A different type of ability plant

As solar technology continues to form gains in efficiency and affordability, designers are starting to take on the next challenge in the evolution of solar technology: how to invent it aesthetic, or at least inconspicuous. While many are solving that problem by integrating solar panels into poolside furniture and ladies undergarments, a consortium of designers in Japan are taking a more functional approach: solar leaves.

While they don’t seem to have the art of camouflage perfected quite …

Technology helps turtles escape

All too often turtles are the accidental victims of commercial fishing. They get caught in the hooks, and even whether the fishermen try to release them, the traditional J-hooks do too much damage, causing internal bleeding and suffocation. The turtles just can’t survive that.

To try to help the turtles, the World Wildlife Fund is sponsoring a trial of a new kind of hook, and they are aly seeing a 90% success rate. The turtles can be safely released, and the fishermen are still able to ma…

Catching leaks may conserve water in the lengthy run

One of the biggest challenges for water conservation is finding and repairing leaks. While a small leak may only lose a little water, by day those drips add up. And when you multiply that volume of water by the number of small leaks, you can see that we are potentially losing a huge amount of water through our water mains, even before a significant break occurs.

The city of Berkeley is taking a proactive approach with a pilot program to conserve water by identifying leaks before they surf…

HP reduces packaging by 97% on laptops for Wal-Mart

If you’re unpacking your new HP Pavilion dv3500 series laptop, don’t bother getting a massive bag to gather the piles of paper and plastic usually found when opening any electronic product. HP has decided to take the Wal-Mart challenge of reducing environmental impact and limit packaging waste as a supplier.

Instead of wads of plastic and styrofoam, your new notebook, packaged that way exclusively for Wal-Mart, comes with a couple of plastic bags and one piece of paperboard with product i…

McDonald Observatory adds solar-powered BLOOMhouse to its campus

It’s always fun to see futuristic home designs at conventions and expos, but it’s even cooler to see one actually graduate into a functional living/working environment. That’s what’s happened in the case of the University of Texas’ BLOOMhouse. The 550 square-foot home was initially designed for the 2007 Solar Decathlon — but it now serves proudly on the campus of one of the nation’s top star-gazing outposts — and home of the much beloved StarDate — the McDonald Observatory.

The BLOOMho…

Keeping track of the vanishing coal plant industry

Over at Earth2Tech, they’ve been holding their own countdown to extinction for coal potential plants. that Coal Death Watch Map adds a small marker to a map of the US every date a coal-fired capability plants closes down.

Yet they were thrown a bit of a curve ball on a recent coal plant closing. The Mitchell Plant in Albany, Georgia is a coal plant that will not be closing its doors completely, but it will be converting by to a biomass utility plant. that conversion will allow the plant t…

QinetiQ flies solar plane for 83 hours

A 66-pound plane covered in paper thin solar panels made an 83 hour unmanned flight last month. It is not a new official world record but QinetiQ says it was more interested in the flight than the record anyway.

The plane, named the Zephyr, is built from carbon fiber and powered by the sun in the daytime and rechargeable lithium sulphur batteries at night.

In its ultra lightweight state the plane obviously won’t hold passengers, but it could be a good alternative for military reconnais…

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