I Think It’s A Cool Engineering Experiment But If He Really Is Pursuing This To Give Green Spaces To

What would have once sounded like a far-fetched feminist fantasy – women forming the majority of a parliament – is a reality in one country in the world, Rwanda.

In fact, women are making gains throughout all of Africa, but these achievements have been met with a loud silence from the western feminist movement. 

African women are blazing a feminist trail - why don’t we hear their voices? (The Guardian) 

Green Lake (Grüner See) in Styria, Austria, is an amazing place. For half of the year, it’s an underwater village with fish swimming through the branches of trees, a floor covered in grass, benches and bridges.

For the other half, it is over ground. In the frozen winter months the area is almost completely dry and is a favorite site for hikers. As the temperature begins to rise in spring, the ice and snow on the mountaintops begins to melt and runs down into the basin of land below. The waters are at their highest in June when it becomes a mecca for divers keen to explore the rare phenomenon.

Iceland to Help Develop Geothermal Energy in Ethiopia

Researchers at MIT have developed a new method for harnessing energy generated by very small bending motions, which could be capable of harvesting power from a broader range of natural human activities such as walking and exercising.

Yale Environment 360: New Device Harvests Energy From Walking and Exercising, Researchers Say

My house is covered with solar panels, and I drove the first hybrid electric Ford in Vermont and on and on and on. I try not to fool myself with that’s how we’re going to win this fight. Global warming is a structural and systemic issue, that’s where it comes from, the structures and systems. So changing those is what’s key. As individuals, we’re relatively powerless against climate change. That’s why the most important thing an individual can do is not be an individual, which means joining with other people in this battle.

Bill McKibben, author, activist and co-founder of 350.org, arguing that the collective nature of our climate crisis requires a collective response. In essence, recycling, commuting by bike or electric vehicle, using cloth bags and unplugging our phone chargers are all fine and good, but they aren’t going to get the job done. Why? Because our economies run largely on fossil fuel energy (i.e. coal, oil and natural gas) and need to be decarbonized in order to ensure we all have a future to look forward to.  The quote comes from a recent interview with economic researcher Chris Martenson for his website, ‘Peak Prosperity’. The whole interview is worth a listen and share.

Photo: Some of the more than 300,000 strong ‘People’s Climate March’ last year in New York City. (Source: UN)

Infographic: Current pledges by countries to #ActOnClimate and transition to low carbon economies currently exceed the 2°C (3.6°F) threshold beyond which climate science shows catastrophic consequences for people, planet and economies. Long story short, we need to up our ambition and urgency. The COP21 negotiations in Paris this fall are critical to secure a deal to get us on the path to a climate-smart, globally sustainable future. (Source: Climate Interactive) Related:

‘Limited progress seen even as more nations step up on climate’ (New York Times)

‘How your brain tricks you into thinking you are greener than you actually are’ (Washington Post)

Dr. William Rees: ‘Climate change is one symptom’ (YouTube)

‘Systems thinking’ (Wikipedia)

‘Shell abandons Alaska Arctic oil drilling’ (Guardian)

A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

Brain, Bone and Blood Vessels Coming Hot Off the Press

Could the days of custom clavicles and bespoke bladders produced just in the knick of time for suffering patients be around the corner?

While keeping an eye on tissue engineering studies, we’ve been seeing some significant wins in the lab that are bringing the sci-fi future of on-demand 3-D printed organs, bone and blood vessels closer. 

Harvard and Brown bioengineers are taking their own routes to build complex tissues in customized 3-D printers. And just the other week, we reported on newly unveiled work at the University of Florida to print complex soft structures in baths that could one day birth replacement human parts along with soft robots.

Now, Carnegie Mellon engineers reported on Friday that they had successfully printed simplified proof-of-concept anatomical structures like mini femurs, blood vessels and brains suspended in soft gelatin. Learn more and see a video below.

Keep reading

Every year, 4.3 million lives are lost to diseases caused by indoor smoke from cooking, heating, oil lamps and candles. That’s one person every eight minutes - mostly women and children.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

The Sustainable Energy for All initiative is working to ensure universal access to modern energy services by 2030 - while also ramping up renewable energy and efficient energy use to help fight climate change.

Find out more here: http://www.cleanenergyislife.org/

‘I Came By Boat’ Campaign Highlights The Critical Skills Migrants Are Contributing

They’re doctors, dentists and students.

Watch: How a simple photo edit perfectly illustrates the importance of gender equality.