Miscellaneous
Buildings will be able to harvest water
More on smart architecture… Usually, buildings shed the water away when it rains. But many houses—not the least in places in Africa or the Amazon—would benefit if the rainwater would be harvested and stored, so it can be used when needed. That’s what two architects have been working on. Read More...
A change of heart changes everything
All you need is love, sang John Lennon. The only challenge: How do you create love? A startlingly simple answer was found in the redwood forests of Boulder Creek, California. Since 1991, the Institute of HeartMath has generated a body of scientific evidence that shows it is possible to create love. Read More...
Retirement from work? Or from life?
Insurance companies paint a rosy picture about retirement in their ads and brochures. We see happy smiling people next to a golf cart. Their message: Life and freedom really begins when you turn 65. But is that so? Retirement from work more often means retirement from life. When you love your work Read More...
Fighting for freedom of the press
Freedom of the press is not a given in many African countries. In Liberia it was impossible for many, many years to write anything critical about government leaders. Now, in 2014, it’s getting better. That is in part due to the long fight for freedom of the press by the journalist Tom Kamara, who Read More...
Sharing economy expands to cities and states
The sharing economy works well for people, services like ride-sharing platform Lyft, and the apartment rental service Airbnb are showing. A new website, MuniRent, aims to bring municipalities into the sharing arena. MuniRent allows cities, counties, and states to rent, or rent-out large equipment Read More...
Digital currencies promise to serve and empower people
There’s hardly anything that can have a deeper impact when it comes to changing the world for the better than a more fair and just money system. The current financial system works best for established institutions and a few individuals—that 1% is not such a bad guess. But in this field as well Read More...
Global cooling and the need for kindness
Italian psychologist and author of The Power of Kindness, Piero Ferruci warns against the dangers of “global cooling”. As the pace of our lives increases and there’s more and more technology around us, our communication tends become less and less personal. The drive for efficiency and profit Read More...
Lego paleontologists
‘Boys as well as girls should be able to play with the same Legos’, that is one of the ten commandments of Lego (Yes, the company came up with that themselves). However, most Lego characters are still men, discovered the Dutch scientist Ellen Kooijman. Kooijman works in Stockholm as an isotope Read More...
Marriage of F1 technology and public transit make buses more efficient
A hybrid motor that made its debut on the F1 circuit will be used in London’s public buses to increase fuel efficiency. The technology called Gyrodrive is a high tech flywheel (a mechanism that stores energy as momentum) and harnesses power that is usually lost as heat. The way Gyrodrive works, Read More...
Electric car sales more than doubled in Europe
Sales of electric cars are surging in Europe. In 2013 nearly 50,000 electric vehicles were sold in European Union member countries, more than twice the number, 22,000, sold in 2012. The analysis of data collected by the Transport & Environment (T&E) campaign group points to three new Read More...