An Overview of Forex Trading, Market hours, Rates, Liquidity and Spread

An Overview of Forex Trading, Market hours, Rates, Liquidity and Spread

Since Forex market is open for 24 hours, investors can make the transactions any time they want. In the forex market, investors can take good positions responding quickly to the changing economic conditions. Unlike stock markets, forex market is decentralized. Hence, the investors or account holders can trade currencies from anywhere.
Spot rate and Cross rates:
The spot rate refers to the market price of a currency, measured in terms of another, on a particular day. The most traded or liquid currencies are termed as MAJORS. The Majors consists on the US dollar (USD), the Euro (EUR), the British pound (GBP), the Swiss franc (CHF), the Canadian Dollar (CAD), the Australian Dollar (AUD) and the Japanese yen (JPY).
Quote and Spread:
Before making the transaction, the investors ask their concerned dealers for a quote. The quote represents the buying and selling price of a currency, e.g. the quote for Euro 1.2043 – 1.2048. The difference between the selling and buying prices is called as Spread.
Advantages of Forex trading:
During the recent years, the average daily turnover of the forex market has been growing rapidly because more and more people are taking advantage of this unique. Resultantly, the market has been well established. To increase your chances of making money in the forex market, you need to use a dynamic trading platform. Following are the advantages of forex trading:
•    24-hour Trading: Since the forex market is open for 24 hours, participants get to trade currencies whenever they want. Hence, the investors can respond to latest developments in the global economy and take a position accordingly in real quick time.
•    Increase in Leverage: The forex market offers great leverage. Leverage refers to the amount an account holder can trade currencies against the deposited money in the account. For example, to trade $200,000 of currency, with a margin of 1%, an investor will only have to deposit $2,000 into the account. In other words, leveraged trading is the margin. Taking the margin as1%, if you have $1000 in your margin account, you can trade currency up to $100,000. If you anticipate the movements in Forex prices, you can earn greater profits through higher gearing.
•    Lower Transaction Costs: Unlike stock markets, low commissions and transaction fees are charged in the forex market.
Liquidity:
Forex market is considered as the most liquid market in the world. In the forex market, investors can easily sell their holdings because there is always a large number of brokers and dealers who buy currencies. As a matter of fact, the liquidity for major currencies is very high. Following are the advantages of liquidity in forex trading:
•    It ensures the price stability of the currencies
•    The investors can easily take a position responding to changing economic conditions
•    The investors receive a fair market price of the currencies
•    The investors or account holders are less vulnerable to liquidity risk.
Participants of Forex market:
Participants of the forex market are commercial banks, central or national banks, currency stock exchanges, government and private commercial companies (such as foreign trade firms, investment funds), insurance and pension funds, individual investors and the broker companies. The large commercial banks are the most significant participant of the forex market. After large commercial banks, the brokerage houses are the most active participants in the market.
Structure of the forex market:
The structure of the forex market refers to its broad framework that consists on three tiers namely the interbank market, large retail banks and funds and retail foreign exchange firms. The structure of the forex market will help you understand how foreign exchange transactions go through. The breakdown of each tier and the interaction between them is mentioned below:
•    Interbank Market: The Interbank market comprises on the largest banks and central banks. The large commercial banks and the central bank trade currencies via a system known as EBS. EBS can simply be defined as the software application. It provides the interbank participants of the forex market with bank’s resources helping them understand the supply and demand. Depending upon the supply and demand conditions, the participants can develop fair prices to trade with each other.
•    Retail Banks: Retail banks allow the customers to exchange currencies. When people exchange currencies, the retail banks move the currency around from one branch to another. The retail banks earn profit with the help of spread, a different price for buying than for selling. In case the retail banks need a particular currency, they approach to the tier above them which is the interbank market.
•    Retail Forex Brokers: The retail foreign exchange brokers allow the individual traders to open accounts with them to trade currencies in the forex market. Generally, the retail forex brokers have good relations with interbanks and retail banks because they need to take prices from them. How does retail forex trader offer prices to retail traders? In simple words, they take prices from the interbanks banks retail banks, add a markup and offer the new prices to the retailer traders.

Western dreams: The Alamosa Solar project, the world's largest CPV plant

by Solar Server International Correspondent Christian Roselund

Image by Amonix

Ambition

The Western United States is a big place. The sheer scale of the landscape overwhelms; in many states you can drive hundreds of kilometers in any direction, through prairies, forests, mountains and deserts, without encountering a city.

This land has always attracted ambitious individuals; after the Native Americans came trappers, prospectors for gold and silver, farmers, ranchers, those fleeing religious persecution, and more recently, hippies and entrepreneurs.

In the Western state of Colorado, on the high prairie of the San Luis Valley, facing the wall of the San Juan Mountains, is one of the most ambitious solar projects yet undertaken. Above the rabbitbrush and greasewood are a series of 15 by 21 meter arrays of lenses, rising on hundreds of metal poles like an alien orchard.

This is Cogentrix' Alamosa Solar project, the world's largest concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) project, which we bring you as Solar Server's November 2012 Solar Energy System of the Month.

The San Luis Valley

The location in the San Luis Valley is important for understanding this project. The high, dry climate of the valley has lent itself to limited agriculture, mostly alfalfa, potatoes, lettuce and barley, as well as ranching.

Alfalfa field under cultivation. The valley is seeing limitations on the use of water. Image by Klepastic

However, agriculture in the valley is seeing difficult times. "The San Luis Valley is undergoing a transition away from an agricultural economic base due to increasing restrictions on the use of water," notes Cogentrix Energy Project Developer Jef Freeman. 

With its extremely arid climate and high elevation, the land is ideally suited to another kind of harvest. Freeman notes the "outstanding sunlight characteristics" which make the land ideal for CPV, which requires not only abundant sunlight, but direct, unfiltered sunlight, known as direct normal irradiation (DNI).

Cogentrix is not the first company to notice this. In 2007 SunEdison built an 8.2 MW solar photovoltaic (PV) plant near the town of Mosca, Colorado, which at the time was the largest PV plant in the United States, and the valley boasts some of the highest rates of home PV adoption in the nation.

Capturing the sun

The Alamosa plant is comprised of 3,528 Amonix 7700-60 and 7700-63 CPV "Mega-Modules", mounted on 504 dual-axis tracking units (utilizing hydraulics provided by Hawe), seven to a tracker.

Amonix' CPV technology is based on the use of mulijunction PV cells. Image by Amonix

Each Amonix module uses over 1,000 acrylic Fresnel lenses to concentrate sunlight up to 500 times onto small multi-junction solar photovoltaic (PV) cells. These cells can reach 31% module efficiency, an approximately 10% raw gain in efficiency over the most efficient PV modules without concentration.

CPV manufacturers and developers including Amonix state that this technology can offer a lower levelized cost of electricity than PV technology, however in order to do so CPV, like concentrating solar power (CSP) requires specific light conditions, as well as the use of tracking devices.

The trackers at the Alamosa Solar plant follow the sun's motions throughout the day using a hydraulic system by Hawe, which is driven by a custom-mounted controller. Each of the trackers holds 60 kW of CPV attached to a Solectria inverter, delivering in total 30 MW of capacity.

This makes the Alamosa project almost four times as large as the next-largest CPV plant in the world, the 7.8 MW Navarra Solar Park in Navarra, Spain, and a breakthrough for CPV technology into the big time.

Sealing the deal

The plant is the result of a solicitation process opened in early 2009 by Xcel Energy subsidiary Public Service Company of Colorado. The process, as approved by the Colorado Public Service Commission, helps to meet Colorado's ambitious renewable portfolio standard (RPS) of 30% by 2020 for private utilities.

However, following the sale of electricity to Xcel, several other significant hurdles stood between Cogentrix and its goal of building the plant. CPV technology uses less water than does agriculture, but developers still needed to secure water rights for the project.

Several hurdles had to be overcome before construction could begin, including obtaining water rights, a height variance and securing financing. Image by Amonix

"The project required obtaining specific Colorado and Alamosa County variances and permits," recalls Cogentrix VP Freeman. "For instance, to obtain the necessary water rights for potable and lens cleaning water, the project team worked closely with County conservancy officials to develop a program of water augmentation into the San Luis Valley groundwater system."

Also, the height of the project exceeded an existing 15 meter county height limitation. Freeman notes that the project team worked with Alamosa County through the state delegated 1041 permit process to secure permits for construction, including a height variance.

Financing

However, the largest hurdle was likely financing. Here, being the first CPV project of this scale was not an advantage.

"Because the project is the first of its kind, conventional financing was not available," notes Freeman. "Traditional financial institutions required at least two years of operating performance data in order to adequately gauge the risk profile of the project before offering financing terms for review."

The project team was ultimately able to secure a loan from the Federal Finance Bank, backed by a U.S. DOE loan guarantee.

Building the future

In order to meet project deadlines, Cogentrix began work on the project in April 2011 with project partners Stantec and Mortenson, financing the work through its own equity while pursuing the DOE loan guarantee. Cogentrix VP Freeman notes that again, the size of the project and its innovative nature brought challenges.

Cogentrix VP of Development Jef Freeman notes that the greatest challenge was the unprecedented scale of the project. Image by Amonix

"By their very nature, innovative projects such as the Alamosa Solar project often bring equipment supply, construction and operational challenges," observes Freeman. "Each occurred at some point during the construction and start-up of the Alamosa Solar project."

Freeman states that the biggest challenge was the project scale, particularly the 15 meter by 21 meter assemblies. The project also required 45 kilometers of grounding cable throughout the site and 84 km of underground electrical cable for carrying the power produced in the field to the interconnection transmission line at 115 kV.

Hard land: Building for ice, wind and other challenges

Freeman also notes that the physical location, while offering rich solar resources, also presented big challenges.

"The mountainous terrain required the engineering designers to account for extreme temperature variations (-43 degrees up to +35 degrees C), a frost line of 107 cm below site grade, a relatively high water table, and the presence of invasive rodents," notes Freeman. "This required that the selection of materials and equipment met the functional needs of the project while also tolerating extreme conditions."

Finally, the project had to take into account strong winds, which led to equipping each tracker assembly with its own independent anemometer to measure wind speed, so that the assemblies can be moved to the flat, face-up position if winds exceed 45 kilometers per hour (kph). A centralized control system puts the whole field into stow position if wind speeds exceed 48 kph.

Solar harvest

Cogentrix completed the project in only 12 months. Image by Amonix

After roughly 12 months of construction, Cogentrix put the Alamosa Solar project into service in April 2012. Freeman credits the team from three companies with the project's success. "It was imperative to have quality ownership, engineering, construction and operational personnel involved to ensure the project’s ultimate success," states Freeman. 

Freeman notes the combination of engineering talent and Cogentrix and Stantec as well as Mortenson's construction expertise, stating that this combination enabled the project to address the multiple challenges that it faced during the construction process and conclude on time. He describes the plant as a role model for similar plants, noting that the project broke new ground in many ways.

"In order for the conventional commercial lending community to get comfortable with risks associated with innovative projects, an operating track record is needed," explains Freeman. "The Alamosa Solar project is well on its way to establishing such an operating track record."

The facility has an availability of 98%, and is meeting contractual obligations with Xcel Energy. Cogentrix, Amonix, and their project team, working with the federal and local government, have shown that once again, the West can deliver on dreams.

Former Amonix CEO Brian Robertson. Image by Amonix

Footnote: Brian Robertson (1973-2011)

On December 22nd, 2011 former Amonix CEO and Board Director Brian Robertson died in a plane crash in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, only four months before the Alamosa Solar plant achieved commercial operation. Mr. Robertson was also a co-founder of SunEdison, and a person who left a mark on the solar industry and the world.

We at Solar Server want to take a moment to remember the pioneering spirit of Mr. Robertson, and his contributions to CPV and the solar industry.

Search for alien life about to step up a gear

Search for alien life about to step up a gear

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LONDON, Oct. 20, 2012 (Reuters) — It remains in the realm of science fiction for now but the discovery of a new planet just four light years away will reignite a race to find a twin of planet Earth that may host extraterrestrial life.

This artist's impression shows the planet orbiting the star Alpha Centauri B, a member of the triple star system that is the closest to Earth in this image released on October 17, 2012. REUTERS/ESO/L. Calcada/N. Risinger

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The step change comes as the most powerful telescopes ever built are about to enter into service and as ideas about where life could exist are being turned on their head. At the same time, scientific discussion about the possible existence of alien life is becoming more mainstream.
"I think scientists are very happy having a rational conversation about the likelihood of life out there," said Bob Nichol, an astronomer at Portsmouth University in Britain.
Nichol said this was partly driven by the discovery of new planets such as one identified this week in the Alpha Centauri star system, the closest yet outside our solar system.
Over 800 of these so-called exoplanets have been discovered since the early 1990s.
"An explosion in the number of planets makes it so much more likely," said Nichol, adding that the many formats in which life appears on Earth is indirect evidence, though not proof, that life is out there.
Researchers from the Geneva Observatory said the newest planet to be found was too close to its own sun to support life. But previous studies have suggested that when one planet is discovered orbiting a sun there are usually others in the same system.
Rival astronomers are now likely to start scouring Alpha Centauri for more planets, possibly in the habitable zone around its stars.
NEW EYES AND EARS
The technological eyes and ears that scientists have at their disposal are about to take a leap forward too, broadening and deepening their search.
Barring a surprise discovery of microbes on Mars, we will see alien life long before we are ever able to touch it.
"I think it is realistic to expect to be able to infer within a few decades whether a planet like Earth has oxygen/ozone in its atmosphere, and if it is covered with vegetation," Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal, told Reuters.
The next decade will see two record-breaking telescopes come on line; the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a huge radio telescope sited in South Africa and Australia, and Europe's Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) that will sit on a mountain top in Chile's Atacama desert and be the largest optical telescope ever built.
Their main task will be to probe the origins and nature of galaxies, but they will also look for signs of life on planets that can now only be seen in the roughest detail.
"I think the capabilities of new telescopes means that the detection of an ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence) is more likely in the next few decades, than it was in the last," said Mike Garrett, general director of Astron, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy.
With a mirror almost 40 metres in diameter, The E-ELT will be able to reveal planets orbiting other stars and will produce images that are 16 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope.
When completed in 2024, the SKA radio scope will comprise 3,000 dishes, each 15 metres (50 feet) wide, together with many more antennae that together will be able to see 10 times further into the universe and detect signals that are 10 times older.
Among those signals could be radiation given off by military radar from the nearest million or so stars. "So," said Nichol, "if there are advanced civilizations on planets around those stars, we could see them".
Isobel Hook, an Oxford University astrophysicist who is working on the E-ELT, said the new telescope will boost the search for life elsewhere.
"The ELT should also allow us to study the atmospheres of extra-solar planets and look for ‘bio-markers' such as water, carbon dioxide and oxygen molecules in their spectra," she said.
With the right equipment, Hook said the ELT may be able to use spectroscopy, the study of the particular wavelengths of light reflected by an object, to detect signs of vegetation on distant planets.
NEW THEORY
The search for alien life has long been framed by the dogma of a ‘goldilocks zone' around faraway suns that is just the right temperature - neither too hot nor too cold - to allow liquid water, essential for life as we know it.
That theory is now being challenged, expanding the potential area in which life could exist.
Other sources of heat have been identified and scientists have come up with radically new ideas about the forms life could take after studying organisms that live in some of the most inhospitable places on Earth.
Earlier this year, Xavier Bonfils of the Institute of Planetology and Astrophysics in Grenoble estimated there could be tens of billions of rocky planets in our galaxy alone with the right temperature to support life.
Meanwhile, researchers at Aberdeen University in Scotland are working on a computer model which suggests astronomers should sharply increase the number of planets they regard as capable of hosting life.
Although scientists would expect water on the surface of a planet outside a habitable zone to be frozen, researcher Sean McMahon has argued the heat generated from inside a planet could be enough for large underground reservoirs of liquid water.
The study of pockets of life on Earth in places not dissimilar to an area being probed on Mars by NASA's rover Curiosity has also altered conventional wisdom.
A team from Centro de Astrobiología in Madrid led by Felipe Gomez studied organisms in the sun-baked Chott el Jerid salt pan in Tunisia, the acidic Rio Tinto in Southern Spain and the permafrost on Deception Island in Antarctica.
Another team from North Carolina State University recently published research on a single-celled organism that lives in a hot spring near Mount Vesuvius in Italy and is able to eat uranium and draw energy from it.
The research suggests that planets hostile to human life might nevertheless suit these so-called extremophiles, leading to what Duncan Forgan at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh calls "a much more complicated and richer concept of the habitable zone."
But at roughly 100,000 light years across, the galaxy is a big place and even if there is intelligent life elsewhere sending out signals astronomers say the chances of not hearing them are still considerable.

Mars rover still sniffing for elusive methane

Mars rover still sniffing for elusive methane

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Nov. 2, 2012 (Reuters) — Initial analysis of the atmosphere of Mars from NASA's rover Curiosity has shown no sign of methane, a gas detected previously by remote sensors, researchers said on Friday.

A sample of Martian soil delivered by the robotic arm on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity to the rover's observation tray for the first time is pictured in this October 16, 2012 NASA handout photo obtained by Reuters October 20, 2012. REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Handout.

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On Earth, more than 90 percent of the methane in the atmosphere results from living organisms and its presence in the Martian atmosphere, first detected in 2003, raised the prospect of microbial life on the planet.
Although no methane was detected during Curiosity's first detailed atmospheric analysis, scientists working under the auspices of the U.S. space agency plan to keep looking.
"The search goes on," Curiosity scientist Paul Mahaffy, from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, told reporters on Friday.
In addition to chemically analyzing soil and rocks, Curiosity is equipped to sample and study gases in the planet's thin atmosphere.
The rover's onboard laboratory looked for methane in concentrations as small as five parts per billion. Scientists so far have no explanation as to why Curiosity has found no methane, when orbiting probes and ground-based telescopes have previously found evidence of the gas on Mars.
As well as being produced by living organisms, methane is also generated by geological activity.
Methane would not have to be released at Curiosity's landing site inside Gale Crater for the rover to detect it, according to atmospheric chemist Sushil Atreya of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
"If there is a source of methane elsewhere, it does not take very long for it to get distributed over the planet - about three months," Atreya said.
"As we monitor (for) methane over time, we may be able to say more about the possibility about any sources in the Gale Crater region," he said.
Measurements of other atmospheric gases have proven more fruitful.
An analysis of carbon, argon and other isotopes, which are variations of particular chemical elements, indicates that Mars, as suspected, has lost significant amounts of its atmosphere to space over time.
"The gases in the current atmosphere are a product of Mars' entire history," said Curiosity scientist Laurie Leshin of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.
The goal of the two-year, $2.5 billion Curiosity mission is to determine whether Mars, which is cold and dry today, ever had the chemical and environmental conditions to support and preserve microbial life.
"Did Mars once have abundant flowing water, and if so why is the climate so cold and the atmosphere so thin today as to preclude this?" Leshin said.
"By studying today's atmosphere, we can gain clues to how Mars' environment has changed," she said.
Curiosity, which landed on Mars in August, is NASA's first astrobiology mission since the 1970s-era Viking probes.

SCIENCE NEWS

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Pressure builds for better oil spill clean-up technology

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With oil becoming scarcer and more expensive, the economics of the industry may finally tip in favor of one of the most neglected areas of its business - the technology for cleaning up oil spills.

An aerial view shows oil that seeped from a well operated by Chevron at Frade, on the waters in Campos Basin in Rio de Janeiro state November 18, 2011. REUTERS/Rogerio Santana/Handout

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Despite efforts by scientists to find new and more effective ways to deal with spilt oil, there has been little fundamental change in the technology in the two decades since the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster that spilled 750,000 barrels of oil into Prince William Sound in Alaska.
But as oil companies push into the environmentally pristine Arctic and deeper waters elsewhere, the pressure on them to demonstrate they can quickly mop up spilt oil will increase.
Big spills like BP PLC's 2010 disaster in the Gulf of Mexico usually trigger a flurry of research, much like the acceleration in weapons technology in wartime, but history shows that industry and government enthusiasm quickly fades.
That loss of momentum could prove expensive. BP has already spent $14 billion on clean-up operations, paid out over $8 billion in claims and is offering a further $7.8 billion in settlement to those affected by the disaster.
ENTER THE SCIENTISTS
A pair of materials researchers from Pennsylvania State University have come up with a novel gel that can absorb 40 times its own weight in oil and forms a soft solid that is strong enough to be scooped up and fed straight into a refinery to recover the oil.
The polymer developed by Mike Chung and Xuepei Yuan only interacted with oil in tests and the swelled gel contained no water, which solves the sticky problem of separating spilt crude from the water it pollutes.
Chung says existing absorbers like straw, and even corn cobs, can only hold about five times their own weight. They also pick up water along with the oil and become waste that has to be buried in special landfills or burned.
The Penn State scientists estimate their polymer gel could be produced on a large scale for $2 a pound, which is enough to recover more than five gallons of spilled oil worth roughly $12 based on a barrel price of $80.
"Had this material been applied to the top of the leaking well head in the Gulf of Mexico during the 2010 spill, this... could have effectively transformed the gushing brown oil into a floating gel for easy collection and minimized the pollution consequences," the scientists said in their research paper on the new material.
Rival teams have applied nanotechnology to the problem to produce ultra-lightweight sponges that are oleophilic and hydrophobic - they love oil but repel water.
Daniel Hashim and colleagues at Rice University in Houston have found a way to turn carbon nanotubes - atom-thick sheets of carbon rolled into cylinders - into a sponge material that sucks up oil and can either be squeezed or burned to remove it. In either case the fire-resistant sponge can be re-used.
Hashim told Reuters he has some seed capital from companies and individual investors to develop the technology but there are plenty of hurdles ahead.
Aside from the need to develop a system to deploy the sponge material into an oil spill, "the most significant barrier is equipment cost associated with the scale-up process," he said.
If those hurdles can be overcome, the material could be useful in the Arctic because it retains its sponginess even in extreme cold.
Even celebrities are getting in on the act. In June this year, a U.S. jury ruled in favor of actor Kevin Costner in a lawsuit in which fellow actor Stephen Baldwin accused him of cheating in a multimillion dollar deal to sell oil clean-up devices to BP after the Gulf of Mexico spill.
FLASH IN THE PAN
Some industry insiders are candid about the problem. Writing in the Journal of Petroleum Technology in September, Michael Cortez, BP's manager of oil spill response technology, and his deputy Hunter Rowe warned the research push since the Gulf disaster could be short-lived.
The industry has ramped up funding to improve response technology after other major spills, they said.
"In all instances, however, after a few years of progress, conditions changed in the industry because of oil price volatility and other economic events, and spill response technology development and funding returned to previous levels."
More than twenty years after Exxon Valdez, when BP's Macondo well spewed out an estimated 5 million barrels into the sea, the flotilla attacking the slick was still using floating booms to contain it, specially adapted ships that pick it up by skimming the surface of the water, and controversial chemical dispersants.
There have been advances, not least in the gadgetry for tracking and imaging spills and deploying the ships. The booms are better designed, the skimmers are more efficient and the dispersants less toxic. Some in the industry think this is enough.
"We believe the current technology we have more than meets the need," said Simon Henry, finance director of Royal Dutch Shell, when asked by Reuters whether the company was increasing research spending as it pushes exploration into the Arctic.
Shell, which is Europe's top oil company, was forced to suspend the hunt for oil in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska this year after a giant metal box designed to help contain the oil in the event of a well blowout, was damaged during tests.
"We put most of our effort into ensuring there isn't a spill in the first place," said Henry, adding that a series of barriers, including the blowout preventer that sits on the sea floor at the well-head, are there to guard against "a very, very unlikely event".
SENSE OF URGENCY
Cortez and Rowe from BP argue that exploration in harsher and more remote environments calls for more cutting-edge spill response technology.
"The key to closing technology gaps and enhancing current technologies is to prevent the sense of urgency from being diminished," they said in their journal article.
Scientists are busy coming up with answers but in the end it will be the will of the oil industry and pressure from governments that determines how far and how fast these new technologies are taken up.
As for the novel oil-absorbing gel, Mike Chung is still waiting for the industry to call.
"There is a lot of interest in Petrogel technology for oil spill cleanup and recovery, but not from major oil companies," he told Reuters. (Additional reporting by Andrew Callus; Editing by xxx)

Touch-Sensitive Plastic Skin Heals Itself

ScienceDaily (Nov. 11, 2012) — Nobody knows the remarkable properties of human skin like the researchers struggling to emulate it. Not only is our skin sensitive, sending the brain precise information about pressure and temperature, but it also heals efficiently to preserve a protective barrier against the world. Combining these two features in a single synthetic material presented an exciting challenge for Stanford Chemical Engineering Professor Zhenan Bao and her team.

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Now, they have succeeded in making the first material that can both sense subtle pressure and heal itself when torn or cut. Their findings will be published on November 11 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
In the last decade, there have been major advances in synthetic skin, said Bao, the study's principal investigator, but even the most effective self-healing materials had major drawbacks. Some had to be exposed to high temperatures, making them impractical for day-to-day use. Others could heal at room temperature, but repairing a cut changed their mechanical or chemical structure, so they could only heal themselves once. Most importantly, no self-healing material was a good bulk conductor of electricity, a crucial property.
"To interface this kind of material with the digital world, ideally you want them to be conductive," said Benjamin Chee-Keong Tee, first author of the paper.
New recipe
The researchers succeeded by combining two ingredients to get what Bao calls "the best of both worlds" -- the self-healing ability of a plastic polymer and the conductivity of a metal.
They started with a plastic consisting of long chains of molecules joined by hydrogen bonds -- the relatively weak attractions between the positively charged region of one atom and the negatively charged region of the next.
"These dynamic bonds allow the material to self-heal," said Chao Wang, a co-first author of the research. The molecules easily break apart, but then when they reconnect, the bonds reorganize themselves and restore the structure of the material after it gets damaged, he said. The result is a bendable material, which even at room temperature feels a bit like saltwater taffy left in the fridge.
To this resilient polymer, the researchers added tiny particles of nickel, which increased its mechanical strength. The nanoscale surfaces of the nickel particles are rough, which proved important in making the material conductive. Tee compared these surface features to "mini-machetes," with each jutting edge concentrating an electrical field and making it easier for current to flow from one particle to the next.
The result was a polymer with uncommon characteristics. "Most plastics are good insulators, but this is an excellent conductor," Bao said.
Bouncing back
The next step was to see how well the material could restore both its mechanical strength and its electrical conductivity after damage.
The researchers took a thin strip of the material and cut it in half with a scalpel. After gently pressing the pieces together for a few seconds, they found the material gained back 75 percent of its original strength and electrical conductivity. The material was restored close to 100 percent in about 30 minutes. "Even human skin takes days to heal. So I think this is quite cool," said Tee.
What's more, the same sample could be cut repeatedly in the same place. After 50 cuts and repairs, a sample withstood bending and stretching just like the original.
The composite nature of the material created a new engineering challenge for the team. Bao and her co-authors found that although nickel was key to making the material strong and conductive, it also got in the way of the healing process, preventing the hydrogen bonds from reconnecting as well as they should.
For future generations of the material, Bao said the team might adjust the size and shape of the nanoparticles, or even the chemical properties of the polymer, to get around this trade-off.
Nonetheless, Wang said the extent of these self-healing properties was truly surprising: "Before our work, it was very hard to imagine that this kind of flexible, conductive material could also be self-healing."
Sensitive to the touch
The team also explored how to use the material as a sensor. For the electrons that make up an electrical current, trying to pass through this material is like trying to cross a stream by hopping from stone to stone. The stones in this analogy are the nickel particles, and the distance separating them determines how much energy an electron will need to free itself from one stone and move to another.
Twisting or putting pressure on the synthetic skin changes the distance between the nickel particles and, therefore, the ease with which electrons can move. These subtle changes in electrical resistance can be translated into information about pressure and tension on the skin.
Tee says that the material is sensitive enough to detect the pressure of a handshake. It might, therefore, be ideal for use in prosthetics, Bao added. The material is sensitive not only to downward pressure but also to flexion, so a prosthetic limb might someday be able to register the degree of bend in a joint.
Tee pointed out other commercial possibilities. Electrical devices and wires coated in this material could repair themselves and get electricity flowing again without costly and difficult maintenance, particularly in hard-to-reach places, such as inside building walls or vehicles.
Next up, Bao said the team's goal is to make the material stretchy and transparent, so that it might be suitable for wrapping and overlaying electronic devices or display screens.

Latest hacking 2012

Remove duplicate files the easy way

I have always wanted this kind of software. I have thousands of mp3 songs packed in various partitions of my hard disk. I have collected these songs from several places and keep them storing, but the problem while augmenting my collection is that I am never sure whether I have copied the set of songs before or not, so I just copy them irrespective of the fact that they may be already present. The consequence is that my limited 40GB hard disk space is almost full leaving me with no more space to store anything else.
That is why I always wanted a software that could compare the contents of two folders and remove the duplicate elements.

File Comparator is a program which compares any files by their contents. This utility allow you to quickly compare contents of any files in specified folders, and allow to show files which contain same data.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Get Free Ferrari stickers (with free shiping)

Yes ,

Shell motors is giving us FREE ferrari stickers without a peny.
With free shiping.

Shell Motorsport celebrates the start of the 2007 Formula One season and its ongoing partnership with Ferrari by offering you brand new free stickers.


(Its My sticker set ^^^)

Don't miss this exclusive set featuring the F2007 and the new driver, Kimi Räikkönen.

Fans who ordered the previous set can now broaden their collection with this new set.

You can order them from here

click >>
http://www.shell.com/home/ferrari-en/html/iwgen/motorsport/app_stickers.html

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Download torrents Without Torrent Client!

A unique online service called Torrent2exe allows users to download torrents without having to install a torrent client by converting the torrent file into a standalone EXE file. Using Torrent2exe is very simple. Copy the URL of the torrent file or browse to the location of the torrent file in your hard disk to automatically upload it to their site. Once you they have got the URL of the torrent file, they will convert it into a self extracting EXE file.
Here you get the option to select the size of the EXE file to be downloaded. Suppose you want to see a movie. What will you require? A media player and the movie. Now you get two choices.
Firstly, you download the movie and the media player, which needs to be downloaded only once. Subsequent movie downloads do not require you to download the movie player since you have already downloaded it.
However, if you move to another computer you will need to download the movie player once again. This is the "small size".
In the second choice, you download the movie along with the media player every time you download a new movie. This is the "normal size"
After you have download the converted EXE file, just run it and it will automatically start downloading the torrent.
The standalone EXE file makes it easier for people to share files and applications on the Internet. You can publish the EXE files on your site or blog to make the downloads easy for visitors, send EXE files to your friends who don't want to be bothered with installing the client.
Torrent2exe is available both as an online service and as a desktop application.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Get all your serials

YouSerials is a search engine for software serials. The idea is to have a backup of all software registration numbers that we use. Each serial key can be voted on by other users, increasing or decreasing its reputation based on its authenticity. It’s also useful if your Operating system had crashed and you need a reinstall but don’t have all the serials stored or are lost.

Avira Antivir Personal Edition Premium 6 Month Serial

The Avira AntiVir Personal Edition Premium enhances the comprehensive protection of the Avira AntiVir Personal Edition Classic (Freeware, basic function) by important security and comfort functions and protects you against viruses, worms, Trojans, ad/spy ware and dialers. Now the product is comes with AntiPhishing and Rootkit protection.

If you wish to have this product here is how you will get a genuine license key for 6 month for free.

Go to this page and enter your name and a valid email address. Avira will send you a link to download the License file (HB EDV.KEY) and the Avira AntiVir Personal Edition Premium. You will be prompted to import the license file during the installation of your Avira product.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Use Proxies in Windows(working 100%)

Go to control panel
1)phone modem options
2)advanced
3)In Providers, click Microsoft H.323 Telephony Service Provider, and then click Configure.
4)In Configure H.323 Service Provider
5)To specify an H.323 proxy, select the Use H.323 proxy, and then type the server name or IP address for the proxy.

Try google for available proxy IP /servers...
Or
try www.proxy4free.com
this is a easy way of using private proxy with windows... plus its more secure than public CGI ones :D

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

**Speed up XP**

To disable unneeded startup services for a safer, faster XP, use the "Services" Admin Tool (Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services). If you are a single user of a non-networked machine, you can disable the following items, with no ill effect.

Alerter
Clipbook
Computer Browser
Fast User Switching
Human Interface Access Devices
Indexing Service (Slows the hard drive down)
Messenger
Net Logon (unnecessary unless networked on a Domain)
Netmeeting Remote Desktop Sharing (disabled for extra security)
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager (disabled for extra security)
Remote Procedure Call Locator
Remote Registry (disabled for extra security)
Routing & Remote Access (disabled for extra security)
Server SSDP Discovery Service (this is for the utterly pointless "Universal P'n'P", & leaves TCP Port 5000 wide open)
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper Telnet (disabled for extra security)
Universal Plug and Play Device Host
Upload Manager
Windows Time
Wireless Zero Configuration (for wireless networks)
Workstation

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Remove RUN ....

Who wants to delete "RUN"

I really don't know why someone could wish to remove RUN from START MENU, but if you're one of them, you can do that, too.

REGEDIT

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Double click on "NoRun" and change "ValueData" from 0 to 1.

Close Regedit, and restart computer.
Done!!

Browse The Web Using MS Calculator

Now access the internet via your standard Microsoft Calculator using this trick.
You can do this for fun or when your browser is messed up for some unexplainable reason.

Steps:

1. Open your MS Calculator. This is normally found in Start => All Programs => Accessories => Calculator.

2. Open the help-window by pressing the F1 key.

3. Click the top-left corner icon of the help window once (Standard is a Document with a Questionmark).

4. Select 'Jump to URL'.

5. Type your address into the avaliable field, but remember to type http://, and not just www. (or equivalent).

Have fun !!!

Posted by Ankit Shrivastava at 12:18 PM No comments: