Today Acer officially announced their latest Android handset, the Stream (coz a whole lotta Liquid makes a Stream).
The device will rock Android 2.1 UI atop a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, a 3.7″ 800×480 AMOLED screen, 5MP camera with 720p video, 512MB RAM, 2GB on-board storage (+ an 8GB MicroSD card), and the usual connectivity options (ie WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth, HSDPA, GPS).
So, yeah, pretty much the standard “high-end” Android device.
The mayor of an Athens suburb is on day 29 of a hunger strike against austerity. Various members of Elliniko’s town council have now joined Christos Kortzidi and are refusing to eat.
Kortzidi is protesting the government’s plan reduce costs by merging dozens of municipalities across Greece.
New pictures from the Elliniko website show the mayor alive and well. He’s got a framed poster of Che Guevera in his office, which suggests support for a growing Communist movement. Kortzidi became famous in 2007 when he led a successful 24-day hunger strike to preserve free access to local beaches.
Greek austerity measures are not going smoothly. Protestors from Elliniko and other towns are arriving in Athens by the busload.
Image: PIAZZA del POPOLO
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Greenland’s Uplift: Evidence Of Rapid Ice Loss
Scientists at the University of Miami say Greenland’s ice is melting so quickly that the land underneath is rising at an accelerated pace.
According to the study, some coastal areas are going up by nearly one inch per year and if current trends continue, that number could accelerate to as much as two inches per year by 2025, explains Tim Dixon, professor of geophysics at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS) and principal investigator of the study.
“It’s been known for several years that climate change is contributing to the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet,” Dixon says. “What’s surprising, and a bit worrisome, is that the ice is melting so fast that we can actually see the land uplift in response,” he says. “Even more surprising, the rise seems to be accelerating, implying that melting is accelerating.”
The research was published in Nature Geoscience. The idea behind the study is that if Greenland is losing its ice cover, the resulting loss of weight causes the rocky surface beneath to rise. The same process is affecting the islands of Iceland and Svalbard, which also have ice caps, explains Shimon Wdowinski, research associate professor in the University of Miami RSMAS, and co-author of the study.
“During ice ages and in times of ice accumulation, the ice suppresses the land,” Wdowinski says. “When the ice melts, the land rebounds upwards,” he says. “Our study is consistent with a number of global warming indicators, confirming that ice melt and sea level rise are real and becoming significant.”
Using specialized global positioning system (GPS) receivers stationed on the rocky shores of Greenland, the scientists looked at data from 1995 onward. The raw GPS data were analyzed for high accuracy position information, as well as the vertical velocity and acceleration of each GPS site.
The measurements are restricted to places where rock is exposed, limiting the study to coastal areas. However, previous data indicate that ice in Greenland’s interior is in approximate balance: yearly losses from ice melting and flowing toward the coast are balanced by new snow accumulation, which gradually turns to ice. Most ice loss occurs at the warmer coast, by melting and iceberg calving and where the GPS data are most sensitive to changes. In western Greenland, the uplift seems to have started in the late 1990’s.
Melting of Greenland’s ice contributes to global sea level rise. If the acceleration of uplift and the implied acceleration of melting continue, Greenland could soon become the largest contributor to global sea level rise, explains Yan Jiang, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Miami RSMAS and co-author of the study.
“Greenland’s ice melt is very important because it has a big impact on global sea level rise,” Jiang says. “We hope that our work reaches the general public and that this information is considered by policy makers.”
Nation’s largest fair-weather CPV project opens in Calif.
A solar technology that leads the pack in hot, sunny climates scored a victory this week with the official launch of a concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) system in Victorville, Calif., that officials claim is North America’s largest facility of its type.
The project brings 1 megawatt of electric capacity online at Victor Valley College, a small school near Los Angeles, and consists of 122 arrays made by Mountain View, Calif.-based SolFocus Inc.
The installation, dubbed a “micro-generating facility,” is connected to the local electric grid and will produce about 30 percent of the electricity used by the college in a year, officials said.
“In addition to providing energy cost savings and a new revenue stream, these 122 arrays will provide the ideal testing ground for our students to build green careers that support the nation’s new energy economy,” said Victor Valley College President Christopher O’Hearn at a launch event. School officials plan to develop curricula on system installation, operations and maintenance around the facility.
The school did not disclose the system’s cost or expected payback time, but they said it uses one-thousandth as much of the expensive solar photovoltaic material as is in traditional cells. The cost of CPV is typically raised by other elements of the systems, such as moving parts that track the sun across the sky, however.
CPV technology is similar to the photovoltaics found on many rooftops but is far more efficient thanks to reflective optical elements that concentrate sunlight onto high-power solar cells. SolFocus claims its cells are more than twice as efficient as traditional silicon solar cells.
The technology works especially well in very sunny regions since, unlike some other photovoltaics, it does not produce energy well with the diffuse light available on cloudy days. It is also more effective than other photovoltaics when temperatures are high, according to the CPV Consortium, a global industry group.
The technology is often confused with concentrating solar power, or CSP, that group said. CSP is also used for large-scale installations but uses the sun’s heat rather than converting it directly to electricity. CSP installations concentrate the sun’s rays onto collectors that heat up a medium, often molten salt, which is then used to produce steam that turns a turbine.
Western U.S. Grid Can Handle More Renewables
More than a third of the electricity in the western United States could come from wind and solar power without installing significant amounts of backup power. And most of this expansion of renewable energy could be done without installing new interstate transmission lines, according to a new study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO. But the study says increasing the amount of renewables on the grid will require smart planning and cooperation between utilities.
The NREL findings provide a strong counterargument to the idea that the existing power grid is insufficient to handle increasing amounts of renewable power. As California and other states require utilities to use renewable sources for significant fractions of their electricity, some experts have warned that measures to account for the variability of wind and solar power could be costly. At the extreme, they speculated, every megawatt of wind installed could require a megawatt of readily available conventional power in case the wind stopped blowing. But the NREL findings, like other recent studies, suggest that the costs could be minimal, especially in the West.
“It’s a lot lower than what people thought it was going to be,” says Daniel Brooks, project manager for power delivery and utilization at the Electric Power Research Institute. Even if wind farms had to pay for the necessary grid upgrades and backup power themselves, they could still sell electricity at competitive rates, he says.
NREL considered a scenario in which 30 percent of the total electricity produced in a year in western states comes from wind turbines and 5 percent comes from solar power–mostly from solar thermal plants that generate power by concentrating sunlight to produce high temperatures and steam. The researchers assumed the solar thermal plants would have some form of heat storage, although not all planned plants do. The study used detailed data about wind speeds, solar irradiance, and the operation of the electrical grid. GE Energy researchers commissioned by NREL then used the data to simulate the impact of various scenarios for wind and solar power use.
The researchers found that one way to keep the number of new backup power plants to a minimum is to expand the geographical area that renewable energy is gathered from, says Debra Lew, the NREL project manager in charge of the study. If utilities can call on wind farms and solar power from several states, rather than just from the local area, a drop in wind in one area is likely to be offset by an increase in wind elsewhere, and solar panels shaded by clouds in one area will be offset by others in sunny areas.
That makes it far less necessary to have conventional power plants standing by to make up for drops in power. The NREL study estimated that drawing only on local resources would increase variability on the grid by a factor of 50. That’s “a huge increase,” Lew says, too big for a local utility to balance using backup power and other resources. If you aggregate resources over several states, the increase is less than a factor of two.
Nissan Says Electric Car Is Sold Out for This Year
Nissan’s chief executive, Carlos Ghosn, said Tuesday that the company had already received 19,000 orders in the United States and Japan for the electric car that it would start selling at year-end.
More than six months before the car, the Nissan Leaf, arrives at dealerships, the preorders mean that the car is sold out for this year and that the company might stop taking reservations, Mr. Ghosn said during a visit to the Detroit Economic Club.
“The preorders are such that we are very comfortable with what we have undertaken,” Mr. Ghosn said after the speech. “The more we advance into it, the more comfortable we are with it.”
Nissan plans to break ground Wednesday in Smyrna, Tenn., for a plant to build batteries for the Leaf and eventually other models, part of its goal to sell at least 500,000 electric cars worldwide starting in 2013. The first Leafs will be made in Japan, with assembly in Tennessee planned to start in 2012.
Mr. Ghosn’s enthusiasm for electric vehicles contrasts with some recent studies and with comments from other automakers, including Honda, suggesting that pure electric vehicles have little short-term potential.
General Motors is scheduled to begin selling a battery-powered plug-in car, the Chevrolet Volt, later this year, but the Volt also has a small gasoline engine so that drivers can go beyond the battery’s expected range of 40 miles a charge.
Mr. Ghosn said he did not want the Leaf, whose expected range is 100 miles on a full charge, to have a range-extending engine, a feature that G.M. has said would assuage drivers’ worries about being stranded with a dead battery with no fast or easy way to recharge.
“We wanted to do a zero-emission vehicle,” Mr. Ghosn said. “I don’t want gasoline in the car, period.”
Nissan has given the Leaf a starting price of $32,780, minus a $7,500 federal tax credit. The Volt, whose price has not been disclosed, is expected to sell for close to $40,000 before the tax credit.
Among the other electric vehicles planned for sale in the United States within several years are a battery-powered version of Ford’s compact car, the Focus, and the Tesla Model S sedan, which will be built in California as part of a new partnership with Toyota announced last week.
The preorders for the Leaf include 13,000 in the United States, where dealers take a $99 deposit, and 6,000 in Japan.
Mr. Ghosn said sales in the United States would be concentrated in areas where there was sufficient means to support electric vehicles, like cities in California and other states that are installing charging stations.
Obama Says U.S. Can’t Lag Behind on Energy Technology
President Barack Obama said the “heartbreaking” oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which has fouled wetlands and closed fishing grounds, underscores the need for the U.S. to rapidly develop alternative energy sources.
The Earth can’t sustain continued dependence on fossil fuels and the U.S. is in a race with other nations to find renewable sources to power cars and companies, the president said after touring the Solyndra Inc. solar-panel manufacturing plant in Fremont, California.
“Even as we are dealing with this immediate crisis,” he said of the BP Plc spill, the U.S. is in competition with countries including Germany and China to develop advanced energy technology.
“Nobody is playing for second place,” Obama said.
He vowed to keep pressing Congress to pass energy legislation that would spur alternative energy development and lessen consumption of oil, most of which the U.S. imports.
Obama was in Fremont to highlight the efforts his administration already is undertaking to both revive economic growth and encourage new energy technology.
Solyndra received $535 million in loan guarantees under last year’s economic stimulus. According to the company, construction of the new solar panel plant will create as many as 3,000 jobs and lead to as many as 1,000 full-time jobs.
Leak as Backdrop
The leaking BP well, which the London-based company was attempting to plug today, served as the backdrop for his remarks.
Obama said he spoke earlier today with Energy Secretary Steven Chu about BP’s work to seal the well, which is about 5,000 feet (1,524 meters) underwater, and cut off the gushing oil.
“If it’s successful, and there’s no guarantees, it should greatly reduce or eliminate the flow of oil,” Obama said. “If it’s not, there are other approaches that may be viable.”
Obama is set to get a report tomorrow from his interior secretary, Ken Salazar, about the cause of the April 20 explosion and fire on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that resulted in the leak. He’s scheduled to visit the gulf coast May 28.
“Our dependence on foreign oil endangers our security and our economy,” Obama said. “The spill in the gulf, which is just heartbreaking, only underscores the necessity of seeking alternative fuel sources.”
Natural gas takes breeze from wind energy’s sails
The good news for your energy bill may be bad news for Iowa’s wind energy.
Thanks to a drilling boom in new fields extending from Texas to New York, natural gas has become as an environmentally friendly competitor to wind. Big new discoveries in shale deposits have brought down the price of natural gas by 60 percent from two years ago.
Michael O’Sullivan of NextEra Energy, Iowa’s second-largest producer of wind power, told the
American Wind Energy Association meeting in Dallas this week: “Our product is too expensive relative to other options. Our competitive advantage has largely evaporated.”The sudden rise of natural gas is credited with throwing wind energy into another of its periodic slowdowns. Iowa, with 2,300 megawatts of wind electricity generation, trails only Texas among the 50 states in wind capacity.
Iowa is seeing the herky-jerky path of wind. The state has gained about 2,300 jobs making towers, turbines, blades and gearboxes at plants in Cedar Rapids, Fort Madison, Newton and West Branch.
TPI Composites recently announced a 237-worker layoff at its Newton blade plant, but at the same time asked the state for assistance to build a blade plant at Sioux City that would employ up to 500 workers, if it is built. Clipper Windpower in Cedar Rapids laid off workers a year ago, but now has stabilized its employment at about 320 workers.
The news for Iowa in the natural gas boom isn’t all bad. At least homeowners are less likely to face
budget-busting winter heating bills if the price of natural gas stays around $4 per thousand cubic feet, down from more than $10 two years ago.
Report: NC solar power could yield 28,000 jobs
An environmental group says North Carolina could generate at least 28,000 jobs in the solar energy field if it shifts electricity production more from traditional sources to solar energy in the next 20 years.
The research arm of Environment North Carolina released a report on Wednesday and held a news conference outside the Legislative Building. The report based findings on raising the percentage of power that comes from solar sources to 14 percent of the state’s electricity consumption by 2030. Current law requires less than 1 percent of electric power to originate from the sun by 2018.
Report co-author Elizabeth Ouzts said lawmakers could help the state encourage solar power by approving a tax break to those who build plants for renewable energy manufacturing.
New Deal to Help Tesla Reach its $49,900 Model S Target Price
Canadian Auto Press
As far as green projects go, it hardly gets bigger than this. Toyota and Tesla will join forces for electric vehicle development and production, with Tesla taking over the recently shuttered NUMMI assembly plant in Fremont, California, previous home to Pontiac’s Vibe five-door.
Tesla and Toyota Partner for Model S Production at NUMMI Plant
A joint press conference was held Thursday, May 20th, with Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda, and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger addressing media and VIPs.
The relationship is more than a strategic sharing of technology and production capability, but rather a full partnership that will see $50 million from Toyota into Tesla common stock, while the state of California promises a sales tax abatement to Tesla for capital equipment expenditures needed for modifying the plant. The abatement is expected to amount to approximately $20 million over the next few years, says Musk.
Model S production will employ about 1,000 workers, says Musk, returning many of the same NUMMI personnel to their jobs. The assembly facility has the capability of producing up to 300,000 vehicles per year, much more than the expected production figure of 20,000 units for year-one, with the ability to employ up to 10,000 workers. Some workers have already been rehired, said Musk, but did not comment on union involvement; NUMMI was the only unionized Toyota plant in North America.
The relationship with Toyota and NUMMI allows Tesla to sidetrack many of the supplier and production problems it initially experienced with its Roadster, being that some of Toyota’s suppliers and production processes can be carried forward for the Model S. This should help Tesla achieve the low cost requirements needed to meet its optimistic sale price of $49,900 per car.
The Model S production will start in 2012 as planned, with a promise of more advanced prototypes later this year.
It’s unclear whether additional Tesla models will expand plant usage, or whether Toyota will benefit from the new partnership by getting a car of its own.
There’s a giant Oreo Blizzard truck making its way around the country, and if you’re lucky enough to spot it, it might give you a yummy Kraft- and Dairy Queen-inspired treat. To celebrate the Blizzard’s 25th birthday (it is, after all, one of DQ’s most requested treats), Kraft and the soft-serve and fast-food chain have teamed up to introduce a limited-edition Oreo Blizzard Cookie. It’s a "combination of smooth Blizzard-flavored crème blended with crunchy Oreo cookie pieces" all sandwiched "between two dark chocolate Oreo wafers," according to Kraft. The mobile truck (which is shaped like a giant Oreo Blizzard cup) is distributing mini versions of the cookie, but for those of you who can’t wait (hey, the truck is only making 25 stops), the new treats are available at Walmart and Target for $3.29. DQ will also begin selling mini Oreo Blizzards in August.
—Posted by Elaine Wong
By Nicole Kilmer
MyStateline.com
ROCKFORD, IL – The Sustainable Sites Initiative™ (SITES™) announced the selection of Rockford Park District’s Loves Park Playground Development project as one of the first landscapes to participate in a new program testing the nation’s first rating system for green landscape design, construction, and maintenance.
The project will join more than 150 other projects from 34 states as well as from Canada, Iceland, and Spain as part of an international pilot project program to evaluate the new SITES rating system for sustainable landscapes, with and without buildings. Sustainable landscapes can clean water, reduce pollution, and restore habitats, while providing significant economic and social benefits to land owners and municipalities.
During the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Sony will open a variety of pavilions in seven countries (including South Africa) where visitors will be able to experience the “3D world Created by Sony,” featuring vivid 3D images of football as well as entertainment content including music, movies and games from across the Sony Group. At these “Sony 3D experience” pavilions, visitors will also be able to watch – for the first time in 3D – highlights of the 25 matches filmed during the 2010 FIFA World Cup (promotional trailer of the official FIFA film in 3D on Blu-ray Disc to be produced and distributed by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment).
The pavilions will vary in size, with the premier location being Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton, Johannesburg. Pavilions will also be located at three 2010 FIFA World Cup stadiums including Soccer City, Durban, and Cape Town, as well as at the “International FIFA Fan Fest (IFFF)” public viewing events in six cities (Berlin, Mexico City, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, and Sydney). Pavilions at the IFFF events will open during the 2010 FIFA World Cup starting from the first match on June 11 through July 11. Sony’s 3D experience pavilion at the Nelson Mandela Square will open to the public starting Wednesday, June 9.
Visitors can expect to see for the first time in 3D music videos from Shakira and South African group Freshlyground, the 2010 FIFA World Cup Official Song “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa),” and MISIA’s “MAWARE MAWARE,” (only artist chosen from Japan and Asia for the Official 2010 FIFA World Cup Album “Listen Up”). Also at the Nelson Mandela Square, Sony will offer an array of additional live 3D entertainment, including performances by South African music artists featured on the “Hello Afrika” album from Sony Music Entertainment, such as Lira, Freshlyground, Vusi Mahlasela and many more. Additional surprise performances by leading international and South African artists are planned.
To build out a theme from the previous post, it’s noteworthy how the National Security Strategy draws on conceptions of military power developed over the last few years by the theorist-practitioners of counterinsurgency in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Before 2006, counterinsurgency was an apocryphal focus of study by dissident officers in the Army and Marine Corps in search of an institutional home. Now this line is in the National Security Strategy: “We will continue to rebalance our military capabilities to excel at counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, stability operations, and meeting increasingly sophisticated security threats, while ensuring our force is ready to address the full range of military operations.”
If that sounds familiar, maybe it’s because you’ve read my 2008 interview with the patron saint of counterinsurgency. “You don’t get to pick your wars. Sometimes they are thrust upon you,” Gen. Petraeus said back then. “They don’t always turn out the way they were envisioned, or the way you envisioned them turning out. The enemy gets a vote. And that’s why I’m persuaded by the logic of the concept of full-spectrum operations.”
But it’s deeper than just declaratory statements about counterinsurgency. The National Security Strategy reflects key counterinsurgency concepts, like integrating security capabilities across the government and among allies. “We must update, balance, and integrate all of the tools of American power and work with our allies and partners to do the same,” it reads, echoing what Petraeus likes to call a “whole of government and whole-of-governments approach.” It’s concerned with the relationship between power and legitimacy, writing, “The United States supports the expansion of democracy and human rights abroad because governments that respect these values are more just, peaceful, and legitimate. (Or, as the Counterinsurgency Field Manual puts it, “Legitimacy Is The Main Objective.”)
And it tethers foreign support for American goals to local perceptions of how American power materially benefits others. In the NSS, that’s given a broad section about how to “Promote Dignity by Meeting Basic Needs.” In section 2-6 of the Field Manual — an admittedly under-developed section — counterinsurgents are instructed to “take responsibility for the people’s well-being in all its manifestations,” not just “essential services, such as water, electricity, sanitation and medical care” but also “sustainment of key social and cultural institutions.”
It shouldn’t be surprising that the National Security Strategy draws on lessons of the counterinsurgent experience. The Obama administration is itself a coalition of progressive national security strategists and key counterinsurgents, and decisions like the Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy represent the crucible for that partnership and its relationship to the national interest. Increasingly, it’s inspiring a similarly improbable counter-coalition of progressive war critics and more traditionally minded military leaders. Adm. Eric Olson, the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, called out the counterinsurgents earlier this week for offering an insufficiently martial strategy that bears little relationship, in his telling, to the realities of war.
Two years ago, before Obama’s strategy coalition took shape, one of the most prominent critics of counterinsurgency, Army Col. Gian Gentile, lamented to me that the “matrix” of counterinsurgency was overtaking Army thinking. Today’s National Security Strategy indicates that Gentile, now a West Point professor, was more prophetic than he thought in describing counterinsurgency’s influence.
Foram mostradas pela Suzuki duas fotos oficiais do novo modelo da Grand Vitara 2010, com um visual modificado e com versões de três e cinco portas. Entre as mudanças visuais, podemos perceber que nào existe estepe na porta traseira do veículo.
Agora a placa de identificação do veículo está mais para cima, no lugar onde o estepe anteriormente estava. O novo modelo terá também como itens de série um leitor de CD e MP3, bancos aquecidos e um sistema de acesso Keyless (sem chaves).
A versão do Grand Vitara comercializada no Brasil é a V6, com um motor 3.2 V6 a gasolina, com 233 cv de potência. Ainda não existe data confirmada para o início das vendas desse novo modelo.
Via | Carplace
By John Addison (5/27/10)
Toyota agreed to purchase $50 million of Tesla’s common stock subsequent to the closing of Tesla’s currently planned initial public offering, giving Toyota over 2 percent of Tesla. The investment was negotiated with Tesla’s purchase of the former NUMMI factory in Fremont, California, that once employed over 4,000 workers in a Toyota-General Motors JV plant. Tesla and Toyota intend to cooperate on the development of electric vehicles, parts, and production system and engineering support. Neal Dikeman reported on Friday the significance of this for Tesla, Toyota, and California jobs.
In 2012, new Tesla S sedan will roll-out of the plant with electric range that remarkably matches the range of many gasoline cars. Tesla is developing a roomy Model S hatchback that starts at $57,400, about half the price of the Roadster. Tesla will start delivering the Model S in 2012 from its new factory in California. The Model S will have up to a 300 mile range, far beyond the Nissan Leaf 100 mile range the Chevy Volt 40-mile electric range, and current ambitions of other electric car makers. Top 10 Electric Car Makers
Tesla will compete with other sedan makers by also offering more passenger space, more cargo space, and a premium cache. With seating for five adults and two children, plus an additional trunk under the hood, Model S has passenger carrying capacity and versatility rivaling SUVs and minivans. Rear seats fold flat, and the hatch gives way to a roomy opening.
With a range up to 300 miles and 45-minute QuickCharge, the Model S can carry five adults and two children in quiet comfort. The roomy electric car starts at a base price of $57,400, before the $7,500 federal EV tax credit and additional tax credits in many states. Yes, it will be more expensive than sedans from Nissan, Ford, and GM but with more battery storage for more range with 3 battery pack options offer a range of 160, 230 or 300 miles per charge.
Don’t pull-up to the Model S in your sedan and try to race. The Model S goes from 0-60 mph in 5.6 seconds with 120 mph top speed, and the promise of sporty handling in the chassis and suspension.
Panasonic Lithium Batteries and Tesla Packs
Tesla touts its expertise and intellectual property in a proprietary electric powertrain that incorporates four key components—an advanced battery pack, power electronics module, high-efficiency motor and extensive control software.
Tesla delivers more range per charge than other electric vehicles by including more lithium batteries. Tesla’s relationship with battery supplier Panasonic is critical. The Roadster uses 6,800 Panasonic lithium-nickel consumer-sized batteries integrated into a Tesla designed battery-pack with unique energy management and thermal management. The new Tesla Model S will use up to 5,500 Panasonic batteries.
Tesla has been skillful in developing strategic partnerships. Tesla also has a relationship with Daimler to supply technology, battery packs and chargers for Daimler’s Smart fortwo electric drive. Daimler holds more than 5% of Tesla’s capital stock. Daimler has orders for Tesla to supply it with up to 1,500 battery packs and chargers to support a trial of the Smart fortwo electric drive in at least five European cities. Tesla delivered the first of these battery packs and chargers in November 2009. Daimler also engaged Tesla to assist with the development and production of a battery pack and charger for a pilot fleet of its A-Class electric vehicles to be introduced in Europe during 2011. Tesla has ambitions to supply other vehicle makers.
By John Addison, Publisher of the Clean Fleet Report and conference speaker.
Filed under: Truck, Chevrolet, GM, GMC, Rumormill
The Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon have never exactly been the sales successor to the S10 throne. While the original baby pickup from General Motors sold like Tastykakes at fat camp, the public has never exactly warmed to the newest generation of short beds. That fact has grown even more apparent in recent months – according to PickupTrucks.com, sales of the Colorado have fallen off 30 percent since last year. But the Colorado isn’t alone – small truck sales have plummeted from their once lofty heights, thanks in part to their mediocre fuel efficiency, outdated designs and often surprisingly high price tags. These days, buyers who really need a truck tend to simply step up to a full-size and call it a day.
But word on the interwebs is that The General is legitimately considering cranking out another take on the small pickup – something that would offer vastly improved fuel efficiency, relatively small dimensions and pint-sized price tag. When can we expect the new truck to show up? Who knows, but it can’t come soon enough for our tastes.
[Source: PickupTrucks.com]
Report: GM working on new small truck originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 27 May 2010 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Palm has lost several key employees since the company put itself up for sale and HP’s purchase of Palm doesn’t look like it has helped stop the bleeding. All Things D has reported that Matias Duarte, Palm’s Senior Director of Human Interface and User Experience and a huge part of the creation of webOS, has left the company and may be heading to Google to work on Android. Palm confirmed Duarte’s departure but would not say where he was headed. However, John Paczkowski of All Things D reports that “multiple sources say it’s Google.” Before working for Palm, Duarte was a major part in creating both the Helio and Sidekick devices. This could be big for Google and Android as there have been many complaints of UI issues with the mobile OS, and Duarte could could certainly help increase the look and the usability of Android.
Via All Things D
Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:
We saw mostly funding news for San Diego’s life sciences community over the past week, and it was light fare. Get our latest roundup here, and enjoy your Memorial Day weekend.
—Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which is based in Cambridge, MA, and operates a research facility in San Diego, said its experimental drug for hepatitis C cured 75 percent of the patients in the last stage of clinical testing required for FDA approval. Luke detailed the results from a pivotal study of 1,095 patients.
—Anadys Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker: ANDS]]), the San Diego biotech developing a drug to treat hepatitis C, said it has hired an adviser to explore “strategic alternatives” for the company. Such alternatives range from a potential sale of the company or selling or licensing its experimental hepatitis C drug, according to a regulatory filing. Anadys also said it entered into agreements with certain institutional investors to raise about $12.5 million.
—La Jolla Pharmaceutical, which now trades on the over-the-counter bulletin board, said it plans to raise as much as $16.3 million as it seeks to revive its fortunes. The San Diego Union-Tribune said the San Diego biotech found institutional investors to commit up to $6 million toward efforts to restart its business.
—Cyntellect, a San Diego-based provider of biotech research instruments, raised an additional $9 million in equity, debt, and rights as part of a $16 million round the company raised last year. Cyntellect’s instruments are designed to analyze, purify, and grow cells for life sciences research.
—San Diego’s newest non-profit biotech group, the San Diego Entrepreneurs Exchange, organized a presentation and discussion on the fine art of grantsmanship—apply for and winning federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants. The tips they offered included a Top 10 list of dos and don’ts from Scott Struthers, the founder and chief scientist at San Diego-based Crinetics Pharmaceuticals.
As Google tries to extricate itself from the privacy furor over personal data being collected from Wi-Fi networks by its Street View cars, the company says it’s hit a roadblock that prevents it from complying with authorities who want the data turned over to them. According to a statement the company made to the New York Times, it’s refusing to give German authorities the hard drives that contain personal data collected (inadvertently, Google says) from that country’s residents over open wireless networks because doing so would breach the same German privacy rules that were broken by the initial data collection itself. In a statement, a Google spokesman in London named Peter Barron said:
As granting access to payload data creates legal challenges in Germany which we need to review, we are continuing to discuss the appropriate legal and logistical process for making the data available. We hope, given more time, to be able to resolve this difficult issue.
Google admitted recently that it had been accidentally collecting data from open Wi-Fi networks that were passed by its Street View cars. Although the company originally said that no personally identifiable information had been accumulated in this manner, it later admitted that this was not true, and that some emails and other data might have been collected as well. It then pledged to destroy the data, but agreed to do so in a way that would allow governments and other groups to verify that it had done so properly.
The company has subsequently destroyed data that was collected in Denmark, Ireland and Austria, but didn’t allow authorities to see or inspect it beforehand. Several countries — including Britain, Germany, France, Spain and Italy — are instead asking Google not to destroy the data collected from their countries, so that it can be used in potential court cases against the company (Street View has been a contentious program in Europe even before the recent privacy issues over wireless data). Meanwhile, German authorities say they’re contemplating laying charges against the search provider for its behavior, and the chairman of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission told Congress last week that he’s also looking into whether the regulator should take action in the case.
Some privacy advocates say the company’s refusal to allow authorities to see the data it collected raises questions about whether it did so accidentally, and just how much personal data was collected. Simon Davies, director of London-based Privacy International, told the New York Times that “if the company is fighting this so hard, it suggests there is more to this than meets the eye. The real question is: What was Google collecting from unwitting individuals and why? So far, nobody really knows.”
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d): As Cloud Computing Goes International, Whose Laws Matter?
TWI’s Annie Lowrey makes another appearance on Bloggingheads.tv today, discussing all things financial with Rortybomb’s Mike Konczal: regulatory reform, Blanche Lincoln’s derivatives proposal, Fannie and Freddie and the economic impact of the oil spill. Check out the video after the jump:
La marca italiana dio totalmente en el clavo cuando presentó el nuevo 500 en el año 2007. Así lo prueban los 500.000 ejemplares que ya se han producido, una cifra espectacular que, por supuesto, es motivo para organizar un festejo por todo lo alto. Pero en esta ocasión, Fiat quiere que sea algo más especial de costumbre y va a involucrar al equipo Fiat Yamaha para que participe en la conmemoración durante el Gran Premio de Estados Unidos el próximo 25 de julio.
Desde hace unos cuantos días, Fiat había abierto una página web específica de la unidad 500.000 del modelo más pequeño de la gama. La iniciativa propuesta consiste en que los usuarios de Facebook amantes del nuevo Cinquecento puedan pegar sus caras en la carrocería del ejemplar y luego el fabricante italiano lo construirá tal y como haya resultado una vez acabe el plazo para participar.
La novedad es que, a partir del 1 de junio, los seguidores de Jorge Lorenzo y Valentino Rossi también tendrán la posibilidad de ceder sus fotos en esta página web y ponerlas en este 500 tan especial. El equipo Fiat Yamaha se encargará de supervisar las imágenes que se envíen y luego las utilizará para realizar un particular homenaje a toda la afición del equipo y sus campeones en el Gran Premio de Estados Unidos.
Esta propuesta tiene mucha importancia tanto para Fiat Automobiles como para Fiat Yamaha. La división de vehículos quiere de esta manera acercarse a los fanáticos de las dos ruedas, mientras que para el equipo de motociclismo representa un acto más en el que pone de protagonistas a todos sus seguidores. Además, al realizarse a través de Internet y una red social, se capta al público más joven, el cual compone en mayor parte la afición de Fiat Yamaha.
Fuente | Fiat
Dipsy Doodles, baseball and dance contests go together like, well, nothing I’ve ever heard of before. But just go with it, people. Wise, a marketer known for its chips, popcorn, puffed cheese thingies and other salty snacks, just launched a summer-long contest to name New York City’s best dancer ($10,000 to the fleet-footed winner). In this era of Dancing With the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, Dance Your Ass Off and the upcoming, awkwardly titled Got to Dance (with Paula Abdul!), an urban dance-inspired promotion does seem too unique. The surprise here is the name, Big City Boogie, which sounds more like something that would’ve caused grandpa to get jiggy back in the day. Wise, via agency Source Communications, will show up in a branded vehicle at lots of New York street fairs and outdoor events over the next few months, dragging a portable dance floor and street teams to capture contestants’ moves on video. (Anyone can upload their "talent" to bigcityboogie.com.) Online voters will pick finalists, who’ll compete for cash at the Mets-Phillies game in Queens on Aug. 14. Dance-cam alert! Social-media and viral campaigns, along with a Fuse TV partnership, radio, TV and outdoor ads support the promo. Now, if they could just find a logical connection between Bravos and break dancing.
—Posted by T.L. Stanley
This is a guest post from Vanessa Woods, author of the new book, Bonobo Handshake. Vanessa is a Research Scientist in Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University and studies the cognition of chimpanzees and bonobos in Congo. When I wake up this morning, someone might try to kill me. I live 10 minutes from a small town called Durham, NC, where according to the last statistics, 22 people were killed, 76 women were raped, and there were 682 cases of aggravated assault. When a chimpanzee wakes up in the morning, they probably have the same thought. In fact, if you’re a male chimpanzee, you’re more likely to be killed by another chimpanzee than anything else. If you’re a female chimpanzee, expect to be beaten by every adolescent male who is making his way up through the ranks. People often ask me why humans are so intelligent, as in, what is it other apes lack that makes us so unique. I’ll tell you this: I would swap every gadget I own – my car, my laptop, the potential to fly to the moon – if I could wake up as a bonobo. No bonobo has ever been seen to kill another bonobo. There is very …
by Ed Bruske.
The Washington, D.C. city council yesterday agreed to fully fund a recently approved “Healthy Schools” initiative—providing more money for school food, as well as
funding local produce in school meals and establishing grants to expand
school gardens and increase physical education—but not with a controversial “soda tax” as had been proposed. Rather, the city will begin imposing a more traditional sales tax of 6 percent on all soft drinks sold in the District.
What, you might be asking, is the difference between these two approaches to taxing sodas?
The beverage industry mounted an all-out assault on the penny-per-ounce excise tax, with radio and newspaper ads plus automated telephone calls to city voters, because it would have raised the shelf price that consumers see when they purchase soft drinks. (The excise tax had a cap of 30 cents per container.) The sales tax of 6 percent, by contrast, appears only on the sales receipt after beverages have been purchased.
The industry has also managed to defeat soda taxes proposed in New York and Philadephia. Although the industry also opposed the sales tax, it brings the District in line with neighboring Maryland, which already taxes soft drinks at 6 percent, as well as many other states. Virginia levies a much lower 2.5 percent sales tax.
D.C. council members were more comfortable with the traditional sales tax approach because it is already familiar, in contrast to the more progressive excise tax, which was aimed not only at raising money to improve food served in the District’s public schools, but also was seen as a weapon to combat obesity by making sugary sodas more expensive to city residents, who are seen as consuming too many cheap and non-nutritious calories.
The excise tax would have applied only to sugar-sweetened beverages. Diet drinks, calorie-free drinks, juices (with at least 70% juice), milk, coffee, and tea would have been excluded. The 6 percent sales tax applies also to artificially sweetened beverages, including diet and zero-calorie drinks, sports drinks and energy drinks. It will not apply to beverages containing milk, coffee, juice or tea.
The 6 percent sales tax is projected to raise more revenue—$7.92 million annually—in the District of Columbia, compared with $6.3 million for the penny-per-ounce tax. Costs associated with the “Healthy Schools” initiative are expected to run about $6.5 million per year.
But the “soda tax” may not be dead. An aide to Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), who authored the “Healthy Schools” legislation, said last night Cheh will continue to press for the excise tax. Because the obesity epidemic is such a enormous health crisis in the District—73% and 72% of residents in Ward 7 and 8 are overweight or obese!—it “is a good health policy.”
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