Photo via the New Republic It's a widely held notion that politicians have long been in the pocket of Big Oil. And there's good reason for that perception: oil companies' huge campaign donations, vast lobbying power, and close ties to politicians have ensured that their taxes remain low , that hidden subsidies are around to provide extra funding, and that they receive preferential treatment in US energy policy. But there could be a new, ... View original post here: The Next Big Oil: Big Smart Grid?
So there really isn't anything that deep to this image. It's just a (more or less) life-sized blue whale eye. And on the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society site you can educate yourself/be mesmerized/ waste some time for a while staring at it while the entire life-sized animal scrolls across your browser window. Believe me, it's way cooler than you might think:... Read more from the original source: Ever See a Blue Whale Life-Sized on Your Computer? Now You Can
published July 1, 2010 and has No Comments
Image via Desktop Earth A very cool new download puts the whole world right on your desktop and in real time, shows where the sun is rising and setting. Using NASA's Blue Marble Next and Earth's City Lights, the download follows the earth's rotation and can be customized to even follow the way the planet looks as seasons change. ...
Read more...published June 24, 2010 and has No Comments
Image credit D. Küttel / ETH Zurich; via PhysOrg ETH researchers Daniel Küttel and Michael Breitenstein teamed up with professors Luc Van Gool and Vittorio Ferrari from the Institute of Image Processing to create a new software program that can learn from watching moving objects, analyzing things like street scenes and figuring out patterns and habits of things like ...
Read more...published June 24, 2010 and has No Comments
Photo via [jeremy] The security of the smart grid, from privacy and ownership of personal information among consumers to hackers' ability to fell the entire grid in one sweep of malicious code, has been a hotly debated topic since the smart grid's earliest days. So it is no surprise to hear that security measures that protect the grid is ...
Read more...published June 16, 2010 and has No Comments
Photo by Scottfeldstein A new report by by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and sponsored by AT&T has revealed that videoconferencing can mean huge savings for companies, both in money and carbon footprints. According to the report, adding a telepresence to their repertoire can mean U.S. and U.K. businesses "cut CO2 emissions by nearly 5.5 million metric tons in ...
Read more...published June 14, 2010 and has No Comments
Photo by canned muffins Just how important is turning off computers at the end of the day in an office building? Very, if a company wants to save big bucks on electricity bills. According to UC San Diego researchers, 50-80% of a modern building's electricity use goes to IT equipment, particularly desktop computers. A report last year showed that ...
Read more...published June 2, 2010 and has No Comments
It's long been thought that giraffes , with their tall necks and spindly legs, were incapable of swimming--unlike virtually every other mammal on the planet . But thanks to a team of researchers, who are strangely curious about such things, it's been proven once and for all that giraffes can indeed handle a dip. Figuring out giraffes possessed this ...
Read more...published May 27, 2010 and has No Comments
Image via NASA Goddard Photo and Video Yesterday I was perusing infographics on global oil spills over the years - a great way to feel disturbed and depressed in under an hour - and wondered how it is we even calculate the amount of oil lost in leaks. Turns out, the Oil Spill Training Company Limited has an app ...
Read more...published May 26, 2010 and has No Comments
Image via Hohm Microsoft has been working away at improving their Hohm platform - the energy management website they built for people interested in monitoring and minimizing their energy use . One of the features that most companies focusing on dashboards for energy management are determined to include is allowing a user to compare their consumption to that of ...
Read more...published May 20, 2010 and has No Comments
Image via Popular Science Back in January, we showed you a project that highlighted the intelligence of mold - er, it's efficiency at finding food, at least. This efficiency was used in an experiment to figure out the best routes for transportation in Tokyo . Turns out, the way slime moved across an agar-gel is surprisingly similar to the ...
Read more...published May 19, 2010 and has No Comments
Photo via chefrandan When it comes to greening up data centers, most IT companies focus on reducing power consumption through better server cooling methods and smarter building structures. A smaller handful, such as Google, have been looking into renewable energy as a greener power source. But one company is looking where most of us turn up our noses - ...
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This hand operated gramophone is as simple as it gets. Original post: Minimalist Gramophone Makes Playing Music Super Simple
Contrary to previously held notions of how whale songs are shared between neighboring populations, a surprising study finds that whales living the same ocean basin are singing different songs. Read the original post: Study: Humpback Whales Living in Same Ocean ...
