If you have ever enjoyed finger painting then you’ll be really excited about Surface. The people at Microsoft have come up with a desktop computer that is, literally, a table-top. A touch screen controlled by the movements of your hands, Surface is the simplest computer interface yet. You can also place objects on it, like a digital camera, and the computer will recognize the object (through barcode scanning) and take the appropriate action, like downloading your pictures.

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Vampire electronics suck! Literally! These are electronics that use energy even when seemingly turned off or idle. CNN recently did a video report about these electronics and found that even some washing machines, when you turn them off, still suck energy. Many homes have up to 50 vampire devises. For example, a turned on DVD player uses 11.32 watts, and when it's turned off it still uses about 6 watts of energy. A home computer uses around 60 watts in standby.

Check out this news piece from CNN.

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“There is a time when panic is the appropriate response,” Eugene Kleiner once said. According to John Doerr, with respect to global warming, that time is now. He and his partners recently formed the “Greentech network,” made up of 50 or so of the smartest people they know, to investigate climate change and what’s being done about it, around the world. They made some interesting discoveries. First of all, they learned beyond the shadow of a doubt that companies are really powerful. Take Wal-Mart, for example. Wal-Mart has the second-largest fleet of vehicles in America. It is also America’s largest private user of electricity, and largest private employer. Wal-Mart deals with 60 000 suppliers—it has a big effect on other businesses, around the world. If Wal-Mart decides that going green is its best and most profitable option, then others will be forced to follow suit.

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Students at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have designed an urban transportation innovation that will work a lot like luggage carts at the airport: stackable, electric, two-person “City Cars” that can fold up to take up less space. Calling them “cars” is slightly misleading, however, since they don’t have an engine and are intended not as a replacement for conventional cars, but rather as a completely new type of vehicle.

The vehicles are driven by robotic motors in each wheel, eliminating the need for any combustion engine, or even a transmission. This frees up a lot of space, so that the interior of the car is big enough for two, yet the exterior is about one quarter of the size of a regular sedan. Everything on board is controlled by a computer, and the car starts with the push of a button. The wheels have 360 degrees of rotation, which eliminates the need for U-turns, 3-point turns, or parallel parking!

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West Nile virus continues to be a threat. It causes flu-like symptoms. Swelling around the brain or spinal cord occurs with a serious form of West Nile Virus. With mosquito season already started in some parts of the country and approaching in other parts of the country, its time for mosquito management.

Gone are the days when children were told to come inside while trucks drove down the street fogging the neighborhood with pesticides to kill the mosquitoes. We now know that it not a healthy or environmentally safe way to deal with mosquitoes.

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Throughout history, there has been scientific based predictions. These predictions have included that end-times are upon us, an ice age is around the corner, a Y2K disaster is eminent, and current predictions of the effects global warming. With each earth changing prediction, comes research and valuable information. Even when the predictions don't come true, we still have the valuable results of the research that is done. It is a good thing to be armed with as much information as possible so we are prepared in the event that the predictions are true. But often the big picture is missed as immediate solutions are focused on.

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We know it’s possible to live off-grid, or to produce your own energy and feed it back into the grid, but is anyone actually doing it? It turns out there’s a growing number of self-sustaining homes, which in turn sustain companies like this one, that will retrofit your home with solar panels and wind turbines for energy production. One homeowner in downtown Toronto finds it hard not to feel smug about living off-grid, and who can blame him? Energy independence, and especially being able to produce this energy using sustainable technologies, must feel pretty darn good.

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In Nice, France, and Melbourne, Australia, people are developing engines that run on compressed air. Moteur Developpement International, in Nice, is perfecting a compressed-air car for public distribution. Someday their cars will be able to travel 4500 kilometres on one tank of air! The engine works the same as a combustion engine, except that the pistons are powered by air instead of tiny explosions of fuel. Because there is no combustion, the engine temperature is much lower, and thus most of the components can be made of lightweight aluminum instead of heat-resistant steel. The air tanks, kept at about 300 bar pressure, are made of carbon fibre, which is not only lighter but will also be safer should the car be involved in an accident—instead of metal exploding and sending shards of shrapnel flying, the carbon fibre will simply crack. All of the components are kept lightweight, which improves the efficiency and the mileage of the vehicle. The air car can get about 200 kilometres of driving per tank, and top speed is about 110 km/h. At a service station, it can be refuelled in about 3 minutes, or you can refill the tanks at home using the onboard compressor, which will fill up in about 4 hours.

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Built from “electricity tubes,” as they’re called in Holland, Theo Jansen’s sculptures don’t just move— they walk. There is no motor and, in the new models, no person involved. Powered by giant fans, or wings, Jansen has found the perfect ratio of tube lengths to construct legs that will bend and lift, in sequence, to make the creature walk in a very life-like manner along the beach. Some of the newer species can even store energy in the form of air, trapped in lemonade bottles for use when the wind is not blowing and the tide dictates a hasty retreat.

The legs are of a form which Jansen calls “the new wheel;” a reinvented shape having a different sort of movement, but based on the principles of how a wheel works: in other words, the axis around which the structure revolves remains steady and on the same plane, as the “wheel” moves.

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Instead of buying a sugar-powered battery pack from Sony, you could make your own sugar battery at home. Here is an instructional video on how to charge your iPod (something everyone seems to want to do, these days) using some sort of sports drink (as long as it has electrolytes in it) and a white onion.

Poke a hole in the onion to let more liquid in. Soak the onion in about 2 cups of the sports drink, until at least one cup has been absorbed by the vegetable. Who knew onions were capable of absorbing so much fluid? Once this step is done, dry the onion off and stick your USB cord into its side. What effect this has on the USB itself, and whether it can ever be plugged into a conventional port again, I have no idea. But, sure enough, the iPod turns on and begins charging— and as long as the onion has soaked up enough fluid, you can go for about 20 minutes!

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