Mr. Wallis, 42, wears an open, curious expression and speaks in a slurred but coherent voice. He volleys a visitor’s pleased-to-meet-you with, “Glad to be met,” and can speak haltingly of his family’s plans to light fireworks at his brother’s house nearby.
For his family, each word is a miracle. For 19 years — until June 11, 2003 — Mr. Wallis lay mute and virtually unresponsive in a state of minimal consciousness, the result of a head injury suffered in a traffic accident. Since his abrupt recovery — his first word was “Mom,” uttered at the sight of his mother — he has continued to improve, speaking more, remembering more.
But Mr. Wallis’ return to the world, and the progress he has made, have also been a kind of miracle for scientists: an unprecedented opportunity to study, using advanced scanning technology, how the human brain can suddenly recover from such severe, long-lasting injury.
Daily Archives: July 4, 2006
A Few July 4, 2006 Madison Photographs
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Music Sales: Fewer Big Hits, Many More Sales at the Tail….
Larry Lessig pointed me to an interesting bit of research on filesharing and the decline of music sales in Denmark, which shows that the fall in sales has been felt far more in the hits than in the niches. The work, by Claus Pedersen, uses data from the Nordic Copyright Bureau. That means the data are not just estimates of sales declines, but actual sales. I’ve charted one aspect of the research, which looks at the change in sales in four sales categories, from bestsellers to the long tail:
Manure Power
In fact, more utilities are thinking of buying the gas outright. Pacific Gas and Electric has agreed to transport gas from a big digester that Microgy, a digester manufacturer, is building in California. Right now Microgy plans to sell the gas on the open market, but Robert Howard, vice president for gas transmission and distribution, said P.G.& E. may buy some gas itself. “This technology provides pipeline-quality gas and reduces carbon emissions, so of course we’re in favor it,” he said.
The environmental boons are many. According to Agstar, digesters are already keeping 66,000 tons of methane from escaping each year into the atmosphere, while generating enough energy to power more than 20,000 homes.
And technologies, some of which have been around for decades, have finally grown more reliable. “There’s been a lot of time and energy spent on making these as effective and efficient as possible, so anaerobic digestion will be a growing business,” said Daniel J. Mannes, vice president of Avondale Partners, a securities research firm that recently initiated coverage of the Environmental Power Corporation, the company in Portsmouth, N.H., that owns Microgy.