ORINDIUVA, Brazil — The ethanol giants of southeastern Brazil have transformed how 185 million residents of this South American nation power their cars and trucks. Now, they say they're ready to start the same ethanol revolution in the rest of the world, if only the world will let them.

That, however, is where Brazil's ethanol leaders are hitting problems. They already churn out what many consider to be the world's cheapest and most efficient mass-produced biofuel and say they can export billions of gallons more.

Yet the rest of the world doesn't seem to want what the Brazilians have. In the United States, a 54 cent-per-gallon tax blocks most Brazilian ethanol from reaching U.S. consumers. Similar tariffs also block access to Europe, China and other major energy markets.

Getting rid of such tariffs, Brazilian producers argue, would give the world what it needs — cheap, clean and environmentally friendly alternative fuel. Ending the trade barriers also would ignite Brazil's ethanol industry and turn the country into a major biofuel exporter, said Jose Goldemberg, one of the founders of Brazil's national ethanol program.

Instead, the United States continues to block Brazilian ethanol while boosting production of ethanol made from corn, which produces much less ethanol per acre than sugar does, cuts into food supplies and does little to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Other countries also have avoided Brazilian ethanol, instead experimenting with wheat, rapeseed and other crops that also produce less biofuel per acre.

"It doesn't make much sense to produce ethanol from corn," Goldemberg said. "What the United States needs to do if it wants to solve its energy problems is very simple. It needs to import ethanol from Brazil."

The message doesn't seem to be getting through. As world alarm grows over rising food prices and shortages, many are blaming expanding biofuel production for hogging farmland that used to produce food, and Brazilian leaders have found themselves on the defensive about their celebrated biofuel.

The Brazilians have hit back by pointing out that sugar cane-based ethanol and the U.S., corn-based variety are worlds apart, and the problem is corn, not sugar.

Science is on their side. Because producers can use the entire stalk of the sugar plant to make biofuel, instead of just the kernels of the corn plant, an acre of sugar cane in Brazil produces about 800 gallons of ethanol, while an acre of corn produces 328 gallons.

The starch from corn also must be converted into sugar before it can be turned into ethanol, an extra step that requires a bigger investment in energy. As a result, sugar-cane ethanol produces 8 units of energy for every 1 unit of fossil fuels invested in its production, while the ratio for corn ethanol is 1.3 to 1.

Not only is producing sugar cane-based ethanol more efficient, Brazilian officials say, very little of the country's farmland is used to produce it. Sugar is grown only on 2 percent of Brazil's arable land, industry figures show.

That means sugar isn't kicking out food crops in Brazil and hasn't contributed to rising food prices, said Ricardo Dornelles, a renewable fuels director for Brazil's mines and energy ministry.

"We want to give the world confidence in our product," Dornelles said. "Whoever buys the product has the right to name the conditions of its production. But this can't mean imposing something that doesn't match reality."

U.S. critics have made the most noise about the possible effects of ethanol production on Brazil's fragile rainforests and other ecosystems, criticisms that Brazilian producers call absurd.

The reasoning goes that growing more sugar cane would replace other crops such as soybeans, which would force farmers to cultivate those other crops in freshly cleared forest or savannah, said Timothy Searchinger, a U.S. scientist who headed an influential study on land-use changes sparked by ethanol production.

Cutting down forest for biofuels would release tons of carbon into the atmosphere and erase any greenhouse-gas benefits of using the biofuel over fossil fuels, Searchinger said.

"People have thought ethanol was a win-win-win situation," he said. "And Brazil has the potential to be really quite good, but today, producing more ethanol there would still push the expansion of farmlands."

Brazilian officials scoff at such criticisms, saying sugar producers don't knock down forests but instead expand into degraded pastures. They say the country's beef industry, which on average grazes one head of cattle for every 2.5 acres, could double that rate and free up to about 260 million acres for other uses, including sugar production.

"Sugar is not growing in the forest," said Marcos Jank, president of the country's biggest sugar industry group UNICA. "You don't destroy forest to grow sugar. You actually produce a carbon credit and not a carbon deficit."

Despite the recent bumps in the road, Brazil has traveled a long way to become what it is today — the world leader in alternative energy.

Already, pumps selling ethanol are common sights throughout this continent-sized country, and this year, Brazilian drivers will consume as much ethanol as gasoline. With the help of aggressive offshore oil exploration, Brazilians also enjoy something Americans can only dream about — energy independence, meaning the country produces all the fuel — fossil or alternative — it needs.

The secret to the Brazilian miracle is endless rows of sugar cane, which has turned Brazil into the world's second biggest ethanol producer, only behind the United States. Brazil churned out nearly 6 billion gallons of sugar-cane ethanol last year, about 85 percent of it used domestically.

What's more, Brazilian producers say they could easily double ethanol production within a decade, and given the right international conditions, eventually supply a tenth of the world's vehicle fuel needs.

Even with the U.S. tariffs, Brazil will export about 500 million gallons of ethanol this year to the United States, with the majority entering through a special Caribbean basin trade initiative allowing a limited amount of duty-free imports.

The Brazilian model, however, hasn't been easy to achieve, having sprouted from more than three decades of trial and error.

Brazil's

ethanol program began with the international energy crises of the 1970s, when the country's military government tried to protect Brazil from price shocks by subsidizing sugar-cane ethanol production and requiring that all gas stations offer the biofuel. Brazilians responded by snatching up millions of cars that ran only on ethanol.

The boom ended in the 1980s when world gasoline prices dropped, and suddenly Brazilians were stuck with cars that ran only on the more expensive biofuel.

Ethanol made its comeback only recently with the return of high gasoline prices and the development of "flex-fuel" cars that can run on any combination of ethanol and gasoline. Such cars now make up nearly all new models sold in Brazil.

Ethanol, in fact, has become so popular in Brazil that it threatens government hopes of turning Brazil into a major biofuels exporter. The vast majority of Brazilian ethanol goes into Brazilian cars, and that'll remain the case even when the country produces some 17.3 billion gallons of ethanol a year in 2020, government and industry estimates show. Brazil will have about 4 billion gallons of ethanol left over to export then.

Reducing trade barriers, however, would upend that estimate and stimulate ethanol production in Brazil as well as in some 100 countries that grow sugar cane, Jank said. Over the next decade, Brazilian producers are planning to add 150 ethanol mills to the 320 already in operation.

Out amid the endless acres of cane in interior Sao Paulo state, the heart of Brazilian sugar country, it's easy to believe the boasts. The country's ethanol machine never stops, working day and night as thousands of people cut and crush tons of sugar cane to produce biofuel.

"The only barrier we face to growth are the export tariffs of other countries," said Renato Junqueira Santos Pereira, whose family owns a mill that covers more than 170,000 acres. "If you get rid of the tariff, production will jump."

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/35360.html

......I want my own planet!

As of Jan. 1, 2009 all cigarettes sold in Texas must extinguish themselves if dropped of set aside.

If smokers won’t put out their cigarettes, a new state law will do it for them," said writer Aman Batheja (http://www.star-telegram.com/news/story/169382.html). "Starting in 2009, all cigarettes will have to meet ’fire-safe’ standards."

According to research, cigarettes are the top cause of fatal home fires in the country and the change could lead to fewer cigarette-related fire deaths in Texas.

Fire-safe cigarettes will be wrapped in two or three pieces of ultra thin banded paper, making them more likely to go out if not smoked for a few minutes, states Batheja.

The new law will not increase the cost of cigarettes, he wrote.

Three years ago New York became the first state to require fire-safe cigarettes and Vermont soon followed suit, writes Batheja.

Legislators couldn’t agree to ban smoking in public places this session.

Similar legislation regarding fire-safe cigarettes is pending in 15 other states including North Carolina.

"It seems like a reasonable enough thing to me," says Charles Kuffner.

The nationwide sweep of fire-safe cigarettes has reached all the way to Alaska. That state’s governor is the 15th one this year and 21st overall to make it a law mandating them. Alaska has the sixth highest smoking rate in the country, according to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). The NFPA stated in a press release that nearly half of U.S. residents live in states where laws requiring fire safe cigarettes have passed or are in effect.(http://www.nfpa.org/newsReleaseDetails.asp?categoryID=488&itemID=35278). The release said that between 700 and 900 people die annually as a result of cigarette-related fires.

The Coalition for Fire Safe Cigarettes, established last year is made up of medical and public health personnel, the elderly,fire service members, advocates, and the disabled among others.

Out in California, Assembly Member Paul Koretz introduced a bill that was signed into law requiring only fire safe cigarettes be sold (http://froggypumpkin.com/praxis/ANATOMY_OF_A_BILL:_). Koretz, who has been in the Assembly six years, said in an that approximately 2,500 fires in his state were due to cigarettes. According to Koretz, random individuals brought the matter to his attention and piqued his interest in getting the bill passed. He called the bill one of his top ones because any piece of legislation that saves lives is one he’s interested in. Koretz stated that fire fatalities have been cut by a third as the result of the bill passing in the state of New York and going into effect June 28, 2004. His hope is that by passing the bill in California, that nationally fire safe cigarettes will take off.

California’s bill went into law January of this year. Firefighters helped in committee by testifying on behalf of the bill despite strong opposition from the tobacco companies. Once it got out of the committee, it was smooth sailing.

On May 17th this year Maryland joined the ranks making it illegal to sell non fire safe cigarettes.

Beyond Batteries: Storing Power in a Sheet of Paper

Troy, N.Y. — Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a new energy storage device that easily could be mistaken for a simple sheet of black paper.

The nanoengineered battery is lightweight, ultra thin, completely flexible, and geared toward meeting the trickiest design and energy requirements of tomorrow's gadgets, implantable medical equipment, and transportation vehicles.

Along with its ability to function in temperatures up to 300 degrees Fahrenheit and down to 100 below zero, the device is completely integrated and can be printed like paper. The device is also unique in that it can function as both a high-energy battery and a high-power supercapacitor, which are generally separate components in most electrical systems. Another key feature is the capability to use human blood or sweat to help power the battery.

Details of the project are outlined in the paper "Flexible Energy Storage Devices Based on Nanocomposite Paper" published Aug. 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The semblance to paper is no accident: more than 90 percent of the device is made up of cellulose, the same plant cells used in newsprint, loose leaf, lunch bags, and nearly every other type of paper.

Rensselaer researchers infused this paper with aligned carbon nanotubes, which give the device its black color. The nanotubes act as electrodes and allow the storage devices to conduct electricity. The device, engineered to function as both a lithium-ion battery and a supercapacitor, can provide the long, steady power output comparable to a conventional battery, as well as a supercapacitor's quick burst of high energy.

The device can be rolled, twisted, folded, or cut into any number of shapes with no loss of mechanical integrity or efficiency. The paper batteries can also be stacked, like a ream of printer paper, to boost the total power output.

"It's essentially a regular piece of paper, but it's made in a very intelligent way," said paper co-author Robert Linhardt, the Ann and John H. Broadbent Senior Constellation Professor of Biocatalysis and Metabolic Engineering at Rensselaer.

"We're not putting pieces together — it's a single, integrated device," he said. "The components are molecularly attached to each other: the carbon nanotube print is embedded in the paper, and the electrolyte is soaked into the paper. The end result is a device that looks, feels, and weighs the same as paper."

The creation of this unique nanocomposite paper drew from a diverse pool of disciplines, requiring expertise in materials science, energy storage, and chemistry. Along with Linhardt, authors of the paper include Pulickel M. Ajayan, professor of materials science and engineering, and Omkaram Nalamasu, professor of chemistry with a joint appointment in materials science and engineering. Senior research specialist Victor Pushparaj, along with postdoctoral research associates Shaijumon M. Manikoth, Ashavani Kumar, and Saravanababu Murugesan, were co-authors and lead researchers of the project. Other co-authors include research associate Lijie Ci and Rensselaer Nanotechnology Center Laboratory Manager Robert Vajtai.

The researchers used ionic liquid, essentially a liquid salt, as the battery's electrolyte. It's important to note that ionic liquid contains no water, which means there's nothing in the batteries to freeze or evaporate. "This lack of water allows the paper energy storage devices to withstand extreme temperatures," Kumar said.

Along with use in small handheld electronics, the paper batteries' light weight could make them ideal for use in automobiles, aircraft, and even boats. The paper also could be molded into different shapes, such as a car door, which would enable important new engineering innovations.

"Plus, because of the high paper content and lack of toxic chemicals, it's environmentally safe," Shaijumon said.

Paper is also extremely biocompatible and these new hybrid battery/supercapcitors have potential as power supplies for devices implanted in the body. The team printed paper batteries without adding any electrolytes, and demonstrated that naturally occurring electrolytes in human sweat, blood, and urine can be used to activate the battery device.

"It's a way to power a small device such as a pacemaker without introducing any harsh chemicals – such as the kind that are typically found in batteries — into the body," Pushparaj said.

The materials required to create the paper batteries are inexpensive, Murugesan said, but the team has not yet developed a way to inexpensively mass produce the devices. The end goal is to print the paper using a roll-to-roll system similar to how newspapers are printed.

"When we get this technology down, we'll basically have the ability to print batteries and print supercapacitors," Ajayan said. "We see this as a technology that's just right for the current energy market, as well as the electronics industry, which is always looking for smaller, lighter power sources. Our device could make its way into any number of different applications."

The team of researchers has already filed a patent protecting the invention. They are now working on ways to boost the efficiency of the batteries and supercapacitors, and investigating different manufacturing techniques.

"Energy storage is an area that can be addressed by nanomanufacturing technologies and our truly inter-disciplinary collaborative activity that brings together advances and expertise in nanotechnology, room-temperature ionic liquids, and energy storage devices in a creative way to devise novel battery and supercapacitor devices," Nalamasu said.

The paper energy storage device project was supported by the New York State Office of Science, Technology, and Academic Research (NYSTAR), as well as the National Science Foundation (NSF) through the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center at Rensselaer.

SYDNEY (AFP) - Potentially cancer-causing chemicals used as flame retardants have been found in the bodies of Tasmanian devils, suggesting a possible role in a disease that threatens to wipe them out, a report said Tuesday.

Scientists have for years been unable to explain why the animals -- the world's largest marsupial carnivore -- have been afflicted with the disease, which causes facial tumours.

A study in which fat was taken from 16 of the animals, including some with the disease, found high levels of retardant chemicals commonly used in computers and foam in bedding and furniture, The Australian newspaper said.

Activists seeking a ban on the toxins said the finding was significant as it showed "reasonably high" levels of a chemical that industry had argued was safe.

"We were quite shocked," said Mariann Lloyd-Smith, co-chair of the International Persistent Organic Pollutants Elimination Network. "Certainly this study will have ramifications."

The National Measurement Institute found high levels of hexabromobiphenyl ether, known as BB153, and "reasonably high" levels of decabromobiphenyl ether, known as BDE209, the newspaper said.

For years, manufacturers had argued that BDE209 was safe, Lloyd-Smith told AFP, but activists believed it broke down into more dangerous chemicals.

The health risks of both chemicals include cancer, developmental problems and neurological effects.

Although the sample of the recent study was too small for firm conclusions, Lloyd-Smith said the toxins weakened the immune system and might theoretically be a factor in the disease that threatens to wipe out the Tasmanian devil.

"They are basically used in a host of domestic and industrial settings to stop the product catching on fire. The problem is once they are used they don't stay in the treated material," she told AFP.

Lloyd-Smith said high levels of the chemicals can be found in dust in offices and at home, which can move thousands of kilometres on the wind and fall to the earth when they hit a colder climate.

Warwick Brennan, spokesman for the Save the Tasmanian Devil Project which commissioned the study, said it needed more assessment.

"We have got some raw data there. It requires an expert toxicologist to interpret it."

The Tasmanian devil now only lives in Australia's island state from where it gets its name, having been competed to extinction on the mainland by the dingo, which was introduced by Aborigines thousands of years ago.

A top biologist said predators are good indicators where chemicals are going, as they are nearer the top of the food chain.

"Disgusting as he usually was," Hunter Thompson writes in this, his 1959 novel, "on rare occasions he showed flashes of a stagnant intelligence. But his brain was so rotted with drink and dissolute living that whenever he put it to work it behaved like an old engine that had gone haywire from being dipped in lard."

Surprise! Thompson isn't writing about himself, but one of the other, older, aimlessly carousing newspapermen in Puerto Rico, a guy called Moberg whose chief achievement is the ability to find his car after a night's drinking because it stinks so much. (I can smell it for blocks, he boasts.)

The autobiographical hero, Paul Kemp, is 30, trapped in a dead-end job (Thompson wound up writing for a bowling magazine), and feeling as if his big-time writer dreams, soaked in Fitzgerald and Hemingway, are evaporating as rapidly as the rum in his fist.

In fact, Thompson was only 22 when he wrote The Rum Diary, but his fear of winding up like Moberg was well founded.

Puerto Rico in 1959 doesn't have bad craziness enough to offer Thompson--just a routine drunken-reporter stomping by local cops and a riot over Kemp's friend's temptress girlfriend, a scantily imagined Smith College alumna who likes to strip nude on beaches and in nightclubs to taunt men.

From Publishers Weekly
When the celebrated iconoclast was a feisty kid working for an English-language newspaper in San Juan 40 years ago, he wrote, and then put aside, a novel, which is here resurrected.

It is very much a young man's book, clearly based on Thompson's own situation and some of the people A mostly drunks and layabouts who gravitated to a loosely supervised journalistic stint in the tropics.

An introduction sets the scene, and the novel that follows is almost equally documentary in tone: young Kemp comes aboard at the News, gets to know its perpetually embattled proprietor and some of his feckless staff. He observes the island, as the invasion of American tourists and values is just beginning to change its lazy, sun-struck character.

He gets involved in a drunken fight with the police, is thrown in jail, bailed out and goes in for a little shame-faced PR writing.

He comes between a wild colleague and the equally unbuttoned young Connecticut girl he has brought out to visit him, and the end is a youth's easy-won nostalgia for a silly, drunken time.

As he always has done, Thompson lays on the drinking and general hell-raising very thick (the amount of rum consumed would dry up a distillery) and indulges flashes of bad temper toward commercialism while always showing a willingness to do whatever it takes to make a buck.

The Rum Diary will be in theaters in 2009.

A classic Xmas Tale:

DOCUMENTS that tell the improbable-sounding story of the first Christmas dinner to be cooked with the help of electricity have gone on public display.

The papers describe how Benjamin Franklin, the 18th-century polymath, electrocuted a turkey and then used electricity to cook it for a party during the festive season in 1749.

He presented his findings in a handwritten letter to the Royal Society in London, which has put it on show until the new year.

Franklin further demonstrated the power of electricity by hooking his guests' champagne glasses to powerful batteries so they received a tingle as they drank.

Franklin's experiments in this vein nearly ended in disaster, however, as the following year he managed to give himself a near-lethal shock and was disoriented for some time.

Franklin was one of the founding fathers of the United States and signed the Declaration of Independence, but was also a leading author and inventor. He was born in Boston in 1706 and lived in London for many years. His face is depicted on the American $100 bill.

Franklin holds a significant place in scientific history for his research into electricity, including his most famous experiment of flying a kite in a storm. For Christmas 1749, however, Franklin wanted to show off what he had discovered rather than find out more.

Keith Moore, head of the Royal Society's library and archives, said: "Franklin had a penchant for showmanship and dangerous experiments."

Franklin's account describes his plan for a dinner party. "A turkey is to be killed for our dinner by the electrical shock," it says, "and roasted by the electrical jack [spit] before a fire kindled by the electrified bottle, when the healths [sic] of all the famous electricians in England, Holland, France and Germany are to be drank [sic] in electrified bumpers [tumblers]."

Franklin continues: "Using five jars [Leyden jars, a primitive form of battery] we killed a turkey with them of about 10lb and suppose they would have killed much larger . . . The birds kill'd [sic] in this manner eat uncommonly tender."

Franklin also describes how he received an electric shock from two Leyden jars during a similar experiment.

He describes the sensation as "a universal blow throughout the body" and says it was "some minutes" before he could collect his thoughts. He did not hear a crack, "tho' bystanders said it was a loud one

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3087946.ece

In 1958 Walt Disney produced "White Wilderness," part of the studio's "True Life Adventure" series. "White Wilderness" featured a segment on lemmings, detailing their strange compulsion to commit mass suicide.

According to a 1983 investigation by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation producer Brian Vallee, the lemming scenes were faked. The lemmings supposedly committing mass suicide by leaping into the ocean were actually thrown off a cliff by the Disney filmmakers. The epic "lemming migration" was staged using careful editing, tight camera angles and a few dozen lemmings running on snow covered lazy-Susan style turntable.

"White Wilderness" was filmed in Alberta, Canada, a landlocked province, and not on location in lemmings' natural habitat. There are about 20 lemming species found in the circumpolar north - but evidently not in that area of Alberta. So the Disney people bought lemmings from Inuit children a couple provinces away in Manitoba and staged the whole sequence.

In the lemming segment, the little rodents assemble for a mass migration, scamper across the tundra and ford a tiny stream as narrator Winston Hibbler explains that, "A kind of compulsion seizes each tiny rodent and, carried along by an unreasoning hysteria, each falls into step for a march that will take them to a strange destiny."

That destiny is to jump into the ocean. As they approach the "sea," (actually a river -more tight cropping) Hibbler continues, "They've become victims of an obsession -- a one-track thought: Move on! Move on!"

The "pack of lemmings" reaches the final precipice. "This is the last chance to turn back," Hibbler states. "Yet over they go, casting themselves out bodily into space."

Lemmings are seen flying into the water. The final shot shows the sea awash with dying lemmings.

Lemmings can swim and will cross bodies of water in their quest for greener pastures. Sometimes they drown. Dispersal and accidental death is a far cry from the instinctive, deliberate mass suicide depicted in "White Wilderness," but Hibbler explains that life is tough in the lemmings' "weird world of frozen chaos." The voice-over implies that lemmings take the plunge every seven to ten years to alleviate overpopulation.

"What people see is essentially mass dispersal," said zoologist Gordon Jarrell, an expert in small mammals with the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "Sometimes it's pretty directional. The classic example is in the Scandinavian mountains, where (lemmings) have been dramatically observed. They will come to a body of water and be temporarily stopped, and eventually they'll build up along the shore so dense and they will swim across. If they get wet to the skin, they 're essentially dead."