Turbine-Free Wind Power

Conservationists argue that wind turbines pose a risk to birds, bats and sensitive habitats like shorelines. People living close to wind farms, meanwhile, complain of constant noise and vibration. This year, engineers responded with a new way to draw electricity from the wind: oscillating wind panels.

The wind panels are the brainchild of Francis Moon, a professor of mechanical engineering at Cornell University. He created a panel of 25 pads that oscillate in the wind, much the way leaves vibrate when a gust of air sifts through a tree. The pads attach to piezoelectric materials that produce electricity from each vibration.

Moon and a team of undergraduates have a working prototype called Vibro-Wind, which functions in variable wind speeds and generates little noise, making it ideally suited for urban spaces. Moon envisions Vibro-Wind on the sides and roofs of buildings, powering electronics and ad displays day and night. Andrew Tolve

“Walk into a Chase branch and we can give you so much quicker, better and faster,” Dimon says, referring to the bank’s array of loans, credit cards and investment products. “Like Wal-Mart. ” It is an intriguing comparison; this is how Dimon wants to be seen — as a retailer with 5,200 branches nationwide whose products happen to be financial services. The reason that J. P. Morgan runs so many disparate businesses, he says, is that they aren’t really disparate. Just as customers in Wal-Mart shop for groceries as well as televisions, people who want credit cards also need mortgages; small businesses that require commercial loans occasionally need an investment banker; and all of the above need a place to put their assets.

Is Wal-Mart really just selling stuff produced by, uhm, Wal-Mart?
This is so wrong, I do not even know where to start.

I just hope this really shameful advertorial for JPMorgan Chase is just a make good preparing the NY Times for some really nasty wikileaks on megabanks behaving badly.