Clipmarks | mrobert's clips

People Hear With Their Skin as Well as Their Ears

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:42:52 GMT

clipped by: mrobert
clipper's remarks: If they can adapt that to hearing devices, it may help the hearing impaired.

Clip Source: www.scientificamerican.com

A new study shows that the skin could help us hear by 'feeling' sounds

Tags: hearing, skin, sounds, science

Save Space with Tumidei Mini-Lofts

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:05:15 GMT

clipped by: mrobert
clipper's remarks: They have some interesting space saving ideas here. Can't say I'd want to live in one permanently - but for a person just starting out, there are some ideas that could be put to good use to save space.

Clip Source: 3rings.designerpages.com

The American sense of space is expansive—what with manifest destiny, great spans of geography, purple mountains, fields of grain, and so forth. This is not the case in other countries, where elevators are more likely to resemble vertically-oriented coffins. It is thanks to these other locations that we get so many ingenious space-saving ideas. Italian company Tumidei has taken economy to a new level by thinking in terms of levels.

Tags: design, space, tumidei, mini-lofts

A Scientific Reality Check

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:20:10 GMT

clipped by: mrobert
clipper's remarks: Don Yoemans, Senior Research Scientist at NASA has written us a reality check with a sense of humour.

Clip Source: www.nasa.gov

There apparently is a great deal of interest in celestial bodies, and their locations and trajectories at the end of the calendar year 2012. Now, I for one love a good book or movie as much as the next guy. But the stuff flying around through cyberspace, TV and the movies is not based on science. There is even a fake NASA news release out there… So here is the scientific reality on the celestial happenings in the year 2012.

Nibiru, a purported large object headed toward Earth, simply put - does not exist

The Mayan calendar does not end in December 2012.

There are no credible predictions for worrisome astronomical events in 2012.

Tags: science, nasa, mayan calendar, doom, predictions, reality check

What's old is new

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 06:14:22 GMT

clipped by: mrobert
clipper's remarks: Re-purposed and reclaimed wood and metal mixed with solar and wind power capabilities plus the option of a rain water collection system design is winning awards.

Clip Source: www.statesman.com

"We try and create what we call a positive footprint with our homes," says Gardner's business partner, Kimber Reed, pointing to the energy-efficient features design to work with renewable energy sources, and materials that would otherwise end up in landfills. "We build beyond green by actually helping the Earth, instead of simply trying not to damage it any further," she says.

The resulting space is elegantly spare, an artful combination of shiplap wood and corrugated metal that would look natural on a ranch or in Clarksville or Travis Heights. "We call it modern rustic," Reed says. Even without any personal effects, the interior, a paradigm in spatial efficiency, is warm and inviting.

Depending on the size of the house and its location, the solar can be grid-tied, meaning it's hooked up to and supplemented by a city's utilities, or an off-grid, stand-alone system that charges batteries that then power the house.

Tags: design, homes, re-purposed, reclaimed, solar power

Electricity: leveling the renewable energy playing field

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:08:00 GMT

clipped by: mrobert
clipper's remarks: Interesting article on European plans.

Clip Source: www.renewableenergyfocus.com

Gone are the days when generating renewable electricity was something of a cottage industry- 100 GW of installed wind capacity worldwide proves this. A paradigm shift has occurred, leading to a greater challenge; What does an electricity structure which seamlessly incorporates multiple sources of generating technology look like and crucially, how can it be achieved? Polly Higgins looks at liberalisation, long distance transmission, HVDC and supergrids.

Tags: energy, renewables, europe, wind power, solar

ENVIRONMENT: Rethinking Jobs for a Sustainable Economy

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 04:22:15 GMT

clipped by: mrobert
clipper's remarks: Article by Matthew Cardinale brings in varying views on the answer to economic changes. What's your view? Will localization and 'greening' help the crisis?

Clip Source: www.ipsnews.net

ATLANTA, Georgia, Oct 31 (IPS/IFEJ) - The possibility of environmental catastrophe has led many leaders, scholars and average citizens to reconsider an economy based on constant growth. It is becoming clear that people, especially in the United States, will need to consume less in the way of natural resources to avoid planetary peril.

growth

The million-dollar question, of course, is how the U.S. can move to a sustainable, zero-growth economy without losing more jobs. If people are consuming fewer goods and services, does that mean fewer jobs in the manufacturing, sale, and provision of those goods and services?

"The source of jobs and job growth is not limited to what we consume. The government plays a large role by taking the social surplus and investing in our natural capital base, in education, health care, rebuilding our infrastructure and housing stock. That public investment is going to be even more significant in the future in terms of employment creation," Talberth said.

Tags: environment, green power, localization

Google PowerMeter available to U.K. residents.

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:43:42 GMT

clipped by: mrobert
clipper's remarks: It's a start....

Clip Source: news.cnet.com

U.K. residents will now be able to monitor and regulate their home energy usage from any Web-enabled phone or computer regardless of whether their energy provider uses smart meters.

Google announced two U.K. partnerships this week concerning its PowerMeter software, one of which completely bypasses the need for cooperation from an energy provider.

The Google PowerMeter software that ties in to First Utility, AlertMe, and (by default) the British Gas trial program, is currently free. It makes real-time usage data collected from the companies available by cell phone or computer. The data can then be charted in hourly, daily, monthly, and yearly segments for analysis, allowing users to basically conduct their own personal green-living and energy-usage experiments.

Tags: power, google, meters, environment, energy, powermeter

I live without cash - and I manage just fine.

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:07:35 GMT

clipped by: mrobert
clipper's remarks: I understand his point of view - but there have to be better solutions. We can't all just go into hibernation. And of course, detractors of this plan will say that the caravan and laptop etc. wouldn't be there for him if we were all sitting in his position - who would manufacture them and how?

He is very right about the disconnect between creation and purchase of products though - and contaminating the environment. All other animals on this planet understand that the environment is their only connection to life on this planet..... there must a solution for human beings too.

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Armed with a caravan, solar laptop and toothpaste made from washed-up cuttlefish bones, Mark Boyle gave up using cash

So I decided instead to become a social homeopath, a pro-activist, and to investigate the root cause of these symptoms.

One of the critical causes of those symptoms is the fact we no longer have to see the direct repercussions our purchases have on the people, environment and animals they affect. The degrees of separation between the consumer and the consumed have increased so much that we're completely unaware of the levels of destruction and suffering embodied in the stuff we buy. The tool that has enabled this separation is money.

If we grew our own food, we wouldn't waste a third of it as we do today. If we made our own tables and chairs, we wouldn't throw them out the moment we changed the interior decor. If we had to clean our own drinking water, we probably wouldn't contaminate it.

Tags: environment, living without cash

The War On Flow, 2009: Why Studies About Multitasking Are Missing The Point

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 04:26:03 GMT

clipped by: mrobert
clipper's remarks: He has a very good point. What we do on media is often more like browsing or grazing - picking up bits here and there to gather into a complete opinion later - than actual multitasking with the intention of getting-things-done.

Clip Source: www.stoweboyd.com

A recent Stanford study suggests that multitasking does not indicate any special cognitive advantages to getting things done, which surprised the researchers and caused glee to percolate through the media circus:

But wait.

Perhaps what we are doing has nothing to do with efficiency. I don't operate the way I do with the principal goal of speeding things up. My motivations are much more complex and diffused.

It's like a painter with a number of works in process. My primary motivation is not getting a particular painting 'done', but adding dabs of paint that I feel are the right ones.

So, I maintain that studies like this continue to miss the point. If you use industrial era yardsticks based on personal productivity to try to figure out what is going on in our heads, here, in the web of flow, you will simply think we are defective. We'll have to learn how to measure the larger scope --

Tags: multitasking

Immersion in Nature Makes us Nicer

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 03:24:42 GMT

clipped by: mrobert
clipper's remarks: Do you think that the more we understand about nature, the more tolerant we become? Maybe it is seeing the larger picture of the planet and the universe and all that it involves makes us look at life differently. What do you think?

Clip Source: www.miller-mccune.com

New research finds those who feel a strong connection to the natural world have a more caring attitude toward others.

Maintaining a connection to nature, either through the presence of indoor plants or artwork depicting the natural environment, has been shown to decrease stress levels and stimulate healing. Newly published research suggests it may also make us better people.

A series of studies suggests immersion in nature "brings individuals closer to others, whereas human-made environments orient goals toward more selfish or self-interested ends," according to a paper posted on the Web site of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. This appears to be the first research to examine the impact of the natural world on people's values and aspirations, and its findings have intriguing implications for architects, designers and urban planners.

Tags: nature, science, ecotherapy

Gravity governs gecko's grip

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:03:04 GMT

clipped by: mrobert
clipper's remarks: Interesting things we learn when we take a close study of nature....

Clip Source: www.bookofjoe.com

Put a gecko on a level piece of glass and it might slip all over the place. Tilt that glass about 10 degrees and it will stay in place. This is because the gecko's grip is triggered by gravity, a recent discovery made by scientists at the University of Calgary and Clemson University in South Carolina and published in Proceedings B, a biological research journal.

"What we found out really was something quite surprising," said Russell in a YouTube video explaining the findings. "Body orientation rather than any interaction with the surface is what triggers when this system is switched on." He said the central nervous system of the brain and ear probably plays an intensive role in the gecko's internal trigger.

Tags: gecko, gravity, science

Pub. Industry Braces for Schwarzeneggrification of Textbooks

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 06:36:45 GMT

clipped by: mrobert
clipper's remarks: This, I think, is a fantastic idea and time it should be implemented.

Clip Source: www.ereads.com

"Textbooks have not gone the way of the scroll yet," writes Tamar Lewin of the New York Times, "but many educators say that it will not be long before they are replaced by digital versions — or supplanted altogether by lessons assembled from the wealth of free courseware, educational games, videos and projects on the Web."

That will come as welcome news to many of the nation's 17 million students. Both the cost and the weight of book-laden backpacks can be crippling.

The state leading the charge to take textbooks digital is California under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who balked at the cost and half-joked that the weight of printed textbooks was daunting even for him, an international bodybuilding champion. His initiative is to replace high school math and science textbooks with open source digital versions, which are free thanks to the efforts of CK-12 Foundation, a nonprofit group. CK-12 has adapted textbooks to meet state education standards.

Tags: digital textbooks

Honeybees Turned Data Collectors Help Scientists Understand Climate Change

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 06:10:06 GMT

clipped by: mrobert
clipper's remarks: Another way of keeping tabs on climate changes - honeybees are doing their part and HoneyBeeNet is keeping tabs on how it is affecting the bees. Spring is coming earlier every year. Can bees and other pollinators adapt?

Clip Source: www.nasa.gov

When honey bees search for honey, colony scouts tend to scour far and wide and sample the area around a hive remarkably evenly, regardless of the size of the hive. And that, Esaias explained, means they excel in keeping tabs on the dynamics of flowering ecosystems in ways that even a small army of graduate students can not.

By creating a burgeoning network of citizen scientists who use industrial-sized scales to weigh their hives each day -- HoneyBeeNet -- Esaias aims to quantify the dynamics of nectar flow over time. Participating beekeepers send their data to Esaias who analyzes it, and posts nectar flow trend graphs and other environmental data for each collection site on HoneyBeeNet's webpage.

And now -- thanks to an innovative project conceived by Wayne Esaias, a veteran oceanographer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. -- bees have yet another role: that of climate data collectors.

Tags: climate change, honeybeenet, honeybees

We Must Save The Living Environment

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 07:42:38 GMT

clipped by: mrobert
clipper's remarks: E. O. Wilson says we must do more than save the plants and animals. 99% of earth's organisms are tiny but extremely important in the functioning of all the larger organisms. If we don't save the minute, we lose it all.

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

When we talk about the world going green, the media and the public think of pollution or fresh-water shortage. They understand, and want to do something. But that is the physical world; concern for the living environment has been slow to take off, as Julia Marton-Lefèvre, head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), will agree. We are not making the headway we should be in preventing the destruction of ecosystems and species. I have written book after book arguing that if we don't start caring about holding onto them, we will have big problems - some unforeseeable. Most Americans have only the vaguest notion about any of that, even though they can talk intelligently about climate change. Yet when it comes to the living world they are in danger of losing something they scarcely understand.

People see nature as trees, plants and vertebrates. Yet the world is run by little creatures most people have not heard of

Tags: ecosystems, environment, climate change, e.o. wilson

50 Questions That Will Free Your Mind

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:09:06 GMT

clipped by: mrobert
clipper's remarks: Good questions to make you think about where you are in life, and what you are doing...... click the link and get the other 40!

Clip Source: www.marcandangel.com

50 Questions That Will Free Your Mind

These questions have no right or wrong answers.

Because sometimes asking the right questions is the answer.

How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?
Which is worse, failing or never trying?
If life is so short, why do we do so many things we don’t like and like so many things we don’t do?
When it’s all said and done, will you have said more than you’ve done?
What is the one thing you’d most like to change about the world?
If happiness was the national currency, what kind of work would make you rich?
Are you doing what you believe in, or are you settling for what you are doing?
If the average human life span was 40 years, how would you live your life differently?
To what degree have you actually controlled the course your life has taken?
Are you more worried about doing things right, or doing the right things?

Tags: life questions