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The town of Guiyu in China's Guangdong Province, where residents have made an industry of recycling waste computer products with serious impact on their health, is one example. "People in Guiyu are breaking down mounds of toxic electronics with crude instruments and burning the electronics in fire pits for the gold and copper wiring in the circuit boards," Greenpeace International campaigner Casey Harrell told TechNewsWorld. "New studies show that the health impacts aren't just a combination of the impacts of chloro- and bromo-dioxin; it's exponentially higher than that," he said. "Among the few places in the world where you find mixed chloro- and bromo-dioxin is in places where you burn items with chlorine and bromine in them."

The Renfrew Health and Social Work Centre in Renfrew, UK, designed by Scottish practice Holmes Partnership, has scooped three design and architecture awards.

"We showed that copper ions diffuse out from a brass plate into a fish tank filled with seawater, and within 40 hours the copper killed 99.99% of the Vibrio food poisoning bacteria contaminating the living fish and shellfish," says Dr Jeong-Weon Huh from the Department of Health Research, at Gyeonggi-do Institute of Health and Environment, Republic of Korea. The copper is absorbed by the bacteria, causing them to die and fall off the gills and skin of the fish. Vibrio are even flushed from the internal organs of the fresh fish, sinking to the bottom of the tank. The remaining copper ions are absorbed from the seawater in the tank by sand and polyester filters, leaving safe, clean fish ready to be eaten by restaurant diners. "By being able to remove the copper ions, we can prevent people from consuming excess copper themselves, but let them safely enjoy any kind of fish, either raw or cooked," says Dr Jeong-Weon Huh.

The recently released LEED version 3 has undergone some significant changes, but for the health care industry the new changes do not go far enough. The U.S. Green Building Council's LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is widely recognized as the preeminent green building certification standard in the U.S. A dozen municipalities have even incorporated LEED standards into their building codes.

There is a school of thought that climate is at the center of 'everything'. If we solve climate, we'll solve many other issues: not only health, but also growth, education, food, water, security, migration, ... Major thinkers such as Latour, Sloterdijk or Beck have written about this. See my discussion on LI: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hansdekeulenaer_chaire-de-philo-%C3%A0-lh%C3%B4pital-on-instagram-activity-6608189040141434880-Botb

"Donald Sadoway: The missing link to renewable energy Tweet this talk! (we'll add the headline and the URL) Post to: Share on Twitter Email This Favorite Download inShare Share on StumbleUpon Share on Reddit Share on Facebook TED Conversations Got an idea, question, or debate inspired by this talk? Start a TED Conversation, or join one of these: Green Home Energy=Hydrogen Generators-alternative sources Started by Kathleen Gilligan-Smith 1 Comment What is the real missing link in renewable energy? Started by Enrico Petrucco 8 Comments Comment on this Talk 60 total comments Sign in to add comments or Join (It's free and fast!) Sort By: smily raichel 0 Reply Less than 5 minutes ago: Nice smily raichel 0 Reply Less than 5 minutes ago: Good David Mackey 0 Reply 3 hours ago: Superb invention, but I would suggest one more standard mantra that they should move on from and that is the idea of power being supplied by a centralised grid. This technology seems to me to be much more beneficial on a local scale, what if every home had its own battery, then home power generation becomes economically more viable for everyone. If you could show that a system like this could pay for itself in say 5 years then every home would want one. Plus for this to be implemented on a large scale requires massive investment that could be decades away. Share the technology and lets get it in homes by next year. Great ted talk. Jon Senior 0 Reply 1 hour ago: I agree 100%. Localised energy production would also make energy consumers more conscious of their consumption and encourage efforts to reduce it. We can invent and invent all we want, but the fast solution to allowing renewable energies to take centre stage is to reduce the base energy draw. With lower baseline consumption, smaller "always on" generators are required to keep the grid operational. Town and house-l

Chile's national copper company, CODELCO, announced Friday that it will invest US$1.5 billion in new environmental and health projects over the next five years. The company plans to utilize copper's antibacterial properties in projects involving Santiago's subway system (Metro) and the salmon-farming industry.

Venture capital is one of the pulses of the industry, and so a headline that VC investments are dropping by double digits is enough to catch the eye of anyone involved in the high tech ecosphere. But when you look at more data, things don't look bleak. On one hand, according to Dow Jones VentureSource, investment is down:\n\nIn the second quarter of 2008, quarterly venture capital investment in U.S. companies slipped below the $7 billion mark for the first time in 18 months. According to the Quarterly U.S. Venture Capital Report released today by Dow Jones VentureSource (http://www.venturecapital.dowjones.com), investment fell 12% in the second quarter compared to the same period last year with $6.64 billion put into 602 deals, the lowest quarterly deal count since 2005. The $7.58 billion invested in second quarter of 2007 was the second-highest quarterly totals recorded since the end of the dot-com boom in 2001.\n\nYet it's not all bad news because there was " steady deal activity and investment in the first half of the year," according to Dow Jones VentureSource director of global research Jessica Canning.\n\n"The movement of venture dollars from the traditional areas of information technology and health care toward burgeoning sectors like renewable energy, power management, and agriculture - or 'clean technology' areas - proves that venture capitalists are making good on their promise to tap opportunities in the massive energy market," said Ms. Canning.

Hewlett-Packard said on Monday it plans to buy Colubris Networks, furthering the consolidation of wireless networking companies. Financial terms were not disclosed. HP said the deal should close by the end of fiscal 2008, which occurs in October. Colubris, founded in 2000 and based in Waltham, Massachusetts, sells wireless access infrastructure products based around the 802.11n wireless standard, which can match or best the speeds of a plugged-in broadband connection. But the upgrade to 802.11n poses many issues for it to work efficiently. Colubris has centered many of its products around the predicted upgrade of those networks over the next few years. Colubris also sells wireless security and network management products. HP said products from Colubris will be incorporated into its ProCurve Networking portfolio, which will improve HP's ability to serve the health-care, transportation, manufacturing and education markets, among others. In June, Belden said it would buy WLAN vendor Trapeze Networks for US$133 million

Chinese and U.S. researchers have developed a carbon nanotube-coated smart yarn which can conduct electricity and be woven into textiles to detect blood or to monitor health.

So how can copper help? Earlier this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved the registration of 275 copper alloys as antimicrobial materials, allowing public health claims that copper, brass and bronze are capable of killing potentially deadly bacteria, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus -- the so-called "superbug" MRSA, which is blamed for many hospital infection deaths.

"On the other hand, we know very little about the behavior of nanomaterials or about environmental and health risks when these products enter various waste streams at the end of their life cycles. "

Revere Copper Products Inc., which is based in Rome, N.Y., will increase its fabrication charge on all copper and copper alloy products by an average of 10%, effective as of 1st March. Revere said that the rise in costs related to supply, energy and health-care were attributable for the price hike. It also added that the new revenue will ensure that the company can reinvest in key process centers to improve its quality, service and reliability.