Solar panel roads 'could solve energy crisis' Asphalt roads and car parks would be torn up and replaced with glass solar cell panels capable of generating enough power to support local communities, under the scheme. A US firm is currently working on a prototype panel that could be embedded into existing roads, having won a $100,000 grant from the US Department of Transportation. The panels would also be covered with a mosaic of small lights, which could be illuminated to provide road markings and warning messages to drivers. They could also be embedded with heaters to keep the road clear by melting snow and ice. With each 12 ft by 12 ft panel capable of producing 7.6 kilowatt hours of power each day, the company Solar Roadways calculates that resurfacing the entire US interstate highway network would meet the country's energy needs three times over. A four-lane, one-mile stretch of road made from the panels could generate enough power for 500 homes, it claims.
It’s Not a Fairytale: Seattle to Build Nation’s First Food Forest Forget meadows. The city’s new park will be filled with edible plants, and everything from pears to herbs will be free for the taking. Seattle’s vision of an urban food oasis is going forward. A seven-acre plot of land in the city’s Beacon Hill neighborhood will be planted with hundreds of different kinds of edibles: walnut and chestnut trees; blueberry and raspberry bushes; fruit trees, including apples and pears; exotics like pineapple, yuzu citrus, guava, persimmons, honeyberries, and lingonberries; herbs; and more. All will be available for public plucking to anyone who wanders into the city’s first food forest. “This is totally innovative, and has never been done before in a public park,” Margarett Harrison, lead landscape architect for the Beacon Food Forest project, tells TakePart. “The concept means we consider the soils, companion plants, insects, bugs—everything will be mutually beneficial to each other,” says Harrison. “Anyone and everyone,” says Harrison. Source: Take Part
Extraterresterial Life Exists, Scientist Chandra Wickramasinghe Claims If a group of scientists are correct, tiny fossils uncovered inside a meteorite found in Sri Lanka in December are proof of extraterrestrial life. In a detailed paper called "Fossil Diatoms In A New Carbonaceous Meteorite" that is appearing in the Journal of Cosmology, Chandra Wickramasinghe claims to have found strong evidence that life exists throughout the universe. An electron microscope was used to study the reported remains of a large meteorite (see image below right) that fell near the Sri Lanka village of Polonnaruwa on Dec. 29. Wickramasinghe is the director of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham in the U.K. Wickramasinghe and the late English astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle co-developed a theory known as "panspermia," which suggests that life exists throughout the universe and is distributed by meteoroids and asteroids. But with any remarkable claim comes criticism of the scientist's research and conclusions. Loading Slideshow
We'll Never Run This Economy On Renewables (We'll Never Have To) SHAREConference/CC BY-SA 2.0 Whenever we talk about pushing for 100% renewables, naysayers start arguing that we can never run our current economy without energy intensive fossil fuels. But they forget one simple thing: We don't have to. In a world where you can address a conference from your own bedroom, or order your groceries or even publish a book without ever getting dressed, the old way of doing things just seems, well, increasingly old. Cheap Fossil Fuels Shaped Our WorldviewThe economy of today is structured the way it is because it was built on the false assumption of cheap fossil fuels. Don't Replace Fossil Fuels. Just because the dinosaur economy is coming to an end does not mean we can, or will, return to a pre-fossil fuel economy. Virtual Industries Create Real JobsFor the last 6 years I've operated a viable business using little more than a laptop, a desk, a lamp and an internet connection. I'm not saying the shift to a smarter, cleaner economy is inevitable.
Driverless cars, pilotless planes … will there be jobs left for a human being? | Technology Suddenly a robotised, automated economic reality is moving off the science fiction pages and into daily life. The growing use of unmanned battlefield drones is encouraging the growth of pilotless commercial aircraft – the first ever flew in British airspace last month. Google's driverless car is completing ever more trials ever more successfully: the world's major car companies are all hot in pursuit, working on their own prototypes of their own versions. This is the "Great Reset" – a cull of broadly middle-class jobs with middle-class incomes that is apparent across the west, but with little current sign of what industries and activities will replace them. The world has lost millions of jobs before – on the land or in the old horse-powered economy – but they were soon replaced by jobs in the car industry or the new service industries. Moshe Vardi, a computer scientist at Rice University, asks if we are ready for a world in which half the adult population does not work.
Researchers find bacteria in Siberia that can thrive on Mars | Information, Gadgets, Mobile Phones News & Reviews Bacteria capable of surviving on Mars has been discovered living in the permafrost of Siberia. Source: News Limited THE chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one. Someone with a microscope has been studying creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. According to Russian newspaper Pravda, researchers have discovered Martian life: Not from the red planet itself, but it may as well be. No-one could have dreamed a team of Russian and American microbiologists would discover bacterial microbes living in an incredibly hostile environment similar to that found on Mars. Few men even considered that life would be a reality on our distant neighbour - as it has an average surface temperature of -50C, a very thin carbon dioxide atmosphere and is constantly bombarded by solar radiation. And yet, across the gulf of space, microbes of immeasurable hardiness are living in those conditions. Some ten thousand different samples of Siberian bacteria was transplanted.
World’s largest sustainable city developed in China The world's largest sustainable city, extending about 30 square kilometers, with urban living conditions has been developed in South Asian country of China. Rising from wastelands in China, the globe's biggest eco-city of Tianjin is located 150 kilometres (93 miles) southeast from Beijing that means less than an hour on the new high-speed train line. The city, designed to be around half the size of Manhattan Island in the United States, is slated to be enriched by the hottest energy-saving technologies. Designed by Surbana Urban Planning Group, the city is planned to have an advanced light rail transit system and varied eco-landscapes ranging from a sun-powered solarscape to a greenery-clad earthscape for its estimated 350,000 residents. A sustainable city or eco-city is a preplanned city to produce their own energy, food and water in a way that does not cause detriment to the world in forms such as waste, water pollution or damage to the air.
After Your Job Is Gone Do you have a job? Do you like having a job? Then I have some bad news for you. The Guardian is worried “today’s technologies are going to remove people from economic activity completely.” Wrong tense: the right question is what is happening. It’s the same around the world. Think you’re safe because you don’t work in a factory? Retail? Retail now employs fewer people than it did in 1999. Even lawyers, financiers, and surgeons aren’t safe. Oh, you work in tech? It’s like the global economy has forked into two tracks: tech, which boomed right through the Great Recession, and just keeps booming on, and nobody can hire enough engineers…and everyone else. It’s happening right in the heart of Silicon Valley. Which is great for those of us in tech, right? I want to stress again that this is only the beginning — that as software eats the world, as Marc Andreessen put it, this two-track economy will grow ever more divergent around the planet. At least I hope so.
Reptilian Creator Gods in Australia: Gold Miners and Human Eaters! + Intentionally Buried Monuments [Revised] Puzzling together small pieces from long gone ancient cultures, I always end up with the same pattern. No matter how distanced by space or time period, all major cultures have the same or very similar creation stories: Serpent/Dragon/Reptilian "gods" came down to Earth in flying crafts, genetically engineered the humans species, offered them knowledge, and eventually returned to the stars. Another striking feature of our ancient history is the link between "gods" and gold. All ancient cultures - same story! I. I. Connecting our true history to modern science While watching the latest series of Ancient Aliens on History Channel (S.03 - Ep.10), I was exalted to find almost the same creation story in Australia, as everywhere else on Earth. Before proceeding, please, allow me to make a brief introduction and tell you how the creator gods are usually described by our ancestors (all over the planet). The serpent gods, the Reptilians, were very advanced in technology. II. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. III.
Made in IBM Labs: Collaboration Aims to Harness the Energy of 2,000 Suns Today on Earth Day, scientists have announced a collaboration to develop an affordable photovoltaic system capable of concentrating solar radiation 2,000 times and converting 80 percent of the incoming radiation into useful energy. The system can also provide desalinated water and cool air in sunny, remote locations where they are often in short supply. A three-year, $2.4 million (2.25 million CHF) grant from the Swiss Commission for Technology and Innovation has been awarded to scientists at IBM Research (NYSE: IBM); Airlight Energy, a supplier of solar power technology; ETH Zurich (Professorship of Renewable Energy Carriers) and Interstate University of Applied Sciences Buchs NTB (Institute for Micro- and Nanotechnology MNT) to research and develop an economical High Concentration PhotoVoltaic Thermal (HCPVT) system. The prototype HCPVT system uses a large parabolic dish, made from a multitude of mirror facets, which are attached to a sun tracking system.
Power JMD From PESWiki "E pure si muove / And yet it moves."-- Galileo said of the Earth Compiled by Sterling D. Allan Pure Energy Systems News June 18, 2013 A French company, Power JMD, appears to have an exotic free energy device that is getting close to market (some time in "2013 or 2014"). From what I can gather, it uses some kind of rotational mechanism that is able to self-loop and provide excess energy; and it is fairly bulky and fairly well engineered. On their site, they say: "With the POWERJMD system, you will get an independent and almost free ecologic source of electricity. And on their "goals" page, they say: "This new system has the potential to end the mass production of electric energy as we know it today." "Who has not dreamed of producing his own electricity? "The POWERJMD system does not pollute and emits very little noise. "Here is a generator for every use: Homes, apartment buildings, industry, commercial centers, and municipalities." Official Websites Videos Clean, Free Energy