Harnessing heat from city roads. Sun-warmed asphalt could heat water for local use or energy generation. The black asphalt roads of urban centres are notorious for soaking up the sun, often helping make cities uncomfortably hot during the summer. Special piping technology from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, however, is offering a way to trap this heat and use it elsewhere, potentially transforming urban streets into giant solar collectors. The idea is simple: the sun-warmed asphalt can be used to heat up water, which is pumped through tubes embedded a few centimetres below the road surface. This has the dual effect of cooling the asphalt, prolonging the lifespan of the road, and heating water which can be used either as is, or to produce electricity.
A prototype using copper piping pointed to an average asphalt temperature drop of around 10°C. The concept is not without its drawbacks, however. Photo: iStockphoto/thinkstock. National Trust aims for nature generation. 16 February 2012Last updated at 11:22 By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News There is even talk that the modern environment is leading to "nature-deficit disorder" The National Trust is planning a campaign this year to improve peoples' links with nature and wildlife. The Trust's director general Fiona Reynolds said children needed freedom to discover nature for themselves. More children go to hospital having fallen out of bed than having fallen out of a tree, she said.
The trust is marking the centenary of the death of Octavia Hill, one of its founders, who fought to preserve public open spaces in London and elsewhere. "It's about wanting to give children a sense of freedom to discover," said Ms Reynolds at a news conference in London. "The campaign will help children to get outdoors and connect them with nature, including things that can be done at trust properties, to try and stimulate a nation of nature-lovers. " Ponds and dens Turbine troubles. Seattle woman “marries” building to protest its demolition | The Sideshow. Komonews.com A Seattle woman recently exchanged one-sided wedding vows with an abandoned warehouse building that is set to be demolished to make way for a new apartment building. In December, Babylonia Aivaz and 16 friends occupied the warehouse, located on 10th and Union streets, to protest the planned development of an apartment complex on the site. "Gentrification is happening," Aivaz said.
"It's a serious issue that affects poor people and especially people of color and this is just the beginning of the fight. " Calling it a "gay marriage," Aivaz was asked by the attending minister if she would "love and cherish and protect this warehouse. " Aivaz reportedly responded in verse, quoting the Cat Power song "Sea of Love.
" "Come with me my love, to the sea, the sea of love. She then added her own verses: "Do you remember when we met? After the ceremony, a large banner reading, "I Do" was hung outside the building as the estimated 50 attendees sang, "Lean on Me. " Other popular Yahoo! 100 Mile House Competition Challenges Architects to Design a House Using Only Local Materials. Prior to the widespread use of polluting fossil fuels, most buildings were made from local materials, using techniques that made sense for the local climate and lifestyle. Now the Architecture Foundation of BC has issued an open challenge to the world: design a house using only materials and systems from within 100 miles of Vancouver. This competition is open to designers, builders, students, thinkers and anyone else in the world who wants to accept the challenge. Vancouver is a city that is familiar with innovative residential design.
However, this competition is set up to challenge how we think about materials, design, technology and building in similar ways to the another stringent building challenge from the Pacific Northwest – the Living Building Challenge. Designing a beautiful, sustainable home on a ’100 mile diet’ will not be easy, but the hosts of the competition have stressed the importance of creative thinking and new ideas. . + 100 Mile House Via TreeHugger. AFRICA: Challenging the urbanization myths | Zambia | Zimbabwe | Economy | Urban Risk.
While the massive sprawl of Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya, would point to rapid urbanization, its extent is often exaggerated (file photo) LONDON, 6 March 2012 (IRIN) - Africa's cities are growing at a frightening rate, as people flood from the countryside to the towns... It is a commonly held view, but a London-based academic, Deborah Potts, has been challenging this received wisdom, asserting that it is based on flawed data, and the rate of urbanization is much lower than people assume. Potts, a reader in human geography at King's College London, says she first began to have doubts in the mid-1980s, when she was working in Zimbabwe. "We interviewed 1,000 migrants," she told IRIN, "and the majority said they would stay in town for a time, but they would leave at some point in the future because they wouldn't be able to afford to stay.
But people were slow to spot the changing trend because of problems with the data. Nobody is suggesting that Africa's towns and cities are actually shrinking. Capital Growth: The campaign for 2,012 new food growing spaces in London. Estimated Short-Term Effects of Coarse Particles on Daily Mortality in Stockholm, Sweden. Every little helps – Tesco opens Ireland’s first “zero-carbon store” - 13 Jan 2012. Robot cars: more time, fewer prangs, less congestion. Robotic car technology being developed at Oxford University that interprets its surroundings and makes decisions about where to go could eliminate the agony and cost of traffic jams. Whilst human drivers might use Global Positioning System (GPS) to find their way such systems cannot provide anything like the coverage, precision, and reliability autonomous cars need to safely navigate.
GPS also fails to tell a robotic car anything about what surrounds it; its proximity to obstacles, other cars, pedestrians, or their intentions. The new technology, which Oxford researchers have now installed on a ‘Wildcat’ vehicle built by BAE Systems, is set to remove the dependence on GPS, improve navigation precision, lower emissions, interpret local traffic conditions, track risks, and above all offer a hands-free experience to the driver.
All this by interpreting a flood of data from sensors such as cameras, radars, and lasers mounted on the car itself. Developing World: Beyond the Frontiers of Science Fiction. The future will not be a monopoly of the current superpowers, but lies in the hands of tech-savvy youth from around the world, trying desperately to survive at all costs in an increasingly asymmetrical world. Imagine a young African boy staring wide-eyed at the grainy images of an old television set tuned to a VHF channel; a child discovering for the first time the sights and sounds of a wonderfully weird world beyond city limits. This is one of my earliest memories; growing up during the mid-nineties in a tranquil compound house in Maamobi; an enclave of the Nima suburb, one of the most notorious slums in Accra. Besides the government-run Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, only two other television stations operated in the country at the time, and satellite television was way beyond my family’s means.
Nevertheless, all kinds of interesting programming from around the world occasionally found its way onto those public broadcasts. Simpler tax system for pensioners proposed. 6 March 2012Last updated at 16:26 About five million pensioners are in the income tax system The tax system should be made much simpler for pensioners, the government has been told. The Office of Tax Simplification says the current system is far too complex for pensioners, about five million of whom currently pay income tax. Its interim report raises the possibility of ending the taxation of state pensions altogether. It also says age-related personal allowances for those over 65, and tax on savings income, need reform. Specific proposals for simplification will now be devised by the OTS and it will publish its final report later this year.
John Whiting, tax director for the OTS, said: "Our report floats a number of possible ways forward to mitigate the difficulties pensioners face. " "We are aiming to make final recommendations that will mean pensioners can have a better understanding of a simpler tax system, and can deal with their responsibilities more easily. " 271na6. Glen Meadows Retirement Community Creates “College Experience” for Residents with Masterpiece Living® GLEN ARM, Md. --(BUSINESS WIRE)--Glen Meadows, a Presbyterian Senior Living retirement community, today announced that it has become the first retirement community in Maryland to offer Masterpiece Living®, a new approach to senior living that helps residents lead more robust and fulfilling lifestyles. Glen Meadows is the first of Presbyterian Senior Living’s 24 locations, all located in the mid-Atlantic region, to launch Masterpiece Living, and will do so today in a community-wide celebration at its Glen Arm location.
“If a community can provide the environment and culture that believes in the growth of their residents, the residents will respond to that. That is what Masterpiece Living is all about – a philosophy that believes in the growth in all areas of our lives and achieving this potential.” “Research shows that aging well – both physically and mentally – is largely dependent on lifestyle,” said Steve Proctor, President, Presbyterian Senior Living. Dr. My Masterpiece Living - My Masterpiece Living. Designing with Nature (lecture by Lehna Malmkvist on TEDxBerlin) | E-learning. Feb 14 This video shows a lecture by Lehna Malmkvist who is an ecologist and the founder of Swell Enviormental Consulting Ltd. Malmkvist works in multi-disciplinary teams for low impact/green development projects, watershed planning, rainwater management and ecological restoration. She ensures an innovative, whole system approach which is integrated into her projects.
She also shares her expertise by teaching workshops and lecturing at professional, community and university events, helping to educate a new way of thinking about our connection to our immediate environment. During this lecture Malmkvist speaks about the importance of environmentally friendly design. TweetShare on Tumblr Malmkvist explains that currently there are number of ecological interactions that take place in natural systems. Photo from flickr.com Malmkvist convinces that we need to move from one-way systems where materials, energy water are used only once. Similar Posts: A special report on smart systems: Living on a platform.
European smart cities - The smart city model. The smart city model A Smart City is a city well performing in 6 characteristics, built on the ‘smart’ combination of endowments and activities of self-decisive, independent and aware citizens. z-transformation To receive results on the level of factors, characteristics and the final result for each city it is necessary to aggregate the values on the indicator level. For the aggregation of indicators of factors we consider also the coverage rate of each indicator. A certain result from an indicator of an indicator covering all 70 cities weights therefore a little more than from an indicator covering only 60 cities. Besides this small correction the results were aggregated on all levels without any weighting. Smart Economy Smart Mobility Smart Environment Smart People Smart Living Smart Governance. Top 10 smartest cities in the world. The future got a little closer this week: Google's driverless cars may now drive on Nevada's public streets and highways.
The future got a little closer this week, as Nevada became the first state to allow self-driving cars on its public roads. The Las Vegas Sun reported that the state issued Google the first testing license for its autonomous vehicles, which will allow the cars to drive on public streets and highways. The cars are guided by GPS, visual indicators, sensor, and artificial intelligence software. Google says that since 2010, it has performed more than 200,000 miles of computer-led test drives on private tracks.
According to the 2011 Nevada law that allows autonomous vehicles to be tested on its roads, the cars must have two people inside at all times - one in the driver's seat and one in the front passenger seat. Advocates of autonomous driving argue that self-driving cars are ultimately safer than those driven by flesh-and-blood humans. Voa [CNET] May 8, 2012. I.B.M. Takes ‘Smarter Cities’ Concept to Rio de Janeiro. City employees in white jumpsuits work quietly in front of a giant wall of screens — a sort of virtual Rio, rendered in real time. Video streams in from subway stations and major intersections. A sophisticated weather program predicts rainfall across the city.
A map glows with the locations of car accidents, power failures and other problems. The order and precision seem out of place in this easygoing Brazilian city, which on this February day was preparing for the controlled chaos that is Carnaval. This building is the Operations Center of the City of Rio, and its system was designed by at the request of Rio’s mayor, Eduardo Paes. On this February day, Guru Banavar, an I.B.M. executive, stood on the balcony above the control room, watching the scene. “I have seen better infrastructure in individual departments in other cities,” said Mr.
For I.B.M., Rio is a crucible. Running a big city, particularly one as varied as Rio, makes running many companies seem easy. AT 45, Mr. That Mr. Rapid Urban Development and the Future of Urbanism (interview with MIT's Dean Adéle Naudé Santos) | Interview. Feb 07 This video shows an interview with Adéle Naudé Santos, FAIA, who is an architect and urban designer. Her career combines a professional practice, research, and teaching. She is currently Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as a principal architect in the San Francisco-based firm, Santos Prescott and Associates.
In the interview, Santos discusses her concerns for rapid urban development and the future of urbanism. TweetShare on Tumblr Sontos explains that she is keenly concerned about few processes which have place on our planet in recent decades. Photo from web.mit.edu Santos convinces that combination of these few processes creates a new ecological agenda. Similar Posts: 232na1. Sustainable Nomadic Home - Fincube - You Can Take It Wherever You Want. Feb 15 Ever imagined a house that can be uprooted and planted again anywhere in the woods? Or even meadows and mountainsides? Sounds like a dream, we know. Not really, we have managed to set sights on such an amazing house in Bozen, Northern Italy. Named Fincube, the structure stands at a height of 4,000 feet above sea level , and thereby provides a magnificent view of the Dolomite mountains yonder. Share on Tumblr The modular home can be easily taken apart and rebuilt in a new location.
Via decoist.com Similar Posts: IKEA expands solar initiative to 75 per cent of US locations - 09 Dec 2011. Global Health and Wellness News: Innovative Wastewater Treatment Technology. Chris Huhne takes solar subsidy cuts ruling to the court of appeal | Environment.