NASA releases stunning images of Earth | Video Here’s Rossi’s one megawatt plant Here it is: the plant that according to inventor Andrea Rossi will produce one megawatt of thermal energy via an unknown reaction in his ‘energy catalyzer’. The plant is now being shipped to the United States. (Swedish version here, and Italian here). Ny Teknik got a look at the plant last week in Bologna, where it had been assembled from parts supposedly manufactured in Rossis’s factory in Miami, Florida. The plant consists of 52 ‘E-cats’ of a new model that Rossi says he developed this spring, partly through discussions with the Swedish physicists Sven Kullander and Hanno Essen, mainly regarding research done by Hidetsugu Ikegami, a professor emeritus at Osaka University in Japan. The plant was supposed originally to consist of 100 units of an early model, rated at a power output of ten kilowatts. In July, Rossi changed his mind after claiming to have reached 27 kilowatts of power output with the latest model, then discarded the previously manufactured units.
The Best Smart Growth Projects in America - Housing One of the country’s very best revitalizing neighborhoods and one of our most articulate city plans for a more sustainable future are among this year’s five national honorees for achievement in smart growth, awarded by the Environmental Protection Agency. The other very worthy winners include a green learning center in a small South Dakota town, a green, affordable apartment building in New Mexico and an innovative civic gathering space in Illinois. This year marks the tenth annual EPA smart growth awards (I also wrote about last year’s) and, in my opinion, perhaps the best so far. Here's a rundown: Old North Saint Louis I have been singing the praises of Old North Saint Louis for over three years now, ever since a presentation I gave to a conference led one of the architects involved in the neighborhood’s restoration to send me some materials. I’m not backing off. Plan El Paso Earlier this year, I profiled a precursor to the plan called Connecting El Paso. Maroney Commons
Theory About the Theory Overview Meta-Theory: The Organismic Viewpoint Formal Theory: SDT’s 5 Mini-Theories Other Topics of Interest Applications References Overview People are centrally concerned with motivation -- how to move themselves or others to act. Self-Determination Theory (SDT) represents a broad framework for the study of human motivation and personality. The dynamics of psychological need support and need thwarting have been studied within families, classrooms, teams, organizations, clinics, and cultures using specific propositions detailed within SDT. Meta-Theory: The Organismic Viewpoint SDT is an organismic dialectical approach. Within SDT, the nutriments for healthy development and functioning are specified using the concept of basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Formal Theory: SDT’s Five Mini-Theories Cognitive Evaluation Theory (CET) concerns intrinsic motivation, motivation that is based on the satisfactions of behaving “for its own sake.”
Is The Internet Awake? - edlundart.com The United States, Canada, Australia and Russia span several time zones. The most populous zones were used to represent these countries. Broadband use by country sourced from Wikipedia. If you don't see anything happening above, you may have better luck with a more HTML5-aware browser like recent versions of Google Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. The circles above are sized according to the number of broadband subscribers in each country, as measured December 2009 - June 2011. China has around 117 million, the United States more than 83 million, and Romania at the bottom of this list has nearly 3 million subscribers. The opposite is true for the right/night side.
Extreme DIY: Building a homemade nuclear reactor in NYC 23 June 2010Last updated at 09:01 By Matthew Danzico BBC News, Brooklyn, New York Mark Suppes is part of a growing community of amateur "fusioneers" Many might be alarmed to learn of a homemade nuclear reactor being built next door. But what if this form of extreme DIY could help solve the world's energy crisis? By day, Mark Suppes is a web developer for fashion giant Gucci. The warehouse is a non-descript building on a tree-lined Brooklyn street, across the road from blocks of apartments, with a grocery store on one corner. In a hired workshop on the third floor, a high-pitched buzz emanates from a corner dotted with metal scraps and ominous-looking machinery, as Mr Suppes fires up his device and searches for the answer to a question that has eluded some of the finest scientific minds on the planet. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote We have people in the whole gamut [building reactors] from physicists to electronics people to car mechanics to even one janitor” 'I was inspired'
Breakdown to Breakthrough: A Powerful Time Special Thanks to Susanna Dakin Stealth Book Announcement Yay for Susanna Dakin! Sue changed the course of history - certainly Bioneers' history - with her five-year one million dollar grant to us in 1998. We treated it as seed capital from which we grew most of what you now know as Bioneers. We honor Sue for taking the stage at Bioneers 2011 to share her story and conjure up the next millions to grow Bioneers 3.0 - in big and small gifts alike. But of course Sue is far more than a heroic Bioneers donor. The Nation Is The Artwork and We Are The Artists A Book By Susanna Bixby Dakin "Artists present a threat to those who love eternal truths. Against the inclination of her own nature as well as advice from friends, family, other artists and scoffers, Sue launched a Presidential campaign, as "An Artist for President" for the 1984 electoral season. This compelling and highly entertaining tale is the true story.
Hovering on the Horizon The limb of the Earth is a work of beauty and a gift to science. When observed from space, the layers of the atmosphere remind us of the fragility of the cocoon that shelters life. That same view also allows scientists to detect the gases and particles that make up the different layers of our atmosphere. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured a bit of both in this digital photograph from July 31, 2011. Closest to Earth’s surface, the orange-red glow reveals the troposphere—the lowest, densest layer of atmosphere, and the one we live within. The different colors occur because the dominant gases and particles in each layer act as prisms, filtering out certain colors of light. A thin crescent of the Moon is illuminated by the Sun from below the horizon of the Earth. Instrument(s): ISS - Digital Camera
Massive networks of stripes appear in Chinese Desert Talk about your morning weird. Some people studying Google Earth for some reason managed to run across some very weird patterns in the Chinese desert that have a bunch of folks stumped. The patterns look like stripes that were etched or dug over the top of the landscape in the area. Some of the lines appear to be made from a silver/white material. Considering these can clearly be seen from orbit the formations are raising some eyebrows with geeks trying to figure out what exactly they are for. Are these some sort of alignment or targeting grids for space weapons or what? The strangest one is the intersecting grids lines; the structure covers 18 miles of space. [via Gizmodo] Cold Fusion Heats Up Clean Power Published on November 14th, 2011 | by Silvio Marcacci Could cold fusion technology revolutionize energy generation? Editor’s Note: I wouldn’t bet on it… Cold fusion is considered by many to be the Holy Grail of energy production: a contained, low-energy nuclear reaction that could theoretically produce endless, self-sustaining, and incredibly cheap energy. Countless scientists have tried to successfully demonstrate cold fusion, and all have failed – until now. energyNOW! Late last month, an Italian inventor named Andrea Rossi, claimed a successful test demonstration of cold fusion at the University of Bologna. Rossi says his technology succeeded where others have failed because he uses a secret catalyst to react with small amounts of nickel powder and hydrogen gas. The E-Cat was built for and tested in front of an unnamed American company that intends to commercialize the technology, but questions still remain about the E-Cat’s viability.