Road train technology can drive your car for you - tech - 18 January 2011 Video: Road train drives your car for you Letting drivers read a book, surf the net or possibly even have a snooze while behind the wheel may not sound like the best way to improve road safety. Yet that's precisely the aim of an automatic driving system that has just been road-tested for the first time in Sweden. By linking cars together into road trains or "platoons" to form semi-autonomous convoys under the control of a professional lead driver, the hope is that average road speeds can be reduced, improving fuel consumption and cutting congestion. In a test performed late last month, Volvo, one of the partners of the Safe Road Trains for the Environment (SARTRE) Project, showed that a single car could join a platoon, be "enslaved" by a lead truck, and then exit safely. Platooning is not a new idea, says Tom Robinson of engineering firm Ricardo UK in Cambridge, the co-ordinator of the project, which is funded by €6.4 million of European Commission money. Your sensors are mine now
Appropriate Technology The argument of mass production versus distributed production at this stage of the game, in my opinion, is a false dichotomy. Personally, and ideologically, I lean towards distributed production, but I do not think that this has to be at … Continue reading After reading what Lucas has been brilliantly putting out over the past 48 hours or so, the picture becomes clearer…we’re getting closer. If anyone needs a quick catch-up, the real edge of the sword is the reprap machine. As per … Continue reading If it’s true that what we are doing, while it may help many of us mitigate the chain reaction effects of collapse, might be too little, too late, then we need to really think hard about what will change that … Continue reading As a movement, we have arrived. Since 2005 I have been a strong advocate for the development of open source appropriate technology (OSAT). A provocative title, indeed, but the reality is a bit more practical.
Harvest Boon Villa Welpeloo in Enschede, the Netherlands, doesn't look like a recycled building. Its austere lines and spacious interior have nothing of the junkyard aesthetic about them. Yet despite appearances, it's reused to the bones. To accomplish this, architects Jan Jongert and Jeroen Bergsma of 2012Architects reversed the typical order of the design process—first house, then materials—and instead began by scouting the local area for items to recycle. Villa Welpeloo was the architects' first house, designed for clients Tjibbe Knol and Ingrid Blans. The architects came to the idea of superuse architecture when they were student at Delft University of Technology. So when they received the commission for Villa Welpeloo (Jongert and Blans have been friends since Jongert was eight), step one was to create a "harvest map," an inventory of possible suppliers from within a nine-mile radius of the building site. Their resourcefulness paid off.
Yurts Cause Controversy in France Photo: yourtes The nomads in Outer Mongolia created yurts out of necessity, now many people in France are living in them as part of an alternate lifestyle decision. But the French government has come up with a new crime bill that will enable it to crack down on Roma (gypsy) camps. The French government, starting with the President, has started raiding Roma camps and expelling them. Here's where the trouble starts: many yurt dwellers are afraid that this legislation will be used against them. Photo: yourte In the south and southeast of France hundreds of people have bought or built their own yurts and they are part of growing movement of those who want to scale down their life style and their consumption. Sounds familiar to TreeHugger readers. However the proliferation of yurts is becoming a local planning issue in some villages. In protest against the new crime bill they have held demonstrations in provincial cities which have ended up in clashes with the police.
Top Ten Most Nutritious Vegetables and How to Grow Them in Your Garden A perfectly ripe, juicy tomato, still warm from the sun. Sweet carrots, pulled from the garden minutes (or even seconds!) before they're eaten. Growing your own vegetables is one of those activities that balances practicality and indulgence. In addition to the convenience of having the fixings for a salad or light supper right outside your door (or on your windowsill), when you grow your own vegetables, you're getting the most nutritional bang for your buck as well. Vegetables start losing nutrients as soon as they're harvested, and quality diminishes as sugars are turned into starches. Broccoli is high in calcium, iron, and magnesium, as well as vitamins A, B6, and C. How to grow broccoliGrow broccoli in containers: One broccoli plant per pot, pots should be 12 to 16 inches deep.What to watch out for: Cabbage worm. 2. There is nothing like peas grown right in your own garden — the tender sweetness of a snap pea just plucked from the vine is unlike anything you can buy in at a store.
How to Compost Indoors (Video) Image credit: Praxxtube From NatureMill's high-tech indoor composter, to building your own worm bin, there are plenty of options for the would-be composter who doesn't have a yard, or who would just like to keep composting through the winter. The video below gives a very basic, cheap methodology for building your own compost bin. OK, so the thin mint joke is kinda goofy, but this is a classic example of just how easy composting can be. Using little more than some leaves, some coffee grounds, some dirt and some water, Praxxtube shows us how to make smell-free, almost mess-free compost in a plastic bucket. Anyone tried this at home? More on Composting at HomeBuild Your Own Worm Bin (Video)Compost Conundrum: Backyard Bin, Can-O-Worms or Indoor Composter?
Engineers Hone Clean-Energy Stoves For The World hide captionThis stove at Aprovecho's lab in Cottage Grove, Ore., has a basic "rocket stove" design built from a 55-gallon oil drum. Its insulated "combustion chamber" is precisely engineered to extract energy from wood. Martin Kaste/NPR This stove at Aprovecho's lab in Cottage Grove, Ore., has a basic "rocket stove" design built from a 55-gallon oil drum. Its insulated "combustion chamber" is precisely engineered to extract energy from wood. Almost half the world still cooks its food with solid fuels, such as wood and charcoal. The results are deforestation and black carbon, which contributes to global warming. In war zones, the daily hunt for firewood can present families with terrible dilemmas, says Veronique Barbelet of the World Food Programme. "You hear women in northern Uganda and places like that telling you, 'My choice is between going out there and collecting firewood and being raped, or for my husband to go out and get killed, and I would rather go and get raped,' " she says.
UndergroundHouse : Underground House The Purpose of this Group is to bring together as much information as possible for the building of an Underground / Earth Sheltered (ES) House that will be Self Heating / Cooling, Off Grid & Food Self Sufficient. There are two main objections to ES houses, which is that they are Dark & Damp, I intend to overcome these by: 1. Building a Back Yard Patio, conceived by Mike Oehler, onto the rear of the house, allowing in natural light, with the advantage of deflecting water away & to the sides into the underground drains. & 2. Installing an Insulated Watershed Umbrella such as John Hait’s system of Passive Annual Heat Storage (PAHS). This will shield the soil around the house from the rain, enabling it to become dryer & also by using Earth Tubes, this soil can be heated up to provide free heat & cooling to the house throughout the year with no maintenance & electricity.
Which Is Worse, Air Leaks or Heat Loss? Neither. It's Energy Consumption That Matters Image Credit: Resources for a Sustainable Future There is a strange debate going on at Green Building Advisor, where a writer thinks "home buyers have been "brainwashed" into thinking only about R-values, as energy codes give short shrift to the importance of airtightness." The debate goes back and forth, but not once to they address the real point: How much energy is being consumed over all. They are preoccupied with relative efficiency when they should be concerned with absolute consumption. Even as our building codes increase the R-values, absolute energy consumption goes up as the houses get bigger. So the rate of heat loss or infiltration is almost irrelevant. I have made this point before in Big Steps in Building: Change our Building Codes from Relative to Absolute. wikipedia Then there is the question of the relevance of the R values of the bits of walls surrounding the acres of vinyl windows that seem to be the style these days.