Category Archives: Awareness and Hype
Not only is the charming American president Obama serious about the go-green campaign. Most of Europe is also getting serious. Stepping aside from inventing hybrids and bringing back the bicycle tradition, here is a new idea. The London Eye that has attracted over 33 million visitors ever since its birth in 2000 will become more environmentally friendly under a £12.5 million upgrade. Merlin Entertainments Group, which owns the Eye, will improve heating and ventilation in the 32 capsules to make the attraction more energy efficient. Ceiling-mounted TV screens and better wi-fi are also being installed.
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Africa is a place with lots of sun and also lots of need for some clean and good water. So adding one and one together, a company launched the SOLAQUA which is a useful device. It is going to be used as a water disinfection unit in the rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. This device will obtain infra-red and ultra-violet rays from the sun and will utilize them to eliminate pathogens of contaminated water.
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This city has gone to the next level in suburban pioneering by going 100% car free. Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district which is near the French and Swiss borders. Car ownership is allowed but you have only two places to park it. There are large garages at the edge of the development where you can buy a space for $40,000 along with a home. So 70% of the families do not own cars and 57% sold theirs to move into this district. Vauban was completed in 2006 showing an example of a growing trend in Europe, US and elsewhere to separate suburban life with the city life. Vauban which is home to 5,500 residents within a rectangular square mile may be the most advanced experiment in low-car suburban life. In this new approach, stores are placed a walk away, on a main street, rather than in malls along some distant highway.
[Times Of India]
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In an attempt to garner ideas to clean the non-earth-friendly image of airline industry, Airbus had launched the “Fly Your Ideas” competition. Out of the 2,350 students worldwide, five teams have been short listed for the $40,500 prize scheduled on 18th of June. Take a look at what these crazy flying green ideas are. Flying on an aircraft powered by an electric motor to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels by Team “Kometa Brno” from the Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic seems to be a smart green design. Also the National University of Singapore’s “Solaire Voyager” team intends to tap sum’s energy to power up the planes. This concept is not too new and many such projects are in the testing mode.
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Few years ago Greenpeace and Apple were not the best of buddies on environmental issues. But now it seems they have set aside their differences because Greenpeace is using Apple’s iPhone to spread the message on the importance of selecting the right toilet paper. Greenpeace has launched an iPhone application version of its “Recycled Tissue and Toilet Paper Guide” that lets consumers compare brands available at their local grocery store to find which brands are most environmentally sustainable. This application is developed by 3rdWhale and gives a scale from “Recommended” to “They can do better” on brands of facial tissues, toilet papers, paper towels and paper napkins. The application is available for download for the iPhone and Google Android. It should be interesting to see if the toilet paper guide prolongs the green peace.
Source
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Washington DC is preparing to see a very green future with major companies preparing to bring a huge reduction in the city’s CO2 emissions. Automotive company, Nissan North America, and AeroVironment, an industry expert in battery and charging systems, have signed a deal that could bring hundreds of Electric Vehicles (EVs) and charging stations to the District. This is part of the Obama Administration’s and the District’s initiatives in progressive transportation programs, reducing C02 emissions and improving the environment.
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It has been found out that the use of solid-state drives could allow the world’s data centers to reduce their cumulative electricity consumption by 166,643MWH from 2008 to 2013, according to iSuppli Corp. Gambia produced a little less than that for the entire year of 2006. The energy savings from using SSDs in this application are expected to rise to 57,564MWH by 2013, up from 6,986MWH in 2008, a total of 166,643MWH for the entire six-year period. SSDs are devices that employ NAND-type Flash memory chips for data storage. Although they are more expensive per gigabyte of storage, SSDs use much less energy than hard disk drives, making them an attractive replacement for HDDs in some applications. SSDs entry into the enterprise data centers is a boon for energy consumption and savings when these SSDs replace select short-stroked hard drives in the not-too-distant future.
[Techon]
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Power from space isn’t a new concept. Earlier we have mentioned about the Space Solar that can re-direct the solar power to earth without hindrance. But today it’s the Space Mirror, intended to ward off the sun rays, we are talking of. Made up of millions of silicon chips, the mirror can be placed at a point in space where the sun’s gravity and the Earth’s cancel each other. This colossal mirror will drift slowly through space between the Earth’s surface and the sun, intercepting the rays of sunlight before they reach the Earth, and deflecting them safely away. Such a conceptual project will help to reverse the graph of global warming. Since climate is changing for the worse, it is mandatory to give importance to the need of altering Earth’s systems. Such a concept of geo-engineering (science of altering the world’s natural systems) sounds wacky and impossible. It will also need enormous funding to materialize too. Till then we have to change our non-earth-friendly lifestyle to stabilize the graph of global warming.
[FT]
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Aurora begins testing SunLight Eagle, the unmanned solar powered aircraft
2012 may be the end of the world, but people are not wasting time trying to get their lives accustomed to alternative energy. Aurora Flight Sciences will begin testing solar-powered unmanned aircraft within the national irspace. The tests will be conducted at Las Cruces, New Mexico, under the auspices of New Mexico State University (NMSU). The Aurora plane named SunLight Eagle has a wingspan of 114 feet. To convert it to fly on sunlight, its wings have been covered with solar cells.
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Sony has for years been creating useful, convenient and exquisite technological designs for mankind. So it took a small break from all the creating and allowed a few ID students from China to let their minds go crazy and create a few green ideas. The outcome was as follows. A Sony Bathman Shower music player created by the Peng Shi-Nan Dong Hwa University students who made a music system that mimics the flow of water from a showerhead which means an invigorating flow of water results in some hard rock music coming your way while a gentle shower plays some soft mellow music. Second is a Sony Conductor TV Remote by the Donghua University students. It is a wand-shaped remote that requires you to sway it from side to side to power it, change channels and play with the volume. It also feature a green LED light to indicate power levels.
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