NEWS : TECH (NFPC)

Detector Alerts Asthmatics to Nasty Air

Asthmatics often feel like we're gambling, discovering triggers a breath too late. AT&T Labs recently developed a prototype for a device that can detect nasty air and alert us before things get bad.

Some asthma are blatant and obvious, and yet every once in a while I've been blindsided by an attack that seemingly comes out of nowhere. Volatile organic compounds or VOCs are a common asthma trigger found all over the place but they can be tricky to spot. AT&T Labs might have a solution.

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A prototype for a trigger detection device, led by head of communications technology research Bob Miller, can pick up on the presence of cleaning products, fragrances, smoke, and even troublesome carpet. Then the portable device can wirelessly transmit data to an online health network so my doctor could potentially spot patterns over time.

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Although the device hasn't been publicly named yet and there are no images available, AT&T Labs did indicate that it will contain a VOC sensor, a microcomputer, a battery and a Zigbee wireless modem. The VOC sensor contains a chip that is heated by a small current.

Talking to Technology Review's Susan Young, Miller said the device could prevent asthmatics from staying in a place where the trigger level is too high. Miller added that one day it might even be connected to a home network and automatically start up the furnace blower to clear the air.

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Asthma is so prevalent in the U.S. that one in every 12 Americans has it. Better prevention means fewer ER visits, fewer absences from school, fewer sick days from work. A device to prevent that first ominous wheeze could help us all breathe easier.

Credit: Jonathan Kos-Read

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'Goosinator' Robot Scares Away Pooping Geese

Canada geese are lingering in parks around the country, and anyone wanting to take a stroll there gets a nasty surprise. Meet the Goosinator, a bright orange robot being tested as a way to keep geese moving along.

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Geese here in Denver seem to find the location as appealing as I do. Instead of moving south, they're hanging around, gorging on grass in open areas, and pooping all over city parks. One goose drops at least a pound of poop daily, Bruce Finley wrote in the Denver Post. Multiply that by flock after flock and we've got a gross, expensive problem.

Usually, parks in the area have turned to dogs to discourage the geese, but they can cost $500 a day to employ and they're limited as to how fast they can move and where they can go. The Goosinator is a remote-controlled, battery-powered robot made from orange foam painted to resemble a devilish, grinning beast. It can move up to 25 miles per hour.

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A video made by its creators shows the robot continuously scaring geese away by moving along grass, snow, concrete and icy water. It also emits a loud motorized sound. Colorado-based Goosinator designer Randy Claussen told the Denver Post his challenge was to come up with a craft that could move along all kinds of different surfaces and be intimidating to geese.

"We humanely are returning wildlife back to the wild, at your fingertips," Claussen told the Post (video). Denver parks officials recently bought two Goosinators, costing about $3,000 each, and plan to have college interns operate them. It sounds expensive but just cleaning up after the geese can cost up to $1,000 a week.

So far the robots have been deployed in urban parks in Massachusetts, Wisconsin and New York. Residents in Westchester, N.Y., are trying it as an alternative to rounding up geese and killing them, which is what happened last summer, according to the Journal News.

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Goosinators do have their detractors. One lady in Denver told Finley she wonders where the geese will go if they all get driven from city parks. I doubt they'll come hang out in my neighborhood for a leisurely snack, though. Almost everyone here has a dog.

Photo: The Goosinator takes to the water. Credit: Randy Claussen via LoHud.com

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Living Bamboo Billboards Have Wi-Fi, Clean Air

Are you sick of ads, especially enormous billboards that seem to shout at you along a congested highway? A Los Angeles artist has an alternative plan: Turn them into smart bamboo gardens.

Sculptor Stephen Glassman has worked with bamboo in the public realm for several decades. After the Northridge earthquake hit Los Angeles in 1994, Glassman noticed that billboards remained even though freeways fell. Since then, his large bamboo installations have gone up in devastated parts of the city.

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His latest project, called Urban Air, proposes to replace traditional advertising with living bamboo in metal billboard scaffolding. Each Wi-Fi-enabled Urban Air billboard will contain misters for the bamboos as well as sensors that collect and transmit local climate data such as temperature and air quality.

"My intention is to put a crack in the urban skyline so that when people are compressed, squeezed, stuck in traffic and they look up, they see an open space of fresh air," Glassman said in a video posted on the project's Kickstarter campaign page.

Glassman is working with the Los Angeles-based billboard company Summit Media and engineering firm Arup on a full-scale working prototype. The idea is that once a prototype has been created, the project team can make "kits" to easily transform billboards in other cities. (Except for my hometown. Vermont is one of the few states that bans billboards.)

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Urban Air has already secured billboards in LA. The team continues to raise money through Kickstarter in hopes of launching in the new year. "We're ready to go," Glassman said in his project video. So, I'm sure, is everyone who's ever been stuck staring at soul-sucking ads in highway traffic.

Credit: Urban Air

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The World's First Net-Zero Energy Stadium

The London 2012 Olympic games were probably the most eco-friendly games yet. But Brazil, whose hosting 2016, could have the world's first net-zero energy stadium.

What's net-zero? According to the U.S. Department of Energy, it's one that consumes no energy and emits no carbon on an annual basis. Upgrades to the existing Estádio Nacional de Brasília will help it achieve that goal, but the modifications are in places few visitors will see: the roof.

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A ring of rooftop photovoltaic panels will collect energy to power the stadium. A photocatalytic membrane will collect air pollution and break down the chemicals to remove toxins from the air. These and other upgrades like rainwater collection for landscaping and plumbing will earn the stadium a LEED Platinum status.

The construction will cost over $400 million, but the returns from investing in this kind of renewable energy should even out in about 10 to 12 years. The stadium should be finished by the end of the year, two years ahead of its first major event, the 2014 World Cup.

via CoExist

Credit: Blue Ant

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Freshwater Ecosystem Lives Off Seawater

Over half of the world's population lives and works within 120 miles from a coastline. Regardless of your views on climate change, it's safe to say that rising sea levels would present nothing short of a catastrophe. 

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In the event that the ivory towers of denial do start to surround with sea water, detractors will be happy to know that Studiomobile won't leave you high and dry.

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Billing themselves as makers of art and technology for architecture and urban research, the firm came up Networking Nature, an ecosystem that lives off seawater and produces fresh drinking water.

Glass tanks anchored near the coast would fill with seawater where a series of solar-powered stills would extract fresh water. Heat produced by small lamps would evaporate the saltwater and convert the condensed steam into fresh water. That water would then be collected in reservoirs near the coast and distributed to those who need it.

Here's how Studiomobile explains it:

However, water is not produced in isolated systems under central control. The new model provides for a large ecological infrastructure as well as small local production units connected to a network able to integrate the production of fresh water and to supply it where needed. It's a Smart Water Network controlled by sensors that read the local lack of water and, through an Arduino board, activate the pumps providing the water where there is a peak of demand. The Smart Water Network will be a layer of the ecological network as well as the Smart Power Grid and the communications network. This strategy not only gives response to the preservation of the environment, but it is also a radically new model that ensures free and democratic access to the resources to everybody.

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Networking Nature was created for the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale.

via Inhabitat

credit: Studiomobile

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Rinse Cycle Turns Clothing into Pollution Buster

Steadfast environmentalists determined on saving the planet with their greener-than-thou efforts usually wear their heart on their sleeves. But why limit the heart to just the sleeve, especially now that it can be worn on every part of one's clothing?

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Catalytic Clothing has been working on pollution-eating clothing prototypes for a while now, but their new laundry additive is set to hit retail stores soon, although the deal is pending.

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Put the additive in the final rinse cycle of your wash and it'll coat your clothes in nano-sized particles of titanium dioxide that trap and convert nitrogen oxide pollutants in the air into harmless byproducts that can be easily washed away on laundry day.

According the company, one person wearing clothes coated with the additive could remove approximately five grams of nitrogen oxides from the air over the course of a day. That may not sound like a planet-saving number, but considering that's roughly twice the amount that a passenger vehicle gives off in a typical day, I'd gladly step into a wardrobe coated in this stuff.

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The pollution-gobbling threads will be on display at the Manchester Science Festival in Manchester, England from October through November 4.

via Yahoo!

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Geoengineering Soaring To New Heights

I come from a pasty Norwegian breed. In my younger, devil-may-care years, I used to scoff at wearing sunscreen with the belief that the quickest way to skin cancer a bronzed bod was roasting myself at the beach without a drop of SPF in sight.

Not any more. I've read the reports and even witnessed my dad, who has a similar complexion, receive skin test results that came back malignant. Now I'm a liberal sunscreen applier when I go out. Plus, sunscreen makes you smell like you just came from the beach, and I like that. It's my new cologne.

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In some ways, our planet is of a pasty breed and needs adequate protection from the sun, too. Many scientists say our planet is getting hotter, compliments of us industrious folks who call Earth home.

Here in Missouri, the grass is brown and the leaves on the trees are wilted. The USDA has declared every county in the state as disaster area because of the drought. Just a random old hot-and-dry summer or the consequences of human-induced climate change?

Well, a couple of Harvard engineers aren't waiting around for your opinion. David Keith and James Anderson are preparing to spray thousands of tons of sun-reflecting sulphate aerosols into the sky over Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Why? They believe the particles will reflect the sun's rays back into space and help lower the Earth's temperature.

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They plan to do so by using a balloon flying 80,000 feet above the Fort Sumner. The geoengineering project aims to mimic the effects of volcanoes spewing sulphuric ash into the air.

Keith says the project could be an inexpensive way to slow down climate change, however other scientists warn that his methods could have dire effects on the planet's weather systems and food supplies. Environmentalists fear Keith's method is merely a stopgap that undermines efforts to accurately fight climate change by reducing carbon emissions.

The experiment will take place in a year and see the release of tens or hundreds of kilograms of particles that, besides measuring impacts on ozone chemistry, will also find ways to make the sulphate aerosols the correct size.

"The objective is not to alter the climate, but simply to probe the processes at a micro scale," Keith told the Guardian. "The direct risk is very small.

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However, Pat Mooney, executive director of the technology watchdog ETC Group, begs to differ:

"Impacts include the potential for further damage to the ozone layer, and disruption of rainfall, particularly in tropical and subtropical regions – potentially threatening the food supplies of billions of people. It will do nothing to decrease levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere or halt ocean acidification. And solar geoengineering is likely to increase the risk of climate-related international conflict -- given that the modelling to date shows it poses greater risks to the global south."

What say you? Let the balloon fly or pop it with a BB gun before lifts off?

via the Guardian

Credit: NASA/Roger Ressmeyer/CORBIS

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Navy Resumes Sinking Old Ships: DNews Nuggets

Navy Resumes Sinking Old Ships: For the first time since 2010, the U.S. Navy will resume its practice of using old warships for target practice and sinking them in U.S. coastal waters. The practice, called Sinkex, was put on hold when conservation groups sued the Navy claiming that the sunken ships pollute the waters. The groups say that the ships should be recycled at a ship-breaking facility.

According to AP, the Navy has destroyed vessels for years with little or no oversight. But in 1999, the EPA ordered the Navy to document the toxic waste, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)left on the doomed ships. But there is little oversight, as the Navy is ultimately in charge in estimating and reporting the pollutants onbaord.

The Navy says that the practice of forcibly sinking sinks provides valuable live-fire training for soldiers. The ships can be targeted from the air, ocean's surface or underwater, giving ship designers useful information about how to build better and stronger ships. Later this month, three inactive vessels -- Kilauea, Niagara Falls and Concord -- will be sent to a watery grave off Hawaii by torpedoes and bombs.

via Associated Press

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Smog-Eating Buildings Gobble Up Pollutants

I can only think of one instance where smog is a good thing and his name is Bill Callahan. Otherwise, smog is a nefarious, asthma-causing byproduct of industry that is poisoning our planet and tainting our skies, on top of our lungs.

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Fortunately, Alcoa just unveiled their first commercial building installations of smog-eating architectural panels they call Reynobond with EcoClean. The aluminum panels are coated with titanium dioxide. Its air-purifying properties have been widely used in other self-cleaning products such as air-purifying light bulbs.

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The panels were installed at the Electronic Recyclers International (ERI) facility in Badin, N.C.

"Sustainability is at the core of Alcoa’s practices and product design, and we’re excited about the completion of this unique installation in the Badin community," said Alcoa Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer Kevin Anton in a press release. "As one of the first installations of EcoClean in North America, the ERI facility in Badin represents an exciting step forward for sustainable building design, making this new electronics recycling facility even more eco-friendly.

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Alcoa claims that by adding 10,000 square feet of the EcoClean panels to a building is enough cleaning power to offset smog created by four cars everyday, which is the approximate cleaning power of 80 trees.

And because Bill has a thing for rivers and often "feels like the mother of the world," Mother Nature won't be the only one who is happy about this.

via Gizmag

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'Necklace' Measures Air Pollution

This necklace may pollute your wardrobe, but being mindful of all the pollutants you're inhaling is always fashionable, not to mention beneficial for your health.

If you still have your head stuck in the sand about whether emissions coming out of those smoke stacks are harmful to nearby residents, try raising a family in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood and tell me how your lungs are fairing in 15 years.

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For years we've understood that air pollution is linked to health problems. What we haven't been so clear on is how various types of physical activities effect the amount of pollutants we breathe in.

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The MicroPEM answers those questions. The device was created by North Carolina-based RTI International and is small enough to be to worn around the neck. While it's not on the level of Flava Flav's clock necklaces, I wouldn't exactly call the MicroPEM small.

But that really doesn't matter because function trumps aesthetic deficiencies, at least on this catwalk. On top of measuring air pollutants, the device also measures a person's activity level with built-in accelerometers.

MicroPEM was recently used in a study by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, scientists from RTI and several American universities. Subjects were outfitted with with the device and asked to perform a number of activities like sitting, standing, walking on a treadmill, climbing stairs or sweeping.

Researchers were able to calculate breathing rates and compare a real-time record of air pollutants that were present.

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"This technology is a game changer in exposure health studies," said study co-author, Dr. Steve Chillrud in an RTI press rlease. "With adult ventilation rates varying by a factor of four across low to moderate activities, any study looking for associations with biomarkers or health outcomes should be better served by potential inhaled dose than with exposure concentrations."

via Gizmag

Credit: RTI

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