A New Jersey Burger King has installed an motion sensitive energy producing panels on the ground near it’s drive thru windows. For more information see www.inhabitat.com/2009/09/08/speed-bumps-harvest-electricity-from-moving-cars/
A new battery has been developed to replace lithium batteries for things like smart cards, RFID tags, and other low power portable devices. Created by researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden, it is made of pressed mats of intertwined cellulose fibers, which act as an electrode, and a salt solution as the electrolyte. It is a simple salt and paper battery.
The Algaeus car is built to be fueled by algae based gasoline. It is going on a cross-country trip from San Fransisco to New York to introduce the new documentary “Fuel” along with other alternative fuel vehicles, by the Veggie Van Organization and San Diego company Sapphire Energy. It uses a Prius and uses it’s plug in hybrid electric energy as well as the algae fuel to get 150 miles per gallon. Most amazingly, the engine of the car has not been modified.
Sapphire Energy’s algae gasoline is created with algae, sunlight and CO2, that’s it. It can be used for jet fuel, gasoline or diesel, and is clearly the most environmentally friendly fuel made. For more information see www.sapphireenergy.com.
Many years ago I read of a proposal to develop a huge island off the coast of Tokyo, but the idea of creating islands to live on is ancient. The Uros tribe of Peru say they existed before the sun, and they have been building their islands of tortura reeds since then. Tortura is like a large cattail. The Uros people also create boats from the reed. For more great pictures and information see http://gosouthamerica.about.com/od/topdestlaketiticaca/ss/FloatingIslands.htm.
In the English town of Wakefield the Green Business Network started the disadvantaged youth of the area in cardboard recycling. It then evolved into selling discarded paper as horse bedding. The “used” bedding was then collected and composted in a wormery. Then, the worms were used to feed a fish farm of Siberian sturgeon and ornamental Koi carp. The sturgeon even produce caviar.
If that wasn’t enough, willow trees were planted that use composted sludge from the local sewage plant, that in turn fuel a biomass boiler that provides the optimum temperature for the fish. The waste from the fish tanks then fertilizes an orchard, tree nursery and vegetable plot. For even more see the link at www.theableproject.org.uk/
Meghalaya is a state in northeastern India which is the wettest of anywhere on earth, it also has a series of living tree bridges. The War-Khasis people live in this land of many rivers and have developed this system of guiding trees to lay across rivers and create living bridges. Some are over one hundred feet long and can hold up to fifty people.
To make these bridges they weave rubber tree roots through hollow betel nut tree trunks and lay it across the stream until they grab hold on the other side. In time, about fifteen years, the root systems become strong enough to hold people. These living structures grow stronger with time and some are estimated to be over five hundred years old. For more information see http://rootbridges.blogspot.com/2009/08/blog-post.html.
Starlings, like some other birds, consume fermented fruit containing alcohol. Other birds get drunk, starlings don’t. Sturnis vulgaris, or starlings stay sober because they metabolize alcohol at a very high rate because they have a larger amount of an enzyme, alcoholdehydrogenase. This was discovered in the late 1990’s by Dr.Ghassem Hakimi and Dr. Roland Prinzinger at Frankfurt University in Germany. They found starlings have 14 times as much of this enzyme as humans.
Who cares about drunken birds? Actually this research has implications for achohol poisoning and alcoholism. For more information see www.asknature.org/strategy/0abdd32261b5789248eef12e695e4ac0#section.
Trees consume carbon dioxide through their leaves, thereby helping to lower CO2 levels. They also use transpiration, where water is sucked up from roots to leaves, where it evaporates. UC Berkeley researcher Michel Maharbiz, and other scientists are developing clean, renewable power by creating an alternate energy system based on this system. Using artificial glass leaves, they generate a steady flow of energy.
These leaves get power from the evaporation-driven flow of water. They are made of glass wafers containing a series of minute water filled channels. Water flows through these channels then evaporates at the leaf’s edge. Then the actual power production takes place in the leaf’s central stem walls, which are lined with metal plates connected to a circuit. The charged metal plates separated by a layer of water essentially create a capacitor. Water flowing through the leaf is occasionally interrupted by small air bubbles–because air and water each have different electrical properties, every time an air bubble passes through the plates, an electric current is generated. This electricity can then be harvested and used to produce power.
The electricity produced is a relatively small amount when compared to power produced by fuel cells and batteries, but they are currently working on modifications to optimize the amount of power the leaves can produce. Eventually, leaves could be made into whole artificial trees. This could be a great source of power from a tiny source.
My gordon setter can chew through a plastic water bottle devour it in a matter of minutes, but recent research may prove there is another way.
In a Waterloo, Ontario science fair, 16-year-old David Burd, won for his research on microorganisms that can quickly biodegrade plastic. Plastic usually takes a thousand years to decompose, but this student questioned whether those microorganisms could process the plastic faster.
To achieve this, he immersed ground plastic in a yeast solution that encourages microbial growth, and then isolated the most productive organisms. He then proceeded to select out the most productive strains and inter bread them. The preliminary results were encouraging, so he kept at it, selecting out the most effective strains and interbreeding them. After several weeks he achieved a remarkable 43% of degradation of the plastic in six weeks. With the amount of tonnes of plastic in landfills and in the ocean world wide, this appears promising.
Butterfly and some other large winged insects, as well as many plant surfaces, stay clean with nothing but their complicated surface and the way it interacts with the physics of water molecules. A paint company has developed a product, Lotusan® exterior coating, using these same micro-structural principles to regain its cleanliness automatically after the mere rinse of a rain shower.
On the lotus plant, it is covered with a wax, and the slightest angle in the surface of the leaf (e.g., caused by a passing breeze) then causes the balls of water to roll off due to gravity, taking the attached dirt particles with them and cleaning the leaf without using detergent or expending energy.
Applications include coatings for paint, tiles, and fabrics, to name a few. For more details, (it is a very complex, interesting process,) and links, see http://www.asknature.org/product/6b8342fc3e784201e4950dbd80510455#changeTab.