Environmental

Brazilian Honda subsidiary Moto Honda da Amazonia Ltda.(HDA) has begun sales of the , the first motorcycle in the world to be equipped with flexible-fuel technology. The 150cc motorcycle is equipped with a Mix Fuel Injection System, a newly developed fuel supply and fuel injection control system that enables consumers to use a flexible mixture of environmentally-responsible bio-ethanol and gasoline fuels, hence reducing CO2 emissions and fuel costs. Read More

Compressed air cars are well and truly on their way to mass production in India and America, among other places - although they seem to be taking their time. But the cheap, environmentally-neutral compressed air engine also lends itself to other interesting urban and industrial transport concepts like the AIRPod. Intended both as a personal 3-4 seater city commuter and as a getabout for airport, train station and municipal workers, the AIRPod is cute and easy to drive with a joystick instead of a steering wheel and pedals. The three-wheel transport weighs around the same as a touring motorcycle at 220kg, so it only needs 5 1/2 horsepower from its lightweight air engine to reach top speeds a little over 40mph. Best of all, cheap compressed air refilling will take as little as 90 seconds and cost about EU1.10 for the AIRPod's expected 220km range. Read More

Tractors may not be the sexiest of vehicles, and they probably aren’t the first ones that come to mind when thinking about environmental friendliness, but agricultural equipment manufacturer New Holland is looking to change that with the production of a prototype tractor that is powered by a hydrogen fuel-cell. Read More

Lasers, is there anything they can’t do? If they’re not shooting down UAVs, they’re fighting AIDS or bringing us the next generation of HDTVs. That’s all well and good, but when it comes to lasers there’s none bigger than the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California - an instrument capable of delivering 500 trillion watts of power in a 20-nanosecond burst which is now nearing completion. Its myriad uses will include providing fusion data for nuclear weapons simulations, probing the secrets of extrasolar planets and could even lead to the holy grail of energy production - practical fusion energy. Read More

March 3, 2009 In rich societies, poorer people have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. Likewise, large inequalities of income are often regarded as divisive and corrosive. Now, in a groundbreaking book, UK-based researchers go beyond either of these ideas to demonstrate that more unequal societies are bad for almost everyone within them — the well-off as well as the poor. The authors forcefully demonstrate that nearly every modern social and environmental problem — ill-health, lack of community, life, violence, drugs, obesity, mental illness, long working hours, big prison populations — is more likely to occur in a less equal society, and adversely affects all of those within it. Read More

February 26, 2009 It definitely looks like solar was in at the recent Mobile World Congress as, following hot on the heels of the world’s first low-cost solar-powered mobile phone, comes the first solar-powered full-touch mobile phone from Samsung. Samsung are highlighting the eco-friendly credentials of the phone, which can be charged by the solar panel located on the back, calling it the "Blue Earth" and constructing it from recycled plastic. Read More

Toyota is taking the concept of green cars literally with the development of a hybrid concept car made from seaweed which will to be shown at the Melbourne International Motor Show in Australia this week. The 1/X (pronounced one-Xth) gets its name because it envisages a hybrid-powered car of the future with a fraction of the environmental footprint of today's cleanest cars. Read More

Expensive carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects are gaining momentum around the world as a way to combat greenhouse gas emissions (or is that sweep them under the carpet?), India’s Economic Times has reported that a team of Indian scientists have discovered a naturally occurring bacteria that could help fight global warming by converting CO2 into calcium carbonate (CaCO3) - a common compound found as rock all the world over. Read More

Since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago, large scale warfare has been a permanent global fixture. History shows that the motivations for war are different for those ordering the conflict than for those undertaking it and now a startling new study has found 80 percent of the world's major armed conflicts occur in biological hotspots. That is, the richest storehouses of life, the areas essential for both biodiversity conservation and human well-being, are also the regions of the most human conflict. Millions of the world's poorest people live in hotspots and depend on healthy ecosystems for their survival. Is it time for civilization to take political and social responsibility and protect these places? It certainly makes more sense than fighting over oil! Read More