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—— ARS Technologies Inc. - links ——
- News - main news page, latest press release
- Products - USB2 line, SSI2 line
- Documents - User’s Guide .pdf
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A single ‘prophecy’ was able to drive the oil price (per barrel of sweet crude) up $10.75US on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

An analyst from Morgan Stanley did ‘predict’ that the crude oil price could reach $150 by 4th of July. Before it would take a real event to drive the prices up, like a corroded pipe in Alaska, or an unrest in Nigeria. Now, a ‘prophecy’ is enough.

Both sides of the market, on the supply and demand side, are about equally matched. Neither a hypothetical new country the size of China is going to start consuming oil tomorrow, nor the current oil production is going to suddenly and rapidly decrease.

If a prediction is able to drive oil pricing, it shows the disconnection between the mercantile market and the real world.

Somehow, the parallels with the electricity crisis in California, are striking. In the mid 1990s California de-regulated the electricity market, sold its power plants, and was buying electricity on the market pricing.

For couple of years the things were fine. Then, power plants started to close, or started having planned and unplanned maintenances. Rogue energy traders artificially reduced the available electricity.

With the things on the edge, risking to turn off the electricity to neighborhoods or cities, California had to pay 5/10/20 times the market rates for electricity.

It took electing a new governor with a ’star’ power - Arnold Schwarzenegger- to bring a message to Washington, and solve the electricity crisis.

So, how do we solve the oil crisis?
The bad news is that Washington, can not help much here - it is a global crisis.
The good news is that most of the countries of the world are aware the issues involving producing and consuming oil, and together we are really interested in solving this problem.

Translate to - Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese

—— ARS Technologies Inc. - links ——
- News - main news page, latest press release
- Products - USB2 line, SSI2 line
- Documents - User’s Guide .pdf
—————————————————-

What do you do in space, when the toilet does not work?

For the last twi weeks, the main toilet at the International Space Station (ISS) has not been working.
The crew of three people had to take turns to manually flush the toilet and use extra water- a precious resource in space.

Russian built, the toilet is used by all of the residents on ISS. Luckily, a toilet pump part was rushed from Moscow, just in time for the launch of the space shuttle Discovery.

The toilet trouble at ISS kind of overshadowed the delivery of the second (and main) part of the Japanese lab, named Kibo (hope). With the size of 37 feet (around 13m), it is a huge contribution by Japan and bigger than the NASA and European labs.

Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko replaced the toilet pump. “Let’s start using it”, the Russian Mission control radioed, when the toilet started working again.

Translate to - Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese

—— ARS Technologies Inc. - links ——
- News - main news page, latest press release
- Products - USB2 line, SSI2 line
- Documents - User’s Guide .pdf
—————————————————-

Rats in mine clearing?

Civil wars and armed conflicts have left mines in many parts of the world, especially in Asia and Africa.
Left in the ground, mines can stay hidden for years or decades, and prevent walking on or using large amounts of land.

A non profit organization from Denmark offers an original approach making this land productive again- training rats to clear mine fields.

Rats’ strong sense of smell makes them ideal helpers to sniff explosives and signal their human handlers to the location of a buried mine.

The rat mine clearing method is currently used in Mozambique and it will will be introduced in Angola, and Cambodia.

It may take a week for a human to clear a field of 1000 sq.ft. (around 100 sq.m). It may take several days for a dog to clear the same size field. However, it takes several hours for a rat to do the same task.

And, unlike dogs, they do not get bored by the same repetitive and mundane mission.

What is the reward for the rat who finds a mine?
A banana.