Fast Company,Wikipedia Galaxy video: Fall Through A Wormhole Into This Stunning Wikipedia Galaxy | Co.Design | business design

Wikipedia does indeed merit a rousing three cheers or should I say Four million-six hundred and sixty eight thousand-one-hundred and seventeen (4,668,117) CHEERS! This brought to us by  Owen Cornec, a French computer science student who also deserves a huge round of applause.

View the Video (format mp4)


Quote from Fastcompany :


"There are a 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone, and the Milky Way is relatively small on the cosmic scale. Luckily, there aren't nearly as many Wikipedia articles: with only 4,668,117 entries published to the English Wikipedia as I write this, stars outnumber those Wikipedia entries 1,867 to 1. From that perspective, Wikigalaxy—a beautiful new visualization of Wikipedia that transforms Wikipedia into a virtual galaxy and maps every entry to a star in a distant nebula—isn't exactly a one-to-one mapping. But when your core idea is this cool, it doesn't need to be."


I have also siezed upon this work to bring readers attention to the impressive approach to Innovation by Fastcompany

REFERENCE Fall Through A Wormhole Into This Stunning Wikipedia Galaxy | Co.Design | business design:



'via Blog this'

And now the weather, featuring climate change blame - environment - 28 August 2014 - New Scientist

And now the weather, featuring climate change blame - environment - 28 August 2014 - New Scientist

Weather forecasting will soon give us predictions about the role of Climate Change on our periodic meteo bulletin" 
This could prove a strong tool to bring environment & economics finally into line? 

Best regars all.

Top 10 Things You Didn't (may not) Know About Concentrating Solar Power_(CSP) provided by the US Department of Energy

Be sure to check-out the interactive presentation of CSP-Concentrating Solar Power provided by the USA's Depart of Energy, part of the series "Top Things You Didn't Know About...also from the Department.

As a metallurgist, high-temperature physical chemist and materials scientist I have undelined  the use of molten salts for thermal energy storage, cf N°6 in the list below.

Top 10 Things You Didn't(or may not) Know About Concentrating Solar Power | Department of Energy: "

"'via Blog this'

THE TOP 10 LIST :

10. Concentrating solar power (CSP) technology involves using mirrors, sometimes in the hundreds of thousands, to reflect sunlight and collect solar heat to generate electricity. A single CSP plant can generate enough power for about 70,000 homes -- making it a major player of the utility-scale solar market. For more CSP technology basics, watch our video Energy 101: Concentrating Solar Power.

9. Legend has it that the Greek scientist, Archimedes, first made use of concentrated sunlight by employing the reflective properties of bronze shields to set fire to Roman ships during the battle of Syracuse in 212 BC. While experimental recreations have proved such a feat is possible, much doubt still surrounds this story.

8. There are four types of demonstrated CSP technologies. Parabolic trough and linear Fresnel systems focus sunlight onto a linear receiver. The other two technologies -- dish/engine and power tower -- focus sunlight to a point. All of these technologies involve converting sunlight into thermal energy for use in a heat-driven engine.

7.  How can solar-generated electricity be consistently available when the sun doesn’t shine around-the-clock? The answer lies in thermal energy storage -- the ability to store the sun’s heat in the form of thermal energy for use when the sun isn’t shining. By incorporating thermal energy storage systems, the cost of power from a CSP plant can actually be reduced and can provide solar power on demand -- even when it’s cloudy or at night.

6. As early as the 1980s, the Energy Department has made strategic investments to demonstrate that large-scale concentrating solar power tower systems are viable. The Solar One project near Barstow, California, paved the way for Solar Two, the world’s first large-scale molten salt power tower facility, launched in 1996. Today, molten salt thermal energy storage technology is widely commercialized in the CSP industry, and both direct steam and molten salt power tower technology are currently being deployed at a global scale.

5. More than 800 megawatts of CSP plants currently operate in the United States. Four new CSP plants will soon increase the total CSP capacity in the United States to 1.8 gigawatts. These new CSP plants will provide enough electricity for nearly half a million homes. Check out our interactive map of America’s CSP plants -- both up-and-running and under-construction.

4. In a CSP system, heat transfer fluids move thermal energy from the solar receiver to the power block, where the heat is used to drive a turbine that generates electricity. The Energy Department is funding research projects to develop new heat transfer fluids that can operate at incredibly high temperatures, of up to 2,350 degrees Fahrenheit, to increase efficiency and decrease costs.

3. The Energy Department’s SunShot Initiative has set aggressive targets to lower the cost of CSP by the end of the decade. The CSP research and development projects funded under SunShot focus on exploring technological innovations for CSP components that will help achieve this goal.

2. The CSP supply chain is overwhelmingly domestic. Most, if not all, materials necessary to build a CSP plant can be found and manufactured here in the United States -- creating job opportunities and driving economic growth. As an example, the supply chain for Abengoa’s Solana recently commissioned project covers 27 states and 90 U.S. companies.

1. Between 11 and 21 gigawatts of CSP could be built and integrated into existing fossil fuel plants in the United States – enough to power to between 3 million and 6 million homes. These hybrid systems improve the efficiency and performance of both resources and help cut carbon pollution -- mitigating the effects of climate change.

MORE NEW PROJECTS & RESEARCHERS

Making AFM probes 20 times more sensitive - Materials Today &

Detecting and characterizing single nanoparticles and airborne viruses are of paramount importance for disease control and diagnosis, for environmental monitoring, and for understanding size dependent properties of nanoparticles for developing innovative products. Although single particle and virus detection have been demonstrated in various platforms, single-shot size measurement of each detected particle has remained a significant challenge.  (ref.1)

Recently laser physicists have found a way to make atomic-force microscope probes 20 times more sensitive and capable of detecting forces as small and light as the weight of an individual virus.

The technique, developed by researchers in the Quantum Optics Group of the Research School of Physics and Engineering, hinges on using laser beams to cool a nanowire probe to minus 265 degrees Celsius. 

The development is thought to be of use in improving the resolution of atomic-force microscopes, which are the state-of-the-art tool for measuring nanoscopic structures and the tiny forces between molecules.(refs 2-3)


REFS:

1. Single virus and nanoparticle size spectrometry by whispering-gallery-mode microcavities

2. Making AFM probes 20 times more sensitive - Materials Today

3. Australian National University,

LINK_Copper foam turns CO2 into useful chemicals -ref. Materials Today

“Copper has been studied for a long time as an electrocatalyst for CO2 reduction, and it’s the only metal shown to be able to reduce CO2 to useful hydrocarbons,” said Tayhas Palmore, professor of engineering and senior author of the new research. “There was some indication that if you roughen the surface of planar copper, it would create more active sites for reactions with CO2.”

LINK to post in Materials Scienceand Engineering Defined

Read and Share, credit to Materials Today for bringing this information to my attention

Waste to Energy: The Answer for Remote Islands is the title of my 2nd theme choice from Waste Management World (WMW) in order to introduce readers to the magazine

Waste to Energy: The Answer for Remote Islands

However, with appropriate levels of realism and pragmatism it is possible to adopt an approach that provides adequate protection to the local environment. Funding is often a major issue, and external support is an inevitable requirement if modern standards of environmental protection are to be met.

Due to their relatively small scale, the development and operation of on-island waste treatment and disposal facilities which meet increasingly stringent legislative requirements is a challenge.

While Islands can range in size from the smallest rock to the 2.1 million km² of Greenland, for those with a human population, the issue of waste management can be problematic. Often isolated from end markets for recyclates, does waste to energy technology offer these remote communities the ideal solution?

by Andrew Street

SITA's waste to energy plant on the Isle of Man handles all of the island's waste and exports 5 MW to the grid - around 10% of the island's needs Image credit: SITA

Due to their relatively small scale, the development and operation of on-island waste treatment and disposal facilities which meet increasingly stringent legislative requirements is a challenge. Whilst many remote island communities are not usually subject to the same level of legislative control as larger mainland states (for example, with regard to key EU Directives relating to waste management), it is usual for an island authority to seek to adopt an approach, and to introduce facilities and technologies that at least go some way to reflecting the high standards set out in European or other similar legislation. 

Within EU legislation, including that relating to waste management, such as the Waste Framework Directive and Landfill Directive, there is explicit recognition of the challenge of seeking to apply the same strict standards to small islands, and in these cases exemptions or derogations often apply.

This should not of course be seen as a 'licence' for any local, island based authority to adopt standards which give rise to wholesale environmental damage. Indeed given the reliance many small islands have on maintaining the environment either for the purposes of supporting tourism or local agriculture, that would clearly be counter-productive.

Lessons from history

In the past there have been plenty of examples of inappropriate waste management on small or remote islands, with very little attempt at adopting a sustainable approach that protects the local environment. On many small remote islands across Europe – and across the globe – indiscriminate dumping of waste was often the norm, with open burning and sometimes the tipping of the residue in a remote corner of the island. For example, for many years on the Greek island of Santorini waste was tipped over a high cliff. However this is no longer practiced and great strides have been made across many of the Greek islands in addressing these issues.

An extreme example of poor waste management – described in the worldwide press in 2012 as 'apocalyptic' and a 'floating toxic time bomb' – is the island of Thilafushi in the Maldives. With an indigenous population of around 330,000 but with nearly 800,000 tourist visitors each year, the Maldives archipelago is considered one of the most beautiful holiday destinations in the world. Of the 1200 islands in the group, 200 are inhabited and half of these are designated as resorts. Consequently, pressure on the environment is enormous, and waste management has simply not been adequately planned for or invested in.

The result is an open dump receiving over 300 tonnes of rotting waste each day, and on an island that is increasingly threatened by rising sea levels; this clearly means something has to be done.

The relatively small permanent population and the potential impact of a transient tourist population can place considerable pressure on local governments in terms of funding waste management services. Most remote island communities can only afford the most basic of waste management systems without external funding, simply because they do not have the local tax raising capacity to fund the full range of infrastructure required to deal with issues such as power generation and supply, water supply and wastewater treatment, let alone to manage solid waste in line with modern standards.

Population critical

There are examples of larger islands having the capacity to develop modern facilities, and to attract the investment required to do so. Two recent examples include the Isle of Man (population of 85,000) and Jersey (population of 98,000), both of which have state-of-the-art waste to energy facilities in place. A third example is the Western Isles (population of 26,000) off the north-western coast of Scotland, where a new integrated waste treatment facility has fairly recently been commissioned.

The Western Isles Integrated Waste Management Facility was the first in the UK to use anaerobic digestion to treat source separated organic waste to generate energy

Islands with much smaller populations simply could not support the development of this sort of facility without external funding from central government, or through grants. A current example of this is the Isles of Scilly – one of the most beautiful island archipelagos in Europe - but with a very small indigenous population of just 2200 people. Without the current commitment from the UK government to provide substantial funding it would simply not be possible for the island's local council to address the urgent need to replace an existing but ageing incinerator with a modern waste to energy facility and at the same time remediate a site which has been impacted by waste management over the last 50 years.

A parallel situation also arises for St Helena in the South Atlantic – one of the most remote islands in the world. St Helena, a British Overseas Territory, has an indigenous population of around 6600, and currently a relatively small number of tourists. That is due to change in the coming years with the development of a €240 million airport, which will make the island far more accessible. Major improvements to the Island's waste collection, treatment and disposal system are currently underway, but largely reliant on funding provided by the UK government.

Limited markets

The size of the local economy and industrial/agricultural base often cannot sustain consistently high levels of material reuse, limiting local markets for recycled materials and for compost products. This is particularly pertinent for an extremely remote location, where the transfer of materials off-island would be both expensive, and difficult to justify in terms of sustainability. This is clearly less of an issue for islands close to a mainland market, and in these cases recycling should be encouraged and established transport routes utilised to transfer materials to mainland markets for recycling.

There will however always be some scope for local reuse and recycling. Particularly in the developing world the imagination of the local population appears to have no limit when it comes to converting waste into something of real value. In most cases however, the market is limited by the size of the local economy, or impacted by the transient nature of any tourist traffic to the island. Therefore a degree of realism is needed when it comes to the level of recycling and reprocessing that can be sustained.

Additionally, on many islands there are seasonal increases in waste generation, and high levels of packaging associated with the necessary importation of food and other goods. These variations make it difficult to sustain both local and off-island commitment to resource efficient recycling and composting. Seasonal variations are often related to tourist activity, which although valuable to the local economy, will always bring additional pressures to the local environment, including the generation and importation of waste

Viable options

Experience indicates that there are normally just a few viable approaches to waste management that could be said to reflect 'good practice' (although not necessarily 'best practice') within a western, mainland state subject to strict legislative controls (such as would be the case for European Member States).

As outlined, it would not be appropriate to adopt the same approach to dealing with waste on a small remote island as one would for a large European metropolitan authority with access to local and central funding, a range of options for collection, treatment and disposal, and an established and mature market for a range of segregated materials and process outputs.

For a remote island community, or indeed any remote location, the range of realistic options for managing waste are inevitably much more limited. Experience across the globe shows that the most likely options to be adopted are:

Existing landfill operation of St Helena in the South Atlantic – soon to be upgraded with funding from the UK government

Landfill: Reliance on landfill as the principal disposal route, with some limited recycling and reuse, but within the limits of local markets. Efforts are typically focused on ensuring that the landfill site (normally a single site, unless the island happens to cover a very large area, or is made up of an archipelago of islands) is developed and operated on a sanitary basis and is subject to appropriate levels of management and control so as to minimise the environmental impact. There are many islands across the world where this approach remains the strategy, and is the preferred approach going forward.

Jersey's recently commissioned waste to energy plant will process up to 105,000 tonnes of waste per year and generate around 7% of the island's electricity Credit: Hopkins Architects Ltd

Thermal treatment: On some larger islands, where the quantity of waste is sufficient to justify the investment, it is quite common for the principal disposal route to be thermal processing through incineration. The preferred technology would be conventional incineration, and it would be unusual for a plant to be smaller than 10,000 – 15,000 tonnes/annum (although there are a few examples of smaller sized facilities on islands). Rarely is this on a combined heat and power (CHP) basis, simply because typically there will be few opportunities for use of the heat, but almost without exception power will be generated and exported to the local network. Any residual wastes that cannot be incinerated would be sent to landfill, along with incinerator residues.

What is notable is that it is very rare for other waste treatment technology to be introduced on small remote islands – whether that be the treatment of residual waste to create RDF for thermal processing (simply because it would not make sense to introduce two expensive treatment processes for such a small quantity of waste), or the treatment of organic waste by anaerobic digestion or composting.

Anaerobic digestion would normally be inappropriate in a remote island situation due to the relative complexity of the technology, and also the challenges of disposing of the digestate. There are often similar challenges in disposing of organic waste derived composts, simply because the local demand for such materials on remote islands is often minimal, and it could therefore end up being sent to landfill – which somewhat defeats the object of investing in a relatively expensive treatment process in the first place.

Conclusion

Developing and implementing a truly sustainable waste strategy for small islands can be challenging, and this becomes all the more difficult for those islands that are very remote. However, with appropriate levels of realism and pragmatism it is possible to adopt an approach that provides adequate protection to the local environment. Funding is often a major issue, and external support is an inevitable requirement if modern standards of environmental protection are to be met.

Andrew Street is a director at SLR Consulting Limited
Web: www.slrconsulting.com

More Waste Management World Articles
Waste Management World Issue Archives Waste Management World Issue Archives

Go Green Profitably_Circular Ecology - Energy, Carbon, Water, Waste - Home

If you are,

 as we are:

Passionate about energy, carbon, water and waste.

Dedicated towards robust, innovative and value for money assessment.

Experienced resource efficiency experts.

Listed blow is a short selection of Circular Ecology's resources: Inventory of Carbon & Energy (ICE) Embodied Carbon Knowledge Hub Services Offered  Footprinting: Energy, carbon, water and waste footprints. For products, organisations, buildings (construction projects) and supply chains. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): An LCA typically assesses the full life cycle impact of a product, activity or service and against up to 18 environmental impact categories. We offer both streamlined and detailed LCA. Resource Efficiency Assessment: We draw on our LCA and footprinting background to assess resource efficiency and to make a number of recommendations for improvement. A truly resource efficient approach would conform to circular economy principles. Craig's team are developing a free Embodied Carbon Knowledge Hub, dedicated to all things embodied carbon. We hope to have the site up and running by the end of 2013 or early in 2014. Read more about theEmbodied Carbon Knowledge Hub.

Check out the website of Prof. Craig Jones and discuss any issues with him and
his team of experts @

Circular Ecology - Energy, Carbon, Water, Waste - Home:

'via Blog this'

“To produce 1 kg of paper requires more embodied energy than is requires to produce 1 kg of steel”!