Science & Technology

The University of Ottawa was hosting “career in engineering day” this week and what caught my eye during this event was this little green laptop Nortel Networks had on their presentation table. It was the “one laptop per child” XO laptop. Although this is not a super computer it’s still a great learning machine.

The purpose of this green wonder was to help under developed countries so that children could get a better education.

Most of the nearly two–billion children in the developing world are inadequately educated, or receive no education at all. One in three does not complete the fifth grade.

How did they manage to pay for this? Well we were the donors. The way this worked was if you paid 200$ for the laptop which was listed at 100$, “one laptop per child” would send one laptop to a developing country.

I also got the chance to play with the laptop. Since it was meant to be sent to many different countries, the designers decided to use symbols instead of words so that they could spare the disk space for the applications. I thought this was a great idea. Even if the screen is quite small it’s still very easy to see the display. You can easily navigate the web and even puts up links to encyclopedia for quick info.

The softwares on this laptop are great for children too. They can draw, learn how to read and write and even learn new animals and objects. On the side of the screen you can find video game controler buttons similar to the ones you can find on a playstation controler.

For more information on the XO laptop visit www.laptop.org

Here’s an invention that manages to be environmentally conscious and ridiculous at the same time.

Figure 1, above, may look like a lovely work of art meant to evoke little wavelets formed by raindrops on a serene body of water.  But actually it’s the Eco-Drop shower floor.  You turn on the shower and step in, the concentric circles gently massaging your feet and helping make the surface non-slip.

But the floor is made of a special expanding material, and the longer you stay in the shower, the more pronounced the droplet designs get.  It’s not too long before, as you can see in Figure 4, they become downright uncomfortable on your feet and you have to get out!  Voila — no one takes very long showers!

Still, there must be a better way.  I’m picturing a bunch of angry people with sore feet and sudsy hair returning this thing to their local hardware store.

Founded in October 2007 on $200 million of venture capital, Better Place, in its first six months, announced cooperative agreements with Israel and Denmark to transform their transportation infrastructure from oil-based to renewable energy and significantly reduce harmful emissions. Doing so they have committed to deploying the world’s first electric car networks.
Realized by Shai Agassi, a social entrepreneur formally working for SAP, Project Better Place was created after Shai left SAP in 2007 to follow his vision to end our world’s dependence on oil. Thomas Friedman quoted Agassi this past Sunday in the New York Times writing,

“His goal is to make his electric car so cheap, so trivial, that you won’t even think of buying a gasoline car. ”

Partnering with Better Place, the Renault-Nissan Alliance is building zero-emission electric cars for its recharge grids. The car will be 100% electric and powered by a battery developed by Automotive Energy Supply Corp.

Better Place hopes to continue to be a leader in alternative forms of energy and to sustain the conversation about lessening the worldwide dependence on oil. In this spirit, Better Place has launched a “10 Words” Campaign, where individuals can submit 10 words explaining for what reasons they believe ending the world’s addiction to oil is important. Contributors to the campaign have included those leaders who have made alternative energy a priority, including, Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Francisco, who wrote,

Oil is the past. Our future is green and renewable

and US Congressman (D-MA) Ed Markey,

Four dollar gas, climate change forecast, and Middle East morass.

Please feel free to check out the campaign at 10words.betterplace.com and make your own “minifesto.”

- Thank you very much Sydney for telling me about this.

The first solar powered community of North America is located in the town of Okotoks, Alberta, Canada. They call it the Drake Landing Solar Community. There are 800 solar panels located throughout the community on garage roofs, and they produce 1.5 mega-watts of thermal power during a summer day and supply heat to the district heating system. The whole system meets 90% of the annual heating and hot water needs of the homes.

For more on the subject visit Inhabitat.com

Even if chemistries wasn’t you favorite class in high school you probably know a little about acids and bases. Scientists have found a way to reverse the effects of ocean acidification and by doing so reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere. How will they do it? By adding lime a.k.a calcium hydroxide to seawater.

Adding lime to seawater increases alkalinity, boosting seawater’s ability to absorb CO2 from air and reducing the tendency to release it back again.

This idea was brought forward quite a few years back but was thought unworkable because of the extravagant expense of obtaining lime from limestone and the amount of CO2 released in the process.

Tim Kruger, a management consultant at London firm Corven believes that it could be workable by locating it in regions that have a combination of low-cost ‘stranded’ energy considered too remote to be economically viable to exploit – like flared natural gas or solar energy in deserts – and that are rich in limestone, making it feasible for calcination to take place on site.

There are many such places – for example, Australia’s Nullarbor Plain would be a prime location for this process, as it has 10 000km3 of limestone and soaks up roughly 20MJ/m2 of solar irradiation every day.

Even if the process of making the lime creates CO2, twice as much is absorbed by adding the lime to seawater. This means that the overall process is “carbon negative”.

I think someone paid attention in is chemistry class!

Via: scienceblog.com

I think it’s pretty clear what the concept here is.  Who doesn’t love the idea of washing your clothes and then using the soapy, dirty water to flush your toilets?  Not me.

Advantages: space savings, grey-water re-use, nice environmental feeling while flushing.

Disadvantages: the occasional dropped sock, and perhaps a bit of a bumpy ride if you can’t wait to sit down and go until after the spin cycle.

(from unplggd.com)

I think it’s pretty clear what the concept here is.  Who doesn’t love the idea of washing your clothes and then using the soapy, dirty water to flush your toilets?  Not me.

Advantages: space savings, grey-water re-use, nice environmental feeling while flushing.

Disadvantages: the occasional dropped sock, and perhaps a bit of a bumpy ride if you can’t wait to sit down and go until after the spin cycle.

(from unplggd.com)