Toledo reinvents itself as a solar-power innovator
Like many manufacturing cities, Toledo has struggled with the loss of jobs and tax revenue, but it has taken pieces of its past as the glass capital to create a new future in solar energy.
The payoff so far: At least 6,000 people work in the area’s solar industry. First Solar (FSLR), which makes solar panels, was founded here and employs more than 1,000 at its 900,000-square-foot plant here. There are more than a dozen solar-related start-up companies in the area. The University of Toledo is home to top solar researchers and has a business incubator that provides business services to solar entrepreneurs. It has graduated four solar companies and is working with six more. Owens Community College, which had 13 students in its first solar class in 2004, has trained 255 solar installers.
US experiment hints at ‘multiple God particles’
There may be multiple versions of the elusive “God particle” – or Higgs boson – according to a new study.
Finding the Higgs is the primary aim of the £6bn ($10bn) Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment near Geneva.
But recent results from the LHC’s US rival suggest physicists could be hunting five particles, not one.
The data may point to new laws of physics beyond the current accepted theory – known as the Standard Model.
Maldive Islands Coral and Fish
Scientists Locate 23-Mile Long Oil Plume Off Florida’s Treasure Coast
E-mail from BP engineer called Deepwater Horizon rig a ‘nightmare well’ six days before explosion
Today, the chief executives of the five big oil companies — including BP’s Tony Hayward — are going to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. According to an e-mail released by that Committee yesterday, a BP drilling engineer warned that the Deepwater Horizon oil rig was a “nightmare well” that had caused the company problems in the past.
DOE chief: Gulf spill tragic, need energy plan
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Monday the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico underscores the need to develop wind power and a national energy plan.
A longtime advocate of wind power, Chu toured the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center to learn more about its plans to design and test floating deep-water wind turbine platforms. Maine officials hope to have a wind farm in operation off the coast within six years.
Chu said the oil spill was “a tragedy” that served to highlight the imperative for a national energy plan.
“It’s another reminder to step back and say, ‘We do need a comprehensive energy strategy in the United States for the coming decades,'” he said.
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