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r0B0t: SwagBot: The cattle-herding robot that's making waves in Australia - Newstalk 106-108 fm  

Newstalk 106-108 fm

SwagBot: The cattle-herding robot that's making waves in Australia Newstalk 106-108 fm The Australian Centre for Field Robotics has developed a robot called 'SwagBot' to assist in everyday agriculture needs, in association with the University of Sydney. This could see the end of the traditional farm dog. SwagBot is designed to herd cows ... and more »

 
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r0B0t: Anki introduces tool that allows developers to hack its Cozmo A.I. robot - VentureBeat  

VentureBeat

Anki introduces tool that allows developers to hack its Cozmo A.I. robot VentureBeat Cozmo is a playful, intelligent robot with an essence of artificial intelligence. As VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi described it, it's “something like Eve the robot in Pixar's Wall-E animated film.” Anki cofounder and president Hanns Tappeiner explained ... Hanging out with Anki's Cozmo, the toy robot putting AI at our fingertipsThe Verge Anki's AI-Powered Toy Robot Is Opening Cozmo Code To Anyone To UseiTech Post Meet Cozmo, the AI robot with emotions video - CNETCNET NewsFactor Network -YIBADA English all 37 news articles »

 
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DSC_6913  

Fearless Photography_ posted a photo:

African Long-Snouted Crocodile at the Oregon Zoo in Portland, OR

 
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Tropical forests overexploited by unsustainable logging  
Widely hailed as a renewable natural resource, tropical timber from old-growth tropical forests is selectively logged worldwide at an unprecedented scale. A new study reveals that once prime tropical hardwoods -- such as Brazilian cedars, ipe (Brazilian walnut), and rosewood -- have been logged, they do not grow back to commercial levels and are at risk from disappearing altogether.  
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Can He Turn Republican Candidates Into Superheroes?  
Republican Ned Ryun is taking a page from the organizer in chief.  
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Analysis of ant colonies could improve network algorithms  
An analysis of ant colony behavior could yield better algorithms for network communication, say investigators. Biologists have long suspected that ants base their population-density estimates on the frequency with which they -- literally -- bump into other ants while randomly exploring their environments. That theory gets new support from a theoretical paper. The paper shows that observations from random exploration of the environment converge very quickly on an accurate estimate of population density. Indeed, they converge about as quickly as is theoretically possible.  
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Tail O' Fish  

Ingrid Taylar posted a photo:

Least Tern juvenile (Sternula antillarum) eating a fish left by the parent. This was shot through a protective fence/barrier at Bolsa Chica, earlier in the afternoon than the other two images here, hence the lighting differences. (The terns were too far away for my lens, so this is heavily cropped.)
Olympus E-M1, mirrorless

 
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Stratos by Vitaliy Sokol  

Stratos by Vitaliy Sokol

«Stratos» Бали 2016. Прибой, океан, волны и сёрфинг. Bali, shorebreak, surfing Photographer -© 2016 Виталий Сокол aka Will Falcon Модель - Даша Зайцева Canon 5D Mark3+canon + canon 20mm 2.8 in LiquidEye 1795 waterhousing Royalty free images at shutterstock: http://www.shutterstock.com/sets/120403-waves.html My social contacts: VK: http://vk.com/vitaly_sokol FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/VitalySokol LJ: http://vitaly-sokol.livejournal.com/ #bali #ocean #waves #baliwaves #willfalcon #surfing #willfalconwaves #balisurfing #gear #canon5dmark3 #5dm3 #liquideye

Vitaliy Sokol: Photos

 
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Leading Lines by Andy Yeung  

Leading Lines by Andy Yeung

Innovation Tower designed by Pritzker-prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid. Kowloon, Hong Kong http://www.andyyeungphotography.com

Andy Yeung: Photos

 
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Balade Urbaine by Matthieu Chaboud  

Balade Urbaine by Matthieu Chaboud

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elephant by Boogie Boogie

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Just Ice cream.jpg by Anfisa  

Just Ice cream.jpg by Anfisa

Anfisa: Photos

 
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Castle by Robert Adamec  

Castle by Robert Adamec

Robert Adamec: Photos

 
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Awakening from a dream by Christian Lindstén  

Awakening from a dream by Christian Lindstén

Combination of 2 exposures. One from the sunset, the other from later that night. This picture represents what goes on in my head and in my dreams.

Christian Lindstén: Photos

 
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Fork shadows by Enrico Salvadori  

Fork shadows by Enrico Salvadori

sometimes also an object of common use as a fork can become attractive.

Enrico Salvadori: Photos

 
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http://twitter.com/Cshepherd7R/status/753369783962173440 
Illegal #wildlifetrade is threatening all of Asia's #turtle and #tortoise species. https://t.co/vuhrzWzUwE via @TOICitiesNews #CITES #India 
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The Difference Between Green Furniture and Sustainable Furniture  
Many furniture companies claim their products are "green," a designation usually referring to material sourcing. Maybe their sofa frames are made out of dumpster-sourced scrap metal or their cushions are filled with used ticker tape. Responsible material sourcing is important, but it does not necessarily make something sustainable; that is, able to exist in perpetuity from an environmental and resource consumption standpoint.

To be sustainable, furniture should be high quality and support a lifestyle with reduced energy and resource needs. You can have a piece of furniture made of the most responsibly sourced materials out there, but if it falls apart in a short time and winds up in a landfill, or if it is designed in such a way that it can only fit into a carbon-spewing, resource-gobbling McMansion, it's not sustainable.



When it comes to sustainability, size does matter. Here's why:

• One of the best ways, if not the best way of reducing our carbon footprints and natural resource consumption is to reduce the physical footprints of our homes.
• 
  
• Smaller homes produce less operational carbon emissions, (e.g., heating and cooling) than larger homes and are less resource intensive to build.
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• Smaller homes tend to discourage excessive consumerism mitigating that behavior's attendant environmental impact.
• 
  
• Smaller homes typically support denser, more transit friendly communities, which, by their very nature, allow for a reduction in associated transit emissions.

Location, Location, Location

When thinking about sustainable housing, the name of the game is location, location, location. An EPA study found that an energy efficient single family suburban house plus a fuel efficient car can cut your carbon footprint by 34% as compared to a conventional, single family, suburban house and a car with average fuel economy. While this is a significant improvement over a standard single-family home, the same study found that living in an energy efficient multifamily house (i.e. housing with two or more units such as a townhouse or apartment) with access to public transportation reduces your carbon footprint by 62% ­- and that still assumes car ownership.

As one would expect, multifamily housing units are typically smaller than single-family houses. The median size of a new multifamily unit is 1,074 square feet, whereas the median size of a new single family home is 2,467 square feet. But with a smaller - albeit more environmentally-friendly - footprint can come some challenges regarding functionality, especially as a household grows or changes over time.

Let's face it, it's the desire for - or perceived need for - more space that frequently drives people out of central, transit-friendly locations in search of more square footage. Since housing in most urban cores is considerably more expensive than suburban housing on a per square foot basis, moving to a larger home in a central location can be cost-prohibitive.

This is where Resource Furniture comes in.



Increase Function, Not Footprints

All this is to say that furniture is only as sustainable as its setting. Space-maximizing furniture solutions from Resource Furniture can remove some of the reasons that people move further out in search of more space, by increasing functionality without increasing the physical footprint. Every product from Resource Furniture is not only manufactured using highly sustainable methods and materials, but also provide the same level of comfort and functionality as conventional furniture pieces and they are designed and built to last. Each of nine Resource Furniture showrooms offers a vast selection of multifunctional, space-saving furniture solutions that allow people to live comfortably and luxuriously in a truly sustainable setting.

By multiplying the function of a single space, combining rooms, making existing spaces work more efficiently, and utilizing high-quality multifunctional furniture, less square footage is required. Needing less space, one can live more centrally, drive less, walk more and consume fewer resources. In other words - live a sustainable life, not just a green one.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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Consumer Protection is Solar's Top Priority  
In a recent Huffington Post blog, "Protecting Consumers: Making the Solar Industry a Safe and Fair Marketplace," former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard makes some important points on solar consumer protection that we can all agree with.

Unfortunately, he neglects a key piece of context. The solar revolution is sweeping America and bringing a choice of clean, reliable and affordable solar power to millions of Americans, the vast majority of whom are fully satisfied with their solar systems.

I agree whole-heartedly with Goddard's points that consumers deserve to be well-informed regarding their choices to go solar. They also shouldn't have to deal with the rare cases of misrepresentation of energy savings made by a few rogue solar providers, whom should be behind bars. Let's face it, every single industry in America has a few bad apples.

But that's no reason to condemn an entire industry. Especially one that employs more than 208,000 Americans and supplied more new power generation capacity to America in the first quarter of 2016 than all other fuel sources combined. In fact, this is why the FTC held its educational workshop and dubbed it "Something New Under the Sun": to learn more about competition and consumer protection in the new, fastest-growing source of electricity in America.

At SEIA, we want to see consumers and companies benefit by choosing solar. Consumers deserve accurate information and companies should have opportunities to grow using sound business practices. To that end, we proactively created a suite of consumer protection materials, working with states, consulting with the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission, and winning the accolades of the Better Business Bureau. The goal is to make sure consumers are fully informed.

Mr. Goddard states that SEIA's new Consumer Guide to Residential Solar, reviewed by dozens of consumer protection specialists and posted on state websites as a resource, is a "good place to start, but would be better with some enforcement mechanisms."

We're way ahead of him. Last year, SEIA's Board of Directors put into force the first national Code of Conduct for the solar industry, along with a complaint resolution and enforcement process by which every one of our 1,000 SEIA member companies must abide. Today, any American can easily submit a claim to SEIA for examination and enforcement. SEIA stands ready to work with state and federal regulators to ensure justice is served.

We also built and released disclosure forms - similar to HUD-1 statements for home purchases -to give consumers a snapshot of the key terms in a contract, as well as free standard lease and power purchase agreement templates to boost transparency. What's more, we're building out a full suite of educational programs for consumers, including hot topic alerts, a just-released community solar consumer protection guide, and Spanish language versions of key documents due out this summer to reach even more Americans. And all of these materials are available free of charge.

Placing consumer protection first is our industry's top priority. The residential solar industry depends on good consumer experiences because referrals are the number one source of new business. It's unfortunate that some critics focus myopically on the rare instances of poor behavior in an industry that's installing more than one hundred solar panels per minute across America for very satisfied consumers.

A larger danger to consumers is red tape from well-intentioned regulators based on knee-jerk reactions to guard consumers from new products without first checking the laws already on the books. Today, all fifty states have consumer protection, fraud and contract laws on the books that provide strong protections to consumers. Combined with federal consumer laws, these state policies prohibit misleading savings claims, bar unwanted phone calls, require leases to disclose payment schedules, and more.

In Arizona, for instance, instead of enforcing existing law, legislators enacted purported consumer protection legislation that killed residential solar in the state. The Arizona proposals crushed law-abiding small businesses, sent thousands of good jobs out of the state and eliminated solar as a consumer choice.

Putting consumers first is both a legal and business imperative for the solar industry. When a consumer looks to solar as a competitive source of electricity, SEIA is committed to ensuring that consumers have all the information they need to make a smart decision. Let's also make sure that the fear of progress doesn't lead government agencies to strip consumers of the power of choice.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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Sacrificing Green for Green  
Sacrificing green for green. That's what cutting down woodland and using farmland to erect solar power systems is about.
Solar energy is great! We have solar panels on our more than century-old saltbox house in Sag Harbor on Long Island and it is marvelous seeing the utility meter going backwards as the panels generate plentiful electricity.
But on Long Island and elsewhere there is a push to clear forests and exploit agricultural land for solar systems--sacrificing green for green.
The forests that would be eliminated provide a home for many animal species and birds, they absorb carbon dioxide, provide aquifer protection and places for people, especially on crowded Long Island, to find peace and for recreation.
Using farmland--the most precious of all land--for solar facilities is outrageous.
An especially outrageous example of this in Long Island's Suffolk County involves the most historic farm in all the county--the Suffolk County Farm and Education Center in Yaphank--and a push by some county officials to erect a massive solar system on 25 acres of agricultural land at it.
The Suffolk County Farm is that beautiful farm one can see just to the south of the Long Island Expressway west of the William Floyd Parkway exit.
It is living testimony to what all of Long Island once was--and much of it still is. Suffolk, the eastern half of Long Island, remains one of the top counties in New York State in value of its agricultural produce. The county's pioneering Farmland Preservation Program, initiated in 1974 and since emulated around the United States, is emblematic of Suffolk's commitment to save farmland.
The farm was an adjunct to the county's almshouse or poorhouse that opened in 1872, land on which its indigent residents could grow their own food. Since 1974 it has been operated by Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County as, notes the state's "I Love NY" website, "A model farm education facility and also a real working farm." It's a tourist attraction--and so important for youngsters in Suffolk, particularly those from its suburban communities, a place for them to visit and learn about cows and chickens and how food is grown on the earth.
The farm is not very large, a little over 200 acres in total. The solar system would go up on this earth, be run by a private company and send electricity to county offices in Yaphank.
Fortunately, the Suffolk County Council on Environmental Quality, established in 1970 as the environmental watchdog of county government, tabled action last month on the bid to use the farm for a solar facility. The application will come back this month. Among the issues: the farmland on which the solar panels would be placed was specifically put in a category of protected farmland by the county in 2003.
The push to build the solar facility at the Suffolk County Farm comes amid other "utility-scale" solar schemes in Suffolk, among them, a 72-megawatt set-up for which 350 acres of coastal forest in Shoreham would be destroyed, and a 9.5 megawatt facility on 60 acres of a sod farm also in Shoreham. Meanwhile, in Long Island's Brookhaven and Riverhead Towns, laws have been enacted barring large-scale solar facilities on farmland.
Solar is a stupendous energy source. As Reuters recently reported: "Solar power is on pace for the first time this year to contribute more new electricity to the grid than will any other form of energy."
Inventor Thomas Edison is credited with saying nearly a century ago: "I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power!" And this was way before, in year after year in recent decades, the efficiency of solar panels (their ability to convert sunlight into electricity) has skyrocketed while their costs have plummeted. Solar is now totally economic. And the sun doesn't send bills.
There are hundreds of thousands of houses on Long Island the roofs of which could provide usable platforms for solar power. There are thousands of industrial buildings on top of which solar panels could be placed. There is an ocean of parking lots where solar panels can be installed. The solar panels at the parking lots at Suffolk government's Hauppauge and Riverhead centers point to that.
Solar panels are being placed on highway medians and along highway right-of-ways.
There are roads aplenty on Long Island.
Many "disturbed" locations on Long Island are suitable for solar. There are, indeed, many, many acceptable sites. Woodland and agricultural land must not be sacrificed.
As Edward Romaine, supervisor of Long Island's Brookhaven Town, has declared: "We must not trade green for green especially when one of those greens is money and not the environment."

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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The End of Coal  
Presidential candidate Hilary Clinton is not an energy expert. She probably has some such person on her campaign staff, but she didn't need them when she told the unfortunate truth to a West Virginia audience. She said, "We're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business." This occurred at a round table forum in March in Kentucky, hosted by CNN. The statement was made in the context of proposing to replace these jobs with renewable energy jobs, and was not made as a policy prescription, more as a statement of fact.

Was she right? What is the future of coal in the US, and more broadly in the world?

It is not easy to make a case for the coal mining (and burning) industry. Coal mostly is used in electric power plants, and has been historically for a hundred and thirty-four years, since Thomas Edison built the first electric plant, the Pearl Street station in downtown Manhattan, in 1882.

Using coal as a fuel has advantages: the combustion technology is straight-forward, it is far easier to burn coal in large boilers and move the electricity around than it is to have coal deliveries to every home and business with a small furnace. It is plentiful; there is a huge reserve available in the US, and much in a number of other countries. There has never been an "OPEC of coal" because of this dispersion of the resource. But over time the disadvantages have begun to chip away at the market.

Let's start with production. Being a coal miner is a dirty, damp and dangerous occupation, particularly underground mining. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, mining is the second most dangerous occupation in America. And just to answer the obvious question, depending on how you calculate, either commercial fishermen or loggers hold the prize for most dangerous US job.

But concern for worker safety is not driving coals' decline--it's a combination of competitive economics and environmental concerns.

Burning coal in power plants has become more and more expensive as more environmental control hardware has been required over time. First it was electrostatic precipitators to take out the particulates n the exhaust, then scrubbers for the SO2 and now technologies to remove mercury and other trace metals. The final step, currently on hold due to litigation, is the Federal proposed requirement - the Clean Power Plan - to decrease the CO2 emitted from burning coal, given its impact on global warming. And since coal is almost all carbon, this is a real problem. It is even more challenging because no cheap or easy way exists to separate the CO2 from the other gasses going up the stack of a coal plant. The most recent effort to solve this challenge, the Kemper plant in Mississippi, has gone from an initial budget of $2.9 billion, to a current estimate of $6.7 billion. And it is neither finished nor working, two years after it was supposed to be on line.

But it may be natural gas and solar that really finishes off coal.

Plants powered by natural gas are cheaper to build and run, and produce far fewer traditional pollutants, and only about forty percent of the CO2 of coal. The fracking boom has driven gas prices below $5/mmbtu for the last five years, and frequently below $2.00. This has made gas a better economic choice in competitive markets. And recent solar prices in utility scale applications--even below 3 cents a kwh in Abu Dhabi a month ago--make electricity from new solar plants cheaper than just the operating cost of coal plants. The CEO of AES' largely coal US plants, Ken Zabgrebski, recently remarked at a recent energy conference in Arizona that the future was clearly solar.

And the rest of the world? China is the largest producer of coal anywhere, with production for 2009 estimated at three times that of the US. But even here, the pressure of unbreathable air in Beijing and other large Chinese cities, and the demands of climate change mitigation have resulted in a startling turn of events: in 2013, China added more renewable energy capacity to its grid than it did coal, and by a ratio of about four to three. And in Germany at 2 PM on Sunday May 15, solar and wind combined to supply "almost all" of Germany's power needs, 45.5 out of 45.8 Gigawatts. This happened in a power system that as recently as 2013 derived 45 percent of its electricity from burning coal.

It is not pleasant to watch wrenching change. It is less pleasant to be on the wrong side of it, especially when the impacts include joblessness for people who have made a decent living from mining coal. But technological advances, the working of markets and the requirements of the widespread consensus on environmental needs occurring simultaneously are difficult to withstand. Just ask any of the 28 US coal companies who have gone bankrupt in the last seven years, including Peabody, the world's largest coal company.

Merle Haggard sang, "It's dark as a dungeon way down in the mines." The same is now true in every coal company boardroom.

R.F. is the former CEO of AES and the author of Stories from the Middle Seat: The Four-Million-Mile Journey to Building a Billion Dollar International Business.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

 
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R.F. Hemphill: The End of Coal  
Presidential candidate Hilary Clinton is not an energy expert. She probably has some such person on her campaign staff, but she didn't need them when...

Read more: Coal, Alternative Energy, Environment, Sustainable Energy, Environmental Policy, Green News

 
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A Portrait of Medicine and Tradition in India  

Bonesetting is a traditional medicinal practice in India. Much like chiropractors, bonesetters manipulate the joints of their patients in order to heal aches and pains. The short film The Bonesetter, by Bruno Pitzalis and Giulia Valentina Paolini of the production company DIÒSCURI, is a stunning visual profile of one man's practice.

 
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