Urban Transportation: Tata Motors Pod

A pod shaped vehicle meant for urban transport on small distance scales is under the works at Tata Motors.

More about it: http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/16/view/23041/tata-motors-airpod-air-powered-urban-commuter-vehicle.html

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Newspaper Record of PA Anthracite Mining Found in 1902 Aussie Newspaper

Australian National Library - home page screenshot

I was looking for some information on Anthracite coals mined in Pennsylvania and conducted a preliminary internet search on mine locations. One result that showed up was very unique indeed, in that, it spoke about a mine (Mammoth) that has been closed for a while (and since reopened for possible coal-to-liquids projects). What struck me about this web-hit was that it was from a 1902 newspaper clipping archived in the National Library (Australia)'s site.

I did my bit in correcting the first two paragraphs of that particular newspaper article and would probably go back to correct more in the near future. If you have an interest in restoring historical items, this is one way to do it sitting in the comfort of your home! You would also be contributing to knowledge sharing.

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Are we driving more efficiently?

Annual highway-vehicle miles per gallon of motor gasoline vs. Chained motor gasoline price

With gas prices inching back up to 3 $/gal, the accepted idea is that people are driving less because of higher gas prices. Does this graph support the idea? (I used data from Federal Highway Administration and EIA to get the data).

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Bottled Water - Energy

Effect of increased oil prices on bottled water revenues

The motivation for this article comes from the "Oil-in-Big-Macs" work by Gregor. This is a graph that I put together taking data from International Bottled Water Association and the Energy Information Administration (EIA). I used the price of gasoline as a proxy for oil/energy prices. The revenues, both real and nominal are affected by higher energy prices. Watch out for more single-figure articles on natural gas, water and energy in general.

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Natural Gas Prices and Demand from EIA forecasts

From

Natural gas prices and demand from EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2009, 2010

This is a combination of data from the EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2009 and 2010. The price data for 2009 were given in 2007 $ and were scaled to account for inflation. The demand curve for 2009 shows an inflection at years past 2025, which is not reflected in the AEO 2010 data. The term "quad" refers to quadrillion (10¹⁵) BTU). Each quadrillion BTU of natural gas is equivalent to approximately 1000 billion standard cubic feet of gas.

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