Smart Water

A standalone desalinator needs 17 gallons of diesel fuel and 66.5 kilowatts of
electricity to make 1,000 gallons of freshwater, but now, the Solar Cube, (made
by Spectra Watermakers in California), churns out 1,500 gallons of drinking water
on just 22 kilowatts of its own solar and wind power. The innovation is a pump
that triples efficiency by recapturing hydraulic pressure during the filtering
process. Solar Cubes are now bringing freshwater to remote regions and places
short on infrastructure and electricity without paying the CO2 price – way cool. (more…)

If you are looking on how to break into the new green movement but are not sure on
how to start.  Well, the Mitchell Technical Institute is providing a training
course, it is located in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and it is offering a degree
in wind turbine technology.

They talked with utility providers and firms that are putting up the wind farms
and tried to determine what it is they need for a worker.  There probably are fewer
than two dozen such programs in the nation.

Starting next fall, students can choose between a one-year program that grants a
diploma to be a wind turbine technician and a two-year degree that qualifies them
for more advanced work. (more…)

Mariah Power, the manufacturer of the Windspire®, a residential and commercial wind power appliance, was recognized in “Best of What’s New” in the green tech category by Popular Science in its December 2008 issue.

Windspire turbine

The Windspire is a 30-foot tall, propeller-free, vertical-axis wind turbine designed for harnessing wind power in urban, suburban and rural locations for both residential and commercial use. Each year, Popular Science reviews thousands of new products and innovations and chooses the top 100 winners across 11 categories for inclusion in its annual “Best of What’s New” issue, the best-read issue of the year. To win, a product or technology must represent a significant step forward in its category.

This award comes on the heels of the company’s announcement of its first volume manufacturing facility in Michigan that will be up and running next year, and the first multi-unit commercial installation of six Windspires at Devon Bank the first “green bank” in the Chicago, Illinois area. (more…)

For you futurists, geeks and of course, you greenies……… look at this!

Supercomputers Break Petaflop Barrier, Transforming Science By Betsy Mason
A new crop of supercomputers is breaking down the petaflop speed barrier, pushing
high-performance computing into a new realm that could change science more profoundl
than at any time since Galileo, leading researchers say.

When the Top 500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers was announced at the
international supercomputing conference in Austin, Texas, on Monday, IBM had barely
managed to cling to the top spot, fending off a challenge from Cray. But both competitors
broke petaflop speeds, performing 1.105 and 1.059 quadrillion floating-point calculations (more…)

Afsaneh Rabiei, Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at
North Carolina State University, has invented a space-age material so light and
strong that it could revolutionize everything from vehicle bumpers to armor to
biomedical devices.  A brand new material that can save energy and lives.

“Basically, it is a new material for all sorts of safety devices,” said Rabiei
Her invention isn’t the first metal foam, but she says it’s the strongest. The main weakness of
existing metal foams is the varying sizes of their cells – tiny pockets (more…)

It’s become almost a reflex to bash aviation’s role in climate change. Passenger
planes are big, they emit stuff into the atmosphere, so they must be bad. It’s
true, but it’s not quite that simple.

Last week, climate and atmospheric scientists from the US and Europe presented
research to a group of aviation types gathered at the Royal Society of London.
Much of their focus was on nitrogen oxide (NOx), and what they found is that
simply dismissing NOx as just another nasty greenhouse gas is not only bad
science, but could also be unwise policy. (more…)

Here are some interesting facts about what food help parts of the body
that you may or may not know.

A sliced Carrot looks like the human eye. The pupil, iris and radiating
lines look just like the human eye… and YES, science now shows carrots
greatly enhance blood flow to and function of the eyes. (more…)