U.S. Dollar Slammed Lower Again
April 28th, 2011WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
Update
72.871 is the new short term low.
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72.904 is a new local low. It is getting down into into the critical support zone established in 2008. The great unknown, as you know, is below 70.792.
MIT: GM Virus Produces Structures That Will Improve Solar-Cell Efficiency by Nearly One-Third
April 28th, 2011Via: MIT News:
Researchers at MIT have found a way to make significant improvements to the power-conversion efficiency of solar cells by enlisting the services of tiny viruses to perform detailed assembly work at the microscopic level.
In a solar cell, sunlight hits a light-harvesting material, causing it to release electrons that can be harnessed to produce an electric current. The new MIT research, published online this week in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, is based on findings that carbon nanotubes — microscopic, hollow cylinders of pure carbon — can enhance the efficiency of electron collection from a solar cell’s surface.
Previous attempts to use the nanotubes, however, had been thwarted by two problems. First, the making of carbon nanotubes generally produces a mix of two types, some of which act as semiconductors (sometimes allowing an electric current to flow, sometimes not) or metals (which act like wires, allowing current to flow easily). The new research, for the first time, showed that the effects of these two types tend to be different, because the semiconducting nanotubes can enhance the performance of solar cells, but the metallic ones have the opposite effect. Second, nanotubes tend to clump together, which reduces their effectiveness.
And that’s where viruses come to the rescue. Graduate students Xiangnan Dang and Hyunjung Yi — working with Angela Belcher, the W. M. Keck Professor of Energy, and several other researchers — found that a genetically engineered version of a virus called M13, which normally infects bacteria, can be used to control the arrangement of the nanotubes on a surface, keeping the tubes separate so they can’t short out the circuits, and keeping the tubes apart so they don’t clump.
The system the researchers tested used a type of solar cell known as dye-sensitized solar cells, a lightweight and inexpensive type where the active layer is composed of titanium dioxide, rather than the silicon used in conventional solar cells. But the same technique could be applied to other types as well, including quantum-dot and organic solar cells, the researchers say. In their tests, adding the virus-built structures enhanced the power conversion efficiency to 10.6 percent from 8 percent — almost a one-third improvement.
Federal Reserve Will Stop Buying Treasury Bonds; Keep Interest Rates Near Zero
April 27th, 2011Warning: this is not a recommendation to buy, sell of hold any financial instrument.
In other news, gold hit a fresh record high as the dollar tanked. Spot gold touched $1523.69.
Via: Washington Post:
The Federal Reserve will end its program of pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy in June but will keep interest rates near zero for the foreseeable future.
No Prosecution Seen for Official in NSA Leak
April 27th, 2011It’s better if as little attention as possible is directed at the NSA’s mass communications intercept program targeting Americans.
Via: New York Times:
A former Justice Department official who told Newsweek that he was one of the sources for a 2005 article in The New York Times about the National Security Agency’s program of wiretapping without warrants will not be prosecuted for leaking secret information, his lawyer said on Tuesday.
Paul Kemp, a lawyer for the former official, Thomas M. Tamm, said a federal prosecutor leading the investigation, William Welch, told him about eight months ago that Mr. Tamm would not be charged. That decision was first reported by Politico on Tuesday.
“Mr. Welch said they were not going to go after Tamm,” Mr. Kemp confirmed in an interview.
Microsoft Collects Locations of Windows Phone Users
April 27th, 2011Via: Cnet:
Like Apple and Google, Microsoft collects records of the physical locations of customers who use its mobile operating system.
Windows Phone 7, supported by manufacturers including Dell, HTC, LG, Nokia, and Samsung, transmits to Microsoft a miniature data dump including a unique device ID, details about nearby Wi-Fi networks, and the phone’s GPS-derived exact latitude and longitude.
A Microsoft representative was not immediately able to answer questions that CNET posed this afternoon, including how long the location histories are stored and how frequently the phone’s coordinates are transmitted over the Internet. Windows Phone currently claims about a 6 percent market share but, according to IDC, will capture about 21 percent by 2015 thanks to Microsoft’s partnership with Nokia.
Microsoft does say, however, that location histories are not saved directly on the device. That’s different from Apple’s practice of recording the locations of visible cell towers on iPhone and iPad devices, which can result in more than a year’s worth of data being quietly logged. Google’s approach, by contrast, records only the last few dozen locations on Android phones.
The privacy practices of mobile software companies have come under extensive scrutiny after a researcher at a conference last week in Santa Clara, Calif., described in detail how the iPhone’s location logging works. A CNET report, however, showed that law enforcement and forensics analysts had been aware of and relied on the undocumented feature since at least last year.
Save $12 On a Year of Web Hosting with BlueHost
April 27th, 2011BlueHost is having one of their rare sales. I’ve only noticed them do this one other time, and it lasted for about two days.
‘A Vast, Global Online Network of Homeless People’
April 27th, 2011Remember Hiro Protagonist’s living arrangement in Snowcrash? He lived in a shipping container, but he also had a fiber optic connection to the Metaverse.
Homeless people with broadband: It’s not Sci-FI, it’s the new normal.
Via: Parent Dish:
Brianna Karp thought she had it all together. At 23, the Orange County, Calif., executive assistant was employed, making $50,000 a year, and living in a cozy cottage with her mastiff, Fezzik.
But she would soon face a downward spiral.
Soaring Costs Force Some Renters To Choose Between Shelter And Food
April 27th, 2011Via: Huffington Post:
Around 10 million American households — or one in every four families that rent their homes — could have to choose between paying rent, buying groceries or keeping current with bills, according to a report released Tuesday.
The number of households spending more than 50 percent of their income on rent and bills jumped by 2.6 million over the last decade, according to a Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies report. Economists generally consider “affordable” rent to cost about 30 percent of a tenant’s income.
When housing costs hit certain levels, many Americans are forced to choose between rent and food.
High Level Member of Sinaloa Cartel Claims Multi-Ton Cocaine Trafficking Activities Were Sanctioned by DOJ, DEA and DHS/ICE
April 26th, 2011Via: Narco Sphere:
A high-level player with one of the most notorious narco-trafficking organizations in Mexico, the Sinaloa “cartel,” claims that he has been working with the U.S. government for years, according to pleadings filed recently in federal court in Chicago.
That player, Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, is the son of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia — one of the purported top leaders of the Sinaloa drug-trafficking organization. Zambada Niebla was arrested in Mexico in March 2009 and last February extradited to the United States to stand trial on narco-trafficking-related charges.
The indictment pending against Zambada Niebla claims he served as the “logistical coordinator” for the “cartel,” helping to oversee an operation that imported into the U.S. “multi-ton quantities of cocaine … using various means, including but not limited to, Boeing 747 cargo aircraft, private aircraft … buses, rail cars, tractor trailers, and automobiles.”
The revelation that Zambada Niebla claims to have been a U.S. government asset, working with its sanction, is a shocking development in the so-called drug war and has gone largely un-reported by the U.S. media. The claim, if true, adds credence to theories long in play that the Mexican and U.S. governments are essentially showing favor toward the Sinaloa drug organization and its leadership, including El Mayo and Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Lorea, as part of a broader strategy to weaken and ultimately eliminate rival narco organizations. U.S. and Mexican government officials, of course, have consistently denied that any such arrangement is in place.
Zambada Niebla’s allegation of U.S. government complicity in his narco-trafficking activities is laid out in a two-page court pleading filed in late March with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago. The pleading asserts that Zambada Niebla was working with “public authority” “on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”); and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”); and the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”).
“Public authority for the defendant’s [Zambada Niebla’s] acts began from at least on or about January 1, 2004 and continued to and included on or about March 19, 2009,” the court pleading alleges.
Remember: Barry Seal
The End of QEII: It’s Time to Make the Donuts
April 26th, 2011Via: PIMCO:
Just as Charles Ponzi needed donuts to turn back a suspicious crowd of investors, the Fed needs “donuts” in order to fill the bellies of the literally millions of investors worldwide who worry about the alarmingly large U.S. budget deficit and the impact that the U.S. debt dilemma could have on their Treasury holdings. Investors are no doubt worried they may have bought into an unsustainable scheme: the creation of a scourge of debt so large that the Fed itself has had to purchase the debt to keep the game going.
