The latest town to get them is Anchorage, Alaska. The municipality, along with Cree, Inc, a maker of LED lights, are planning to change 16,000 municipal roadway lights with high-efficiency LED fixtures (about 1/4 of total streetlights).

Bigger Benefits Up North
Because Anchorage has 85 days a year with less than 8 hours of daylight, any benefit over the tradition lighting architecture are compounded. Read on for technical benefits of LED streetlights.

Benefits of LED streetlights
The LED fixtures are expected to use 50% less energy than current streetlights, which could save the city $360,000 per year at the current energy prices. The cost of the project is 2.2 million dollars. "The LED fixtures, based on performance-leading Cree XLamp(r) LEDs, typically last up to seven times longer than high-pressure sodium fixtures, allowing Anchorage to better utilize maintenance resources." And the quality of light should also be better, though people will need to get used to it at first.

Read Full Article: treehugger.com

Tags: LED street lights

Foster + Partners presented designs for a new waterfront development in Rimini. Revealed at a public presentation to the City last week, the proposal is designed to strengthen the relationship between the town centre and the seafront and to create a year-round attraction for an international tourist industry.

The scheme comprises a new seafront promenade with a mix of related activities and public spaces including a hotel tower, which will extend Rimini’s historic beach culture and continue the existing urban grain. The project celebrates Rimini’s tradition of green boulevards, best characterised by the Via Vespuci. The waterfront will be pedestrianised at certain times and will link directly to a linear public park – or green spine – which will provide much needed shade during the hotter months. This currently links the seafront to the historic city and will be enhanced with improved connections to the new promenade area.

A new hotel tower includes space for a Fellini film museum at its base. Its curving form anchors the wider project, while the building extends out to sea along a new 300m long pier, continuing the dialogue between the city and the water and referring to Rimini’s tradition of piers.

The scheme will use new technologies, such as rainwater collection and photovoltaics, to establish a long-term, sustainable commercial and environmental strategy for the town that is balanced with its rejuvenation in the short-term.

Tags: Rimini, WaterFront

TED is a simple, yet extremely accurate, home energy monitor that allows you to see electricity usage in real-time. You no longer have to wait for the 'electricity bill surprise'! TED will accurately tell you what your bill is going to be long before the electric bill arrives. Meanwhile, you will learn more about conserving energy, saving money, and helping save the environment.

With its two-second reaction time, TED provides immediate feedback on energy usage. For you, that means no surprises. You can see what you're spending on electricity each second, as well as what you've spent so far today or so far this month.

Full article: http://www.theenergydetective.com

Tags: Energy meter

BAGHDAD -- In a city with constant electricity shortages but no lack of sunshine, the new buzz is solar energy.

Teams of engineers have appeared along major Baghdad roadways, bolting panels and bulbs to rows of towering steel poles to make solar-powered streetlights.

"We are lighting up the city with solar power," Sajad Hussein declared when queried by curious residents. "People say it is a gift from God."
Surging oil prices have fueled interest in solar power and other renewable energy sources in California and across the United States, where pressure also is building to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to fend off global warming.

Read Full Story: latimes.com

Tags: Traffic Lights, Solar Power, Baghdad

Future generations may never have a sweet tooth to feed. John Mason, the executive director and founder of the Ghana based organization Nature Conversation Research Council (NCRC) believes that in 20 years times, chocolate will be much like caviar today.

"[Chocolate] will become so rare and so expensive that the average joe won't be able to afford it."

This fate of chocolate is terrifying news for two parties. The chocoholics of the world, but more importantly the producer countries that depend greatly on the sale of the cocoa beans as a portion of their GDP.

The main cause for the decline in cocoa bean growth is unsustainable farming in Ghana and other nations known for their cocoa plants. Also cocoa is naturally a rainforest plant that grows in shady conditions surrounded by a high biodiversity, until recently. Now, hybrid varieties have been grown on cleared land as mono-cultures and in full sun.

Although this hybrid seeds fills the demand for the short term, the soil quickly becomes degraded and the lifespan of plants can be cut from 75 or 100 years, to 30 or less. When the trees die and the land is exhausted, farmers must move on and clear more rainforest to plant cocoa.

The decline in West African cocoa is not only a problem for farmers and chocolate producers, one of which is Cadbury who uses 100 percent of West African cocoa beans to produce their chocolate, but environmentalists are increasingly concerned about the destruction of the rainforest for short-term gain.

Read Full Article: greenopolis.com

Tags: Chocolate, Cocoa

Mitchell Joachim & Douglas Joachim


The motion starved environments we live in are the antithesis of our being. Perhaps the most primal of all human function is locomotion. We need to move more!

Our concept encapsulates a new typology for the contemporary urban gym. It is intended to challenge our innate proprioceptive and multi-planer locomotive abilities while synchronously altering the surroundings. The River Gym will fulfill one of the major contemporary fitness goals of “functional training”. This training protocol will exploit the inherent disequilibrium of floatation devices. Often the average urbanite exercising at the gym performs controlled repetitive single plane movements using industrial fitness equipment. All of this energy is summarily dissipated and ultimately exhausted for the sake of a single individual’s wellbeing. Other potentials exist to harness this vast human expenditure of caloric energy. Why not have the simple transfer of this workout vigor supply New York with needed supplemental transport and amenities? How can we extend and capitalize on this untapped group potential? Into what form will this new kind of gym evolve?

Read Full Article: http://www.archinode.com

Tags: Power, Human Power, River Gym

Jun 5th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Environmental technology: Desalination turns salty water into fresh water. As concern over water’s scarcity grows, can it offer a quick technological fix?
THERE are vast amounts of water on earth.



Unfortunately, over 97% of it is too salty for human consumption and only a fraction of the remainder is easily accessible in rivers, lakes or groundwater. Climate change, droughts, growing population and increasing industrial demand are straining the available supplies of fresh water. More than 1 billion people live in areas where water is scarce, according to the United Nations, and that number could increase to 1.8 billion by 2025.

One time-tested but expensive way to produce drinking water is desalination: removing dissolved salts from sea and brackish water. Its appeal is obvious. The world’s oceans, in particular, present a virtually limitless and drought-proof supply of water. “If we could ever competitively—at a cheap rate—get fresh water from salt water,” observed President John Kennedy nearly 50 years ago, “that would be in the long-range interest of humanity, and would really dwarf any other scientific accomplishment.”

Read Full Article: The Economist

Tags: Water, Desalination

Americans must restore their credibility as nation as people as hard workers as they are. To do that all we need is a good policies a good leaders and a fresh mind which think contemporary and looking forward to clean up the mess that human being have done so far.
Few people have a power to shift back in track this great country and one of these is Obama. All I can say to you believe in this man, do not jeopardize the last chance to make the USA and the world a better and a clean place to live. We cannot afford to send the white hair man in the white house for another 4 years.

Tags: Obama

Argentine scientists are taking a novel approach to studying global warming -- strapping plastic tanks to the backs of cows to collect their burps.

Researchers say the slow digestive system of cows makes them a producer of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that gets far less public attention than carbon dioxide in efforts to fight global warming.

Scientists around the world are studying the amount of methane in cow burps and Argentine researchers say they have come up with a unique way.

Attaching a red plastic tank to a cow's back and connecting it through a tube to the animal's stomach, scientists say they can trap bovine burps and analyze them.

Tags: Cow, Argentina

How safe are eggs?
The risk of getting a foodborne illness from eggs is very low. However, the nutrients that make eggs a high-quality food for humans are also a good growth medium for bacteria. In addition to food, bacteria also need moisture, a favorable temperature and time in order to multiply and increase the risk of illness. In the rare event that an egg contains bacteria, you can reduce the risk by proper chilling and eliminate it by proper cooking. When you handle eggs with care, they pose no greater food-safety risk than any other perishable food.

The inside of an egg was once considered almost sterile. But, over recent years, the bacterium Salmonella enteritidis (Se) has been found inside a small number of eggs. Scientists estimate that, on average across the U.S., only 1 of every 20,000 eggs might contain the bacteria. So, the likelihood that an egg might contain Se is extremely small – 0.005% (five one-thousandths of one percent). At this rate, if you’re an average consumer, you might encounter a contaminated egg once every 84 years.

Other types of microorganisms could be deposited along with dirt on the outside of an egg. So, in the U.S., eggshells are washed and sanitized to remove possible hazards. You can further protect yourself and your family by discarding eggs that are unclean, cracked, broken or leaking and making sure you and your family members use good hygiene practices, including properly washing your hands and keeping them clean.

Via: http://www.aeb.org/

Tags: Eggs

Bamboo timber can be harvested every year after 7 years, compared to 30 to 50 years for trees. With 10-30% annual increase in biomass versus 2-5% for trees, bamboo can yield 20 times more timber than trees on the same area. Bamboo can be selectively harvested annually and regenerates without replanting.
Bamboo generates 30% more oxygen than trees. It helps reduce carbon dioxide gases blamed for global warming. Some bamboo sequesters up to 12 tons of carbon dioxide per hectare, which makes it an efficient replenisher of fresh air.
Bamboo is a natural water control barrier. Because of its wide spread root system and large canopy, bamboo greatly reduces rain run off, prevents massive soil erosion and keeps twice as much water in the watershed. Bamboo helps mitigate water pollution due to its high nitrogen consumption, making it a solution for excess nutrient uptake of waste water from manufacturing, livestock farming and sewage treatment.

Via: http://www.bambooliving.com

Tags: Bamboo