Monthly Archives: July 2006

Accelerating Developments for Green Cars

smart car
A few car makers are actively trying to make our over-reliance on oil less of an issue. The most interesting one is the car made by Tesla motors.
Here is a quick round-up of recent announcements:

Toyota is thinking of making a ethanol-powered vehicle in the “near term” and is “pursing a plug-in hybrid vehicle” for the USA’s auto market.

“DaimlerChrysler has turned its popular teeny Smart car into an EV. The electric version of the Smartfortwo will be available for lease to 100 customers in Great Britain in November.”

A car made by Tesla Motors (who gets funding from Google founders and a Pay-Pal founder) has made and electric car that can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in about four seconds.

Go green cars go!

Musicians In New Orleans Build A Village

A 23-year-old saxophone player named Dan Oestreicher and other fellow residents of the Ninth Ward in New Orleans have come together with Habitat For Humanity to build a “Musicians Village”. The new housing program aims to provide affordable housing for victims of last years hurricaine as well as to bring together the musicians in the area. The concept was dreamed into frution with the help of Harry Connick Jr and sax player Branford Marsalis. The only catch is that they have to help build it! They must spend 350 hours pounding nails and cutting drywall, and the result will be a community based in commradere and good tunes!

Students Cleanup Their ‘Hood

Students at Spain Middle School, which is nowhere near Spain, in fact the school is in Detroit Michigan. Detroit is renowned for it’s urban areas that are falling apart, well these kids had enough. For a school project they utilized technologies used by NASA and marketing corporations, GIS – also known as Geographic Information Systems.

They went around their neighborhoods documenting all things wrong. They plotted the location of say an abandoned car and took a picture of it and went on to the next sign of urban blight. After collecting all their data they took the next logical step.

“They students have compiled their material into Power Point presentations for Detroit city council members, highlighting areas that have been neglected and need improvement. They were able to show, for example, that the number of abandoned homes in one neighborhood had increased by more than 50 percent. The Wayne County prosecutors’ office began targeting the area.”

With GIS technology becoming more accessible hopefully we can see it used for more projects like this and maybe for tracking environmental damage too.

Scientists Regrow Damaged Nerve Cells in Rats

In an amazing new discovery (ScienceDaily), Researchers at Johns Hopkins and the University of Michigan have been able to regrow damaged nerve cells in lab rats. The researchers used an enzyme called sialidase from bacteria to treat the rats’ spinal cords.

There is hope that the proceedure will also work on other types of spinal cord injuries.
Continue reading →

First Fair Trade Town in USA

Buying fair trade is increasing in popularity, as any ThingsAreGood reader already knows, but it has taken a little longer for the World Bank to catch on. On the WB’s private sector development blog they announced today that fair trade is popular. Even if they are a little slow, good for the WB for figuring things out.

In the United States of America, a town has proclaimed itself to be the first town to be a fair trade community. These communities have existed in Europe for years now, but now that it’s happening in America let’s hope the idea continues to grow. Congrats go out to Media, Pennsylvania becoming a fair trade community.

“The Media Borough Council unanimously passed a resolution on June 15th supporting the concept of Fair Trade and promising to serve Fair Trade products at its meetings and functions. The resolution was the last goal necessary to become a Fair Trade town. The other goals are that a certain percentage of retailers and institutions sell and use Fair Trade products, widespread support and media coverage exist for Fair Trade, and an ongoing steering committee keeps the Fair Trade issue vital. Since there is as yet no national Fair Trade town initiative in the United States, Media, Pennsylvania used the goals established by the Fairtrade Foundation of Britain.”