Good Fact

This message will disappear in 24 hours

- Cam Proctor

Scientists at Xerox have developed an ink that will disappear from printed paper in 24 hours, allowing the paper to be reprinted and reused again. The ‘disappearing ink’ is actually not an ink at all, but a temporary discoloration of light sensitive molecules known as photochromes. A sheet of paper is coated with these molecules (on both sides) which change color in response to ultraviolet light. After printing, the ‘ink’ starts to revert back to its natural state due to heat provided by the surrounding air. The paper itself is no more expensive than a regular page, costing about 0.5p per sheet.

The technology, which will not be commercially available for several years, will reduce the amount of energy required to print a single page by a factor of 200 – from just over 200kJ (which would power a 75W light bulb for an hour) to 1kJ (which would power the bulb for just 18 seconds), Mr Smith said. A recycled page uses about 110kJ of energy.

Walking Towards Health

- Adam Clare

While I’m at a conference looking at how we can use the internet for the better, in Toronto there’s a conference on how to use public space for the better called Walk 21. The Toronto magazine Spacing has been blogging about it on their site and I particularly like their recent post on how walking improves health and mental well-being.

“I was also particularly struck by their awareness that walking is important for sustaining good mental as well as physical health. It was a message conveyed in a plenary session in the morning by Nova Scotia researcher Catherine O’Brien, but in Canada this concept is still in its initial stages, and public health departments are only just beginning to realize that maintaining good mental health can be as important as maintaining good physical health. Apparently they are way ahead of us in Australia. For example, VicHealth funds public art projects in low-income areas that will draw people into public space, to enhance mental well-being.”

Algae is Gooey Power

- Adam Clare

I’m always impressed by what algae can do. It can be used to generate electricity, make us healthier, it can function as a biofuel, and can be used to clean the air. Algae can almost solve all the worlds problems!

Some enterprising researchers have found out that algae can also be tweaked to create a lot of hydrogen. Hydrogen produced by algae can then be used as a power source elsewhere.

Melis has created mutant algae that make better use of sunlight than their natural cousins do. This could increase the hydrogen that the algae produce by a factor of three. It would also boost the algae’s production of oil for biofuels.

The new finding will be important in maximizing the production of hydrogen in large-scale, commercial bioreactors. In a laboratory, Melis says, “[we make] low-density cultures and have thin bottles so that light penetrates from all sides.” Because of this, the cells use all the light falling on them. But in a commercial bioreactor, where dense algae cultures would be spread out in open ponds under the sun, the top layers of algae absorb all the sunlight but can only use a fraction of it.

Got Radioactive Waste?

- Cam Proctor

If you do have radioactive waste, i.e. any country with nuclear power, you probably have a really, really good plan to store that waste for millions of years. No? Well then you might be interested in transmuting the waste into different form that has a half life of 25 minutes. Using a high-powered laser, gold and some physics I don’t understand iodine can be transmuted making the material safer. If the process could be scaled up and cheaper it could pose an alternative to Yucca Mountain.

British scientists have “transmuted” iodine-129 into iodine-128 with a high-powered laser. Now, dropping one neutron might not seem like a big deal, but the half-life of iodine-129 is 15 million years while the half-life of iodine 128 is 25 minutes.

Green Living Toolbox

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

From Mashable

The internet contains a lot of information, a lot of green information. Mashable has a Green Toolbox that is a massive list of online resources to help you with your green living. This list is very extensive!

From
The Carbon Diet – Track your carbon footprint every day and compare your footprint with those of your friends.
to
Hunuh – Community collaboration space where members can submit & discuss green technologies, services and processes.
This list is great!

Scroll To Top