Universal Pultrusions, LLC
The Ultimate in Fiberglass Reinforced Polymer Door Systems
Strong as Steel and Corrosion Defiant
100 Tillco Dr., POBox 1289, Marshall, AR 72650
voice: 870-448-4406 ~ fax: 870-448-5120
info@unipulllc.com

The difference between 'winners' and 'losers' is the ability to view obstacles as opportunities. ~~~

Marketing Accountability

According to Michael Dunn (author of “The Marketing Accountability Imperative”), "The vast majority of companies cannot actually calculate the ROI of their marketing spending programs to uncover the hard truth about their performance."

Dunn, who is CEO of Prophet, a marketing resource service provider, says that a survey done by his company "suggests that as few as 19 percent of companies can consistently and accurately determine what they are getting — if anything — from untold millions in marketing spending."

Dunn asserts that unlike marketing, “other complex business functions, such as R&D or IT, are characterized by learned skills that smart executives could theoretically master if they put their minds to it. But this is not the case with marketing.”

This distinction, says Dunn, is because marketing “balances learned skills and hard-to-define intrinsic skills” which are reliant “on art as well as science.”

Marketing, says Dunn, requires a long-term investment in brand building which must continue with consistency during periods of earning shortfalls and requires other divisions of the company (sales, R&D, customer service, etc.) to recognize that:

(1) They must invest more in R&D, physical plant infrastructure and civic outreach to create new sources of customer value (such as financing, partnering, and service) so that marketing has something tangible to promote;

(2) Earnings shortfalls tend to (unjustifiably) increase expectations placed on marketing performance, whereas marketing's actual performance may or may not have changed at all and may or may not be a provocateur of the downturn.

Marketing accountability is a long-term proposition, says Dunn, which requires leadership with both the vision and the executive mandate to implement a multiyear corporate journey during which “accountability without authority” is not an option.

Citing a senior marketer survey conducted by the Marketing Leadership Council, Dunn points out the typical downfall of the majority of marketing efforts: That the chief marketing officer does not control many of the various elements that contribute to market-share success such as pricing, sales force training, R&D and customer service.

Another critical flaw is not allowing brand-building programs to run their full multi-year course as initially envisioned and line-itemed. Abrupt changes cloud data and make legitimate ROI evaluation of effectiveness impossible. ~~~

Self-Healing Polymers

Requiring no external intervention to initiate mending, embedded microcapsules rip open when the self-repairing polymer coating is scratched, releasing silica-based nanoparticles that trigger self-repair by simple exposure to ultraviolet light. ~~~

How many types of composites are there, how are they made, what are synthetic polymer resins, what are engineered composites, what are fiber-reinforced polymers and what effect are super-composites having on society? Find answers to these questions and more in UniPul's Guide to Understanding Composites.

Invisibility Cloaking

Researchers at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona have recently designed a peculiar material — called a dc metamaterial — that has the property of making objects wrapped in it undetectable to magnetic and very low-frequency electromagnetic fields. The breakthrough brings the dream of "invisibility cloaking" closer to reality and could have important repercussions in both the military and medical fields. ~gizmag

21st Century Suffragettes?

According to The Washington Post, the "sexy new discussion in policy circles around the world, thanks to the recession, is whether a significant shift of power from men to women is underway -- or whether it should be."

The numbers make a compelling case: Companies with more women in senior management roles make more money.

At least half a dozen studies, from a broad spectrum of organizations such as Columbia University, McKinsey & Co., Goldman Sachs, Ernst & Young, and Pepperdine University, document a clear relationship between women in senior management and corporate financial success. By all measures, more women means better performance.

Companies with women at the top were 18 to 69 percent more profitable than the median companies in their industries. Companies with three or more women in senior management positions score higher in overall organizational excellence and those with three or more women on their boards outperformed the competition on all measures by at least 40 percent.

While gender stereotypes are neither  politically correct nor factually accurate, the research broadly finds that males tend to be genetically more competitive and risk-taking. Females, on the other hand, seem to be wired for collaboration, rely on long-term strategies and aim for measurable long-term results.

The "diversity prediction theorem" is part of the most cutting-edge thinking about best business practices. Scott Page, an economist at the University of Michigan, uses mathematical models to demonstrate that a diverse group will solve a complicated business problem better than a homogeneous group. In fact, diversity is even more important than expertise. In other words, "a bunch of white male brainiacs" won't usually reach the best conclusions.

That's why companies such as Wal-Mart, Capital One, Best Buy, Sun Microsystems and Sara Lee, to name just a few, say they've discovered that allowing people to work the way they want -- from home; at night; from the sidelines of the soccer field -- actually increases productivity by an average of 40 percent.

Bottom line, all those right-brain skills disparaged as soft in the roaring '90s are suddenly 21st-century-hot, while cocky is experiencing a slow fizzle. ~~~

According to "Reading the Economic Landscape," by Glenn R. DiNella, June 2009, Total Landscape Care, recent reports from Standard and Poor's, the Consumer Confidence Index and the U.S. Labor Department show hints of economic improvement.

Additionally, the magazine's survey of its own readership showed an overwhelming 70.3% of respondents were confident to very confident that a healthy comeback will proceed throughout the second half of 2009. ~~~

A Tale of Two Brothers

Brothers Keith Jensen and Kevin Jensen, co-owners of Metalogic and Universal Pultrusions

As Unipul celebrates its 5th anniverary and Metalogic approaches 20, the Jensen brothers reflect on their manufacturing career: “We grew Metalogic from a welding and fix it shop to a strategy for successful niche-market manufacturing,” said Kevin Jensen, co-owner of Metalogic, Inc., located in Flippin, Arkansas near the state's northern border with Missouri. Read more... ~~~

Be Happy, See More

Happy people — those viewing life through the proverbial rose colored glasses — see more of the world, literally, than their glum neighbors. Researchers monitored the visual cortex using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Good moods, they report, expand the window of visual information; bad moods narrow it. In other words, scientists say happy people actually "see" more than crabby people. ~Science Daily

Safe Drinking Water

According to Environmental Expert, nanotechnology offers solutions to meeting global water needs. Processes to control matter at an atomic or molecular level promise to reduce or eliminate contaminants in water and could help double sustainable access to safe drinking water worldwide by the year 2015.

Cloud Computing & SaaS

According to IT Outsourcing Magazine, 'cloud' is the new buzzword of office connectivity and productivity. But what, exactly, is 'cloud computing' anyway?

It all started with SaaS (Software as a Service) and software vendors realizing that they could increase their marketshare by charging less. Not a new idea, but definitely a new approach for IT. 

The idea is simple: Not every customer uses or needs 100% of a product's functionality. Realistically, maybe they need only 10% – but have to pay for 100% in order to use the software at all.

Thus arose the concept of 'software as a service' (SaaS), a marketing/packaging model which implies that if you only use 10% of a product, you only pay 10% of the price.

The term 'cloud computing' refers to the idea of bundling select elements of various software applications (data storage/backup services, spam filtering, accounting applications, etc.) as custom tailored SaaS packages and calling it a 'computing cloud'. ~~~

Find more news briefs posted to our blog IndustrialDoors.US

Lucintel, a premier global market research and management consulting firm, has recognized our customer Plasti-Fab for 40 years of specialized fiberglass manufacturing. Plasti-Fab develops innovative corrosion resistant equipment for water and wastewater treatment and control, including such products as: flumes, gages, gates, manholes, stop logs, and more. As the company has evolved and expanded,  their fiberglass reinforced plastic (FRP) composites expertise has been cited as visionary; providing solutions for critical industrial demands. ~~~

METALOGIC HOSTS ANNUAL APPRECIATION FISH-FRY (pictorial)

Has it really gotten that bad?

According to the FBI, while violent crime offenses (rape, murder, robbery) declined nationwide from 2007 to 2008, mortgage scams, corporate fraud and public corruption have been on the upswing.

According to the FBI's website, this is because the people caught red-handed running the scams believe that everyone (yes, everyone) is doing similarly underhanded things so they assumed it is "normal and therefore legal."

Addressing this "groupthink and greed" syndrome, the FBI reports that when their New York agents busted 13 people last week for mortgage scams involving properties worth more than $10 million, many of those arrested claimed they were just making money the same way as everyone else.

This new brand of 'normal' includes such routine practices as lying, tricking, defaulting on promises and deliberately falsifying reports in order to pocket big bucks.

Addressing the lack of ethical accountability in today's marketplace, the boardroom, and the halls of government, FBI Director Robert Mueller said that many of today’s financial crimes that amount to billions of dollars in losses (like the Madoff debacle) “once would have been unthinkable” in terms of what used to be called 'personal integrity'. ~~~

Back from whence it came

Agricultural plastics (pots, greenhouse covers, food service containers, and agricultural film) have long been sent to landfill because they are too dirty to recycle. Now, however, Agri-Plas of Oregon has developed a process to convert  plastic waste  back to crude oil. The plastic is burned at 1,100 F; the released gases are then condensed to produce oil. Agri-Plas recently delivered their first tanker (8,200 gallons) to a refinery for its conversion into gasoline and are breaking ground on a facility to add capacity in hopes of delivering a tanker a day. ~~~

Find more news briefs posted to our blog IndustrialDoors.US

What are Specifications?

This is a great monograph on specifications, written as continuing education to help architects understand specs including their formatting. The opening line is: “Everyone knows that nobody looks at a spec until there is a problem in the field, right? The contractor is doing something questionable, the harried architect opens the spec, hoping that the spec writer has written the language they need to back them up, and voila, there it is!” Pass this link around to everyone in your company that works with specs and to your reps and distributors. ~Colin Gilboy, Publisher 4specs.com

A Good Marriage Takes Work

Biopolymers and injection molding are a new couple trying to work out the quirks of their relationship. Consumers want their plastics made with renewable resins, and the split from petrochemical-based thermoplastics will not be heartbreaking. But PTOnline reports getting all the factors right — temperature, moisture levels, screw and injection speeds, plus flow rates — is new territory for many companies.~~~

New Product Announcement

Our corrosion defiant adjustable doorframe works where others won’t. Whether retrofit or new construction, this frame is factory configured to fit any wall up to 12” thick. Available with either a 2” or 4” face, manufactured with homogenous glass fiber reinforced isophthalic polyester resin with a 65/35 reinforcement to resin ratio, this composite polymer doorframe delivers the same benefits of steel with none of the drawbacks. Immune to magnetism and rust, pultruded FRP materials resist chemicals, salt air, physical abuse, chronic moisture, bacteria and radiation and will never delaminate, chalk, craze, fuz or warp. Visit UniPul during WEFTEC.09 at booth 1557.

Introducing....
Since the advent of the World Wide Web it has been understood that 'content is king'. That is, the usefulness, clarity, and appropriateness of the information posted to a website in context of the visitors and clients the website purports to serve is a critical factor of the website's effectiveness.

Also, the arrangement, grouping and categorizing of this content has much to do with how useful a site is to the folks who visit. Is sought-after information readily accessible? Do graphics accurately illustrate concepts? Is text-copy easy to comprehend?

Today's technology-rich marketplace breeds  information overload, making the digestion of data and processing of tasks difficult. And as an increasing number of people logon to the Internet to conduct necessary research, procure vital resources and develop essential business relations, an equally increasing number of product purveyors clamor for increased marketshare.

Daunting and confusing, exhausting and exasperating, confounding and frustrating: These (and a few four-letter expletives) are the adjectives many of us use to describe the process of surfing the virtual world in quest of those bits of info needed to make critical business decisions.

Well... (dramatic drum roll here....)

With our own inimitable style, we humbly offer a 'divide and conquer' solution to this debacle with the debut of our four brand new affiliate websites:

FRPDOORS.BIZ is streamlined with our repeat customers in mind. When you know you want pultruded FRP, this site makes it easy to place an order online or by printing a form to fax.

INDUSTRIALDOORS.US is the blog to visit when you want to know (or comment on) 'the buzz' going on behind industrial doors. Energy, Environment, the Economy, Human Resources mix-and-match alongside news about manufacturing with a special leaning toward the burgeoning world of Plastics and Composites.

FIBERGLASSDOORS.INFO is your place to research the features, advantages and benefits offered by FRP materials in general and a variety of fiberglass door manufacturers specifically, making it easy to compare things like warranties and better understand things like resin/glass ratios, thermal properties and other FRP dynamics.

INDUSTRIALFIBERGLASSDOORS.COM is where you will find direct links to everything you always wanted to know about our industrial fiberglass doors: How they're made, what they're made of, what our manufacturing process is, etc.

UNIPULLLC.COM continues to serve as our corporate homebase, showcasing information about our company, our community and our manufacturing team.

Winner's Circle Network
Lou Tice, founder, The Pacific Institute

So, what's the answer? Get up, get moving, and conquer your fears by doing what you need to do. Being ruled by fear is not living safely. In fact, it's not living at all. ~~~

New Advances in Solid State Data Storage

According to researchers at UCBerkeley, their team effort with UMass Amherst has resulted in a copolymer technology that could store 250 DVDs worth of data in an area the size of a quarter.

The process involves cutting crystalline sapphire at an angle and heating it to 1300-1500 C to form a sawtooth surface. This new method to assemble nanoscale elements could transform the data storage industry. ~~~

Is this email a scam or hoax?

Ask the "Scam-O-Matic"! If you have received an email that you suspect to be a scam, you can copy and paste the complete email message of the suspect email into an online form and the Scam-O-Matic software determines if it looks like a known scam.

Another good site for detecting fraudulent motives is Snopes where a simple search for keywords from the suspect email (ie: Montana Restaurant) will quickly distinguish rumor and fraud from fact. ~~~

Fiberglass doors 101: The replacement of steel doors (personnel doors, utility doors, flush doors) in caustic, abusive and/or corrosive (indoor or outdoor) environments.

Research establishes that industrial-duty FRP (fiberglass) doors give longer service, deliver greater ROI and are generally kinder to the environment.

Doors, doorframes, louvers and other fiberglass products come in two classes: (a) those manufactured by the form-molded gelcoat method, and (b) those which are manufactured by the pultrusion method.

Pultrusion does for conventional FRP products what extrusion does for aluminum and what vulcanization does for rubber: Causes molecules to link in a way that creates a more stable and durable product.

We manufacture the world's only fully pultruded FRP door -- The UniPul Corrosion Defiant Door System. Why do we say the pultrusion method delivers benefits superior to the gelcoat method of fiberglass (frp) manufacturing...??? clickhere~~~

A Workable System to Replace Energy Guzzling A/Cs?
The new Coolerado produces 6 tons of cooling using only 600 watts -- that's about half the amount of electricity used by a typical hand-held hair dryer. The downside, however, is that these units only cool and do not dehumidify and therefore are not recommend for high humidity climates. Also, the evaporative cooling system uses about 4 gallons of water per hour (roughly 96 gallons per day).

Hydrogen Town
Rapid economic development in Asia has accumulated over recent decades in serious health and economic concerns. To stave off unwelcome consequences, the Fukuoka Hydrogen Town project brings fuel cell cogeneration technology to 150 homes in Maebaru City, Japan. Each 1 kW systems, fueled by hydrogen in LPG form, promises to supply roughly 60% to 80% of the electricity a homeowner needs for lighting, bathing, cooking, and technology use. The downside is cost which currently runs about $32,500 per unit -- which over 30 years averages only about $95 per month but does not include the cost of financing, maintenance or the LPG fuel. Thus the importance of demonstration projects, such as the Fukuoka project, which also endeavors to reduce residential energy consumption by about 30 percent. ~~~

Where the growth is
According to a new Borrell Associates report, by the end of 2013 advertising expenditures by small-to-medium U.S. businesses will grow by almost 34 percent from 2008 levels. Considering that roughly 80% of new jobs are created by and workers are employed with small-to-medium sized companies, this bodes of increased employment opportunities over the next four years. ~~~

Where the sales are
To locate suppliers, components and services, 73% of those participating in a recent GlobalSpec survey reported spending at least three hours per week surfing the Internet and 43% are spending six or more hours a week doing business online. ~~~

Gemasolar Uses Molten Salt

Seville, Spain will be the site of the first utility-scale solar thermal power plant with molten salt heat-storage and central tower technology. Expected to be operational in 2011, the Gemasolar plant will generate 110,000 MWh/yr from 2,500 heliostats focusing up to 95% of solar radiation onto a collector tower. Heat trapped by molten salt in the tower is converted to steam to drive a turbine, and excess heat will transfer to a storage tank to enable nighttime or cloudy day operation. As reported in The Engineer, this technology should support 15 hours of power production. ~~~

Knock-knock joke

"Knock"

"Who's there?"

"Opportunity!"

Christine, I have enjoyed the e-mail and information. However I wanted to share that the [quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln, see below] should be corrected...per the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency:

The "Ten Points" appear every February 12 in newspaper ads honoring Abraham Lincoln. In fact, these aphorisms are from the pen of Reverend William John Henry Boetcker (1873-1962):

* You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
* You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
* You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
* You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
* You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer.
* You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
* You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
* You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
* You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence.
* You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

Respectfully,
Edward Neiman, AIA
Anderson, Eckstein, and Westrick Inc.

The referenced quote as we published it with mistaken attribution:

"You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing what they could and should do for themselves."
                                       ~Abraham Lincoln

Sustainability, Resilience and Life Cycle ROI: Stop wasting money and start talking sense!

Industry standards are in flux. New standards cater to a ‘lean/green’ ideology. USGBC, LEED, Carbon Credit Trading, Energy Star, FEMP, the ‘triple bottom line’ and a plethora of other buzzword-acronyms are all being touted as synonymous with systematically minimizing both financial and environmental costs while at the same time maximizing human serviceability, well-being, effectiveness, prosperity and benefit.

In terms of real-world technology, engineering specifications and opinionated experts, however, there is little true agreement about what actually works.

Complicating the matter, nearly all ‘energy efficiency’ and ‘environmental friendliness’ standards are voluntary and self-certifying. That is, the company which manufactures the product contracts with a private lab to perform various tests and certify that the product meets certain criteria. In addition to this being somewhat akin to putting the fox in charge of the henhouse, such testing is usually very expensive and thus may prohibit innovative products produced by smaller manufacturers from gaining credible shelf-space in the lean/green market.

Still, some facts are self-evident and a little common sense goes a long way toward sifting fantasy from reality. To accomplish a stated objective, Ċ the first step is to be precisely clear about what is to be achieved. The second step is to understand where we are on the reality map in relationship to the long-term expectation and goal.

The wisdom of ‘natural systems’ is both efficient and effective, creating value that produces no waste at all. That is, everything in the natural environment, from leaf litter to road kill, has ‘food/energy' value for some other critter, plant or microbe in the system.

To eliminate waste while continuing to create value, leadership must heed this natural wisdom by adopting organizational standards that ensure accuracy, competency and effectiveness. To deliver benefits in terms of performance, the learning curve of the transition process must be short and easy.

Economic sustainability has always been a critical core value of company methodology, however that benchmark has been applied only to financial balance sheets. The developing model considers economics on par with ecology and social equity, giving each aspect of the overall 'natural system' credence and equal weight at every decision-making opportunity. [see also: Economics In One Lesson]~~~

Red tape was once used to bind Civil War-era veterans' files. Cutting the red tape was the only way to get into the files to determine the benefits for which the vets were eligible.

"It has become obvious over the last 18 months that the materials and technologies that were once thought to be 'nitchy' are rapidly becoming the mainstays of modern construction philosophy," said Margaret Ratchford, Unipul Sales & Customer Service Director.

"Our one-day program is 'information intensive'," she continued, "grounded in a serious investigation of current trends and a detailed examination of how mounting regulatory pressures are influencing procurement practices." Download PDF Registration Form ~~~

Going green is only part of the solution... there are other colors.
By Ed Neiman, AIA, Anderson, Eckstein, and Westrick, Inc.

AEW (Anderson, Eckstein, and Westrick) will continue over the next weeks and months to provide a flow of information regarding “sustainable design” (just as it did when it began providing architectural and engineering services in 1987 and 1968, respectively).

At this point we can say that regardless of whether our clients go through the green rating system (achieving LEED certification), that they can achieve many of the same green benefits.

Good design for us includes: selecting good sites, listening to our clients, understanding project needs, and offering solutions that are responsive to project objectives and goals. At AEW, green benefits are just one part of good design.

While we could expand on all of the design colors, here are just a few color swatches. We start every project with an open mind and a blank or “white” piece of paper, adding our experience and expertise. Our goal for every project is to engage the participants by making them an integral part. Perhaps their excitement can be represented in the color “red”. As project guide, we also issue “yellow” warning signs, when project re-direction keeps us on course and away from hazards. And when it comes to thinking long term, with out-of the box and the sky is the limit “blue “ ideas; our goals will always be high.

To say that we detail in black and white, but always dream in color, may be oversimplified. We however design in all the colors…not just green. ~~~

(Image: University of Zurich/Wiley Vch)

New "super-hydrophobic" fabric repels water
Thanks to a fabric coating made of silicone nanofilaments with a spiky structure, water droplets are prevented from soaking through the polyester fabric underneath. As pictured above, drops of water stay as spherical balls on top of the fabric and a sheet of the material need only be tilted by 2 degrees from horizontal for them to roll off like marbles.

In part this magic results because the nanofilaments also trap a layer of air known as a plastron. This fine layer of air ensures that water never comes into contact with the fabric which, even when submerged in water for two months still remains dry to the touch. ~~~

Average cost of purchase order According to the 2008 Aberdeen report "A Comparison of Supplier Enablement around the World", only 34% of purchase orders are transmitted electronically in North America. They also report that the average cost to a company for processing per conventional paper PO is $37.45 in North America, which drops to $23.83 when processed electronically. ~~~

Nanoemulsion potent against deadly superbugs
An ultra-fine oil-and-water emulsion may succeed where antibiotics fail, according to University of Michigan scientists. Highly encouraging evidence shows that a non-toxic super-fine oil-and-water emulsion is a potent killer of bacteria such as Streptococcus pneumoniae, H. influenzae and gonorrhea, of viruses such as herpes simplex and influenza A, and also of several fungi. The nanoemulsion appears to kill bacteria by disrupting the outer membranes of the invading cells so even antibiotic-resistant microbes are quelled.

Did you hear the one about the sweet-thang that went to the local automotive mechanic asking for "a new 710 knob" for her car...?!?!?

Bill Fox (seated at far end of table, above), Business Consultant for the Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center (ASBTDC) of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, was the featured speaker at a business development resources program held recently at Universal Pultrusions LLC in Marshall, Arkansas.

Fox overviewed the support services offered by his organization, which include free consulting services on the ‘how-tos’ of starting, financing and marketing a business.

Fox also handed out literature covering a variety of low-cost training seminars, ranging from Web Page Design and QuickBooks a Business Boot Camp. He spoke highly of about the Guerilla Marketing seminar which is designed to help business get through tough times.

Fox, who holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from Florida Atlantic University and an MBA from West Virginia University, leads several of the educational seminars and works directly with clients on various types of issues such as business plan development, financial management and SBA loan programs offered to start-ups and established businesses with the purpose to facilitate regional economic development. Similar programs are available in every state as part of a national network of more than 1,000 small business development centers. ~~~

Hydroinformatics is the application of information and communications technologies (ICTs) to the increasingly serious problems of the equitable and efficient use of water for many different purposes.

Striving to understand the social processes which bring water management technologies into use, hydroinformatics draws on the sciences of hydraulics, hydrology and environmental engineering to examine the natural water cycle from atmosphere to ocean while also looking at artificial interventions (crop irrigation, hydroelectric dams, urban drainage, human water supply and wastewater treatment systems) to provide support for decision making about water management policy and operations.  ~~~

The investment company has 'earned' these carbon credits (and therefore the right to sell same) through a complex 'validation process' which assesses how much GHG (greenhouse gas) will (supposedly) be reduced because of the 'green project' the investment company develops (with the money paid to them to purchase carbon credits). The problem, however, is that critics contend that this 'trading' mechanism doesn't really promote the development of 'clean energy' projects which legitimately accomplish the envisioned goal.

Take the the hydroelectric dam in Xiaoxi, China, which supposedly helps a power company in distant Germany contribute to 'saving the climate' while putting lucrative 'carbon credits' into the pockets of Chinese developers.

The low wall of concrete slices across an old farming valley, once home to 7500 people -- all of whom seethe over having been displaced from their homes and evicted from their farms.

"Nobody asked if we wanted to move," said a 38-year-old man whose family lost a small brick house. "The government just posted a notice that said, 'Your home will be demolished'."

The dam shortchanges Chinese villagers and the climate itself which has uncertain effects on GHG emissions, according to critics. "[Carbon Credit Trading] is an excessive subsidy that represents a massive waste of developed world resources," said Stanford University's Michael Wara. Yet similar stories are being repeated hundreds and potentially thousands of times over around the world. ~~~

CAN THE SPAM
Last month, upon distributing our December newsletter to the 4354 email addys on the list my predecessor started developing back in 2006, we got a predictable number of bounce-backs (186), a routine number of 'please remove' requests (7), a couple of flattering compliments and one highly contentious complaint wrongfully labeling what we'd sent as 'junk'.

This skirmish and a few similar encounters (mainly with AOL users who are encouraged to flag 'everything they don't like' as SPAM -- regardless of the very real consequences their actions have on legitimate business professionals) made it apparent that the facts about what does (or does not) constitute 'spam' by legal definition deserve to be reviewed for the benefit of those among us who think we know all there is to know but factually are missing a few cards in our deck, to wit:

The CAN-SPAM Act, codified at 15 U.S.C. §§ 7701-7713 and 18 U.S.C. § 1037, does NOT seek to halt unsolicited e-mail. Instead, this law establishes the “rules of the road” that must be followed by everyone who sends emails to distribution lists.

These laws draw a clear distinction between product-hyping, porno-flashing spam and informational messages such as newsletters. That is, no matter the reader's opinion of the quality of the information, even if an email is unsolicited, unless it meets specific legal criteria it is NOT 'spam'.

In a nutshell, spam laws prohibit fraudulent or misleading conduct and mandate that sexually oriented materials be plainly labeled as such. Also that the sender of any 'commercial electronic message' be clearly identified with accurate contact information, that there be an easy way for the email recipient to request removal from a distribution list and that such requests be honored within 10 days.

Also contrary to the rules are 'flaming' emails that are threatening, abusive, obscene, vulgar, nasty, insulting or rude no matter if they are sent only to one person.

In a nutshell, however, only emails which are 'commercial in nature' (as determined by how aggressively they seek to sell a product or service) are regulated by spam laws. Bona fide e-mail newsletters, periodicals or news releases which contain little or no 'product advertising' are essentially exempt.

See also: "Blacklisted in Cybersapce" ~~~

FOLDIT PLAYS WITH PROTEINS
Foldit is the first protein-folding project which capitalizes on people’s natural 3-D problem-solving skills. Researchers are trying to use the brain power of people all around the world to advance biomedical research and asking volunteers to participate in this study by playing a new game called Foldit which they say may be the key to unlocking profound biological mysteries. Click here to give it a whirl.

CAN YOU CRACK CODE?
Again this year, FBI “cryptanalysts” (experts in breaking ciphers of all kinds) are challenging average folks to try and crack a code they created. Last time around, tens of thousands of folks gave it a whirl and so now the FBI has posted "round two".

Consensus: Build, and Build Big
Promising an economic stimulus package that could rival the Dwight Eisenhower era, federal plans forecast spending billions to rebuild the nation's crumbling highways, renovate aging school buildings, extending high-speed Internet to underserved areas, make a down payment on a new carbon-conscious energy economy, and make public buildings energy-efficient (with pultruded FRP doors <smile>).

PostSecret
The simple concept of this 'community art' project is for people to portray a secret never previously revealed by decorating a postcard and anonymously submitting it for publication to a website. No restrictions are made on the content of the secret except that it must be completely truthful and must never have been spoken before.

This postcard extols: "I get jealous of people who can solve Rubik's Cubes. (So I switch the stickers and watch them struggle!)"

Entries range from admissions of criminal activity to confessions of secret desires, embarrassing habits, hopes, dreams and emotional turmoil. Since Frank Warren created the website on January 1, 2005, PostSecret has collected and displayed upwards of 2,500 original pieces of art from people across the United States and around the world.

PLUG-IN HYBRID
Chinese auto maker BYD now offers the F3DM (pictured at left) in China for 149,800 yuan ($21,200). The electric car travels up to 100 km (60 miles) on a fully charged battery. The car is then plugged into a standard 220 volt outlet for 'refueling'. BYD has announced plans to begin exporting the F3DM to the U.S. in 2010.

"Intellectuals solve problems. Geniuses prevent them." ~Albert Einstein

More Clipboards
In response to “Ode to Clipboards” (Industry News, December 2008), we got a nice note from J. P. “Perky” Kilbourn, Ph.D., who owned and operated a Clinical Microbiological Laboratory for 18 years. Perky wrote:

“It was essentially me doing clinical microbiological testing for physicians and small clinics. I received each specimen and request and the request went on a ‘clipboard’ and the specimen went on culture plates. After incubation of the culture plates, the ‘clipboard’ was updated until the final report could be prepared and mailed. Then the ‘clipboard’ could receive the next specimen request.”

Now ‘sort of’ retired, Perky ‘likes to keep active’ by helping students at a local urban high school with their science fair projects, writing a monthly column on science for The Predicator – a newsletter of the Portland chapter of the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) – and consulting on the use of microorganisms to biodegrade toxic waste (PCPs and PCBs) and manage the fungi that attack trees in forests.

Exchanging a few emails with Perky opened my eyes to the science of bioremediation. That is, left to their own devices, microscopic organisms, fungi and plants have a natural aptitude for cleaning-up the toxic waste so readily generated by us humans. Back in the 1960’s, one observer of this phenomenon – George M. Robinson by name and a petroleum engineer by trade – started spending his spare time playing with oily jars and microbes.

Robinson pioneered the idea of making custom mixtures of dried bacteria cultures for commercial use such as cleanout of buildup in fuel holding tanks and restaurant grease traps. Hailed as microbe-miracles, municipal sewage treatment also gleaned benefits from what is now called bioaugmentation.

Perky got involved with all this in the 1980’s when her cousin Kay Richardson, who lived on a tree farm and worked as a lumber broker, mentioned having read something about a white rot (see photo) fungus that could perhaps biodegrade chlorinated phenolic (organic) compounds (which are very bad for humans) and suggested that Phellinus weirii – the fungus that causes laminated root rot in Douglas Fair Trees – might biodegrade toxic waste as well.

“Toxic waste, such as chlorinated phenolic (organic) compounds, should be reduced to a minimal level in the environment,” Perky explained. “And I followed up on Kaye's suggestion,” she elaborated.

“I obtained funding to do the research and several presentations were made and articles published. I only did what I was asked to do,” she said, “because if I did anything more, I had to pay for it! For example, I am fairly sure that the root rot fungus was changing the tetrachlorophenols into possibly trichlorophenols and then breaking them down to chlorine, carbon dioxide and water, however the funding agency would not pay for me to keep the experiment going long enough for all the pentachlorophenol to be changed to tetrachlorophenol and/or trichlorophenols. They simply wanted to confirm that all the chlorinated phenol compounds (pentachlorophenol, tetrachlorohenol and possibly trichlorophenol) had been converted to chlorine, carbon dioxide and water.

“Part of the reason,” she continued, “that the funding agency did not want to pay to prove that all chlorinated phenol compounds have been converted to chlorine, carbon dioxide and water is because the sensitivity of the various testing methods can detect very, very, very small quantities of the chlorinated phenol compounds. Consequently, one could only say that there were less than so many parts per trillion or billion or million of the chlorinated phenol compounds remaining.”

Results of Perky’s research were published in the April 1990 and June 1990 issues of Townsend Letter for Doctors, which she summarized as “water containing twenty-four parts per million of Pentachlorophenol was inoculated with wood chips contaminated with Phelinus weirii - a root rot fungus. After eleven weeks, the Pentachlorophenol in the water had been reduced to eight parts per million. When I compared the nine weeks (gas chromatograph) sample and the control solution, I concluded that the fungus had converted the Pentachlorophenol to Tetrachlorophenols.”

Today, bioremediation and bioaugmentation are routinely employed to attack specific types of contaminants and facilitate the decomposition of pollutants. Essentially, in oversimplified layman’s terms, microbes 'neutralize' (specific) toxins because the toxins are not toxic to the microbes, thus the microbes consume the toxins like food, utilize the toxins to produce energy (like humans use sugar) and then 'excrete waste' that is non-toxic to humans.

INEOS Bio is one of a gaggle of new ventures proposing sophisticated technological solutions for the production of renewable energy. In this instance the thrust is to manufacture bioethanol fuel from a broad range of low-cost organic carbon materials, including  municipal, commercial and industrial wastes. According to INEOS Bio, fuel manufactured with their technology delivers substantial greenhouse gas (GHG) savings compared to conventional petrol-chemical fuels (ie: diesel and gasoline) and also allows for renewable fuel production to be de-coupled from food production.