Month: November 2012

Pacific Island 100% Solar Powered

- Adam Clare

Tokelau is a small island in the Pacific that has switched it’s entire power grid to solar, this is the first of a few islands in the region that will be fully independent from having to import fuel for electricity.

Before the solar power grid was completed, the New Zealand-administered grouping of three coral atolls, with a population of just 1,500, relied on diesel generators for electricity. Project coordinator Mike Bassett-Smith said the diesel was not only environmentally unfriendly, it also cost the islands, which lie about halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii, around NZ$1.0 million ($825,000) a year.

Bassett-Smith, from New Zealand firm PowerSmart Solar, said the change would allow Tokelau to switch money from fuel purchases to social welfare projects.

“For Tokelau, this milestone is of huge importance for their continued well-being,” he said in a statement received Wednesday.

Read more here.

Free Transit Can Improve Cities

- Adam Clare

A small city in France had a problem: their transit system was failing and it was expensive to run. Their solution was to make ridership free for all, and it has turned out to be a success that other cities are looking into.

The motivations for making a transit system free are obvious. Increased ridership can relieve traffic, improve the environment, boost the system’s efficiency, give residents more spending money, help the poor, and rejuvenate central business districts. Unfortunately, the Châteauroux report contains little large-scale analysis of the effects of the system.

But as it turns out, the change nearly paid for itself. Forty-seven percent of bus-goers were already riding for free, and tickets covered only 14 percent of the city’s transit expenses. By slightly increasing the transit tax on big local businesses while eliminating the costs of printing, ticket-punching technology and the human infrastructure of ticket sales, the city turned a profit on the transit system in ’03, ’04, ’05, and ’07. Since ’08, returns have not been as positive, though the report attributes that to a shift in control from the city to the region.

Read more at The Atlantic Cities.

Thanks Mike!

Online Sex Ed Course Decreases STI Risk in Teens

- Adam Clare

A lack of education around sex can lead to a lot of unwanted things like sexually transmitted infections and diseases to pregnancies. For many people sex is a taboo subject so delivering worthwhile information to teens can be difficult due to parent’s attitudes. One way to get directly to teens is through the internet and, unlike abstinence-only programs (which raise STIs and lower condom use), a new online course helps teens be safer when it comes to sex.

The results of the study showed a 10-per-cent increase in condom use among students who had taken the course and a reduction in self-reported infections for those students who were sexually active when the course started.

Gonzalez-Navarro said there was a significant, positive impact on sexual behaviour among friend groups who had taken the course.

“That was pretty encouraging,” he said. “You get much more effects if you have groups of kids knowing the same things.”

Read more at The Star.

Vegetarians Live Longer

- Adam Clare

If you’re not vegetarian yet, this may change your mind: vegetarians live longer than meat eaters. A plant-focused diet is fantastic at helping people with all sorts of ailments from diabetes to heart disease. This is great news for all of us as a vegetarian diet puts very little pressure on the environment whereas modern meat production is absolutely destructive.

More than 20 years ago, Dr. Dean Ornish showed that heart disease could not just be stopped but actually reversed with a vegan diet, arteries opened up without drugs or surgery. Since this lifestyle cure was discovered, hundreds of thousands have died unnecessary deaths. What more does one have to know about a diet that reverses our deadliest disease?

Cancer is killer number two. Ah, the dreaded “C” word — but look at this hopeful science. According to the largest forward-looking study on diet and cancer so far performed, “the incidence of all cancers combined is lower among vegetarians.” The link between meat and cancer is such that even a paper published in the journal Meat Science recently asked, “Should we become vegetarians, or can we make meat safer?” There are a bunch of additives under investigation to suppress the toxic effects the blood-based “heme” iron, for example, which could provide what they called an “acceptable” way to prevent cancer. Why not just reduce meat consumption? The meat science researchers noted that if such public health guidance were adhered to, “Cancer incidence may be reduced, but farmers and [the] meat industry would suffer important economical problems…” Hmmm, so Big Ag chooses profit over health; what a surprise.
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Diabetes is next on the kick-the-bucket list. Plant-based diets help prevent, treat, and even reverse Type 2 diabetes. Since vegans are, on average, about 30 pounds skinnier than meat-eaters, this comes as no surprise; but researchers found that vegans appear to have just a fraction of the diabetes risk, even after controlling for their slimmer figures.

Read more at The Huffington Post.

Thanks to Kathryn!

Solar Panels Break 1/3 Record

- Adam Clare

Photovoltaic solar panels are measured in terms of how efficient they are at converting light into electricity. Obviously potential energy is lost when this conversion occurs and it has long been speculated that it would be possible to get 1/3 of the energy captured converted into electricity. In labs, this is a relatively easy task, however doing this in the field proves to be rather hard.

An American company announced recently that they have been able to achieve this level of efficiency on a regular enough basis.

During a period of testing by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory back in May, a peak efficiency of 34.2 percent was achieved, which Amonix claims is the highest ever reached by a PV module under real-world conditions. However, Amonix is only now drawing attention to the breakthrough, which saw its own record of 30.3 percent efficiency broken.
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The solar module efficiency is the efficiency of the panel, and not the same as the efficiency of individual solar cells from which it’s comprised. At the moment, solar cell efficiency can just exceed 43 percent for concentrated systems. It’s the module efficiency, however, which reflects the amount of electricity a PV system can produce.

Read more at Gizmag.

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