EcoRadio

Category: Archive

Archived material from historical editions of The Generator

  • Rudd misleads Australia over whale watching program

    News Ltd this morning reported that the aircraft’s owner, Skytraders, had only late yesterday lodged an application with CASA to fly to the southern oceans, with an air safety spokesman saying that it would be a long process.

    "The process has started but it’s only just started and there will be a lot of issues that have got to be identified, discussed and addressed," CASA’s Peter Gibson said.

    Ministers Smith and Garrett yesterday attempted to quell concern over the issue, saying that there was ‘plenty of time’ before the Japanese returned from their mission, with the cull sometimes continuing into March.

    Despite the Government pledging to dispatch the mission within "a few days" of December 19, it appears planning was not in place at the time of the announcement.

    Shadow Environment Minister Greg Hunt said yesterday that the Government had misled the Australian people, and was sending the wrong message to the Japanese Government.

    "Sixteen days ago Mr Smith and Mr Garrett [said] within hours the ship would be on the high seas protecting the great whales," Mr Hunt said.

    "Hopefully… I’m sure one day they will get the ship on the seas and the plane in the air… the Japanese Prime Minister must be sitting back wondering…." he said.

  • Dance Party isolated in local floods

    Parts of the northern rivers and far northern New South Wales have been declared a natural disaster area after heavy rain and flooding.

    The floods are being called the worst to hit the region in more than 50 years.

    NSW Emergency Services Minister Nathan Rees made the announcement at Banora Point during an inspection tour of the region today.

    Mr Rees says it is a serious situation.

    "We’ve seen the prospect of severe flooding in places like Coraki in the next 24 hours and river heights of up to 16 metres in some locations and 120 people evacuated in some towns," he said.

    "The sitaution’s serious and on the basis of the advice from the SES … I’m declaring a natural disaster area for the Tweed Shire of New South Wales and also for Kyogle.

    "We’ll be keeping a close eye on the Richmond Valley Shire."

    About 150 people were evacuated from low-lying areas on the Tweed Coast and Kyogle early this morning.

    The Kyogle mayor, Ernie Bennett, says the Bruxner Highway has been severely damaged.

    "As you walked along the bitumen surface you could actually jump up and down six inches on it," he said.

    "The water under that subsurface is going to destroy that road and it doesn’t take very much of a highway to chew up a million dolars when you have to replace it."

     

  • Scientists Test Sonic Levitation on Goldfish

    Wenjun Xie and his team of colleagues used ultrasonic fields in their testing to keep a myriad of small animals in levitational stasis. Scientists were able to successfully levitate beetles, ants, spiders, ladybugs, tadpoles and fish between the sound wave emitter and reflector that comprise the device. While the ants, ladybugs and other insects were successfully levitated for over 30 minutes apiece without harm, the fish used in the experiment perished despite the scientists’ attempts to add water to the field with a syringe.

    While the team has tested the levitation equipment on small quantities of mercury and iridium, the heaviest known liquid and solid respectively, this is the first time it has been used to levitate living creatures. The initial aim of the project was to devise a way to levitate hazardous materials that could corrode containers or for whatever reason aren’t conducive to storage. And while the successful levitation of hazardous materials could prove useful for the production of pharmaceuticals and other industries that involve volatile substances, Xie says that the levitation of animals could open up a whole new realm of possibilities for such technology:

    Our results may provide some methods or ideas for biology research. We have tried to hatch eggs of fish [during] acoustic levitation.

    Results for the study were published in the online periodical Applied Physics Letters on November 20th.

  • Reading 78 Apple Peeler

    Reading 78 Apple Peeler
    Same proven design since 1878

     
    		Lightning fast!

    It’s almost worth buying one just to watch it work. Peel over 10 apples per minute!

     

    • Spike apple of any shape or size onto holding-fork
    • In just five turns of the crank the apple is peeled and automatically pushed off the fork
    • Cast iron and brass with carbon steel knife and blade

    "I don’t know what we would do without the Reading 78 Parer. Once a year we make mincemeat for the church & we peel 10 bushels of apples. It is a lifesaver – we used to peel them by hand."
    – Marjorie Cunningham in Kansas City, KS

  • PNG goes ahead with palm oil

    Woodlark Island is a small island, some 80,000 hectares, in the Pacific with a population of 6,000 residents. Vitroplant plans to convert 60,000 acres to palm oil plantations for biofuels. A solid majority of villagers reportedly oppose the project, and were not even aware of it until after its approval.

    An oil palm plantation on Woodlark Island will endanger the island’s flora and fauna, cause environmental upheaval, and result in drastic cultural change. Woodlark Island is home to at least nineteen endemic species, including a speckled nocturnal marsupial called the Woodlark Cuscus, and an endemic ebony tree. The initial logging would cause many of these rare species to go extinct, and toxic waste and runoff will threaten freshwater and marine ecosytems.

    Woodlark Island continues to maintain a social and ecological system that has supported human and other life for millennia; with healthy forests, wildlife and humans. Those opposing the project locally are concerned with disintegration of the native culture from socially unacceptable behavior and starvation as gardening and hunting activities are displaced.

    Throughout Southeast Asia, particularly in Malaysia and Indonesia, large swaths of rainforest have been and continue to be destroyed to produce biofuel crops. Oil palm has many uses, but increasingly it is used in biodiesel in Europe and elsewhere, raising ethical issues of burning a food product for fuel. Oil palm agrofuel is heralded as a climate change mitigation measure, yet the initial rainforest clearance leads to much more carbon release than its production and use avoids.

    The islanders of Woodlark have worked hard to draw international attention to this issue, and have issued an appeal for the support of international NGOs and citizens to pressure the government to withdraw the project. Register your support here.

  • Introducing the Solar Tree

    "The solar cells on the tree were able to store enough electricity in spite of receiving no direct solar light for days at a time because of the clouds. They showed that solar trees really are a practical form of street lighting," Christina Werner from Cultural Project Management (Kulturelles Projektmanagement, Vienna) told RenewableEnergyAccess.com.

    She said that the City of Vienna was now in the process of deciding whether to install more solar trees.

    "We hope that not only the city of Vienna but other cities will see the merits of using renewable energy for street lighting to cut emissions," Christina Werner said. "Someday soon solar trees could well be the main form of street lighting in Europe."

    Putting solar powered LED light systems on trees would cut down on the carbon emissions and also slash the bills of local authorities, she said.

    Street lighting consumed 10 percent of all the electricity used in Europe in 2006 or 2,000 billion KWh, and resulted in carbon emissions of 2,900 million ton.

    The use of more energy-efficient lighting in the Austrian city of Graz, with a population of almost 300,000 saved the city 524,000 KWh of electricity and 67,200 euros [US $96,800] in 2005.

     

     Close up of branches on a solar tree in Vienna.  (Credit: Gerhard Koller/MAK)

    "Not just trees but other objects could be decorated with solar cells and so keep streets well lit at night time," she said.

    The branches of the solar tree were decorated with 10 solar lamps, each one comprising 36 solar cells; they also had rechargeable batteries and electronic systems.

    A sensor was used to measure the amount of light in the atmosphere and trigger the solar lamps to go on automatically at sunset and off at sunrise.

    The tree’s lights went on for the first time in Vienna on October 8, 2007 at 11:00 pm. They are now on display outside the La Scala opera house in Milan.

    The tree was designed by Ross Lovegrove, a British designer, who said that they are not only efficient but also attractive and bring "nature into a gray city environment".

    An Italian company specializing in designer lighting systems, Artemide, as well as the world’s largest producer of photovoltaic (PV) cells, the German company Sharp Solar, joined forces to turn the design into reality.

    The idea came from Peter Noever, the Director of the Austrian Museum for Applied Arts in Vienna (Österreichisches Museum fuer angewandte Kunst). 

     Solar Tree, prototype, November 2007, designed by Ross Lovegrove and produced and developed by Artemide polycrystalline solar cells by Sharp. On display at the Piazza della Scala, Milan, Italy.  (Photo by David Zanardi)

    Ross Lovegrove and Sharp are now working on the design study for a car that is powered by solar energy.

    Sharp solar had a production volume of 434 megawatts in 2006 and a world market share of 17 percent. It produces PV cells in a factory in Katsuragi, Japan.

    Most of Sharp’s modules are used for solar energy systems on roofs, but the company believes that solar cells could soon be used in all areas of everyday life from clothes to satellites – including Christmas trees.

    Jane Burgermeister is a RenewableEnergyAccess.com European Correspondent based in Vienna, Austria.