Hybrid Living

Just a friendly reminder that as 2010 comes to a close, Blisstree staffers are taking a much-needed break this holiday season. (And we hope you are, too.) So we’ll be publishing fewer posts today through Sunday, January 2, 2011.

But not to worry, we’ve got plenty of original health and wellness content to keep you occupied, informed, and entertained over New Year’s weekend. So come in, look around, pop that cork, and stay a while. … More »

Post from: BlissTree

Happy New Year! (and Holiday Programming Note)

It’s New Year’s Eve and it’s time to look back at the year in clean technology.  This year held some incredible innovations and big renewable energy news.  The stories you clicked on the most ranged from an energy-harvesting rubber material to a zero-energy fridge and, of course, the big Bloom Energy reveal.  Ecogeeks, here are your top ten:

10. Google Develops New Solar Thermal Mirror Prototype Google made a lot of headlines this year, but you were most interested in its new solar thermal mirror prototype.  Using new materials on the reflective surface, Google believes it can halve the cost of building a solar thermal plant and bring electricity costs way down.

9.   Save Your Battery: Unplug Your Laptop We all want to preserve the battery life in our laptops.  As it turns out, it could be as simple as pulling the plug as soon as your laptop is fully charged.

8.   Rubber Material Harvests Energy from Small Movements A new material harvests energy from simple movements like walking or even breathing.  It could be implanted in shoes to power gadgets or even next to the lungs to power pacemakers.

7.   High-Efficiency Hydraulic Hybrid Car Could Get 170 MPG Hydraulic power in a hybrid car allows for significant weight reduction and greatly increases the power recovered with regenerative braking.

6.   Solar Aero’s Bladeless Wind Turbine The lack of blades in this new wind technology makes it cheaper, quieter and reduces the threat to birds and bats.

5.   Europe Will Be Powered By Saharan Sun in Five Years A huge scheme of solar projects in the Saharan Desert will be up and running sooner than first planned.  The enormous Desertec project will initially have a capacity in the hundreds of megawatts increasing to hundreds of gigawatts over the next two to four decades.

4.   Printable Lithium Batteries Coming Soon The latest in the printable technology craze, we’ll soon see lithium batteries rolling hot off the presses.

3.   Zero-Energy Fridge Uses Gel to Preserve Food Easily one of the weirdest stories of the year, this fridge concept takes off the door and uses a gel-like substance to hold and preserve food.

2.   Bloom Energy: Should you Believe the Hype? We cut through the hype of one of the biggest clean tech stories of the year:  the Bloom Energy fuel cell box.

1.   Sponge-Like Glass Cleans Contaminated Water The most popular story was about an amazing glass material that can absorb gasoline and other pollutants containing volatile organic compounds out of water.  The Gulf oil spill had us all wishing that this material was ready to be deployed on a large scale.

It’s nearly time to start counting down to 2011, and there’s no getting away from headlines declaring that in the new year, you can find a new you. Some of us make resolve to get more organized or go to the gym more often, but are we really striving to reinvent ourselves? We hope not. Starting with a fresh calendar and (hopefully) refreshed mindset makes January a great time for resolutions, but we also think the end of the year is a good time to take stock of what we like – and don’t want to change – about ourselves.

… More »

Post from: BlissTree

Resolutions: Is a New You Necessary This New Year?

The various branches of the US military are adopting green practices and are helping advance sustainable technologies. The latest development comes with the announcement that the United States Army has incorporated green building standards into its day-to-day practices.

The ASHRAE 189.1 standard is a green building standard written in the form and manner of current building codes, rather than as a separate rating system, such as LEED. Standard 189.1 was developed with the cooperation of ASHRAE, the professional organization of mechanical engineers, US Green Building Council, and IESNA, the professional organization of lighting engineers, as well as the International Code Council.

Buildings built to meet Standard 189.1 have a weighted average site energy savings of 27 percent as compared to the standards of the current (2007) building energy code. Standard 189.1 also “requires that each building project be designed to be ready for renewable energy in the future.” While it doesn’t make buildings carbon neutral, it does set the stage for them to be converted and to become net-zero energy in the future.

link: ASHRAE Standard 189.1

via: Buildings Magazine

Check out this post about the link between stomach fat and osteoporosis by Catherine Donaldson-Evans on AOL Health

Having too much fat around the middle may compromise bone health and raise the risk of osteoporosis in women, a new study has found.

Previous research has suggested that obesity guarded women against the disease because extra body fat seemed to protect against bone loss. … More »

Post from: BlissTree

Obesity Linked with Osteoporosis in Women

A new study by Energy Trends reports that Scotland is right on track to meet the world’s most ambitious renewable energy goal of generating 80 percent of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2020 and all of its energy from renewables by 2025.

As of 2009, Scotland was getting 27 percent of its electricity from renewable sources and the country expects that number to increase to 31 percent by 2011.  It has also set the goal of decreasing emissions by 42 percent by 2020.

Scotland has been on the forefront of renewable energy for years, with large-scale wind projects (both offshore and on), cutting edge solar projects, and tidal-powered data centers.  A lot of credit is due to the country’s natural resources (about 25 GW worth of wind energy resources), but also to the government for creating subsidies and incentives for renewable energy generation at the commercial and residential scale.

via CleanTechnica

What’s in Your Beef – If you’ve ever wanted to calculate the damage of a homemade hamburger, rest assured: the USDA says it will put nutrition labels on meat by 2012. (USA Today)

A Healthy Dessert for New Year’s Eve – Serve this chocolate-zucchini cake at the New Year’s table; your blood sugar levels will thank you. (Green Lemonade)

Start the Year Off Right – Shake off the first hangover of 2011 by honoring yourself in the new year at a yoga class from one of these top studios. (Yoga Buzz) … More »

Post from: BlissTree

Morning Links: Healthy New Year Habits

Check out this post about summer birthdays by Jennifer Barton on Lemondrop.

You’d think that people with summer birthdays would be sad and embittered from a childhood spent without being able to bring cupcakes to class. But you’d be wrong!

A study in the journal Nature Neuroscience has revealed that the season you’re born in can significantly impact the way your body clock works. … More »

Post from: BlissTree

Summer Birthdays Make Happier People, Study Says

The municipal offices of St. Cloud, Minnesota are the first in the country to install a visible light communication system in place of Wi-Fi.  The system, which uses LED fixtures to connect office computers to the internet, is saving lots of energy, and the city of St. Cloud lots of money on energy bills.

The system was installed by LVX System, a Minnesota-based start-up and consists of LED lights that flicker thousands of times per second at speeds undetectable by the human eye.  The flickering of light communicates binary code to special modems attached to computers below (off is zero, on is one) that then transmit data back to the fixtures where a sensor receives the data and transmits it over the internet.

According to LVX, the systems save 30 to 80 percent on lighting costs, usually enough to match or mostly pay for the internet service.  One of the LED fixtures uses about 36 watts of power compared to 100 watts used by a similar fluorescent office lighting fixture.

LVX sees the technology as not only an energy-effiicient and cost-effective alternative to Wi-Fi, but a solution to overcrowded Wi-Fi networks and the slower connections they create.

Right now, the LVX system can transmit about 3 Mbps, roughly the speed of a residential DSL line. So, it’s not exactly ready to be swapped in for Wi-Fi in most businesses, but LVX expects to increase that speed. The company is also working on making smart lights that brighten and dim depending on available natural light and turn off automatically when a room empties.

via AP

Some of the technology that helps make hybrid vehicles so efficient will soon be making its way into non-hybrid cars as well. Ford has recently announced that Auto Start-Stop technology, which has been used in gasoline-electric hybrids since 2004, will be introduced in some conventional cars, crossovers and SUVs in North America starting in 2012. Auto Start-Stop automatically turns off the engine when the vehicle comes to a stop, and then restarts it again when the vehicle is ready to move again.

Using Auto Start-Stop will increase fuel economy in city driving by at least 4 percent up to as much as 10 percent, depending on the particular vehicle size and usage. Auto Start-Stop also reduces all tailpipe emissions to zero when the vehicle is at a stop.

Ford is already making Auto Start-Stop available in Europe. According to Ford, “is standard on the ECOnetic models of the Ford Ka and Mondeo, and is launching now on Focus, C-MAX and Grand C-MAX.” In North America, Auto Start-Stop will be available on hybrid models of the Escape and Fusion, as well as Lincoln MKZ.