Understanding is the Essence of Intelligence

The FDA might better serve the public if FDA employee salaries were not paid by industry user fees.

A very good inside story of subtle corruption of the FDA.

It is very difficult for the FDA to guaranty food and drug safety when its financing depends on the very industry it is supposed to control.

The result is that we cannot trust the FDA with its current funding structure.

This is about the battle between Ecuadorian villagers in the Amazon rain forest and Texaco (now Chevron) over one the biggest environmental disaster ever.

This is just the beginning of the knowledge revolution where advanced courses start to become available online for free with an open-source model.

Everyone on earth will soon have access to most knowledge. This revolution will be far greater than the industrial revolution.

The knowledge revolution will induce deep political and social changes worldwide because many more people will have access to sciences.

This will not happen overnight but over the course of the 21st century.

Education costs have increased dramatically in the 20th century reaching a level that limits access to knowledge. In the future, as in the past, the most successful people and economies will be those will the highest level of education. Decreasing the cost to knowledge access increases education productivity.

Teachers need to provide their talents to more people with the help of technology.

Other than being a path towards electric vehicles, (non-plug-in) electric hybrids are the wrong solution to a real energy recovery problem.

Electric hybrids provide less than 34% energy recovery efficiency because they require several energy conversions to store and release the kinetic energy of braking. On the other hand flywheel hybrids do not require any energy conversion and yield efficiencies of about 70%.

In addition to this doubling in energy recovery efficiency, flywheel hybrids are much less expensive than electric hybrids requiring no batteries and no additional (electric) engine.

Furthermore much of the energy efficiency provided by electric hybrids comes from not idling the engine. The same can be accomplished with low-cost stop-and-go technology where the engine is automatically stopped and restarted when needed. In such a system, the flywheel can again help restart the engine without requiring extra battery capacity.

Having two engines in the same vehicle is costly and inefficient. Cost-effective solutions are either 100% mechanical or 100% electric. Gasoline-Electric Hybrids are only good to reassure car manufacturers by adopting small steps towards electric cars but this comes at a price for consumers.

The company estimates that "refueling" the plane with a full charge of the battery will cost, on average, a whopping sixty cents.

Add solar panels and you have an extended range solar plane.

In addition to being an exceptional artist, Michael Jackson also fought for justice, environmental protection, and many other causes through his art and donations to numerous charities.

At high altitude, wind power is at least 10 times greater than near ground level, binging the promise of cheaper renewable energy.