Month: November 2010

World Toilet Day

- Adam Clare

World Toilet Day is today! For those of you who care about sanitation it’s time to celebrate this campaign to increase awareness of the plight of loos around the world. Access to toilets is a huge issue in poor areas that has cascading effects on all levels of society, particularly women.

It’s great to see this campaign get so much attention and there’s stuff you can do to help out!

WTO which has over 200 partners worldwide, 42 of which are in India is one of the few organisations that focusses only on sanitation and toilets instead of water. “Everyone clubs water and sanitation, and 95% of the funds go towards water projects. But good sanitation is the first step towards clean water,” he says.

Toilets weren’t really top of the pot for Sim, who ran a number of businesses from the age of 25. “When I turned 40, I realised that I had 13,000 more days to live the average Singaporean lives to 80 and wanted to do something useful,” he says. Sim started reading and “realised that the toilet is really neglected”. So he started “the other WTO” in 2001 to disseminate serious facts with a sense of humour. The logo is a toilet seat shaped like a heart. “I thought the best way to break the toilet taboo was to use lots of puns.” But the name, which everyone thinks is “really bad at first” sticks in people’s minds. “That’s because every mother has told her child not to talk about the toilet. It’s not polite’. And here we are talking about the loo quite freely,” says Sim, who is often called Toilet Man.

And it’s not just about getting toilets installed. “You have to keep them clean too. So Sim has started the World Toilet College in Singapore that provides training in toilet maintenance and design. “I’m hoping we can open one in India too to train toilet cleaners like technicians.”

Read more: The big squat’ to take a stand on sanitation

Solar Snow Removal

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

It should come to no surprise that the sun melts snow and ice. Indeed, one of the reasons we have such severe climate change is because the energy from the sun isn’t being reflected off of snow (the albedo effect).

Some enterprising researchers have proposed that we capture the energy the sun is tossing at us by using roads to store energy that can be later used to melt snow or provide energy. Imagine all the roads in North America as an energy source!

“We have mile after mile of asphalt pavement around the country, and in the summer it absorbs a great deal of heat, warming the roads up to 140 degrees or more,” said K. Wayne Lee, URI professor of civil and environmental engineering and the leader of the joint project. “If we can harvest that heat, we can use it for our daily use, save on fossil fuels, and reduce global warming.”
The URI team has identified four potential approaches, from simple to complex, and they are pursuing research projects designed to make each of them a reality.
One of the simplest ideas is to wrap flexible photovoltaic cells around the top of Jersey barriers dividing highways to provide electricity to power streetlights and illuminate road signs. The photovoltaic cells could also be embedded in the roadway between the Jersey barrier and the adjacent rumble strip.
“This is a project that could be implemented today because the technology already exists,” said Lee. “Since the new generation of solar cells are so flexible, they can be installed so that regardless of the angle of the sun, it will be shining on the cells and generating electricity. A pilot program is progressing for the lamps outside Bliss Hall on campus.”
Another practical approach to harvesting solar energy from pavement is to embed water filled pipes beneath the asphalt and allow the sun to warm the water. The heated water could then be piped beneath bridge decks to melt accumulated ice on the surface and reduce the need for road salt. The water could also be piped to nearby buildings to satisfy heating or hot water needs, similar to geothermal heat pumps. It could even be converted to steam to turn a turbine in a small, traditional power plant.

Read the rest at Physorg

The Story of Electronics

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

The Story of Electronics is brought to us by the same woman who made The Story of Stuff.

There is also a section on action that you can take and it’s already made a differnece!

From their blog:

Inspired by The Story of Electronics, hundreds of people sent letters to Lenovo President and CEO Rory Read yesterday, telling the company to green its products and “Make ‘em Safe, Make ‘em Last, and Take ‘em Back.” Within hours,Read got back in touch to say he “could not agree with [us] more.”

We’re excited that Lenovo wants to do better, but with their weak track record on responsible recycling and failure to follow through on a commitment to get PVC and brominated flame retardants out of their products, we’re not ready to take them at their word just yet.

The Story of Electronics

Carbon Cloth to Wipe Away Toxic Stuff

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

This is a pretty neat reuse of knowledge of material science from one of violence to one of saving the environment. Carbon cloth meant for the battlefield can be used to clean up toxic spills.

The textile is composed of tiny pores that adsorb organic molecules through weak Van der Waals forces. By adding ozone to the process, the fabric becomes even more effective at catalyzing the conversion of unwanted content into smaller molecules—or even carbon dioxide and water. In other words, the activated carbon cloth breaks pollutants down into less-harmful compounds.

Read more

Science is Great!

- Adam Clare

publicscience.ca is designed to educate the Canadian population about how great science and knowledge is. This a direct reaction to the direct attacks that research, science, and innovation have been under since the Conservative government took power. It’s really good to see scientists taking a stand and promoting all the reasons that science and research makes the world a better place!

It can also highlight important work that is already on the public record but may not be getting the attention it deserves. Of course, scientists who work for the Canadian people must be answerable for the dollars they spend. But too often, critiques of government science begin and end with knee-jerk scoffing when the topics seem frivolous to the ill-informed layman. A study on bird habitats, for example, might teach us something important about the environmental impact of public policy.

Ottawa is a government town. Part of what that means — although Ottawans themselves are prone to forget this — is that it’s a research town. Citizens have a duty to be informed about the world around them. Government has a duty to, at the very least, not get in their way.

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