Miscellaneous
Amazon uses bike messengers to deliver within the hour in New York
The most daring of Amazon’s distribution dreams is, of course, the drone that flies to your home and drops a package before the front door. That’s still future—and perhaps less “distant” than we now think. In the mean time the online shopping giant tries to speed up her distribution in Read More...
The Transformative Studies Program: Big Impact, Low Risk
The Transformative Studies Program, the next generation of The Intelligent Optimist’s highly successful Course in Spiritual Healing & Transformation, launches in January 2015. With it comes the chance to transform yourself and the world around you. To live fully in possibility. To chart your Read More...
Biodegradable and tagged nets save fish and marine life
Traditional fishing nets take millennia to break down, and they’re often discarded into the ocean where they unnecessarily kill helpless marine life. Now an engineering student has come up with a biodegradable fishing net that can be tracked as well. The nets are affixed with RFID tags so that Read More...
Cheap device making drinking water from salt water
Our world is covered in water, but most of it is in the oceans. And, so far, making drinking water out of salt water is a difficult and expensive process. A new device, Desolenator, driven by solar power can desalinate seawater in a cheap and efficient way. The instrument can also purify heavily Read More...
Biowaste toilets solves stinky problem for Kenyan school
Last year the Maseno School in western Kenya completed a substantial renovation. A major part was a brand new 720-student dormitory, but what the renovation lacked was a new sanitation system; the current one is stinky and is polluting a nearby stream that provides drinking water to a community. Read More...
The car of the future could drive on air without ever needing fuelling
The clean car story gets better and better. Current electric car still need batteries that require not so nice chemicals and time for recharging. The hydrogen fuel cell car is the next step with the fuel cell powering the electric engine. The first such cars will enter the roads of Japan and Read More...
Harnessing the power of waves with an floating hydraulic squid
Harnessing wave power in the seas around Scotland, a new hydraulic energy-capturing device shows promise. The floating squid-like mechanism is made of a central ballast shaft and three attached arms. As the arms move along an X,Y, and Z axis the hydraulic connecting points harness the energy as the Read More...
A magic wand saves energy while making tea
We boil too much water for the cups of tea we drink. And as the leading tea-drinkers in the western world, the British are in the right position to figure that out. They have calculated that the collective extra energy used to bring a whole kettle to boil when you only need a cup’s worth of water Read More...
Electric bacteria cold be source of future fuel
Standard approaches to green energy are great for consumers, but aren’t very useful for larger machinery, or huge cargo ships. The battery technology powering your Prius or the windmills that dot open landscapes don’t produce enough energy to get a containership from Stockholm to San Francisco. Read More...
A practical approach to green building
Buildings have been getting progressively greener, and we don’t mean in color. The Green Building Initiative (GBI), an organization created in 2004 with the aim of bringing sustainable building practices into the mainstream, recently turned recently celebrated it’s 10th year in operation. The Read More...