NEWS : TECH (NFPC)

Environmental Efforts Power the Olympics

We’re seeing a lot of gold at this year’s Olympics, but behind the scenes, it’s all green. From environmentally responsible energy to recyclable venues, the London 2012 Olympics could be one of the most eco-friendly games yet. Two areas stand out when talking about sustainability and the Olympics, transportation and architecture, and here’s a few ways London is keeping them green:

Transportation

BMW is providing two-hundred zero-emission electric cars comprised of 160 ActiveE First Drive and 40 Mini Cooper Mini Es (right). GE has placed 120 of their DuraStation EV chargers throughout the Olympic Village to keep the cars juiced and ready to go.

An even cuter “mini-er” Mini Cooper (right) is being used to transport athletic gear. According to Edmunds Inside Line, the radio-controlled electric vehicles are small enough to carry equipment like a single discus or two javelins, which can be accessed through a sunroof. Charging up in about 80 minutes, the cars can carry up to 18 pounds and have a range of around 109 yards.

Architecture

All of the structures built for the London 2012 Olympics were done so with environmental sustainability and energy consumption in mind. Both the Velodrome (above), home of indoor cycling, and the Copperbox, venue for handball and badminton, collect rainwater from their sloped roofs for indoor plumbing usage, which cuts water consumption by 40 percent annually. Using a natural ventilation system, outdoor air is used to keep the more than 6,000 visitors to the Velodrome cool -- no A/C needed.

Two buildings in Olympic Park won’t last long after the closing ceremonies -- and that’s ok. The Water Polo Arena (right) and the Basketball arena will be torn down immediately after the Olympics are over. Both structures were built with PVC fabric that’s highly recyclable and will be reused for other construction projects. The wings of the exterior of the Aquatic Center will also be removed and the main structure will be used for other London community events. 

So, whether you’re watching at home or from the stands, remember that not only are these games making athletic history, they are also making environmental history. 

Credits: Edmund Sumner/View/Corbis (top); BMW North America (middle); London 2012 (bottom)

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Eat Your Vegetables, and Their Wrappers

One of the fun things about eating ice cream cones in the summer is munching down the cone itself. (The brown sugar cones were always my favorite).

Harvard professor David Edwards wants to extend that idea to other foods. He's invented a product called WikiCells, an edible packaging that mimics many of the properties of plastic without the environmental problems.

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Most foods come in plastic packaging that is not only inedible, but ends up in landfills and the oceans. Most plastics never biodegrade; they just break down into smaller and smaller pieces. The results can be pretty devastating to sea animals and and other wildlife that eat the plastic, can't digest it and die of starvation when it accumulates in their stomachs.

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The edible packaging is made of a sugar processing by-product called bagasse, mixed with chitosan and alginate. Bagasse is what is left over once sugar cane is crushed for the juice. Chitosan is made from the shells of shrimp (it's used in agriculture and even winemaking). Alginate is derived from algae. All three compounds are bound with electrostatic charges and turned into an edible shell membrane. The shell can also be made into a compostable, quickly biodegradable covering that, if you don't want to eat, will break down very fast in the environment the way fruit peelings do.

Edwards unveiled WikiCells bottles in February at Harvard's Wyss Institute, and made appearances in Paris last week showing some of the ways food might be packaged. One of his ideas was ice cream inside a chocolate membrane.

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One thing that makes these shells easy to commercialize is that the technology isn't new – the ingredients are all well known and have been manufactured for a century or more. The down side is that this packaging would have a sell by date, just like the food in it. People might also resist eating the packaging of their food this way – eating a water bottle is a bit of an alien idea. But the fact that the package is biodegradable makes a big difference, and at the very least might mean the great garbage patches in the ocean won't get any larger.

Via Fast Company, Wyss Institute

Image: WikiCells.com

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Exchange Dog Poo For Free Wi-Fi

We've seen some innovative, yet expensive, methods to rid cities of the foul indecency of dog owners who refuse to clean up after Fido craps on the sidewalk.

However, Mexican Internet portal Terra is tapping into the online pulse of the modern era and has come up with a truly contemporary way to inspire dog owners to get out their plastics bags.

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The company has teamed up with ad agency DDB to create a pilot program in 10 parks in Mexico City and it definitely gets my seal of approval. After pet owners pick up their dog's turds, they can place the bag in a special box that calculates its weight in exchange for a few minutes of free Wi-Fi. Ladies and gentle, welcome to 21st Century.

Of course, that didn't stop park habitués from dropping bags of garbage in the box to claim their free Wi-Fi, but DDB said they didn't mind. In their opinion, if people want to pick up trash -- so be it -- that just means a cleaner park.

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To ensure the device is used pooperly properly, during the day, hostesses stand beside the boxes handing out bags to dog owners.

While it's not even in the ballpark exploiting the homeless as Wi-Fi hotspots, this new program is sure to raise, if not wrinkle, a few brows. If anything, it's a sign of the times.

via Mashable

Credit: Terra

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Titanium Straw Out-Muscles All Others

Titanium Straw: $14.99

We've all experienced the horrors of the wimpy plastic straw: Too weak to penetrate the juice box; too flimsy for anything but the most mundane cold beverage; too prone to cracks, leaks and other unsightly embarrassments. The solution? That's right, it's the Titanium Straw, very likely the last straw you'll ever need to buy.

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For those of us who weren't already aware, titanium -- none other than the metal of the gods -- is not only tasteless, odorless and corrosion-resistant, but it also possesses low thermal conductivity, meaning that it won't get too hot or too cold. Take note, Goldilocks! Perhaps even better, it's very lightweight and yet strong enough to be stabbed straight into an orange in a single bound, according to ThinkGeek, its trusty purveyor. (That feat and more are actually demonstrated on this video.) The dishwasher-safe innovation measures about 7 inches tall; get one for yourself and “juice boxes will shudder and beverages everywhere will quake in fear,” ThinkGeek predicts. Who can resist a prospect like that?

Credit: ThinkGeek

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Floating Golf Course Has Underwater Tunnels

Normally those hitting the links try to avoid water hazards, but designers of a new floating golf course are hoping golfers actually want to tee-off surrounded by one.

Plans are already underway to build an 18-hole course 250 miles off the southwest coast of India, among the islands of the Maldives. The course will consist of a series of floating platforms that contain two to three holes each, built by world-renowned floating technology company, Dutch Docklands.

No, you won't have to swim to each platform - they'll be connected to one another and surrounding hotels by clear underwater tunnels, similar to those you'd find at an aquarium. 

Unlike other floating islands and resorts guzzling energy off the coast of Dubai, course developers call their project a "scarless development" which will have a zero carbon footprint on the Maldives ecosystem. To do so, developers are banking on the islands' sunny locale near the equator to generate energy through floating solar blanket fields. Developers will also employ sustainable techniques to desalinate and cool water.

 

Because the Republic of the Maldives' highest point of elevation is only 7.5 feet above sea level, the island nation is expected to be significantly impacted by the rising sea-levels associated with climate change. As such, Maldivian president, Mohamed Nasheed has been a staunch investor and activist for carbon-neutral developments.

In 2009, he pledged the Maldives islands would be carbon neutral within the decade. That same year, to publicize the threat climate change poses on his nation, Nasheed presided over the world's first underwater cabinet meeting where participants donned scuba gear and gathered around a desk on the the sea floor.

Nasheed has also announced that he's looking to purchase new land in other countries to resettle Maldivian refugees potentially affected by climate change. To fund those efforts, the government is looking to further boost revenues from the nation's largest economical contributor: tourism.

Managed by Troon Golf, the $500 million floating golf course project anticipates doing just that: bringing a wealth of ecological tourism and investment to the Maldives. The project is due to be completed by 2015.

Illustrations: Koen Olthuis Waterstudio.NL/Dutch Docklands

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Recycled Island to Be Built from Ocean Garbage Patch

What's made of plastic, the size of Hawaii, and powered by wind and solar energy? If Dutch architect Ramon Knoester succeeds with his vision, it will be Recycled Island, a sustainable, floating society constructed from a collection of all the Pacific's floating plastic debris.

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Koester went public with his ideas for Recycled Island, which would support its own agriculture, a community of inhabitants, and even tourists from its position somewhere between Hawaii and San Francisco, in 2009. His firm, Whim Architecture, is now in the process of designing a prototype of the 10,000-square-kilometer habitat with a grant from the Netherlands Architecture Fund (according to the firm's website).

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Still, Koester estimates it will take years once they begin gathering plastic in from the Pacific before they have enough to melt together (using solar power) into the island, as he told CTV News. No one really has any idea how much debris is out there. Though the media tends to refer to the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” as a floating island of sorts, sometimes even saying it is nearly twice the size of the continental United States, other sources disagree. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has a thorough article about “De-Mystifying the 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch.'”

Regardless, even that article agrees that plastics make up most of the debris found in the ocean, and Recycled Island could be one creative solution for how to clean up and reuse some of it. Seaweed and compost toilets will make the island fertile, and the living arrangements are envisioned as urban, mixed-use. Since the city will be floating, Whim plans to keep the residents' connection to the water, with a canal-heavy design. It will be powered by solar and wave energy, with the aim of having zero negative environmental impact and remaining completely self-sustainable.

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About a half million residents –- slightly less than the population of Baltimore -– could reside on Recycled Island. Though I'm sure they could come up with some interesting reasons for moving there (shipwrecked, saw oasis, got turned on to solar farming?), the project itself will likely remain in the economic red. Just cleaning up the ocean before building begins is a gargantuan task of time, energy and expense that's simply mind-boggling.

For more about plastic pollution in the Pacific and the ongoing saga of the “garbage patch,” check out the news responses from the Algalita Marine Research Foundation and this interview with a Scripps Institution of Oceanography Ph.D. student who went aboard an NOAA ship that was studying plastic debris in the Pacific.

Image: Whim Architecture

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Battlefield Battery Packs Work Day and Night

Image: The superimposed numbers are readings for anticipated sunlight. Credit Solar Soldier

Infantry soldiers pack on incredible weights of equipment between weapons, GPS devices, radios and the like, while on duty. And all that high-tech gear needs power. For Brits, the load typically adds 100 to 155 lbs (about 45 to 70 kg), more than 10 percent of which can be attributed to batteries.

A number of universities in the United Kingdom have teamed up, with funding from the Engineering Physical Sciences and Research Council and the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory, to revolutionize the battery packs that soldiers bring into the field. Combining solar cells and thermoelectric technology, which generates electricity based on the temperature difference between two surfaces, the researchers are creating systems that deliver full power, 24/7. One day, the power-generating tech might even be woven into the fabric of soldiers' uniforms.

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Photovoltaic solar cells, just nanometers in size, collect energy directly from sunlight throughout the day, with zero cost and zero waste. At night, thermoelectric devices use the difference in heat between the inside and outside of a soldier's uniform to generate electricity. Along with power saved during the day -- the team is working on incorporating small storage devices into the system -- this should provide a reliable, continuous power source for gadgets. A working prototype is expected in the next two years, and will hopefully weigh half as much as the battery packs British soldiers carry now.

The project, known as Solar Soldier, will allow for better mobility and longer treks away from base, since returning for a recharge won't be necessary. Not to mention, according to this news release, such a system should also make it harder to detect a soldier with night vision equipment that uses, for example, infrared, since thermoelectric devices absorb energy across the electromagnetic spectrum.

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Immortal Computers Never Grow Old

When it comes to computers, any hardware over two years old is considered middle-aged and anything over five years is considered ancient. Updating old computers is an expensive endeavor, particularly for business, and it's even more painful for nonprofit organizations or school systems with limited budgets. And the cycle of exchanging old electronics for new, after just a few years, increases the amount of e-waste that's shipped overseas or dumped into landfills.

"If you could break that pattern of planned obsolescence, you would generate huge savings, not just on the economic level, but from an environmental standpoint as well," twenty-five-year-old innovator, Jonathan Hefter told a New York Observer reporter.

Hefter has an idea to do just that. He's created a way for people to use an older model computer as a "virtual desktop," outsourcing its processing power, memory and operating system to another piece of equipment located down the hall. The so-called "juicebox" -- the size of a pizza box-size -- is capabl;e of powering hundreds of terminals on a cloud-based network, and can be updated for a fraction of the cost of updating those hundreds of terminals.

Hefter founded a company for this hardware-saving venture: Neverware. The name, as he told, was chosen "'Because with us, [consumers] will never have to buy a new computer again.'" An autodidactic technologist (his degree is in economics), Hefter created a prototype of the virtual desktop on his own in less than a year. He began working to start up Neverware in New York with Dogpatch Labs, an entrepreneurial incubator, until just recently; Hefter now works on the project with education technology organization Startl.

A simple and elegant idea, can the technology behind Neverware really be that incredible? Hefter claims he could transform a setup of 160 traditional PC's in a school into a Neverware system that powers all the computers with just two juiceboxes. An entire system updated with no dangerous e-waste, and all for $20,000? In this case study (also from the Observer article), HP replaced all 160 PC's with newer models for about five times as much money -- with two tons of e-waste. And as we've all heard repeatedly, that's some of the most hazardous waste on the planet. So I, for one, hope Hefter's solution is truly as remarkable as it sounds. He's up against every hardware manufacturing giant out there, but with economics, logic, and bucket loads of Earth-lovers' warm fuzzies on his side, Neverware might prevail.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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Cold Fusion Claims Resurface

Hopes about cold fusion have been raised once again by two Italian researcher who claim to have fused atomic nuclei at room temperature.

Cold fusion has been a holy grail of physics for decades. If it could be achieved, it would be a cheap, clean, and limitless energy source.

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According to a column at Physorg.com:

Italian scientists Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi of the University of Bologna announced that they developed a cold fusion device capable of producing 12,400 W of heat power with an input of just 400 W. Last Friday, the scientists held a private invitation press conference in Bologna, attended by about 50 people, where they demonstrated what they claim is a nickel-hydrogen fusion reactor. Further, the scientists say that the reactor is well beyond the research phase; they plan to start shipping commercial devices within the next three months and start mass production by the end of 2011.

If this all sounds fishy to you, it should.

This is of course not the first time that scientists have made such a claim. On March 23, 1989, two chemists at the University of Utah, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, announced that they had discovered a technique for creating cold fusion using deuterium.

That was surprising enough, but they also claimed to have done it with inexpensive equipment that could be found in most high school chemistry classes. It caused a big stir in the media and in science circles, but months and years passed without the promised cold fusion.

Physics professor Robert Park, in his book Voodoo Science (Oxford University Press, 2000), notes: “One reason Pons and Fleischmann had to be wrong was because the number of neutrinos they claimed to see was at least a million times too small to account for the energy they reported.”

Furthermore, there were early indications that something wasn’t right about the researchers' experiments. For one thing, the byproducts of deuterium fusion include neutron, tritium and gamma rays. In fact, their experiment would have produced lethal doses of nuclear radiation on a scale that approached Russia’s Chernobyl reactor. It didn’t.

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The University of Utah, embarrassed by the whole affair, announced in 1998 that they would let Pons' and Fleischmann's cold fusion patent lapse. The researchers remain adamant that their research was valid, though no one has been able to reproduce their findings.

The Italian scientists, like Pons and Fleischmann, skipped the typical route of publishing their study and results in a peer-reviewed science journal, instead taking it directly to the press and public. This is a strong sign of pseudoscience, and smacks of a mistake, if not an outright hoax.

In many ways cold fusion is similar to perpetual motion machines. The principles defy the laws of physics, but that doesn’t stop people from periodically claiming to have invented or discovered one.

Photo credit: Corbis

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Man-Made Oasis Will Transform the Desert

An amibitious project to pipe salt water from the Red Sea into the arid coastal city of Aqaba, Jordan, could turn the region into an oasis. A 50-acre demonstration facility, which will combine two technologies -- seawater greenhouses and concentrated solar power -- to grow crops, produce carbon neutral energy and desalinate seawater, has received approval from the government of Jordan and could be operational by 2012, with full-scale commercial use going online in 2015.

The novel development is from the Sahara Forest Project, an environmental technology group based in Norway. Back to 2009, the group presented their idea at the UN's Copenhagen climate conference. After which, the team won an audience with Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan. Convinced that the project would be worth trying in his country, he made a deal to pilot a desert forest in the Aqaba Special Economic Zone

A structure, called a seawater greenhouse, will capitalize on the abundance of sun in Jordan and use it to evaporate seawater and condense it into fresh water. While this happens, a naturally cool and humid environment will be created -- perfect for growing crops.

Energy to run the facility will come from a concentrated solar power plant, which will use mirrors to focus sunlight onto pipes of fluid. The super-heated fluid boils and the steam is captured to drive a turbine generator, which produces electricity.

Though arid coastal locations are ideal, a forest project could still be used further inland. Several arid areas in the Sarhara are below sea level, making it relatively inexpensive to deliver water to the facility without costly pumping fees. The Qattara Depression in Egypt, for example, is about 435 feet below sea level -- a drop that could be exploited for hydro-electric power, too.

The technology could also be used to tranform existing, large-scale greenhouses used to grow acres of crops, into more efficient facilities. According to the Sarah Forest Project, in the south of Spain, the regions of Murcia and Almeria together have nearly 100,000 acres of greenhouses that consume five times more water than the area receives rainfall. Water from the Ebra River in the north of Spain has been diverted to the area to make up for the lack of rain and 20 fossil-fuel powered desalination plants are also online in order to accommodate irrigation.

These options are unsustainable, degrade the natural environment and pollute the air. Innovative ideas such as the Sahara Forest Project work with the environment, not against it. If successful, it could be a model food and energy facility for the future.

[via Science]

Photos: Exploration Architecture and Sahara Forest Project

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