The University of Engineering and Technology, in collaboration with the Mayo DraftCFB ad agency, invented a billboard that draws humidity from the air and turns it into clean drinking water. It’s a good thing too because the billboard is located in the desert mega-city of Lima where clean drinking water is a scarce commodity.
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TWENTY MILLION tons of Japan tsunami debris is closing in on Hawaii! TVs, fridges and fishing boats and More(photos)
Televisions, refrigerators and furniture pieces are going to Hawaii, because a huge amount of debris from the earthquake in Japan, sails over the Pacific.
Up to 20 million tons of debris from the earthquake in March is expected to travel faster and could reach the U.S. west coast in three years.
Russian ship’s crew spotted the debris – which included a 20ft long fishing boat – last month after passing the Midway Islands.
“We have a rough estimate 5-20000000 tons of debris from Japan,” University of Hawaii researcher, Jan Hafner, told KITV.
Experts are revising their forecasts to say garbage now reached Midway Island in Hawaii for the winter and less than two years.
Crew members of the Russian training ship spotted debris from the STS Palladia 2,000 kilometers from Japan, including the fishing boat Fukushima, reported AFP.
“They saw some furniture, some appliances, which can float – and they picked up a fishing boat,” Mr. Hafner told KITV.
We also sighted a television, a fridge and a couple of other home appliances. ”
Spokesman for the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii said: “The Russian ship … found a number of unmistakable tsunami debris on its way back home in Honolulu to Vladivostok.”
Japan was badly affected by 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami of 11 March, which left 20,000 people dead or missing.
Earthquake damaged the cooling systems at the Fukushima plant, which resulted in the worst disaster in the world of Atomic since Chernobyl in 1986.
Japan is struggling in part because the tourists are worried about the visit, so that the Tourist Board is to donate 10 000 free flights.
Scientists are eager to follow, if the debris is going, because it may threaten the small vessels as well as the coasts, reported in a live science.
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The yellow and purple Audi A2 car took about seven hours to complete the 600 km (372 mile) stretch and arrived in the opulent court of the economy ministry in Berlin just before 8:00 local time (0600 GMT).
“If journalists want to recharge their iPhones, we still have some power again,” quipped driver Mirko Male Male, 27, as he stepped out of the four-door car to show off the battery.
Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle welcome the team on arrival, and was even tempted to take a spin around the yard, but not behind the wheel.
“They even had the heat on. It was really a luxury trip,” Bruederle told a lot of reporters and photographers on a cool Berlin morning.
At a later news conference, said Bruederle: “Welcome to a world before electric cars could usually only go 60 or 70 miles before charging, this is a technological leap forward …”
Car manufacturers hope that electric vehicles will grow to dominate the automotive industry, but consumers can see the short range of cars as a big disadvantage.
Japanese researchers have taken an experimental electric car more than 1,000 kilometers around a track, but the two German companies, leaking Energie and DBM Energy, said their vehicle was long gone with an everyday car.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government aims to have one million electric cars on the road by 2020, but Germany, the car giants have been slow from the starting field, and are now scrambling to catch up with their Asian rivals.
The world’s leading luxury car maker BMW and Europe’s largest manufacturer Volkswagen both have said they plan to launch its first cars in 2013.
Unlike last week, Japan’s Nissan said it had started mass producing its Leaf electric car and is ready to put it on sale both at home and in the United States.
Nevertheless, Berlin has offered sweeteners to jump start their national champions, and we hope that by 2050, gas-guzzle be a thing of the past.
“Let the message go out to the world. Germany is again a technological leader,” said Bruederle.
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It Has Benn an Historic Week. A geomagnetic space storm sparked by a solar eruption like the one that flared toward Earth Tuesday is bound to strike again and could wreak havoc across the gadget-happy modern world, experts say.
What does this mean to me? Contemporary society is increasingly vulnerable to space weather because of our dependence on satellite systems for synchronizing computers, airline navigation, telecommunications networks and other electronic devices.
A potent solar storm could disrupt these technologies, scorch satellites, crash stock markets and cause power outages that last weeks or months, experts said Saturday at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting.
The situation will only get more dire because the solar cycle is heading into a period of more intense activity in the coming 11 years.
“This is not a matter of if, it is simply a matter of when and how big,” said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration administrator Jane Lubchenco.
“The last time we had a maximum in the solar cycle, about 10 years ago, the world was a very different place. Cell phones are now ubiquitous; they were certainly around (before) but we didn’t rely on them for so many different things,” she said.
“Many things that we take for granted today are so much more prone to the process of space weather than was the case in the last solar maximum.”
The experts admitted that currently, little that can be done to predict such a storm, much less shield the world’s electrical grid by doing anything other shutting off power to some of the vulnerable areas until the danger passes.
“Please don’t panic,” said Stephan Lechner, director of the European Commission Joint Research Center, drawing laughter from the scientists and journalists in the audience. “Overreaction will make the situation worse.”
The root of the world’s vulnerability in the modern age is global positioning systems, or GPS devices, that provide navigational help but also serve as time synchronizers for computer networks and electronic equipment, he said.
“GPS helped and created a new dependency,” said Lechner, noting that the technology’s influence extends to aerospace and defense, digital broadcast, financial services and government agencies.
In Europe alone, there are 200 separate telecommunication operators, and “nothing is standardized,” he said.
“We are far from understanding all the implications here,” he said.
World governments are hurrying to work on strategies for cooperation and information sharing ahead of the next anticipated storm, though forecasters admit they are not sure when that may occur.
“Actually we cannot tell if there is going to be a big storm six months from now but we can tell when conditions are ripe for a storm to take place,” said the European Space Agency’s Juha-Pekka Luntama.
On Tuesday at 0156 GMT, a huge solar eruption, the strongest in about five years, sent a torrent of charged plasma particles hurtling toward the Earth at a speed of 560 miles (900 kilometers) per second.
The force of the Class X flash, the most powerful of all solar events, lit up auroras and disrupted some radio communications, but the effects were largely confined to the northern latitudes.
“Actually it turned out that we were well protected this time. The magnetic fields were aligned parallel so not much happened,” said Luntama.
“In another case things might have been different.”
Space storms are not new. The first major solar flare was recorded by British astronomer Richard Carrington in 1859.
Other solar geomagnetic storms have been observed in recent decades. One huge solar flare in 1972 cut off long-distance telephone communication in the midwestern state of Illinois, NASA said.
Another similar flare in 1989 “provoked geomagnetic storms that disrupted electric power transmission” and caused blackouts across the Canadian province of Quebec, the US space agency said.
A panel of NASA-assembled scientists issued a report in 2009 that said a powerful solar flare could overwhelm high-voltage transformers with electrical currents and short-circuit energy grids.
Such a catastrophic event could cost the United States alone up to two trillion dollars in repairs in the first year — and it could take up to 10 years to fully recover, the report said.
by Kerry Sheridan
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Tagged rob simone, Solar Flare
air has launched an emissions calculator that’s the first to use actual real world data to drive it’s predictions rather than estimates or assumptions.
Read more: Carbon Emissions, Carbon Emissions Calculator, Finnair, Green Technology, Carbon Emissions Airlines, Carbon Footprint, Green News
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You might think getting soaked up with soapsuds in your driveway is the most environmentally friendly way to wash your car, but that may not be the case depending on the car wash in your neighborhood.
In this video from CNN, David Podrog, owner of Maritime Autowash in Baltimore, says his facility recovers 95 percent of the wash water it uses. He also claims that his car wash utilizes better cleaning solutions, as older, cheaper chemicals are far more detrimental to the environment.
“We end up paying more for safer chemicals than we would for more dangerous ones,” Podrog tells CNN.
According to the International Car Wash Association, an average individual washing their car at home uses more water than a commercial car wash, and the runoff from their driveway can pollute groundwater, CNN reports.
WATCH:
Read more: Video, Maritime Autowash, Green Technology, Environmental Car Wash, Car Wash Green, Eco-Friendly Car Wash, Green Living, Eco Car Wash, Green Car Wash, Green News
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Major companies like General Electric have dedicated the last few years to switching over to eco-friendly compact florescent bulbs, which use 75 percent less energy while giving as much light as incandescent light bulbs. […] But as the Washington Post reports, one unintended consequence is the contribution it makes to the “continuing erosion” of U.S. manufacturing. As companies transition over to making CFLs, local plants close and jobs are moved out of the country.
Read more: Winchester GE Factory, Winchester Light Bulbs, Light Bulbs Winchester, Green Technology, Light Bulb Factory Closes, Last US Lightbulb Factory, GE Light Bulbs, GE Factory Winchester, Green News
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Reminiscent of James Bond’s fold-away Acrostar mini-plane, the Cri-Cri is the world’s smallest electric plane and this week made its official maiden flight at Le Bourget airport near Paris.
Read more: Smallest Electric Plane, Cri-Cri Airplane, The Cri-Cri, Cri-Cri, World's Smallest Electric Plane, Green Technology, Cri-Cri Electric, Green News
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“Poo-powered” vans will soon be seen on the streets of Sheffield in an attempt by the city council to encourage sustainable motoring.
The six vans run on biogas generated from the raw sewage treatment process.
Read more: Poo Power Sheffield, Sheffield Poo Power, Poo Power Van, Green Technology, Poo-Powered Vehicle, Poo-Powered Van, Poo Power Vehicle, Biogas Vans, UK Poo Power, Poo-Power Van, Poo Power UK, Green News
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I was getting worried, because about two months had gone by without the words “Facebook” and “privacy” appearing in almost every technology article in my RSS feed. But then, Facebook was nice enough to launch Places, giving the blogosphere a whole new reason to include “Facebook” and “privacy” in every tech piece. The world is back to normal; everyone’s talking about Facebook and privacy again.
Concern over privacy is a topic that has reared its head with frequency as we’ve become increasingly reliant on digital technologies. Back in 1999, Scott McNealy then CEO of Sun Microsystems famously said, “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it,” in the midst of a brouhaha over personally identifiable information on Intel Pentium III chips. Then in 2003, it was the new accessibility of public information, like court records, that made the headlines. It seems quaint, but even Facebook’s initial launch of the newsfeed sparked big privacy concerns.
Business interests have always had powerful economic incentives to end our privacy. Behavioral targeting is only the latest evolution of direct marketing techniques that rely on knowing as much as possible about an individual and delivering relevant marketing messages to that person. But the ugly truth is that behavioral targeting wouldn’t fill the coffers of corporate America if consumers didn’t like it. When ads are well targeted, consumers click on them more and better respond to the marketing messages. Instinctively, I may not like the idea that a publisher knows I’m in the market for a new car, but I’m sure happy when I see an ad for a car that seems interesting to me. It may seem creepy that Google tailors ads based on what I search for and what’s in my email, but that doesn’t stop me from reading and clicking on the text ads. As soon as an advertisement is relevant and the information is useful to my life, it’s no longer an advertisement. It’s the convenient delivery of information. Our erosion of privacy makes this possible.
The same can be said for the erosion of privacy with respect to information people can access online about me. I may not like the idea that my friends can “check me in” when I’m with a group of friends, but Facebook Places sure is useful when I want to find where my buddies are hanging out. It may be jarring that people can tag my identity in photographs, but being able to quickly see who is in what picture is quite useful. Some people may still not like that their court records, home records, political donations and other personal files are now available at the click of the mouse — unless they’re evaluating a home for purchase or want to see who is funding a political candidate. A personal example: I make my calendar widely available to my colleagues at HUGE. The benefit: I spend no time managing my calendar.
A transparent society delivers levels of information and service that were never before possible and are highly desirable. The price is a loss of privacy. And it’s a trade people are getting more comfortable making. After all, we’ve been consistently moving toward transparency, not away from it, in spite of the semi-annual privacy debate. This spring Facebook didn’t change the level of privacy it offers, it just made the settings easier to personalize. And as younger generations grow up, the privacy flap will simply no longer exist because people will be used to living in a transparent world. The feeling of vulnerability caused by the worry, “people know everything about me,” will go away. The fear of embarrassing information getting out will become meaningless. We all do crazy things at parties and make gaffes, and it will all be recorded. We’ll all be on the same level playing field. Societal norms will eventually shift so today’s bad behavior will become tomorrow’s collective shrug, just as Lucy Ricardo’s pregnancy on I Love Lucy was once so shocking the word “pregnancy” could not be used.
The only real cause for concern in a truly transparent society are security and safety issues: identity theft, people harming my kids, people robbing my home. But I have faith that technology will inevitably solve these issues.
And so, to those still worried about their own privacy, I would make a suggestion: stop using features that benefit from transparency and start a movement to get everyone else do the same thing. It’s the only way to truly stop the privacy erosion tide. But my guess is that after a day without Google, Google Maps, Facebook, FourSquare, Amazon, and every ad-supported content site, you may conclude that losing a little privacy isn’t so bad.
And so, as today’s privacy debate fades away and we look forward to the next round of Web innovation/privacy outrage (could it be for Google Me?), remember this: when the loss-of-privacy outrage dies, we’ll likely be left with a new set of services we’ll all love.
This story was originally published on FastCompany.com. Read more of Aaron’s insights at Notes on Digital.
Read more: Google, Business, Facebook, Privacy, Scott Mcnealy, Green Technology, Intel, Places, Google Maps, Advertising, Amazon, Foursquare, Technology News
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