There are several solar panels available for home installation you can choose from. Following are the types of solar system panels that can be used for powering up several home appliances.

Monocrystalline
The type that started it all, monocrystalline panels, originated in the 1950s. The cells are cut from silicon in a cylindrical fashion, each cell resembles the shape of wafer. A group of tens of wafers make up a monocrystalline panel. Monocrystalline panels are generally constructed from high-quality silicon, giving them the highest performance rates in the industry, usually up to 21 percent. Monocrystalline panels outperform thin film as they make wise use of space, offering a high-power yield per square foot.
Warranties often last for 25 years, as these panels perform better in low-light conditions than their polycrystalline counterparts. Since they are of a superior quality, these panels are also costly. The manufacturing process produces significant waste.

Polycrystalline
Unlike cutting silicon in the form of wafer shapes, manufacturers pour silicon into a mold to form polycrystalline panels. Polycrystalline types of panels are a good option for many residential solar panel systems. The manufacturing process produces little waste, and the technology allows for a cost-effective panel. Efficiency is lower, than its other counterparts. The panels require more space when installed to produce the same electrical output as a panel constructed from monocrystalline.

Thin film
Thin-film solar panels are manufactured by putting down multiple layers of a photo-voltaic element, such as amorphous silicon or organic photo-voltaic cells. Thin film solar panels are lightweight, and are not affected by factors like shading or obstructions. These panels are easy to mass manufacture, hence they are an affordable option. Most thin-film panels offer very low performance, swinging between 7 and 13 percent, they have an average operating efficiency of about 9 percent. These panels generally require a lot of space. As a result, they are not fit for commercial applications. For most residential installations, with strict space constraints, thin film solar panel systems don’t work well.
In most cases, thin-film panels don’t last long and quickly succumb to the effects of weather conditions. Hence typically a manufacturer may not offer a long warranty to go along with a thin-film panel.

There are a number of websites on the Internet that you can use to compare and buy a particular type of panel. Some of the popular websites include wholesalesolar.com, gogreensolar.com, etimates.solar etc.

In the ever-growing field of technology, the need for clean and sustainable power generation go hand in hand. With the ever-depleting natural resources that we have been using since the first sprout of evolution, it is becoming more and more difficult to garner clean energy. That’s when solar technology came into existence. Solar technology uses sun energy that can power up things, from toy car to a whole city. It can be stored in a simple photovoltaic cell or solar panels depending on the purpose.

Solar panel is a collection of solar cells. The more light hits the cells the more electricity is produced. There are different types of silicon present for almost 90% of the World’s photovoltaics today are based on some variation of silicon. The silicon used in Photo voltaic cells has many forms. Efficiency should not be your primary concern. As cost and space efficiency are the determining factors for most people.

For people having space constraints for thin film solar panels, in order to limit the amount of space photo voltaic system takes up, crystalline-based solar panels can be a good option. Although there are not a whole lot of solar panel system installers that offer thin-film solar panels for residential use at this point.

The 180, 200 and 220 watts rated solar panels are usually of the same size. They are manufactured exactly the same way, but yield different results when tested, hence they end up in different categories for power output. It is recommended to go for the highest rated power output for a particular physical size.

Both mono and polycrystalline solar panels are good choices and offer similar advantages. Even though polycrystalline solar panels tend to be less space efficient and monocrystalline solar panels tend to produce more electrical power, this is not always the case. It would be nearly impossible to recommend one over the other, as different locations have different requirements.

Like for instance, monocrystalline solar panels are slightly more expensive, since they are slightly more space-efficient. A solar panel system made up of one polycrystalline and one monocrystalline solar panel, both rated 220-watt, would generate the same amount of electricity, but the one made of mono-crystalline silicon would take up less space Lowest Costs materials used in solar panel systems. If you want the lowest costs per rated power, or in other words, pay as little as possible for a certain amount of and electricity. At the end it depends on what appliances you are choosing to run on solar power. So consider takinng an opinion from a solar panel installer before deciding to install one for your home.

A lot has been said and written about Americans and electric kettles. Yes, it is a fact that most American households do not have electric kettles. How do we survive then? Well, we use kettles on gas tops! Electric kettle is a rarity in America as the water takes longer to boil on electricity than gas. Why is that? It all boils down to the voltage difference. However, fair and genuine this reason may be, people from across the world are not convinced. This is simply because electric kettles are an indispensable part of most British and Asian households! It’s true electric kettles enjoy mass appeal across the other half of the globe. People go gaga over these literally power packed pots and here’s why.

One of the primary reasons why kettles or hot pots are so popular is because they save on lots of time and time they say is money. Efficient, quick and compact electric kettles have sundry qualities to boast about. It is the sheer convenience and ease kettles working on electricity offers, that makes them supremely popular. They are a boon for most tea drinking nations as boiling water becomes just a button away.

This is not it. It works wonders for people who do not have access to kitchen supplies or the kitchen itself! Students and working professionals who are living away from the comforts of their homes, often find great utility in these electric hot pots that enable them to quickly boil a wide variety of easy to make food items. Electric kettle may not cook like traditional stoves and hot plates but they can surely do some eggs, potatoes, milk, soups, oatmeal, boiled veggies and noodles in seconds! The best part is that you can even multitask while your food gets boiled and cooled, all on its own. Automatic turn off buttons enable one to step away and go about one’s errands. Electric kettles are hugely popular among students living in hostels who find mess food difficult to gulp down!

Not just students, even the hospitality industry seems to be a fan! All European hotel rooms for instance come with a table stocked with sachets of tea and coffee and of course, an electric kettle!

Travelers who find a tough time adjusting to the local taste, find electric kettles a great help. People on tours can easily make prepackaged meals, cup noodles and other quick meals to keep up their energy levels.

Owing to its umpteen advantages, electric kettle’s heroism and glory, is totally understandable.

Cord blood stem cells can treat several diseases, including some cancers, blood disorders, and immune deficiencies. Among these are leukemia, aplastic anemia, Hodgkin’s disease, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. There are many blood bank companies in the United States that exclusively store cord blood for future and emergency use.

Estimates suggests that more than one million units of cord blood are stored in family banks in the United States. And the national Be the Match Registry lists more than Twohundred and twenty five thousand donated cord blood units, with additional access to more than Seven hundred thousand cord blood units through partnerships with international registries.

Verter estimates that about five percent of parents now bank their baby’s cord blood. Ninety percent of that cord blood goes to family banks and 10 percent goes to public banks.
Some of the popular and oldest blood cord banks include Cryo-Cell, Viacord, and Cord Blood Registry. These are some of the oldest and largest private cord blood banks in the United States. They’ve been storing cord blood since the early ’90s, and they are all accredited by the AABB (the American Association of Blood Banks) Cryo-Cell located in Oldsmar, Florida; Viacord in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Cord Blood Registry in San Bruno, California.

Lifebank USA is another private bank, located in Cedar Knolls, New Jersey, that’s also accredited by the AABB. The bank lets you store umbilical cord blood and placenta blood (this is done for free). Stem cells from placenta tissue can turn into skeletal tissue types such as bone, cartilage, fat tissue, and connective tissue, whereas cells from cord blood turn into different types of blood cells. There are websites on the internet that list the number of cord blood banks. Some of the websites are parents.com, bioinformant.com, aabb.org etc. that list and compare various cord blood banks region wise.

Blood cord banks are a good option to store blood cords that are rich in stem cells as they can be useful to the person in dire times

Cord blood is the blood in the baby’s umbilical cord. It contains stem cells that can be used to cultivate blood vessels, organs, and tissues.
Cord blood banking involves collecting blood left in your newborn’s umbilical cord and placenta and storing it for future medical use. Cord blood contains stem cells that are potentially lifesaving cells.

For cord blood storage, you have two main options; You can donate your baby’s cord blood to a public cord blood bank for anyone who needs it, or You can store your baby’s cord blood in a private cord blood bank for future use.

Cord blood is collected right after birth. The collection process is painless. It has the following procedure,

Clamping and cutting the cord
After delivering the baby, whether vaginally or by Cesarean, the cord is clamped and cut in the usual way. You can delay cord clamping only for a brief period (not more than a minute or two). If cord clamping is delayed for too long, the blood will clot in the cord. And once the blood gets clotted, it’s of no benefit to anyone thus it can’t be collected for storage.

Collecting the cord blood
The medical provider then inserts a needle into the umbilical vein on the part of the cord that is still attached to the placenta.The blood (some 100 to 150 ml) drains into a collection bag. The entire process of extracting the blood from the cord takes less than 10 minutes. Finally, the cord blood is shipped to a cord blood bank, where it’s tested, processed, and preserved in the cryogenic fluid for long-term storage. Some cord blood banks now give us the option of collecting a segment of the umbilical cord in addition to the cord blood. Umbilical cord tissue contains stem cells that are different from cord blood stem cells.

Since, Cord blood is a rich source of blood stem cells. Stem cells are the building blocks of the blood and immune system. They can develop into other types of cells, so they can help repair tissues, organs, and blood vessels and can be used to treat a host of diseases.

If a person suffering from a terminal disease has a failed treatment or if the disease reoccurs, the doctors often do a stem cell transplant. A transfusion of stem cells from the bone marrow, peripheral blood (blood in the bloodstream), or cord blood from a healthy donor can help create a new blood and immune system, giving the patient a better chance of making a full recovery. It’s easier to match transplant patients with cord blood than with other sources of stem cells because the cord blood stem cells are less likely to reject the transfusion.

Also called as weather surveillance radar (WSR) or Doppler weather radar, Weather radar, are the ones that are used to locate precipitation, calculate its motion, and estimate its type (rain, snow, hail etc. weather radars that are manufactured nowadays are mostly pulse-Doppler radars. These weather radars are capable of detecting rain droplets motions. They are also capable of measuring the intensity of the precipitation. These types of data can be used to determine the structure of storms and their potential to cause severe weather.

Radar operators during World war II noticed that weather parameters were causing echoes in the signals appearing on their screen, which masked potential enemy targets. Techniques were developed to filter these anomalies. This led scientists to study the phenomenon. Soon after, many radars were used to detect precipitation. Weather radars since then have evolved and are now used by national weather services, research departments in universities, and television newscasts. Specialized software can take radar data and make short term forecasts of future positions and intensities of rain, snow, hail, and other weather phenomena. Radar output is even incorporated into numerical weather prediction models to improve analyses and forecasts.

Weather radars use microwave radiation as their source of propagation. They send directional pulses that are of the order of a microseconds using a cavity magnetron or klystron tube that is connected to a parabolic antenna. The radiation so generated is of wavelength of the order 1^10cm, approximately ten times the diameter of the droplets or ice. This means that part of the energy of each pulse will bounce off these small particles, back in the direction of the weather radar station.

Shorter wavelengths are useful for smaller particles, but the signal is more quickly attenuated. Thus 10 cm (S-band) radar is preferred although expensive than a 5cm C-band system. 3cm X-band radar is used only for short-range units, and 1cm Ka-band weather radar is used only for research on small-particle phenomena such as drizzle and fog.

Radar pulses spread out as they move away from the radar station. Thus the volume of air that a radar pulse is traversing is larger for areas farther away from the station, and smaller for nearby areas, decreasing resolution at far distances. At the end of a 150 200 km sounding range, the volume of air scanned by a single pulse might be on the order of a cubic kilometer, which is called pulse monitoring.

The United States of America has been known for its extreme weather. It has areas that are Coldest, Warmest, wettest and driest. Over the past decades, the country has experienced record breaking (minimum and maximum) temperatures and have measured rain gauge brimming rainfall. There are states that have witnessed catastrophic weather conditions.

States like Montana and Oklahoma have witnessed some land ripping tornadoes. Montana facing some of the harshest weathers like floods and tornadoes through the past decades have incurred huge losses.Oklahoma being in the tornado alley has witnessed level five tornadoes that proved to fatal at very magnitudes, let alone millions of dollars’ worth of loss.

Mississippi has had a deadly weather in the past few years. Winds with an average speed of 150 kmph hit Hattiesburg in the recent year which cost the state a huge fortune. In addition to this, the Mississippi river has been flooded to such extreme levels that had not been witnessed since the early 1900’s. Flooding of the river alone cost a state some three billion dollar worth of losses.

Nevada is notorious for its blistering heatwave. With temperatures soaring up to 115 degree Fahrenheit, this extreme weather condition has left the Nevadans susceptible to heatstroke, which has resulted in state’s higher fatality rate. The heat stroke which usually takes the form of wild fire has resulted in destruction of the state’s wild life, which also effects the state’s economy.

Despite being home to United States’ one percent population, Arkansas has recorded fatality rates that were mainly attributed to flash floods. Other extreme weather conditions such as tornadoes has resulted in tens of deaths and injuring hundreds of citizens. Extreme weather does not only kill and injure people it also effects the yield of the state. Mississippi river flooding in the Arkansas border resulted in severe crop damage.

Wyoming is one of those states that was never in the news because of extreme weather. But, due to climatic changes, it has experienced its share of extreme weather since the past few years. Wyoming has experienced multiple avalanches in Teton, snake river and Wyoming range.
Alabama has been in the news for extreme weathers in the recent years. A tornado outbreak which ripped through the state in a four day period resulted in 100’s of casualties.

Storm chasing came into existence when David Hoadley from North Dakota started chasing storms back in 1956. He used to collect the data (predictions) from weather stations and airport control towers. Neil Ward together with Oklahoma university played a major role in institutionalizing storm chasing. Oklahoma university together with NSSL (national severe storms laboratory) initiated the tornado intercept project in the year 1972.

Storm chasing now is more of a recreational endeavor and is seldom research specific. Its main intentions remain photography and video recording. It is one of the favorite endeavors for thrill seekers who like to live life on the edge by chasing dangers.

Storm chasing can also be used for scientific work is generally cited as a goal. Direct participation in such work is almost always impractical except for those collaborating in an organized university or government project. Storm chasers are also storm spotters. They report observations of hazardous weather to the concerned authorities. As these are real time reports, they benefit real-time warnings with practically seen information as well as science which increases the reliability of severe storm databases used by weather stations and climatologist.

Storm-chasing is generally done using light vehicles that can maneuver on difficult roads. Normally they are trailed along with an RV that has make shift radars and other weather-tracking gadgets that are used to spot changes in weather and probable development of a storm in the nearby area.

Storm chasers are not generally paid to chase, with the exception of television media crews in certain television market areas, video stringers and photographers, and researchers such as a handful of graduate meteorologists and professors. An increasing number do sell storm videos and pictures and manage to make a profit.

You don’t need a specific qualification to be a storm chaser. Local National Weather Service offices do offer storm spotter training classes, which are usually held during the spring.

Storm chasers come from a wide variety of occupational and socioeconomic backgrounds. Chasers may be professors, scientists from other fields, engineers, programmers, students, teachers, pilots, medical doctors, postal workers, laborers, photographers, or from any other totally unrelated background. A large majority of chasers are male. Although the ages range from teenagers to those in their 60’s, the average age is probably around 35. Many of these storm chasers possess college degrees and a large number of them live in the central and southern region of The United States.

While plant zones and heat zones are extremely helpful, they do not cover everything you need to know about plantation. There are many other weather and climatic effects that can determine how well a plant will grow, this includes humidity, rainfall and wind. The growing zone maps that were compiled were based on average temperatures, hence they don’t account for unusual weather patterns, and sudden climatic changes such as temperatures hitting -10 degrees Celsius on a Halloween night with no previous frosts or wintry climate for that matter. The hardiness zone maps are neither an assurance that the winter temperatures will never be colder than what is stated on the map. Other factors that cannot be included on a large national map are the effects of soil and soil fertility. Also, the health of your plants in general cannot be predicted alone through a growing zone map.

Planting Zone maps also don’t tell us about micro-climates. Micro-climates are nothing but small areas with different weather. A good example of a micro-climate is a mountain. The largest micro-climate would be the whole mountain. Micro-climate of a mountain have different weather based on its elevation, but smaller micro-climates are the north and south sides of the mountain. Factors such as wind-sheltered pockets on the south side or areas beside a mountain stream are also independent of the planting zone map. A very small micro-climate might be the north side of a house or a south-facing brick wall. Several micro-climates can exist in one place, with one adding to or canceling out the effect of another, hence these factors are also independent of the planting zone maps.

So know if you have a micro-climate where you live, Take your own temperature readings around your yard. The best indications are the plants you grow. Use your plants as a guide, if certain plants that are supposed to be hardy to your zone continue to die in your yard, you may have a cold pocket. Or if you’re growing a Zone 8 plant in Zone 7, you may have a warm pocket. So it is advisable that you consider these factors even while relying on planting zones as they (together with planting zones) will give you a better insight on growing a particular plant in that particular region.

Planting zones or hardiness zones are a geographically defined area that specifies the category of the plant that will be able to survive in that area. This includes its ability to withstand minimum and maximum temperature. Developed by Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum from Massachusetts, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in the year 1960 and revised in 1965, the planting zones help decide what crops and plants can be grown in the specified area, so that they do not wither away because of the unfavorable climatic conditions.

A plant in Hardy zone or plant zone 1 is less resilient to the ones in plant zone 2. Most of the warmer zones (8, 9, 10 and 11) are in the southernmost part of United States and the relatively colder zones move towards the northern territory. There are zones where in it is difficult to choose the type of crop or plantation to go with as they experience severe climates throughout the year.

The planting zones are 6 degrees apart from each other. For example, zone 1 is in the temperature range of 51 degree Celsius and zone 2 is of the range -45-degree Celsius zone 3 is 6 degrees warmer and so on. The central and northerly regions have less fluctuations in the temperature thus have limitations in these areas.

One of the drawbacks of planting zones is that they tend to overlook the fact that the snow cover actually acts as insulator to the roots of the plant that are hibernating. many plants may survive in a locality but will not flower if the day length is insufficient or if they require a particular duration of low temperature. With annuals, the time of planting can often be adjusted to allow growth beyond their normal geographical range.

Different plants grow under a different planting zone. If you are planning for home gardening and have gone to buy plants to grow them into your garden, then you might have come across plants tagged with holly or plain numerical, what do they mean exactly? The tags define the hardiness zone of the plant. For instance, if you cultivate Zone 3-7 (plants that dwell in the colder regions, Alaska for instance) plant in a zone 9 or zone 10 territory (much warmer regions, Florida for instance) the plant might as well wither away as it cannot withstand warmer temperatures and vice versa. Almost all the plants have been assigned Hardiness zones. Some plants might have a tag of two zones (4-5 / 6-7 for instance), this means the plant is from the hardiness zone that has a particular range of temperature for particular number of days.