Grid

Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen will be penalized five grid places at Sunday's Malaysian Grand Prix after making an unscheduled gearbox change following the opening practice sessions. According to Formula One regulations, gearboxes are required to last five races. The Finnish driver was 15th in second practice Friday ahead of the season's second race but was slowed by problems with the KERS system and the gearbox. Teammate Romain Grosjean finished the session with the ninth fastest time.

Some Boston area residents may wake up Wednesday to an alarming sight: a dramatic flame coming from a natural gas pipeline in Everett, but the public won't be in any danger, National Grid said today. The flame, which will be accompanied by a "loud blowing noise," will come as the company burns off extra gas before inspecting and cleaning the pipeline, the company said in a statement. The operation will begin at 6 a.m. on Rover Street in Everett. "While this may be visually dramatic, the natural gas purging process is conducted by...

The brain is crisscrossed by neural highways that follow a simple, grid-like pattern, much like ordered city streets that intersect at right angles, according to new research by Massachusetts General Hospital scientists. "Basically, the overall structure of the brain ends up resembling Manhattan, where you have a 2-D plan of streets and a third axis, an elevator going in the third dimension," said Van Wedeen, a physicist and radiologist at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Mass.

A Westford family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against National Grid following an August 2011 incident in which a woman was crushed to death by a backhoe that fell off a trailer and landed on the family's van on Interstate 495 in Southborough. Sharon Wang, her two children, and her mother, Xiaoyun Jiang, were trapped inside their Toyota Sienna minivan when a National Grid supervisor lost control of a company-owned dump truck that was towing the backhoe on a flatbed trailer.

Q. The metal covers of my baseboard heating units are getting quite rusty. How can I get rid of the rust and repaint? R.R., Sudbury A. It’s a common problem, especially in bathrooms and kitchens, but there are two pretty good cures. 1. Sand off as much rust as practicable, then paint the remaining rust with Rust Reformer or any brand containing phosphoric acid, which will turn the rust black and make it paintable. Apply a metal primer and finish with a metal finish paint.

So you’re a guy who rides a motorbike around town. You’re about 25, and your father’s been missing since you were 12. His computer company has just released a pricey new operating system meant to be distributed for free. And his old business partner has just been paged from somewhere inside dad’s long-defunct video arcade. You find a secret lair behind a console of the game he invented. Suddenly you’re zapped from boring old Earth into dad’s computer program. The slashes of neon circuitry are galactic disco, the ground is nothing but moving shifting panels of macrochip...

MARLBOROUGH - Evergreen Solar Inc., which makes silicon wafers for solar panels, yesterday introduced a new line of solar panels designed for the global off-grid market. The new ES-C solar panels, which include 80-, 120-, and 125-watt panels, will be made by Evergreen Solar’s contract manufacturing partner, Jiawei Solarchina Co., using cells supplied by Evergreen Solar. The panels are suitable for direct 12-, 24-, or 48-volt battery charging in a wide variety of off-grid applications.

NStar is teaming up with A123 Systems to test the advanced battery maker's large-scale energy-storage device, a technology that could be key to integrating intermittent energy from wind turbines and solar arrays into the nation's power grids. Company officials say they plan to install one of A123's storage devices at an NStar substation in Medway, where it will be connected to the grid and used to capture electricity when supply exceeds demand and to release it when more power is needed.

Sarah Fisher finally found an engine deal for her IndyCar team, signing Friday with Honda for the 2012 season. Fisher's team will field a car for rookie Josef Newgarden, last year's Indy Lights champion. He's scheduled to be on the grid for the season-opening Grand Prix of St. Petersburg on March 25. Fisher thanked fellow team owner Bobby Rahal for helping the deal come together. Rahal originally had the rights to two Honda engine lease agreements this season, but does not plan to get his second team onto the grid until the Indianapolis 500. That opened...

The term 'grid' is spare and scientific, speaking neither to wonders of nature nor the pulse of personal endeavor. For a small but growing group of relentless New England hikers, though, the grid - catalogued on a spreadsheet 48 rows deep, 12 columns wide - documents a particular pursuit of both mountains and motivation. Forty-eight is the number of 4,000-foot peaks in New Hampshire's White Mountains; 12 the number of months in a year. Hike each 4,000-foot peak in each month of the calendar, and you summit the grid's magic number: 576. The feat apparently was first accomplished two decades...

EnerNOC Inc. stock rose after National Grid hired the provider of energy management solutions to manage natural gas consumption at about 4,000 commercial, institutional, and industrial sites in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. The Boston company will provide the utility with wireless hardware that automates fuel switching at the enrolled customer sites.

National Grid, which delivers electricity to 3.3 million customers in New England and New York, said it has awarded $5.6 million to the University of Massachusetts Medical School for the expansion of the school's power plant. National Grid said the award is the largest incentive of its kind ever given by the company in Massachusetts. The incentive is earmarked for "a high-efficiency, 7.5-megawatt, gas-fired combustion turbine and an associated heat recovery system that will boost the medical school's capacity to generate electricity on its Worcester...

Worldwide spending on smart grids is projected to reach $46.4 billion in 2015, said IDC Energy Insights, a Framingham-based consulting firm focused on the energy and utility industries. In the coming years, power grids face a number of challenges as their operators look to integrate intermittent energy from wind turbines and solar arrays. Another challenge: How to capture and store energy when supply exceeds demand and then release that stored energy when it is needed. Addressing those challenges will drive significant investments.

The brain is crisscrossed by neural highways that follow a simple, grid-like pattern, much like ordered city streets that intersect at right angles, according to new research by Massachusetts General Hospital scientists. "Basically, the overall structure of the brain ends up resembling Manhattan, where you have a 2-D plan of streets and a third axis, an elevator going in the third dimension," said Van Wedeen, a physicist and radiologist at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Mass.

Everybody went a little nuts a couple of weeks ago when the lights went out in the Back Bay. Good thing the problem was the electricity, not the gas. "Gas is a whole different thing," says Joe Kirylo, and he should know because for 32 years his job has been to make sure gas is more a utility than a liability. He says that's getting harder to do as National Grid guts the union whose workers inspect and maintain the gas lines, replacing them with lower-paid workers with less training and experience.

Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen will be penalized five grid places at Sunday's Malaysian Grand Prix after making an unscheduled gearbox change following the opening practice sessions. According to Formula One regulations, gearboxes are required to last five races. The Finnish driver was 15th in second practice Friday ahead of the season's second race but was slowed by problems with the KERS system and the gearbox. Teammate Romain Grosjean finished the session with the ninth fastest time.

NStar was planning a power outage overnight Sunday in the Prudential Tunnel to bring it back to permanent power following last week's transformer fire in the Back Bay, a spokesman said. The tunnel was closed to traffic while NStar crews worked, spokesman Michael Durand said, but it should be open by the Monday morning commute. Durand said the majority of the 21,000 customers who lost power when the substation on Scotia Street caught fire Tuesday have been returned to the permanent grid.

Lewis Hamilton edged McLaren teammate Jenson Button in the second practice at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Friday, while Formula One champion Sebastian Vettel was unhurt when he slid into a wall. Hamilton clocked 1 minute, 39.586 seconds on the 3.5-mile Yas Marina circuit, 0.199 seconds quicker than Button, who was fastest in the first practice. The solid run by Hamilton was in stark contrast to his last race at the Indian GP, where his aggressiveness in practice got the best of him and he was penalized three grid places for ignoring yellow flags.

NStar was planning a power outage overnight Sunday in the Prudential Tunnel to bring it back to permanent power following last week's transformer fire in the Back Bay, a spokesman said. The tunnel was closed to traffic while NStar crews worked, spokesman Michael Durand said, but it should be open by the Monday morning commute. Durand said the majority of the 21,000 customers who lost power when the substation on Scotia Street caught fire Tuesday have been returned to the permanent grid.

An abundance of natural gas should result in bills going down for National Grid's natural gas customers in Massachusetts, the company said Thursday. For residential customers, that should translate into a drop of about $6 in their monthly bills, the company said. Their average monthly bill is expected to decrease from $47 to $41 on a year-to-year comparison basis, the company said. If approved, the new rate would go into effect in May and run through October. According to National Grid, its proposed price adjustment is subject to approval by...