Aug
10
The Problem At The Athabasca Oil Mines
August 10, 2009 | 10 Comments
Last Wednesday’s readers know I went up last week to Fort McMurray Alberta (expenses covered by the API, now disclosed again) to tour Syncrude’s oil mining facility and ConocoPhillips Surmount oil extraction that’s done in place under the ground. So before we start here is a photo from along the Athabasca River where you can […]
Aug
7
A Breakthrough For Internal Combustion Engines
August 7, 2009 | 3 Comments
Rolf Reitz, heading the engine research group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is blending both diesel and gasoline fuel sources in the engine’s combustion chamber with models showing significantly lower pollutant emissions than conventional engines, with an average of 20 percent greater fuel efficiency as well. This is very big news. The dramatic results came […]
Aug
6
A Battery So Good and Its Real
August 6, 2009 | 15 Comments
Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) researchers are developing a lithium-air cell with a new structure (a set of three different electrolytes) to avoid the degradation and performance problems of conventional lithium-air cells. But the big news is in the discharge capacity. The newly developed lithium-air cell has shown a continuous […]
Aug
5
Looking at Canada’s Tar Sands – What It Means to Consumers
August 5, 2009 | 3 Comments
Today I’ll be on the way to Canada to see the Conoco Phillips tar sands oil extraction operation near Fort McMurray in Alberta. It’s another of those American Petroleum Institute efforts to inform and educate. Being a blogger in the field has its perks, if flying for a day to get up there, racing about […]
Aug
4
High Speed Genetic Modification
August 4, 2009 | 1 Comment
High-throughput sequencing machines have turned biologists into voracious genome readers, enabling them to scan millions of DNA letters, or bases, every hour. The problem is knowing what genes do just what and what rewrites will make the difference hoped for. It’s like a writers block. Struggling to come up with the story. That struggle is […]
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