• View our YouTube Channel
• Subscribe to Newsletter
• Subscribe to RSS
• Contact Us

An accredited investor is an individual with net worth, or joint net worth with that person's spouse, at the time of purchase, exceeds $1,000,000

OR

An individual with income in excess of $200,000 in each of the two most recent years or joint income with that person's spouse in excess of $300,000 in each of those years and has a resonable expectation of reaching the same income level in the current year.

What are feeds? I see "RSS", "XML", and "Atom" out there, but I don't know how I might use these links when I find them.

Feeds are a way for websites large and small to distribute their content well beyond just visitors using browsers. Feeds permit subscription to regular updates, delivered automatically via a web portal, news reader, or in some cases good old email. Feeds also make it possible for site content to be packaged into "widgets," "gadgets," mobile devices, and other bite-sized technologies that make it possible to display blogs, podcasts, and major news/sports/weather/whatever headlines just about anywhere.

Why is This a Good Thing?

Subscribing to feeds makes it possible to review a large amount of online content in a very short time. Feeds permit instant distribution of content and the ability to make it "subscribable." Advertising in feeds overcomes many of the shortcomings that traditional marketing channels encounter including spam filters, delayed distribution, search engine rankings, and general inbox noise.

How do I read feeds?

If you want to browse and subscribe to feeds, you have many choices. Today, there are more than 2,000 different feed reading applications, also known as "news aggregators" (for text, mostly) or "podcatchers" (for podcasts). There are even readers that work exclusively on mobile devices. Some require a small purchase price but are tops for ease-of-use and ship with dozens of feeds pre-loaded so you can explore the feed "universe" right away. Free readers are available as well; a search for "Feed reader" or "Feed aggregator" at popular search sites will yield many results. A handful of popular feed readers are listed at the bottom of this page. A typical interface for a feed reader will display your feeds and the number of new (unread) entries within each of those feeds. You can also organize your feeds into categories and even clip and save your favorite entries (with certain applications). If you prefer, you can use an online, web-based service to track and manage feeds. Online services give you the advantage of being able to access your feed updates anywhere you can find a web browser. Also, upgrades and new features are added automatically.

Popular Feed Readers

Applications

• NewsGator - FeedDemon 2.0 (Windows, more info)
• NewsGator - Inbox for Microsoft Outlook (Windows)
• NewsGator - NetNewsWire (OS X)
• Firefox (via "Live Bookmarks" feature)
• Safari (feed support in the Apple OS X native browser)
• Pulp Fiction (OS X)

Online Services

• Google Reader
• NewsGator (Online)
• My Yahoo!
• Bloglines
• Pageflakes
• Netvibes

The Wonders of Algae

• What are Algae
• The Many Uses of Algae
• Algae vs. Other Biomass
• Our Nation’s Petroleum Issue
• Ideal Region to Grow Algae
• Industry Need

Industry Need

The U.S. imports roughly 3.6 billion barrels of oil and produces 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year. Microscopic algae are an incredible life form that can thrive in poor quality water, consume carbon dioxide, double their mass up to 3 times per day, and produce more than 50% lipids (oil). Furthermore, algae can achieve a density, in terms of productivity per acre, far greater than other biological route - 400 times higher productivity than soybeans, 30 times more than palm. The land use impact of higher density crops is shown graphically in Figure 1, which shows the amount of land required to offset U.S. oil imports with a variety of terrestrial crops and algae.

Today, a major hurdle for the commercialization of algae based fuels and other products is separating the valuable biomass and lipids from water; the processing steps to get algae out of solution and dry, account for 30%-50% of the total cost of converting algae into fuel. AVS has developed novel concepts for dewatering dilute solutions that will enable the economic implementation of biomimetic industrial processes, including unlocking the potential of algae. To date, the preferred method of dewatering algae has been the centrifuge, which is a brute force approach that speeds settling through vigorous spinning. While effective, centrifuges have a number of shortcomings, including the consumption of far more energy than is required to affect the separation and damage resulting from applying too much force. AVS technologies offer an attractive and cost effective alternative.

Beyond algae, there are multitudes of dewatering and other solid-liquid separations that currently use centrifuges, belt filters and other similar technologies. These methods consume far more energy than is required to affect the separation, and can render a process uneconomical, energy negative or both. AVS technologies can dramatically lower the cost and energy intensity of solid-liquid separation; thereby, improving the economics of a wide range of processes and enabling many more.