Jay Gaulard Blog

The EPA, Gardening, Biodiesel, Renewables and Natural Gas

Monday, June 30th, 2008

Pentagon Fights EPA On Pollution Cleanup

The Defense Department, the nation’s biggest polluter, is resisting orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up Fort Meade and two other military bases where the EPA says dumped chemicals pose ‘imminent and substantial’ dangers to public health and the environment.

8 Ways to Green Your Garden

Summer is a great opportunity to spend time in the garden. Sunny days provide nice weather and extra daylight. School is out so you’ve got extra potential workers. The ground is fertile from springtime rain.

Biodiesel’s New Approval Rating Could Ease Warranty Concerns

Lack of warranty support for biodiesel has been a major stumbling block for new diesel owners who want to start using the fuel. But three long-awaited ASTM specifications could help change that.

Unprecedented bill could spark renewables in US

A new feed-in tarriff bill, mimicing many laws already in place in Europe, could pave the road for a renewable energy revolution in the United States.

Cost Benefits Could Bring Natural Gas Vehicles To Forefront

There is nothing really new about using Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) as a vehicle. The new thing, the reason that talk about CNG is growing, is that natural gas now costs about half as much per unit energy as gasoline and has an even greater cost advantage over diesel fuel.

Twitter, Ethanol, Instant Messengers and Diesel

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

How We Tweet: The Definitive List of the Top Twitter Clients

Twitter has one of the fastest growing application ecosystems of any web service outside of Facebook. For this post, we looked at 37,248 tweets and found 142 different ways in which people interact with the Twitter service. Some of the results, which follow below, were rather surprising.

Is Ethanol Production Fueling the Size of the Dead Zone?

Every year a New Jersey-size patch of the Gulf of Mexico where no sea life can be sustained is created by nitrogen-based fertilizer runoff. This runoff comes largely from corn production, which is now tied heavily to the production of ethanol in areas of the Midwest where the runoff comes from. So what can we do about it?

5 Best Instant Messengers Compared & Analyzed

5 Winners from the 550 comments on Lifehacker from users of IM services. They are compared and analyzed so that you can select the ones right for you.

World’s First Commercially Viable Cellulosic Ethanol Plant O

Range Fuels Inc. announced yesterday it has secured over $100 million in Series B funding, an investment that could make it the first company to seriously commercialize cellulosic ethanol. The first phase of construction will produce 20 million gallons of mixed alcohols per year by 2009, and has the potential to expand to up to 120 million gallons.

Diesel Grows On Trees, Seriously

Apparently scientists (and some of our readers, surely) have known that we can grow oil for years, and not in the grow-corn-make-oil kind of way. The Brazilian Copaifera langsdorfii can be tapped for a natural diesel fuel that requires simple filtering before being poured into a truck. Is it viable for world use?

Biodiesel, Brains, Hybrids and Vista

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

Top 15 Unexpected Uses For Biodiesel

While virtually everyone is familiar with the use of biodiesel as a substitute for diesel fuel, there are a few novel uses that may not have crossed your radar. Biodiesel can produce hydrogen, clean up oil spills, degrease your tools, heat your home, and more.

Does the Human Brain Possess Potential Super-Powers?

Some of the most incredible minds on Earth lack the ability to filter irrelevant facts and can retain information at incredible rates. Somehow their brains are able to store & access incredible loads of info, even perceiving & relating to this info in an entirely different way. Some scientists even believe that our brains could possess super-power.

Top 10 2008 Hybrids

Hybrid rankings have often been simplistic: Most are little more than lists of the highest-mileage models on the market. Here, we ranked hybrids based on how much fuel savings they get when compared to their non-hybrid version, as well as how much all that saved gas is going to cost you.

Vista SP1: Threat or Menace?

But given how customers who have upgraded from XP have struggled with driver and application incompatibilities, it’s no surprise that many are gun-shy of the latest update.

Paint on Solar Power!

The idea is to coat every piece of steel cladding with a solar cell paint. As steel is passed through the rollers multiple coatings of of the solar cell system are applied to it. Based on the preliminary research, the materials that are being applied are suited to capturing low level solar radiation, which means that they should work just as well.