The new Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball is a 12 foot geodesic sphere, double the size of previous Balls, and weighs 11,875 pounds. Covered in 2,668 Waterford Crystals and powered by 32,256 Philips Luxeon Rebel LEDS, the new Ball is capable of creating a palette of more than 16 million vibrant colors and billions of patterns producing a spectacular kaleidoscope effect atop One Times Square.

Tags: LED

Here is an infrastructure investment America should consider: an Envac waste disposal system. Instead of filling our streets with garbage bags and waiting for trucks to pick them up, many European cities (they invest in infrastructure that isn't for cars there) are trying out these clever underground vacuum systems. Garbage is separated into "fractions"- paper, organics, or other garbage, deposited in chutes where it is held until a computer opens the gate at the bottom of the tube and sucks a particular fraction down the pipe to a processing center. The result? "...A drastic reduction of road transportation of waste, improved hygiene and enhanced occupational health and safety standards." And better looking and smelling cities.

http://www.treehugger.com

Tags: Waste disposal

LAGO AGRIO, Ecuador — When the sun beats particularly hot on this land in the middle of the jungle, the roads sweat petroleum. A Rhode Island-sized expanse of what was once pristine Amazon rainforest is crisscrossed with oil wells and pipeline grids built by Texaco Inc. a generation ago.

And for the past 15 years, a class-action lawsuit has been winding its way through the courts on behalf of the more than 125,000 people who drink, bathe, fish and wash their clothes in tainted headwaters of the Amazon River.

Now a single judge is expected to rule in the case in 2009 from a ramshackle courtroom in this northern frontier town. Statements from a court-appointed expert suggest Chevron Corp. – which bought Texaco in 2001 – will be held responsible for the many oil spills and dumping of wastewater. If Chevron loses, it could be ordered to pay up to $27.3 billion in damages, though an appeal would be likely.

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/

Tags: Amazon Forest, Pollution, Texaco

A "revolution" in the way we illuminate our world is imminent, according to a paper published this week by two professors at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Innovations in photonics and solid state lighting will lead to trillions of dollars in cost savings, along with a massive reduction in the amount of energy required to light homes and businesses around the globe, the researchers forecast.
A new generation of lighting devices based on light-emitting diodes (LEDs) will supplant the common light bulb in coming years, the paper suggests. In addition to the environmental and cost benefits of LEDs, the technology is expected to enable a wide range of advances in areas as diverse as healthcare, transportation systems, digital displays, and computer networking.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/

Tags: LED

BASF and Osram announced that:

A big step towards energy-saving OLED lighting with efficiency of more than 60 lm/W.

International standard for white color requirements met BASF and Osram Opto Semiconductors have developed a highly efficient white organic light-emitting diode (OLED): for the first time an OLED not only is able to achieve a light yield of over 60 lumens per watt (lm/W), but also, at the same time, meets the international Energy Star SSL Standard with regard to color requirements. Lighting efficiency on this scale had been achieved previously. Lighting efficiency describes the ratio of luminous flux given off by a lamp to the amount of power consumed; the greater the yield, the less energy is lost. However, up until now the color values of OLEDs have not been within the acceptable band for color coordinates around the Planck curve, as defined by the Energy Star SSL Standard.
The color values of the new OLED are within this band – its light retains the white color at different levels of intensity.

http://www.oled-display.net/

Tags: OLED