JEMMYX BLOG

The UK's first ever bus powered on human and food waste has taken to the road today which engineers believe could provide a sustainable way of fueling public transport - cutting emissions in polluted towns and cities.  The 40-seater Bio-Bus, which runs on gas generated through the treatment of sewage and food waste that's unfit for human consumption, helps to improve urban air quality as it produces fewer emissions than traditional diesel engines. Running on waste products that are both renewable and sustainable, the bus can travel up to 300km on a full tank of gas generated at Bristol sewage treatment works – a plant run by GENeco, a subsidiary of Wessex Water. This week GENeco became the first company in the UK to start injecting gas generated from food waste and sewage into the national gas grid network and at the same time installed a gas refueling plant for the bus. GENeco general manager Mohammed Saddiq said: “Through treating sewage and food that unfit for hu...

According to the University of Wisconsin-Madison computer science researchers, a method for using social media posts to estimate air pollution levels with significant accuracy has been developed. Graduate students Shike Mei, Han Li and Jing Fan analyzed Sina Weibo — a Twitter-like site that is China's most popular social media outlet — to uncover real-time information about air pollution levels in Chinese cities. Though the approach cannot forecast future air quality, it can provide accurate, real-time information on the Air Quality Index (AQI). For 30 days, the team monitored Weibo posts from 108 cities to see how often people complained about the air. The group analyzed the text of the posts, as well as a time- and-space correlation among cities and days, since pollution flare-ups typically cover large amounts of territory and can last for days. Between 350,000 and 500,000 Chinese citizens die prematurely each year because of air pollution, according to ...

God particle ... The Higgs boson was discovered in 2012 by scientists at the Cern particle accelerator in Switzerland. Picture: AFP SCIENTIST Stephen Hawking has warned that the Higgs boson, the so-called God particle, could cause space and time to collapse. But there is time for lunch: It may take trillions of years to topple. The British professor said that at very high energy levels the Higgs boson – the subatomic particle which gives us our shape and size - could become so unstable that it would cause space and time to collapse. Hawking made his comments in the preface to a new book,  Starmus . The Higgs boson field is the force within the universe which give particles mass and therefore acts as the “glue” which holds everything together. Without that “glue”, we’d all disintegrate at the speed of light. Now, Hawking’s comments that the Higgs “has the worrisome feature that it might become metastable” at very high energies has reignited unfounded fears t...

http://news.yahoo.com/chinese-media-warn-us-over-warplane-interception-053349701.html China's state-run media warned Washington on Monday that Beijing could treat its surveillance flights as an "act of hostility", after accusations a Chinese fighter jet flew dangerously close to a US military aircraft.

Researchers Say They Can Charge a Phone With Ambient Sound BY SAMANTHA MURPHY KELLY2 A new smartphone prototype can be charged by ambient sound, such as cheers from a football field or chatter from a coffee shop — though don't expect to cut your charging cable anytime soon. Scientists from Queen Mary University of London and researchers at Nokia built a mobile device that can be refueled when everyday background noise, including traffic and music, is converted into electricity. When Joe Briscoe and Steve Dunn of Queen Mary studied how playing fast-tempo pop and rock music stimulated and improved the performance of solar cells, the team wanted to create a device that could take motion energy and turn it into electricity. "Charging by sound and vibrations could help improve the usability of electronic devices and allow them to work for longer, without worrying about connecting to a charger," Briscoe told Mashable on Thursday. "It would also be helpful to the envi...

Nigerian born africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote has donated N150million to help in the fight of the spread of the Ebola virus in Nigeria. The Chief Executive Officer of the Dangote Foundation, Mrs Adhiambo Odaga announced this at a media briefing at the Ministry of Health, Abuja on Monday. She said the money will be available for the establishment of an Ebola emergency operation centre in Lagos. “After bilateral discussion with the honourable minister and his team, Dangote foundation has funded the establishment of the Ebola emergency operation in Lagos, that is being done through grant from the foundation of just a little over N150 million,” she said. “The strategy that our chairman is deploying is the strategy to respond and to commend government for the effort, and to show that all Nigerians are concerned. We will continue to discuss with the ministry about what additional support can be offered. “And we also have been approached by several part...

Lagos set to repair Eko Bridge http:// feedproxy.google.com /~r/ punchng /NEWS/~3/v_W98SD8R9s/