They have studied the dangerous art of manipulating great powers since the 1960s, when they played Russians and Chinese against one another. They perfected their skills in the 1990s, when they managed to manipulate the US, South Korea and China into providing large amounts of food and energy aid while giving essentially nothing in return.
Entrepreneurs have been trying for years to turn low-value wastes into high-value products. Waste plastic is among the lowest in value, and gasoline or diesel fuel the highest, but machines that carry out that conversion usually consume a lot of energy and get gummed-up by leftover materialthat they cannot convert. Now a company in Washington, D.C., is trying out a new way heating the plastic to a very carefully controlled temperature range, with infrared energy. The company, Envion, is expected to cut the ribbon on Wednesday morning on a $5 million plant that it says will annually convert 6,000 tons of plastic into nearly a million barrels of something resembling oil. The product can be blended with other components and sold as gasoline or diesel.
A blue-ribbon scientific panel has waved a yellow flag in front of a rapidly expanding number of products containing nanomaterials, cautioning that the tiny substances might be able to penetrate cells and interfere with biological processes.
The warning is contained in a report from the Council of Canadian Academies that will be released publicly today. It is one of the most authoritative to date in this country about the risks of engineered nanomaterials, which companies are adding to products ranging from sunscreens to diesel fuels.
You can get 35 percent better fuel mileage out of your current vehicle by using a device most drivers already have.
That would be your right foot.
Most drivers agonizing over the cost of gasoline fail to realize the enormous impact their driving style has on fuel consumption.
Their lorry, called "the Bio-truck", runs on a fuel created by a Lancashire-based producer, Ecotec, which has developed a process to turn chocolate misshapes into biodiesel.
Most of the chocolate would otherwise end up in landfill.
The layer of peat and the high acidity of the marshy lake had created a kind of protective cocoon around the tank, sealing it off from corrosion and preserving it through 56 years under water. To the team’s delight, nearly every part and mechanism proved to be in perfect working order after cleaning. The fuel tanks were found to be empty, confirming the assumption that the tank had been abandoned and dumped in the lake due to shortage of fuel. The diesel engine had leaked no oil. Astoundingly, without replacing any spare part, the team managed to start up the Diesel engine.
Spending data and interviews around the country show that middle- and working-class consumers are starting to switch from name brands to cheaper alternatives, to eat in instead of dining out and to fly at unusual hours to shave dollars off airfares.
