Miscellaneous Articles
Evolution meets creation
At first glance, a humpback whale and a wind turbine don't have a lot in common. For that matter, neither do a shellfish and a sheet of plywood. But both sea creatures are the inspiration behind products designed using biomimicry, or looking to nature's designs and processes to solve human problems.
For those who know where to look, biomimetically inspired products can be found in almost every corner of the marketplace, from medicine to transportation. But where the emerging field has the potential for the greatest impacts, according to advocates and practitioners, is in changing the way we think about our built environment-not only in designing individual building products, but in conceiving of entire communities as biomimetic systems, not to mention businesses, government bodies and other “systems.”
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Transparent Aluminum Is 'New State Of Matter'
ScienceDaily (July 27, 2009) - Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminum by bombarding the metal with the world's most powerful soft X-ray laser. 'Transparent aluminum previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion.
In the journal Nature Physics an international team, led by Oxford University scientists, report that a short pulse from the FLASH laser 'knocked out' a core electron from every aluminum atom in a sample without disrupting the metal's crystalline structure. This turned the aluminum nearly invisible to extreme ultraviolet radiation.
"What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before," said Professor Justin Wark of Oxford University's Department of Physics, one of the authors of the paper. 'Transparent aluminum is just the start. The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of 'miniature stars' created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth.'
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Teaching Energy Efficiency
New York - Another school year is just around the corner and with rising energy costs, increasing concern over air quality and growing interest in preserving resources for the future, a growing number of parents, teachers and school administrators are reevaluating their school environmental policies. According to the US Department of Energy, taxpayers spend $8 billion dollars on energy for schools each year. Not only can good environmental stewardship help cut costs, but integrating sustainability into classrooms can be an effective cost-saving measure for taxpayers and provide worthwhile lessons for students of all ages.
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For Community Colleges, Wind Technician Training Is a Growth Business
Wind turbine technicians are strongly in demand - and community colleges are moving quickly to fill the need.
In recent months, the Kalamazoo Valley Community College in Michigan has added a wind course, as has the Lake Region State College in North Dakota.
Riverland Community College in Minnesota will hold its first turbine classes this fall. Altogether, Christine Real de Azua, a spokeswoman for the American Wind Energy Association, said there are more than 100 such programs for renewable energy around the country - more than 80 of them created in the last two years.
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Going Green: Syracuse is becoming a leader in indoor environmental systems
Could Syracuse become a center of "green" building technology?
Guess what? It already is. Consider:
* In March, the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry held its seventh annual Green Building Conference.
* Also in March, the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., gave S. Richard Fedrizzi of Westvale its "Visionaries in Sustainability" award. The former Carrier executive and Le Moyne graduate is president and founder of the U.S. Green Building Council, known worldwide for its system of "scoring" buildings according to its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) criteria. Last October, Fedrizzi received the Dr. Willis H. Carrier Achievement Award for his contributions to enhancing the human environment.
* New building projects in Syracuse are expected to earn LEED certification, including the Jefferson Clinton Commons on South Clinton Street, equipped with energy-efficient bamboo and cork flooring, and a proposed office/residential building in Franklin Square that includes geothermal heating and cooling. Although Bob Congel's Destiny mall expansion has hit some financial snags, he has vowed than when completed, it will be powered entirely by renewable energy.
* Syracuse Mayor Matt Driscoll calls Syracuse "the Emerald City," and is committed to environmentally friendly policies. In 2007, the Go Green Earth Summit named Syracuse the Go Green Large City of the year.
* The centerpiece of Syracuse's green building reputation is Syracuse University's new Center for Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems, nearing completion at Almond and East Water streets.
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Eating High Levels Of Fructose Impairs Memory In Rats
ScienceDaily (Aug. 1, 2009) - Researchers at Georgia State University have found that diets high in fructose - a type of sugar found in most processed foods and beverages - impaired the spatial memory of adult rats.
Amy Ross, a graduate student in the lab of Marise Parent, associate professor at Georgia State's Neuroscience Institute and Department of Psychology, fed a group of Sprague-Dawley rats a diet where fructose represented 60 percent of calories ingested during the day.
She placed the rats in a pool of water to test their ability to learn to find a submerged platform, which allowed them to get out of the water. She then returned them to the pool two days later with no platform present to see if the rats could remember to swim to the platform's location.
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Plague strikes French oysters
France's oysters have been struck by a mystery plague that has killed millions of the prized shellfish and plunged the industry into crisis for the second year running.
Scientists have yet properly to determine what has caused up to 90 per cent of baby and juvenile oysters, due to be eaten by Christmas 2010, to have died.
Producers in Normandy are so worried that last month they handed out free boxes of the shellfish near Caen chanting: "Take these oysters, they may be the last you'll ever eat."
The deaths have come in two waves. The first, in May, hit the Mediterranean - including Corsica and the Etang de Thau, a salt-water lake near Montpellier - and also the west coast in the bay of Arcachon. The second struck oyster farmers all the way as far as Normandy.
"It's a catastrophe," said Goulven Brest, a producer from northern Brittany, home of the famous flat oysters of Cancale.
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