Group items tagged

"A report released late Thursday in London and discussed Friday at the U.N. climate conference in South Africa said that - in theory - reflecting a small amount of sunlight back into space before it strike's the Earth's surface would have an immediate and dramatic effect. Within a few years, global temperatures would return to levels of 250 years ago, before the industrial revolution began dumping carbon dioxide into the air, trapping heat and causing temperatures to rise."

Throw-away Buildings Thermal Window Failure: How it Happens Virtually all glass condominium towers feature window wall systems (floor-to-ceiling walls of glass) enclosing the entire facade. Window walls yield spectacular views, but owners who buy a condo unit for the view may not realize that they're relying on a couple of panes of glass separated by less than an inch of insulated space to protect them from the elements. That insulated barrier will degrade over time, even as energy costs increase. On some buildings, five per cent of the thermal windows may have failed before they're even delivered to the construction site. Another 10 - 15 per cent will fail by the 20-year mark as they're exposed to the physics of heat expansion. By the 25 year-mark, a growing number will fail every year.

Earthship Biotecture creates buildings that... * Heat and cool themselves naturally via solar/thermal dynamics * Collect their own power from the sun and wind * Harvest their own water from rain and snow melt * Contain and treat their own sewage on site * Produce food in significant quantities * Utilize materials that are byproducts of modern society like cans, bottles and tires

Saturn's tiny, icy moon Enceladus has recently been visited by NASA's Cassini orbiter on several very close approaches - once coming within a mere 25 kilometers (15 miles) of the surface. Scientists are learning a great deal about this curious little moon. Only about 500 kilometers wide (310 miles), it is very active, emitting internal heat, churning its surface, and - through cryovolcanism - ejecting masses of microscopic ice particles into Saturnian orbit.

HyperPhysics is an exploration environment for concepts in physics which employs concept maps and other linking strategies to facilitate smooth navigation. For the most part, it is laid out in small segments or "cards", true to its original development in HyperCard. The entire environment is interconnected with thousands of links, reminiscent of a neural network.