Date archives "November 2016"

Economy Energy Environment Technology

Blockchain As Backbone of Community Solar Microgrid

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Last Monday 6 community members on President St in the Brooklyn Park Slope neighborhood created the first local marketplace for renewable energy on a blockchain network. They individually invested in solar panels and created a community to sell their excess energy called Brooklyn Microgrid.

 

Environment Science

Hacking C02 Sequestration

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A synthetic biological metabolic pathway fixes CO2 more efficiently than plants
A synthetic biological metabolic pathway fixes CO2 more efficiently than plants
In future, greenhouse gas carbon dioxide could be removed from the atmosphere by deploying a new biological method. A team headed by Tobias Erb, Leader of a Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, has developed a synthetic but completely biological metabolic pathway based on the model of photosynthesis that fixes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere 20% more efficiently that plants can photosynthetically. The researchers initially planned the new system, which they presented in the magazine Science this week, on the drawing board and then turned it into reality in the laboratory.
phys.org

 

Culture

They Can’t All Be Dystopias

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Project: Hieroglyph is an anthology of positive science fiction futures by: Elizabeth Bear, Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, Cory Doctorow, Karl Schroder, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Madeline Ashby, Lee Konstantinou, Annalee Newitz, Geoffrey Landis, James L. Cambias, Gregory Benford, Vandana Singh, Brenda Cooper, Rudy Rucker, David Brin, Charlie Jane Anders.

Hieroglyph: Stories & Visions for a Better Future | Project Hieroglyph
hieroglyph.asu.edu
Health

Women’s Health, Period.

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This Teen Is Bringing Menstrual Products To Homeless Women Around The World
This Teen Is Bringing Menstrual Products To Homeless Women Around The World
When she became homeless at 15, she decided to take action.
 “It was that experience of being at the women’s shelter alone, and hearing the stories of women who were in much worse situations than I was ― I had a complete privilege check.”

That moment led the high schooler to create Camions of Care, (now Period.org) a youth-led non-profit organization that distributes menstrual products to women and girls in need. Okamoto said her inspiration to create Camions of Care came from the conversations she had with homeless women in shelters, and during those four hours of bus rides each day to and from school.
www.huffingtonpost.com

 

Environment Health Science Technology

Ocean Cleanup Foundation Deploys Prototype

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Boyan Slat's Ocean Cleanup Project Launches Historic First Prototype at Sea
Boyan Slat’s Ocean Cleanup Project Launches Historic First Prototype at Sea
Boyan Slat’s ambitious plan to rid the world’s oceans of plastic has taken another step towards reality with its first prototype to be tested at sea. The Ocean Cleanup Foundation, founded by the 21-year-old Slat, has deployed a 100-meter clean-up boom today in the North Sea in The Netherlands.The p…
www.ecowatch.com