Below you’ll find a list of all vehicles that are on the road today and are Flex Fuel cars. Meaning you can run you car on ethanol (E85) or regular fuel.

Currently ethanol isn’t as cheap as it can be, but there are more gas stations opening which offer it and with higher demand it will become cheaper. Ethanol is grown and produced in North America, meaning less dependency on foreign oil and creation of new jobs.

Beginning with 2007 models, the Chrysler Group vehicles capable of using both gasoline and ethanol will carry a special badge. The gas caps also will be yellow, the color associated with ethanol. In the near future maybe we’ll see more car manufactures advertising this feature of their vehicles.

Flex Fuel Car List

Daimler Chrysler

• 2007 
        4.7L Dodge Durango
        4.7L Dodge Ram Pickup 1500 Series
        4.7L Chrysler Aspen
        4.7L Jeep Commander
        4.7L Jeep Grand Cherokee
        4.7L Dodge Dakota
        3.3L Dodge Caravan, Grand Caravan and Caravan Cargo
        2.7L Chrysler Sebring Sedan

• 2006 
        4.7L Dodge Durango
        4.7L Dodge Ram Pickup 1500 Series
        2.7L Dodge Stratus Sedan
        2.7L Chrysler Sebring Sedan
        3.3L Caravan & Grand Caravan SE
• 2004 – 2005 
        4.7L Dodge Ram Pickup 1500 Series
        2.7L Dodge Stratus Sedan
        2.7L Chrysler Sebring Sedan
• 2003 – 2004 
        2.7L Dodge Stratus Sedan
        2.7L Chrysler Sebring Sedan
• 2003 
        3.3L Dodge Cargo Minivan
        2.7L Chrysler Sebring Convertible & Sedan
• 2000 – 2003 
        3.3L Chrysler Voyager minivan
        3.3L Dodge Caravan minivan
        3.3L Chrysler Town & Country minivan
• 1998 and 1999 
        3.3L Dodge Caravan minivan
        3.3L Plymouth Voyager minivan
        3.3L Chrysler Town & Country minivan   

Ford

• 2007 
        4.6L Ford Crown Victoria (2-valve, excluding taxi and police units)
        5.4L Ford F-150
        4.6L Lincoln Town Car (2-valve)

• 2006 
        3.0L Ford Taurus sedan and wagon (2-valve)*
        4.6L Ford Crown Victoria (2-valve, excluding taxi and police units)
        5.4L Ford F-150 (3-valve. Available in December 2005)
        4.6L Lincoln Town Car (2-valve)

  2004 – 2005 
        4.0L Explorer Sport Trac
        4.0L Explorer (4-door)
        3.0L Taurus sedan and wagon (2-valve)

• 2002 – 2004                                                          
        4.0L Explorer (4-door)
        3.0L Taurus sedan and wagon
• 2002 – 2003 
        3.0L Supercab Ranger pickup 2WD
• 2001 
        3.0L Supercab Ranger pickup 2WD
        3.0L Taurus LX, SE and SES sedan
• 1999 and 2000 
        3.0L Ranger pickup 4WD and 2WD
        3.0L Taurus LX, SE and SES sedan

General Motors

• 2007 
        5.3L V-8 engine Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra half-ton pickups 2WD & 4WD
        5.3L Vortec-engine Avalanche, Suburban, Tahoe, Yukon & Yukon XL
        3.5L Chevy Impala (LS, 1LT & 2LT)
        3.5L Chevy Monte Carlo (LS and LT models only) 5.3L Chevy Express 5.3L GMC Savana
        3.9L Chevy Uplander
        3.9L Pontiac Montana (Offered only in Canada and Mexico by special order)
        3.9L Saturn Relay
        3.9L Buick Terraza

• 2006 
        3.5L Chevy Impala (LS, 1LT & 2LT)
        3.5L Chevy Monte Carlo (LS and LT models only)
• 2005 – 2006 
        5.3L Vortec-engine Avalanche
        5.3L Vortec-engine Police Package Tahoe*
• 2003 – 2006 
        5.3L V-8 engine Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra half-ton pickups 2WD & 4WD
        5.3L Vortec-engine Suburban, Tahoe, Yukon and Yukon XLs
• 2002 
        5.3L V-8 engine Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra half-ton pickups 2WD & 4WD
        5.3L Vortec-engine Suburban, Tahoe, Yukon and Yukon XLs
        2.2L Chevrolet S-10 pickup 2WD
        2.2L Sonoma GMC pickup 2WD
  
  
• 2000 – 2001 
        2.2L Chevrolet S-10 pickup 2WD
        2.2L Sonoma GMC pickup 2WD

Isuzu

• 2000, 2001 
        2.2L Hombre pickup 2WD

Mazda

• 1999, 2001-2002 
        3.0L Selected B3000 pickups

Mercedes

• 2007 
        2.5L C230 Sedan automatic AND manual transmission

• 2005 
        2.6L C240 luxury series

• 2003-2005 
        3.2L Mercedes-Benz C320 sport series

Mercury

• 2006 – 2007 
        4.6L Mercury Grand Marquis (2-valve)

• 2002 – 2005 
        4.0L Mountaineers
        3.0L Sables
• 2000 – 2004 
        3.0L Sables
• 2007 
        5.6L Titan V8 engine
        5.6L Armada V8 engine

Nissan

• 2005 – 2006 
        5.6L Titan V8 engine

With the growing world energy consumption and our dwindling natural resources people are looking at all aspects of our life and how we can change to consume less energy. That’s why companies like http://www.StarryNightLights.com exists, they have ordered a ReviewMe review of their website.

Starry Night Lights are here just in time, with the high flying energy prices more people are now looking at ways of reducing their energy consumption. http://www.StarryNightLights.com specialize in outdoor lighting which dramatically reduce the effects of light pollution and save energy.

They do this with the type of lighting which shines light down only, it requires significantly less energy. It’s estimated that light pollution costs the US alone 5-10 Billion dollars annually and provides absolutely no benefit to the society.

Browsing http://www.Starrynightlights.com you immediately see that just because you’re saving the environment you don’t have to lose out on style. They offer hundreds of different light styles, you’ll be able to find something that fits everyone’s style.

They have a great example of how much most households are wasting:

To power five 100-watt light bulbs from dusk to dawn for one year costs about $200. Yup $200 to light up the neighborhood every night for a year.

Now, let’s look at the “hidden” costs

To produce the electricity to run those five lights from dusk to dawn the utility company must burn about one ton of coal. Hmmm.. You may already see where this is going.

Burning one ton of coal releases the following toxins into the environment:

6600 lbs of Carbon Dioxide – a greenhouse gas

50 lbs of sulfur dioxide – a prime ingredient in acid rain

30 lbs of nitrogen oxide – a ground level ozone

trace amounts of Mercury, Arsenic and other heavy metals – even the tiniest amounts are harmful to ones long term health and has also been linked to birth defects.

Wasting energy produces many problems, oil dependency, environmental effects, and health effects just to name a few. If all of us start taking these small steps to saving energy our grandchildren will have much happier lives.I hope you take a look at http://www.starrynightlights.com/ and I’m sure you’ll find at least one light to replace in your house and help to save our planet. I hope more websites like this start appearing as we need more green choices. You should also check out their blog ( http://www.starrynightlights.com/blog/ ) for more information on light pollution. Great job guys and keep it up.

Source: Jonathan Fildes, Robot watches out for rare bird. BBC News, February 18.

By farming the work out to other computers, more variables can be tested, and in some cases, can get the job done faster. A similar technique is used in the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) program which searches for signs of extra-terrestrial life in space.

The end result of this climate study was a prediction that the temperature in Britain could rise 2.5 degrees by 2050 and 4 degrees by 2080.

Source: CBC.ca, Fantastic’ response to online climate-change experiment, January 19.

Enter Turnover, an E-Reader designed by Timothy Yeoh. Using a relatively new flexible-screen technology, Yeoh has created an electronic reader that looks and feels more like a book.

Turnover has two pages, or rather two displays. Insert a chip containing an eBook or a library of eBooks and use a touch screen to navigate your way through. Here is the innovative part, when you’ve read one page you simply flip it around to the back it will reload as the following page. And get this you can electronically dog-ear the pages to bookmark them and the system will remember which ones you marked next time you flip through.

With a 170-degree view and a format the same as a printed book, could this design be the answer to our problems with reading from a screen? It’s still as bulky to carry as a book but not nearly as large as several books or a laptop. You can’t highlight text but you can turn down page corners. Perhaps students could save their backs by carrying an e-reader back and forth to school instead of several textbooks. You’ll never be caught without that one book you wanted to reference or read during that long trip home on a bus. In Japan, you can buy a subscription and get full-length novels to read from your mobile phone. Turnover is a similar idea but much easier on the eyes. It incorporates what are supposed to be the most essential aspects of reading: turning pages and dog-earing them.

The way of the future? I can’t help but suspect I’d feel a little silly if anyone saw me insistently flipping the same two pages around to read a book. But now more then ever we need innovative technology like this that will steal people away from printing on paper and help save a tree.

New, albeit peculiar, hope is on the horizon. There is some evidence that female sharks may be able to reproduce without mating. A study published in the Journal of Fish Biology documents the latest case.

A female blacktip shark, resident in the Virginia Aquarium, has provided some crucial evidence. The shark was born in the wild and captured soon after birth. After living for eight years in an exhibit that lacked male blacktips, the female shark had just reached sexual maturity when she died. The subsequent necropsy revealed a developing pup. Genetic testing showed that the offspring contained only maternal DNA.

Blacktip sharks are found throughout tropical and subtropical waters, particularly in shallower coastal areas. They give birth to live young, with litters of one to 10 pups. Gestation lasts 10-12 months. In the US, blacktip sharks are fished commercially and used for food, fish meal, shark fin markets, and leather.

Reproduction by females – without male sperm – is known as parthenogenesis. Seen in a variety of species including certain insects, bony fishes, amphibians, reptiles, and birds, it is not widespread. There are several mechanisms for this process. In sharks, automictic parthenogenesis occurs wherein a female’s chromosomes split during egg development (as usual) and then go on to combine with a second set of chromosomes from the same female.

Last year, the same team of researchers also confirmed that a female hammerhead shark – living in a zoo in Omaha, Nebraska – had reproduced without any contribution from male sharks. The offspring contained only maternal DNA, as with the recent case. This prior observation was published in Biology Letters. It is unclear how many shark species share this ability. Other cases have been reported from females separated from male sharks. In these situations, it was unclear how long stored sperm might remain viable.

While the findings are intriguing, they do not solve the other issues faced by sharks. For a start, parthenogenesis is not common in captive sharks and has been documented only a few times. In both cases, a single offspring was found. However, depending on the species, sharks typically produce more pups than this – up to one hundred or more. In addition, sexual reproduction evolved for good reason: new genetic combinations allow for natural variation and potential adaptive significance. It is possible that parthenogenesis only occurs at very low population densities. Aquarium conditions may mimic shark scarcity and trigger parthenogenesis under certain conditions.

Photo credit: Charlene-SJ@Flickr.com

New research published in the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology reveals that sponges can transmit light internally. Unlike other animals, which use nerve cells to carry electrical signals, some sea sponges use light to promote biological functions.

Sponges are members of the Phylum Porifera. They live attached to surfaces, catching food through a form of filter-feeding. Each sponge is made up of many small pores (ostia) that lead to canals and empty into larger holes (oscula). Canals are lined with collar cells (choanocytes), each of which sports a whip-like flagellum. Flagellar movement creates a current to ensure water flow through the canals, while sticky areas on the cells allow food to adhere. Nearby amoebocyte cells can move and transport these food particles throughout the sponge.

The body structure of a sponge is supported by tiny crystalline spicules or a protein mesh. Some species have a combination of both. It turns out that many deep-sea sponges incorporate silica spicules into their skeletons, allowing them to maximize the use of light. The natural structure is very strong due to concentric ring growth. The spicules act like fibre optic cables, allowing light transmission into deeper parts of the sponge and promoting growth through symbiotic photosynthetic microorganisms (algae and cyanobacteria).

Currently, man-made fibre optic cables transmit light signals across long distances, enabling telephone, television, and computer transmissions. Information is encoded as light. Standard cables are made with a core of thin glass fibres, making them susceptible to damage through cracking. Studying sponge spicules may illuminate ways to improve on the present technology. For a start, they are stronger and more efficient than synthetic versions. If the manufacturing process could replicate the concentric structure, perhaps man-made cables would share more sponge benefits. Deep-sea sponges grow slowly and at low temperatures. Fibre optic cables are created, at great expense, using very high temperatures. A better understanding of natural processes could prove beneficial.

Sponges boast other amazing possibilities. For example, one sponge extract called candidaspongiolide has demonstrated cancer-fighting properties. Much more is yet to be discovered, again proving that preserving biodiversity is beneficial for the whole planet and its human occupants.

Photo credit: Littoraria@Flickr.com

Asian white-backed vultures are primarily found in India and other parts of the Indian subcontinent. Until quite recently, they were widespread across southern Asia. Highly social birds, white-backed vultures have communal roosts and use the same sites each year. Long-lived and slow-breeding, the potential for population growth is low. They are found in both rural and urban areas, wherever carrion is available.

A study published in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society documents a dramatic population crash. Since 1992, up to 99.9% of the white-backed vultures have disappeared. Long-billed and slender-billed vultures have also declined by about 97%. Historically, these were also the most common vulture species. However, researchers warn that all three species easily could become extinct within 10 years.

The culprit is diclofenac, a veterinary drug used as an anti-inflammatory in cattle. It may be given to reduce joint pain and keep animals working longer. If livestock are treated up to a few days before death, their carcasses can be lethal to vultures, with high levels of diclofenac causing kidney failure. Only a small fraction of cattle are affected, but entire flocks of vultures may be poisoned by a single carcass.

Although the Indian government imposed a 2006 ban on diclofenac manufacture for veterinary use, the human version continues to be available. Farmers still use it to treat domestic animals, due to the low cost. Meloxicam, an alternative non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, is not toxic to vultures. With increased production, it may become cheap enough to replace all use of diclofenac. Conservation breeding is another important part of revitalizing vulture populations.

So why the concern about usually reviled carrion-eaters? In fact, vultures are part of the decomposition cycle. By removing animal carcasses, the birds eliminate primary sources of disease and infection. Without them, other scavengers move in – but rats and stray dogs are much less savoury neighbours.

Blinding rain. Careening traffic. Distracted drivers. There are lots of reasons why car crashes are America’s leading cause of accidental death. And one way that most accidents could be prevented: with cars that predict a coming collision and take action to stop it.

The key to the crash-free future is vehicle-to-vehicle communication, or V2V. Some advances that would make V2V possible are already on the way. Increasingly sophisticated GPS will soon allow you to pinpoint your vehicle’s precise location at any given moment, and stability-control systems that track your car’s speed and direction are even now feeding such information to onboard computers. The primary remaining challenge is finding the means to communicate that data to cars in your projected path.

To encourage the development of V2V, the Federal Communications Commission has cleared the 5.9-gigahertz band for dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) among cars, other cars, and roadside transceivers. Volkswagen’s Electronics Research Laboratory which helped build the autonomous VW Touareg that won last year’s Darpa Grand Challenge robotic race recently fitted two Jettas and two Audi A3s with DSRC units and used V2V to successfully run them, platoon-style, through San Francisco. The technology is doable right now, says Carsten Bergmann, a VW lab manager. (Of course, getting the right data to the right car at the right time calls for fiendishly complicated threat-detection algorithms that are far easier with four cars than with hundreds of them.)

This sounds like an interesting concept. If I had the money, I’d probably buy it shortly after it came on the market. But we need to think how much of our life we want to trust to a computer?

Read the rest of the article here

In fact, the current estimate puts the global humpback population at 40,000 – about 35% of the historic pre-whaling population. Humpback whales are large baleen whales that feed on krill and small fish species. They live in throughout the world’s oceans, migrating from summer feeding grounds to winter calving areas. They are large and relatively slow-swimming; their migratory routes are consistent and often follow coastlines. These factors have made them easy prey for whalers in the past.

The total population is made up of three separate groups, or stocks, including the western North Atlantic, north Pacific, and the southern oceans (south of 60 degrees south). Since 1966, humpback whales have been protected by the International Whaling Commission (IWC). Despite initial conservation measures, humpbacks were subject to an illegal hunt into the 1970s.

While the increase in humpbacks is a positive result of conservation efforts, it may also lead to problems. With rebounding numbers of whales, some whaling countries may be keen to resume the hunt. While commercial whaling is confined to Norway and Iceland – while Japan uses a scientific justification – other groups also hunt whales. Aboriginal subsistence whaling is permitted in the US, Denmark, Russia, and several Caribbean countries.

Australian researchers just identified an area where hundreds of humpback calves are sheltered. Nearly 400 pods use a particular bay – Camden Sound – off the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Breeding grounds such as this are crucial to the viability of cetacean populations. Adults teach calves to feed, swim, and interact. Conservation efforts can be focused on these known areas of congregation.

The southern right whale has also been deemed to be of “least concern” in the same IUCN announcement. However, while humpbacks and southern right whales are showing improved populations, most cetaceans are facing more sobering challenges. Out of a total of 44 cetacean species, nine are endangered or critically endangered. Several subspecies and subpopulations are also critically endangered – especially smaller coastal species. Realistically, accurate data are lacking for many species. Gathering information about migratory aquatic mammals is a challenge. But accurate data is the key to making decisions and ensuring population viability.

Threats for whales include collisions with ships, entanglement in fishing gear, changes in prey availability, and other habitat disruption. Some countries have attempted to address these problems with conservation plans. Changes to shipping lanes and disentanglement responses have helped in certain areas.