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The Biden administration is poised to soon finalize gas-powered car tailpipe emissions standards that consumer advocates and energy industry groups have dubbed a "de facto electric vehicle mandate." The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) proposed tailpipe emissions – which were in recent weeks submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget for final review – are designed to ensure a staggering 67% of new car sales are electric by 2032. Over the weekend, the New York Times and Washington Post reported the White House is set to double down on that lofty goal while loosening earlier targets. "The President...

Legendary Italian car maker Ferrari has no intention of phasing out combustion engines and going fully electric or hybrid anytime soon, promising Sunday to keep making the eight and 12-cylinder engines it has made its trademark at least until the end of the 2030s. The chief of the Italian manufacturer told the BBC in an interview it would be “arrogant” to dictate to customers what they can buy while at the same time walking away from the company’s heritage.

Industrial-scale agriculture has changed the make up of our atmosphere. So "exofarms" ought to be visible on Earth-like planets orbiting other stars. One of the key developments separating modern civilization from the hunter gatherer societies of the past is the invention of farming, which took place about 10,000 years ago. This began with the cultivation of wild plants and the domestication of various animals for dairy products and meat. The big advantage of farming is that it sustains a much larger population than hunting and gathering. This led to the emergence of cities, the sharing of natural resources and of...

A newly conducted analysis predicts that sales of electric vehicles will outpace combustion vehicles by 2036 in the United States. Ernst & Young (EY) released an analysis stating that Europe will sell more zero emission vehicles than combustion vehicles by 2028 and that threshold is expected to be reached in China in 2033 and in the U.S. in 2036. According to EY's predictions, within the next 10 years, electric vehicles are expected to outsell combustion vehicles in the main global markets. In the next 25 years, combustion vehicles or non-electric cars are expected to only make up one percent of...

A woman is fighting for her life in a German hospital after appearing to spontaneously combust while sitting on a park bench.Flames sprouted from her as a horrified passerby rushed to her and used his jacket to beat out the fire. But she was severely burned over most of her body.The incident occurred in Flensburg, in the north of Germany, on Monday evening. The victim is in her 40's and comes from Mauritius.After being rushed to the local hospital she was later flown by air ambulance to a specialist burns unit in Lubeck where she remains in a critical condition.'The...

A 29-year-old mother of three is recovering in an Alabama burn unit after her face caught fire during a routine surgery earlier this week. Kim Grice, of Holt, Fla., was having three cysts removed from her head at a hospital in Crestview, Fla., on Tuesday when a flash fire erupted, torching her face and neck, family members told the Crestview News Bulletin. The blaze quickly fizzled, and doctors rushed her to the emergency room at North Okaloosa Medical Center, where she was stabilized. She was then flown to the University of South Alabama Medical Center, where family members said she...

GOTHENBURG, Sweden — An unidentified man burst into flames while waiting outside a train station in Sweden, leaving police flummoxed, the Göteborgs-Posten reported. Witnesses said the man was standing outside a music shop at the Gothenberg central train station around 10:30 p.m. Sunday, when he suddenly caught on fire. "He just stood there burning outside the shop," a witness told the paper. "After a while he started screaming. There were a few people about but they just watched him. I ran up to him, tore my coat off and managed to put the fire out together with another guy." The...

A startup company in Camarillo has created some buzz in the automotive industry with a new technology it says will improve gas-engine efficiency by 50 percent to 75 percent. Officials at Transonic Combustion Inc. said they have developed a fuel injection technology in their Camarillo lab and testing facilities that not only provides better fuel efficiency but also could help reduce emissions. “The heart of what we are doing here is improving how this fuel injection process works,” President and CEO Brian Ahlborn said. “Think about how much fuel you inject, and as it sprays, where is it going? Is...

Nuclear missiles could blow up 'like popcorn' By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent Last Updated: 8:59PM BST 25/06/2008 A design flaw in Britain's nuclear arsenal means that warheads could set off a chain reaction "like popcorn" if they were accidentally dropped, according to Ministry of Defence documents. More than 1,700 warheads are affected by the problem which would cause them to explode one after another, an effect known as "popcorning." A typical Trident nuclear missile contains three to six warheads, and some submarines carry up to 24 missiles, meaning the potential for disaster could be huge. Defence companies try to prevent...

The recent unusual weather patterns have accelerated one of the strangest phenomena witnessed in the bush: an unprecedented number of haysheds have been spontaneously bursting into flames. Throughout the grain belt, it has been the worst season ever for spontaneous hayshed fires, according to the executive officer of the Australian Fodder Industry Association, Colin Peace. He estimates there have been 400 incidents of spontaneous combustion of haysheds in NSW alone. From northern NSW to South Australia, haystacks and haysheds have been bursting into flames. Drought, followed by summer rains, microbial growth in the stack and then hot, dry conditions can...

Spontaneous Combustion On Arlington PlaygroundJoel Thomas Reporting Aug 13, 2007 4:55 pm US/Central (CBS 11 News) ARLINGTON A new danger has cropped up at some North Texas schools. It's now so hot that some things are spontaneously combusting. The wood-chip fiber that's used as mulch on a playground at an Arlington school burst into flames last week. A surveillance camera at Anderson Elementary School caught the fire on tape. It shows the mulch begin to smolder and then catch fire. It caused significant damage to the playground. "There just isn't any explanation except spontaneous combustion," said Mac Bernd, Arlington ISD...

The spontaneous combustion of a manure pile sparked a blaze that grew to about 200 acres Sunday, fire officials said. No injuries were reported and no structures were threatened. The blaze, dubbed the Red Star Fire because of its origins at the Red Star Fertilizer Co., was 50 percent contained, said Jonathan Pangburn, a spokesman with the California Department of Forestry. The fire was expected to be fully contained by late Sunday. The blaze, which consisted of a main 175-acre fire and several smaller ones, was reported shortly before 5 a.m. It was partially burning in Prado Regional Park near...

Although simple in concept, the complexity of the internal combustion engine is mind-boggling. Most of the time we take it for granted when we turn the ignition key, shift into gear and step on the gas, but a marvel of mechanics, managing thousands of little explosions each minute, keeps us traveling smoothly down the highways and byways and streets where we live. This video gives us an animated look at a virtual engine, from bare block to ignition. The inline-four engine is made by Deutz, an independent German machine manufacturer. See every component: casted this, braided that, spinning this, machined...

/begin my summary[N. Korean Missile] Taepodong-2 Engine Defect, Exposing its ProblemsThe source of N. Korean Taepodong-2 missile failure is now being narrowed down to its engine problem.According to NIS(S. Korean Intelligence Agency,) Taepodong-2 was launched at 5am, on July 5th, from the launch pad at Munsudan-ri, Hwa-dae County, N. Hamkyong Province. After its vertical ascent, it was flying over East Sea when its engine developed 'shaking.'It is the same as  the situation where imperfect combustion of automobile fuel causes engine to shake. Experts suspect that some technical problems inside booster rockets lead to imperfect combustion of its liquid fuel. According to this scenario, this 'shaking' persisted for (initial) 40 seconds of...

Investors seem to be betting that Congress will fix the asbestos mess this coming year.... We suspect they're too optimistic, and for now we take more heart from last week's landmark decision by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to reject the $1.2 billion Combustion Engineering settlement. ...[O}ur view is that the judiciary is finally exercising some adult supervision over a mess of its own making. Combustion Engineering, a unit of European construction giant ABB, had become a model of how trial lawyers abuse "prepackaged" bankruptcies to rake in millions for their unimpaired clients, while leaving real cancer victims with...

CANNETO DI CARONIA, Sicily (Reuters) - The gate at the entrance to this tiny Sicilian village has come off its hinges and swings in the wind as cats wander into homes abandoned after a series of mystery fires. Reuters Photo A series of spontaneous fires started in mid-January in the town of Canneto di Caronia in about 20 houses. After a brief respite last month, the almost daily fires have flared up again -- even though electricity to the village was cut off. An endless flow of scientists, engineers, police and even a few self-styled "ghostbusters" have descended on the...