Our lead story this month is an exciting energy harvesting discovery since it points the way for much of the future energy trends today.  Similar to the Moddel and Degenais rectennas you can see in my BEM talk, the #1 story is closer to the Delft and Eindhoven Universities' energy harvester from the August FE eNews with almost the same resonant frequency around 900 MHz. However, this metamaterial product advertises a whopping 37% efficiency, competing with solar PV, and can be ganged together in series for energy harvesting upgrade.

      Every so often we get a question about dark energy and its relation to the quantum vacuum. More and more physicists are buying into the fundamental nature of dark energy based on quantum mechanics zero point energy, rather than the speculative "dark" implications of the unknown that cosmologists would have us believe. At the same time that the most sensitive experimental measurement of dark matter at Sanford Underground Lab has failed to find any WIMPs in our solar system, the simplest dark energy hypothesis, that it has remained constant over time, is also coming into question in Story #2. Our IRI position is that the dark energy phenomena of the cosmological constant that is pushing the galaxies apart in an accelerated fashion is a quantum vacuum variation of the Repulsive Casimir force, which is known to depend heavily on geometry from the work of Dr. Jordan Maclay who found the relation of negative and positive Casimir forces with a NASA grant, as reported in Zero Point Energy, Fuel of the Future.

      Our Story #3 reflects an emerging electrotherapy in bioenergetics that IRI is advocating. Fighting paralysis with electricity is an ongoing field of research involving neuronal stimulation as reported in New Scientist as far back as 2008 "Broken nerves are fixed in a flash". The more recent book on the subject, The Spark of Life, Electricity in the Human Body by Frances Ashcroft released in 2012 also touches on paralysis and electricity.

      I just subscribed to another news service called GreenTechMedia.com that has a wealth of information about solar and other green technologies. How valuable can this be? Our Story #4 shows the result of a study performed on West-facing vs. South-facing rooftop solar PV systems. The surprise is that West-facing panels can produce about 50% more electricity during peak demand, which can be monetarily valuable in some areas.

     Now the Story #5 however probably could have been the lead story for many reasons. The most important is that it displays a new trend of eight (8) states in this country conspiring to boost the use of electric cars and other zero emission vehicles (ZEV), including lower electricity rates for home charging stations and more charging stations statewide. With electricity costs already about 2/3 less per mile than gasoline, there is a good incentive to consider an electric car.

Sincerely,