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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
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This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
contamination  ~ technical cleverness  ~ global warming  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ sustainability  ~ water issues  ~ invasive species  ~ climate impacts  ~ toxic sludge  ~ rights of nature  ~ renewable energy  



ApocaDocuments (9) matching "technical cleverness" from this week
[see full week] ~ [see all stories tagged "technical cleverness"]
Sat, Dec 27, 2008
from New York Times:
No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in "Passive Houses"
...Even on the coldest nights in central Germany, Mr. Kaufmann's new "passive house" and others of this design get all the heat and hot water they need from the amount of energy that would be needed to run a hair dryer...The concept of the passive house, pioneered in this city of 140,000 outside Frankfurt, approaches the challenge from a different angle. Using ultrathick insulation and complex doors and windows, the architect engineers a home encased in an airtight shell, so that barely any heat escapes and barely any cold seeps in. That means a passive house can be warmed not only by the sun, but also by the heat from appliances and even from occupants' bodies. And in Germany, passive houses cost only about 5 to 7 percent more to build than conventional houses. ...


And I used to think "passive" was a bad thing!

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Sat, Dec 27, 2008
from Discover:
Super Trees Clean up Superfund Sites
Argonne, Illinois -- A legacy of the Argonne National Laboratory�s early foray into atomic energy lies buried here on its campus, about 25 miles southwest of Chicago. Although solid wastes from all sorts of experiments have been sealed in a landfill, certain liquids, mostly chlorinated solvents, still taint the water that runs under the site. The ongoing attempt to remove these contaminants occupies an enormous experimental facility that covers four acres and looks like a forest. "I like to brag that I have the biggest lab at Argonne," says agronomist Cristina Negri, indicating an expanse of 900 poplars and willows growing in rows. The trees stand about 30 feet high. More important, their roots extend 30 feet down, where they tap the contaminated aquifer and literally pull pollutants out of the ground. ...


This is a treeific solution!

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Fri, Dec 26, 2008
from Associated Press:
Amateurs are trying genetic engineering at home
The Apple computer was invented in a garage. Same with the Google search engine. Now, tinkerers are working at home with the basic building blocks of life itself. Using homemade lab equipment and the wealth of scientific knowledge available online, these hobbyists are trying to create new life forms through genetic engineering -- a field long dominated by Ph.D.s toiling in university and corporate laboratories. ...


In ye olde days we called that "sex."

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Wed, Dec 24, 2008
from The Michigan Messenger:
Will water vortices provide the next renewable energy?
U of M engineer says water currents can solve world's power problems: T. Boone Pickens may well have been right: Oil dependence is almost certainly "one emergency we can't drill our way out of." But if a University of Michigan engineer knows half of what he thinks he knows about water power, the solution to the world's energy needs doesn't have much to do with the billionaire oilman's much-advertised vision of an endless line of windmills stretching from Texas to Canada. The real answer may be a cylinder continuously moving up and down in an 8,000-gallon water tank in the Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering Building on the University of Michigan's North Campus in Ann Arbor. As Professor Michael M. Bernitsas sees it, the cylinder-based device he invented is a short step away from a commercially viable version that might be the key to a cheap, inexhaustible supply of clean energy to power the entire world, even regions far removed from sources of water. The device is nicknamed VIVACE, short for Vortex Induced Vibrations for Aquatic Clean Energy. It's pronounced "Vee-VAH-chay," after the term for music played in a lively, spirited manner. ...


I wouldn't mind getting some of those vortex induced vibrations at my home!

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Wed, Dec 24, 2008
from Annapolis Capital:
Measure your nitrogen footprint
Environmentalists often stress that each of the 17 million people living in the Chesapeake Bay watershed contributes to the bay's decline. Now they have a nifty tool to drive home their point: an online calculator that adds up how much nitrogen pollution each household generates. The project has been two years in the making for Dr. Beth McGee and the staff at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. It's posted at www.cbf.org/yourbayfootprint. ...


Pretty soon we'll have to have methane calculators that assess how often and much we fart!

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Tue, Dec 23, 2008
from Inderscience via ScienceDaily:
Fix For Global Warming? Scientists Propose Covering Deserts With Reflective Sheeting
A radical plan to curb global warming and so reverse the climate change caused by our rampant burning of fossil fuels since the industrial revolution would involve covering parts of the world's deserts with reflective sheeting, according to researchers writing in the International Journal of Global Environmental Issues... The team's calculations suggest that covering an area of a little more than 60,000 square kilometres with reflective sheet, at a cost of some $280 billion, would be adequate to offset the heat balance and lead to a net cooling without any need to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide. ...


I have an even better idea.

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Tue, Dec 23, 2008
from University of British Columbia via ScienceDaily:
Earth Not Center Of The Universe, Surrounded By 'Dark Energy'
Earth's location in the Universe is utterly unremarkable, despite recent theories that propose toppling a foundation of modern cosmology, according to a team of University of British Columbia researchers....The team's calculations instead solidify the conventional view that an enigmatic dark energy fills the cosmos and is responsible for the acceleration of the Universe...."Since we can only observe the Universe from Earth, it's really hard to determine if we're in a 'special place,'" says [UBC post-doctoral fellow Jim] Zibin. "But we've now learned that our location is much more ordinary than the strange dark energy that fills the Universe." ...


A little humility could go a long way.

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Tue, Dec 23, 2008
from TIME Magazine:
A Japanese Town That Kicked the Oil Habit
...In resource-poor Japan, which imports 90 percent of its fuel, Kuzumaki is a marvel of energy self-sufficiency. Signs of the town's comprehensive focus on environmental sustainability are visible from its mountaintops to the pens of the dairy cows that once were the bedrock of local commerce. Atop Mt. Kamisodegawa, the 12 wind turbines, each 305 feet (93 m) tall, have the capacity to convert mountain gusts into 21,000 KW of electricity — more than enough to meet the needs of the town's residents. The excess is sold to neighboring communities. Of course, the wind doesn't always blow. At Kuzumaki Highland Farm, 200 dairy cows share the power load. Their manure is processed into fertilizer and methane gas, the latter used as fuel for an electrical generator at the town's biomass facility. Nearby, a three-year project sponsored by Japan's Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry's New Energy Development Organization (NEDO) uses wood chips from larch trees to create gas that powers the farm's milk and cheese operations. The bark of other trees is also made into pellets for heating stoves used throughout the community. A local winery, for instance, has two such stoves, and Kuzumaki pays residents up to 50,000 yen ($490) toward the cost of installing one. All told, clean energy generated 161 percent of Kuzumaki's electricity last year. ...


One hundred and sixty-one percent!? That's enough to give us some!

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Mon, Dec 22, 2008
from Riverside Press-Enterprise:
Inland researchers say storm runoff, once just a threat, is a resource to be managed
Two Inland researchers think they have come up with a way to help replenish depleted aquifers and reduce ocean pollution using some unlikely partners: big-box stores. When it rains, much of parking-lot runoff flows across impervious surfaces into large detention basins, culverts or concrete waterways that carry the water to lakes and into the ocean. The researchers propose tapping big-box stores, shopping malls and warehouses -- properties that generate much of the runoff -- to help capture some of it before it flows into storm drains. They recommend building porous-pavement parking lots on the properties or channeling the storm water into infiltration trenches that allow the water to percolate into the ground. Not only would these devices help reduce the amount of polluted water or "urban sludge" that ends up in lakes and in the ocean, it also would help recharge depleted groundwater basins, the researchers say. ...


Now that's thinking outside the big box!

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