A cheaper drive to 'cool' fuels

June 21, 2013 ? University of Delaware chemist Joel Rosenthal is driven to succeed in the renewable energy arena.

Working in his lab in UD's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Rosenthal and doctoral student John DiMeglio have developed an inexpensive catalyst that uses the electricity generated from solar energy to convert carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, into synthetic fuels for powering cars, homes and businesses.

The research is published in the June 19 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Gold and silver represent the "gold standard" in the world of electrocatalysts for conversion of carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide. But Rosenthal and his research team have pioneered the development of a much cheaper alternative to these pricey, precious metals. It's bismuth, a silvery metal with a pink hue that's a key ingredient in Pepto-Bismol, the famous pink elixir for settling an upset stomach.

An ounce of bismuth is 50 to 100 times cheaper than an ounce of silver, and 2,000 times cheaper than an ounce of gold, Rosenthal says. Bismuth is more plentiful than gold and silver, it is well distributed globally and is a byproduct in the refining of lead, tin and copper.

Moreover, Rosenthal says his UD-patented catalyst offers other important advantages: selectivity and efficiency in converting carbon dioxide to fuel.

"Most catalysts do not selectively make one compound when combined with carbon dioxide -- they make a whole slew," Rosenthal explains. "Our goal was to develop a catalyst that was extremely selective in producing carbon monoxide and to power the reaction using solar energy."

Many of us hear '"carbon monoxide" and think "poison."

"It's true that you do not want to be in a closed room with carbon monoxide," Rosenthal says. "But carbon monoxide is very valuable as a commodity chemical because it's extremely energy rich and has many uses."

Carbon monoxide is used industrially in the water-gas shift reaction to make hydrogen gas. It also is a prime feedstock for the Fischer-Tropsch process, which allows for the production of synthetic petroleum, gasoline and diesel.

Commercial production of synthetic petroleum is under way or in development in a number of countries, including Australia and New Zealand, China and Japan, South Africa and Qatar.

Rosenthal says that if carbon dioxide emissions become taxed in the future due to continuing concerns about global warming, his solar-driven catalyst for making synthetic fuel will compete even better economically with fossil fuels.

"This catalyst is a critically important linchpin," Rosenthal says. "Using solar energy to drive the production of liquid fuels such as gasoline from CO2 is one of the holy grails in renewable energy research. In order to do this on a practical scale, inexpensive catalysts that can convert carbon dioxide to energy-rich compounds are needed. Our discovery is important in this regard, and demonstrates that development of new catalysts and materials can solve this problem. Chemists have a big role to play in this area."

Rosenthal credits a scientific article published during America's first energy crisis in the 1970s for piquing his interest in bismuth. At that time, many researchers were examining the conversion of carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide using electricity and metal electrodes. The research went bust in the early 1980s when federal funding dried up. Rosenthal picked up the trail and blazed a new one.

"With this advance, there are at least a dozen things we need to follow up on," Rosenthal notes. "One successful study usually leads to more questions and possibilities, not final answers."

Rosenthal's lab will be operating at full tilt this summer, exploring some of those questions. And his research team of seven will have some company. Through the American Chemical Society's Project SEED summer research program, budding scientists from nearby Newark High School will join Rosenthal's team for further study of this bismuth-based catalyst.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/matter_energy/electricity/~3/JL_FzuAJvG0/130621095324.htm

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The Longform Guide to The Sopranos

James Gandolfini died this week at age 51.

Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Every weekend, Longform shares a collection of great stories from its archive with Slate. For daily picks of new and classic nonfiction, check out Longform or follow @longform on Twitter. Have an iPad? Download Longform?s app to read the latest picks, plus features from 70 of the world?s best magazines, including Slate.

Every story ever written about the late Gandolfini was really just a story about The Sopranos. Except this one.

?He pulls up on his Harley. I watch as he awkwardly backs the small bike to the curb outside the Ear Inn and lifts off his helmet. James Gandolfini arrived back in New York City at seven thirty this evening after his Emmy weekend in Los Angeles; he put his 5-year-old son to bed, then headed out, only slightly late for his interview. He does very few of these. He has not always had an easy time with the public side of the fame The Sopranos has brought him?all those nosy questions, those pesky paparazzi, the peculiar moments when a person will come up to you as you are vomiting at the curbside outside a Tennessee airport to ask whether you'd mind his taking a picture. But nor does he have much patience with the sound of someone like him complaining about such things. In the past, when he has spoken, he has sometimes replied to questions by protesting that he is boring. Maybe he believes that this is the case, or just believes there is no point in allowing himself to seem interesting in the way interviewers usually want people to be. Still, he has told himself that tonight he will be truthful. He's feeling calmer these days. He has not had one of these conversations for a while, and he intends it to be a long time before he has another.?

The Family Hour
Sam Kashner ? Vanity Fair ? April 2012

?JAMES GANDOLFINI (Tony Soprano): I dabbled a little bit in acting in high school, and then I forgot about it completely. And then at about 25 I went to a class. I don?t think anybody in my family thought it was an intelligent choice. I don?t think anybody thought I?d succeed, which is understandable. I think they were just happy that I was doing something.

?DAVID CHASE: In the movie version of The Sopranos, I thought about Robert De Niro. For TV, it was audition after audition?a lot of people went up for that role. As a matter of fact, they don?t like you to bring in one person?they want to have some input. So three people were brought to HBO for the role of Tony, and Jim was one of them. And when Jim Gandolfini walked in, that was it.

?JAMES GANDOLFINI: I read it. I liked it. I thought it was good. But I thought that they would hire some good-looking guy, not George Clooney but some Italian George Clooney, and that would be that. But they called me and they said can I meet David for breakfast at nine A.M. At the time I was younger and I stayed out late a lot, and I was like, Oh, for fuck?s sake. This guy wants to eat breakfast? This guy?s going to be a pain in the ass. So we met and we spent most of the time laughing about our mothers and our families.?

The Long Con
Emily Nussbaum ??New York ? January 2007

?Now that it?s over, no longer a work-in-progress, we are finally free to criticize it for real or praise it as a whole, and despite some missteps (a gambling problem, really? And what was that Furio-Carmela thing back in Season 4?), I do think the show will reward rewatching. It was, in fact, truly revolutionary, but not because it was adult or novelistic. The Sopranos was the first series that truly dared us to slam the door, to reject it. And when we never did, it slammed the door on us: A silent black screen, a fitting conclusion to a show that was itself a bit of a long con, that seduced us as an audience, then dismantled its own charms before our eyes.?

Is This the End of Rico?
David Remnick ? The New Yorker ? April 2001

The Sopranos and the fading mob genre.

?Does ?The Sopranos,? with all its postmodern self-awareness, with all its evidence of decline, signal the end of the Mafia movie? Will the Mob movie go the way of the Western, revived rarely and only then as something nostalgic (?Unforgiven?), sensational (?The Wild Bunch?), or comic (?Blazing Saddles?)? It is remarkable to think now how such a rich movie genre came out of such a small, violent, and hermetic world. There were a few silent Mob pictures of distinction?D. W. Griffith?s 1912 short ?The Musketeers of Pig Alley,? Raoul Walsh?s ?The Regeneration? (1915), and Josef von Sternberg?s ?Underworld? (1927)?but the first golden age was ushered in by two events: the advent of sound, in 1927, which gave us the jolt of gunfire and the bite of the gangsters? slang and wit, and the St. Valentine?s Day Massacre, in 1929, which made Al Capone a national media figure. Three films released between 1931 and 1932?Mervyn LeRoy?s ?Little Caesar,? William Wellman?s ?Public Enemy,? and Howard Hawks?s ?Scarface??set the standard. Both David Chase and Tony Soprano adore them and the theme they established. As Robert Warshow pointed out in his 1948 essay ?The Gangster as Tragic Hero,? the appeal of these pictures, beyond their visceral excitement and their opportunity for escapism, resides in ?that part of the American psyche which rejects the qualities and the demands of modern life, which rejects ?Americanism? itself,? the comfort and conformity, the sunny optimism and unbounded opportunity. The gangster in these movies is a man whose response to harsh circumstance is brutal and ultimately doomed. He is possessed of perverse ambition and perverse nobility. With our ids, we enjoy his murderous ascent, we delight in his malapropisms and limitless appetites, and with our superegos we are satisfied by his inevitable fall, we feel a sense of superiority and relief.?

The Night Tony Soprano Disappeared
Brett Martin ??GQ ??June 2013

Playing Tony Soprano wasn?t easy. And one night 2002, Gandolfini decided he?d had enough.

?By the winter of 2002, Gandolfini's sudden refusals to work had become a semiregular occurrence. His fits were passive-aggressive: He would claim to be sick, refuse to leave his TriBeCa apartment, or simply not show up. The next day, inevitably, he would feel so wretched about his behavior and the massive logistic disruptions it had caused?akin to turning an aircraft carrier on a dime?that he would treat cast and crew to extravagant gifts. ?All of a sudden there'd be a sushi chef at lunch,? one crew member remembered. ?Or we'd all get massages.? It had come to be understood by all involved as part of the price of doing business, the trade-off for getting the remarkably intense, fully inhabited Tony Soprano that Gandolfini offered.

?So when the actor failed to show up for a 6 p.m. call at Westchester County Airport to shoot the final appearance of the character Furio Giunta, a night shoot involving a helicopter, few panicked. ?Nobody was particularly sad to go home at nine thirty on a Friday night,? says Terence Winter, the writer-producer on set that evening. ?You know, ?It's just money.? I mean, it was a ton of money?we shut down a fucking airport.?

?Over the next twelve hours, it would become clear that this time was different. This time, Gandolfini was just gone.?

A beyond-thorough examination of The Sopranos? final scene. Not for beginners.

??If you look at the final episode really carefully, it's all there.? These are David Chase's words regarding the finale of the Sopranos. He is right, it is ?all there.? This is the definitive explanation of why Tony died in Holsten's in the final scene of The Sopranos. The following is based on a thorough analysis of the final season of the show and will clear up one of the most misunderstood endings in film or television history. Chase took almost 2 years to construct the final season of the show after the fifth season ended in June of 2004. Part 1 will show how Chase directed, edited and scored the final scene of the Sopranos to lead to the interpretation that Tony was shot in the head in Holsten's and how this ties into the ?never hear it happen? concept that Chase hammered into the viewer before the show's final scene.?

Have a favorite piece that we missed? Leave the link in the comments or tweet it to @longform. For more great writing, check out Longform?s complete archive.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2013/06/james_gandolfini_tribute_great_stories_about_the_sopranos.html

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Lebron?s ?legacy? (Powerlineblog)

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This week on gdgt: MOGA Pro, Xbox One, Xperia Tablet Z

Each week, our friends at gdgt go through the latest gadgets and score them to help you decide which ones to buy. Here are some of their most recent picks. Want more? Visit gdgt anytime to catch up on the latest, and subscribe to gdgt's newsletter to get a weekly roundup in your inbox.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/21/moga-pro-xbox-one-xperia-tablet-z/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Critics Consensus: Monsters University is Certified Fresh

Plus, World War Z is smart and tense, and The Bling Ring is stylish and lurid.

Also opening this week in limited release:

• A Hijacking, a thriller about a Danish cargo ship commandeered by a group of Somali pirates, is Certified Fresh at 100 percent.
• The Attack, a drama about a prominent Israeli Palestinian whose wife is posthumously accused of being a suicide bomber, is at 92 percent.
• Unfinished Song, starring Gemma Arterton and Terence Stamp in a dramedy about a grumpy older guy who comes out of his shell when he joins a local choir, is at 64 percent.
• Maniac, starring Elijah Wood in a thriller about a withdrawn shop owner whose dark side is unleashed, is at 54 percent.
• The French import Three Worlds, a drama about disparate people who reconnect after a hit-and-run accident, is at 43 percent.
• Somm, a documentary about a group of wine experts working to pass the demanding Master Sommelier test, is at 33 percent.
• Rushlights, a thriller about a pair of teens who get into big trouble when they attempt to claim an inheritance under false pretenses, is at zero percent.

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1927703/news/1927703/

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FOR KIDS: Cool Jobs ? Moved by life

Biologically inspired robots travel ? naturally

By Sharon Oosthoek

Web edition: June 21, 2013

Enlarge

Do the locomotion

A robot built to mimic the movements of a shark relative, the cownose ray, takes a dip.

Credit: Norm Shafer

Meet three researchers who study animal locomotion. Each of the critters they work with has perfected a style of movement over millions of years. Their moves have inspired these engineers to build robots that can do important and useful jobs ? ones that people can?t do. Known as biomimicry,?it's the design of new technologies based on nature.

Visit the new?Science News for Kids?website and read the full story:??Cool Jobs ? Moved by life

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/351179/title/FOR_KIDS_Cool_Jobs__Moved_by_life

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Will iRobot and Cisco's New Robot Take a Bite Out of Business ...

If Cisco and iRobot have their way, robot CEOs may invade boardrooms from Tokyo to New York in 2014. The two companies?recently announced collaboration on the autonomous Ava 500 telepresence robot for business. The firms hope the Ava 500 will allow business people to attend daily meetings in person, across the planet?without ever changing a plane or time zone.

The navigation technology behind iRobot?s Roomba robot vacuum cleaner and the RP Vita medical telepresence robot will guide the five foot five inch, 100 pound Ava 500. Meanwhile, a Cisco TelePresence EX60 personal video endpoint will broadcast a worker?s face and voice from its?21.5? screen and send back sounds and images via an onboard camera and microphone.

Using a special app on a tablet, remote workers will wake the robot up and tell it where to go. The Ava 500 can map and autonomously navigate the halls of its home office, freeing the telecommuter to make small talk along the way (or leave the screen off until it reaches its destination). After a meeting, the unit dutifully returns to its charging station to catch a few winks and juice up for its next appointment.

iRobot CEO, Colin Angle, told the Boston Herald the Ava 500 gives folks the chance to be in the same room as the people they?re meeting, to see facial expressions, and to go in the hall after for a private chat. Angie Mistretta, director of telepresence solutions at Cisco, says, ?The real value of the robot is that spontaneity.?

The question is whether that spontaneity is worth the robot?s $70,000 price tag?(or?$2,000 ? $2,500 a month to rent). iRobot and Cisco are targeting executives, corporate trainers, site inspectors, and remote employees. Travel costs for these folks can stack up fast.?If Ava 500 saves even a few trips a month, the robot could pay its way.

But businesses are cost cutting machines. If telepresence robots are attractive at $70,000, then they?re even more appealing at $7,000, and exponentially sexier as the price tag approaches $0.?And already, firms can order a simpler telepresence robot from Double Robotics for $2,599. Businesses may be willing to sacrifice a little screen real estate and autonomous navigation for $67,000 in saved costs.

Double Robotics iPad telepresence robot.

And they may not need to make that sacrifice very long.?Advanced AI and robotics are entering the consumer market at drastically reduced prices.

We recently wrote about AI startup Anki. Anki?s robot cars drive themselves around a track at top speed, avoiding each other, the wall, making evasive maneuvers?all this runs on iOS with an expected cost of $200.?But Anki isn?t just about toy cars. It?s an iOS-powered consumer AI and robotics platform.

Such technology will just as easily guide an autonomous telepresence robot through the office. And soon. Offering enterprise solutions at enterprise prices in a world where AI and robotics are hitting consumer markets at consumer prices?how long will such products make sense?

Source: http://singularityhub.com/2013/06/21/will-irobot-and-ciscos-new-robot-take-a-bite-out-of-business-travel/

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