Ok, I couldn't quite come up with a headline on this one. The thing is, in order to make bricks we cut down trees. This new recipe uses sand, bacteria, calcium chloride and urea, all easy-to-come-by materials. The process does not require an outside heat source, so the trees are protected.

It seems like urea, is becoming quite a sustainable ingredient. Beyond being tapped as a good source of hydrogen used in fuel cell batteries it is now being used to make sustainable bricks.

Architect Ginger Krieg Dosier has designed a process to "grow" bricks by combining the materials listed above. Traditional brick-making is very energy-intensive, producing more pollution than global air travel each year. It also consumes a lot of resources: 400 trees are burned to make 25,000 bricks.

The new sustainable bricks are as strong as traditional bricks, maybe stronger depending on the recipe used for the traditional bricks. We need to keep an open mind about resources, I know some people will have a hard time with the idea of handling a brick made with urea, but keep in mind in chemistry it is just an acid.

For more information, and the recipe, follow the related link below:

Please take this statement to heart. I have two small children myself and I know it is difficult at times to sift through alarmist information to really know what is a potential hazard. One thing we know for certain is Lead poisoning is very real. We also know that Cadmium is a neurotoxin that can cause permanent brain damage if young children are exposed.

It took the CPSC nearly five months to act on AP tests, which identified the Claire's children's jewelry as a concern, since they are made with as much as 90% Cadmium. With this information, a ban on Cadmium in children's jewelry has been made. However, we can not be too careful because the damage is permanent. Please recycle any metal jewelry fitting this description if you are not 100% positive it is safe.

You can check recall information on the CPSC website.

CPSC Chairman Inez Tenenbaum warned manufacturers against using cadmium in January, while speaking in Hong Kong, but she had a more direct warning for parents:

"Because of these recent developments, I have a message for parents, grandparents and caregivers: Do not allow young children to be given or to play with cheap metal jewelry, especially when they are unsupervised," she wrote. "We have proof that lead in children's jewelry is dangerous and was pervasive in the marketplace. To prevent young children from possibly being exposed to lead, cadmium or any other hazardous heavy metal, take the jewelry away.... The key message that I want parents to know is: We will act to protect young children, but take the metal jewelry away from children who will swallow, suck or chew on it while our work continues."

At first glance, an article about Sony that implicates them with a little issue regarding their firmware upgrades hardly seems appropriate for an environmental blog. However, decisions like this by Sony and other companies can have far reaching impacts going all the way to the waste of materials and all that is involved with their life cycle.

Imagine for a moment, a company produces an electronic device, runs it to market in large quantities, the product is made obsolete within a year and those devices are processed straight to e-waste before their second birthday. What is the impact on the environment? This is hugely wasteful.

What Sony is doing is not intended to hurt the environment. However, their decision may have significant impact if the current issue is not cleared up. Let me summarize the situation and then I will do my best to explain it.

The Air Force originally purchased 300 PS3s for a special project. Next an order came through for 2,200 more, it seemed something serious was afoot, and sure enough the armed force was aiming to use them as a cluster for high-def video processing. Naturally that's quite dependent on the machine's Linux capabilities, capabilities that Sony has since disabled. You might think this doesn't matter, since the units will never play games and so don't need the crippling firmware update. But, hardware fails, especially when stacked as close as these units are and according to the Air Force's Research Laboratory, Sony takes the liberty of applying the latest firmware even to refurbished units.

As shown in the photo above, a cluster of computers can be wired together to work as one big computer. This is done with an advanced operating system like UNIX or Linux. As Linux is a widely used operating system in advanced systems and devices with specific functions it is used as the backbone of our military forces. So Linux is the choice for this project and in itself presents no problems that can't be resolved by the techs working on the project. However, Sony, in an attempt to protect their game machines from running software that is not Sony approved, has disabled very specifically the ability to run an operating system other than the one they supply with the machine. This means the Air Force will not be able to use their own software on the computers even though they own the computers after the point of purchase.

You can imagine why this is a complicated argument for both sides. As the owner, you should have the right to do as you like with what you own but as the producer, you have the right to modify the product to better suit its intended purpose and market.

If this is not resolved, we know there are 2,500 PS3's that will have a very short useful life. I don't want to see perfectly good electronic hardware go to waste over situations like this. In my opinion, Sony should embrace the military customer and recognize the added revenue stream as well as advertising zeal it may provide. At the same time, doing this and allowing the use of outside software for special cases would ensure the long useful life of the machines keeping the waste to a minimum.

You can read the whole article and its references by following the related link below. However, this is the outcome.

If you are in the market for rechargeable batteries, there is very little difference in performance. The life of the batteries is claimed to be 2x by one manufacturer but the article did not have a long run test to verify they would outlast competitors by that amount. By the way, that is the number of recharge cycles, not how many hours they will run a device.

Average prices:

PowerGenix Batteries: $11
PowerGenix Charger Bundle: $23

Energizer Batteries: $12
Energizer Charger Bundle: $20

Eneloop Batteries: $10
Eneloop Charger Bundle: $21

As the article said, a safe bet is whichever is on special.

From the article:
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Solar Aero has recently been awarded a patent for a new bladeless wind turbine, the Fuller Wind Turbine, which is being claimed to be entirely safe for wildlife and as an added advantage, it generates electricity without any noise.

The entire assembly is contained in the housing and the only movement visible to an observer is the movement of the housing as it adjusts to the direction of the wind. The company expects that their wind turbine will be able to deliver power at a comparable cost to coal-fired power plants.
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This is not a lot of information. First, we measure energy in use over time, so the statement of 10KW in the heading is without supporting information. Does the 10KW come from the portable size unit shown in the picture or a unit that is 50x larger? Does the 10KW come as a monthly value since our utility bills come monthly? These are questions I am curious about.

What I can tell you with some certainty is this, a class 1 air flow contains about 200 watts per square meter. This means; If your machine can catch 1 square meter of air in a class 1 flow, 100% efficiency would mean collecting 200 watts of energy. Classes range from Class 1 (200 watts/square meter or less at 50 meters altitude) to Class 7 (800 to 2000 watts/square meter). However, there are problems with this possibility I will address in a minute. Take a look at that photo, lets assume the opening is about 1 square meter. This means the maximum, in a theoretical perfect world, that this machine can harvest is 200 watts in a class 1 air flow.

Now the problem: There is a little piece of bad news called Betz' law. Back in 1919 a smart German physicist named Albert Betz figured out that the most you can possibly get out of a wind turbine is around 59% of the power in the wind. This is a nondisputable bit of physics. I'm not going to prove it here but it is not hard to at least understand why we can never convert 100% of the wind's power.

Imagine a wind energy extraction machine of 100% efficiency that could take all of the kinetic, (moving), energy out of the wind. That would mean the velocity, (movement), on the "out" or "leaving" or "exit" side of the turbine blades would be zero, zilch, nada. No kinetic energy left. No velocity left. No wind. Dead calm.

If the velocity leaving the blades is zero then the air wouldn't be leaving at all. There would be no air movement, meaning the air after the blades isn't getting out of the way of the air coming in, which would mean the fresh air couldn't come in, which would mean there is no air flowing through the turbine blades, which would mean no power. In order to at least keep the wind moving through the turbine there has to be some velocity or energy in the air after going through the blades so that the air can get out of the way of the air coming through next. Sort of a "Catch-22". Just to keep the machine running at all the efficiency has to be less than 100%.

Mr. Betz pointed this out and then proceeded to prove, with solid physics and math, that the best that could be achieved by a wind turbine is around 59%. In other words, a perfect best-possible wind turbine would be able to convert almost 59% of the power in the wind into mechanical rotating power.

With this in mind, take another look at that photo. The idea is nice, the execution is elegant, however the promise is very big compared to known processes.

Consider also, this machine needs to be aligned with the wind to function. In areas that the wind changes direction, there will have to be another device or feature to keep the alignment.

This type of turbine will spin very fast, but there is also no torque for doing work. If you are interested, here are some further references on the Tesla turbine:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_turbine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_layer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_number
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine