martes, 20 de enero de 2015

Water Splitter Runs on an Ordinary AAA Battery, Creates Clean Energy




Hongjie Dai and colleagues have developed a cheap, emissions-free device that uses a 1.5-volt battery to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen gas could be used to power fuel cells in zero-emissions vehicles.

Stanford University Professor Hongjie Dai has developed an emissions-free electrolytic device that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen at room temperature.

In 2015, American consumers will finally be able to purchase fuel cell cars from Toyota and other manufacturers. Although touted as zero-emissions vehicles, most of the cars will run on hydrogen made from natural gas, a fossil fuel that is riddled with controversy due to excessive pollution.

Now scientists at Stanford University have developed a low-cost, emissions-free device that uses an ordinary AAA battery to produce hydrogen by water electrolysis. The battery sends an electric current through two electrodes that split liquid water into hydrogen and oxygen gas. Unlike other water splitters that use precious-metal catalysts, the electrodes in the Stanford device are made of inexpensive and abundant nickel and iron.

"Using nickel and iron, which are cheap materials, we were able to make the electrocatalysts active enough to split water at room temperature with a single 1.5-volt battery," said Hongjie Dai, a professor of chemistry at Stanford. "This is the first time anyone has used non-precious metal catalysts to split water at a voltage that low. It's quite remarkable, because normally you need expensive metals, like platinum or iridium, to achieve that voltage."

In addition to producing hydrogen, the novel water splitter could be used to make chlorine gas and sodium hydroxide, an important industrial chemical, according to Dai. He and his colleagues describe the new device in a study published in the Aug. 22 issue of the journal Nature Communications.

The promise of hydrogen

Automakers have long considered the hydrogen fuel cell a promising alternative to the gasoline engine. Fuel cell technology is essentially water splitting in reverse. A fuel cell combines stored hydrogen gas with oxygen from the air to produce electricity, which powers the car. The only byproduct is water -- unlike gasoline combustion, which emits carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.

Stanford scientists have developed a low-cost device that uses an ordinary AAA battery to split water into oxygen and hydrogen gas. Gas bubbles are produced by electrodes made of inexpensive nickel and iron.

Earlier this year, Hyundai began leasing fuel cell vehicles in Southern California. Toyota and Honda will begin selling fuel cell cars in 2015. Most of these vehicles will run on fuel manufactured at large industrial plants that produce hydrogen by combining very hot steam and natural gas, an energy-intensive process that releases carbon dioxide as a byproduct.

Splitting water to make hydrogen requires no fossil fuels and emits no greenhouse gases. But scientists have yet to develop an affordable, active water splitter with catalysts capable of working at industrial scales.

"It's been a constant pursuit for decades to make low-cost electrocatalysts with high activity and long durability," Dai said. "When we found out that a nickel-based catalyst is as effective as platinum, it came as a complete surprise."

Saving energy and money

The discovery was made by Stanford graduate student Ming Gong, co-lead author of the study. "Ming discovered a nickel-metal/nickel-oxide structure that turns out to be more active than pure nickel metal or pure nickel oxide alone," Dai said. "This novel structure favors hydrogen electrocatalysis, but we still don't fully understand the science behind it."

The nickel/nickel-oxide catalyst significantly lowers the voltage required to split water, which could eventually save hydrogen producers billions of dollars in electricity costs, according to Gong. His next goal is to improve the durability of the device.

"The electrodes are fairly stable, but they do slowly decay over time," he said. "The current device would probably run for days, but weeks or months would be preferable. That goal is achievable based on my most recent results"

The researchers also plan to develop a water splitter than runs on electricity produced by solar energy.

"Hydrogen is an ideal fuel for powering vehicles, buildings and storing renewable energy on the grid," said Dai. "We're very glad that we were able to make a catalyst that's very active and low cost. This shows that through nanoscale engineering of materials we can really make a difference in how we make fuels and consume energy."

Other authors of the study are Wu Zhou, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (co-lead author); Mingyun Guan, Meng-Chang Lin, Bo Zhang, Di-Yan Wang and Jiang Yang, Stanford; Mon-Che Tsai and Bing-Joe Wang, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology; Jiang Zhou and Yongfeng Hu, Canadian Light Source Inc.; and Stephen J. Pennycook, University of Tennessee.
A video describing the experiment is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh_0cRYebYU

Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Stanford University. The original article was written by Mark Shwartz. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Photo Credit:
Mark Shwartz/Stanford Precourt Institut for Energy

Journal Reference:
Ming Gong, Wu Zhou, Mon-Che Tsai, Jigang Zhou, Mingyun Guan, Meng-Chang Lin, Bo Zhang, Yongfeng Hu, Di-Yan Wang, Jiang Yang, Stephen J. Pennycook, Bing-Joe Hwang, Hongjie Dai. Nanoscale nickel oxide/nickel heterostructures for active hydrogen evolution electrocatalysis. Nature Communications, 2014; 5: 4695 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5695

jueves, 1 de enero de 2015

2014: Major Events, Big Lies and Censored News

The major events of 2014 listed below and in the coming articles are probably the same as the ones recorded in the mainstream media year review. The difference is, as always, in the interpretation of events, in the lies repeated often enough to become “truths” and in the omission of important facts and media censorship.
In 2014, once again, the western mainstream media has shown its servility to the establishment and its mandate: control the public bymanaging perceptions, convey US-NATO war propaganda and protect the one percent. Once again, its failure to inform instead of propagandizing showed how essential independent media are in our societies to help us understand what is truly going on in the world and to remain free from mental slavery.
The German author Goethe once said: ”None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” 
We could easily say that none are more hopelessly misinformed than those who falsely believe the are informed by the mainstream media.
Help us fight mental enslavement and please share this 2014 independent media retrospective of major events and unreported news.Since there is a lot to cover, there will be separate articles dealing with different issues.
This selection focuses on the Islamic State and related events in Iraq and Syria, the U.S. “withdrawal” from Afghanistan and Libya and the Benghazigate.

The Islamic State (ISIS) and the War on Terror Redux 

 The U.S. “withdrawal” from Afghanistan and the opium trade:

Libya and the “Benghazigate”:

If you find this useful consider Donating to Global Research

jueves, 12 de junio de 2014

Amlou; Argan oil, Almonds and Honey

martes, 21 de enero de 2014

The Tree of Life


The fruits of the argan tree are nut-sizes and may be round, oval or conical in shape. The fruits are covered by a thick peel which covers the fleshy pulp. The pulp surrounds a hard-shelled nut which represents approximately 25% of the weight of the fresh fruit.
Contained within the nut are one to three argan oil-rich kernels. Argan oil is extracted from the kernels, with yields varying from 30% to 55% depending on the extraction method used.
Extraction of the kernels is key to the argan oil production process. In order to extract the kernels, the argan fruits are first dried in the open air and then the fleshy pulp of the fruit is removed. Sometimes the flesh is removed mechanically without the need to dry the fruits. The flesh is usually used as feed for animals.
The next stage involves cracking the argan nut to obtain the argan kernels. Attempts to mechanize this process have been unsuccessful and therefore it is still carried out by hand, making it a time-consuming and labour-intensive process.
Kernels used to make argan oil for food use, culinary argan oil, are then gently roasted. After the argan kernels have cooled down, they are ground and pressed. The brown-colored mash expels pure, unfiltered argan oil. After this, unfiltered argan oil is decanted into vessels. The press cake remaining after the argan oil has been expelled is protein-rich and is frequently used as feed for cattle.
Cosmetic argan oil is produced almost identically, although the argan kernels are not roasted to avoid an excessively nutty scent.
After pressing, the argan oil is decanted and left to rest for approximately two weeks. This allows solids suspended in the argan oil to settle to the bottom, creating a natural sediment. The clearer argan oil may then be further filtered depending on the clarity and degree of purity required. Pure argan oil may contain some sediment. This is a natural part of the production process and does not affect the quality of the argan oil.
At Shop Morocco. All our Argan products are produced in Morocco by the Adaguen cooperative.The Moroccan Adaguen cooperative is specialized in the production and marketing of Argan oil. It was born in 2000, Members of the cooperative are Moroccan women wishing to develop their skills and their social-economic situation, The realization of the products and qualifications meet international standards
Argan oil is well known for it's anti-ageing properties, Due to high levels of Vitamin E and saponins, which soften the skin. It can help to reduce wrinkles by restoring the skin's water lipid layer and it also cools and soothes inflammation. Its antioxidant properties help to neutralise free radicals. Yet it does all this quite naturally.



sábado, 16 de marzo de 2013

 
Watch this film you owe it to yourself

domingo, 27 de enero de 2013

The United States Promotes Israeli Genocide Against the Palestinians

israelus
In direct reaction to Israel provoking the Al Aqsa Intifada, on October 19, 2000, the then United Nations Human Rights Commission (now Council) condemned Israel for inflicting “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” upon the Palestinian people, some of whom are Christians, but most of whom are Muslims.[i]
This Special Session of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights adopted the Resolution set forth in U.N. Document E/CN.4/S-5/L.2/Rev. 1, “Condemning the provocative visit to Al-Haram Al-Shariff on 28 September 2000 by Ariel Sharon, the Likud party leader, which triggered the tragic events that followed in occupied East Jerusalem and the other occupied Palestinian territories, resulting in a high number of deaths and injuries among Palestinian civilians.” The U.N. Human Rights Commission said it was “[g]ravely concerned” about several different types of atrocities inflicted by Israel upon the Palestinian people, which it denominated “war crimes, flagrant violations of international humanitarian law and crimes against humanity.”
In operative paragraph 1 of its 19 October 2000 Resolution, the U.N. Human Rights Commission then:
“Strongly condemns the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force in violation of international humanitarian law by the Israeli occupying Power against innocent and unarmed Palestinian civilians…including many children, in the occupied territories, which constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity;…”
And in paragraph 5 of its 19 October 2000 Resolution, the U.N. Human Rights Commission:
“Also affirms that the deliberate and systematic killing of civilians and children by the Israeli occupying authorities constitutes a flagrant and grave violation of the right to life and also constitutes a crime against humanity;…”
Article 68 of the United Nations Charter had expressly required the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council to “set up” this U.N. Commission (now Council) “for the promotion of human rights.” This was its U.N.-Charter-mandated job.
The reader has a general idea of what a war crime is, so I am not going to elaborate upon that term here. But there are different degrees of heinousness for war crimes. In particular are the more serious war crimes denominated “grave breaches” of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Since the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987, the world has seen those heinous war crimes inflicted every day by Israel against the Palestinian people living in occupied Palestine: e.g., willful killing of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army and by Israel’s criminal paramilitary terrorist settlers. These Israeli “grave breaches” of the Fourth Geneva Convention mandate universal prosecution for the perpetrators and their commanders, whether military or civilian, including and especially Israel’s political leaders.
Let us address for a moment Israel’s “crimes against humanity” against the Palestinian people—as determined by the U.N. Human Rights Commission itself, set up pursuant to the requirements of the United Nations Charter. What are “crimes against humanity”? This concept goes all the way back to the Nuremberg Charter of 1945 for the trial of the major Nazi war criminals in Europe. In the Nuremberg Charter of 1945, drafted by the United States Government, there was created and inserted a new type of international crime specifically intended to deal with the Nazi persecution of the Jewish people:
Crimes against humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.
The paradigmatic example of “crimes against humanity” is what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish people. This is where the concept of “crimes against humanity” originally came from. And this is what the U.N. Human Rights Commission (now Council) determined that Israel is currently doing to the Palestinian people: crimes against humanity.
Expressed in legal terms, this is just like what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jews. That is the significance of the formal determination by the U.N. Human Rights Commission that Israel has inflicted “crimes against humanity” upon the Palestinian people. The Commission chose this well-known and long-standing legal term of art quite carefully and deliberately based upon the evidence it had compiled.
Furthermore, the Nuremberg “crimes against humanity” are the historical and legal precursor to the international crime of genocide as defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention. The theory here was that what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish people was so horrific that it required a special international treaty that would codify and universalize the Nuremberg concept of “crimes against humanity.” And that treaty ultimately became the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Article II of the Genocide Convention defines the international crime of genocide in relevant part as follows:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
As documented by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in his seminal book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), Israel’s genocidal policy against the Palestinians has been unremitting, extending from before the very foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, and is ongoing and even intensifying against the 1.6 million Palestinians living in Gaza as this book goes to press.
As Pappe’s analysis established, Zionism’s “final solution” to Israel’s much-touted and racist “demographic threat” allegedly posed by the very existence of the Palestinians has always been genocide, whether slow-motion or in blood-thirsty spurts of violence. Indeed, the very essence of Zionism requires ethnic cleansing and acts of genocide against the Palestinians. In regard to the latest 2008-2009 Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza – so-called Operation Cast-lead — U.N. General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, the former Foreign Minister of Nicaragua during the Reagan administration’s contra-terror war of aggression against that country, condemned it as “genocide.”[ii]
Certainly, Israel and its predecessors-in-law—the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs—have committed genocide against the Palestinian people that actually started on or about 1948 and has continued apace until today in violation of Genocide Convention Articles II(a), (b), and (c). For over the past six decades, the Israeli government and its predecessors-in-law—the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs—have ruthlessly implemented a systematic and comprehensive military, political, and economic campaign with the intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical, racial, and different religious (Jews versus Muslims and Christians) group constituting the Palestinian people.
This Zionist/Israeli campaign has consisted of killing members of the Palestinian people in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(a). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also caused serious bodily and mental harm to the Palestinian people in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(b). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also deliberately inflicted on the Palestinian people conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in substantial part in violation of Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention.
Article I of the Genocide Convention requires all contracting parties such as the United States “to prevent and to punish” genocide. Yet to the contrary, historically the “Jewish” state’s criminal conduct against the Palestinians has been financed, armed, equipped, supplied and politically supported by the nominally “Christian” United States. Although the United States is a founding sponsor of, and a contracting party to, both the Nuremberg Charter and the Genocide Convention, as well as the United Nations Charter, these legal facts have never made any difference to the United States when it comes to its blank-check support for Zionist Israel and their joint and severable criminal mistreatment of the Palestinians—truly the wretched of the earth!
The world has not yet heard even one word uttered by the United States and its N.A.T.O. allies in favor of R2P/humanitarian intervention against Zionist Israel in order to protect the Palestinian people, let alone a “responsibility to protect” the Palestinians from Zionist/Israeli genocide. The United States, its N.A.T.O. allies, and the Great Powers on the U.N. Security Council would not even dispatch a U.N. Charter Chapter 6 monitoring force to help “protect” the Palestinians, let alone even contemplate any type of U.N. Charter Chapter 7 enforcement actions against Zionist Israel – which are actually two valid international legal options for R2P/humanitarian intervention! The doctrine of “humanitarian intervention” and its current “responsibility to protect” transmogrification so readily espoused elsewhere when U.S. foreign policy interests are allegedly at stake have been clearly proven to be a sick joke and a demented fraud when it comes to stopping the ongoing and accelerating Zionist/Israeli campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people.
Rather than rein in the Zionist Israelis—which would be possible just by turning off the funding pipeline—the United States government, the U.S. Congress, the U.S. media, and U.S. taxpayers instead support the “Jewish” state to the tune of about 4 billion dollars per year, without whose munificence this instance of genocide – and indeed conceivably the State of Israel itself – would not be possible. Without the United States, Israel is nothing more than a typical “failed state.” In today’s world genocide is permissible so long as it is done at the behest of the United States and its de jure allies in N.A.T.O. or its de facto allies such as Israel.
I anticipate no fundamental change in America’s support for the Zionist/Israeli ongoing campaign of genocide against the Palestinians during the tenure of the Obama administration and its near-term successors, whether neoliberal Democrats or neoconservative Republicans. Tweedledum versus Tweedledee.
What the world witnesses here is (yet another) case of bipartisan “dishumanitarian intervention” or “humanitarian extermination” by the United States and Israel with the support of the N.A.T.O. states, against the Palestinians and Palestine. While at the exact same time these white racist cowards and hypocrites preach R2P/humanitarian intervention in order to subjugate Libya, now Syria, and perhaps someday soon Iran.
As Machiavelli so astutely advised The Prince in Chapter XVIII of that book:
“…one who deceives will always find one who will allow himself to be deceived.”[iii]
On these dissentient points, this law professor rests his case against the doctrines of “humanitarian intervention” and its imperialist transformation into the demagogic “responsibility to protect.”

domingo, 13 de enero de 2013

The Cancer Cash Cycle: The Causes of Cancer and Ill Health


Cancer is big business. Despite massive public screening campaigns and talk of cures, cancer rates continue to soar, and certain companies not only profit from making the chemicals that cause cancer but also from selling the drugs that treat it.
The 2010 documentary ‘Cut, Poison, Burn” provides revealing insight into the medical monopoly of cancer ‘treatment’, as a four year old boy who was diagnosed with brain cancer was compelled to undergo a system of chemo, surgery and radiation, against his parents wishes. He was not allowed access to a proven method of alternative treatment. The medical system’s response was callous. The authorities threatened to take the boy into custody and charged his parents with child abuse if the medical option was not opted for. The boy’s death certificate states his cause of death as: “respiratory failure due to chronic toxicity of chemotherapy”.
It is easy to conclude after watching the film that what we have here is some kind of corrupt racket. Indeed, the 2009 documentary ‘The Idiot Cycle’ alleges that some of the world’s top cancer causing culprits (including, it is claimed in the film, Bayer, BASF, Dow, Dupont, Monsanto, Syngenta, Novartis, Pfizer, among others) are allegedly profiting from the production of cancer-causing products and then some of the same companies are investing in profitable cancer ‘treatments’. These claims outlined in the movie remain to be fully verified.
On top of this, some of these companies are now developing genetically modified crops, which have never been adequately tested for long-term health impacts like cancer. The onset of the disease is frequently 15 to 20 years down the road for victims.
Prior to undertaking his recent study into the health impacts of GMOs and incurring the wrath of the GMO sector for his findings, Gilles-Eric Seralini, professor of molecular biology at the University of Caen in France, said it was absurd that only three months of testing allowed GM corn to be approved in over a dozen nations. Upon reviewing Monsanto’s raw data, he and his team found, among other problems, liver damage and physiological changes into a pre-diabetic condition among the rats which had eaten Monsanto’s GM corn. And that’s just from three months of eating such food. His new study was over a two year period.
The incidence of cancer is escalating and is expected to double by 2050, and it’s a global issue. For example, the incidence of cancer for some major organs in India is the highest in the world. While tobacco is a major cause, other factors cannot be discounted. Recent reports in the Indian media have drawn attention to rising rates of breast cancer in urban areas, and in 2009 there was a reported increase in cancer rates in Tamil Nadu’s textile belt, possibly due to chemically contaminated water. But without proper regulations in force, this may be the thin end of the wedge for India.
According to Dr Samuel Epstein, emeritus professor of environmental medicine at the University of Illinois, a range of industries in the US have contaminated the air, land and sea with a wide range of petrochemical and other carcinogens. This has not only affected the public at large, but has also placed workers in certain sectors and their offspring at risk of cancer.
Epstein notes that the incidence of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma has increased by nearly 100 per cent in the US over the last few decades, and brain cancer by about 80 to 90 per cent. Breast cancer has gone up by about 60 to 65 per cent. Testicular cancer – particularly in men between the ages of 28 and 35 – has gone up by nearly 300 percent. Epstein asserts that there has been a massive escalation in the incidence of cancer that cannot be explained away on the basis of smoking, longevity, genetics or a fatty diet. He may be right.
In the US, animal and dairy products are contaminated with a wide range of hormones, pesticides and other industrial chemical carcinogens, some of which are very important risk factors for reproductive cancers – testicular cancers in men, breast cancers in women and leukemia in children. The use of the IGF1 growth hormone in milk has been associated with breast, prostate and colon cancer.
Epstein provides various examples of everyday, taken-for-granted household items, cosmetics and toiletries, from deodorants to shampoo and talcum powder, which also contain chemicals that are carcinogens. The conclusion is that synthetic chemicals and their effects on people’s health affect everyone simply because they can be found in so many consumer products today. Unfortunately many governments roll over all too easily when it comes to sanctioning new synthetic chemicals without adequate testing, which is not too surprising, especially where pharmaceuticals are concerned – substantially more money is spent by companies on marketing and lobbying than on actual research into their drugs.
The usual tactic by officialdom is to individualise health issues by advising people to change their behaviour. While in certain cases individual behaviour may indeed minimise risks, there is not much the individual can do in terms of many of the major cancers that have increased in recent decades. By adopting a “blame the victim” strategy, attention is diverted away from the practices of large profiteering corporations that cause cancer and ill health.
Scientist Dr Shiv Chopra tells of his many battles against the Canadian government which knowingly allowed dangerous drugs, agricultural practices and carcinogenic pesticides to enter the food supply. Chopra asserts that there is a concerted effort by companies to sicken and then treat humanity, while raking in massive profits.
Whistleblowers like Chopra are playing a valuable role by exposing corrupt practices, and films like ‘Cut, Burn, Poison’ and ‘The Idiot Cycle’ are helping to shed light on the failure of the ‘war on cancer’ (war on drugs, war on terror… corrupt practices and failure – a common theme). At the same time, a number of pressure groups are actually engaged in trying to phase out the use of carcinogenic chemicals in products. As was the case when the tobacco companies were taken on, though, tackling the interests of powerful state-corporate actors is likely to be a long and arduous affair.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cancer-cash-cycle-the-causes-of-cancer-and-ill-health/5318449