Alternative energy

Last week I had the opportunity to visit the two new coal fired generating plants for Santee Cooper at the Crossfield Station site units three and four. These two plants sit next to plants one and two and generate a total of over 2400 MW of power for South Carolina. Given that we need to clean up the air, these plants use the latest pollution protection systems and even sell the gypsm from the scrubbers on the exhaust stacks. Regardless of your political persuasion, the U.S. can't afford to throw away the most abundant source of fuel available to us domestically. We have the technology to make burning coal cleaner and improving that technology should be one of our priorities.

Steve

NGA University Research Initiatives

Take a look at this article in Defense Systems about NGA grants.

The DARPA of geospatial

• By Patrick Marshall
• September 16, 2008

When you think of NURI, think of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency...but only for geospatial projects.

NURI stands for NGA University Research Initiatives. NGA, of course, is the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a combat support agency at the Defense Department.

The NURI project has been operating since 1997 and has already awarded 103 grants to researchers at more than 60 universities to investigate topics related to geospatial intelligence. Each grant is for three years and generally amounts to $150,000 per year.

This year’s awards (GCN.com, Quickfind 1201) range from one for a research project on “Spaceborne Magnetic Gradiometry after Swarm: Novel Approaches to Mapping the Earth’s Magnetic Field Employing Nonlinear Magneto-Optical Rotation Sensors” to a project titled “Purpose- Aware Dynamic Graph Models for Representing and Reasoning about Networks.”

http://defensesystems.com/Articles/2008/09/The-DARPA-of-geospatial.aspx

Amazing NEAH fuel cells

The NEAH fuel cells have the ability to cut the weight of body worn systems significantly. This fuel cell is equivalent to 12 BA-5590 military batteries weighing 27 pounds but it only weighs 8 pounds.