Monthly Archives: July 2008

Ontario Electronic Waste Program

Starting in April 2009 people living in the Canadian province of Ontario will start paying a levy on electronic products that are costly to recycle. These added fees will go to fund the expensive recycling procedures for electronics, while also expanding the program.

The fees will go to an arm’s-length organization established by Waste Diversion Ontario and will be used to fund the collection and recycling of the products from hundreds of drop-off locations to be established across the province.

The program for TVs and computers is just the beginning of the province’s plans. Waste Diversion Ontario, which creates and runs recycling programs for the province, will today begin drafting the next phase of electronics recycling in Ontario. By next summer, the agency will put forward a plan to recycle nearly all other electronic products.

The ultimate purpose of adding recycling fees is to force manufacturers to create more environmentally friendly products.

Under the program, the fees, which are expected to total $62 million in the first year, could drop in future years if, for example, the cost to recycle the products decreases because manufacturers have removed lead or mercury components.

Things Are Good’s occasional writer, Cam Proctor, will be working on the program! Congrats to Cam!

Blimps for Heavy Lifting

Airships are really fun! We haven’t looked at them in a long time though, last time airships were mentioned here was in 2006. Well, there has been some development since then and now a company has designed an airship for really heavy lifting.

SkyHook International announced Tuesday that it will build the Jess Heavy Lifter (JHL-40) in conjunction with aircraft manufacturer Boeing Co.

The JHL-40 takes elements of a blimp and a helicopter to lift up to 40 tonnes in one load and travel up to 320 kilometres without refuelling. It will have a top speed of 70 knots.
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“The perception is ‘Oh, it’s going to blow up. It’s a Hindenburg or something like that.’ And it’s going to be our job to educate people as to what this thing is. You can’t get around the fact it’s a large envelope full of helium, and it does look a little bit like a balloon,” said the aviation engineer and former helicopter pilot.

“It’s a blimp on steroids because it’s got more than 20,000 horsepower on it and it’s a serious working machine.”

The company said that unlike blimps, the airship is neutrally buoyant.

Ferrari Plans to Build Hybrid Sports Car

Ferrari is planning on building a hybrid race car that will compete with its gas-guzzling cars. Other car manufactures are building (or going to build) hybrid cars, but the reason I post that Ferrari is shifting gears is because in my impression this is significant. When expensive race cars go green it truly means that the future could use less oil.

In a recent interview with German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo said that they are planning to reduce CO2 levels by 40% before 2012. They will make it possible thanks to a new hybrid technology and Ferrari might build cars powered by turbocharged V6 engines which are smaller and more fuel-efficient.

“We are currently working on the development of a Ferrari that will use alternative energy sources and which will be based on what we are doing at the moment in Formula 1″, he said. KERS or Kinetic Energy Recycling System is a technique based on the brake-energy-regeneration principle and it consists of a super-efficient CVT gearbox which uses a spinning flywheel to harness energy when the car brakes. This energy will be perfect to increase the acceleration needed when overtaking or cornering.

Wave Powered Boat Succeeds

We first looked at the wave-powered boat back in March, before Kenichi Horie set sail (or is that set wave?). Now he has become the first person to cross the Pacific in a wave-powered boat.

Weak waves and opposing ocean currents delayed his arrival, which was originally set for late May.

“When waves were weak, the boat slowed down. That’s the problem to be solved,” the adventurer told reporters Saturday from aboard his catamaran Suntory Mermaid II off the Kii Peninsula in western Japan.

The 9.5 metre (31-foot) boat is equipped with two special fins at the front which can move like a dolphin’s tail each time the vessel rises or falls with the rhythm of the waves.

Horie, who will turn 70 in September, reached his destination in the channel between the main Japanese islands of Honshu and Shikoku just before midnight (1500 GMT Friday) after covering some 7,000 kilometres (3,780 nautical miles) from Hawaii without a port call.

“The feeling is yet to sink in,” Horie added, according to the Jiji and Kyodo news agencies. “I want to go home as soon as possible and eat home-cooked meals.”

Horie first made world headlines in 1962 when, at the age of 23, he became the first person to sail solo across the Pacific.

Cold Sores No Mores

Luckily I don’t suffer from cold sores, but a lot of people do. Based on some new research a cure for cold sores could be just around the corner. Researchers have found some key information about how cold sores go away and then come back.

By examining the interplay of various molecular substances the virus produces, researchers at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., have found how it hides and then emerges periodically.

One such substance is called latency associated transcript RNA, which the study reveals blocks the formation of proteins that “turn” on the virus and make it replicate. It does this by splitting into strands of microRNAs, which essentially keep the virus in check.

However, in stressful situations, the virus makes more messenger RNA than the microRNAs can handle and eventually viral replication occurs.
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“In principle, you could activate and then kill all of the virus in a patient,” said Cullen. “This would completely cure a person, and you would never get another cold sore.