Video: Elektra One All-Electric Plane Makes Successful Maiden Flight

Meanwhile, jet contrails found to be a worse climate-change culprit than carbon

POPSCI, By Clay Dillow, 03.30.2011

ELEKTRA ONE via PS-Aero

German company PC-Aero is trying to win NASA’s CAFE Green Flight Challenge, and Saturday they took a big step toward doing just that. The company’s ELEKTRA ONE aircraft, designed by PC-Aero’s founder and president Calin Gologan, made its successful first flight. But this one-seater isn’t your average single-prop. ELEKTRA ONE flies on electricity alone.

The Green Flight Challenge seeks a demo aircraft that can fly 200 miles in less than two hours on the energy equivalent of less than one gallon of fuel per person. ELEKTRA ONE didn’t push the envelope that far just yet--the maiden flight hit a ceiling just above 1600 feet and lasted just 30 minutes, burning just half the 6 kWh stored up in its batteries. But the fact that the lightweight aircraft was able to comfortably circle the airfield for half an hour-- more or less silently, we might add--is nothing short of impressive.

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And the timing for such a flight couldn’t be better. A study released Tuesday claims that airplane contrails--those long, white condensation trails jets leave in the sky--may warm the planet more on the average day than all of the carbon emissions spewed from airplanes in the history of modern aviation.

The carbon lingers longer of course--the contrails and any heat-trapping cirrus clouds they cause dissipate in hours or days, while the carbon remains for decades--but still, that’s a lot heat being trapped on any given day. Electric planes, as you may have surmised, wouldn’t contribute to warming on either front. See ELEKTRA ONE take flight in the video below.

[Treehugger, Reuters]

Feds forbid scientists probing Gulf dolphin deaths from speaking to media

Yahoo News, By Brett Michael Dykes

(Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP)

Last month dolphin corpses began washing up on the Gulf Coast in alarming numbers. Well, more dead dolphins continue to be found, bringing the total this year up to 114--100 more than the average number of dead dolphins that washed ashore during the first three months of any year between 2002 and 2007.

So, naturally, there are quite a few people interested in what might cause such dramatic increases in marine mammal mortality. But Mississippi's WLOX reported recently that government testing on the animals has been slow to commence, and Reuters reported over the weekend that a gag order has been put into place forbidding wildlife biologists at the National Marine Fisheries Service to talk to the media about their findings.

Reports Reuters:

The gag order was contained in an agency letter informing outside scientists that its review of the dolphin die-off, classified as an "unusual mortality event (UME)," had been folded into a federal criminal investigation launched last summer into the oil spill.

"Because of the seriousness of the legal case, no data or findings may be released, presented or discussed outside the UME investigative team without prior approval," the letter, obtained by Reuters, stated.

One veteran biologist-- speaking on the condition on anonymity -- told the news agency that fellow government scientists are "confused" and "angry" about the order because it leaves outside "marine experts out of the loop completely" and it "throws accountability right out the window."

Meanwhile, Gulf Coast residents already convinced that their government is either lying to them about the situation in the Gulf or doing everything in its power to suppress bad news (or both) aren't likely to find such reports reassuring.

"The government's full of more crap than a bathroom at a Taco Bell," one Louisiana fisherman told this reporter over the weekend. "Anybody down here with a lick of sense knows that."

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Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium

If Barack Obama were to marshal America’s vast scientific and strategic resources behind a new Manhattan Project, he might reasonably hope to reinvent the global energy landscape and sketch an end to our dependence on fossil fuels within three to five years.

The Telegraph, by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor, 29 Aug 2010

Dr Rubbia says a tonne of the silvery metal produces as
much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal

We could then stop arguing about wind mills, deepwater drilling, IPCC hockey sticks, or strategic reliance on the Kremlin. History will move on fast.

Muddling on with the status quo is not a grown-up policy. The International Energy Agency says the world must invest $26 trillion (£16.7 trillion) over the next 20 years to avert an energy shock.

The scramble for scarce fuel is already leading to friction between China, India, and the West.

There is no certain bet in nuclear physics but work by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) on the use of thorium as a cheap, clean and safe alternative to uranium in reactors may be the magic bullet we have all been hoping for, though we have barely begun to crack the potential of solar power.

Dr Rubbia says a tonne of the silvery metal – named after the Norse god of thunder, who also gave us Thor’s day or Thursday - produces as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal. A mere fistful would light London for a week.

Thorium burns the plutonium residue left by uranium reactors, acting as an eco-cleaner. "It’s the Big One," said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA rocket engineer and now chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown Engineering.

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"Once you start looking more closely, it blows your mind away. You can run civilisation on thorium for hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s essentially free. You don’t have to deal with uranium cartels," he said.

Thorium is so common that miners treat it as a nuisance, a radioactive by-product if they try to dig up rare earth metals. The US and Australia are full of the stuff. So are the granite rocks of Cornwall. You do not need much: all is potentially usable as fuel, compared to just 0.7pc for uranium.

After the Manhattan Project, US physicists in the late 1940s were tempted by thorium for use in civil reactors. It has a higher neutron yield per neutron absorbed. It does not require isotope separation, a big cost saving. But by then America needed the plutonium residue from uranium to build bombs.

"They were really going after the weapons," said Professor Egil Lillestol, a world authority on the thorium fuel-cycle at CERN. "It is almost impossible make nuclear weapons out of thorium because it is too difficult to handle. It wouldn’t be worth trying." It emits too many high gamma rays.

You might have thought that thorium reactors were the answer to every dream but when CERN went to the European Commission for development funds in 1999-2000, they were rebuffed.

Brussels turned to its technical experts, who happened to be French because the French dominate the EU’s nuclear industry. "They didn’t want competition because they had made a huge investment in the old technology," he said.

Another decade was lost. It was a sad triumph of vested interests over scientific progress. "We have very little time to waste because the world is running out of fossil fuels. Renewables can’t replace them. Nuclear fusion is not going work for a century, if ever," he said.

The Norwegian group Aker Solutions has bought Dr Rubbia’s patent for an accelerator-driven sub-critical reactor, and is working on his design for a thorium version at its UK operation.

Victoria Ashley, the project manager, said it could lead to a network of pint-sized 600MW reactors that are lodged underground, can supply small grids, and do not require a safety citadel. It will take £2bn to build the first one, and Aker needs £100mn for the next test phase.

The UK has shown little appetite for what it regards as a "huge paradigm shift to a new technology". Too much work and sunk cost has already gone into the next generation of reactors, which have another 60 years of life.

So Aker is looking for tie-ups with countries such as the US, Russia, or China. The Indians have their own projects - none yet built - dating from days when they switched to thorium because their weapons programme prompted a uranium ban.

America should have fewer inhibitions than Europe in creating a leapfrog technology. The US allowed its nuclear industry to stagnate after Three Mile Island in 1979.

Anti-nuclear neorosis is at last ebbing. The White House has approved $8bn in loan guarantees for new reactors, yet America has been strangely passive. Where is the superb confidence that put a man on the moon?

A few US pioneers are exploring a truly radical shift to a liquid fuel based on molten-fluoride salts, an idea once pursued by US physicist Alvin Weinberg at Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee in the 1960s. The original documents were retrieved by Mr Sorensen.

Moving away from solid fuel may overcome some of thorium’s "idiosyncracies". "You have to use the right machine. You don’t use diesel in a petrol car: you build a diesel engine," said Mr Sorensen.

Thorium-fluoride reactors can operate at atmospheric temperature. "The plants would be much smaller and less expensive. You wouldn’t need those huge containment domes because there’s no pressurized water in the reactor. It’s close-fitting," he said.

Nuclear power could become routine and unthreatening. But first there is the barrier of establishment prejudice.

When Hungarian scientists led by Leo Szilard tried to alert Washington in late 1939 that the Nazis were working on an atomic bomb, they were brushed off with disbelief. Albert Einstein interceded through the Belgian queen mother, eventually getting a personal envoy into the Oval Office.

Roosevelt initially fobbed him off. He listened more closely at a second meeting over breakfast the next day, then made up his mind within minutes. "This needs action," he told his military aide.

It was the birth of the Manhattan Project. As a result, the US had an atomic weapon early enough to deter Stalin from going too far in Europe.

The global energy crunch needs equal "action". If it works, Manhattan II could restore American optimism and strategic leadership at a stroke: if not, it is a boost for US science and surely a more fruitful way to pull the US out of perma-slump than scattershot stimulus.

Even better, team up with China and do it together, for all our sakes.

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Shocking new ADI cruelty exposé shames UK circus industry

by Animal Defenders

Shocking new ADI cruelty exposé shames UK circus industry from Animal Defenders on Vimeo.

Animal Defenders International has released shocking footage from behind the scenes at the winter quarters of Bobby Roberts Super Circus, which graphically shows violence and confinement of circus animals.

ADI secured footage over a three and a half week period from a camera observing activity in a barn where the animals are kept when not touring, which shows a staggeringly high level of violence and serious animal husbandry flaws. Incidents included Annie (Anne), an elderly, severely arthritic 57 year old elephant being hit with a metal pitchfork and kicked around the face and body 48 times over the period of observation by workers, who are also seen beating and spitting on a camel and beating miniature ponies and horses on numerous occasions.

The disturbing footage also shows Annie constantly chained for the entire period of filming by her front and arthritic back leg with only enough room to take one step forward or backwards. Her chains were only changed to different legs twice, ADI believes this will clearly cause her pain and discomfort. It was noted that the feeding regime was poor.

What makes this case all the more disturbing is that the circus proprietor Bobby Roberts, who has claimed publicly to take good care of Annie as ‘she is a family pet’ and ‘part of the family’, is clearly captured on camera kicking Annie on the trunk, an extremely sensitive part of an elephant’s anatomy, and this is done in front of a worker.

As government prepares to make an announcement within the next few weeks regarding the fate of animal circuses in the UK and makes the decision to implement a total ban or self regulation, Animal Defenders International believes that this new evidence provides them with only one option – a total ban on the use of wild animals in circuses.

Jan Creamer, ADI’s Chief Executive said: “Annie’s tragic story symbolizes the plight of circus animals and is a shocking indictment of the circus industry at a key time as government considers a ban on the use of wild animals in circuses. We have presented successive governments with extensive evidence from our undercover investigations over the years into UK circuses that proves conclusively that routine violence and deprivation is endemic within the industry.

“To Lord Henley, the Minister responsible, we say enough is enough. It is now time for him to act decisively to stop this appalling suffering. It is time for him to enact a total ban once and for all.”

Government’s own public consultation in March 2010 found that an overwhelming 94.5% of the public want to see a ban on wild animals in circuses and over 170 MPs have now signed Early Day Motion 403 calling on the Government to ban wild animal acts. A recent parliamentary poll conducted by ADI found that 63% of MPs would like to see a ban on the use of wild animals in circuses and only 14% disagreed.

ADI has now exposed the shocking abuse of animals in UK circuses from several random undercover investigations over the last fifteen years. Only recently, in 2009, the beating of elephants at the Great British Circus was exposed and now in 2011 Bobby Roberts Super Circus shows that this is a way of life at the circus. A clear pattern has been proven and this time the government needs to act.

Tim Phillips, ADI’s Campaigns Director said: “The release of this footage stops any attempt by UK government to ignore the will of the public. It is clear that self-regulation is not an option in this industry.

“Once again, we have exposed that cruelty and deprivation is rife within the circus industry. We have also established that self regulation is not a viable option as the government would be asking circuses like Bobby Roberts or the Great British Circus to regulate themselves. That would be a farce, and the animals will continue to suffer abuse."

And to the circus industry, ADI says enough is enough.

Jan said: “I have no doubt that it will be claimed that this is an ‘exception’ and/or that the owner was not aware of the abuse, but the evidence is now conclusive. Each time we expose the cruelty, the circuses give a similar range of excuses.

“ADI has been concerned for Annie’s welfare for many years and have followed her tragic plight. Poor Annie has been with the circus for over 50 years since she was baby, having been caught in the wild and torn from her family. Elephants are social and extremely intelligent so this has been a living hell for her. At last we have managed to expose this circus operation for the cruel farce that it is and never again can Roberts preach about animal welfare and how well his animals are cared for.”

Tim concluded: “Our latest investigation shows how animals like elephants suffer in the travelling circus. In the name of entertainment they are beaten, jabbed with hooks and hit with pitchforks, chained up for hours every day, and pushed into metal boxes each week where they remain for hours on end whilst the circus moves to another site. And when they are meant to be resting in their winter quarters the abuse and cruelty continues.

“The public wants to see a ban, Parliament wants a ban, animal protection groups want a ban. A ban is the only way to put an end, once and for all, to this deplorable violence and deprivation, and government must act now.”

The Bobby Roberts Super Circus began its UK tour on the 24 March. Potential visitors are being asked to vote with their feet and stay away.

ADI is consulting with its lawyers to see what the potential is for legal action.

Treatment: Anne is receiving medical care to help deal with
her crippling arthritis that had threatened her journey to her new home

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Dutch seal shelter to open in Canada

RNW, 26 March 2011

A Dutch seal shelter is to open a second a second facility in Canada hoping to sway public opinion to ban seal hunts completely.

The shelter, based in the northern province of Groningen, will open the facility in Nova Scotia. It set up its first facility in Canada three years ago. A Canadian volunteer is currently being trained in the Netherlands.

The news comes on the same day that the Canadian authorities set the quota of seals to be killed this year at nearly 500,000, a 20 percent increase over last year. Since 2007, annual quotas have risen every year.

Hunted for their fur and meat, most seals are clubbed to death. Worldwide, some 900,000 seals are killed every year, more than half of them in Canada.

Earlier this month, Lenie 't Hart, who founded the Groningen seal shelter 40 years ago, announced she was retiring.

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Canada, which has argued that its annual seal hunt
is conducted humanely, is challenging the European
Union's ban on the import of seal products. A WTO
dispute panel will be assembled to hear the case.
((Andrew Vaughan/Canadian Press))

Beetles take over Surfers Paradise

Goldcoast, Jessica Johnston | March 24th, 2011

THOUSANDS of beetles are swarming Surfers Paradise in a never before seen phenomenon that has stumped local scientists.

Picture of beetle invasion in Surfers
Paradise. Sent in by reader Norman
Herfurth.

The water beetle invasion captured on amateur youtube footage shows the large black beetles swarming around lights and dropping to the footpath on The Esplanade last night.

Griffith University entomologist Professor Clyde Wild said he had no definitive explanation for the rare phenomenon.

''I've never seen swarms of these like this before, why they are at the beach front escapes any explanation I can think of,'' Prof Wild said.

''You might see two or three on any given night - this is literally thousands.

''They haven't come out of the sea, they live in fresh water and live on larvae, or eating other insects.''

Prof Wild said he would be less surprised if the invasion had occurred in areas that had recently flooded.

''If there was masses of flowing water, a lot of habitat, it would make more sense.

''But it hasn't been that wet on the Gold Coast so it's a very curious phenomenon.

''They can fly very well, kilometres, but if for instance they were breeding in a river, or a swamp that had dried up, I can't see the connection as to why they would relocate to the beachfront.''

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Why are birds falling from the sky? - Gaia / Pepper Lewis

“2011 and Beyond” - What you are seeing, and why - Jan 16, 2010 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Text version)

"The whales beached themselves because the magnetics of the earth shifted so greatly that their navigational system [the magnetite in their biology, which is their migration compass] steered them right into the land. The land didn't move; the magnetics did. Therefore, you might say their internal inherited migration map was flawed. The reason it's not happening now is because the calves, the generation beyond the one that beached themselves, figured it out and rewrote the maps. Nature [Gaia] does this. So the next generation didn't repeat it. Instead, it realigned itself to the migratory lay lines and now whales don't beach themselves nearly as often."

Bell Labs’ lightRadio Promises Greener, Simpler, Lighter Networks

Scientific Computing

Alcatel-Lucent has announced lightRadio, a new mobile and broadband infrastructure that streamlines and radically simplifies mobile networks. The solution was unveiled at a major press launch event in London supported by partners Freescale and HP.

The lightRadio cube is a small antenna
and radio that has shrunk the regular
workings of a conventional cell phone
base station and antenna and could,
as soon as mid-2012, replace unsightly
cell phone towers. Courtesy of Bell Labs /
Alcatel-Lucent

Pioneered by Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent’s unique research and development arm, the new lightRadio system is designed to dramatically reduce technical complexity and contain power consumption and other operating costs in the face of sharp traffic growth. This is accomplished by taking today’s base stations and massive cell site towers, typically the most expensive, power hungry, and difficult to maintain elements in the network, and radically shrinking and simplifying them.

lightRadio represents a new architecture where the base station, typically located at the base of each cell site tower, is broken into its components elements and then distributed into both the antenna and throughout a cloud-like network. Additionally, today’s clutter of antennas serving 2G, 3G and LTE systems are combined and shrunk into a single powerful, Bell Labs-pioneered multi-frequency, multi-standard Wideband Active Array Antenna that can be mounted on poles, sides of buildings or anywhere else there is power and a broadband connection.

The new lightRadio product family, of which initial elements will be ready to begin customer trials in the second half 2011, is designed to provide the following benefits:

• Improve the environment: reduce energy consumption of mobile networks by up to 50 percent over current radio access network equipment. (As a point of reference, Bell Labs research estimates that basestations globally emit roughly 18,000,000 metric tons of CO2 per year). Also, lightRadio provides an alternative to today’s jungle of large overcrowded cell site towers by enabling small antennas anywhere.
  
  
• Address digital divide: By reducing the cell site to just the antenna and leveraging future advances in microwave backhaul and compression techniques, this technology could eventually enable the easy creation of broadband coverage virtually anywhere there is power (electricity, sun, wind) by using microwave to connect back to the network.
  
  
• Offers major savings for operators: Thanks to lightRadio’s impact on site, energy, operations and maintenance costs; when combined with small cells and LTE, this new solution is expected to lead to a reduction of total cost of ownership (TCO) of mobile networks up to 50 percent (as a point of reference, Bell Labs estimates that TCO spent by mobile operators in mobile access in 2010 was 150 billion Euros).

Ben Verwaayen, CEO of Alcatel-Lucent, said: “lightRadio is a smart solution to a tough set of problems: high energy costs, the explosion of video on mobile, and connecting the unconnected.”

Alain Maloberti, Senior Vice President, Network Architecture and Design, France Telecom/Orange said: “Alcatel-Lucent’s new vision and strategy of mobile broadband is quite exciting: the new wireless network architecture and innovative radio proposal will potentially help us to achieve significant operating cost savings and be better prepared for future challenges. We look forward to work closely with Alcatel-Lucent to explore and test this new approach.”

Tom Sawanobori, VP Technology Planning, Verizon Wireless, said: “Verizon looks forward to learning more about the benefits of lightRadio technology and how they could be applied as we continue to expand and evolve our LTE network.”

Alcatel-Lucent also is in advanced planning with China Mobile, as well as a number of other carriers around the globe around co-creation and field trials of the lightRadio solution.

Alcatel-Lucent studies have concluded that the total addressable opportunity for the multi-technology radio market (consists of radio access base stations that simultaneously support 2G, 3G and LTE, and multiple frequencies, in the same platform), which lightRadio addresses, will be over 12 billion Euros in 2014, representing more than 55 percent of the total wireless RAN market. The cumulative total addressable market will be over 100 billion Euros from 2011-2018.

Alcatel-Lucent’s lightRadio portfolio integrates a number of breakthrough innovations and technologies from Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs research arm and ecosystem of companies:

Market Impact

• Technology Innovation – A new generation of active antennas allows vertical beam-forming that improves capacity in urban and suburban sites by about 30 percent, supports all technologies (2G, 3G and LTE) and covers multiple frequency bands with a single unit.
  
  
• lightRadio cube – A unique Bell Labs antenna technology, the lightRadio Cube includes an innovative diplexer type, radio, amplifier and passive cooling in a small cube that fits in the palm of the hand. By moving former basestation components to a System on a Chip (SOC), lightRadio places processing where it fits best in the network — whether at the antenna or in the cloud.
  
  
• System-on-a-chip (SoC) jointly developed with Freescale Semiconductor, integrates intelligent software from Alcatel-Lucent onto fully remotely programmable state-of-the-art hardware. The economics of radio networks are substantially improved by reducing the number and cost of fiber pairs required to support the traffic between the antenna and the centralized processing in the cloud.
  
  
• Unique compression algorithms provide nearly a factor of three compression of IQ sample signals. Matching of load to demand through ‘elastic’ controller capacity, delivered on sets of distributed and shared hardware platforms, will improve cost, availability and performance of wireless networks.
  
  
• Virtualized processing platforms – Alcatel-Lucent will use innovative virtualization software and will collaborate with partners like HP to enable a cloud-like wireless architecture for controllers and gateways.

The lightRadio Product Family

The new Alcatel-Lucent lightRadio product family is composed of the following components: Wideband Active Array Antenna, Multiband Remote Radio Head, Baseband Unit, Controller, and the 5620 SAM common management solution. The Wideband Active Array Antenna will be trialed later this year and have broad product availability in 2012. Additional product family members will be available over 2012, 2013 and 2014.

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Michelle Obama to write gardening book

US first lady to publish book about healthy eating and the vegetable patch she created at the White House

guardian.co.uk, Ewen MacAskill in Washington, Thursday 17 March 2011

Michelle Obama takes part in the third planting of the White House
kitchen garden with local children on Wednesday. Photograph: AP

Michelle Obama is hoping to join her husband on the bestseller lists with a book devoted to her experience of creating a vegetable plot on the White House lawn.

The book, due in April next year, will detail the US first lady's pet project, set up as part of a campaign against obesity, and will be padded out with the Obamas' favourite healthy recipes.

Given the success of books by previous first ladies, it is almost certain to become a bestseller. Barack Obama made a small fortune from his autobiography, Dreams From My Father, and a political treatise, Audacity of Hope, but the proceeds of his wife's book will to go to charity.

Michelle Obama dug her first vegetable garden on the White House lawn in March 2008, two months after Barack Obama became president, and has grown about 55 varieties, most of whichare used by the White House chefs. As well as vegetables, such as lettuce, peppers and spinach, Obama and her team of helpers also grow herbs and berries.

She was out on the lawn again on Wednesday for photographers to mark the garden's third season.

In an interview with AP, she said she wanted to share the story of the garden with the rest of the nation and perhaps the rest of the world because she "received so many questions about it: How did we do it? Why did we do it? How do I do this in my own home or community?"

Eleanor Roosevelt had a "victory" garden at the White House during the second world war and the Clintons made a modest effort, with a few vegetable pots on the White House roof. Michelle Obama did not have a vegetable plot in her home city, Chicago, but was persuaded by advocates of healthy eating to take it up as project when she moved to Washington.

She has said she was partly influenced by a paediatrician who expressed concern about the diet of the Obama children, Malia and Sasha, brought up in Chicago on processed, fast-foods such as pizza, and how they might put on weight.

Obama said her book, which will be written with the help of a ghost-writer, will have the president's input in some capacity. "I will definitely have him be involved and look at it," the first lady told AP.

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Part of Highway 1 near Big Sur crumbles into the sea; road closed indefinitely

Mercury News, by Donald Murphy, Monterey County Herald, 03/17/2011

The southbound lane of Hwy 1 about 2 miles south of Rocky Point
is gone and so is the majority of the northbound lane in Big Sur, Calif.
on Wednesday, March 16, 2011. (Orville Myers/ Special to the Sentinel)

BIG SUR -- Highway 1 was closed to traffic about 12 miles south of Carmel on Wednesday after a stretch of the scenic roadway tumbled toward the Pacific Ocean far below.

About 40-feet of the two-lane highway washed out just after 5 p.m. on a curve south of the Rocky Creek Bridge where the highway hugs the Santa Lucia Mountains. All of the southbound lane was gone as was a chunk of the northbound lane. Soil under the northbound lane was reported sliding as late as 6:30 p.m.

The California Highway Patrol closed the southbound lane of the highway at Palo Colorado Road and drivers going north were stopped at the Bixby Creek Bridge.

No one was injured, a CHP dispatcher said. "Nobody went down. No people got

View Highway 1 closure, Big Sur in a larger maphurt," she said.

It was not immediately known how long the coast road would be closed.

"It could be cleaned up in a couple of days, who knows," the dispatcher said.

Caltrans workers posted signs near Rio Road to the north and near Ragged Point and Cambria to the south warning drivers that the highway was closed.

The road was not completely impassible.

Emergency vehicles would be allowed through "at their own risk," the CHP dispatcher said.

For a while after the closure, people were allowed cross the area on foot, but authorities stopped that as soil continued to erode under the roadway.

The Rocky Point Restaurant north of the closure reported business was down Wednesday night.

"We've had two no-shows. It's totally affecting our business," said bartender Rose Russo. "Two people are stuck in the bar," she said.

One was unable to go south and the other was waiting for his girlfriend coming north from Big Sur.

The Ventana Inn and Spa and the Post Ranch Inn reported that all their expected guests had checked in for the night. At Ventana, a few other people who had been traveling north decided to stay the night after learning of the wash out.

A long closure of Highway 1 would undoubtedly be bad for the tourist-dependent businesses in Big Sur and in the tiny communities along the highway between Big Sur and Ragged Point.

The cause of the slide was not immediately clear. The asphalt nearby looked new and no seeping water was seen. Fresh looking rip-rap was spotted mixed with the earth that fell from beneath the roadway.

"It's basically just nature," the CHP dispatcher said.

Caltrans crews were expected at the slide area early today.

It was not clear late Wednesday if people who wish to cross the slide area on foot would be allowed to do so.

Drivers who wish to get to Big Sur from the north can take Highway 101 to south of King City and the steep and winding Nacimiento-Fergusson Road to the coast.

The slide was reported about 5:10 p.m. by a passer-by who saw the road crumble.

The popular Big Sur International Marathon, in which the runners start 13.1 miles south of the Bixby Creek Bridge and run north along Highway 1, is scheduled for May 1.

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Shockwave-Generating Wave Discs Could Replace Internal Combustion Engines

POPSCI, by Rebecca Boyle, 03.16.2011

Wave Disc Auto Rambler

Michigan researchers have built a prototype of a new auto motor that does away with pistons, crankshafts and valves, replacing the old internal combustion engine with a disc-shaped shock wave generator. It could slash the weight of hybrid cars and reduce auto emissions by 90 percent.

The generator is about the size of a saucepot, and would replace the 1,000-pound power train in most cars — no transmission, cooling system, emissions regulation or fluids needed. Norbert Müller and colleagues at Michigan State University showed off the new motor prototype at a meeting with the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency.

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It consists of a rotor carved with wave-like channels. Fuel and air enter through central inlets, and the rotor spins to block their exit through a separate outlet. The sudden build-up of pressure generates a shock wave, compressing the mixture. Then it’s ignited, and as the rotor keeps spinning, the outlet opens again to let the hot gases escape. New Scientist explains in further detail.

The novel generator would use about 60 percent of fuel for propulsion, according to MSU. This is a dramatic improvement over typical car engines, which use only 15 percent of fuel for forward movement. The system could also make cars 20 percent lighter, improving fuel economy even more.

MSU received a $2.5 million ARPA-E grant to develop the technology. Müller said he hopes to have an even larger 25-kilowatt prototype by the end of this year.

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