We’re guessing you’ve heard about Toyota’s massive 3.8 million vehicle recall for unintended acceleration. It appears to be an issue that could have potentially resulted in several deaths and reports of hundreds of accidents. Consumer Reports wanted to dig deeper on the matter, studying National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) data for the 2008 model year. CR chose 2008 because the claims occurred prior to the widespread media coverage that has resulted in a flood of new complaints.
In studying NHTSA’s accumulated 5,916 reports CR found that 166 involved unintended acceleration complaints. Of those complaints, 47 came from Toyota and five from Lexus, representing 41 percent of overall unintended acceleration complaints. That’s obviously a disproportionate amount of reports for an automaker with 16 percent of the US market’s overall share. Here’s one complaint logged by NHTSA.
“I felt the vehicle [2008 Lexus ES 350] increasing in speed to about 90 mph, without depressing the accelerator. I had been on cruise control at about 73 mph… [A] passenger screamed at me to slow down. I was unable to do so, even after stepping forcefully on the brakes.”
While Toyota had a disproportionate amount of unintended acceleration claims, the Japanese automaker wasn’t alone. Ford received an also high 36 overall complaints, or 28 percent of all U.S. models. The F-150 appears to have been one of the Blue Oval’s main culprits, and complaints ranged from a gas pedal that was too wide to an engine that decided to go buck wild.
“The engine immediately increased in rpm to the point where the rear tires began spinning on the gravel. I put the transmission in Neutral and the engine rpm increased. I removed my foot from the brake and the engine continued at a very high rpm. I then depressed and released the accelerator and the engine returned to a normal idle.”
While Toyota and Ford have the lion’s share of unintended acceleration claims, other automakers have a disproportionately low amount of complaints. Chrysler came in with 11 complaints, GM had seven, Honda had five and Nissan had three. Head over to Consumer Reports for its full report and more information on unintended acceleration.
Fuel cell sailboats and motorboats are both making headlines promoting the use of green hydrogen as way to clean up oceans, rivers, lakes and other waterways. I’ve talked about EFOY several times in the past as providing auxiliary power to motor homes and traffic signals.
This time on the Pogo2 yacht the EFOY 2200 provided auxiliary power to keep the ship on course for its 27 day, 4,800 mile journey from France to Portugal to Brazil. Out of 85 yachts in the race, the Pogo2 took 2nd place largely due to the trouble free power provided by the fuel cell for the GPS system, lights, refrigerator and other navigational tools.
The Pogo2 yacht used swappable hydrogen tanks that can be obtained from any one of 1,400 sales points around Europe in both 5 and 10 liter cartridges. A 10-liter cartridge can provide enough power for a typical ship’s onboard systems for 14-days before it has to be swapped out.
Now, in the Austria, a fuel cell is being used to power a motorboat on a lake that forbids the use of gasoline or diesel engines. The boat is a Frauscher 750 St. Tropez powered by a Fronius fuel cell and electric motor.
The Frauscher motorboat uses a swappable 5,000 psi hydrogen tank. The hydrogen itself is made by solar cells, which electrolyze water to create hydrogen and oxygen, making the whole process of motoring upon this lake a very clean adventure indeed.
There is a video on the Motor Boats Monthly website that explains how the fuel cell motorboat works and the company’s plans to commercialize this technology. While many are concerned about cleaning up our highways and byways, our oceans, lakes and river systems also must not be ignored. Hydrogen boats, ships, yachts and even submarines will help keep our waterways cleaner than they are right now.
Marcus Samuelsson’s book New American Table is an explosion of love and praise for all the many immigrant cuisines that melt together to make American food so glorious. And yet the recipe in his book that we were most drawn to was Doro We’t, the classic Ethiopian stew. But maybe this just reinforces his premise: we all bring our own histories to the table, and this is part of his, and his wife’s.
In this morning’s Breakfast With Dave newsletter, analyst Dave Rosenberg talks about Ben Bernanke’s speech yesterday at the NY Economic Club. He likens its speech to that of Alan Greenspan in 1992:
Rosenberg: We are talking about the latest employment report, which had far too many non- confirmations … like the one above. In yesterday’s Economics Club speech in Washington, the Fed Chairman stressed that “the economy confronts some formidable headwinds that seem likely to keep the pace of expansion moderate … we still have some way to go before we can be assured that the recovery will be self-sustaining.”
The last time we heard the term “headwinds” was from Alan Greenspan in the summer of ’92 when the economy was out of technical recession but not yet into a complete recovery, and the Fed waited 20 months to tighten rates! Quick, buy me back those Eurodollar futures!!
Mr. Bernanke received some key support from Bill Dudley who heads up the New York Fed, and stated that the economy faces near term “downward pressure” and that “mostly because some of the current sources of strength are temporary” (ie. fiscal stimulus and the arithmetic boost from reduced inventory de-stocking).
Essentially, Americans will have to continue waiting for the job market to recover if this post-recession vibe is anything like that of the Greenspan era.
The Minerals Management Service on Monday approved Shell’s plan to drill three “exploratory” wells off the North Slope of Alaska.
Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) calls it “progress.” Alaskan environmentalists are crying foul. Big surprise.
The Houston Chronicle: A number of Alaskan environmental and community groups expressed disappointment in the MMS decision, calling it a “rubber stamp” on the plan without doing “a full analysis of its potentially significant effects on wildlife and Alaska Native subsistence, already threatened by climate change…
The greenlight for Shell will likely put wildlife at risk, says Karla Dutton, Alaska Program Director with the Defenders of Wildlife.
The bricks-and-mortar infrastructure of community colleges has not nearly kept pace with increases in student enrollments.
By Jennifer Grayson
Not only are colleges bursting at the proverbial seams, but, according to the American Graduation Initiative, many two-year institutions “face large needs due to deferred maintenance or lack the modern facilities and equipment needed to train students in technical and other growing fields. Insufficient classroom space can force students to delay needed courses and reduce completion rates.” As part of the initiative, President Obama is proposing a new $2.5 billion fund to catalyze $10 billion in community college facility investments that will “expand the colleges’ ability to meet employer and student needs.” One Illinois community college is already fixing its focus on the future, revamping its classrooms to provide top-notch training for 21st century jobs.
Harper College’s virtual hospital unit
THE DESIRE TO “DO SOMETHING THAT COULD BE ON THE CUTTING EDGE” of jobs training led Chicago-area Harper College to renovate 4,360 square feet of existing shell space in its Avanté Center for Science, Health Careers, and Emerging Technologies into a laboratory for its degree program in nanotechnology, says Sally Griffith, assistant vice president for career programs. “As a college, we were looking to get into something that was an emerging technology, and nanoscience goes across all of the sciences.” The science has applications in numerous industries, including manufacturing, biotechnology, and healthcare, and is proving particularly relevant to the new greencollar work force. Nanoengineering is being used to develop alternative fuels, including ethanol, low-cost LED lighting, and coating for super-efficient solar panels. As such, the demand for skilled technicians is high: The National Science Foundation estimates the industry will create 2 million new jobs by 2015.
Harper’s two-year degree in nanotechnology, which launched in the fall of 2008, is the first such program offered by a community college in the state of Illinois. The new space, completed this fall, is a state-of-the-art nanoscience lab, complete with a Hitachi scanning electron microscope, an NT-MDT atomic force microscope, and a device that allows students to lay down nanoscale layers of material. Having such sophisticated technology in the classroom allows students to collaborate with local area companies that are incorporating the “tiny science” into some pretty profound work. “We’re working with a company close by here that is developing very tiny little motors that will carry medication to the spot on somebody’s body that needs it. Can you imagine if you did chemotherapy just to the part that needed it rather than poisoning a whole body?” marvels Griffith.
The facility does have some limitations, however. Harper can’t match the research power of a huge research university, admits Griffith, which is why the nanotechnology lab was designed as a smart classroom, complete with capabilities for multimedia, online learning, and remote collaboration with other institutions. Harper students can even operate equipment located at Penn State and the University of Minnesota, virtually. (UM is a partner in the National Science Foundation grant that Harper received to launch nanotechnology in the Midwest; the other grant partners include Dakota County Technical College [MN], Chippewa Valley Technical College [WI], Lansing Community College [MI], North Dakota State College of Science, and Minnesota State Community and Technical College.) “Students can send a sample in [for testing in labs at Penn State or UM] and watch what happens on a video camera,” says Samuel Levenson, assistant professor and nano-science coordinator at Harper. In addition, Team-Viewer remote-access software allows students at partner school College of Lake County (IL) to access the instruments at Harper.
Simulations for Students
Biotech isn’t the only area predicting massive job growth. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment for registered nurses is expected to grow faster than all occupations and generate the largest number of new jobs for any field. That’s why Harper has also focused attention on its nursing program, which is in the final stages of a renovation to create a virtual hospital for its students.
When Harper lab and simulation coordinator Barbara Gawron proposed recreating a hospital unit at the school– complete with nurse’s station, patient rooms, designated specialty areas, and talking mannequins (called simulators)– Cynthia Luxton, dean of the health careers division, jumped at the idea. In a typical nursing school scenario, explains Luxton, you walk into a large, open lab where different equipment is available to students. “It’s not what they’re going to do when they walk into a patient’s room at the hospital.” Harper nursing students already use simulations in all four semesters of the Associate Degree Nursing program– the faculty even use it for pre-program testing to ensure students are competent in certified nursing assistant skills– so by making the experience even more realistic, the department hopes to truly engage its students. The new space will be multi-disciplinary; students in other medical technician programs (ultrasound, general diagnostic, graphic technology) also will use the new virtual hospital for training.
The physical renovation of the space will mostly involve constructing wall dividers to create the look and feel of a real hospital. What will require the most work is integrating all the new technology into the space. In addition to Laerdal and Gaumard simulators which, depending on the level of model purchased, can even be used to draw blood and check levels, the new virtual hospital will include a computerized system for charting medical records, nursing call lights, videotaping so that instructors can see students work during simulations, iPod Touches used as clinical-reference tools, and a Pyxis computerized medication-administration system from CareFusion.
“Students are going to walk into a space that looks just like a hospital, because we want them to make decisions, we want them to problem-solve; and if they do make a mistake, it’s going to be in a safe environment, rather than [in] a clinical area that’s very busy and hectic,” says Gawron. “We can control the situations and what they’re going to encounter.” One advantage of this regulated environment is that instructors can design simulations to mimic what’s happening in society. “I could totally see that we could have an H1N1 epidemic in our hospital,” says Gawron. “What we’re seeing trendwise we can replicate right away.”
It’s this trailblazing technology that regularly brings larger schools to visit Harper. But Harper College President Kenneth Ender emphasizes that atomic force microscopes and robotic patients alone aren’t enough to prepare students for 21st century jobs. “It is paramount that we not only acquire the latest technology, but also work to thoughtfully integrate it into all levels of our curriculum. How we use these resources is just as important as acquiring them.”
Looking for another edible – or in this case, drinkable – gift idea? How about tea? With just a little time and imagination, you can create beautiful homemade blends, bags, and sachets for the tea lovers in your life. (Bonus: tea is light and easy to ship!)
It seemed pretty obvious when we first heard that China’s BAIC wanted Saab’s tooling that it didn’t want anything to do with purchasing the Swedish automaker’s full monty. If BAIC wanted to be in the Saab business, clearly, it would have made overtures for more than just the retired tooling from the older versions of the 9-5 and 9-3. BAIC wants the cars and all the stuff that Saab made to make them, so as to have something else to sell in its home market. The rest of Saab, such as its Trollhattan headquarters and workforce apparently aren’t of interest to BAIC, which just secured a line of credit from the Bank of China, presumably to finance this purchase.
General Motors is said to still have some suitors interested in the whole shooting match, instead of BAIC’s cherry picking. Since the deal with Koenigsegg fell apart, Spyker has indicated interest in Saab, as has a private concern called Renco Group. Any deal will be carefully vetted by General Motors, and will have a short time-table for completion. If BAIC’s bid for the parts of Saab carries through, the rest of the company will almost certainly head for liquidation. It’s looking increasingly likely that there will be no stay of execution for Saab, no white knight riding in to save this Swedish automaker in distress. Still, it ain’t over until it’s over…
Student artists from across the Northwest suburbs exhibited their work at the 2009 Harper College Regional High School Art Show — an annual, vibrant display of 2D and 3D pieces, from photography to sculpture.
The roughly 500 submissions, representing 10 schools from districts 211, 214 and 220, were chosen by the high schools’ art teachers.
Students from Barrington and John Hersey high schools emerged as the show’s top honorees: Justin Lynk of Hersey won the Harper Faculty Award in the 2D category for his photography entry, and Lexy Fischer of Barrington High School scored the Harper Faculty Award in the 3D category for her sculpture.
Both were honored with scholarships at a reception held Dec. 2.
Art teachers from the participating schools also chose first-, second- and third-place winners — as well as honorable mention recipients — in both the 2D and 3D categories from each high school.
The contest “is a way to get our high school students even more excited about art, and also to showcase our facility,” said Harper Assistant Professor Stephany Rimland, who helped coordinate the show.
“This art show encourages the arts, and it also specifically encourages arts at Harper College.”
The Dec. 2 reception allowed student artists and parents to browse the submitted entries, see Harper’s art department and meet Harper art faculty. Dr. Kenneth Ender, Harper’s president, also was there to hand out the two Harper Faculty Awards.
Fremd High School Art Teacher Paul Radek, who helped coordinate the show, said the Harper show provides students the chance to exhibit their work alongside those from other schools and suburbs. The show also, he says, reminds students and parents of Harper’s strong art program.
The schools that participated are Barrington, Buffalo Grove, Elk Grove, Conant, Fremd, John Hersey, Palatine, Prospect, Rolling Meadows and Wheeling.
HAVANT, UK … Diversified industrial manufacturer Eaton Corporation today announced that its proprietary Eatonite™ Laser Clad coating technology was certified by independent test services company DNV after fulfilling requirements stated in the “Guideline for qualification of wear and corrosion protection surface materials for piston rods” developed as part of a Joint Industry Project (JIP).
“Eaton is the first, and to date the only, cylinder manufacturing company that has passed the JIP test requirements,” said Dr. Luis F. Garfias, director of Testing & Qualification for DNV’s Materials & Corrosion Technology Center in Columbus, Ohio. “DNV-certified Eatonite laser coating technology is a significant breakthrough for upstream, offshore applications in the oil and gas industry,” said Astrid Mozes, vice president and general manager of Eaton’s Controls Division. “It will also provide new solutions in key industries like Hydropower and virtually anywhere else piston rods are exposed to severe environmental corrosion.” Piston rod samples made of SAE 4130 steel coated with Eatonite were tested at DNV laboratories in Høvik, Norway, and Columbus, Ohio, for a wide range of physical, mechanical, and electrochemical properties to evaluate the performance of the Eatonite coating against the JIP standard.
“Controlling corrosion is an ongoing challenge for the offshore oil industry,” said Dr. Alexander Bogicevic, senior technology manager of Eaton’s Innovation Center in Southfield, Mich. “We developed the Eatonite laser coating technology to extend the life of piston rods used in hydraulic riser tensioning systems on offshore platforms. Many materials and processes were tested and the result of this multi-year development program was the Eatonite technology. “After proprietary processing, the Eatonite material is twice as hard as conventional Inconel 625, a well known corrosion resistant alloy (CRA), but also has good cladding homogeneity due to the novel laser technology developed to deposit the Eatonite. As confirmed by the DNV certification testing, Eatonite-clad rods deliver the mechanical performance of traditional SAE 4130 steel piston rods, along with the corrosion resistance expected for CRA materials like Inconel 625. It really does give customers the best of both worlds” Eatonite testing is the subject of a technical paper being prepared for the 2010 Offshore Technology Conference (OTC).
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Aired Dec. 7, 2009 4:40 PM By Josh Peterson, KVEW TV Reporter
RICHLAND — Hospital patients with mobility problems at Kadlec Regional Medical Center now have a new way to get rehabilitated.
The new inpatient rehabilitation vehicle is designed to help patients enter vehicles, adjust mirrors and put on seat belts before they get on the road after being released.
Columbia Basin College’s Autobody students built the car in a few weeks.
The truck was a ‘Cash for Clunkers’ car. It was donated from Pasco Auto Wrecking.
Before it arrived, patients used to practice vehicle procedures outside in their own cars.
“Now that we have this capability, we’re gonna be able to practice more regularly and really take some of the stress away from being able to go home after you’ve been in the hospital for an extended period of time,” said Angela Mohondro, Kadlec Director of Rehabilitation.
Mohondro says the rehabilitation vehicle is only the second one in the state.
She says it will be used every day starting today.
Subscribers to our Search and Information Access Research are well aware that we’ve been increasing our coverage of ApacheLucene lately, in keeping with the phenomenal — and still growing — popularity of Apache’s well-known open-source search engine.
This has led to a coverage conundrum (of sorts) for us, inasmuch as it is no longer possible to cover Lucene properly without also devoting a good deal of discussion to closely related projects like Nutch and (especially) Solr. This becomes problematic at times, not just because we’re in essence covering multiple projects under one conceptual umbrella, but because the functional and architectural boundaries between things like Lucene, Nutch, and Solr — though well understood by developers — are easily blurred in a semi-technical writeup unless special care is taken to distinguish between concepts like search server, search engine, crawlers versus parsers, etc.
Some of these bits are unique to Lucene (the "engine" part, for example, consisting of the indexer and query framework), whereas others are unique to Solr (e.g., the "query server" bits that handle data-fetching and -passing over HTTP), whereas other bits (like UI widgets for faceted search) aren’t there at all — you have to build them yourself.
In short, as we expand our coverage of Lucene, we find ourselves investing ever-greater amounts of time and care in tiptoeing the conceptual boundaries around Solr, Nutch, Lucene, Hadoop, and so on. We think we do a pretty good job. But it’s surprising how many people (including us, at times) still have trouble keeping the various pieces of the Apache search world straight.
Our job isn’t made easier by the Apache Foundation’s laissez-faire attitude toward project naming, which has led to an out-of-control zoo of projects with some sensical but oftentimes nonsensical names like Hadoop, Mahout, Tika, Lenya, James, Mina… and the list goes on.
There’s a longstanding tradition in R&D (and elsewhere, of course) of using whimsical, short, purposely obscure code names for projects early in their lifetimes. And that’s fine for prototypes and pre-release versions of software. But a mature product needs a mature name, preferably something descriptive and apropos. For example, Droids is not an entirely inappropriate name for Apache’s autonomous-robots project. It’s at least semantically aligned with the domain. But even if you know enough Hindi to figure out that Mahout is a term for the driver of an elephant, you’re not likely to divine that it is also an open-source project for distributed machine learning algorithms on the Hadoop platform (and you shouldn’t then be forced to look up what Hadoop means, and so on).
So, Suggestion No. 1 for Apache: When a project graduates from incubation, give it a real name.
It would also help if Apache namespaced subprojects and/or related projects in a logical fashion — a fashion that shows the relationship. For example, would it hurt to call Solr "Lucene Search Server" — or at least "Lucene Solr"? Solr is, after all, strictly dependent on Lucene, much the way Sling is dependent on Jackrabbit.
Suggestion No. 2: Make dependencies evident in project names. It helps people understand what the projects are about.
If the world is headed toward a Lucene-* stack (as it surely is), wouldn’t it be nice to be able to refer to it that way? If people are having a hard time understanding that Solr is a search server, wouldn’t it make sense to put "server" in the name? Bottom line, a rational namespace for Apache projects would be a big win for all concerned.
Those of us who regularly tiptoe the boundaries around Apache’s zoo of related projects would like to occasionally REST our feet.
KNOXVILLE — For years students in the College of Nursing at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, have traveled far and wide to take their nursing skills to those in need. This spring, students from the college will help some of Peru’s poorest populations.
While the group will offer their assistance for free, their travel to and stay in Peru are not free. Eyeing costs per person of nearly $3,000, the nursing students and faculty are turning to the UT and Knoxville communities for help.
The College of Nursing will host a $5 pancake breakfast benefitting the international health care mission to Peru from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 9, 2010, at Aubrey’s Restaurant off Papermill Drive. Tickets are available for pre-order now and at the door the day of the event.
“Experiential learning — in which students engage in meaningful activities that address human and community needs — is fundamental to our nursing program and the kind of nurses we aim to graduate,” said Karen Lasater, clinical assistant professor in the College of Nursing. “These experiences provide students with the opportunity to develop cultural competence and a global perspective — lessons that you can’t learn in a classroom. To have this kind of experience will make our graduates all the more competitive in the profession.”
Thirteen students and two faculty members, including Lasater, will travel to Peru March 6 – 17, 2010. They will provide primary care to some of Lima’s poorest residents. Their trip also will involve community assessments and home visits where the students and instructors will educate people on nutrition and dietary needs, prenatal care, proper sanitation, safe food and water storage practices and sanitary living conditions. They also will conduct physical exams.
Similar trips have been made to Ghana, Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Panama in years past. All trips, including the one to Peru, are coordinated through International Service Learning (ISL), an educational organization offering multidisciplinary humanitarian programs in Central and South America, the Caribbean, Mexico and Africa.
ISL offers programs in health and education and general service projects. For health programs, participants are expected to be able to perform health services in the field under sometimes difficult and always unpredictable and challenging circumstances. The College of Nursing began participating in ISL programs in 2005.
“A fund has been endowed by Mr. Joe Emert, ‘78 alumnus of the College of Nursing, to assist with expenses for the international health trip. Our nursing students receive funds from the endowment, but we still need more funding,” Lasater said. “The pancake breakfast will be a nice, quick, affordable meal for all those students just getting back in town for the start of the spring semester, and for members of the community and surrounding area who wish to support the College of Nursing. We hope everyone comes out to support the nursing students and the mission.”
Aubrey’s will donate the food, time, facilities and kitchen cooks for the all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast. Members of the college will be on hand to help. The meal includes pancakes, eggs, bacon, juice and coffee. All proceeds go to support the trip to Peru, and donations also will be accepted.
While Google is making strides in real-time search, Yahoo has to sit back and work mostly on the front end and the user experience, as the underlying technology is pretty much a dead end facing an imminent replacement once the Microsoft deal gets underway. But it doesn’t mean that there’s nothing to show, the company has been introducing all sorts of features and updates. The most recent one involves its video search engine which has been getting some attention lately. When doing a search for a show or a movie, Yahoo will list its characters and popular episodes in the left sidebar along with the usual options.
“You can see that the left rail on our video search results page is becoming a place where you can use new ways to explore online videos. By hooking into the “Web of Things,” we have created intelligent contextual refiners to narrow down your search intent intuitively,” Nilesh Gattani and Ranjita Naik from Yahoo Video Search wrote. “The TV refiner that we are launching today organizes TV series queries into main characters, popular episodes, and seasons.”
The new features are similar to the ones Yahoo has been introducing lately, both on the video search engine and in the main one as well. Recently, it has launched similar features for music videos,… (read more)
“We will add from our side,that company (TNR Gold) was trading at the same level in Spring – Summer 2008 before any lithium and REE properties were acquired. It is an early stage exploration play and access to the capital will be critical for the company. Any significant result from the properties could generate a Buy signal from recent consolidation stage. Stock was in an accumulation stage around 0.3CAD recently and Insiders increased their position according to filing. It is the only company from this sector with drivers in lithium, REE, gold and copper with catalyst in the form of announced strategy to spin off International Lithium and Alaska Gold and Copper properties could follow this approach. We own the shares of this company among others discussed on this blog, please do not take anything as a solicitation to buy or sell any particular stock on this blog.”
We have a very positive news for the company – the last crucial piece in its strategic plan to be put in place: access to the capital. Insiders can sell in a lot of circumstances, they buy only in one – when they like what they see in the company and they think with their money that the company is undervalued and has a growth potential. Gary Schellenber and all team at TNR Gold apparently made a very good effort this Fall and manage to find strategic investors in the company. Financing is without any fees and shows continuous commitment of a majority shareholder. Strong hands are accumulating shares in the company and will allow it to develop its business plan without distraction from short term minded financial players in the market. After closing of this financing company will be transformed almost overnight into the very aggressive player in Lithium and REE market with capital to prove its ambitions. Company has extended its shareholder base and added a very important link to energy market players and green energy venture capital. Now we have in play Non-Executive Chairman Kirill Klip further commitment to TNR Group of companies, Canada Zinc Metals with its Chinese connections, industry insiders like Barrick Gold, Nova Gold, NGeX Resources and group of funds supporting this company: Pinetree Capital and Tocqueville Fund among them. We have found a new Interview on TNR Gold home page, which can bring more light about Company plans.
Press Release Source: TNR Gold Corp. On 9:23 am EST, Tuesday December 8, 2009 VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA–(Marketwire – Dec. 8, 2009) – TNR Gold Corp. (“TNR” or the “Company”) (TSX VENTURE:TNR – News) and wholly-owned International Lithium Corp. (“ILC”) are pleased to announce a fully subscribed non-brokered private placement in TNR for 10,000,000 (ten million) units (the “Units”), priced at $0.30 per Unit, to raise $3,000,000 (the “Offering”). Each Unit consists of one common share and one-half common share purchase warrant. Each whole warrant entitles the holder to purchase one additional common share of the Company at a price of $0.40 for a period of twenty four months from the date of closing. There are no finders fees payable for the placement. TNR’s Non-Executive Chairman, Mr. Kirill Klip, will be taking 5,000,000 units of the private placement and will concurrently sell 5,000,000 shares privately in order to bring key energy sector strategic investors into the Company. Mr. Klip has filed a notice of distribution to disclose the sale of 5,000,000 shares privately.The remaining 5,000,000 units of the private placement will go to one subscriber. TNR President and Executive Chairman, Gary Schellenberg, states, “We are encouraged by the continuing support received from Mr. Klip and welcome new strategic investors in TNR and International Lithium Corp. It is clear that our strategic focus on Lithium, other Rare Metals and Rare Earth Elements properties around the world has attracted energy sector investors who are building a portfolio of green energy assets including TNR and wholly-owned International Lithium Corp.” All securities issued pursuant to this financing are subject to a 4-month hold period from the date of closing. The Offering is subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval and any regulatory approvals. Proceeds of the private placement will be used to fund the evaluation of TNR’s Lithium, other Rare Metals and Rare Earth Elements properties, implement the proposed spin-off of International Lithium Corp. and for general corporate purposes. Further to the Company’s news release dated September 22, 2009, TNR will not be proceeding with the brokered private placement. ABOUT TNR GOLD / INTERNATIONAL LITHIUM CORP. TNR is a diversified metals exploration company focused on exploring existing properties and identifying new prospective projects globally. TNR has a total portfolio of 33 properties, of which 16 will be included in the proposed spin-off of International Lithium Corp. It is anticipated that TNR shareholders of record will receive up to one share and one full tradable warrant of International Lithium Corp. for every 4 shares of TNR held as of the yet determined record date. This will result in TNR shareholders owning shares in both TNR and International Lithium. For further details of the spin-off please refer to TNR’s April 27, 2009 news release or visit http://www.internationallithium.com/. The recent acquisition of lithium, rare metals and rare-earth elements projects in Argentina, Canada, USA and Ireland confirms the company’s commitment to generating projects, diversifying its markets, and building shareholder value. TNR Gold Corp. On behalf of the board, Gary Schellenberg, Chairman and CEO”
KNOXVILLE – Thomas Mason, director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and president and CEO of UT-Battelle, LLC, will be the featured speaker at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, fall commencement.
The ceremony will begin at 3 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 13, in Thompson-Boling Arena.
More than 2,800 undergraduate and graduate students who have completed degree programs during the summer or fall semester will be awarded diplomas. Six graduates will receive commissions as second lieutenants in the United States Army.
Students being awarded post-graduate degrees will be honored in a graduate hooding ceremony at 4:30 p.m., Friday, Dec. 11 in the arena.
Mason has served as director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s largest science and energy lab since 2007. He joined ORNL in 1998 as Scientific Director for the DOE’s Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) project. He was later named associate laboratory director and oversaw construction and development of the $1.4 billion dollar project, now one of the nation’s largest science facilities.
“The university is pleased to welcome Dr. Mason to share his message with our graduates,” said Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek. “The Oak Ridge National Laboratory is at the forefront of the nation’s science and energy agenda. Through our unique partnership, our faculty and our students reap enormous benefits. We appreciate being able to hear Thom’s insights, not only as the lab’s director, but as an extremely accomplished scientist and dedicated professional.”
Mason is an internationally recognized leader in the application of neutron scattering techniques. As director of the lab, he oversees a staff of more than 4,600 people and an operation which hosts approximately 3,000 guest researchers a year. The lab’s annual funding exceeds $1.4 billion.
Mason has served as an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, a senior scientist at Risø National Laboratory in Denmark and as a postdoctoral Fellow with Bell Laboratories. He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2001 and a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2007.
A native of Nova Scotia, he received a bachelor’s in physics from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia and a doctor of philosophy in experimental condensed matter physics from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
In 2008, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award for the Sciences from McMaster University.
The University of Tennessee manages and operates Oak Ridge National Laboratory through UT-Battelle with support from the state of Tennessee. The research enterprise consists of $3 billion in research facilities, equipment and expertise in East Tennessee. These resources include the Spallation Neutron Source, a $1.4 billion science project; the world’s largest unclassified supercomputer, joint research centers, state tax exemptions, and funding for joint faculty appointments.
Parking for commencement is available at any area on campus. Parking for disabled persons is available in the Neyland Drive garage (G-10). For more information, see the campus parking map.
For more information regarding the ceremony, call the registrar’s office at (865) 974-2101 or visit its Web site.
Back in June, we wrote about an odd lawsuit from a bunch of independent music publishers headed by MCS Music America against Microsoft, Yahoo and RealNetworks claiming that all three failed to secure licenses on the compositions. This seems strange, of course. You would assume that big companies like Microsoft, Yahoo and Real would make sure to secure all the necessary licenses for their music download and streaming operations. However, MCS and the others suggested that the three companies only secured the licenses on the recordings, but not the compositions. What appeared to have happened, was that Microsoft, Yahoo and Real licensed the songs from the major record labels, who also own many publishing operations, and in were told that they had received licenses for both the recording and composition. The problem is that not all of those major labels hold the composition rights. In some cases, those rights are still held by independent music publishers — and there was a fair amount of confusion over who owned what. It was a perfect example of how ridiculous copyright law is today that even in setting up a big music operation from a major company with the major record labels, no one was exactly sure if all the proper rights were secured.
Either way, Microsoft, Yahoo and Real were quick to ask for the lawsuit to be dismissed and Eric Goldman sent over the rather short ruling from last month that does, in fact, dismiss the case stating (surprisingly) that the music publishers failed to show they hold the copyrights they were arguing over. That’s rather incredible, seeing as the original lawsuit went on for pages and pages, claiming to hold various licensing rights. But the court wasn’t buying it:
Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss All Causes of Action of Plaintiff MCS Music America,
Inc. (“MCS”) is granted on the ground Plaintiff MCS has failed to state a legal
claim for copyright infringement. To establish a claim of copyright infringement,
two elements must be satisfied: (1) ownership of a valid copyright, and (2)
unauthorized copying of the original work. Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural
Telephone Services Co., Inc,. 499 U.S. 340, 111 S.Ct 1282 (1991); Jones v. Blige,
558 F.3d 485 (6th Cir.2009).
MCS has failed to demonstrate ownership of any of the copyrights at issue.
Plaintiffs allege MCS is a licensing administrator and an exclusive licensing
agent of the copyrights at issue, but do not allege MCS to be an owner of such
works. Without demonstrating legal ownership, MCS is not able to plead all of the
necessary elements of copyright infringement.
Plaintiffs ask the court to consider the affidavit of Janice Bane with regard to
MCS’s rights. The court will not consider Ms. Bane’s affidavit in deciding this
issue. In ruling on a motion to dismiss, a court properly may consider only
evidence contained in or asserted in the pleadings. As a general rule, matters
outside the pleadings may not be considered in ruling on a motion to dismiss
unless the motion is converted to one for summary judgment under Rule 56. Jackson
v. City of Columbus, 194 F.3d 737, 745 (6th Cir.1999). Weiner v. Klais & Co., 108
F.3d 86, 88-89 (6th Cir.1997). Furthermore, even if the court were to consider Ms.
Bane’s affidavit, it does not indicate any ownership on the part of MCS, thus
rendering its consideration moot.
Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss All Causes of Action of Plaintiff MCS is GRANTED.
On top of that, MCS requested the right to amend the lawsuit, and the court shot them down there as well:
Plaintiffs have moved to amend their complaint a second time. The Federal Rules of
Civil Procedure state “… a party may amend its pleading only with the opposing
party’s written consent or the court’s leave. The court should freely give leave
when justice so requires.” Fed.R.Civ.P. 15(a)(2). However. Plaintiffs have not
demonstrated their amended complaint would show MCS has ownership of any of the
copyrights at issue and would therefore be futile. For that reason, Plaintiff’s
Motion to Amend Complaint is DENIED.
So much for that, then. Somewhere along the line, it looks like these publishers got some really poor legal advice, as this case didn’t last long at all, and to be tossed out so early is pretty bad.
Fuel cell sailboats and motorboats are both making headlines promoting the use of green hydrogen as way to clean up oceans, rivers, lakes and other waterways. I’ve talked about 
The Frauscher motorboat uses a swappable 5,000 psi hydrogen tank. The hydrogen itself is made by solar cells, which electrolyze water to create hydrogen and oxygen, making the whole process of motoring upon this lake a very clean adventure indeed.
While Google is making strides in real-time search, Yahoo has to sit back and work mostly on the front end and the user experience, as the underlying technology is pretty much a dead end facing an imminent replacement once the Microsoft deal gets underway. But it doesn’t mean that there’s nothing to show, the company has been introducing all sorts of features and updates. The most recent one involves its video search engine which has been getting some attention lately. When doing a search for a show or a movie, Yahoo will list its characters and popular episodes in the left sidebar along with the usual options. 
