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Here´s what low-grade cotton means for oil spill cleanup

May 18, 2013

Memphis Business Journal - The science behind cotton’s efficacy is simple enough to understand, said Seshadri Ramkumar, lead author and manager of the study. “Because low-micronaire cotton is less mature, it shrinks, and you are able to pack more fiber into a given area,” Ramkumar said in a release. “The strength here is that the low-micronaire cotton absorbs the most crude oil. The oil is not only stuck to the surface, (it) gets absorbed into the fiber.”

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4% Rule for Retirement Withdrawals Is Golden No More

May 18, 2013

The New York Times - Michael Finke, a professor in the department of personal financial planning at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, is a co-author of a paper critical of the rule, “The 4 Percent Rule Is Not Safe in a Low-Yield World.” He says Mr. Bengen’s rule doesn’t acknowledge the new economic reality of prolonged low returns. “There haven’t been any historical periods that look like today,” Mr. Finke said. “We’ve never had an extended period where rates of returns on bonds have been so low and valuation on stocks so high.”

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Raw Cotton Might Help Clean Up Oil Spills

May 17, 2013

Softpedia - A new research paper documents the possibility of using raw cotton in order to clean up any accidental spills that might occur while the oil industry is busy carrying on with its working agenda. The study, made available to the public in the latest issue of the journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, argues that, apart from its being highly efficiency in terms of sopping up oil, unprocessed cotton is also an environmentally-friendly way of dealing with such accidents.

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Cotton effective in cleaning up oil spills

May 17, 2013

Process Engineering- Scientists report that each pound of raw cotton may be able to sop up more than 30 pounds of crude oil. Seshadri Ramkumar and colleagues note that a particular need exists for oil-spill sorbents that are abundantly available at relatively low cost, sustainable and biodegradable. There have been extensive studies on fibers such as barley straw, kapok and wool — but big gaps in knowledge about their basic crude oil-uptake mechanisms and no data on unprocessed raw cotton.

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