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Automated Manipulation of Spherical Objects in Three Dimensions Using a Gimbaled Air Jet. Developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"A report released late Thursday in London and discussed Friday at the U.N. climate conference in South Africa said that - in theory - reflecting a small amount of sunlight back into space before it strike's the Earth's surface would have an immediate and dramatic effect. Within a few years, global temperatures would return to levels of 250 years ago, before the industrial revolution began dumping carbon dioxide into the air, trapping heat and causing temperatures to rise."

"Aviation history was made when the University of Toronto's human-powered aircraft with flapping wings became the first of its kind to fly continuously. The "Snowbird" performed its record-breaking flight on August 2 at the Great Lakes Gliding Club in Tottenham, Ont., witnessed by the vice-president (Canada) of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the world-governing body for air sports and aeronautical world records."

The ash cloud produced by the eruption of a sub-glacial volcano in Iceland has brought chaos to the European air industry. Here we explain how and why the crisis developed.

"An ambitious solar energy project on a massive scale is about to get underway in the Arizona desert. EnviroMission is undergoing land acquisition and site-specific engineering to build its first full-scale solar tower - and when we say full-scale, we mean it! The mammoth 800-plus meter (2625 ft) tall tower will instantly become one of the world's tallest buildings. Its 200-megawatt power generation capacity will reliably feed the grid with enough power for 150,000 US homes, and once it's built, it can be expected to more or less sit there producing clean, renewable power with virtually no maintenance until it's more than 80 years old."

"Researchers are finding that food miles are far from the whole story when assessing the environmental impact of what we eat. At a conference last month on the economics of food, Chris Foster of Manchester Business School presented some startling conclusions from a review of the evidence. "