Friday, October 14, 2011

Discovery could make fuel and plastics production more energy efficient and cost effective

Discovery could make fuel and plastics production more energy efficient and cost effectiveby Staff WritersMinneapolis MN (SPX) Oct 14, 2011

U of M researchers developed "carpets" of flaky crystal-type nanosheets that can be used to separate molecules as a sieve or as a membrane barrier in both research and industrial applications to save money and energy.

A University of Minnesota team of researchers has overcome a major hurdle in the quest to design a specialized type of molecular sieve that could make the production of gasoline, plastics and various chemicals more cost effective and energy efficient.

The breakthrough research, led by chemical engineeringand materials science professor Michael Tsapatsis in the university's College of Science and Engineering, is published in the most recent issue of the journal Science.

After more than a decade of research, the team devised a means for developing free-standing, ultra-thin zeolite nanosheets that as thin films can speed up the filtration process and require less energy. The team has a provisional patent and hopes to commercialize the technology.

"In addition to research on new renewable fuels, chemicals and natural plastics, we also need to look at the production processes of these and other products we use now and try to find ways to save energy," Tsapatsis said.

Separating mixed substances can demand considerable amounts of energy-currently estimated to be approximately 15 percent of the totalenergy consumption-part of which is wasted due to process inefficiencies.

In days of abundant and inexpensive fuel, this was not a major consideration when designing industrial separation processes such as distillation for purifying gasoline and polymer precursors. But as energy prices rise and policies promote efficiency, the need for more energy-efficient alternatives has grown.

One promising option for more energy-efficient separations is high-resolution molecular separation with membranes. They are based on preferential adsorption and/or sieving of molecules with minute size and shape differences.

Among the candidates for selective separation membranes, zeolite materials (crystals with molecular-sized pores) show particular promise.

While zeolites have been used as adsorbents and catalysts for several decades, there have been substantial challenges in processing zeolitic materials into extended sheets that remain intact.

To enable energy-savings technology, scientists needed to develop cost-effective, reliable and scalable deposition methods for thin film zeolite formation.

The University of Minnesota team used sound waves in a specialized centrifuge process to develop "carpets" of flaky crystal-type nanosheets that are not only flat, but have just the right amount of thickness. The resulting product can be used to separate molecules as a sieve or as a membrane barrier in both research and industrial applications.

"We think this discovery holds great promise in commercial applications," said Kumar Varoon, a University of Minnesota chemical engineering and materials science Ph.D. candidate and one of the primary authors of the paper published in Science. "This material has good coverage and is very thin. It could significantly reduce production costs in refineries and save energy."

Members of the research team include Ph.D. candidates Kumar Varoon and Xueyi Zhang; postdoctoral fellows Bahman Elyassi and Cgun-Yi Sung; former students and Ph.D. graduates Damien Brewer, Sandeep Kumar, J. Alex Lee and Sudeep Maheshwari, graduate student Anudha Mittal; former undergraduate student Melissa Gettel; and faculty members Matteo Cococcioni, Lorraine Francis, Alon McCormick, K. Andre Mkhoyan and Michael Tsapatsis.

This research is being funded by the United States Department of Energy(including the Carbon Sequestration Program and the Catalysis Center for Energy Innovation - An Energy Frontier Center), the National Science Foundation and a variety of University of Minnesota partners.

To read the full research paper in Science, visit here.

An evil wind in the Arab spring

An evil wind in the Arab spring

By Wesley Pruden We’ve “enjoyed” the Arab spring, celebrated by one and nearly all. But if you’re a Christian under the wheels of an Egyptian army truck, it looks a lot like winter. Compassion fatigue runs endemic in the West. The rest of the world succumbs to the temptation to tune out the news from the Islamic world, because news of “the religion of peace” (as George W. Bush famously called it in the wake of September 11), is nearly always bad.
The horrific details of what happened in Cairo on a Sunday night in early autumn has only slowly dribbled out in the days since, and mostly through the work of freelancers, an occasional columnist, and bloggers working on the scene at considerable risk to life and limb. The big news organizations have been occupied elsewhere—covering the continuing Michael Jackson inquest, the latest celebrity sighting in Hollywood, who’s up and who’s down among the Republican presidential impersonators.

French President Sarkozy didn’t want to hear that Assad’s overthrow could lead to a harsh Islamist regime.

The Egyptian government, the one we’ve been told is the one we’ve been waiting for, succeeded for a time in suppressing the news, portraying the Christian protests against Muslim church-burnings as a brutal attack on brave and innocent soldiers. The government said only that three soldiers were killed in trying to keep order, and nothing about dozens of dead Christians.
Almost no one in the West seems bothered. “It is unclear what either Western governments or Western churches think they are achieving by turning a blind eye to the persecution of Christians in the Muslim world,” observes Caroline B. Glick, a deputy editor of the Jerusalem Post, writing in the Jewish World Review.
She cites Coptic sources in Cairo for the details of how Christian protesters were beset by Islamic thugs backed by the Egyptian army, how up to 40 Christians “were run over by military vehicles, beaten, shot and dragged through the streets of Cairo.”
The massacre was observed first-hand on the streets by Sarah Carr, a resourceful freelance correspondent: “And then it happened: an APC [armored personnel carrier] mounted the island in the middle of the road, like a maddened animal on a rampage. I saw a group of people disappear, sucked underneath it. It drove over them. I wasn’t able to see what happened to them because it then started coming in my direction . . . The Coptic Hospital tried its best to deal with the sudden influx of casualties. Its floors were sticky with blood and there was barely room to move among the wounded, the worried and the inconsolable.”
Massacres of Christians goes athwart the story line of the great Islamic peoples’ revolution, the so-called “Arab spring,” which it turns out is nothing like the “Prague spring” on which it was modeled in the imaginations of weepy sentimentalists in the West. Robert Gates, who was then the chief at the Pentagon, assured everyone that the Egyptian army had “conducted itself in exemplary fashion” and “made a contribution to the evolution of democracy.” The uprising in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the British Broadcasting Corp., assured everyone, was proof that “Egypt’s religious tensions have been set aside,” with Muslims and Christians (and maybe even the odd and foolish Jew) joining forces in anti-government solidarity. But months later, the Egyptian military has lost whatever goodwill it had, except in the West where fantasy reigns unchallenged.
Sad to say, the West is complicit in the Islamic persecution of Christians throughout the Muslim world. When Bechara Rai, the patriarch of Maronite Catholic Christians in Lebanon, went to Paris to warn President Nicolas Sarkozy that the overthrow of the Assad regime by opposition forces dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood could lead to a harsh Islamist regime, eager to massacre Christians, he was all but invited to leave town. The French Foreign Ministry said it was “surprised and disappointed” by the patriarch.
From Paris, the patriarch was meant to travel to Washington to see President Obama, but his visit was abruptly canceled when the White House learned of the patriarch’s politically incorrect warning. Mr. Obama, who never sees a Muslim potentate without bowing low enough to bang his head on the floor, was eager to avoid the patriarch lest meeting him offend harsh Muslim regimes.
Saddest of all, self-satisfied pastors, priests, prelates, bishops and assorted other divines in the West have been uninterested in speaking up for their fellow Christians marooned in the Islamic world. Fear, indifference and cowardice reigns.
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.

NYC IMAM CALLS ON MUSLIMS TO JOIN OWS

NYC imam calls on Muslims to show solidarity with Wall St. occupiers

Posted on October 13, 2011 by creeping

Aka the “Flea Party.” The lines are being drawn and the sides are being chosen. via White-collar workers join Occupy protests – UPI.com.

Imam Ayyub Abdul Baki of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York called on Muslims and Muslim charities Tuesday to show solidarity with the activists.

“We will be feeding protestors and the hungry with the collaborative efforts of invited Muslim charities,” he said.

Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?

A little more on the Islamic Cultural Center of New York – it was founded by the father of the Ground Zero mosque imam, Faisal Rauf:

Rauf is a permanent trustee of an Islamic Cultural Center (ICC) which his father founded in New York City. Until September 28, 2001 — seventeen days after 9/11 – the ICCemployed Imam Sheik Muhammad Gemeaha, who later would saythat “only the Jews” could have perpetrated the 9/11 attacks; that if Americans only knew about this Jewish culpability, “they would have done to Jews what Hitler did”; and that Jews “disseminate corruption in the land” and spread “heresy, homosexuality, alcoholism, and drugs.” Gemeaha’s successor at the ICC, Omar Saleem Abu-Namous, said there was no “conclusive evidence” proving that Muslims were responsible for 9/11.

Related: ‘Occupy Boston’ Holds Rally for Muslim Terror Suspect who Targeted Americans

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Iran Backing More Plots in Wake of Alleged Assassination Scheme ?

U.S. Senate - POLITICS

Feinstein Questions Whether Iran Backing More Plots in Wake of Alleged Assassination Scheme

Published October 13, 2011

| FoxNews.com

A top senator warned that the United States should be on "alert" about other Iran-driven terror plots in the wake of the alleged scheme to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she's been aware of the investigation for about a month and that "intelligence indicates" there could be "problems" elsewhere.

Feinstein declined to get into detail and stressed that she wasn't saying other diplomats are necessarily in danger. But she raised the question of whether an Israeli ambassador or American ambassador could also be targeted, if Iran's special operations Quds Force was involved in this plot as alleged.

"It's hard for me to believe that there is just one plot involving the U.S. ... I think we need to explore whether there are other plots going on in other countries," she said Wednesday. "I'm not saying there's a broader plot. I'm just saying that we need to look at that."

Other senators will be briefed on the assassination plot Thursday.

The State Department acknowledged that the plotters were looking at other targets but assured that the administration believes the entire operation was short-circuited after the Justice Department went public with the investigation.

"I would simply say that we do believe that there were other targets, and there were follow-on notions by these plotters. But we do believe that the entire plot now has been disrupted," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

Aside from aiming to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, the plotters apparently were looking at possible attacks on the Saudi and Israeli embassies.

According to the Justice Department, the lone suspect in custody initially inquired about the possibility of attacks on a Saudi Arabian embassy. A separate alert obtained by Fox News outlined a possible plot regarding attacks on the Saudi embassies in Washington, D.C., and in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Nuland, without getting into detail, acknowledged that a top State official had called Argentina's government in the wake of the investigation.

Meanwhile, U.S. lawmakers continue to speculate over whether the top echelons of the Iranian government knew of the plot.

Feinstein said she doesn't know whether, for example, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was aware. But she said the Quds Force would probably not have proceeded without high-level approval from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other elements.

D CORRUPTION @ TOP: Pelosi’s disclosure belated in husband’s land deal

Pelosi’s disclosure belated in husband’s land deal

Partner is father of favored envoy

618 Comments and 349 Reactions|Share Tweet|Email|Print|

By Chuck Neubauer

The Washington Times

Monday, October 10, 2011

Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis, longtime friend of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (left), was sworn in as ambassador to Hungary in January, 2010 by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton (second from right). Also in attendance were her father, Angelo Tsakopoulos, (holding Bible) and Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. Mrs. Pelosi’s husband, Paul, is a longtime business associate of Mr. Tsakopoulos. (State Department)

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QUESTION OF THE DAY

In light of the recently foiled D.C. terror plot, are you more fearful of the possibility of terrorist attacks?

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s husband, a real estate developer and investment banker, stands to make millions of dollars in a previously undisclosed residential real estate project in California as a partner with the father of a woman Mrs. Pelosi helped become ambassador toHungary, records show.

Paul F. Pelosi’s investment in Russell Ranch is worth at least $5 million and possibly as much as $25 million in a deal put together by his friend and longtime business associate, Angelo Tsakopoulos, patriarch of a multimillion-dollar real estate development firm, according to Mrs. Pelosi’s latest personal-disclosure statement.

Mr. Pelosi said in an email from his wife’s spokesman that initially he invested between $1 million and $5 million in the project a dozen years ago, although its value has shot up recently as the undeveloped land moves closer to being annexed by a nearby city. He said the Russell Ranch investment had increased in value less than 5 percent per year over the last dozen years.

Despite his involvement in the project dating back to the late 1990s, Mrs. Pelosi first listed the investment in May 2010 on her federal financial-disclosure forms covering the couple’s finances during 2009. The forms are required annually and are supposed to identify assets she and her husband have that are worth more than $1,000.

The first Russell Ranch listing came a month after The Washington Times raised questions about business dealings between Mr. Pelosi andMr. Tsakopoulos and Mrs. Pelosi’s successful efforts to help his daughter, Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis, become ambassador. For 2009, Mrs. Pelosi reported that the Russell Ranch investment was worth between $1 million and $5 million. The next year, she listed the value as between $5 million and $25 million.

Nadeam Elshami, spokesman for Mrs. Pelosi, said the California Democrat did not have to list the Russell Ranch investment because it was held in the name of another company her husband owns, Forty-Five Belden Corp., which is a Subchapter S corporation and taxes it owes are paid by the shareholders rather than the corporation.

While federal officials usually have to list the underlying assets of their privately held companies that hold investments, the House does not require such disclosures for Subchapter S corporations

Asked why she listed the project now if she was not required to do so, the spokesman said Mr. and Mrs. Pelosi “voluntarily decided to list it separately for clarity and transparency purposes.” Noting that the couple has been friends with Mr. Tsakopoulos and Mrs. Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis “for more than 25 years,” he said there was no attempt to hide the asset - calling any such claim “ridiculous” and “false.”

But a government watchdog said that even if it was not legally required,Mrs. Pelosi should have voluntarily disclosed the Russell Ranch investment earlier, at least by the time she was helping Mrs. Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis become an ambassador in November 2009.Mrs. Pelosi promised upon her election as House speaker in 2007 to lead “the most honest, most open, most ethical Congress in history.”

“She should take every effort to disclose anything that could pose a potential conflict of interest before she takes any formal action,” saidCraig Holman, legislative representative for Public Citizen, a Washington-based consumer-advocacy group.

Mr. Holman said helping the daughter of her husband’s business associate become an ambassador was “significant” and that the Russell Ranch asset should have been disclosed. He also described as a “loophole” the House rule that members did not have to disclose the underlying assets of Subchapter S corporations.

“I can’t imagine why a class of companies are exempt from disclosing their underlying assets,” he said.

Bill Allison, editorial director of the Washington-based Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan watchdog group, agreed: “We have financial disclosure so that any citizen can tell if a member has a conflict of interest. When the rules allow a member to omit underlying assets, it undermines the effectiveness and flies in the face of the purpose - and definition - of disclosure.”

In the email quoting Mr. Pelosi, Mr. Elshami said the general partner at Russell Ranch, Mr. Tsakopoulos, determined that the value of Mr. Pelosi’s interest “was in excess of $5 million” and thats why it was reported in the $5 million to $25 million category. He said the value has been close to $5 million “for several years.”

The partnership was set up by Mr. Tsakopoulos, one of the largest land developers in Northern California. It bought Russell Ranch, property outside of Sacramento, Calif., for residential real estate development. It is part of 3,500 acres of land that are to be annexed by Folsom, Calif., a project Mr. Tsakopoulos has worked on for more than a decade.

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