GeoIsla

Tras comprometerse con el ambiente.

Por Gerardo E. Alvarado León / galvarado@elnuevodia.com

Los 78 alcaldes del País podrán afianzar su compromiso con el medio ambiente y convertir sus municipios en “ciudades verdes” a través de una campaña que les dará herramientas para reducir las emisiones de gases que producen el calentamiento global.

Se trata de un esfuerzo llamado “Ciudades cool: solucionando el calentamiento global pueblo por pueblo”, dado a conocer el lunes por una coalición de grupos ambientales y sociales quienes llamaron la atención sobre las amenazas del cambio climático y la escasez de fondos públicos a nivel municipal para combatirlas.

Camilla Feibelman, coordinadora de Sierra Club en Puerto Rico, indicó que la campaña ayuda a los alcaldes y a las comunidades a implementar un plan que responde al Protocolo de Kioto, firmado en 1997 con el fin de que los países industrializados reduzcan sus emisiones colectivas de gases que causan el calentamiento global.

“Ciudades cool” destacadas

1. Salem, Virginia
2. Santa Rosa, California
3. Richardson, Texas
4. Long Branch, New Jersey

Fuente: Sierra Club

Un estudio del Sierra Club entre 43 “ciudades cool”, que consideró únicamente el renglón energético, reveló ahorros de casi $140 millones y una reducción de más de 500,000 toneladas en las emisiones de gases a la atmósfera.

Al día de hoy, 750 alcaldes de Estados Unidos han firmado el acuerdo, incluyendo tres de la Isla: Aguadilla, Camuy y Yauco.

Vía El Nuevo Día

Global interest in couple’s pioneering project to live off-grid - including their car

Severin Carrell
The Guardian, Monday May 19, 2008

Michael and Dorothy Rea outside their home on Unst. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

Life on the most northerly inhabited island in Britain can be very tough indeed. On Unst the winters are harsh, and the winds brutal and relentless, regularly sweeping across the treeless landscape at more than 100mph.

But Unst is the island chosen by a retired couple from Wiltshire to build one of the world’s greenest houses - a “zero carbon” home powered entirely by the wind and the sun. It sits on the same latitude as southern Greenland, but will soon boast lemon trees, grapevines and green pepper plants in its greenhouse, an electric car powered by the wind, and floors heated by drawing warmth from the air.

The three-bedroom home designed by Michael and Dorothy Rea, near the shoreline of a secluded bay, has become a test bed for living “off-grid”: generating all their power from renewable sources, growing most of their food at home, and running a car without a petrol station.

Their home - built for just over £210,000 from an off-the-shelf timber framed house - has quietly become famous. The Scottish executive in Edinburgh is using it as a benchmark for new sustainable house-building rules; officials in the prime minister’s office watch its progress and Chinese officials are studying its innovative technologies for a new 5,000-home eco-town in Guangzhou, in southern China.

Last year, the Reas learned that their website - zerocarbonhouse.com - was the fourth most popular site worldwide on Google. Michael Rea is often up at 5am answering emails from PhD students, green activists and even Canadian senators.

The Reas believe their home is the first of its kind. “If we can do this here, anyone can do it anywhere,” said Dorothy, a former headteacher. “It’s just an ordinary house. It could be in Edinburgh; it could be in Chigwell.”

“It’s definitely significant,” said Duncan Price, a director of one of the world’s largest green energy consultancies, ESD, and an advisor to the Reas. “What’s very special is they’re trying to address the carbon impact of their whole lifestyle. It’s a microcosm of how the world would be in a carbon-constrained future.”

It is one of several pioneering off-grid projects in remote areas of Scotland, where communities such as the islanders on Eigg in the inner Hebrides and another living on Scoraig, a remote peninsula near Ullapool in north-west Scotland, have developed their own independent green power sources.

Around 80 people living on Scoraig, which is only accessible by boat or with a five-mile trek overland, power their homes and businesses chiefly using small hand-made wind turbines designed by local resident Hugh Piggott, a guru of self-sufficient off-grid living. Solar panels and diesel generators supplement the turbines.

In February, the islanders of Eigg, just south of Skye, switched on the UK’s first independent “green grid”. It provides power to all the 45 homes and 20 businesses by combining electricity from wind turbines, solar panels and two small hydro-electric dams into a single supply. For the first time, islanders can run fridges, electric kettles, satellite TVs and computers without using unreliable oil-powered generators.

Forced by their isolation to become self-sufficient, many observers believe these communities prove that micro-generation and home energy schemes are viable UK-wide. Nick Rosen, author of How to Live Off-Grid, a handbook on off-grid communities, said: “It doesn’t mean we should all live like Scoraig but we should be fostering communities like it all over the place. It increases the self-reliance of our society overall, in the event of sudden energy price hikes, the Russians cut off the gas or strikes in the oil industry.”

The Reas are not naive about the severity of Shetland’s weather or the scale of the challenge. They erected the timber frame for their new home during a gale in November 2006; the strongest gusts threw heavy roof sections through the air, smashing one to the ground.

Shetland, the Reas note wryly, has the strongest and most reliable winds of any inhabited part of the world, closely followed by the Falkland islands. But then they have striking views over a south-facing bay across to the low-slung, mottled green islands of Uyea, Fetlar and Yell. In midsummer, the temperature can hit 30C and the sun never sets.

“I could foresee the time when energy would be very, very expensive,” Michael Rea said. “But at first what we were doing was viewed as the black arts, but we weren’t cranks. We were ordinary people.”

Although they describe their home as normal, it will use advanced low-carbon technologies, many of which are being fitted this summer. With help from Dundee University and Duchy College in Cornwall, they are building a greenhouse which uses hydroponics where their vegetables, fruit and herbs will be grown in a liquid with specially controlled lighting to create artificial “seasons”. The University of Delaware is refitting a Toyota Yaris car with an electric engine.

Dogged and single-minded, Michael Rea has cajoled builders, banks and even the window firm Velux into sponsoring the project. Eventually, the house will be lit by very low energy LED lights, the greenhouse will use electricity from its own wind turbine and the chief source of heating will be a heat pump which draws warmth from the air into an under-floor system.

“I have been waiting 24 years for this house to be built,” said Dorothy, 65. “But it’s just a standard house, an honest house, nothing fancy. It’s a serious project in renewable design and energy efficiency, an experiment in joined-up technology, but it’s also a house we intend to grow old in.”

Explainer: How heat is harnessed

The house is very heavily insulated and its under-floor heating uses warmth drawn from the outside air and stored in a giant “water battery”. Heat inside the house is captured by a ventilation system and reused. Rainwater is harvested for toilets and the washing machine. Large windows capture warmth from the sun.

Power for dishwasher, cooker, toaster, fridge, computers and lights comes from a wind turbine, which charges fuel cells able to store power for four days. The house’s LED lights will use the same power as one 100W bulb.

The greenhouse will have its own wind turbine. Plants will grow in high-nutrient hydroponic liquids, with special LED lights to create artificial seasons and daylight. A converted battery-powered Toyota Yaris will be charged from the fuel cells.

Via guardian.co.uk

From: www.biomimicrynews.com
Published May 21, 2006

Researchers have been unable to build an ideal “photonic crystal” to manipulate visible light, impeding the dream of ultrafast optical computers. But now, University of Utah chemists have discovered that nature already has designed photonic crystals with the ideal, diamond-like structure: They are found in the shimmering, iridescent green scales of a beetle from Brazil.

This inch-long beetle from Brazil accomplished a task that so far has stymied human researchers. University of Utah chemists determined the beetle glows iridescent green because it evolved a crystal structure in its scales that is like the crystal structure of diamonds. Such a structure is considered an ideal architecture for ‘photonic crystals’ that will be needed to manipulate visible light in ultrafast optical computers of the future. - Photo Credit: Jeremy Galusha

“It appears that a simple creature like a beetle provides us with one of the technologically most sought-after structures for the next generation of computing,” says study leader Michael Bartl, an assistant professor of chemistry and adjunct assistant professor of physics at the University of Utah. “Nature has simple ways of making structures and materials that are still unobtainable with our million-dollar instruments and engineering strategies.”

The study by Bartl, University of Utah chemistry doctoral student Jeremy Galusha and colleagues is set to be published later this week in the journal Physical Review E.

The beetle is an inch-long weevil named Lamprocyphus augustus. The discovery of its scales’ crystal structure represents the first time scientists have been able to work with a material with the ideal or “champion” architecture for a photonic crystal.

“Nature uses very simple strategies to design structures to manipulate light - structures that are beyond the reach of our current abilities,” Galusha says.

Bartl and Galusha now are trying to design a synthetic version of the beetle’s photonic crystals, using scale material as a mold to make the crystals from a transparent semiconductor.

The scales can’t be used in technological devices because they are made of fingernail-like chitin, which is not stable enough for long-term use, is not semiconducting and doesn’t bend light adequately.

The University of Utah chemists conducted the study with coauthors Lauren Richey, a former Springville High School student now attending Brigham Young University; BYU biology Professor John Gardner; and Jennifer Cha, of IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif.

Quest for the Ideal or ‘Champion’ Photonic Crystal

Researchers are seeking photonic crystals as they aim to develop optical computers that run on light (photons) instead of electricity (electrons). Right now, light in near-infrared and visible wavelengths can carry data and communications through fiberoptic cables, but the data must be converted from light back to electricity before being processed in a computer.

The goal - still years away - is an ultrahigh-speed computer with optical integrated circuits or chips that run on light instead of electricity.

“You would be able to solve certain problems that we are not able to solve now,” Bartl says. “For certain problems, an optical computer could do in seconds what regular computers need years for.”

Researchers also are seeking ideal photonic crystals to amplify light and thus make solar cells more efficient, to capture light that would catalyze chemical reactions, and to generate tiny laser beams that would serve as light sources on optical chips.

“Photonic crystals are a new type of optical materials that manipulate light in non-classic ways,” Bartl says. Some colors of light can pass through a photonic crystal at various speeds, while other wavelengths are reflected as the crystal acts like a mirror.

Bartl says there are many proposals for how light could be manipulated and controlled in new ways by photonic crystals, “however we still lack the proper materials that would allow us to create ideal photonic crystals to manipulate visible light. A material like this doesn’t exist artificially or synthetically.”

The ideal photonic crystal - dubbed the “champion” crystal - was described by scientists elsewhere in 1990. They showed that the optimal photonic crystal - one that could manipulate light most efficiently - would have the same crystal structure as the lattice of carbon atoms in diamond. Diamonds cannot be used as photonic crystals because their atoms are packed too tightly together to manipulate visible light.

When made from an appropriate material, a diamond-like structure would create a large “photonic bandgap,” meaning the crystalline structure prevents the propagation of light of a certain range of wavelengths. Materials with such bandgaps are necessary if researchers are to engineer optical circuits that can manipulate visible light.

On the Path of the Beetle: From BYU to Belgium and Brazil

The new study has its roots in Richey’s science fair project on iridescence in biology when she was a student at Utah’s Springville High School. Gardner’s group at BYU was helping her at the same time Galusha was using an electron microscope there and learned of Richey’s project.

This microscopic image shows individual scales attached to the exoskeleton of the beetle Lamprocyphus augustus, and how the scales glow iridescent green because the fingernail-like material in the scales has a diamond-like crystal structure that reflects green light. University of Utah chemists are among researchers seeking to create a material with the same structure, which is considered ideal for future optical computers that would run at ultrahigh speeds on light rather than electricity. - Photo Credit: Michael Bartl

Richey wanted to examine an iridescent beetle, but lacked a complete specimen. So the researchers ordered Brazil’s Lamprocyphus augustus from a Belgian insect dealer.

The beetle’s shiny, sparkling green color is produced by the crystal structure of its scales, not by any pigment, Bartl says. The scales are made of chitin, which forms the external skeleton, or exoskeleton, of most insects and is similar to fingernail material. The scales are affixed to the beetle’s exoskeleton. Each measures 200 microns (millionths of a meter) long by 100 microns wide. A human hair is about 100 microns thick.

Green light - which has a wavelength of about 500 to 550 nanometers, or billionths of a meter - cannot penetrate the scales’ crystal structure, which acts like mirrors to reflect the green light, making the beetle appear iridescent green.

Bartl says the beetle was interesting because it was iridescent regardless of the angle from which it was viewed - unlike most iridescent objects - and because a preliminary electron microscope examination showed its scales did not have the structure typical of artificial photonic crystals.

“The color and structure looked interesting,” Bartl says. “The question was: What was the exact three-dimensional structure that produces these unique optical properties?”

The Utah team’s study is the first to show that “just as atoms are arranged in diamond crystals, so is the chitin structure of beetle scales,” he says.

Galusha determined the 3-D structure of the scales using a scanning electron microscope. He cut a cross section of a scale, and then took an electron microscope image of it. Then he used a focused ion beam - sort of a tiny sandblaster that shoots a beam of gallium ions - to shave off the exposed end of the scale, and then took another image, doing so repeatedly until he had images of 150 cross-sections from the same scale.

Then the researchers “stacked” the images together in a computer, and determined the crystal structure of the scale material: a diamond-like or “champion” architecture, but with building blocks of chitin and air instead of the carbon atoms in diamond.

Next, Galusha and Bartl used optical studies and theory to predict optical properties of the scales’ structure. The prediction matched reality: green iridescence.

Many iridescent objects appear that way only when viewed at certain angles, but the beetle remains iridescent from any angle. Bartl says the way the beetle does that is an “ingenious engineering strategy” that approximates a technology for controlling the propagation of visible light.

A single beetle scale is not a continuous crystal, but includes some 200 pieces of chitin, each with the diamond-based crystal structure but each oriented a different direction. So each piece reflects a slightly different wavelength or shade of green.

“Each piece is too small to be seen individually by your eye, so what you see is a composite effect,” with the beetle appearing green from any angle, Bartl explains.

Scientists don’t know how the beetle uses its color, but “because it is an unnatural green, it’s likely not for camouflage,” Bartl says. “It could be to attract mates.”

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, American Chemical Society, the University of Utah and Brigham Young University.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by the University of Utah

Via Biomimicry News

by Bonnie Hulkower
From: www.treehugger.com
Published June 23, 2006

Rosa Hilda Ramos accepting Goldman Prize

Rosa Hilda Ramos is a 63-year-old grandmother, environmental activist, and one of the recipients of the 2008 Goldman Prize, recognizing grassroots environmental heroes. Ramos mobilized her community to legally take on the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority. Now she is using part of the $7 million she won in a judgment against the Power Authority to permanently protect Cucharillas Natural Reserve, one of the largest wetlands in her area. On Earth Day, she arrived in the Puerto Rican legislature with one hundred children dressed as butterflies. The kids came with songs, dances, and origami butterflies. Rosa’s goal is cleaner air for her community and their children — in other words more butterflies as neighbors, and fewer trucks!

Treehugger (TH): What inspired you to start Communities United against Contamination (CUCCo)?

Rosa Hilda Ramos (Ramos): My husband and I bought what we hoped was our dream home in Cataño, across the bay from San Juan, Puerto Rico. We soon discovered we actually bought a nightmare, as the town had the most polluted air on the island. At night, the air became a toxic soup. Cataño had the highest cancer incidence of type O cancer in young people, and also the highest morbidity rate in asthma patients. Cataño was surrounded by polluting industry; none of the industries were in compliance with the Clean Air Act standards.

Smokestacks in Cataño

TH: How did you form your coalition?

Ramos: I visited all the town neighborhoods, door-to-door, house-by-house, explaining the direness of the situation. I work with community leaders, public school teachers, universities, churches, government agencies, and volunteers.

TH: What made you decide to sue the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA)/power plant and what did you learn from that experience?

Ramos: After trying to move the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Puerto Rico Environmental Quality Board to enforce the law and make the industries comply with emission limitations without any success, I went to court without lawyers. No lawyer wanted to represent us because of our monetary limitations. All of the lawyers I consulted thought there was no way we could win against such powerful adversaries, but we succeeded. We were able to force the public utility to both reduce its level of pollutants and pay a $7 million fine.

TH: How did you decide to spend the money to protect Las Cucharillas marsh?

Bird in Las Cucharillas Marsh

Ramos: Part of the money will be used to defend myself from a SLAPP [Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation lawsuit], part to support the Cucharillas projects, and part to go on a trip with my family. I was never able to travel with my children before. Although they are now all grown up, they will enjoy it.

TH: Do you think kids make good lobbyists/?

Ramos: If small children are treated with respect and the issues are explained to them in a simple but powerful manner, they are great lobbyists. Who is better prepared to convey a strong message defending the future of our natural resources than our children?

TH: This has been a long and continued fight for you, how do you sustain your energy? And what gives you the strength to keep fighting?

Ramos: My family support and that of the community is very strengthening. I try to enjoy life through simple activities. And I pray a lot.

TH: Many people don’t think of grandmothers as activists, do you think being a grandmother helped your fight or did people at times take you less seriously?

Ramos: You must be kind but strong. Age doesn’t have anything to do with it, but having children and a grandchild is the main reason I fight for a cleaner environment. I want them to be healthy. I try to help people understand the environmental and public health issues and make their own decisions. Pollution isn’t something you can hide under the rug. If you do, the rug will eventually be pulled out from under you.

TH: I love coqui frogs! I have a poster of Puerto Rico with coqui in my office. Can you tell me more about your plans for these frogs?

Ramos: Coqui are lovable. The concerts these 17 species perform every night on the island are amazing. Sadly, the coqui are hidden under the leaves and not easily seen. We don’t have a place for people to see them. We are working to build an enclosed glass habitat for them, in order for the world to admire their looks as well as their songs!

This is part of a series of profiles on winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize. Founded in 1990, the prize is given annually to six grassroots environmentalists working for change around the globe. This year’s prize winners were announced on April 14.

More on the Goldman Prize
::2008 Goldman Prize Lauds International Grassroots Environmentalists
::Pablo Fajardo Mendoza and Luis Yanza
::Jesus Leon Santos
::Silas Kpanan’Ayoung Siakor
::Orri Vigfússon
::Julio Cusurichi Palacios
::Anne Kajir
::Yu Xiaogang

Via Treehugger

Por David Basulto [tricky]

De: Plataforma Arquitectura

“Ir más allá de la Arquitectura” - la exploración de nuevos dominios y terrenos - a sido el lema de Volume desde sus inicios el 2005. Es hora del siguiente paso: ¿como llevar a la práctica este “ir más alla”? ¿Como materializar ese discurso, cuando parece ir contra todas las lógicas económicas e industriales? Volume presente la práctica NO SOLICITADA - poderosos generadores de ideas, planes de negocio sólidos y metodologías de diseño idealistas. Estas son las herramientas esenciales que permiten a los arquitectos reclamar su autonomía profesional.

Con este párrafo se introduce a una de las mejores ediciones de la revista Volume, que aborda el tema de la arquitectora no solicitada o auto encargo. El editor en jefe de la revista Volume, Arjen Oosterman, abre con su artículo “Una profesión aparte”, donde reflexiona sobre los cambios en el rol del arquitecto, partiendo con la post guerra y el movimiento moderno, quienes cambiaron al arquitecto artista por las utopías de la industrialización. Si bien durante la primera parte del siglo pasado esto permitió a los arquitectos abordar complejos temas de la sociedad de ese entonces desde la arquitectura, se volvió incapaz de responder a cambios en el cliente (estado-privado), el mercado, la producción, la construcción e incluso en el retorno económico, estancándose. Si bien siempre se necesitará quien diseñe dentro de una cierta estética, el rol del arquitecto va más allá que eso. Según palabras de Oosterman, que los arquitectos […] re definan su rol, pasando de ejecutores de encargos extremadamente competentes a emprendedores y productores. Y cierra con la siguiente frase: Arquitectura No Solicitada: ¿quién se atreve?

Continúe leyendo en Plataforma Arquitectura

Vía Plataforma Arquitectura, Archis.org

+ Ole Bouman
+ Unsolicited Studio