mardi, avril 16, 2013

A new use for tabacco leaves


How to quit smoking without posing a threat to the tobacco industry (already in the decline!!):



mercredi, avril 03, 2013

Brazil immigration booming

According to a source there are more foreigners in Brazil than brazilian abroad for the first time ever!!
The source says the number of people moving to Brazil has significantly risen over the last decade. Data within the latest Registro Nacional de Estrangeiros (RNE), a document issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice, showed that the number of legal foreign residents has increased from 22,418 in 2002, to 1,466,584 in 2012. Analysts are attributing the figures to Brazil's increasing level of economic stability and government legislation. One possible explanation is the multiple pre-sal discoveries off the south-coast, which have stimulated the Brazilian oil industry and attracted companies from all over the world. “Brazil is the new hub of global petroleum. Anyone who works in the field has to be here now,” Joe Lochridge, a commercial director of an American company that drills and exports Brazilian oil, told O Globo. Yeah, I'm in the right place I believe!!!

mardi, avril 02, 2013

Energy factbook


Currently, 52 per cent of Planet Earth's daily energy consumption is expended on transportation:
  • cars make up 25%
  • planes, trains, trucks and ships 27%. 
That other 27% is globally embracing and incentivising liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the extent that a thousand ship LNG fleet is possible by 2020 and the first LNG-powered commercial flight took place this year. 
Heat and power generation, which in many countries is already fulfilled by natural gas, makes up a further 16% of barril per day consumption.
Up to 68% of global oil needs could be supplanted by natural gas, supply dependent, of course.
Even as oil becomes "too difficult", advances in nanomaterials may soon allow greatly enhanced oil recovery by reducing the adhesion of hydrocarbon molecules to rock, and nanoscale sensors are allowing us to interpret wells in a more acute way then ever before. Still there is around 60% of oil that is till date unextractable though the advances in technology makes it drop every year a little bit more (see figure on the left...