In the off-chance that you haven't already started holiday shopping for your favorite Engadget editors, we'd like to turn your attention to the new X0-1 from hobby RC car manufacturer, Traxxas. This little speed demon can do zero to 60MPH in 2.3 seconds and zero to 100MPH in a cool 4.92 seconds. The diminutive sports car also has built-in speed, voltage and RPM monitoring. It'll go on sale December 30th for $1,100, for a slightly belated -- and rather expensive -- gift for the Fast and the Furious reenactor in your life. Video of this sucker in action after the break.
WASHINGTON ? House Republicans are drafting legislation to renew an expiring unemployment benefits program, officials said Thursday, and intend to add it to a planned extension of a Social Security payroll tax cut due to run out on Dec. 31.
The measure is expected on the House floor as early as next week, and marks the second sign in as many days that lawmakers in both parties are eager to close out the year with a compromise on key elements of President Barack Obama's jobs program.
Republican officials say the cost of the extension of both programs will be covered within the measure, making sure deficits don't rise as a result.
The officials who spoke did so on condition of anonymity to provide details in advance of a formal announcement.
With unemployment hovering around 9 percent nationally, Obama urged Congress in September to renew and expand the payroll tax cut he signed a year ago, and called as well for an extension of benefits that can cover up to 99 weeks for the long term jobless.
The core state-paid unemployment insurance program guarantees coverage for six months but Congress typically has provided additional weeks of federal jobless benefits in bad times. The latest cycle of additional benefits began in 2008, the last year of George W. Bush's administration.
Letting extended jobless assistance expire would mean that more than 6 million people would lose benefits averaging $296 a week next year, with 1.8 million cut off within a month.
It was unclear what changes, if any, Republicans intend to propose for the unemployment benefit portion of the bill.
A struggle already has broken out over steps to pay for the payroll tax cut.
Senate Democrats want to levy a 3.5 percent surtax on million-dollar tax filers to cover the costs, while Senate Republicans unveiled an alternative on Wednesday that relies on freezing federal workers' pay through 2015 and reducing the government's bureaucracy by 200,000 jobs. The bill also would raise Medicare premiums for the wealthy, and take steps to deny unemployment benefits and food stamps to anyone with a seven-figure income.
Senate Republicans said their legislation would offset the cost of the payroll tax cut extension, and generate about $110 billion in additional savings that could reduce deficits. They circulated statistics from the Internal Revenue Service reporting that tax filers with $1 million or more in income had received a total of $20.8 million in unemployment benefits in 2009, the latest year for which figures are available. Their bill would impose a 100 percent tax on those payments.
Neither of the two alternatives appears likely to win the 60-vote Senate majority needed to advance in votes anticipated Thursday night, a double-barreled rejection that would presumably clear the way for final negotiations on a compromise.
With lawmakers eager to adjourn for the year at mid-month, Republican and Democratic leaders have also begun discussions on legislation to avert a 27 percent cut in payments to doctors who treat Medicare patients, officials said.
The measure generally has bipartisan support, since it has the backing of the American Medical Association as well as patient advocacy groups.
AGU meeting: Stanford scientists subject rocks to hellish conditions to combat global warming Public release date: 1-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Mark Shwartz mshwartz@stanford.edu 650-723-9296 Stanford University
A team of Earth scientists at Stanford University is subjecting chunks of rock to hellish conditions in the laboratory all in the name of curbing climate change.
By exposing a handful of rocks to high temperatures and pressures, the scientists have obtained critical new data about the large-scale underground storage of carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas and leading cause of global warming.
"About 60 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions come from power plants, refineries and other industries," said Sally Benson, professor (research) of energy resources engineering at Stanford. "One way to significantly curb global warming is to capture carbon dioxide from industrial smokestacks and store the emissions in geologic formations thousands of feet below the surface."
Benson and her colleagues have conducted numerous experiments on rock core samples and analyzed the results in microscopic detail. The goal is to predict how minute grains and pores in rock will affect the flow of vast quantities of carbon dioxide pumped deep into the ground.
"We want to see where the carbon dioxide moves, how fast, how much gets dissolved and how much gets trapped," said Benson, director of Stanford's Global Climate and Energy Project.
On Dec. 6 and 7, she and members of her lab will present their findings at the 2011 fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco.
Experimental rocks
Over the past five years, Benson's team has collected cylinder-shaped core samples of sandstone and other rocks from various sites in North America. Each core roughly the size of a beer can is placed in a special chamber and subjected to high temperatures and pressures similar to those found a half-mile or more underground.
"We then inject carbon dioxide and water into the rock cores and take X-ray CT scan just like the CT scan you'd get if you had a back injury," Benson explained.
This technique has allowed Benson's team to generate detailed, three-dimensional maps showing the real-time movement of carbon dioxide through tiny pore spaces between individual grains of rock.
"We're making observations on a spatial scale that people have ignored in the past," Benson said. "Before, you could only estimate the average properties of a rock. Now we can tell you the precise carbon dioxide saturation and relate that to other rock properties in a quantitative way. "
Among the most important properties for large-scale carbon storage is permeability a measurement of how easily fluids flow through a porous rock formation. The higher the permeability, the more carbon dioxide can be pumped into the rock.
"We developed a new imaging technique that allows you to determine the permeability and capillary pressure down to the individual pixel," Benson said. "Nobody has done that before. Because we can observe the rocks so carefully and control the amount of CO2 in them by the experiments we do, we've been able to learn a huge amount about what happens in a real CO2 sequestration project at a much larger scale."
Leakage potential
A major focus of Benson's research is leakage potential: Will stored carbon dioxide gas eventually escape its underground prison and return to the atmosphere?
Because carbon dioxide is soluble in water, scientists worry about the consequences of water leaking from an underground reservoir. Will dissolved carbon dioxide gas be released and eventually reach the surface?
"It's like when you open a bottle of Perrier water," Benson said. "You release the pressure and little bubbles of carbon dioxide come out. But is there a big risk of that happening underground? Do we have to not only worry about carbon dioxide getting out of the reservoir, but also about water containing carbon dioxide escaping?"
To address the problem, Stanford graduate student Lin Zuo focused on a property known as relative permeability a measure of the ability of water and carbon dioxide to through the pore spaces between grains of rock. "CO2 and water basically have to compete," Benson explained. "Which one gets the big pores, and which one gets the small spaces?"
In his lab experiments, Zuo discovered that carbon dioxide has an incredibly low the relative permeability when it's released from water. "This is good news," Benson said. "It means that it's not really a problem if water with dissolved carbon dioxide gets out of the storage reservoir, because when the bubbles come out of solution, they actually plug up the rock formation."
But will the released carbon dioxide bubbles eventually escape? "Lin's study predicts that the rock formation will stay plugged up for a really, really long time. His research shows that one thing people worry about is not really a big risk after all. This kind of work helps us prepare for scale-up, so that we can accurately predict where the carbon dioxide will go when we put it underground."
Norwegian example
Despite the enormous potential of carbon capture and storage to significantly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, the technology has only been adopted by a handful of commercial operators, including the Sleipner natural gas project in Norway's North Sea.
Since 1996, nearly 12 million metric tons of carbon dioxide have been captured from natural gas production at Sleipner and stored in a sandstone aquifer filled with saline water about 2,600 feet below the seabed, according to the company website. "The carbon dioxide will probably remain stored in the geological layer for thousands of years," the website predicts.
So why hasn't the Sleipner example been adopted worldwide?
"We can do it today," Benson said. "It's really just a matter of money. If we had a price on carbon that was $50 a metric ton, carbon capture and storage would take off. But with no price on carbon in sight, companies can only sustain a certain amount of investment. So really the impediment is creating the incentive where people will pay that price for capturing carbon."
The Norwegian government created an incentive 20 years ago. "To combat global warming, Norway imposed a carbon tax of $50 per metric ton for offshore carbon dioxide emissions in 1991," Benson said. "Companies were faced with a choice either pay the tax or stop emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. They soon realized it would cost them a lot less to inject it under the seabed."
The biggest expense Sleipner and other companies face is separating and capturing the carbon dioxide emissions. "Separating is quite costly, $50 to $100 per metric ton," Benson said. "That's the big cost. The underground storage is less than 20 percent of the total cost."
The natural gas produced at the Sleipner site contains about 10 percent carbon dioxide, which has to be separated and removed before the company can sell the natural gas. The additional cost of storing it in the seabed is relatively nominal, Benson said. Perhaps one day the United States and other major fossil fuel consumers will follow Norway's lead, she added.
"Fundamentally, carbon capture and storage is not such a challenging thing to do," she said. "If we were really serious about dealing with climate change, we would be deploying this technology today."
###
This article was written by Mark Shwartz, communications/energy writer at the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University.
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
AGU meeting: Stanford scientists subject rocks to hellish conditions to combat global warming Public release date: 1-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Mark Shwartz mshwartz@stanford.edu 650-723-9296 Stanford University
A team of Earth scientists at Stanford University is subjecting chunks of rock to hellish conditions in the laboratory all in the name of curbing climate change.
By exposing a handful of rocks to high temperatures and pressures, the scientists have obtained critical new data about the large-scale underground storage of carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas and leading cause of global warming.
"About 60 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions come from power plants, refineries and other industries," said Sally Benson, professor (research) of energy resources engineering at Stanford. "One way to significantly curb global warming is to capture carbon dioxide from industrial smokestacks and store the emissions in geologic formations thousands of feet below the surface."
Benson and her colleagues have conducted numerous experiments on rock core samples and analyzed the results in microscopic detail. The goal is to predict how minute grains and pores in rock will affect the flow of vast quantities of carbon dioxide pumped deep into the ground.
"We want to see where the carbon dioxide moves, how fast, how much gets dissolved and how much gets trapped," said Benson, director of Stanford's Global Climate and Energy Project.
On Dec. 6 and 7, she and members of her lab will present their findings at the 2011 fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco.
Experimental rocks
Over the past five years, Benson's team has collected cylinder-shaped core samples of sandstone and other rocks from various sites in North America. Each core roughly the size of a beer can is placed in a special chamber and subjected to high temperatures and pressures similar to those found a half-mile or more underground.
"We then inject carbon dioxide and water into the rock cores and take X-ray CT scan just like the CT scan you'd get if you had a back injury," Benson explained.
This technique has allowed Benson's team to generate detailed, three-dimensional maps showing the real-time movement of carbon dioxide through tiny pore spaces between individual grains of rock.
"We're making observations on a spatial scale that people have ignored in the past," Benson said. "Before, you could only estimate the average properties of a rock. Now we can tell you the precise carbon dioxide saturation and relate that to other rock properties in a quantitative way. "
Among the most important properties for large-scale carbon storage is permeability a measurement of how easily fluids flow through a porous rock formation. The higher the permeability, the more carbon dioxide can be pumped into the rock.
"We developed a new imaging technique that allows you to determine the permeability and capillary pressure down to the individual pixel," Benson said. "Nobody has done that before. Because we can observe the rocks so carefully and control the amount of CO2 in them by the experiments we do, we've been able to learn a huge amount about what happens in a real CO2 sequestration project at a much larger scale."
Leakage potential
A major focus of Benson's research is leakage potential: Will stored carbon dioxide gas eventually escape its underground prison and return to the atmosphere?
Because carbon dioxide is soluble in water, scientists worry about the consequences of water leaking from an underground reservoir. Will dissolved carbon dioxide gas be released and eventually reach the surface?
"It's like when you open a bottle of Perrier water," Benson said. "You release the pressure and little bubbles of carbon dioxide come out. But is there a big risk of that happening underground? Do we have to not only worry about carbon dioxide getting out of the reservoir, but also about water containing carbon dioxide escaping?"
To address the problem, Stanford graduate student Lin Zuo focused on a property known as relative permeability a measure of the ability of water and carbon dioxide to through the pore spaces between grains of rock. "CO2 and water basically have to compete," Benson explained. "Which one gets the big pores, and which one gets the small spaces?"
In his lab experiments, Zuo discovered that carbon dioxide has an incredibly low the relative permeability when it's released from water. "This is good news," Benson said. "It means that it's not really a problem if water with dissolved carbon dioxide gets out of the storage reservoir, because when the bubbles come out of solution, they actually plug up the rock formation."
But will the released carbon dioxide bubbles eventually escape? "Lin's study predicts that the rock formation will stay plugged up for a really, really long time. His research shows that one thing people worry about is not really a big risk after all. This kind of work helps us prepare for scale-up, so that we can accurately predict where the carbon dioxide will go when we put it underground."
Norwegian example
Despite the enormous potential of carbon capture and storage to significantly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, the technology has only been adopted by a handful of commercial operators, including the Sleipner natural gas project in Norway's North Sea.
Since 1996, nearly 12 million metric tons of carbon dioxide have been captured from natural gas production at Sleipner and stored in a sandstone aquifer filled with saline water about 2,600 feet below the seabed, according to the company website. "The carbon dioxide will probably remain stored in the geological layer for thousands of years," the website predicts.
So why hasn't the Sleipner example been adopted worldwide?
"We can do it today," Benson said. "It's really just a matter of money. If we had a price on carbon that was $50 a metric ton, carbon capture and storage would take off. But with no price on carbon in sight, companies can only sustain a certain amount of investment. So really the impediment is creating the incentive where people will pay that price for capturing carbon."
The Norwegian government created an incentive 20 years ago. "To combat global warming, Norway imposed a carbon tax of $50 per metric ton for offshore carbon dioxide emissions in 1991," Benson said. "Companies were faced with a choice either pay the tax or stop emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. They soon realized it would cost them a lot less to inject it under the seabed."
The biggest expense Sleipner and other companies face is separating and capturing the carbon dioxide emissions. "Separating is quite costly, $50 to $100 per metric ton," Benson said. "That's the big cost. The underground storage is less than 20 percent of the total cost."
The natural gas produced at the Sleipner site contains about 10 percent carbon dioxide, which has to be separated and removed before the company can sell the natural gas. The additional cost of storing it in the seabed is relatively nominal, Benson said. Perhaps one day the United States and other major fossil fuel consumers will follow Norway's lead, she added.
"Fundamentally, carbon capture and storage is not such a challenging thing to do," she said. "If we were really serious about dealing with climate change, we would be deploying this technology today."
###
This article was written by Mark Shwartz, communications/energy writer at the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University.
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
That tablets are beginning to supplant the bog-standard PCs in some people's lives shouldn't come as a surprise, but what about outside of the home? Tablets are in some ways better suited to certain situations where managing PCs can be a real hassle. Dan Frommer ran into such a situation not long ago -- while at JFK International Airport, Fromm found himself relaxing at the MasterCard Lounge surrounded by a handful of iPads intended for guest use.
DALLAS ? Andre Coe, a former editorial assistant in the Dallas bureau of The Associated Press and the cooperative's regional news desk in Phoenix, died Friday. He was 36.
During his career at the AP, Coe reported from the Texas Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Ike in 2008, and was one of the first reporters to arrive at the scene of a bus crash that killed 17 passengers in Sherman earlier that year. He wrote about the 45th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the return of U.S. Airways Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who successfully landed a passenger jet in the Hudson River in 1999, to his hometown of Denison.
"Andre would appear in our cramped newsroom after a long day out in the wet heat of a summer disturbed by Ike, drop a backpack heavy with gear, and inquire about our story," said David Scott, the AP's Central Regional editor. "Invariably, it was a story for which he'd again earned the byline, having dictated throughout the day the details and interviews that made it work."
Coe had just started working as an editorial assistant at the AP's West Regional desk in 2010 when he was diagnosed with brain and lung cancer.
"Andre was an inspiration to everyone he met," said Dale Leach, AP's Chief of Bureau for Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. "Even when his body was failing, his spirit remained hopeful and uplifting. We will miss his presence, but always remember his spirit."
Coe was born in Fort Worth and grew up in Abilene. He graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in sociology in 2000 and returned to the school to earn a second degree in journalism in 2003.
Before coming to the AP, Coe was a reporter at the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser and the Dallas Examiner. He also had interned at the Austin American-Statesman and the Abilene Reporter-News.
"He said his biggest accomplishment was being a journalist, working where he could tell other people's stories," said Kim Bogney, one of Coe's three siblings.
He was a member of the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity, where his nickname was Aries, for his warrior spirit, she said. Coe was an ROTC cadet and also a huge sports fan.
While battling his illness, Coe would often visit his colleagues and joke about the weight and hair he lost during his treatment for cancer. He was a constant upbeat presence on Facebook.
"He remained happy, joyful and positive even while being fully cognizant of what he was facing and he truly inspired everyone who knew him during that period because he fought that battle joyfully," said Matt Curry, a reporter in the AP's Dallas bureau, who became good friends with Coe as they worked together at night.
While Coe was ill, he wrote a book of humorous stories about his life titled "The Life and Times of a Curly Headed Kid from West Texas."
"Andre was very carefree," Bogney said. "He lived his life. He didn't leave anything on the table."
Coe is survived by his mother, Irene Coe of Abilene; two sisters, Vickie Hall of Plano and Kim Bogney of Allen; and a brother, Anthony Coe of Round Rock. Funeral services are pending.
LONDON ? The deadline is approaching for Iranian diplomats to leave Britain following their expulsion by the U.K. government after protesters attacked the British embassy in Tehran.
Early Friday, the Iranian flag was still flying at Tehran's embassy in London, with diplomats given until 2 p.m. GMT (9 a.m. EST) to leave the U.K.
Phones at Iran's London embassy and consulate rang unanswered.
Tehran's relations with Britain have become increasingly strained in recent months, largely due to tensions over Tehran's refusal to halt uranium enrichment ? a process that can lead to developing nuclear weapons.
On Tuesday, Iranian protesters stormed and ransacked the U.K. embassy compounds in Tehran.
The incident ? broadcast around the world ? showed demonstrators tearing down Union Jack flags and brandishing a looted picture of Queen Elizabeth II. It has deepened Iran's isolation and significantly escalated tensions with the West.
In retaliation, Britain ordered Iranian diplomats off its soil, pulled its diplomats out of Iran and backed new sanctions on the Islamic republic. At least four other European countries, including Germany and France, also moved to reduce diplomatic contacts with Iran.
The storming of the embassy came two days after Iran's parliament voted to reduce ties with Britain following London's support for the recently upgraded U.S. sanctions on Tehran.
Although host nations are supposed to ensure security for embassies, the mob rampaged for hours at the British compound. Attackers torched a vehicle, tossed looted documents through windows, tearing down Union Jack flags and replacing them with Iran's flag and a banner in the name of a 7th-century Shiite saint, Imam Hussein.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague has said the attacks were "clearly premeditated" by high-ranking officials, but claimed there were "divisions within the Iranian regime" about the move.
Iran's government has criticized the attacks. But hard-liners have spoken out in support of the protesters. Mohammad Mohammadian praised the attackers, saying they had targeted the "epicenter of sedition."
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That tablets are beginning to supplant the bog-standard PCs in some people's lives shouldn't come as a surprise, but what about outside of the home? Tablets are in some ways better suited to certain situations where managing PCs can be a real hassle.