lascelles's story links

Recent research from Vidi researcher Josef Stuefer at the Radboud University Nijmegen reveals that plants have their own chat systems that they can use to warn each other. Therefore plants are not boring and passive organisms that just stand there waiting to be cut off or eaten up. Many plants form internal communications networks and are able to exchange information efficiently.

82% either ’strongly favor’ or ’somewhat favor’ “Requiring electric utilities to produce at least 20% of their electricity from wind, solar, or other renewable energy sources, even if it cost the average household an extra $100 a year.”

Operators of Paul Brown Stadium want permission from the city to kill birds that have been pooping on Bengals fans. City officials are working with stadium officials on both the legalities of killing the birds as well as the means by which they might be killed.

Orcas sprint along a channel which has opened in the ice. They are headed deep into McMurdo Sound, where they hope to find food. They must hurry, however, for wind conditions can cause the channel to freeze again, cutting off the whales' access to air.

The Environmental Protection Agency's pursuit of criminal cases against polluters has dropped off sharply during the Bush administration, with the number of prosecutions, new investigations and total convictions all down by more than a third, according to Justice Department and EPA data.

The Nature Conservancy is a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 15 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific.

There is an estimated 2 trillion barrels of oil buried beneath parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Geologists, petroleum companies and the federal government have known about these massive deposits for nearly a century. The trouble has always been: how do you get at it?

Florida Power & Light, one of the nation’s largest utilities and the largest producer of wind power – announced at the Clinton Global Initiative conference that it will spend $1.5 billion to build solar thermal energy in Florida, California, and other states. In addition, the utility plans on investing nearly another billion dollars nationwide to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, a big contributor to global warming.

Europe's new Metop satellite has revealed the extent of ozone thinning over Antarctica this year.

CBS News reports that almost a dozen security guards were taped sleeping on the job at Peach Bottom Nuclear Power Plant, located on the Pennsylvania-Maryland border.

The world's largest offshore wind farm, which will occupy a site of 90 square miles off the coast of Kent, has been given the go-ahead by the government and should be ready to provide clean power for a quarter of London's homes by 2010.

A Greek firm has unveiled a hi-tech office block that relies on solar power for heating and cooling.

Flats cost between �100,000 and �125,000, two-bedroom houses cost �132,500-�139,500 and three-bedroom houses are on sale for �150,000.

It is the first time flat-pack homes have been sold with their plots and demand is expected to be high. Ikea said it had already received a lot of interest from potential buyers.

The siblings started attending seminars, workshops, conferences, anything they could find, on development.The more they learned, the more they felt that green building had the closest parallel to what they saw as the "old way of doing things.""I call it the common sense way of doing things," Anthony said.

Build a wooden frame and fill it with dirt and water. Stir. Tamp down hard. Let dry. Keep this up and you'll have a rammed earth house. Tere O'Connor calls his new dance Rammed Earth because, like this primal home, it springs from its environment.

The project includes several green features, such as exposed roof trusses that support an integrated photovoltaic system; native plants; highly reflective paving and groundcovers to reduce the urban heat island effect (when an urban area becomes significantly warmer than its surroundings); integrated airtight drywall approach at the building envelope, high-efficiency boiler and other mechanical equipment; air-to-air heat recovery system; and the specification of regional and rapidly renewable materials and fin

"If you take your 30-year mortgage, you may spend $10 or $15,000 more up front, but that six or seven percent interest rate, that's only $70 to $80. So you could save that in your heating and cooling,"

Container City, located at Trinity Buoy Wharf in the London Docklands, is one such example of a larger scale housing development comprised of recycled shipping containers. The London docklands development is composed of environmentally friendly work studios and live/work lofts stacked on top of each other to create a 5-story building.

Believed to be one of the first "cob" houses in Washington to win a building permit, it recently was appraised for at least a quarter-million dollars.

Recycling old buildings can keep historic landmarks part of the community, and revitalizing these structures makes for one-of-a-kind homes. Recycled Spaces presents projects that have created beautifully designed apartments and houses out of former ecclesiastical, industrial, agricultural, municipal, and commercial sites. It provides guidelines for preserving the integrity of architectural features such as staircases, mezzanines, and period decor.

With any designer, ask how many homes the firm has built and how many are in the pipeline, and arrange to visit a finished house. The growing prefab field has led many designers to jump in, but not all them actually have designs that have been built.

The four-storey house in Lewes, East Sussex, was built on a brownfield site using local labour and sustainable materials and utilised a neighbouring Victorian viaduct for part of its foundations.

Its environmentally-friendly features including solar panels, underfloor heating and lamb's wool insulation earned the couple an eco house of the year prize and another top sustainability award for their architect.

Tango is an electric bike. It has two wheels beside each other. It's controlled with Segway like balancing by the rider.

Thailand said it would give big tax breaks for a company making eco-cars. Honda had planned a big factory already but increased the scale to take advantage of this plan. "We are hoping the eco-car will be out next global niche," said Sudjit Inthaiwong, BoI deputy secretary general.

Odd contraction in an article about a guy going vegan.

Christian Science Monitor article about local food, bottled water, organic food and other green things in Restaurants. The article points out; 'The ideas are not new, say experts, but they are gaining fresh currency because of the burgeoning global environmental movement and new generations of youth with budding enthusiasm for long-established notions of sustainability, ecological health, and food safety.'

Solel 'will build the world's largest solar energy park in Southern California's Mojave Desert to supply enough electricity to power 400,000 homes in central and northern California. The massive $ 2 billion project was announced on July 25.'

'Etruk has devised a method to produce biodiesel within the comfort of your own home, using their Home Biodiesel Processing Plant.'

'THE Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) has launched a million dollar ad campaign calling for Australia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and a 60 per cent cut in carbon emissions.'

Interesting line in a New York Times article on New Urbanism. 'Carving out those small lots, however, requires a zoning change. As a rule, communities don’t like smaller lots, because that means more density, more cars, more people and higher school taxes.'