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Hong Kong’s air quality getting worse
Air pollution levels in Hong Kong were the worst ever last year, the South China Morning Post reported on January 10, a finding that may further undermine the city’s role as an Asian financial center as business executives relocate because of health concerns.
Worsening air quality in Hong Kong caused by vehicle emissions and industrial pollution from the neighboring Pearl River Delta is already forcing many in the financial community to move to Singapore.
Readings at three roadside monitoring stations in Hong Kong’s Central, Causeway Bay and Mong Kok commercial districts showed that pollution levels were above the 100 mark more than 20 per cent of the time, the newspaper said, citing the city’s Environmental Protection Department.
This was 10 times worse than in 2005, when very high readings were recorded only two per cent of the time, it said. The station in Central business district, home to the Asia head- quarters of global banks such as HSBC Holdings Plc and Goldman Sachs Group Inc, showed the worst figures, with excessive readings a quarter of the time, the report said. Hourly readings are taken at the roadside stations throughout the year on major pollutants such as respirable suspended particles and nitrogen oxides. A reading above 100 means at least one pollutant fails air quality objectives. 
Environmentalists renewed their calls for the immediate introduction of new air quality objectives, claiming that the government had deliberately delayed their introduction to ease the way for major infrastructure projects, the newspaper said.
The department blamed the figures on unfavorable weather conditions, worsening background, pollution and the number of aging vehicles on streets. The newspaper quoted the government as saying a number of measures were being considered to help improve air quality, and new air quality objectives would be discussed by Hong Kong’s legislature soon.
CO2 sucker could just clean the air
Researchers in California have produced a cheap plastic capable of removing large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air. Down the road, the new material could enable the development of large-scale batteries and even form the basis of “artificial trees” that lower atmospheric concentrations of CO2 in an effort to stave off catastrophic climate change.
These long-term goals attracted the researchers, led by George Olah, a chemist at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles. Olah, who won the 1994 Nobel Prize in chemistry, has long envisioned future society relying primarily on fuel made from methanol, a simple liquid alcohol. As easily recoverable fossil fuels become scarce in the decades to come, he suggests that society could harvest atmospheric CO2 and combine it with hydrogen stripped from water to generate a methanol fuel for myriad uses.
Olah and his colleagues also work on making cheap, iron-based batteries that can store excess power generated by renewable energy sources and feed it into the electrical grid during times of peak demand. To function, the iron batteries grab oxygen from the air. But if even tiny amounts of CO2 get into the reaction, it kills the battery. In recent years, researchers have come up with good CO2 absorbers made from porous solids called zeolites and metal organic frameworks. But they’re expensive. So Olah and his colleagues set out to find a cheaper alternative.
They turned to polyethylenimine (PEI), a cheap polymer that is a decent CO2 absorber. But it only grabs CO2 at its surface. To boost PEI’s surface area, the USC team dissolved the polymer in a methanol solvent and spread it atop a batch of fumed silica, industrially produced porous solid made from microscopic droplets of glass fused together. When solvent evaporated, it left solid PEI with a high surface area.
When the researchers tested the new material’s CO2-grabbing abilities, they found that in humid air each gram of the material sopped up an average of 1.72 nanomoles of CO2. That’s above the 1.44 nanomoles per gram absorbed by a recent rival made from aminosilica and among the highest levels of CO2 absorption from air ever tested, the team reported in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Once saturated with CO2, the PEI-silica combo is easy to regenerate. The CO2 floats away after polymer is heated to 85 degree Celsius. Other solid CO2 absorbers must be heated to over 800 degree Celsius to drive off the CO2.
Straw as Building Material for Future
A modern take on straw-bale construction may well be the grand design of the future if results coming out of the University of Bath are accepted by the construction industry. Think of a straw-bale house and you might imagine a tumbledown shack that leaks, creaks, slumps and smells somewhat of the farmyard. But step into Bale-Haus, a startlingly contemporary looking prototype home that has been built on the Bath Campus and there’s nary a wisp of straw to be seen. Instead, you are in a hallway of an upside down house with two bedrooms and a bathroom on the ground floor and an airy open plan living area upstairs. It feels like a little piece of Scandinavia has just arrived in Somerset, southwest England. The straw bales are all packed tightly inside a series of prefabricated rectangular wooden wall frames, which are then lime rendered, dried and finally slotted together like giant Lego pieces called ModCell panels.
People perceive straw houses as being a bit hippy and not particularly durable. Add to that the problems of getting mortgage – very few lenders will consider straw-bale construction. The benefits of straw, points out Professor Peter Walker, director of the University of Bath’s BRE Centre for Innovative Construction Materials, are that “it’s cheap, widely available and a good insulator. It’s been used in buildings houses for hundreds of years”.
The stack that remains after grain has been harvested – straw also helpfully soaks up carbon from the atmosphere and locks it in, so long as it is not allowed to decompose. For the building industry, which currently depends on materials with very high embedded energy costs - concrete and brick are expensive in carbon terms both to make and to transport – straw could therefore offer a welcome solution to housing’s greenhouse gas emission.
The straw-bale house won’t get sopping wet in a thunderstorm or go up in a whoosh of flames if you knock over a candle. The results now being published by Walker and his research partner, Dr Katharine Beadle, who have spent the past 18 months testing the BaleHaus against an exhaustive list of risk factors that could rot it, burn it or blow it down, so far seem to be reassuring.
Beadle with his team took a ModCell unit to a test laboratory and tried to reduce it to ashes by strapping it to a fiery furnace and raising the temperature to over 1,000 degree Celsius. “It’s standard test to replicate a fire in a building.” explains Walker. “It means you know that a house will at least retain its structural integrity for half an hour, which gives people a chance to get out”. “It took an hour and a half of being in direct contact with the flames”, says Beadle, before the lime render began to drop off, “and then the straw did start to burn back, but because it’s so compacted it suffered more charring then actual disintegration.”
When it come to blowing the house down – hydraulic jacks were placed against the walls to replicate wind forces pushing against the bales – the ModCell panels moved a few millimeters, but stayed within the tolerances allowed for by the computer modeling carried out prior to its construction. That says Walker, could be very good news for the price of the eventual ModCell building system. “It means the house is stiffer than it needs to be.” The approximate cost of the current modular building system for this design is £132,000 from above the concrete slab. “Cost is a challenge to the introduction of this technology but as a prototype house I think it stacks up well,” said Walker. “The aspiration is that it should be cost competitive with more savings coming through reduced heating bills.”
To replicate the heat given off by humans and appliances arrays of incandescent light bulbs on timers blaze in every room at pre-programmed times of day “to see how much heat escapes, and what level of heating would be needed at different times of the year,” explains Beadle.
“That environmental modeling will give us all the numbers about the energy the house is predicted to use. And if we are predicting how it will operate in given climate change, we can then put in those variables.”
Sensors embedded within each wall panel constantly monitor the degree of moisture absorbed and then released back through the breathable lime render into the sir outside by the panels. And on the air tightness test that was carried out, BaleHaus came in way under the building regulations threshold, and did considerably better than the far lowest “best practice” standard.
- The Guardian
Why don’t you walk and generate some electricity
Juicing up the portable electric devices on the go using energy emitted from human bodies is a dream long conceived by researchers and technology developers. This might now be near possible with this latest development by researchers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Using reverse electrowetting technology that converts the energy generated by moving liquid into electricity the system will be embedded in footware to generate about 20 watts of usable electricity, using heat lost from the body during walks. This can charge up small portable devices and in the future, might generate enough juice to power up those hefty energy drinking mobile phones too.
Other uses of dental floss
There are so many ways to use dental floss than just keeping your teeth and gums healthy. Here are few of the many alternative uses of dental floss:
- Hang time: Use dental floss to hang pictures. In fact, you can use it to hang just about any small object in need of string or wire.
- Sew neat: If you have ever had a coat button that keeps coming off, try dental floss instead of thread the next time you sew it on.
- Cookie saver: Crumbling cookies got you down? Slide some floss underneath your baked goods to easily lift them off the baking tray.
- It’s a wrap: Use dental floss, instead of twine, to securely tie packages for mailing.
- Gone fishing: If you happen to break your fishing line, dental floss makes a sturdy replacement.
Oil spill responsible for corals death
“It reminds me of going to a family funeral,” said Charles Fisher, a biology professor at Penn State University, and chief scientist on a recent mission to study the impact of the Gulf oil spill on coral in the area.
Just like seeing extended family, “It’s always fun to go into the deep sea, and we saw a lot of life” he said. “But, on the other hand the reason you’re there is not a happy reason. Some corals have been severely slimmed. Some are dead or dying.”
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass, led a nine-day mission this month to study the effects of the oil spill on life at the bottom of the sea. A team of scientists set out on a research vessel, spending just over a week in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.
Equipped with both an autonomous submarine called Sentry, as well as a submersible called Alvin, the scientists photographed, mapped and collected samples from the Gulf nearly 24 hours a day. They completed six dives on Alvin, and set up a camera near the site of a dying coral reef, which will snap photos every hour for the next two months monitoring the coral’s heath.
The expedition follows on the heels of an earlier cruise in which many of the same scientists found dozens of coral species seven miles from the spill site that appeared to be dead or dying. The scientists revisited that same site, looked for other coral reefs, and took photos and samples from both the sick coral as well as another colony of reefs that appeared healthy.
“I probably had the happiest experience on the cruise,” said Chris German, chief scientist for deep submergence at Woods Hole. “I got to see the healthy coral.” More disheartening were the damaged and dying corals coated with a brown gooey substance. While German said the team was refraining from making any conclusions about the source of the brown goo before the analysis was complete, he said, “it doesn’t look like it is part of the natural system.”
The coral were “covered in brown goop that we haven’t seen anywhere else,” German said, describing the site as a “smoking gun” that may be representative of other impacted coral communities.
German said that the coral coated in brown goop was about seven miles southwest of the spill site. Based on the ocean currents and the dynamics of the gushing oil, scientists were able to predict where the oil plume was likely to spread. The dying coral was found in that area, while the healthy coral about 15 miles southeast of where the rig exploded was likely out of range of the plume, German said.
Food production threatened by soil erosions
Within 40 years, there will be around two billion more people on Earth. Food production must increase at least 40 per cent, and most of that will have to be grown on the fertile soils covering 11 per cent of the global land surface.
Annually, says the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization, 75bn tones of soil, the equivalent of nearly 10m hectares of arable land, is lost to erosion, water logging and salination; another 20m hectares is abandoned due to degraded soil.
“The world is facing a serious threat of a major food shortage within the next 30 years. We are trying to grow more food on less land while facing increased costs for fertilizer, fuel and a short supply of water,” says Professor Keith Goulding, head of sustainable soils at Rothamsted research station. Lester Brown, president of the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, says it takes between 200 and 1,000 years to renew 2.5cm of soil. “Sometime within the last century, as human and livestock populations expanded, soil erosion began to exceed new soil formation over large areas.”
Soil erosion also leads to lower crop productivity due to loss of water and soil nutrients. A 50 per cent reduction in soil organic matter has been found to reduce corn yields by 25 per cent. Countries are losing soil at different rates. The US, which just avoided turning the Great Plains into a dust bowl in the 1930s, is still losing soil 18 times more rapidly than it is forming it.
Green iphone speaker dock
If you are planning to buy a new iphone speaker dock than this should definitely interest you. You can now buy an iphone speaker dock that is as green as one can get. I think this product will put an end to your search. The new product is called Koostik iPhone Stereo dock.
Nothing gets greener than the Koostik and here is why. It needs no plugging in to amplify your music. So how dies it function? Using the principals of wood acoustics, this one amplifies all your favorite tracks playing out of your iPhone. No wires, no electricity and no grid connections required here.
If you are into heavy metal and high volume music, this one might not just be the right choice for you. If you live those soft vocals and instruments playing though, the Koostik is sure to make you smile.
Optionally made for walnut, cherry and birdseye maple, the Koostik seems to be the best way to play your iPhone music out loud, without electricity.
Study indicates Wi-Fi signals radiation is killing trees
Radiation from Wi-Fi networks which enable our burgeoning online communications may be killing off magnificent trees. Trees planted close to a wireless router has bleeding bark and dying leaves. The revelation will raise fears that Wi-Fi radiation may also be having an effect on the human body and supports parents who have campaigned to stop wireless routers being installed in schools.
The city of Alphen aan den Rijn in the Netherlands ordered the study after officials found unexplained abnormalities on trees. Researches took 20 ash trees and for three months exposed them to six sources of radiation. Trees placed closed to Wi-Fi source developed a ‘lead-like shine’ on their leaves which was caused by the dying of the leaf’s skin.
The Wageningen University scientists behind the research also discovered that Wi-Fi radiation could slow the growth of corn cobs. In the Netherlands, 70 percent of all trees in urban areas show the same symptoms compared with 10 percent five years ago. Trees in densely forested areas are not affected, according to a Wageningen University statement.
The Dutch health agency issued a statement stressing that ‘these are initial results and they have not been confirmed in a repeat survey.’ In 2007, a BBC Panoroma documentary found that radiation levels from Wi-Fi in one school were up to three times the level of mobile phone mast radiation. However the readings were 600 times below government safety limits.
New Zealand wine set to display carbon footprint
Scrutinizing bouquet, viscosity and finish on the palate is no longer enough for the accomplished wine connoisseur but carbon footprint as well. Now they can consider a vintage’s environmental credentials — for one brand at least.
A New Zealand wine has become the first in the world to display the carbon footprint of each individual glass serving on its label — laying bare to the shopper or drinker the full environmental impact of making and transporting it. Each bottle of Mobius Marlborough sauvignon blanc — which takes its name from the highest peak of the range of hills above the town — will display its carbon footprint emissions for a typical 125 ml glass.
On the new label the relevant emissions, which are calculated to reflect the environmental impact of factors such as transportation and refrigeration, will be measured separately for every export market. So, bottles sold in New Zealand, for example, will carry a figure of 140g CO2, whereas bottles shipped to Australia will display 190g.
Significantly, the wine is the world’s first to be certified by the UK’s Carbon Trust which is leading a drive to influence consumer choice by encouraging universal carbon footprint labeling — using its own Carbon Reduction label — across all products.
This certification is a milestone for the New Zealand Wine Company (NZWC), which is based in Marlborough in the country’s South Island and which has been pursuing sustainable management within the New Zealand wine industry.
Craig Fowles, NZWC’s sustainability manager, said, “It’s a very important certification as it is a full-life cycle carbon approach. In a very recent development, the Carbon Trust in the UK announced that sales of products carrying its carbon footprint reduction label will shortly top GBP 2bn per annum.”