All the Cyber Monday Deals We Know So Far [Cyber Monday]

So you survived Black Friday. (We hope.) Congrats! But it's not over yet: from Friday's smoldering rubble comes Cyber Monday and another pack of deals to kick your bank account in the face. Here's your advance scouting report for Digital Shopping D-Day. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/JSonGqTbFRk/all-the-cyber-monday-deals-we-know-so-far

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Reheat Pizza in a Skillet to Bring Back Crispy Crusts [Video]

Reheat Pizza in a Skillet to Bring Back Crispy Crusts Instead of microwaving your leftover cold pizza to make soggy hot pizza, reheat the pizza slices in a large skillet on medium heat for 4-5 minutes with a domed lid for the pizza made with aluminum foil to help reflect heat back to the toppings without trapping steam inside.

Chef John from Culinary blog Foodwishes claims that the residual oil from the pizza crust in your skillet will be reheated and make the crust crispy again and by the time this happens the cheese will have melted again and warmed the toppings. He even makes the claim that he uses this method with delivery pizza to improve the crust.

Magic Pizza Reheat Method! | YouTube

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/f5aj7mHtQt8/reheat-pizza-in-a-skillet-to-bring-back-crispy-crusts

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NASA launches $2.5 billion rover to Red Planet

NASA has launched its next Mars rover, kicking off a long-awaited mission to investigate whether the Red Planet could ever have hosted microbial life.

The car-size Curiosity rover blasted off atop its Atlas 5 rocket at 10:02 a.m. ET Saturday, streaking into a cloudy sky above Cape Canaveral Air Force Station here. The huge robot's next stop is Mars, though the 354-million-mile (570-million-kilometer) journey will take eight and a half months.

Joy Crisp a deputy project scientist for the rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., called the liftoff "spectacular."

"This feels great," she said as she watched the rocket lift off from Cape Canaveral.

Pamela Conrad, deputy principal investigator for the mission at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said, "Every milestone feels like such a relief. It's a beautiful day. The sun's out, and all these people came out to watch."

  1. More space news from msnbc.com

    1. Partial solar eclipse gets a little southern exposure

      Science editor Alan Boyle's Weblog: A partial solar eclipse darkened the skies only slightly over? areas of New Zealand, Tasmania, South Africa and Antarctica on "Black Friday."

    2. NASA launches $2.5 billion rover to Red Planet
    3. Russian leader suggests punishing space failures
    4. Space 'superbubbles' could spawn cosmic rays

The work Curiosity does when it finally arrives should revolutionize our understanding of the Red Planet and pave the way for future efforts to hunt for potential Martian life, researchers said.

"It is absolutely a feat of engineering, and it will bring science like nobody's ever expected," Doug McCuistion, head of NASA's Mars exploration program, said of Curiosity. "I can't even imagine the discoveries that we're going to come up with." [Photos: Last Look at Curiosity Rover]

Long road to launch
Curiosity's cruise to Mars may be less challenging than its long and bumpy trek to the launch pad, which took nearly a decade.

NASA began planning Curiosity's mission ? which is officially known as the Mars Science Laboratory, or MSL ? back in 2003. The rover was originally scheduled to blast off in 2009, but it wasn't ready in time.

Launch windows for Mars-bound spacecraft are based on favorable alignments between Earth and the Red Planet, and they open up just once every two years. So the MSL team had to wait until 2011.

That two-year slip helped boost the mission's overall cost by 56 percent, to its current $2.5 billion. But Saturday's successful launch likely chased away a lot of the bad feelings still lingering after the delay and the cost overruns.

"I think you could visibly see the team morale improve ? the team grinned more, the team smiled more ? as the rover and the vehicle came closer, and more and more together here when we were at Kennedy [Space Center]" preparing for liftoff, MSL project manager Pete Theisinger of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said a few days before launch.

A rover behemoth
Curiosity is a beast of a rover. Weighing in at 1 ton, it's five times more massive than either of the last two rovers NASA sent to Mars, the golf-cart-size twins Spirit and Opportunity, which landed in 2004 to search for signs of past water activity.

While Spirit and Opportunity each carried five science instruments, Curiosity sports 10, including a rock-zapping laser and equipment designed to identify organic compounds ? carbon-based molecules that are the building blocks of life as we know it.

Some of these instruments sit at the end of Curiosity's five-jointed, 7-foot-long (2.1-meter) robotic arm, which by itself is nearly half as heavy as Spirit or Opportunity.

The arm also wields a 2-inch (5-centimeter) drill, allowing Curiosity to take samples from deep inside Martian rocks. No previous Red Planet rover has been able to do this, researchers say.

"We have an incredible rover," said MSL deputy project scientist Ashwin Vasavada of JPL. "It's the biggest and most capable scientific explorer we've ever sent to the surface of another planet."

Learn more about Curiosity's mission (800kb PDF)

Curiosity is due to arrive at Mars in early August 2012, touching down in a 100-mile-wide (160-km) crater called Gale.

While the rover's launch was dramatic, its landing will be one for the record books, if all goes well. A rocket-powered sky crane will lower the huge robot down on cables ? a maneuver never tried before in the history of planetary exploration. [Video: Curiosity's Peculiar Landing]

A giant mound of sediment rises 3 miles (5 kilometers) into the Martian air from Gale Crater's center. The layers in this mountain appear to preserve about 1 billion years of Martian history. Curiosity will study these different layers, gaining an in-depth understanding of past and present Martian environments and their potential to harbor life.

Life as we know it depends on liquid water. So the rover will likely spend a lot of time poking around near the mound's base, where Mars-orbiting spacecraft have spotted minerals that form in the presence of water, such as clays and sulfates.

"Going layer by layer, we can do the main goal of this mission, which is to search for habitable environments, " Vasavada said. "Were any of those time periods in early Mars history time periods that could have supported microbial life?"

If Curiosity climbs higher, its observations could shed light on Mars' shift from relatively warm and wet long ago to cold, dry and dusty today, researchers said.

"We want to understand those transitions, so that's why we're headed there [to Gale]," said Bethany Ehlmann of JPL and Caltech in Pasadena.

Setting the stage for life detection
Curiosity isn't designed to search for Martian life. In fact, if the red dirt of Gale Crater does harbor microbes, the rover will almost certainly drive right over them unawares.

But MSL is a key bridge to future efforts that could actively hunt down possible Martian life forms, researchers said. Curiosity's work should help later missions determine where ? and when ? to look.

"We don't really detect life per se," Vasavada said. "We set the stage for that life detection by figuring out which time periods in early Mars history were the most likely to have supported life and even preserved evidence of that for us today."

You can follow Space.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow Space.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45444246/ns/technology_and_science-space/

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Tom Wicker Dead: Former NYT Columnist, Author Dies

MONTPELIER, Vt. ? Tom Wicker, the former New York Times political reporter and columnist whose career soared following his acclaimed coverage of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, died Friday at his home in Rochester, Vt. He was 85.

Wicker died after an apparent heart attack Friday morning, his wife Pamela said.

"He'd been ill with things that come from being 85," she said. "He died in his bedroom looking out at the countryside that he loved."

Wicker grew up in poverty in Hamlet, N.C., and wanted to be a novelist, but pursued journalism when his early books didn't catch fire. He worked at weekly and daily newspapers in North Carolina before winning a spot as a political correspondent in the Times' Washington bureau in 1960.

Three years later, he was the only Times reporter to be traveling with Kennedy when the president was shot in Dallas.

Gay Talese, author of the major history of The New York Times, wrote of Wicker's coverage: "It was a remarkable achievement in reporting and writing, in collecting facts out of confusion, in reconstructing the most deranged day in his life, the despair and bitterness and disbelief, and then getting on a telephone to New York and dictating the story in a voice that only rarely cracked with emotion."

One year later, Wicker was named Washington bureau chief of the Times, succeeding newspaper legend James Reston, who had hired Wicker and called him "one of the most able political reporters of his generation."

In 1966, Wicker began his "In the Nation" column, becoming, along with colleague Anthony Lewis, a longtime liberal voice on the Op-Ed page. Two years later he was named associate editor of the Times, a post he held until 1985.

He ended his column and retired to Vermont in 1991 but continued to write. He published 20 books, ranging from novels about gritty, hard-scrabble life in the South to reflections on the presidents he knew.

Among his books was "A Time to Die," winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1976, which recounted Wicker's 1971 experience as an observer and mediator of a prison rebellion at New York's Attica prison.

Wicker, the son of a railroad man, started in journalism in 1949 at the weekly Sandhill Citizen in Aberdeen, N.C., where he was paid $37.50 a week to report on such local news stories as the discovery of "the first beaver dam in anyone's memory on a local creek."

He moved on to a local daily and then to the larger Winston-Salem Journal, where he worked for most of the 50s, with time out in 1957-58 to serve as a Nieman fellow at Harvard University. He went to work for the Nashville Tennessean in 1959 but then a year later was hired by Reston.

In mid-1961, when Times veteran Bill Lawrence abruptly quit his post as White House correspondent in a dispute with management, Wicker got the assignment. He said it was a dream assignment ? "sooner or later most of the government's newsworthy business passes through the White House" ? and especially covering the excitement of the Kennedy era.

On Nov. 22, 1963, Wicker was in the first press bus following the Kennedy motorcade when the president was assassinated. He would later write in a memoir that the day was a turning point for the country: "The shots ringing out in Dealey Plaza marked the beginning of the end of innocence."

At that moment, however, all he knew was that he was covering one of the biggest stories in history. "At first no one knew what happened, or how, or where, much less why," he later wrote. "Gradually, bits and pieces began to fall together."

Wicker dictated his story from phones grabbed here and there, with most of his writing done at a desk in the upper level of the Dallas airport. "I would write two pages, run down the stairs, across the waiting room, grab a phone and dictate," Wicker later wrote. "Dictating each take, I would throw in items I hadn't written, sometimes whole paragraphs."

Although Wicker didn't even have a reporter's notebook that day and scribbled all of his notes on the backs of printed itineraries of the presidential visit, his story captured the detail and color of the tragic events.

Describing the president's widow as she left the hospital in Dallas, Wicker wrote: "Her face was sorrowful. She looked steadily at the floor. She still wore the raspberry-colored suit in which she greeted welcoming crowds in Fort Worth and Dallas. But she had taken off the matching pillbox hat she had worn earlier in the day, and her dark hair was windblown and tangled. Her hand rested lightly on her husband's coffin as it was taken to a waiting hearse."

In 1966, Wicker was named a national columnist, replacing retiring Times' icon Arthur Krock, who had covered 10 presidents. Wicker's first column reported on a political rally in Montana. He would later say that it was a huge step to move from detached observer to opinion holder ? and especially in the times he was writing.

"My own transition from reporter to columnist coincided roughly with the immense American political re-evaluation that sprang in the sixties from the Vietnam War and the movement against it, from the ghetto riots in the major cities, and from the brief flowering of the counterculture," Wicker wrote in his 1978 book, "On Press."

Wicker was not lacking in opinions, though, and over the years took strong and sometimes unpredictable stands, emphasizing such issues as the nation's racial divide.

On race, he said in a 1991 interview in the Times: "I think the attitudes between the races, the fear and the animosity that exist today, are greater than, let us say, at the time of the Brown case, the famous school desegregation decision in 1954."

Although Wicker was attacked by President Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew for his negative coverage during the Nixon administration, he argued in a 1991 book, "One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream," that Nixon accomplished much in his presidency and deserves a high ranking in history.

In his final column, published Dec. 29, 1991, Wicker commented on the fall of the Soviet Union and urged President George H.W. Bush to "exercise in a new world a more visionary leadership" on non-military issues like the environment.

"As the U.S. did not hesitate to spend its resources to prevail in the cold war, it needs now to go forward as boldly to lead a longer, more desperate struggle to save the planet, and rescue the human race from itself," he wrote.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/25/tom-wicker-dead-_n_1113548.html

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Don't Take Our Word for it: Test the Best Tablets and Phones Yourself at Gizmodo Gallery [Gizmodo Gallery]

It's the time of year when tons of the best tablets and phones are released. It's also the time when people go on shopping sprees. At Gizmodo Gallery we're going to help you choose the right gift—for yourself. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/XQvF2psAQ98/dont-take-our-word-for-it-test-the-best-tablets-and-phones-yourself-at-gizmodo-gallery

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Healthier Philippine ex-leader seeks house arrest

Three doctors of former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Dr. Mario Ver, right, Dr. Juliet Gopez-Cervantes, center, Dr. Roberto Mirasol leave the court room after the hearing Friday, Nov. 25, 2011 in suburban Pasay City, south of Manila, Philippines. Former Philippine President Arroyo, who tried to leave the country on medical grounds while the government scrambled to file charges against her, is well enough to leave the hospital where she was arrested last week, she and her doctors agree. (AP Photo/Pat Roque)

Three doctors of former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Dr. Mario Ver, right, Dr. Juliet Gopez-Cervantes, center, Dr. Roberto Mirasol leave the court room after the hearing Friday, Nov. 25, 2011 in suburban Pasay City, south of Manila, Philippines. Former Philippine President Arroyo, who tried to leave the country on medical grounds while the government scrambled to file charges against her, is well enough to leave the hospital where she was arrested last week, she and her doctors agree. (AP Photo/Pat Roque)

Three doctors of former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Dr. Mario Ver, front, Dr. Roberto Mirasol, center, and Dr. Juliet Gopez-Cervantes prepare to leave the court room after the hearing Friday, Nov. 25, 2011 in suburban Pasay City, south of Manila, Philippines. Former Philippine President Arroyo, who tried to leave the country on medical grounds while the government scrambled to file charges against her, is well enough to leave the hospital where she was arrested last week, she and her doctors agree. (AP Photo/Pat Roque)

(AP) ? Former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who tried to leave the Philippines on medical grounds while election fraud charges were being prepared against her, is well enough to leave the hospital where she was arrested, she and her doctors agree.

Arroyo lawyer Jose Flaminiano told a court Friday he was withdrawing his motion for a hospital arrest in favor of house arrest. Earlier, he had resisted efforts to have doctors testify about Arroyo's condition.

Arroyo is "fit to be released as outpatient," her physician Dr. Mario Ver testified Friday.

The Commission on Elections, an independent body that filed the charges, has asked the court to order Arroyo's transfer to a government jail cell.

Arroyo has had three surgeries on her cervical spine, and she argued before her arrest that she needed to travel abroad for an urgent bone treatment that she claimed was unavailable in the Philippines.

The government refused to let her go this month, even after the Supreme Court ruled in her favor. She wore a head and neck brace as she was turned away from the Manila airport.

President Benigno Aquino III, Arroyo's successor, refused to comment, saying he did not want to be seen as trying to influence the court's decision on the petition for house arrest.

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said Friday that house arrest might be seen by the public as special treatment for Arroyo.

Arroyo's son, House Rep. Dato Arroyo, in a statement to reporters called for fair treatment for his mother. He said she has no plans to seek political asylum abroad and should be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

He decried what he said were the "nonstop villification of my mother" and "the never-ending cases" being filed against her.

Judge Jesus Mupas of the Pasay Regional Trial Court gave the commission and Arroyo until Tuesday to submit their motions and comments. In the meantime, clerk of court Joel Pelicano told reporters that Arroyo would remain at St. Luke's hospital.

Arroyo, who left office last year, is charged with ordering the rigging of 2007 congressional polls, which she denies. If convicted, she faces life imprisonment.

Aquino promised to uproot corruption in the Philippines and says he wants to start with Arroyo, accusing her of proliferating a culture of graft and eroding public trust in government.

The judge earlier ordered Arroyo's doctors at Manila's St. Luke's Medical Center to testify about her condition. Flaminiano objected, citing doctor-patient confidentiality and the fact she was no longer seeking a hospital stay, which the court had previously approved on humanitarian grounds and because of Arroyo's stature.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2011-11-25-AS-Philippines-Arroyo/id-9d02420919f24e1e8de0312abee41df0

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Mazda's Capacitor Based Automotive Regenerative Braking System ...






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Mazda?s Capacitor Based Automotive Regenerative Braking System


It is called 'i-ELOOP'.Wayne Gerdes - CleanMPG - Nov. 24, 2011

Mazda's 'i-ELOOP' regenerative braking system

Mazda released details on a groundbreaking regenerative braking system that uses a super capacitor in leiu of a battery for quick storage. The system, which Mazda calls 'i-ELOOP', will begin to appear in Mazda's vehicles in 2012. Mazda claims that in real-world driving conditions with frequent acceleration and braking, 'i-ELOOP' improves fuel economy by approximately 10 percent. We know better but there will always be an advantage with regenerative braking rather than throwing it away any time you have to step on the brake.

Mazda's regenerative braking system is unique because it uses a capacitor that temporarily stores large volumes of electricity. Compared to batteries, capacitors can be charged and discharged rapidly and are resistant to deterioration through prolonged use. 'i-ELOOP' efficiently converts the vehicle's kinetic energy into electricity as it decelerates, and uses the electricity to power the climate control, audio system and numerous other electrical components.

Regenerative braking systems are growing in popularity as a fuel saving technology. They use an electric motor or alternator to generate electricity as the vehicle decelerates, thereby recovering a portion of the vehicle's kinetic energy. Regenerative braking systems in hybrid vehicles generally use a large electric motor and dedicated battery.

Mazda developed its regenerative braking system to handle a large influx of current and slowly give it back. And they somehow did it without the use of a dedicated electric motor but instead of a reversing alternator which sounds to me like a dedicated motor generator by a different name?

'i-ELOOP' features a new 12-25V variable voltage alternator, a low-resistance electric double layer capacitor and a DC/DC converter. 'i-ELOOP' starts to recover kinetic energy the moment the driver lifts off the accelerator pedal and the vehicle begins to decelerate. The variable voltage alternator generates electricity at up to 25V for maximum efficiency before sending it to the Electric Double Layer Capacitor (EDLC) for storage. The capacitor, which has been specially developed for use in a vehicle, can be fully charged in seconds. The DC/DC converter steps down the electricity from 25V to 12V before it is distributed directly to the vehicle's electrical components. The system also charges the vehicle battery as necessary. 'i-ELOOP' operates whenever the vehicle decelerates, reducing the need for the engine to burn extra fuel to generate electricity. As a result, in "stop-and-go" driving conditions, fuel economy improves by approximately 10 percent.

There is no way to improve fuel economy by 10% through a 12-25V system but on the Japan Test cycles known to the world as magic pixie dust, maybe 10% is about right?

The name 'i-ELOOP' is an adaptation of "Intelligent Energy Loop" and represents Mazda's intention to efficiently cycle energy in an intelligent way.

'i-ELOOP' also works in conjunction with Mazda's unique 'i-stop' idling stop technology to extend the period that the engine can be shut off.

Mazda is working to maximize the efficiency of internal combustion engine vehicles with its groundbreaking SKYACTIV TECHNOLOGY. By combining this with i-stop, i-ELOOP and other electric devices that enhance fuel economy by eliminating unnecessary fuel consumption, Mazda is striving to deliver vehicles with excellent environmental performance.

SuperCap systems used for hybridization in R&D projects from the past found the Super Cap to be prohibitively expensive with the resultant payback smaller than what was hoped. Who knows, maybe Mazda has discovered the holy grail but when I hear of 12-25V systems returning a 10% increase in fuel efficiency, I will be just as skeptical as I am with SKYACTIV which so far has produced 7 more HP and the same highway fuel economy from the much hyped 2.0L in the new Mazda3 as the standard every day 2011/2012 Elantra with its MPFI 1.8L.

We will have to wait and see?

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Re: Mazda?s Capacitor Based Automotive Regenerative Braking System


Your skepticism is justified. I doubt even powering the alternator with magic would improve fuel economy by 10% in normal circumstances in a non-hybrid car. It would be possible if we assume unusually heavy electrical demands, and a lot of time idling or moving very slowly.


Last edited by RedylC94 : Yesterday at 02:58 AM.
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Re: Mazda?s Capacitor Based Automotive Regenerative Braking System


Regen is meaningful in that it recovers kinetic energy that would otherwise be turned
into waste heat. But it is a lossy system, due the energy conversions between wheel
and battery.

kinetic -> (wheels) -> mechanical -> (gen/alt) -> electrical -> (batt) -> chemical

I've read that in the Prius the energy recovery efficiency is ~40%. A smart Prius driver
minimizes the losses by using regen as little as possible by "driving without brakes',"
traffic and topography permitting. If you're really trying to drive efficiently, regen is a
measure of your mistakes in being caught going too fast in changing real world
conditions.

So, different drivers will see different amounts of regen and determing "real savings"
would require removing the human factor somehow.

Stopped in my Prius w/ScanGuage, I do notice a slow reduction in charge in the HV
battery as it feeds the 12V bus via the DC-to-DC converter. So, Madza's regen system
coupled with the i-Stop would provide an alternate energy source for the "housekeeping"
electrical loads when stopped. I wonder though if the small gains are worth the necessary
extra cost and complexity.

I expect to see the old "What's the payback period?" question come up soon.

All that said, Mazda is to be complemented in doing something to recover otherwise lost
energy. I'd guess that driving in the "Zoom-zoom" style would generate a lot of regen,
but very little energy recovered relative to the amount of fuel that propelled the zooming
in the first place.

.


Last edited by Rokeby : Yesterday at 09:15 AM.

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Re: Mazda?s Capacitor Based Automotive Regenerative Braking System


Quote:

The Prius system allows Toyota to gear it really tall-since the electric motor can kick in to prevent lugging.

Great point. The Prius normally uses the electric motor to get going from a dead stop (assuming the ICE is warmed up). I hadn't thought about the savings from higher gearing, but starting on electric also avoids gas-wasting high throttle/low rpm usage of the ICE.

I'm not a big fan of regen. As rokeby says, braking of any kind, regen or not, is often a sign of inefficient driving: you've wasted energy to get more momentum than you need.

Another problem with regen is that most often it's a high current/short time event. For example, braking to a stop sign or red light: 10-20 seconds of regen?? Batteries recapture charge better from longer, lower current events. The SOC in either of my cars rarely budges after a typical stop like this. Maybe a capacitor captures energy from these events better than a battery does.

What DOES show on the SOC is regen during long descents and gradual decels on long freeway offramps, but these opportunities are less frequent.

I sometimes think that the main advantage of regen is that it reduces wear on the friction brakes so less money spent on brake jobs!!

Mazda's iStop autostop technology seems really great. Apparently they haven't used it more because of the demands on the battery during autostop, and this cap storage is a missing piece of the puzzle.


Last edited by lightfoot : Yesterday at 01:19 PM.

Quote:

I'm not a big fan of regen. As rokeby says, braking of any kind, regen or not, is often a sign of inefficient driving: you've wasted energy to get more momentum than you need.

Another problem with regen is that most often it's a high current/short time event. For example, braking to a stop sign or red light: 10-20 seconds of regen?? Batteries recapture charge better from longer, lower current events. The SOC in either of my cars rarely budges after a typical stop like this. Maybe a capacitor captures energy from these events better than a battery does.

Ok, guys. Step down from your hypermile horse for a moment: brakes are there for a reason. You will need to use them, and likely more in the future as traffic density increases. There's not a way for our road system support 380 million hypermilers unless we leave the driving to computers, otherwise you'll have to always maintain 10x extra spacing for the one person out there that doesn't...

As for the technology, one of the more inefficient pieces of regen braking is the charge loss to the battery. Charging to a capacitor is far more efficient, although not as efficient as directly spinning a mechanical flywheel. In any event, Mazda will be able to get more that the 40% recovery number of the Prius's.

Where Mazda's mild hybrid will still lose out is the lack of a good EV only mode, but this will be as effective as Honda's IMA. At the end of the day, that's all it's about, is using less energy to support the inefficiencies of having a human driver that doesn't want to be efficient.

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Re: Mazda?s Capacitor Based Automotive Regenerative Braking System


I think lightfoot has the key in mentioning i-stop. i-stop works with piston positioning instead of using an auxiliary battery. So, in addition to the gains by use of a smart alternator, and, I presume, higher efficiency in the charge and discharge process, many of the gains with i-eloop may simply be making up for deficiencies in i-stop.

The cost of the capacitors is obviously a key issue. However, just as the Prius' HSD saves by displacing multiple conventional parts, i-stop plus i-eloop displaces the auxiliary start/stop battery, and should reduce the draw from the main 12V battery and extends its life. Then, an extremely durable capacitor would have value at end of vehicle life. However, if large capacitor is heavy if could negatively affecting fuel economy. To become a dominant system the capacitor has to be durable and cheap enough to beat the displaced battery-based systems. But for Mazda's purpose, it just has to be cheap and durable enough to be able to make a profit on it: it does have a coolness factor on its side. I hope it at least indicates some price drops in large capacitors.

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Re: Mazda?s Capacitor Based Automotive Regenerative Braking System


Quote:

Ok, guys. Step down from your hypermile horse for a moment: brakes are there for a reason. You will need to use them, and likely more in the future as traffic density increases. There's not a way for our road system support 380 million hypermilers unless we leave the driving to computers, otherwise you'll have to always maintain 10x extra spacing for the one person out there that doesn't...

Umm, this IS the hypermiling site, so why shouldn't we be on that horse??

Other thoughts:
- I think all hypermilers DO use brakes, we just try to drive so that we are not forced to use them, which also happens to be a big part of safe defensive driving.
- Population of the USA is about 310 million, not all are drivers. About 190 million licensed drivers in 2000.
- I'm baffled why hypermiling would put a strain on the road system. Surely lower speeds would allow increased traffic density??
- Between 30,000 and 40,000 people die in traffic accidents on US highways every year, even larger numbers of serious injuries, so what we're doing now isn't working very well. Maybe it's time to change things??

Quote:

At the end of the day, that's all it's about, is using less energy to support the inefficiencies of having a human driver that doesn't want to be efficient.

Using technology to support unsafe driving by people that don't want to change to safer driving behaviors hasn't worked, so why believe that technology will work any better to make them more efficient? The number of people that manage to get a Prius down to 40mpg is a good hint. Humans are remarkably good at circumventing technology.

It would make more sense to put effort into improved driver training and testing*, retesting for relicensing, traffic enforcement, etc. Changing driving behavior can improve both safety and fuel efficiency at the same time. And lower speeds could enable engineers to design cars so that they are just as crash-worthy at the lower speeds as current cars are at high speeds, only much lighter/smaller, which would improve fuel economy.

So I'm stayin' on that horse, thanks!

* - Given the current political climate, it's unlikely that government would do this, but maybe insurance companies would. In the motorcycle arena, insurance companies more or less force you to take motorcycle safety training before they will insure you, and those courses are supported by the manufacturers and are very good.

I'll leave it there, this is way way OT, apologies!!


Last edited by lightfoot : Yesterday at 01:56 PM.


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Lithuania to dismantle troubled bank

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) ? Lithuania's central bank said it would dismantle a bank controlled by a Russian businessman after regulators discovered large sums of money missing.

Lithuanian prosecutors said Friday that Raimondas Baranauskas, minority owner of Snoras Bank, has been detained in London after they had issued a European arrest warrant on Wednesday.

Prosecutors could not say whether Russian citizen Vladimir Antonov, the bank's majority owner, was also detained. Antonov is the owner of the Portsmouth football club.

The Bank of Lithuania said late Thursday that the dismantling of Snoras was the best solution for the Baltic state's financial system and economy, which have been jolted after the bank was nationalized and its operations halted.

Bank chief Vitas Vasiliauskas said should not waste taxpayers' money trying to help "a plane that won't fly."

"There is no other way to solve this situation," he said.

Hundreds of millions of euros (dollars) are believed to have been siphoned off from Snoras and Latvijas Krajbanka, a subsidiary bank in neighboring Latvia.

Janis Brazovskis, an official with Latvia's Finance and Capital Markets Commission who was appointed to oversee Latvijas Krajbanka, said Wednesday that Antonov's failed attempt to acquire the troubled Swedish automaker Saab might have triggered the downfall of the two Baltic banks.

He said that approximately 100 million lats ($200 million) were siphoned from the bank to increase its charter capital and finance Antonov's investment projects ? including the unsuccessful takeover of Saab.

Deposit holders in both countries are now forced to wait in long lines to withdraw money from cash machines, while companies and municipalities have seen the working capital virtually disappear.

Still, authorities in both Lithuania and Latvia say the two banks' collapse does not pose a systemic risk since they are mid-sized and the two states have ample reserves to guarantee deposits.

Latvijas Krajbanka was Latvia's 10th largest bank by assets after it was taken over by regulators on Monday.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2011-11-25-EU-Lithuania-Bank-Woes/id-a7db1ca05f6749f5b98b5d78cff80dac

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Actress Sienna Miller tells inquiry of media abuse (omg!)

British actress Sienna Miller, arrives to testify at the Leveson inquiry at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011. The Leveson inquiry is Britain's media ethics probe that was set up in the wake of the scandal over phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch's News of the World, which was shut in July after it became clear that the tabloid had systematically broken the law. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

LONDON (AP) ? Actress Sienna Miller told a media ethics inquiry Thursday that she was left paranoid and scared by years of relentless tabloid pursuit that ranged from paparazzi outside her house to the hacking of her mobile phone.

Miller said the surveillance, and a stream of personal stories about her in the tabloids, led her to accuse friends and family of leaking information to the media. In fact, her cell phone voice mails had been hacked at Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid.

Miller, 29, became a tabloid staple when she dated fellow actor Jude Law. She said the constant scrutiny left her feeling "very violated and very paranoid and anxious, constantly."

"I felt like I was living in some sort of video game," she said.

She called the paparazzi focus on her terrifying.

"For a number of years I was relentlessly pursued by 10 to 15 men, almost daily," she said. "Spat at, verbally abused.

"I would often find myself, at the age of 21, at midnight, running down a dark street on my own with 10 men chasing me. And the fact they had cameras in their hands made that legal."

Miller, the star of "Layer Cake" and "Alfie," was one of the first celebrities to take the News of the World to court over illegal eavesdropping. In May, the newspaper agreed to pay her 100,000 pounds ($160,000) to settle claims her phone had been hacked.

The newspaper's parent company now faces dozens of lawsuits from alleged hacking victims.

Miller, who looked confident as she gave evidence at London's Royal Courts of Justice, said challenging Murdoch's media conglomerate had been a difficult decision.

"I was very nervous about taking on an empire that was richer and far more powerful than I will ever be," she said. "It was very daunting."

Prime Minister David Cameron set up the inquiry amid a still-unfolding scandal over illegal eavesdropping by the Murdoch-owned tabloid. Murdoch closed down the News of the World in July after evidence emerged that it had illegally accessed the mobile phone voice mails of celebrities, politicians and even crime victims in its search of scoops.

More than a dozen News of the World journalists and editors have been arrested over allegations of illegal eavesdropping, and the scandal has also claimed the jobs of two top London police officers, Cameron's media adviser and several senior Murdoch executives.

The inquiry, led by Judge Brian Leveson, plans to issue a report next year and could recommend major changes to media regulation in Britain.

Miller took the stand after another witness was allowed to give evidence in private. The courtroom was cleared of press and members of the public as the witness, identified only as HJK, testified about suffering intrusions while in a relationship with a well-known figure, whose identity was also kept secret.

"Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling is due to give evidence later Thursday about the media intrusion on her life. The tribunal will also hear from former Formula One boss Max Mosley, who has campaigned for a privacy law since his interest in sadomasochistic sex was exposed in the tabloid.

High-profile witnesses still to come include CNN celebrity interviewer Piers Morgan, who has denied using phone hacking while he was editor of the Daily Mirror newspaper.

The hearings have heard allegations of media malpractice and intrusion that extend far beyond the News of the World.

Witnesses have included celebrities like actor Hugh Grant and ordinary people pursued in times of grief, including the parents of murdered 13-year-old Milly Dowler, whose voice mails were accessed by the News of the World after she disappeared in 2002.

Her parents said the hacking gave them false hope their daughter was still alive during the investigation into her disappearance.

On Wednesday, the parents of missing child Madeleine McCann said they were left distraught by false stories and the publication of private information by the tabloid press.

Kate and Gerry McCann told the inquiry they felt powerless in the face of stories, based on concocted evidence, suggesting they had killed their daughter. Madeleine had vanished when she was three during the British family's 2007 vacation in Portugal.

___

Leveson Inquiry: http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/

Jill Lawless can be reached at: http://twitter.com/JillLawless

British actress Sienna Miller, center, arrives to testify at the Leveson inquiry at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011. The Leveson inquiry is Britain's media ethics probe that was set up in the wake of the scandal over phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch's News of the World, which was shut in July after it became clear that the tabloid had systematically broken the law. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/entertainment/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/omg_rss/rss_omg_en/news_actress_sienna_miller_tells_inquiry_media_abuse113523958/43703756/*http%3A//omg.yahoo.com/news/actress-sienna-miller-tells-inquiry-media-abuse-113523958.html

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