Propellers have owned propulsion in the seas since roughly 1775. Their reign might soon be ended by what we have learned from Cuttle Fish and other marine animals–none of which have a propeller. Animals with fins and flippers silently and quickly move through the water with an incredible agility to swim forwards, backwards but also…
Category: Clean technology
How clams are the defenders of our water supply
It turns out that one of our favorite mollusks is incredibly good at detecting pollution in water. In Poland, close to the city of Warsaw and under the Vistula river, there are eight clams hooked up to computers. They are monitoring the drinking water for the city on a continual basis. When the clams encounter…
Wasted artificial light gets new life as electricity
In an office, or your home, what ever light does not pass through your eye gets wasted. A new photovoltaic technology based on Perovskite, better know as calcium titanium oxide, have been developed into PV that can capture artificial, indoor lighting, found inside buildings. The amount of energy in artificial lighting is much less than…
Curing what ails Concrete
A cure for our Canadian crumbling concrete
Two ways that Google Keeps Its Operations Carbon-Neutral
Google searches the Circular Economy for carbon neutrality
Signs the textile industry is the next innovation frontier
Last week my family gathered all of the clothing that was too small, too worn or too embarrassing to let me wear out and took it for recycling. It struck me as such a waste in money and energy, for good reason. The production of textiles, from the pesticides we use on cotton fields to…
Iceland– a leader in football and climate change solutions!
Tiny Iceland is poised to give the world a huge solution for climate change
Green Field Opportunities
Originally published on the Annex Consulting website. http://www.annexgroup.com/articles/2011q3/advice5-0911/ As an IT consultant I am always looking for technology that can help my clients be more competitive. In my field ‘more competitive’ translates directly to ‘can I help them make more money, save more money, or build a stronger brand?` Green IT is one of the…
There is power in using your voice
The California Institute of Technology’s Dr. Choo has developed a generator that runs off the vocal cords to improve the efficacy of implanted medical devices. This is not insignificant to the millions of people who have Cochlear Implants, Pacemakers, Implanted Cardiac Defibrillators and other devices that every 5-1o years need to undergo an operation to…
Capacity building within Industry Canada
Industry Canada works with Canadians in all areas of the economy and in all parts of the country to improve conditions for investment, enhance Canada’s innovation performance, increase Canada’s share of global trade and build a fair, efficient and competitive marketplace. In the Pacific Region office, the ICT function had just been transferred from Spectrum,…
Tapping into the power of new ideas
For many years immigrants have been coming to Canada and starting their own businesses. For some, it is the only way to earn a living and for others a way to make their entrepreneurial vision a reality. Either way, between no network in this country, poor english language skills and the Canadian business environment, many…
Call for papers: The 4th Climate Change Technology Conference (CCTC 2015)
The 4th Climate Change Technology Conference (CCTC 2015), organized by The Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC) and ten of its member societies, is a forum for Canadian and International participants to exchange ideas on emerging techniques and technologies for the mitigation of, and adaptation to, the impacts of climate change. If you have a technology…
eBay decides to run a full data center on fuel cells
The six megawatts of cells will run on biogas, generated by organic waste at landfills or farms, and natural gas, use the grid only for backup power. I love this announcement, along with the fact that Daimler Benz is opening a fuel cell plant in Vancouver, as it gives amazing credibility to a technology sector, and a group…
Wired Lego Petri Dish Gives Real-Time Updates
A sample is placed on top of a small image-sensor chip, which uses an Android phone’s LED screen as a light source. The whole device is placed in an incubator, and the image-sensor chip connects to a laptop outside through a wire. As the image sensor snaps pictures of the cells growing in real-time, the…
Kyoto plan: Emission credits send the wrong message
Focus should be on developing local markets for local technology On April 13, the feds released Moving forward on Climate Change: A Plan for Honouring our Kyoto Commitment. Clearly the plan lacks certain logic. The most obvious example to me is the encouragement of a large emitter of greenhouse gases to invest in international projects…
Pension funds can boost green technologies
Have you ever wondered what the $40 billion or so that the B.C. government has in pension holdings for teachers, hospital workers and government employees is invested in? You should go to http://www.pensionsbc.ca and look. It might surprise you to learn that the money is not invested in a way that will make our province…
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