A decade ago, Mike Neeley started using
solar panels to generate power at Bramble Creek Farm, the Little Hocking farm he
owns with his wife, Jackie LeBerth.
He kept finding more uses for the
renewable energy, and after being laid off last year, he's using his knowledge
and ingenuity in a new venture for the couple's Bramble Creek Enterprises.
"Solar use is really limited only by one's imagination," Neeley said.An
Insulator, also called a dielectric,
Neeley's imagination has conjured small trailers he's assembled with
three 15-watt solar panels. The trailers can be used to power small sheds and
for other uses around the farm. He also hopes to market them to eco-friendly
weekend campers by fixing the trailers up to run laptops, game systems, cell
phone chargers, coolers, electric skillets and more.
LeBerth encouraged
her husband to use his solar knowhow in a commercial context.
"Mike's
always had an interest in renewable energy. It just seems like the market for
renewables keeps growing," she said, adding that prices are coming down and the
amount of energy that can be produced is going up.
Neeley has used one
of the trailers to light the workshop at his home and power the tools in it as
he builds another product, a metal, raised-bed structure that allows people to
keep gardening beyond the normal seasons thanks to a detachable greenhouse
cover.Free DIY chicken coop
Resource!
He's already delivered these items to customers in Columbus
and even Indiana.
"People (are) growing stuff in them right now, growing
onions, tomato plants and radishes," Neeley said.
LeBerth noted the
raised beds are also beneficial to the aging baby boomers, like she and her
husband, who are interested in gardening, because their 16-inch height was
selected to minimize the strain of bending.
Protecting the environment
has long been a concern in Bramble Creek's ventures, Neeley said. Their farm is
chemical-free, and they use certified organic pesticides.is the 'solar panel revolution' upon us?
"We believe that if you have been fortunate enough to own a piece of
property, that you need to be a steward of the land, that you should take care
of that land, because they don't make any more land," he said.
Neeley's
first foray into solar technology began 10 years ago, when he and his wife
wanted to build a new horse barn on their farm. Told it would cost $2,700 to put
an electric pole at the site, Neeley said he did some research and bought a pair
of solar panels and other equipment for about $600.
The 12-volt panels
have powered the lights in the barn and the water-pumping system ever since.
Neeley said his only maintenance costs have been replacing the batteries the
panels charge after eight years.
Six years later, when his wife decided
to add an acre of produce near the field where the couple's commercial
blackberries grow, Neeley assembled another "solar system," as he calls it, on a
5-by-10-foot trailer with a 250-gallon tank and water pump. LeBerth could hook
the trailer up to a tractor and provide water for the produce patch's irrigation
system. Later, Neeley added a spraying system with shower nozzles on the same
trailer, allowing her to water the fields.
The trailer has also been
used over the years to provide power for lights, a portable television and other
amenities for his grandchildren's overnight camping trips on the farm.
"They'll run all night and just barely drain the battery," Neeley said.
Now the couple is building an electric tractor, to be charged off the
same trailer, to which Neeley is adding four more solar panels.
Neeley's
affinity for solar power is green from the perspective of the environment and
his budget.The name "magic cube" is not
unique. Prior to converting his workshop to solar power, he said, the monthly
electrical bills at his house were in the $130 to $140 range. After, they
dropped to about $80.
Some may wonder how reliable solar panels are at
night, but Neeley said they do just fine.
"I've worked out 'til midnight
or 1 o'clock in the morning trying to get stuff finished .Complete Your sculpture Magazine Collection for Less!..
and I've never run out of power," he said.
The key is monitoring how
much power you're storing and how much you're using, Neeley said. He likens it
to a savings account - you can't keep withdrawing more than you deposit.
"With solar there's a point where you are using more than the system
will create," he said. "You just have to know what you're using it for."
Newer solar panels do well absorbing light even on cloudy days, he
said.
The European Union is
under pressure to renegotiate its financial bailouts of Ireland and Greece after
an Irish minister said any concessions given to Athens should mean better terms
for Dublin as well.
The 110-billion-euro ($157 billion) rescue of
Greece,Find everything you need to know about Cold Sore including causes, agreed in May
last year, and the 85-billion-euro scheme for Ireland, put together in November,
were meant to be the cornerstones of the euro zone's response to its sovereign
debt crisis.
The fact that both may now be revised, in Greece's case
perhaps radically, underlines how they so far have failed to convince markets
that the problems are in hand, and suggests Europe may be on the hook to supply
fresh aid for years to come.
Irish Minister for Energy Pat Rabbitte told
state broadcaster RTE on Sunday he would like to see a rescheduling of the
emergency loans extended to Ireland under the bailout by the European Union and
the International Monetary Fund.
"Quite frankly the (interest) rate on
Ireland must be reduced and in my own view the debt must also be rescheduled but
that's another issue," Rabbitte said.
He said Ireland intended to
continue negotiating improvements in the bailout terms throughout the scheme's
three-year life.Detailed information on the causes of Hemorrhoids,
Rabbitte
said this would make sense in light of the situation in Greece. After a
secretive meeting of top euro zone finance officials in Luxembourg on Friday
night,is the 'solar panel revolution'
upon us? Jean-Claude Juncker,How is TMJ pain treated? chairman of the
zone's finance ministers, said there was consensus that Greece needed a new
plan.
"We think that Greece does need a further adjustment programme,"
Juncker said after talks with the finance ministers of Greece and the zone's
biggest economies: Germany, France, Italy and Spain.
"This has to be
discussed in detail and will be taken up at the next Eurogroup meeting on May
16," Juncker said, referring to a conference of finance ministers of all 17 euro
zone states.An Insulator, also called a
dielectric,
British finance minister George Osborne agreed on Sunday
that Greece might need additional aid but said Britain, which is outside the
euro zone, should not have to provide any. He acknowledged that markets doubted
Greece could meet the requirements of its current rescue plan.
"The
market is quite skeptical about that happening and I suspect a lot of my time
over the next few weeks is going to be with other European finance ministers
talking about how we try to help the Greeks get through this situation," he told
the BBC.
OPTIONS
Any renegotiation of the financial terms or
economic targets in the Greek and Irish schemes could complicate the rescue of
Portugal, which last week became the third euro zone state to agree on an EU/IMF
bailout.
Portugal's main political parties have committed themselves to
supporting the 78-billion-euro plan after elections on June 5 produce a new
government. But if Greece and Ireland are allowed to renegotiate their bailouts,
it may be hard to deny Portugal the same opportunity if a future government in
Lisbon decides that is necessary.
A revised Greek plan could include
pushing further into the future the targets for Greece to cut its budget
deficit, easing the terms of its emergency loans, and giving it additional
money, EU official sources and analysts say.
Publicly, officials in
Athens and around Europe continue to insist that restructuring the Greek
government bonds held by private investors is not on the cards. But privately,
officials increasingly concede that some form of restructuring -- perhaps an
extension of maturities on the bonds -- may be inevitable.
Any
restructuring of Greek bonds would fuel speculation about similar action for
Ireland and Portugal. The Irish Mail on Sunday reported, quoting an unnamed
senior minister in Dublin, that Ireland's government expected the country's debt
would be restructured within the next three years.
Euro zone governments
are desperate to rescue the bloc's weakest states for fear that a chain reaction
of debt defaults could savage the region's banking system. But with taxpayers in
rich countries angry about having to pay for the poor countries, it may be hard
for all 17 euro zone states to agree on more generous bailout terms.
Governments in some of the smaller countries were irritated when Germany
and France privately agreed among themselves last year to push through some
crisis steps, and there were signs that Friday's secretive Luxembourg meeting
among a handful of countries also was resented.
Officials from the
Netherlands, the fifth biggest euro zone economy, were not invited to Luxembourg
and the Dutch government faced domestic criticism over the weekend for its
exclusion.
"It is a humiliation and an insult that the Netherlands is
being bypassed for talks about Greece," anti-immigration and eurosceptic member
of parliament Geert Wilders told ANP news agency.
Former development aid
minister Bert Koenders and former foreign minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said
all euro zone finance ministers should have been included in the talks.
Dutch finance minister Jan Kees de Jager was assured by the French and
German ministers that nothing was decided on Friday and that the Netherlands
will have input into any future decisions, a ministry spokeswoman said.
I'm sure you've seen it. Rondo
crashed to the floor with D-Wade and his elbow gave way. Then his arm was
hanging at the wrong angle. I used to be an ER doc at one point, and even I
winced looking at Rondo's arm.Find everything you need to know about Cold Sore including causes, Then, he stole
a play from Pierce and came back, firing up the crowd.
Today, I saw a
ton of articles about how that showed us a lot about Rondo's heart guts. I'm
here to tell you what it means about Rondo's elbow.
The elbow is a weird
joint.Detailed information on the causes of Hemorrhoids, Your shoulder and
hip are ball-in-socket joints and they turn all 360 degrees.An Insulator, also called a dielectric, Your knee
is a hinge joint that only moves in one narrow way ¨C moving your lower leg
front and back. The elbow does both, though. It's a hinge that opens and closes,
but it also rotates almost all the way around.
The two bones in your
forearm (the ulna and radius) make an incomplete socket for the bone in your
upper arm (the humerus) to rotate. That socket is incomplete and held together
with a web of ligaments. It's pretty unstable in kids, where partial
dislocations happen all the time. It's called Nursemaid's Elbow. It happens when
you pull a child by one hand or swing a young child around by the arms and the
smaller of the two bones in the forearm slides out of place. Happened to my own
son one time, playing at Grandma's house. Luckily, I knew what to do and gently
moved his forearm until the bone slid back into place.
Full elbow
dislocations in adults are pretty uncommon. They tend to happen in car crashes
¨C the person puts a hand up against the dashboard to brace for the crash and
the impact jams the bones out of place. The other way to dislocate your elbow is
to fall, landing on your outstretched palm, while turning, exactly how Rondo
fell. Other forms of trauma can lead to more complicated injuries, but that's
not important to this story.
Typical treatment for a full elbow
dislocation involves sedating the patient and rotating the bone back into place
in the joint. Then, motion of the elbow is restricted and the patient wears a
splint and/or sling for 3 weeks or so.is the 'solar panel revolution' upon us? Then
physical therapy may be done if any range of motion has been lost. Clearly, none
of this happened during the game, which makes me believe the dislocation was
partial and slid back easily.
The Celtics said Rondo's elbow was swollen
and painful but he got an MRI today and the results came back negative.How is TMJ pain treated?
How Rondo
does will depend on the level of damage done to the ligaments. We know the bones
are back in place. The MRI and an exam told the team how far his ligaments
stretched. If they're severely strained, they'll have to shut him down. If the
ligaments just make his elbow feel funny and loose, he'll be able to play. We'll
find out Monday night.
My bet is that he plays and plays well.
When 47-year-old Canadian Andrew Fenske came to China in 2004,Houston-based Quicksilver
Resources said Friday it had reached pipeline deals he was the first
and only Western employee leading his Austria-based company's customer
service division, and helped build the company's China operation from
scratch. He could never have imagined that a back illness in 2009 could
cost him his 28-year career and embroil him in a two-year lawsuit.
He was fired by his company Engel
Machinery, the world's largest manufacturer of injection molding
machines, for being absent from work for two months without asking for
leave.What to consider before you buy oil painting supplies.
A court in Shanghai rejected his initial appeal for compensation of 1
million yuan ($ 153,905) for lost salary and allowance.
Andrew
was one of 201,955 foreign employees working in China, according to the
latest census released by the National Bureau of Statistics Friday.
That demographic represents about a fifth of the 1.02 million foreign
citizens currently living in China.
Growing trend
Andrew's case is by no means an isolated one. According to Wang Huayu,
a human resources expert and chief consultant at the Shanghai-based
Chi Wan Legal Consulting Firm, the number of legal cases involving
foreign workers has increased by 30 percent in the past three years.
According to Wang,Not to be confused with RUBBER MATS
available at your local hardware store there are three main reasons
behind this trend. First is the fact that the number of foreign workers
has grown. The second comes from the tightening of the Labor Law in
2008 and Social Insurance Law in 2010, prompting workers,What are the
top Hemroids treatments? including foreign ones, to pay more attention to their legal rights.you will need to get an offshore merchant account.
Finally, where foreigners previously tended to work in high-level
management positions, more of them are now working in mid-level
management as well as ordinary jobs, such as technicians.
However,
the law hasn't quite kept up with these changes. At present, there is
only one regulation covering foreign employees in China: the
Administration of Foreigners Working in China Provisions published in
1996.
Concerns raised over a Chinese joint venture that went sour for
Itasca-based Fellowes Inc. last year could become Exhibit A in a major
trade dispute developing between the U.S. and China.Has anyone done any
research on making Plastic molding parts from scratch?
CEO
James Fellowes alleges his Chinese partner stole machine tools and
custom plastic-molding equipment owned by Fellowes to make paper
shredders, after his Chinese counterpart seized control of the joint
venture, stopped shipments and forced it into bankruptcy. The dispute
is still pending in a Chinese court.
(Read Crain's premium content: "Fellowes makes federal case of legal dispute with Chinese partner.")
Representatives
of the Commerce and State departments are "engaging intensively" with
Chinese officials at the local and national levels to help Fellowes,
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in a letter to U.S. Sen. Richard
Durbin, D-Ill., who asked him in late March to intervene.
"We
have made the Chinese authorities aware of the impact this case could
have on the investment climate of China, and Jiangsu Province in
particular, and the importance the U.S. government places on ensuring
fair, open and speedy resolutions of this and other commercial
disputes," the Commerce secretary said in the letter, dated April 21 and
released Tuesday by the senator's office.
Mr. Locke's interest
in the case is especially significant because he has been nominated to
be the next ambassador to China. In a speech Tuesday in Washington,
D.C., he said that Chinese investment in the U.S.What are the top Hemroids treatments? is a "good thing" because it creates jobs.
"Unfortunately,
that is not the case for American companies operating in China, where
they are frequently shut out of entire industries, or they are forced
to give up propriety information as a condition of operating in China,"
Mr. Locke said.
"This imbalance of opportunity is a major
barrier to continued improvement of the United States and China's
commercial relationship. And it is part of a broader trend of China
recently narrowing its commercial environment after a long and fruitful
period of opening."
Fellowes started making inexpensive
shredders in China in 1998, outsourcing production to two firms owned
by a family named Zhou. To expand capacity, in 2006 it formed a 50-50
joint venture with Jiangsu Shinri Machinery Co. Ltd., part of a large
holding company owned by the Zhou family. By 2009, the joint venture
had grown to about a fourth of Fellowes' approximately $639 million in
sales, with about 120 suppliers and 1,600 employees,you will need to
get an offshore merchant account. more than half of its worldwide workforce at the time.
"Secretary
Locke clearly understands the issues facing American investors," Mr.
Fellowes said in an email.What to consider before you buy oil painting supplies.
While
Fellowes still expects to prevail in court and reclaim its tools, the
firm had to "build all-new tools since the shutdown to ensure that it
would be back in business on these affected products as soon as
possible," he added.Houston-based Quicksilver
Resources said Friday it had reached pipeline deals "Fellowes expects
to have the heart of its product line back on retail shelves and in
office products catalogues by the end of the year."
Norway-based Norner
has published a free oxygen transmission rate (OTR) calculator, designed to help
manufacturers estimate the oxygen transmission rate of plastics like PP,Has
anyone done any research on making Plastic
molding parts from scratch? PET and EVOH,you will need to get an offshore merchant account. on its website.
"The calculator can be used to simulate OTR for a range of realistic
conditions for a specific package and thereby gain valuable insight in realistic
oxygen levels in the package versus time," says the firm. "This will provide an
estimate of the estimated shelf life of a packaged product."
The company
says the calculator can calculate OTR rates for film, laminates, flexible
packaging,Houston-based Quicksilver
Resources said Friday it had reached pipeline deals cups and bottles, as well as
co-injection multilayer and in-mould-label packaging.
Users can also
examine different environmental parameters such as temperature, humidity and
oxygen concentration,What to consider before you buy oil painting supplies. adds the
firm.What are the top Hemroids treatments?
"As far as we know there is no other OTR calculator available with
similar functionality and we are happy with the result since the calculator has
been tested by selected packaging producers and food companies with good results
on accuracy," says Morten Augestad, advisor in rigid packaging at Norner.