Category Archives: Awareness and Hype
Only if things were unlimited on earth and there would be no pain and struggle for the human kind, wouldn’t it be perfect? Nevertheless designers Kim Hyo Jin and Seol Ah Sun have sought nature’s help to solve nature’s problems. Inspired by the Giving Tree, this project called the “Savior Bud” latches on to trees and uses it’s natural recycling processes to obtain water. In a simple process which basically involves collecting the moisture from the leaves and emptying it out into containers, the Savior Bud takes one more step toward acceptable living conditions in Africa where out of the little available water most of it is polluted and undrinkable. After clamping the ‘Savior Bud’ onto the leaves, about one cup of drinkable water can be produced in a matter of 4 hours.
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There have been several high end pollution measuring devices in the past, but the simplest and the cheapest way of measuring the level of pollution on the streets has been found only recently. Geophysicist Bernie Housen and colleague Luigi Jovane, with their recent study have founded that the level of magnetism of tree leaves could be a powerful tool to monitor the air quality of streets. Their research has shown that leaves along bus routes were up to ten times more magnetic than leaves on quieter streets. So that means higher the amount of magnetism on leaves, higher the level of pollution on the street. The magnetism comes from tiny particles of pollution, such as iron oxides from diesel exhaust, that float through the air and either stick to the leaves, or grow right into them. The inhalation of these matters could lead to several health problems. Personally, I feel this is a very low-cost and powerful tool and an effective way to measure the load of particulate matter in the air for planning cities, biking routes or walking paths. The results of the study by Housen and Jovane from Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA, USA, will be presented at this month’s Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Portland, Oregon.
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Coming October 17th the cabinet ministers of the Maldives are all gearing up to go to one of the most powerful board meetings ever. A meeting to decide the fate of this beautiful country, a meeting that will discuss on the threat of rising coastlines, a meeting six meters below the surface? Yes you heard right, the President of Maldives has been urging ministers in his cabinet to get training for the sub-aqua session, which will be held six meters beneath the surface.
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The solar capacity of the National Mall in Washington D.C. has increased by a very huge margin in just a week as teams of college students from 20 international schools are gearing up for the fourth ever Solar Decathlon, a competition in which students must create “the most attractive, effective, and energy-efficient solar-powered house.” The three-week event started yesterday with an opening ceremony that featured a speech from Energy Secretary Steven Chu. He declared an $87 million solar-targeted award for solar energy projects. “Decathletes,” as the participants are called, began construction on October 1, 2009, exactly a week before the start of the competition. Each house was designed to be deconstructed and then reassembled for the event. The components of each house travel from each team’s school and are reconstituted as the solar-powered homes lining on the National Mall.
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The Monte Rosa hut is an Alpine shelter developed to work effectively at an altitude of 2883m above sea level. Designed to be surrounded by the Swiss Alps, the shelter is a convincing demonstration of state of the art technology working simultaneously with the environment. The shelter can be built using traditional construction methods such as half-timber building with its geometrically complex wood junctions.
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The major contributor to carbon dioxide is from air travel. Whatever offsets are being done is just a small part of the larger solution. San Francisco airport is launching the Climate Passport program that will allow travelers to offset the impact of their travel by air with the help of the airport kiosk. This gives an opportunity for the people to calculate how much will be the impact on the environment if they use air travel and they purchase offsets to address that impact while at the airport. The money that has been collected from this is used for doing projects that have minimal impact on the environment. The offsets for Climate Passport customers, supplied by San Francisco based carbon firm 3Degrees, are currently sourced from the Garcia River Forest, a conservation-based forest management project located in Mendocino County, California. This was a forest that was heavily cut before and now it has been reforested with Redwood and Douglas fir trees. This has helped in absorbing a lot of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. A part of the fund will be used to develop local San Francisco carbon reduction projects. These offsets will also help in the planting of urban trees in the city of San Francisco. All travelers can look for this kiosk on both sides of the international terminal and in terminal 3.
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If you thought you can make solar energy only with the help of the sun, time to think again. You can now make solar energy with the fluorescent tubes that keeps buzzing on top of you. And where do see them the most. In your office! New Energy’s solar cells in their transparent SolarWindow generate electricity by using the visible light in artificial fluorescent lighting typically installed in offices and commercial buildings. Researchers tested the ultra-small solar cells on a 1”x1” substrate against today’s popular solar materials for their capacity to produce electricity under varying artificial light conditions, mimicking the levels of light exposure in homes and commercial offices.
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How many of us view our cell phones as an essential gadget? In today’s day and age, bet none of my readers will give a negative reply to this. Touted to be the most addictive product of the era, the cell phone addiction is being considered as the current age epidemic. Even though it promises to connect us to the world, it has succeeded in disconnecting us from people standing next to us. Moving over the social disadvantages, let’s take a look at how this communicating device is harmful to our health too. The radiations emitted by almost all cell phones are listed down at Environmental Working Group’s online guide. It calculates the specific absorption rate (SAR) for each phone. And if this term is greek to you, then allow me to enlighten you that SAR is a measure of how much radiation is absorbed by the body when the phone is sending a signal to the network. By the way, how many of you are aware that our phone emits radiation only when we talk or text? Though 1000 cell phones were ranked, here is a list of top ten lowest radiation cell phones and top ten highest radiation cell phones. It is pleasure to know that Samsung holds five out of the top ten best-for-health category. While Motorola bags five out of ten places for worst-for-health category. Blackberry users also need to know that the Bold and the Curve find a place in the ten highest radiation emitting list.
Roll over to go through the lists…….
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A research said that in offices, wastage accounted to 33% of all garbage. So someone invented the Biophillic Composting System that will help offices to be green and not waste so much. This system is created by Cooler Solutions Inc and what it does is uses plants in offices while using waste to sustain these plants. In this way, the
waste is gone into feeding the plants that in turn give the offices an eco-friendly feel and maybe even boost employees into actually liking their work and working place.
[Trendhunter]
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Things are moving now after the six-month, no-work slurs that President Obama has been constantly getting. The Department of Energy announced which U.S. companies have been awarded grants amounting $2.4 billion to build manufacturing plants for electric vehicle batteries. It will include categories such as related technology, federal agencies to purchase fleet plug-in electric vehicles as well as to develop the infrastructure needed for plug-in electric vehicles, such as charging stations and training for technicians in electric vehicles. In total, there will be 48 funded projects, with many–18 out of the total–located in the traditional auto manufacturing states of Michigan and Indiana.
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