by: TEDTalks (video), 2011-10-03 15:03:21 UTC
Yang Lan, a journalist and entrepreneur who's been called "the Oprah of China," offers insight into the next generation of young Chinese citizens -- urban, connected (via microblogs) and alert to injustice.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has its eye on $300 billion worth of obsolete, failed, and non-functioning satellites in geosynchronous orbit, with an eye toward collecting working parts from them to be recycled and used on new satellites.
Unlike an earlier satellite recycling proposal that was more about refueling and extending the life of old satellites, the DARPA Phoenix Program would harvest the useful components from satellites that are no longer functioning for use on new satellites.
For satellites in high, geosynchronous orbits, a lot of energy has been used to put those pieces in that location. If antennas, solar panels, and other components can be collected and re-used there could be significant recycling. Theoretically, it would also be possible to launch satellites without these components, making for a lighter payload which could be easier and less expensive to launch, and then attach the salvaged parts to them to make the new satellites fully functional.
On November 17 at the LA Auto Show, the Green Car of the Year Award will be given out for the seventh year. The five finalists for that prize have been announced and they represent a cross-section of what's available in cleaner cars these days.
All-electric models are represented by the Ford Focus Electric and the Mitsubishi i. The Mitsubishi i is wildly popular in Asian markets and although it hasn't hit U.S. markets yet, it will be available by the contest's January 1 deadline.
The new Prius v is the only hybrid contender, but is being recognized as a new extension of the popular brand to a larger customer base.
The Honda Civic Natural Gas was chosen because it runs off cleaner burning compressed natural gas, a fuel that is pretty much ready for mainstream if cars are built to use it.
Finally, the Volkswagen Passat TDI takes up the final space in the contest. The TDI is diesel vehicle that boasts great fuel economy and fewer emissions.
These five were also chosen as Green Car Journal's top cars for 2012.
by: FEED STOP, 2011-10-27 13:00:00 UTC
Sustainability is the wicked problem of design in the 21st century. From now on, all problem solving, decision and policy-making, and all aspects of design have to consider their impact on the health of individuals, communities, societies, ecosystems and the planetary life-support system in order to be sustainable. Sustainable solutions require transdisciplinary integration of multiple knowledge bases. Design can play the role of integrator and facilitator in this process. The complexity of the interrelated social, economic, cultural and ecological problems that are facing humanity not only call for collaboration between diverse disciplines but also for political and civic cooperation on [...]
When digital cameras focus, they use a complicated and slow system that often doesn't come close to being correct. Humans, however, focus correctly in an instant. Now scientists have developed an algorithm to make cameras work as well as our eyes.
For half a century, we've known that the human visual system has an exquisite ability to lock focus on an object instantaneously, a feat that no digital camera or camcorder has yet matched. Now, finally, scientists have developed a good guess about how we might do that, and have translated that method into software that could make its way into cameras that never lose focus.
Johannes Burge, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas, and his advisor Wilson Geisler, wondered how it was that the eyes of humans and many other animals were able to focus so much more efficiently than most digital cameras. In a traditional autofocus system, the camera uses only one piece of information about a scene to determine whether or not an object is in focus--its level of contrast. Contrast, says Burge, isn't always a perfect proxy for focus. But it's worse than that: To determine in which direction to re-focus, a camera must first change its point of focus and compare the new image it captures with the old one, to determine whether or not the object in question has a higher or lower level of contrast. Often, the camera isn't even re-focusing in the correct direction when it captures this second image. This method of "guessing and checking" is "slow and not particularly accurate," says Burge.
Even though any two instants that a camera might capture are very different from one another, they tend to have a number of fundamental similarities. It's this built-in knowledge of what to expect--in essence, a statistical distillation of what the physical world looks like--that allows their algorithm to instantly know the degree and direction in which a scene is out of focus, yielding information about how much to change the focal length of a lens (biological or mechanical) in order to bring it into focus.
There are already cameras on the market that are capable of "instant autofocus," but even these systems are merely optimizations of existing autofocus systems and aren't as fast or as accurate as the new algorithm. Canon's autofocus system, for example, relies on an external sensor to determine the distance to an object, which then narrows the range over which the traditional autofocus system has to search for the true focus.
This is a less-than-optimal solution and precisely the inverse of how things are done in nature. "In some animals [an accurate estimate of blur in an image] is the primary way they sense distance," Geisler told ScienceNow. If Canon were to move to the new algorithm, it would eliminate the necessity of an external sensor. It would also add an intriguing piece of information to every image--the precise distance to any object in a scene.
The team has already applied for a patent on the technology, which could apply to digital cameras, digital video cameras, visual robotics, digital microscopes, and image-driven microfabrication devices. If it were implemented in a point-and-shoot camera, the system would focus in as few as 10 milliseconds, "[which] should decrease the lag time between when the shutter is pressed and when the photo is snapped, and should improve focusing accuracy," says Burge.
It should be noted that this approach to auto-focusing differs from that of the recently announced Lytro camera, which does no focusing at all, except in software. But who knows--perhaps there is an animal out there that uses an algorithm like that in Lytro to accomplish the same feat. In which case engineers who ignore the solutions inherent in nature will have re-invented the wheel yet again.
A couple of high-tech programmable thermostats are starting to draw a lot of attention for raising the bar for both style and user friendliness. Proper use of a programmable thermostat is one of the best ways to control your home energy usage and reduce energy costs, and these new thermostats can make it easier than ever to accomplish this.
Both the ecobee and the Nest thermostats come in stylish packages that offer wireless connectivity, user-friendly interfaces, and online access and mobile apps to let you control your system remotely.
The Nest thermostat is designed to learn and adapt itself over time, so that your house is at the temperature you want when you want it without having to fuss with reprogramming it. The ecobee web interface also gives you energy reports so you can see when you are using energy.
Both thermostats are priced in the range of a few hundred dollars, which is more than the average programmable thermostat, but they offer more features and easier accessability, which presumably should translate into greater energy savings. If using one of these thermostats helps save as much energy as they claim, either one would be well worth the investment, and should pay back its cost with energy savings within a couple of years.
Despite what some right-wingers would have you think, we’re making quick work of the planet. (Check out J Henry Fair’s environmental photos for some arresting evidence.) Swapping out incandescent bulbs for energy-saving CFLs can only do so much; if we’re to stave off devastation, we're going to need more radical, holistic approaches to sustainability. Philips, the Dutch electronics company, has one such game-changing idea: the Microbial Home, a domestic ecosystem that harnesses biological processes to break down waste and convert it into energy. At its heart is the “bio-digester” kitchen island, which uses bacteria to generate gas.
Philips unveiled the Microbial Home concept at this year’s Dutch Design Week. From the company’s press release: “We need to push ourselves to rethink domestic appliances entirely, to rethink how homes consume energy,” says Clive van Heerden, Philips’s senior director of Design-Led Innovation. That includes a kitchen that powers itself. Apart from the usual chopping surface and gas range, the bio-digester island--made from copper, cast iron, glass, and bamboo--features a vegetable grinder and bacteria culture that lives on organic waste and produces methane gas. The gas is collected, burned, and fed to a cooking range and gas mantle lights. It’s also used to preheat water pipes leading to other parts of the house.
The digester requires a steady supply of water and waste material in the form of vegetable scraps and, uh, bathroom waste solids--which certainly challenges conventional notions of cleanliness in the kitchen, not to mention household chores. The resulting sludge residue can be safely removed and recycled as compost.
Philips views its system as a step away from the electro-mechanical age and toward a biological age, in which by-products are no longer waste but fuel for other systems. Stay tuned: We’ll be taking look at all the other components of the Microbial Home, including a filtering squatting toilet and an urban beehive.
Becoming green is harder than many people think. Going green means that you strive to better your home and yourself for the environment. This includes using solar power, using other alternative energies, preserving water, and many other green techniques that will help us go green. Meters have become a popular tool in helping people who want to go green make sure that they are saving water and conserving energy when they can.
What Are Meters?
Meters are tools used to measure either water usage or energy consumption. Many people that are trying to go green and conserve water place water meters in their sinks and showers to see how much water is being used and how much water is being wasted. Electric meters can hook up to different things in your home, including a direct power source and can let you know how much energy you are wasting and how much you are conserving. These meters can help tell people where they are not conserving energy or water and let them know that they need to do more to conserve energy.
Where Can I Find Meters?
Depending on the type you want you may be able to find a meter at your local home improvement store. Many retail stores in your area may also carry the meter that you are looking for. To find out whether or not stores in your area carry these meters, you can give them a call or visit the store itself to see if they do carry these. If you cannot find a store that carries these meters you can go online and do a search for these meters. Many green companies have websites dedicated to the sale of meters and other green products.
Different Kinds of Meters
There are many different kinds of water meters as well as electrical meters. You might choose from a plain design to a more unique and broader design. Here are two different meters that you may find interesting.
Personal Water Reading. This unique tool is placed in any location that your water goes in. Including sinks, bathtubs and anywhere else you might have water coming from or going to. The digital display will tell you how many drops of water you have used in one day. This is a great way to determine if more needs to be done in your household to conserve water.
Flower Pod. This unique design allows for a neat decoration in your home that detects power usage. When the power is used too much in your home, the flower wilts, but when energy is being conserved the flower is brilliant. This is a great way for people to have great home décor while being able to detect their energy usage.
There are many different meters out there that can help you determine your energy usage and your water usage. Once you know those numbers you can determine how your energy and water usage is affecting the environment and you can start doing whatever you can to help lower those numbers. The lower you get your usage down the lower your energy bills will be and the lower your carbon footprint will be on the Earth.
Want to buy this gadget? Check out the Using Meters to Become Greener article on EnviroGadget to see the lowest prices for this gadget.
Encouraging consumers to ‘buy green’ by making environmentally-friendly goods cheaper might have drawbacks as the much feared ‘rebound effect’ could offset gains by pushing for ever more consumption, environmentalists argue.
This sexy new electric motorcycle, called the Volta BCN, is set to hit the market in Q2 of next year in Spain and promises to be the perfect ride for the urban environmentalist. The electric motorcycle world is getting larger by the minute and bikes like the BRD Redshift and Orphiro are hitting the market this year, so Volta has a bit of competition to go up against. Teaser video for the Volta BCN after the jump.
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2011-10-12 10:54:43 UTC
McKinsey, since last year, holds a yearly survey on sustainability. "The outcome this year":http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/The_business_of_sustainability_McKinsey_Global_Survey_results_2867 ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2011-10-09 08:02:04 UTC
A business card made using an autumn leaf from the garden. Fallen leaves are gathered in the autumn, and dried. The letters are not ink-printed but ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2011-10-05 06:23:45 UTC
The drinking fountain is a ceramic water cooler that is connected to the existing water supply. it can be placed in a public environment, in- or outdoor. ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2011-10-03 06:29:13 UTC
GOOD DESIGN Award for Ben in Bad! from The Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art design ...
Comments by our Users
Be the first to write a comment for this item.