INCREASING THE NUMBER OF 'GREEN' CARS

Image via Wikipedia

-------------------------------------

SINGAPORE - To encourage test-bedding of clean technologies, green vehicles brought in here can enjoy the waiver of Additional Registration Fees, Certificate of Entitlement and custom duties for six years - an extension from the current two years.

The Transport Technology Innovation Development Scheme will also be enhanced to allow up to 1,300 vehicles, up from the current quota of 300. The total amount of tax waived is estimated to be about $75 million.

Imported used green vehicles will also get to enjoy the Green Vehicle Rebate, which grants a 40-per-cent cut in the main car tax. Currently, only brand new green vehicles qualify for the rebate, but the scope will be extended from July.

However, the extension of the rebate will not be applicable to imported used Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) vehicles and vehicles which are required to be brand new at the point of registration, such as taxis.

More details will be released by the National Environment Agency and the Land Transport Authority next month.

Singapore Environment Council executive director Howard Shaw welcomed the move to allow imported used green vehicles here as returning Singaporeans and expatriates could bring their green vehicles for use here. "Overall, it is a small development in the scheme of greening private cars but it will increase the number of green cars on the roads," he said. Leong Wee Keat

From TODAY, Tuesday, 23-Feb-2010

----------

Solar eclipse shrouds Asia in cloak of darkness

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Is this your first time to witness a solar eclipse? If it were many years back then, technology wasn't available to capture so many awesome pictures.

One news story is here. Hope you learn something about the solar system we live in.

Enjoy!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Total Solar Eclipse Videos & Images (techie-buzz.com)
• So Much For The Longest Solar Eclipse on the Planet (lifeonapencil.blogspot.com)
• Solar Eclipse Wednesday (neatorama.com)
• Millions Watch Longest Eclipse This Century (news.sky.com)
• Total Solar Eclipse Awes Skywatchers (space.com)
• Total Eclipse Of The Sun Today In Asia (treehugger.com)
• Paralysed Kids Buried For Solar Eclipse Cure (news.sky.com)
• Empire of the Sun Get Eclipsed (idiomag.com)
• Watch the July 2009 Solar Eclipse Online: Live Streaming (blippitt.com)
• Total eclipse envelops Asia in darkness (cnn.com)

Two NASA space probes near moon

Updated 3 hours, 15 minutes ago

Story Highlights

• Two space probes to begin collecting data from the moon Tuesday
• One probe will send back lilve video on the Internet
• Orbiter will collect data to be used to plan a lunar outpost

Dan Andrews, LCROSS manager, left, and Craig Tooley, LRO manager stand in front of the spacecraft.

(CNN) -- Two NASA spacecraft closed in on the moon Tuesday morning -- one to send streaming video to Earth as it swings past the moon, the other to map the lunar surface from orbit, the space agency said.

The two probes were to begin collecting data after nearing the moon's orbit about 5:30 a.m. ET.

By about 8:20 a.m. E.T., the space agency will begin streaming footage on the Internet.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Spacecraft, lifted off June 18 atop the same Atlas V rocket.

Drawing depicts the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which will look for potential landing sites on moon.

The mission is the first in NASA's plan to return to the moon, then travel to Mars and beyond, the space agency said.

During the mission, the agency will collect all sorts of data, including day-night temperature maps, NASA said. There is particular emphasis on the polar areas of the moon, where sunlight is more plentiful and where water might exist.

The data that the orbiter collects and sends to Earth will be used in planning an eventual lunar outpost, the agency said. The orbiter also will look for potential landing sites for astronauts.

From CNN.com; see the source article here.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Two NASA space probes near moon (cnn.com)
• Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and LCROSS to reach the Moon on Tuesday. (space.gs)
• Scrappy Post-Apollo Lunar Science Sets Stage for New Missions (wired.com)

Two NASA space probes near moon

Updated 3 hours, 15 minutes ago

Story Highlights

• Two space probes to begin collecting data from the moon Tuesday
• One probe will send back lilve video on the Internet
• Orbiter will collect data to be used to plan a lunar outpost

Dan Andrews, LCROSS manager, left, and Craig Tooley, LRO manager stand in front of the spacecraft.

(CNN) -- Two NASA spacecraft closed in on the moon Tuesday morning -- one to send streaming video to Earth as it swings past the moon, the other to map the lunar surface from orbit, the space agency said.

The two probes were to begin collecting data after nearing the moon's orbit about 5:30 a.m. ET.

By about 8:20 a.m. E.T., the space agency will begin streaming footage on the Internet.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Spacecraft, lifted off June 18 atop the same Atlas V rocket.

Drawing depicts the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which will look for potential landing sites on moon.

The mission is the first in NASA's plan to return to the moon, then travel to Mars and beyond, the space agency said.

During the mission, the agency will collect all sorts of data, including day-night temperature maps, NASA said. There is particular emphasis on the polar areas of the moon, where sunlight is more plentiful and where water might exist.

The data that the orbiter collects and sends to Earth will be used in planning an eventual lunar outpost, the agency said. The orbiter also will look for potential landing sites for astronauts.

From CNN.com; see the source article here.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Two NASA space probes near moon (cnn.com)
• Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and LCROSS to reach the Moon on Tuesday. (space.gs)
• Scrappy Post-Apollo Lunar Science Sets Stage for New Missions (wired.com)

New 'Urban Car' claims to slash CO2 emissions by two thirds

June 16, 2009 -- Updated 1727 GMT (0127 HKT)

Story Highlights

• Riversimple launches car prototype with lowest level of carbon emissions
  
• Car is powered by a hydrogen fuel cell and four electric motors over the wheels
  
• Company's looking for $33 million dollars to build ten cars for trials
  
• Designer Spowers used expertise he gained in motor racing to build prototype
  

By Hilary Whiteman, CNN

The Riversimple Urban Car has been nine years in the making and needs further funding for city trials.

LONDON, England (CNN) -- A former motor-racing engineer has unveiled a prototype of a new hydrogen-powered city car which claims to emit less than one third of the carbon emissions produced by its nearest rival.

The creators of the 'Urban Car,' UK-based company Riversimple, say the vehicle emits less than 30 grams per kilometer of carbon dioxide, less than one third of the carbon produced by the Polo Bluemotion.

Riversimple founder Hugo Spowers has spent nine years researching and developing the prototype car.

"I think that the auto industry is focusing a lot of money on research and development at a basic science level on hydrogen storage and fuel cell technology. We don't think it's necessary to do that," Spowers told CNN.

"We can use existing technology and integrate it into a whole system design approach -- that is where the breakthrough has come."

Spowers is searching for extra funding to put the 'Urban Car' on the streets, but he says at this stage they won't be for sale. Riversimple plans to lease the car to customers for a monthly fee of £200 ($330). Hydrogen fuel for the cars will cost just 15 pence (25 cents) per mile.

It's a long way from the fuel-guzzling world Spowers used to inhabit as a designer and developer of high-powered racing cars. It was the industry's appalling environmental record that encouraged him to leave to try to find a way to make driving greener.

"Certainly the first five or six years were hard work because I did have an awful lot of people telling me I was mad," Spowers told CNN, at the launch of the Riversimple Urban Car in London.

"Gradually it all sort of gathered steam," he said, adding "I'm absolutely convinced that we're offering a better solution for a segment of the transport problem and we'd be crazy not to pursue it."

The Urban Car's power comes from hydrogen fuel cells which are linked to four electric motors situated over each of the car's wheels. Almost all of the braking is done by the electric motors, which then capture the energy of the car in motion and store it in a bank of ultracapacitors. In conventional cars, the energy generated through braking is lost as heat.

The energy stored in the Urban Car's electric motors is enough to power 80 percent of the car's acceleration. That reduces the energy demands on the hydrogen fuel cell, meaning it can be one fifth of the size of one used in a normal car. The lighter fuel cell also makes it more energy efficient.

A large part of the funding for the car's development came from the family of Ernst Piëch, the eldest grandson of Ferdinand Porsche who founded the motor company of the same name in 1931.

Ferdinand Porsche's great-grandson Sebastien Piëch is a partner in Riversimple. He says the company's nimble size has given it an advantage over larger car manufacturers whose future he says concerns him.

"It concerns me massively, because I don't see that the model they have now is very relevant to where consumers are going. Consumers are looking for a different solution. I'm not sure if what they're producing is working," he said.

Riversimple plans to share the designs for its car through open-source licence agreements, a system more commonly used in the software industry. Designers and manufacturers will be invited to make improvements so the car evolves into the most efficient vehicle it can be.

"We don't believe that making money on IP (intellectual property) is really what's actually happening even now. We believe that service and providing the solution for customers will be where we make money," Piëch told CNN.

The next step now is to find further financing, another £20 million ($33 million), to build and test ten cars. Fifty prototypes will then be built for a pilot project in a small city. The location is still to be confirmed, but Riversimple has narrowed down its options to small towns in the United Kingdom, perhaps Oxford or Peterborough.

"I'm very confident we'll get it to market," Spowers said. "I couldn't say hand on heart that I'm confident that we'll achieve what I think technically can be done. That's a bit in the lap of the gods and it's all to do with people, politics and business -- all a bit more unpredictable."

From CNN.com; see the source article and related items here.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Is hydrogen being left out in the cold? (businessgreen.com)
• Electric cars: the pick of the next generation (telegraph.co.uk)
• Driving the Volt (technologyreview.com)
• Driven: 2009 Honda FCX Clarity (blogs.thecarconnection.com)
• Rinspeed iChange Concept: Mighty Morphing Electric Changer [Geneva Motor Show] (jalopnik.com)
• Mazda starts leasing hydrogen hybrid mini-van (reviews.cnet.com)
• Jonathan A. Schein: Note to GM, Relevance is Good Business (huffingtonpost.com)
• Porsche 356: The car that started it all (autos.canada.com)
• World's First Hydrogen Fuel Cell Tractor Sexier Than Most Chryslers [Alternative Energy] (jalopnik.com)
• Collecting: Seeds That Grew Into Porsche Legacy (nytimes.com)

New 'Urban Car' claims to slash CO2 emissions by two thirds

June 16, 2009 -- Updated 1727 GMT (0127 HKT)

Story Highlights

• Riversimple launches car prototype with lowest level of carbon emissions
  
• Car is powered by a hydrogen fuel cell and four electric motors over the wheels
  
• Company's looking for $33 million dollars to build ten cars for trials
  
• Designer Spowers used expertise he gained in motor racing to build prototype
  

By Hilary Whiteman, CNN

The Riversimple Urban Car has been nine years in the making and needs further funding for city trials.

LONDON, England (CNN) -- A former motor-racing engineer has unveiled a prototype of a new hydrogen-powered city car which claims to emit less than one third of the carbon emissions produced by its nearest rival.

The creators of the 'Urban Car,' UK-based company Riversimple, say the vehicle emits less than 30 grams per kilometer of carbon dioxide, less than one third of the carbon produced by the Polo Bluemotion.

Riversimple founder Hugo Spowers has spent nine years researching and developing the prototype car.

"I think that the auto industry is focusing a lot of money on research and development at a basic science level on hydrogen storage and fuel cell technology. We don't think it's necessary to do that," Spowers told CNN.

"We can use existing technology and integrate it into a whole system design approach -- that is where the breakthrough has come."

Spowers is searching for extra funding to put the 'Urban Car' on the streets, but he says at this stage they won't be for sale. Riversimple plans to lease the car to customers for a monthly fee of £200 ($330). Hydrogen fuel for the cars will cost just 15 pence (25 cents) per mile.

It's a long way from the fuel-guzzling world Spowers used to inhabit as a designer and developer of high-powered racing cars. It was the industry's appalling environmental record that encouraged him to leave to try to find a way to make driving greener.

"Certainly the first five or six years were hard work because I did have an awful lot of people telling me I was mad," Spowers told CNN, at the launch of the Riversimple Urban Car in London.

"Gradually it all sort of gathered steam," he said, adding "I'm absolutely convinced that we're offering a better solution for a segment of the transport problem and we'd be crazy not to pursue it."

The Urban Car's power comes from hydrogen fuel cells which are linked to four electric motors situated over each of the car's wheels. Almost all of the braking is done by the electric motors, which then capture the energy of the car in motion and store it in a bank of ultracapacitors. In conventional cars, the energy generated through braking is lost as heat.

The energy stored in the Urban Car's electric motors is enough to power 80 percent of the car's acceleration. That reduces the energy demands on the hydrogen fuel cell, meaning it can be one fifth of the size of one used in a normal car. The lighter fuel cell also makes it more energy efficient.

A large part of the funding for the car's development came from the family of Ernst Piëch, the eldest grandson of Ferdinand Porsche who founded the motor company of the same name in 1931.

Ferdinand Porsche's great-grandson Sebastien Piëch is a partner in Riversimple. He says the company's nimble size has given it an advantage over larger car manufacturers whose future he says concerns him.

"It concerns me massively, because I don't see that the model they have now is very relevant to where consumers are going. Consumers are looking for a different solution. I'm not sure if what they're producing is working," he said.

Riversimple plans to share the designs for its car through open-source licence agreements, a system more commonly used in the software industry. Designers and manufacturers will be invited to make improvements so the car evolves into the most efficient vehicle it can be.

"We don't believe that making money on IP (intellectual property) is really what's actually happening even now. We believe that service and providing the solution for customers will be where we make money," Piëch told CNN.

The next step now is to find further financing, another £20 million ($33 million), to build and test ten cars. Fifty prototypes will then be built for a pilot project in a small city. The location is still to be confirmed, but Riversimple has narrowed down its options to small towns in the United Kingdom, perhaps Oxford or Peterborough.

"I'm very confident we'll get it to market," Spowers said. "I couldn't say hand on heart that I'm confident that we'll achieve what I think technically can be done. That's a bit in the lap of the gods and it's all to do with people, politics and business -- all a bit more unpredictable."

From CNN.com; see the source article and related items here.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Is hydrogen being left out in the cold? (businessgreen.com)
• Electric cars: the pick of the next generation (telegraph.co.uk)
• Driving the Volt (technologyreview.com)
• Driven: 2009 Honda FCX Clarity (blogs.thecarconnection.com)
• Rinspeed iChange Concept: Mighty Morphing Electric Changer [Geneva Motor Show] (jalopnik.com)
• Mazda starts leasing hydrogen hybrid mini-van (reviews.cnet.com)
• Jonathan A. Schein: Note to GM, Relevance is Good Business (huffingtonpost.com)
• Porsche 356: The car that started it all (autos.canada.com)
• World's First Hydrogen Fuel Cell Tractor Sexier Than Most Chryslers [Alternative Energy] (jalopnik.com)
• Collecting: Seeds That Grew Into Porsche Legacy (nytimes.com)

English gets millionth word on Wednesday, site says

June 10, 2009 -- Updated 1328 GMT (2128 HKT)

By John D. Sutter

CNN

Story Highlights

• Web site estimates English got its millionth word at 5:22 a.m. Wednesday
  
• English accumulates new words from other languages and from its global reach
  
• Linguists question group's formula, which estimates rate of new words
  
• English has more words than any other language, site says
  

The Global Language Monitor says the millionth word was added to English on Wednesday.

(CNN) -- English contains more words than any other language on the planet and added its millionth word early Wednesday, according to the Global Language Monitor, a Web site that uses a math formula to estimate how often words are created.

The site estimates the millionth English word, "Web 2.0" was added to the language Wednesday at 5:22 a.m. ET. The term refers to the second, more social generation of the Internet.

The site says more than 14 words are added to English every day, at the current rate.

The "Million Word March," however, has made the man who runs this word-counting project somewhat of a pariah in the linguistic community. Some linguists say it's impossible to count the number of words in a language because languages are always changing, and because defining what counts as a word is a fruitless endeavor.

Paul J.J. Payack, president and chief word analyst for the Global Language Monitor, says, however, that the million-word estimation isn't as important as the idea behind his project, which is to show that English has become a complex, global language.

"It's a people's language," he said.

Other languages, like French, Payack said, put big walls around their vocabularies. English brings others in.

"English has the tradition of swallowing new words whole," he said. "Other languages translate."

The Internet, global commerce and global travel have accelerated the trend by putting English in contact with many other linguistic groups. This has made English more rich and more complex -- hence all of the new terms, he said.

----------

New English words

Web 2.0: the second generation of the Internet

n00b: a new or inexperienced user, usually with technology

Jai Ho: an exclamation of victory, from Hindi

slumdog: an unkind term for a person who lives in a slum

cloud computing: services delivered via the Internet

carbon neutral: an activity that doesn't produce heat-trapping carbon emissions

Source: Global Language Monitor

----------

Still, Payack says he doesn't include all new words in his count. Words must make sense in at least 60 percent of the world to be official, he said. And they must make sense to different communities of people. A new technology term that's only understood in Silicon Valley wouldn't count as a mainstream word, he said.

His computer models check billions of Web sites -- including the Global Top 5,000 media sites -- dictionaries, scholarly publications and news articles to see how frequently words are used, he said. A word must make 25,000 appearances to be deemed legitimate.

Payack said news events have also fueled the rapid expansion of English, which he said has more words than any other language. Mandarin Chinese comes in second with about 450,000 words, he said.

English terms like "Obamamania," "defriend," "wardrobe malfunction," "zombie banks," "shovel ready" and "recessionista" all have grown out of recent news cycles about the presidential election, economic crash, online networking or a sports event, he said. Other languages might not have developed new terms to deal with such phenomena, he said.

Language experts who spoke with CNN said they disapprove of Payack's count, but they agree that English generally has more words than most, if not all, languages.

"This is stuff that you just can't count," said Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary. "No one can count it, and to pretend that you can is totally disingenuous. It simply can't be done."

The Oxford English Dictionary has about 600,000 entries, Sheidlower said. But that by no means includes all words, he said.

For example, Sheidlower said "great-great-great-great grandfather" could be considered a word, but wouldn't be in the dictionary. There's a similar problem with numbers, which may be counted up by their pieces -- "twenty" and "three" -- but not always as a group, as in "two-hundred twenty-three."

Part of what makes determining the number of words in a language so difficult is that there are so many root words and their variants, said Sarah Thomason, president of the Linguistic Society of America and a linguistics professor at the University of Michigan.

In the language of native Alaskans, she said, there are dozens of words for snow, but many of them are linked together and wouldn't be counted individually. Does that mean, she asked, that "slush," "powder" and other snow words in English should be counted as one entry?

Thomason called the million-word count a "sexy idea" that is "all hype and no substance."

Linguists and lexicographers run into further complications when trying to count words that are spelled one way but can have several meanings, said Allan Metcalf, an English professor at MacMurray College in Illinois, and an officer at the American Dialect Society.

"The word bear, b-e-a-r -- is that two words or one, for example? You have a noun that's a wild creature and then you have b-e-a-r, [which means] to bear left or to bear right, and there's many other things," he said. "So you really can't be exact about a millionth word."

Payack said he doesn't consider his to be the definitive count, just an interesting estimation based on set criteria he has helped develop.

"It's always an estimation," he said. "It's like the height of Mount Everest is an estimation. The height of Mount Everest has changed five times in my lifetime because as we get better tools, the estimates get better."

He said the count is meant to be a celebration of English as a global language. And, while he says other languages are being stamped out by English's expansion, it's a powerful thing that so many people today are able to communicate with such a vast list of words.

From CNN.com; see the source article and other materials here.

Related articles by Zemanta

• English gets millionth word on Wednesday (cnn.com)
• English set to get millionth word? (cnn.com)
• Jai Ho! English lexicon hits million-word milestone (ctv.ca)
• Web 2.0 crowned one millionth English word (nationalpost.com)
• And the Millionth English Word is...Web 2.0? (thaibrother.com)
• Millionth English word 'looming' (news.bbc.co.uk)
• You: Millionth new English word 'due any time now' (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Millionth word story botched (languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu)
• One millionth English word to be unveiled (telegraph.co.uk)
• English language to hit one million words (ctv.ca)

English gets millionth word on Wednesday, site says

June 10, 2009 -- Updated 1328 GMT (2128 HKT)

By John D. Sutter

CNN

Story Highlights

• Web site estimates English got its millionth word at 5:22 a.m. Wednesday
  
• English accumulates new words from other languages and from its global reach
  
• Linguists question group's formula, which estimates rate of new words
  
• English has more words than any other language, site says
  

The Global Language Monitor says the millionth word was added to English on Wednesday.

(CNN) -- English contains more words than any other language on the planet and added its millionth word early Wednesday, according to the Global Language Monitor, a Web site that uses a math formula to estimate how often words are created.

The site estimates the millionth English word, "Web 2.0" was added to the language Wednesday at 5:22 a.m. ET. The term refers to the second, more social generation of the Internet.

The site says more than 14 words are added to English every day, at the current rate.

The "Million Word March," however, has made the man who runs this word-counting project somewhat of a pariah in the linguistic community. Some linguists say it's impossible to count the number of words in a language because languages are always changing, and because defining what counts as a word is a fruitless endeavor.

Paul J.J. Payack, president and chief word analyst for the Global Language Monitor, says, however, that the million-word estimation isn't as important as the idea behind his project, which is to show that English has become a complex, global language.

"It's a people's language," he said.

Other languages, like French, Payack said, put big walls around their vocabularies. English brings others in.

"English has the tradition of swallowing new words whole," he said. "Other languages translate."

The Internet, global commerce and global travel have accelerated the trend by putting English in contact with many other linguistic groups. This has made English more rich and more complex -- hence all of the new terms, he said.

----------

New English words

Web 2.0: the second generation of the Internet

n00b: a new or inexperienced user, usually with technology

Jai Ho: an exclamation of victory, from Hindi

slumdog: an unkind term for a person who lives in a slum

cloud computing: services delivered via the Internet

carbon neutral: an activity that doesn't produce heat-trapping carbon emissions

Source: Global Language Monitor

----------

Still, Payack says he doesn't include all new words in his count. Words must make sense in at least 60 percent of the world to be official, he said. And they must make sense to different communities of people. A new technology term that's only understood in Silicon Valley wouldn't count as a mainstream word, he said.

His computer models check billions of Web sites -- including the Global Top 5,000 media sites -- dictionaries, scholarly publications and news articles to see how frequently words are used, he said. A word must make 25,000 appearances to be deemed legitimate.

Payack said news events have also fueled the rapid expansion of English, which he said has more words than any other language. Mandarin Chinese comes in second with about 450,000 words, he said.

English terms like "Obamamania," "defriend," "wardrobe malfunction," "zombie banks," "shovel ready" and "recessionista" all have grown out of recent news cycles about the presidential election, economic crash, online networking or a sports event, he said. Other languages might not have developed new terms to deal with such phenomena, he said.

Language experts who spoke with CNN said they disapprove of Payack's count, but they agree that English generally has more words than most, if not all, languages.

"This is stuff that you just can't count," said Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary. "No one can count it, and to pretend that you can is totally disingenuous. It simply can't be done."

The Oxford English Dictionary has about 600,000 entries, Sheidlower said. But that by no means includes all words, he said.

For example, Sheidlower said "great-great-great-great grandfather" could be considered a word, but wouldn't be in the dictionary. There's a similar problem with numbers, which may be counted up by their pieces -- "twenty" and "three" -- but not always as a group, as in "two-hundred twenty-three."

Part of what makes determining the number of words in a language so difficult is that there are so many root words and their variants, said Sarah Thomason, president of the Linguistic Society of America and a linguistics professor at the University of Michigan.

In the language of native Alaskans, she said, there are dozens of words for snow, but many of them are linked together and wouldn't be counted individually. Does that mean, she asked, that "slush," "powder" and other snow words in English should be counted as one entry?

Thomason called the million-word count a "sexy idea" that is "all hype and no substance."

Linguists and lexicographers run into further complications when trying to count words that are spelled one way but can have several meanings, said Allan Metcalf, an English professor at MacMurray College in Illinois, and an officer at the American Dialect Society.

"The word bear, b-e-a-r -- is that two words or one, for example? You have a noun that's a wild creature and then you have b-e-a-r, [which means] to bear left or to bear right, and there's many other things," he said. "So you really can't be exact about a millionth word."

Payack said he doesn't consider his to be the definitive count, just an interesting estimation based on set criteria he has helped develop.

"It's always an estimation," he said. "It's like the height of Mount Everest is an estimation. The height of Mount Everest has changed five times in my lifetime because as we get better tools, the estimates get better."

He said the count is meant to be a celebration of English as a global language. And, while he says other languages are being stamped out by English's expansion, it's a powerful thing that so many people today are able to communicate with such a vast list of words.

From CNN.com; see the source article and other materials here.

Related articles by Zemanta

• English gets millionth word on Wednesday (cnn.com)
• English set to get millionth word? (cnn.com)
• Jai Ho! English lexicon hits million-word milestone (ctv.ca)
• Web 2.0 crowned one millionth English word (nationalpost.com)
• And the Millionth English Word is...Web 2.0? (thaibrother.com)
• Millionth English word 'looming' (news.bbc.co.uk)
• You: Millionth new English word 'due any time now' (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Millionth word story botched (languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu)
• One millionth English word to be unveiled (telegraph.co.uk)
• English language to hit one million words (ctv.ca)

A $20m jolt for electric cars

ELECTRIC VEHICLES

New taskforce to look at introducing them in Singapore

A MULTI-AGENCY taskforce has been set up to lead tests and research into the introduction of electric vehicles (EVs) in Singapore from next year.

Some $20 million has been set aside to get the Republic plugged into such vehicles. The programme is expected to last until 2012 and based on the results gathered, the taskforce will evaluate the scope for large-scale adoption of EVs in future.

The taskforce, to be chaired by the Energy Market Authority (EMA) and Land Transport Authority (LTA), will see the involvement of different ministries and statutory boards, including the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, the Economic Development Board, and the National Environment Agency.

Also involved will be key industry players such as auto manufacturers and technology companies, who will be able to help examine infrastructure requirements and new business models arising from EVs, as well as to identify industry and research and development (R&D) opportunities.

Mr Lawrence Wong, chief executive of EMA said Singapore is well-positioned for the deployment of EVs because of its compact urban environment and robust electrical grid and IT infrastructure.

He added that the EV test bed will also provide a platform for companies to gauge different vehicle prototypes and charging technologies, allowing EV owners to sell unused power back to the Republic's electricity grid.

"In particular, if EVs are able to provide power to the grid during peak periods, and draw power from the grid during off-peak periods, they will help to level the demand (load) on the grid, thereby enabling our power system to operate more efficiently," said the EMA head.

The EV test-bed offers potential economic benefits for manufacturing and R&D in areas such as battery technology, power electronics and electric drive systems, which could generate new and high-value investments.

So far, two groups — Renault-Nissan and Keppel Energy — have signed a memorandum of understanding with the EV taskforce. Renault-Nissan will supply EVs to the Singapore market and share its knowledge of such vehicles to develop common standards, while Keppel Energy will focus on developing charging stations and other infrastructure to support the test-bedding of EVs.

In January, the LTA gave approval for a new electric scooter to be brought to Singapore by local company Zeco Scooters.

CHANNEL NEWSASIA

One of Renault-Nissan's Electric vehicles.

RENAULT-NISSAN

-----

From TODAY, News – Thursday, 07-May-2009

Related articles by Zemanta

• Rumor mill: Nissan to launch hybrid Z (reviews.cnet.com)
• Zippy electric motorcycle comes at a price (news.cnet.com)
• UK's national grid 'ready' for e-car expansion (reghardware.co.uk)
• Scientists say device charges cars smarter (msnbc.msn.com)
• Washington scientists say their device recharges cars smarter (thenewstribune.com)
• PNNL researchers develop standard smart charger for plug-in vehicles (engadget.com)
• Project aims to make communities plug-in ready (news.cnet.com)
• 'Green News Report' - May 5, 2009 (bradblog.com)
• How a "smart charger" could ease transition to electric cars (scientificamerican.com)

A $20m jolt for electric cars

ELECTRIC VEHICLES

New taskforce to look at introducing them in Singapore

A MULTI-AGENCY taskforce has been set up to lead tests and research into the introduction of electric vehicles (EVs) in Singapore from next year.

Some $20 million has been set aside to get the Republic plugged into such vehicles. The programme is expected to last until 2012 and based on the results gathered, the taskforce will evaluate the scope for large-scale adoption of EVs in future.

The taskforce, to be chaired by the Energy Market Authority (EMA) and Land Transport Authority (LTA), will see the involvement of different ministries and statutory boards, including the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, the Economic Development Board, and the National Environment Agency.

Also involved will be key industry players such as auto manufacturers and technology companies, who will be able to help examine infrastructure requirements and new business models arising from EVs, as well as to identify industry and research and development (R&D) opportunities.

Mr Lawrence Wong, chief executive of EMA said Singapore is well-positioned for the deployment of EVs because of its compact urban environment and robust electrical grid and IT infrastructure.

He added that the EV test bed will also provide a platform for companies to gauge different vehicle prototypes and charging technologies, allowing EV owners to sell unused power back to the Republic's electricity grid.

"In particular, if EVs are able to provide power to the grid during peak periods, and draw power from the grid during off-peak periods, they will help to level the demand (load) on the grid, thereby enabling our power system to operate more efficiently," said the EMA head.

The EV test-bed offers potential economic benefits for manufacturing and R&D in areas such as battery technology, power electronics and electric drive systems, which could generate new and high-value investments.

So far, two groups — Renault-Nissan and Keppel Energy — have signed a memorandum of understanding with the EV taskforce. Renault-Nissan will supply EVs to the Singapore market and share its knowledge of such vehicles to develop common standards, while Keppel Energy will focus on developing charging stations and other infrastructure to support the test-bedding of EVs.

In January, the LTA gave approval for a new electric scooter to be brought to Singapore by local company Zeco Scooters.

CHANNEL NEWSASIA

One of Renault-Nissan's Electric vehicles.

RENAULT-NISSAN

-----

From TODAY, News – Thursday, 07-May-2009

Related articles by Zemanta

• Rumor mill: Nissan to launch hybrid Z (reviews.cnet.com)
• Zippy electric motorcycle comes at a price (news.cnet.com)
• UK's national grid 'ready' for e-car expansion (reghardware.co.uk)
• Scientists say device charges cars smarter (msnbc.msn.com)
• Washington scientists say their device recharges cars smarter (thenewstribune.com)
• PNNL researchers develop standard smart charger for plug-in vehicles (engadget.com)
• Project aims to make communities plug-in ready (news.cnet.com)
• 'Green News Report' - May 5, 2009 (bradblog.com)
• How a "smart charger" could ease transition to electric cars (scientificamerican.com)