Energy internet!!!

Thomas L Friedman calls for action!

If we want to save the planet we need to work togehter. He gives his opinions en suggestions to work on it.

You can feel the urge when he talks.

I think he is got some really good points. Now find a way to make it work.

Maybe his ideas call for a strategy and concept for the internet to make the governments of this planet understand that they are old school concerning the economy and environmental decisions.

How can we achieve a revolution on the internet to get people to understand our possibilities to do something?

Start using the power of the internet and stimulate everybody, also our governments to use green energy. It's not about money, it is about saving ourselfes.

Listen to his explanation of the Energy Internet.

He believes in ET; Energy Technology. This is our new economy perhaps?

I think tis is one of the possible evolutions of the internet....The Energy Internet.

Thomas L Friedman speaks...

Mon, Oct 20, 2008  Permanent link

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Pale blue dot!

Sat, Sep 13, 2008  Permanent link

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Designed by nature Anaconda

Anaconda.



Anaconda uses an entirely new way of harvesting wave energy. Essentially, it is a very large (perhaps 200m long and 5m diameter) water filled distensible rubber tube floating just beneath the ocean surface at right angles to the waves, with a power take off at the stern. As a long wave passes the bulge tube is lifted with the surrounding water and this causes a bulge wave to be excited which passes down the tube’s walls like a pulse in an artery, gathering energy from the ocean wave as it goes. Continuous energy gathering is caused by resonance between the bulge wave frequency and the sea wave’s so energy is drawn in towards the tube from the width of the sea wave crest as it progresses along the tube . Energy from the sea wave is stored in the rubber as potential energy by it being stretched (in a sea wave it is stored as potential energy due to gravity). The bulge wave travels just in front of the wave rather like a surfer, picking up energy as it increases progressively in size. At the end of the tube the bulge wave energy is converted to a surge of water which drives a turbine in the power take off after the flow has been smoothed.

It is a closed circuit system so issues with ingestion of marine animals will not arise. Because it is under the surface and rubber can be formulated to be non polluting, environmental impact will be minimal.

Anaconda demo

Anaconda is novel and the operating concept can be hard to grasp. It's all about hydrodynamics. As you explore the site they will explain in more detail how it works and its many advantages. Because Anaconda is new it poses technical challenges which they are currently managing in their development programme. As this progresses they will provide more information on their website.

Official website
Anaconda website

Anaconda is the brainchild of Emeritus Professor Francis Farley, a major arse-kicking boffin. He's a Fellow of the Royal Society and a winner of the Society's Hughes medal.
His past career has included work on radar control at Britain's mighty cross-channel Dover gun batteries during World War II.

Later, the prof did particle-punishing research at the CERN atom-smasher in Switzerland.

In wave power, Farley has been involved with a number of designs, including early stages of the "Pelamis" beam generation plan. Now he is progressing the Anaconda, which has already been through some lab tests at Southampton Uni. It seems as though the machines could produce 'leccy at 6p per kilowatt-hour; pricey compared to fossil or nuclear juice, but pretty good for renewables.

"The Anaconda could make a valuable contribution to environmental protection by encouraging the use of wave power," says Professor John Chaplin of Southampton.

Wed, Sep 10, 2008  Permanent link

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Cern! The end of times?

Cern or ConCern?

People panic. Scientist' are threatened with dead. What will happen. Will there be a black whole? What happens if human beings create a mini copy of the big bang them selves?

The experiment is about to happen....

A subatomic venture

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

These were the words of the famous physicist Albert Einstein, who went on to say that "Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."

If you venture into the subatomic world in an attempt to unveil its inner workings, possession of all the knowledge in the world is not enough. Instead, invite your imagination to serve as a guide, because many rules as we know them no longer apply. Just like the story of Alice In Wonderland, this new world may look familiar but it is not fully comprehensible. Scales shift and matter transforms. Transitory twins appear and extra dimensions hide.

Nature has the ability to throw us the biggest surprises, so expect dramatic twists and unexpected turns; many before you have dreamed up mind–blowing theories and crazy concepts. Some of these have prevailed against the tests of time and armies of knowledgeable critics – thus far.

Someone, sometime, somewhere, may succeed in completing these unfinished mysteries, or even rewrite the chapters entirely. The book is by no means finished.

CERN is an international laboratory for particle physicists, providing some of the most technologically advanced facilities for their research into the basic building blocks of the Universe. Specialist facilities that would otherwise be difficult or impossible for individual nations to build include advanced particle accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider, and facilities for the production of exotic forms of matter, including antimatter.





CERN has established a reputation at the forefront of research, proven through its experiments, past and present. The Laboratory is a vibrant meeting place for discussion and debate; around half of the world’s particle physicists come here for their research. This is reflected in the experiments, which are usually run by international collaborations, bringing together teams of physicists from different institutes towards a common goal.



Geneva, 7 August 2008. CERN1 has today announced that the first attempt to circulate a beam in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be made on 10 September. This news comes as the cool down phase of commissioning CERN’s new particle accelerator reaches a successful conclusion. Television coverage of the start-up will be made available through Eurovision.

The LHC is the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, producing beams seven times more energetic than any previous machine, and around 30 times more intense when it reaches design performance, probably by 2010. Housed in a 27-kilometre tunnel, it relies on technologies that would not have been possible 30 years ago. The LHC is, in a sense, its own prototype.

Safetey numbers, radiation figures, etc,




Webcast will be available!

CERN
Radiationfacts

Tue, Sep 9, 2008  Permanent link

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GALAXY ZOO!! (community)

Systems of Stars
Sir Patrick Moore for Galaxy Zoo













We have found out a great deal about the galaxies, but we cannot claim that our knowledge is at all complete, and there are so many of them that even classification is a problem. This is where Galaxy Zoo is so helpful. It has been organised by professional astronomers, and demonstrates yet again that in astronomy professionals and amateurs can work closely together to their mutual benefit. And – who knows? – while taking part in the programme you may be luck enough to make some unexpected and spectacular discovery. The universe, with its majestic star-cities, is indeed a wonderful place.




So here it is.... A place were people with the same passion share there knowledge and content about and images from the galaxy.

There is still the possibillity to join! Feel free and take the tour!


How to Take Part - Tutorial


Your job is very simple! All you need to do is look out for the features that mark out spiral and elliptical galaxies. In fact, as you're a human and not a computer, most galaxies should be easy to classify since they're obviously spirals or obviously ellipticals. On this page, you will practice classifying galaxies. On the next page, you will take a short trial to test your skills. If you don’t pass the trial, you can try again. Once you pass the trial, you can start contributing to Galaxy Zoo science!




GALAXY ZOO

Mon, Sep 8, 2008  Permanent link

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Nice toy 360° Video with Papervision3D video

Check this beautifull new tool for the video industry.

Just love it...!

click here

Wed, Apr 2, 2008  Permanent link

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Volapük since 1879–1880....and now?

Today I saw a man on television ( Man, sounds old school ).

He is one of the last of 20-30 people that speaks a language that was created for all of us.
I got triggered by his story and thought to search and post about this language....

Volapük

Volapük (pronounced [volaˈpyk], is a constructed language, created in 1879–1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Roman Catholic priest in Baden, Germany.

Schleyer felt that God had told him in a dream to create an international language.

According to his own report, the idea of an international language arose out of a conversation he had with one of his parishioners, a semi-literate German peasant whose son had emigrated to America and could no longer be reached by mail because the United States Postal Service couldn't read the father's handwriting.

Volapük conventions took place in 1884 (Friedrichshafen), 1887 (Munich), and 1889 (Paris).
The first two conventions used German, and the last conference used only Volapük.
In 1889, there were an estimated 283 clubs, 25 periodicals in or about Volapük, and 316 textbooks in 25 languages.

Today there are an estimated 20-30 Volapük speakers in the world.

Schleyer adapted the vocabulary mostly from English, with a smattering of German and French. Often modified, it is beyond easy recognizability.
For instance, "vol" and "pük" are derived from the English words "world" and "speak".

It seems to have been Schleyer's intention, however, to deform its loan words in such a way that they would be hard to recognise and thus lose their ties to the language(s)—-and, by extension, nations—-they came from.

Compare the common criticism that Esperanto and Interlingua are much easier to learn for Europeans than for those with non-European native languages. R was not included in the initial set aiming to ease the pronunciation for Chinese speakers. However other phonemes difficult for non-Europeans (such as ö and ü) remain.

Then the internet;
Volapuk and Translit have been in use since the early days of the Internet to write e-mail messages and other texts in Russian where the support of Cyrillic fonts was limited: either the sender did not have a keyboard with Cyrillic letters or the receiver did not necessarily have Cyrillic screen fonts.

In the early days, the situation was aggravated by a number of mutually incompatible computer encodings for the Cyrillic alphabet, so that the sender and receiver were not guaranteed to have the same one. Also, the 7-bit character encoding of the early days was an additional hindrance.

Some Russian e-mail providers even included Volapuk encoding in the list of available options for the e-mails routed abroad, e.g.,
Example

COBETCKIJ COIO3 ("advanced" volapuk)
СОВЕТСКИЙ СОЮЗ (Cyrillic)
SOVETSKIY SOYUZ (transliteration)
Soviet Union (English)

A constructed world

A constructed world (also conworld or sub-creation) is an imaginary world, usually associated with a fictional universe, built via a world building or conworlding process.

A constructed world typically has a number of constructed cultures and constructed languages associated with it. Worlds are often created for a novel, video game, or role-playing game, but sometimes for personal enjoyment or its own sake (see geofiction).

I think maybe Space Collective is close to becoming a constructed space...the constructed language is still missing... any volunteers?

Volapük

Thu, Feb 28, 2008  Permanent link

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Design meets nature 3.

PARQUE ESPAÑA LIBRARY BY GIANCARLO MAZZANTI


At the edge of the mountain in the city of Santo Domingo, Colombia, Giancarlo Mazzanti projected three artificial rocks as a symbol for the city to enhance urban development and public activities in the area.

The rock-buildings are organized into three major blocs: library, community center and cultural center. Each tower-rock has a different height to accommodate its program, creating educational environments for multiplicity of events.

Tue, Feb 26, 2008  Permanent link

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In the Event of Global Disaster, the Ultimate Crop Backup System

In the Event of Global Disaster, the Ultimate Crop Backup System

Opened offically 05.26.07


November 2007 Issue A blastproof vault being built deep inside an Arctic mountain will be the world's seed bank of last resort. Early withdrawal discouraged Seed Bank The Norwegian Island of Spitsbergen A Category 5 hurricane makes landfall, winds clocking in at 208 miles per hour. Eleven thousand die; there are $5 billion in damages; the region's economy is set back 20 years. More bad news for the survivors: Crops, and therefore the food supply, have been destroyed. This isn't a doomsday scenario: It happened in 1998 when Hurricane Mitch shredded large parts of Honduras and Nicaragua. But in a break with the usual devastating cycle of famine following a natural disaster, relief organizations worked with seed banks to supply farmers, saving lives and letting the agencies focus on problems like rebuilding the housing stock. Seed banks don't just store dried peas; they preserve our most precious resource, biodiversity. (You can't eat petroleum.) The banks back up farmers and thus the food chain, minimizing the impact of catastrophic crop failures. Without seed banks, when a species is destroyed or a genetically modified variety has supplanted wild strains, farmers have no recourse if weather or pest infestation devastates their crops. The Global Crop Diversity Trust is raising $260 million to run the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which will serve as the backup's backup. Starting in 2008, as many as 4.5 million samples from other banks will be preserved on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen in icy perpetuity. There are only two reasons a seed would ever leave this vault: (1) to be replaced by a fresh sample or (2) to reseed a crop that's been wiped off the earth.



Spotted owls and humpback whales grab headlines, but plant life is under siege as well — even fruits and vegetables that humans have been growing for millennia are dying out. One study of more than 8,000 crop varieties grown in the US in 1903 found that only 600 remained by 1983. The solution? A Noah's ark for seeds. Last February, the Norwegian government unveiled plans for the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a fortress for up to 3 million seed varieties on a remote island 600 miles from the North Pole.
The project is the first comprehensive effort to protect the world's agricultural gene pool. Some 1,400 seed repositories throughout the world safeguard roughly 1.5 million varieties against crop failure and serve researchers hoping to breed desired traits. But these collections are fragmentary and loosely organized. Many are vulnerable to threats like floods, civil strife, and simple mismanagement. The Svalbard facility will be a backup to the backups, preserving the DNA of every crop on the planet along with wild relatives. Once the doors open, seeds will be released only if every other source has been depleted or destroyed.
"This is an insurance policy for the world's most valuable natural resource," says Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which is spearheading the project. The vault should be finished by October at a cost of roughly $6 million. The Norwegian government is funding construction, and Fowler's group has pledged to pay operational costs and help develop standards to link up existing agricultural databases.
"This vault is not a time capsule," Fowler says. "It's a living institution." And while it lives, so will the crops that mankind relies on to survive.

The Svalbard Seed Vault



Entrance
A | To maintain security, motion sensors and a webcam monitor the door. The control tower at the local airport has a direct view of the site, which is kept well lit during the dark winter months.

Tunnel

B | A tunnel extends 400 feet into the mountain. It leads past an office and utility room before ending at two airlocked chambers. A steel sheath reinforces a portion where the rock is especially prone to fragmentation.

Storage

C | A third of a mile of shelving fills each vault. Above, vents cool the air to 0 degrees Fahrenheit, which will keep some of the seeds viable for centuries. Fresh seeds will be added periodically.

Boxes

D | Seed envelopes are housed in corrugated plastic boxes. Serial numbers link the envelopes to academic databases of information about the seeds' genetic lineage, varietal traits, and other husbandry details.

Envelopes

E | Each envelope holds a 500-seed sample. Adapted from the pharmaceutical industry, a five-layer composite of mylar, plastic, and foil keeps out air and moisture and resists punctures.

Story By Lucas Graves and rendering by Don Foley

Tue, Feb 26, 2008  Permanent link

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Designed by nature (officially opened 01/28/08)

The Arup/PTW design, known as the 'Water Cube', plays on the geometry of water bubbles in a rectangular form. The structure's shape is specifically designed to work in harmony with the circular main Olympic stadium by the Swiss architectural team of Herzog & de Meuron Architekten with China Architecture Design and Research Group and Arup Sport London. Both are to be built on the Beijing Olympic Green.


There are two parts to the centre's structural framework - internal and external.

The external structure forms the actual roof and ceiling. This accepts the lightweight transparent 'teflon' known as ETFE pillow cladding. This face structure comprises a flat web of rectangular box sections bolted together on site. The building's skin, made from ETFE, has been designed to react specifically to lighting and projection. This state-of-the-art material provides a cost-effective cladding solution, enabling a wide range of applications where traditional materials, such as glass, may not be possible.

The internal steel space frame is based on the unique geometry of biological cells or soap bubbles. Arup based this 'soap bubbles' structural concept on a solution from two Irish Professors of Physics at Trinity College, Dublin. The benefits of this frame design, as well as looking like water bubbles, is that it is ideally suited to the seismic conditions found in Beijing. The system consists of three different steel nodes and four different steel members that will be fabricated from steel plate and bolted together on site.

As the building will be clad in ETFE cushions, it means that the solar energy falling on the building will help create a very efficient green house. This energy will be used to heat the pools and the interior area.







The question is; Does it fit the natural environment??

To my opinion design meets nature when the result of the 'piece' also suits the environment.
This is were, I think, the architect(s) / designer(s) should improve their working method.

Here the focus has been on the building totaly. Imagine this building on the moon! Probably less out-placed then in Beijing.
Form follows function, but when form doesn't suit the environment......?

Ego beats nature?

I do love the shape of the bubbles and understand the idea behind the building, but I think it is sold with the artists impressions you see here too.



See the difference between real bubbles and the ambitious project... Failed?

Mon, Jan 28, 2008  Permanent link

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