Britain Loves the Sun

Soon in Britain people will be able to operate their own solar power generators and wind farms. This is a great way to lower one’s carbon footprint while saving money!

From April 6, all homeowners in Britain will be free to install microgeneration equipment like solar panels without getting planning permission for them, as the government tries to cut climate warming gases emitted from coal and gas fired power plants in order to supply electricity.
“We want to make it easier to help people reduce their carbon footprint. Technology like solar panels can make a real difference, but homeowners can be put off by the time and expense of getting planning permission,” planning minister Caroline Flint said.

Video Games for the Brain

Become a smarter a individual by exercising your brain using video games!

The five-week program required Alex to spend up to an hour a day on a computer, pitting his wits against a robot. Among other exercises, the robot blinked out sequences of flashing lights that Alex was required to replicate.

The program made a dramatic difference in Alex’s ability to concentrate, remember and act on daily chores, his mother says.

“I noticed it immediately,” said George, 47, who lives with her physician husband in Santa Rosa Valley, California. “The program was like a game and my son was loving it.”

Cogmed is part of an emerging brain fitness software industry that could expand rapidly as aging baby boomers seek ways to stave off dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

The size of the U.S. market for brain stimulation products — which can range from games such as Nintendo Co Ltd’s Brain Age to programs backed by research showing they can improve memory or other cognitive functions — more than doubled between 2005 and 2007 to $225 million, according to a new report by the consulting group SharpBrains.

Just as baby boomers’ desire to delay cardiovascular and ot

Into the Future by Using the Past

To most people it looks like leaders in North America keep forgetting about global warming, well this isn’t all true. Brush the Bush and Harper conservative agendas aside and you’ll find other political leaders trying to save the planet. In Mexico, aboriginal leaders are looking into the ways of that their ancestors lived to help us slow global warming today.

More than 200 leaders from 71 American Indian nations in Mexico, the United States and Canada came together in this Mexican jungle to find indigenous solutions to pollution and ecological problems threatening the planet.

“Our Mother Earth is being polluted at an alarming rate, and our elders say that she is dying,” said Raymond Sensmeier, a Tlingit leader from Yakutat, Alaska. “The way the weather is around the world … a cleansing is needed.”

The conference began with a pre-dawn ceremony that included fire, copal incense, chants in Lacandon Maya and blasts from a conch shell.

Greenomics

The CBC has a feature article on the emerging green economy and it’s a good read to start the week.

At the same time, some leading multinational corporations are taking action to slash their use of fossil fuels. Manufacturer Johnson and Johnson has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by seven per cent while growing its business by 300 per cent in the past eight years, according to Banks.

“They’re saving on average about $40 million a year. So, the rhetoric that this is going to hurt economies, that it’s going to bankrupt companies, is simply not the case,” said Banks.

Canadian entrepreneurs are hoping to take advantage of the growing appetite for clean technologies, which includes everything from efficient lighting to renewable energy. More than 70 Cleantech companies are now listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, including many solar technology firms.