Neat Stuff

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Questions for the green-home buyer

by Patricia Mayville-Cox
Nov 17th 2007 @ 8:53AM

What questions should homebuyers ask related to the green (not the cash)? Here is some advice from The Green Guide:

Has the home been certified green by an independent third party?
How energy efficient is the home now?
What is the orientation of the home, north, south, east or west?
Can you install solar panels?
Are lead and asbestos lurking in the home (important for homes built before 1978 for lead and 1981 for asbestos)?
What about radon?

For the advice related to these questions, see The Green Guide here. For a directory of green homes, like the Eagle River Bioshelter in Alaska pictured above, see Listed Green.

Filed under: Home

Taking your laptop off the grid

by Josh Loposer
Nov 17th 2007 @ 4:27PM

Lots of laptops claim to be infinitely portable and have super-long battery life, but in reality, the technology always seems to fall a bit short (or totally flat). In other words, you're going to spend most of your computer-life tethered to an electrical outlet.

Here's a green gadget that allows you to finally have a truly "mobile" laptop.
The "SolarRoll" is a flexible solar panel that can roll up and fit in your backpack -- and it's waterproof. There has been lots of talk flying around the blogosphere recently about how much energy computers consume (and waste), so if you feel like opting out of the "computer drain," this might be the ticket.

It's obvious that this thing is a turn-on for the backpacker who has to have it all, but I get way more excited when I think about its practical applications: using my laptop at the park or in remote locations, not needing to sit in a coffee shop to work. Sweet. If you don't own a laptop, the SolarRoll comes in other sizes and outputs, so it can support devices like your cellphones, 2-way radios, digital cameras, or even your car battery.

Filed under: Gadgets and Tech

Science: Two Companies Now Offering Personal Gene Sequencing

Posted by Zonk on Saturday November 17, @03:34PM
from the sequencing-for-fun-and-profit dept.

corded writes "Yesterday, deCODE genetics announced the launch of their $985 personal genotyping product, deCODEme (video), beating their competitors to market. Perhaps not coincidentally, 23andMe's website is suddenly much more informative today, and the New York Times features a preview of 23andMe's $999 offering. deCODEme and 23andMe will scan about a million and 600,000 sites across the genome, respectively and assess your risk for common diseases, along with providing information about ancestry, physical traits, and the ability to compare genes with friends and family."

[+] biotech, technology, science, gattaca, heroes (tagging beta)

Science: MIT Students Show How the Inca Leapt Canyons

Posted by Zonk on Saturday November 17, @08:33PM

PCOL writes "When Conquistadors came to Peru from Spain in 1532, they were astonished to see Inca suspension bridges achieve clear spans of at least 150 feet at a time when the longest Roman bridge in Spain had a maximum span of 95 feet. The bridges swayed under the weight of traffic terrifying the Spanish and their horses, even though, as one Spaniard observed, they were almost as "sturdy as the street of Seville." To build the bridges, thick cables were pulled across a river with small ropes and attached to stone abutments on each side. Three of the big cables served as the floor of the bridge, two others served as handrails and pieces of wood were tied to the cable floor before the floor was strewn with branches to give firm footing for beasts of burden. Earlier this year students at MIT built a 70-foot fiber bridge in the style of the Incan Empire. The project used sisal twine from the Yucatan Peninsula and anchored it by wrapping it around massive concrete blocks. The weekend's burst of activity was preceded by 360 hours of rope-twisting as the 50 miles of sisal twine was turned into rope. Working together as a group was part of the exercise. "A third of the time was spent learning to work together," one of the students said. "But after a while, we were banging those cables out.""

[+] hardhack, science, rope, oldnews, moneyforoldrope (tagging beta)

Games: Inside A Korean Rehab Camp For Web Addiction

Posted by Zonk on Sunday November 18, @12:07AM
from the place-you-never-want-to-go dept.

caffeinemessiah writes "The New York Times has a story about a Korean kids' camp for 'curing' Internet addiction. 'Seventeen hours a day online is fine,' said one such kid at the camp. From the article: 'Drill instructors drive young men through military-style obstacle courses, counselors lead group sessions, and there are even therapeutic workshops on pottery and drumming ... this year, the camp held its first two 12-day sessions, with 16 to 18 male participants each time. (South Korean researchers say an overwhelming majority of compulsive computer users are male.)'"

[+] games, internet, onlyyoungsouthkoreans, emailgoodwebbad (tagging beta)

Star Trek Home Theater

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday November 18, @12:23PM
from the money-to-burn dept.

Critical Facilities writes "Someone thought it would be a good idea to model their home theater after the Enterprise NCC-1701D from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The result is super geeky, but actually rather cool. Named the best theme theater installation at CEDIA 2007, this Palm Beach County, FL home features motion-activated air-lock doors with series sound effects, and a "Red Alert" button on the Crestron TPMC-10 controller to turn all of the LEDs bright red and flashing."

[+] movies, scifi, slashdotted, getalife, itsatvshow (tagging beta)

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Sesame Street DVD Deemed Adult-Only Entertainment

Posted by Zonk on Sunday November 18, @01:28PM
from the media-execs-need-to-grow-a-freaking-spine dept.

theodp writes "The earliest episodes of Sesame Street are being made available on DVD, but the NYT notes Volumes 1 and 2 carry a rather strange warning: 'These early 'Sesame Street' episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today's preschool child.' So why are they unsuitable for toddlers in 2007? Well, in the parody 'Monsterpiece Theater,' Alistair Cookie — played by Cookie Monster — used to appear with a pipe, which he later gobbled. 'That modeled the wrong behavior,' explained a Sesame Street executive producer, adding that 'we might not be able to create a character like Oscar [the Grouch] now.'"

[+] avenueq, longliveoscar, education, tv, thinkofthegrouches (tagging beta)

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China In the Habit of Copying And Redirecting US Sites?

Posted by Zonk on Sunday November 18, @04:42PM
from the not-the-way-you-play-the-game dept.

Want to know why US web companies have trouble making it China? gaz_hayes passed us a link to the blog commiepod, which suggests that successful US websites are targeted by 'Chinese government backed companies.' "These companies copy the site, deploy it on a .cn domain, and then DNS poison or forcefully lower the bandwidth the US site. Just a few weeks ago google.com and google.cn were DNS poisoned across the entire Chinese internet and were being redirected to their Chinese competitor Baidu. This probably explains Google's 3rd quarter market share in China." This is a fairly serious accusation; anyone else have first-hand experiences that would back this up?

[+] google, business, internet, china, nosurprisehere (tagging beta)

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Textual ads destined to hit shopping cart handles

Posted Nov 16th 2007 2:43AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

As marketers continue to search for (and exploit) places in which you'd never think to find an ad, it makes sense to scroll a few plugs through an item that the vast majority of us spend at least a few hours per week touching. That item, dear friends, is the handle of the tried and true shopping cart, and apparently, Modstream is hoping to install bars with scrolling displays onto buggies and allow companies to beam in messages wirelessly. The system works by allowing outfits to access a web-based profile, enter in a given message, and transmit the ad to participating stores. As an added bonus, the setup enables said companies to change up their messages on a whim and keeps us shoppers guessing as to what clever line is coming next. Now, who's down with hacking this thing to scroll through our favorite RSS feeds?

[Via Textually]

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Nanotube batteries could power printed electronics

Posted Nov 17th 2007 11:11AM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We've seen some interesting nanotech power concepts in the past, but researchers at UCLA have gone back to basics and developed a printable nanotech version of a traditional battery they say could power other printed, flexible nanotech devices. The batteries, which are less than a millimeter thin, feature the same zinc-carbon makeup as traditional rechargables, but are made by depositing thin layers of zinc and manganese oxide over a layer of nanotubes. Sadly, tech isn't producing usable amounts of power yet, but lead scientist George Gruner says the simplicity of the underlying tech should make it easy to solve that problem. Damn straight -- we're not giving up till we get a pair of electric underpants to call our own.

[Image courtesy of CNano]

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Thursday, November 15, 2007

Neat Spore Video

Spore is a game that has the potential to fundamentally change games. The idea is that if you give people a framework and allow them to build their own content and build in a way to share that content without allowing a few users to degrade the experience of the other users, you will end up with a different experience for every user and many hours glues to the glow of an LCD panel. I am really excited that this if FINALLY coming out after many years in development. Check out the video if you want to find out more about the game.

http://www.spore.com/screenshots.php?movieID=5&play=lo

Hybrid school buses

This was an interesting story about how some school districts in a few states (PA and VA are two of them but I don't FX County is buying them at this point) are buying a few hybrid school buses. They are 50% more efficient but the are also 70K more per bus. Some guy says that the break even point would be in 6 years (15 year expected bus life) if they were bought in batches of 1000 or more because of volume discounts (reduces to 40k more per bus.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-11-14-hybridbus_N.htm?csp=34

Wine power, baby!

by Josh Loposer
Nov 15th 2007 @ 8:41AM

Filed under: Food

You've heard that Jesus turned water into wine, now Canada's wine country will turn it into electricity -- for homes in the Niagra area. StormFisher Biogas is offering Ontario's wine producers a productive way to get rid of about 2,000 tons of smooshed grape stuff, which up until now had been sent to landfills.

It basically works like this: dump grape remnants into an industrial digester (whatever that is) then use the methane created by the decomposing grape skins and seeds to produce both electricity and natural gas. Cheers!

How Much is Your Right to Vote Worth?

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday November 15, @07:56AM
from the how-much-are-you-offering dept.

Attila Dimedici writes "Two thirds of the students at NYU would give up their right to vote in the next election for a full scholarship. Some would be satisfied with an ipod. A few would be willing to give up the right for the rest of their lives for one million dollars."

[+] education, politics, ignorantsaps, nothing, indecentproposal (tagging beta)

On the cutting edge of green tech

This one was actually worth the click. This was 9 items on the cutting edge of green technology. Here is a quick breakdown.

Microcars were interesting in the 70s and now there are companies looking at making them.
Recycle your used tires into the perfect lawn
Those crazy scientists are still trying to get the whole fusion thing working. New info but nothing earth shattering...
This one was about harnessing the wind at a consumer level. Looks worth while if you live somewhere where the wind blows. My guess is that here, this will not really catch on unless the process becomes really efficient. On the other hand, every little bit helps.
This one was slick. a company figured out how to distill not only salt water, but industrial waste and makes it safe to drink. This could help with the first of the big changes with global climate change, drinkable water.
This one talks about commercializing the production of methane from manure.
Recycling all those bottles is nice but where does it all go? Floor tiles, counter tops, rugs etc.
Producing electricity from tiny vibrations in ordinary matter or simply from the heat in a room. Sounds cool but this one is a ways off.
Do you go to the dry cleaners? This one was as dull as it sounds. Apparently it is more eco friendly to use cardboard hangers than to use wire ones.

http://www.news.com/2300-13838_3-6218577-1.html?tag=ne.gall.pg

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

OLPC XO and iRobot Create brought together for telepresence hack

Posted Nov 14th 2007 2:53PM by Donald Melanson
Filed under: Laptops, Robots

While the project is still classified as "ongoing," Damon Kohler nonetheless looks to have made some considerable progress in his OLPC XO / iRobot Create combo, which together forms a makeshift telepresence robot. Among other things, if you decide to build your own, you'll apparently be able to control the robot via a web interface, and make use of the OLPC's webcam and microphone to monitor its surroundings. Some of the more recent additions include some text-to-speech capabilities to totally freak out your pets, and a high-tech night vision system (pictured above). If that's enough to tempt you, hit up the links below for the complete details on how to put together your own.

Read - Instructables, OLPC Telepresence
Read- Project Blog

[Via Gadget Lab]

Tags: irobot create, IrobotCreate, olpc, olpc xo, OlpcXo

Close but no Cigar for Netflix Recommender System

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday November 14, @10:00AM
from the fifty-grand-aint-bad dept.

Ponca City, We Love You writes "In October 2006, Netflix, the online movie rental service, announced that it would award $1 million to the first team to improve the accuracy of Netflix's movie recommendations by 10% based on personal preferences. Each contestant was given a set of data from which three million predictions were made about how certain users rated certain movies and Netflix compared that list with the actual ratings and generated a score for each team. More than 27,000 contestants from 161 countries submitted their entries and some got close, but not close enough. Today Netflix announced that it is awarding an annual progress prize of $50,000 to a group of researchers at AT&T Labs, who improved the current recommendation system by 8.43 percent but the $1 million grand prize is still up for grabs and a $50,000 progress prize will be awarded every year until the 10 percent goal is met. As part of the rules of the competition, the team was required to disclose their solution publicly. (pdf)"

Facial Recognition Vending Machine Debuts

I wonder if this is able to detect a mask?

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday November 13, @07:23PM
from the no-more-candy-for-you-chubby dept.

Peter Hanami writes "Yesterday in Japan, a facial recognition vending machine went on sale that can tell the age of the buyer based on a range of features including number of wrinkles, bone structure and how the skin sits on the face. It was developed as a way to stop minors from buying cigarettes from vending machines. In Japan, cigarette vending machines are a common feature on the street and presently few safeguards exist to stop younger users from purchasing them. This new machine is seen as a positive step to reduce under age smoking. If the machine doesnt deem the buyer to be of suitable age, 20 years old, the buyer must provide further identification such as a drivers licence."

A Giant Step in Cloning

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday November 14, @07:53AM
from the a-barrel-full-of-clones dept.

mernil writes "The Independent reports: "A technical breakthrough has enabled scientists to create for the first time dozens of cloned embryos from adult monkeys, raising the prospect of the same procedure being used to make cloned human embryos."

[+] biotech, dontclonemebro (tagging beta)

The Rules of the Swarm

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday November 13, @08:47PM
from the welcome-to-the-collective dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Researchers are starting to discover the simple rules that allow swarms of thousands of relatively simple animals to form a collective brain able to make decisions and move like a single organism. To get a sense of swarms, Dr. Iain Couzin, a mathematical biologist at the Collective Animal Behaviour Laboratory at Princeton University, builds computer models of virtual swarms with thousands of individual agents that he can program to follow a few simple rules. Among the findings are that swarm behavior has patterns common to many different species, that just as liquid water can suddenly begin to boil, swarm behavior can also change abruptly in character, and that just a few leaders can guide a swarm effectively by creating a bias in the swarm's movement that steers it in a particular direction. The rules of the swarm may also apply to the cells inside our bodies and researchers are working with cancer biologists to discover the rules by which cancer cells work together to build tumors or migrate through tissues. Even brain cells may follow the same rules for collective behavior seen in locusts or fish. "How does your brain take this information and come to a collective decision about what you're seeing?" Dr. Couzin says. The answer, he suspects, may lie in our inner swarm."

[+] science, dontswarmmebro, swarm, borg, overlord (tagging beta)

Stopping Cars With Microwave Radiation

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday November 13, @10:10PM
from the stops-in-under-a-minute dept.

Ponca City, We Love You writes "Researchers have created an electromagnetic system that can quickly bring a vehicle to a stop by sending out pulses of microwave radiation to disable the microprocessors that control the central engine functions in a car. A 200-pound unit attached to the roof of a police car can be used to stop fleeing and noncooperative vehicles. The average power emitted in a single shot is about 10 kilowatts at 100 hertz and since each radiated pulse lasts about 50 nanoseconds, the total energy output is 100 joules at a distance of 15 meters. One concern with the device is that it could cause an accident if a car is disabled and a driver loses steering control. The device could also disable other vehicles in the area so the most practical application may be for perimeter protection at remote areas. Criminals have a work-around too. Since electronic control modules were not built into most cars until 1972, the system will not work on automobiles made before that year."

[+] transportation, technology, igottagetmeoneofthese, emp, dontwavemebro (tagging beta)

Yahoo Settles With Imprisoned Chinese Journalists

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday November 13, @04:59PM
from the stepping-up-to-the-plate dept.

Terms of the deal are secret, but Yahoo has reached settlements with two Chinese journalists who were arrested based on information the company provided to the ruling Communist government. "[...] a source at Yahoo said the company has been 'working with the families, and we're working with them to provide them with financial, humanitarian and legal assistance.' Yahoo has also agreed to establish a global human rights fund to provide 'humanitarian relief' to support dissidents and their families. The source said that details still have to be worked out."

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Vinegar + water + bacteria + electrons = hydrogen?

Posted Nov 13th 2007 10:59AM by Sam Abuelsamid
Filed under: Emerging Technologies, Hydrogen

Currently the most cost effective means of producing hydrogen is through steam reformation of natural gas. While this process is efficient, it does produce CO₂. Electrolysis of water produces only oxygen and hydrogen but takes more electricity than the energy you can get from the hydrogen produced and is at best 50-70 percent efficient.

Bruce Logan and Shaoan Cheng of Penn State University may have devised a mechanism that can produce more hydrogen energy than the energy that must be added to the process. They have developed a bacterial electrolysis cell that can consume a variety of organic compounds and produce hydrogen with only a small amount of electricity added to the process. The total efficiency of hydrogen production ranges from 63 percent for cellulose to 82 percent for acetic acid (vinegar) when both the electricity and the energy in the feedstock are factored in. The process produces 144 percent more hydrogen energy than the amount of electricity added. If the process can be scaled up it could be a major breakthrough in carbon-free hydrogen production.

[Source: PhysOrg, thanks to Jason for the tip]

Green truckers in short supply

by Josh Loposer
Nov 13th 2007 @ 10:38AM

Filed under: Cars and Transportation

Although hybrid truck technology took center stage at the European Road Transport Show in Amsterdam, green forms of transportation took a backseat to different kind of green. Money (what did you think I was going to say?) is the primary roadblock standing in the way of a more eco-friendly trucking industry.

Because hybrid trucks require a lot of extra mechanization (a 2nd drive train), they are significantly more expensive and heavier (less freight capacity) than their conventional diesel counterparts. Not to mention they have no real track record as far as maintenance goes.

There is hope however, as some small fleets are investing in the new technology. Fedex leads the pack with 95 hybrid trucks in its fleet, and other delivery companies could benefit from a more efficient vehicle for their "stop and go" type of work, where they would see the greatest gains.

As for long haul vehicles, its a different story. With many skeptics claiming that hybrids won't get significantly better highway mileage, don't expect to see hybrid trucks gassing up at the local truck stop anytime soon.

Targeted muscle reinnervation enables your brain to control prosthetic limbs

Posted Nov 13th 2007 9:38AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

If you're suddenly overcome with an eerie feeling of déjà vu, fret not, as this idea has certainly been brainstormed before. As scientists aim to make prosthetic limbs more user-friendly, a certain physiatrist at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and professor at Northwestern University has developed a technique that enables artificial arms to react directly to the brain's thoughts. The process, dubbed targeted muscle reinnervation (TMR), works by rewiring residual nerves that once carried information to the now-lost appendage to the chest; when the person thinks to move their arm, the chest muscle contracts, and with the help of an electromyogram (EMG), the signal is "directed to a microprocessor in the artificial arm which decodes the data and tells the arm what to do." Currently, "only" four movements are possible after the procedure, but studies are already in full swing to determine if TMR could be used to bless future patients with an even fuller of range of motion.

[Image courtesy of ScienceDaily]

Tags: brain, disabled, handicapped, health, muscle, neural prosthetic, NeuralProsthetic, prosthetic, prosthetics, science, targeted muscle reinnervation, TargetedMuscleReinnervation, think, thinking, tmr, touch

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