Eco-Funerals Raise Environmental Awareness in China

Interesting trend and food for thought

Eco-Funerals Raise Environmental Awareness in China

HEALTHY PEOPLE, HEALTHY PLANET
Because at 160,000 years, the party is just getting started.
Eco-Funerals Raise Environmental Awareness in China
8/13/2010 1:30:57 PM
By Adam Lafferty
Tags: eco-funerals, green burials, urban expansion, land erosion, environment
On July 20, families in Tianjin, China, participated in the nation’s largest green burial ceremony. The ashes of 250 people were placed into biodegradable urns made of sand and clay and buried at Yong’an Cemetery. At a separate ceremony on the same day, 30 other families held “water burials” and placed the urns in a nearby pond.
With land increasingly lost to urban development, desertification and soil erosion, the people of China are struggling to save as much farmable land as they can. As a result, burial costs have skyrocketed for families of the 10 million people who die each year in a country that already holds one-fifth of the world’s population. Some cemeteries have even started leasing plots to families.
Green burials are becoming more and more popular, as they are environmentally friendly and take up less space. They are also cheaper than more customary funerals with lavish memorial services and decorated urns and headstones. Shengtai, a manufacturer of these biodegradable urns, has sold more than 10,000 since it started in 2007, and sales are only going up. Local governments in China have been promoting green burials as an alternative to the traditional funeral rites, and Yong’an Cemetery offers free urns and burial ceremonies every month as a way to promote the environmentally safer method. Families can also give gravesite decorations to the deceased through an “online mourning” website.
Read more on natural burials and planning a low-cost, green funeral on our website.

high growth trend

Scientist: Wind, solar energy is future
BOSTON (UPI) -- A Nobel Prize-winning U.S. scientist says the world could soon enter an era where renewable wind and solar power will be the globe's main sources of energy.

Walter Kohn, who shared the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, told a meeting of the American Chemical Society that total oil and natural gas production, which today provides about 60 percent of global energy consumption, is expected to peak about 10 to 30 years from now, followed by a rapid decline, an ACS release said Tuesday.

But ongoing research and development of alternative energy could lead to a new era in human history in which two renewable sources -- solar and wind -- will become Earth's dominant contributors of energy, Kohn said.

Global photovoltaic energy production increased by a factor of about 90 and wind energy by a factor of about 10 over the last 10 years, Kohn said, and he expects vigorous growth of these two effectively inexhaustible energies to continue.

Kohn, from the University of California, Santa Barbara, cited students on his campus who spent their own funds to convert an athletic building to total solar power.

"When it comes to providing leadership by young people in the area of energy conservation and energy efficiency and global warming -- they are fantastic," he said. "It is a major social commitment for our times."

Copyright 2010 by United Press International

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technology is amazing

Thought-controlled prosthetic arm tested
LAUREL, Md. (UPI) -- A four-year program to create a thought-controlled prosthetic arm has yielded a prototype with nearly as much dexterity as a natural limb, U.S. researchers say.

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory will test a Modular Prosthetic Limb system on human subjects, using a brain-controlled interface, ScienceDaily.com reported Wednesday.

The MPL provides 22 degrees of motion, including independent movement of each finger, and weighs about 9 pounds, about the weight of a natural limb. It is designed to respond to its user's thoughts.

"We've developed the enabling technologies to create upper-extremity prosthetics that are more natural in appearance and use," APL's program manager Michael McLoughlin said. "Now … we are ready to test it with humans to demonstrate that the system can be operated with a patient's thoughts and that it can provide that patient with sensory feedback, restoring the sensation of touch.

"The results of this program will help upper-limb amputees and spinal cord injury patients, as well as others who have lost the ability to use their natural limbs, to have as normal a life as possible despite severe injuries or degenerative neurological disease," McLoughlin said.

Copyright 2010 by United Press International

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Fwd: [Skimaire High Tech] future trends in work -2020

2020: Get Ready For 3 Major IT Changes In The Workplace

Gartner gets paid the big bucks to gaze in their crystal ball and
predict how our lives are going to look down the road. They did it
again, and came up with 10 things that will change in the workplace.
I'm picking three that have impact on IT and system admins
specifically.

They started out with: "The world of today is dramatically different
from 20 years ago and with the lines between work and non-work already
badly frayed, Gartner, Inc. predicts that the nature of work will
witness 10 key changes through 2020.

"Work will become less routine, characterized by increased volatility,
hyperconnectedness, 'swarming' and more," said Tom Austin, Gartner
Veep. (With swarming they mean fast ad-hoc work groups to solve a
problem or work on an opportunity and then dissolve.)

Only five years from now, 40(!) percent or more of an organization's
work will be 'non-routine', up from 25 percent this year. "People will
swarm more often and work solo less. They'll work with others with
whom they have few links, and teams will include people outside the
control of the organization," he added. "In addition, simulation,
visualization and unification technologies, working across yottabytes
(yeah, you read that right) of data per second, will demand an
emphasis on new perceptual skills."

From an IT perspective, you will need to look at how these changes in
the nature of work will affect you, and consider whether different
technology and management models will be required. Start thinking
mega-bandwidth to begin with. Fiber through the whole building,
anyone?
De-routinization of work. "The core value that people add is not in
the processes that can be automated, but in non-routine processes,
uniquely human, analytical or interactive contributions that result in
words such as discovery, innovation, teaming, leading, selling and
learning. Impact for IT: you will get asked for applications that
support these processes, probably in the cloud.

Work swarms. Gartner calls "swarming" a "flurry of collective activity
by anyone and everyone conceivably available and able to add value."
Impact for IT: Get ready to give everyone webcams that allows at least
six people to communicate at the same time, www.oovoo.com is a good
example. I use it myself and like it a lot. Also, they will want
conference rooms fully decked out with projectors, cameras, lots of
network drops and of course high speed wireless.

Hyperconnectedness. What they mean with that is a property of most
organizations, existing within a tight network of separate business
units, but unable to completely control any of them. For instance,
while key supply chain elements may be "under contract," there is no
guarantee it will perform properly, not even if the supply chain is
in-house.
Also, the workplace is becoming more and more virtual, with meetings
occurring across time zones and organizations and with participants
who barely know each other. Many will have neither a company-provided
physical office nor a desk, and their work will increasingly happen 24
hours a day, seven days a week. Impact for IT: First start working on
your security policy. Neither iPhone or Android are very secure
compared to Blackberry. Get ready to support end-users 24/7 and in the
weekends instead of normal working hours. Also, inevitably there
-will- be lots more laptops, iPads, smartphones and other roaming
devices first to be connected, equipped with security software,
deployed and subsequently debugged and repaired (hopefully remotely as
much as possible). Single sign-on solutions are starting to look more
and more attractive. Might also be a good idea to start looking at
software that MSP's are using for remote IT management like GFIMAX,
which can save incredible amounts of admin time:
http://www.wservernews.com/UY0HR7/100809-RemoteManagement

The full Gartner report was released here:
http://www.wservernews.com/UY0HR7/100809-World-of-Work

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: BrantKnight <siegholle@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 7:24 PM
Subject: [Skimaire High Tech] future trends in work -2020
To: siegholle@gmail.com

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Hollecrest & Associates Inc   -"Turnaround Consultants"
http://www.ic.gc.ca/ccc/search/cp?l=eng&e=123456239975 .

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future trends in work -2020

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Hollecrest & Associates Inc   -"Turnaround Consultants"
http://www.ic.gc.ca/ccc/search/cp?l=eng&e=123456239975 .

Interesting green strategy

College to be first 'grid positive'
OROVILLE, Calif. (UPI) -- A California college says it is set to
become the nation's only grid-positive college, producing more energy
from its own on-site solar power than it uses.

Butte College in Oroville, Calif., will add 15.000 solar panels to its
existing 10,000 by May 2011 to become the largest solar-producing
college in the world, a college release said Wednesday.

"Once this solar project is completed, Butte College will provide
enough clean renewable energy to cover all of our electricity needs
and generate slightly more than we use -- which will be a source of
additional revenue for the college," Dr. Diana Van Der Ploeg, Butte
College President, said.

The school's solar panels will generate more than 6.3 million kilowatt
hours per year, enough energy to power more than 9.200 average-sized
homes, the release said.

The 15,000 new solar panels will be placed atop rooftops and will
create covered parking areas and walkways.

The project will cost $17 million, with $12.65 million coming from
federal Clean Renewable Energy Bonds, which are low-interest loans
that can be used for clean energy projects.

The college will fund the remainder, up to $4.35 million.

Copyright 2010 by United Press International

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Hollecrest & Associates Inc   -"Turnaround Consultants"
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p energy?

Urine eyed as possible power source
BRISTOL, England (UPI) -- British researchers say they are looking at
urine as a possible energy source for fuel cells that could power
autonomous robots.

Scientists at the University of Bristol say the waste product could
serve as the fuel for microbial fuel cells, which use bacterial
cultures that digest waste to create power, ScienceDaily.com reported
Wednesday.

A team at the university's Bristol Robotic Lab has spent more than 3
years developing EcoBot-III, a robot that can power itself by
converting waste such as rotten fruit and grass clippings into power.

As part of their research to find the best waste materials that create
the most energy, they will look at urine as a "food" for the microbial
power units, the team leader says.

"Urine is chemically very active, rich in nitrogen and has compounds
such as urea, chloride, potassium and bilirubin, which make it very
good for the microbial fuel cells," Dr. Ioannis Ieropoulos says.

Copyright 2010 by United Press International

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Hollecrest & Associates Inc   -"Turnaround Consultants"
http://www.ic.gc.ca/ccc/search/cp?l=eng&e=123456239975 .

Back to Eden communities
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light transmittor?

New chip uses light to send, receive data
SAN JOSE, Calif. (UPI) -- U.S. microprocessor giant Intel says it has
developed a chip that can send and receive information at incredible
speeds using beams of light.

The California chip maker said the fingernail-size prototype can
transfer 100 hours of digital music from one device to another in one
second, the San Jose Mercury News reported Wednesday.

Eventually, such chips could transmit the contents of a laptop's hard
drive in one second and the entire printed collection of the Library
of Congress in two minutes, the company says.

Because the chips are made of the same material as the company's
current microprocessors, the "silicon photonic links" could be
produced at low cost, making them practical for use in everything from
personal computers to smartphones, Intel says.

"It's actually quite significant and a wonderful step forward," Alan
Wilner, a laser expert at the University of Southern California who is
familiar with the technology, said.

Copper connections traditionally used in devices ranging from PCs to
digital camera and flat screen televisions can become overloaded with
data, degrading their electronic signals.

And with the amount of video and other information being transmitted
expanding rapidly, concerns are mounting that copper is nearing its
technological limits.

But vast amounts of data can be transmitted easily via light beams
over optical fiber, leading a number of companies, including Intel, to
work seriously on the technology, the Mercury News said.

Copyright 2010 by United Press International

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Back to Eden communities
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