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GOLDEN, Colo. — Beer and a tank of gas will usually get you on the road to nowhere. But chemical engineers who partnered with Coors Brewing Co. (search) have found a way to make it a fuel-efficient combination.

Though Coors and its partner, Merrick & Co., aren’t pouring brewskies straight into your car, they are turning some of the waste created during the beer-making process into 200-proof high-octane alcohol called ethanol (search), used to purify gasoline.

“We really never thought we were going to have something of ours go directly into your gas tank,” said Coors’ Rick Paine.

Some states mandate ethanol be blended with gasoline to reduce harmful emissions such as carbon monoxide (search). In the U.S., about 4 million cars on the road run on the purer form of gas, called E-85 (search).

“For every gallon of ethanol that we put into the gasoline pool, we get back out a gallon of crude oil that comes from who-knows-where,” said Steven Wagner of Merrick.

There are opponents to ethanol production, but their focus is more on the traditional way of extracting it — from corn. Critics point to studies showing that process is not cost-effective.

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LIMA, Peru — A camera crane operator shooting a commercial at the Machu Picchu Inca ruins whose equipment tipped and chipped a stone sundial there has been sentenced to six years in prison, officials said Friday.

The local court in Urubamba, 338 miles southeast of the capital, Lima, said it had found Walter Leonidas Espinoza guilty on Nov. 3 of destruction and alteration of cultural goods.

The charge carries a maximum penalty of eight years behind bars. Antonio Terrazas, a lawyer acting as spokesman for Peru's Institute of Culture, said offenders are seldom charged and when they are prosecuted and found guilty, it normally results only in a fine or a few months in jail.

Espinoza has appealed his sentence, authorities said.

The production company Espinoza worked for knocked a corner edge off the Intihuatana, or "hitching post for the sun," in 2000 while shooting the commercial for the Backus beer company