. . . ENERGY FLASHES...... ENERGY FLASHES...... ENERGY FLASHES. . .

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AN URBAN HEAT SOURCE? Geologists have discovered that the temperature of shallow ground water beneath Philadelphia may be as much as 34°F more than usual . . . and they attribute the warmth to man-made heat sources, such as the combustion of fossil fuels and heat loss from buried steam lines. Scientists estimate that some 570 trillion BTU (the equivalent of the energy that would be released by burning 98 million barrels of oil) is stored in the city's ground water and rock layers and could be recovered by heat pumps.

TINY PELLETS OF STYRENE, the material of which insulated coffee cups are made, are being used for nighttime insulation in greenhouses at the Ohio Agricultural and Development Center. The system — which may be able to save 80% of the facility's heating costs — utilizes a blower that pushes millions of the minute pellets into an airtight, double-layered sheet-plastic roof every night . . . and sucks the beads out each morning.

SOLAR ROTISSERIE: Hammacher Schlemmer, the New York specialty store, has introduced a novelty for the dedicated sunbather: a $4,500 solar-powered lounge chair, which rotates once every 15 minutes to promote uniform tanning.

The Tennessee Valley Authority is conducting an air-quality study, at a plant near Oak Ridge, to develop more accurate methods of predicting how different types of terrain affect the BEHAVIOR OF EMISSIONS FROM TALL STACKS AT COAL-BURNING POWER PLANTS.... An Alamogordo, New Mexico inventor has devised a machine, dubbed the "Monster Molder", that can MASS-PRODUCE ADOBE BLOCKS. The age-old building material is experiencing an increase in popularity, but traditional hand-forming methods are time-consuming and labor-intensive .... The Solarex Corporation has completed the first of five SOLAR-POWERED MEDICAL CLINICS for a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The clinics are to be shipped to remote Third World villages where electric power isn't available .... The American Solar Energy Society has announced that it intends to PUBLISH GOVERNMENT ENERGY RESEARCH whose dissemination would otherwise be delayed as a result of curtailed government printing under reduced federal budgets. The reports will be offered for sale to the general public .... After enduring more than eight nuclear explosions over the past 25 years, the Frenchcontrolled Mururoa Atoll seems to be developing a fissure and SLOWLY SINKING INTO THE DEPTHS OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC (see page 32 for related developments).

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