Hydrofluorocarbons are the chemicals that currently make the air conditioner in your car or the cooling system in your refrigerator work. These chemicals are perfectly safe in the captive environment of the equipment they operate in, however, conditions change and they escape. Cars get in accidents, and refrigerators go without maintenance too many years causing the the seals to dry out. Dry seals lead to escaped gases or chemicals.

We have very good control of these issues since the 1970s. The thing is, this new process could be cheaper and safer. The effect has already been recorded so the race is on to make it work in real world situations.

What we are talking about is a property of some substances to lose heat when they are exposed to changing magnetic fields. The process of this is called the magnetocaloric effect. Calories are a measure of heat, so the name literally means magnetic heat effect. Any time you have an exchange of heat, one material has a temperature drop while the other has a gain. Refrigeration and heating systems are all about controlling this process.

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I've said it before and I know I will say it again, wear sunblock.

Another note about the sun, it gives us vitamin D. Our vitamin D needs vary with age, body weight, percent of body fat, latitude, skin coloration, season of the year, use of sun block, individual reactions to sun exposure, and our overall health. As a general rule, older people need more vitamin D than younger people, large people need more that small people, fat people need more than skinny people, northern people need more than southern people, dark-skinned people need more than fair skinned people, winter people need more than summer people, sun-phobes need more than sun worshipers, and ill people may need more than well people.

Here are some basic tips about getting your vitamin D safely:

* Treat direct sun, (without sunscreen) like medication, using the lowest dose necessary, but don't avoid it completely.

* Always avoid sunburn.

* Get 15-30 minutes of unprotected sun exposure two to four times a week. Each of us has different needs for unprotected sun exposure to maintain adequate levels of vitamin D.

* Get frequent, short exposures. Regular short exposures have been found to be much more effective and safer than intermittent long ones.

* Note that you cannot generate vitamin D when sitting behind a glass window, because the UVB rays necessary for vitamin D production are absorbed by glass.

* After your 15-30 minutes of sun-block free time in the sun, you must protect yourself.

* Boost your "internal sunscreen" by consuming anti-oxidants and beneficial fats.

* Wear sunblock

Remember this one. It may be a reality soon. The Vision EfficientDynamics concept is a three-cylinder diesel, four-door, plug-in hybrid that generates about 356hp, 590-pound-foot output. The hybrid allows the diesel engine to drive the rear wheels directly or with assistance from a rear-axle electric motor through a six-speed gearbox and the electric motor up the front drives the front wheels. For maximum performance, all the three system can be made to run in tandem.

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In Peru, the disappearance of Chalcataya, a most important glacier, was a call for action. Then a huge chunk of Hualcan, another mountain glacier in Peru, broke up causing a lakeside tsunami.

These events led to a competition for "100 Ideas to Save the Planet." Out of 1700 entries, inventor Eduardo Gold was one of 26 winners of the World Bank-sponsored contest. Golds idea was to simply paint the mountains white, thus keeping their surface temperature down and allowing new ice to form and hopefully stay.

The paint is nontoxic. It is made from a combination of egg whites, lime, and water and it works by increasing the reflectivity of the mountain, preventing the normally dark rocks from absorbing the sun's heat.

Peru is home to 70 percent of the world's tropical glaciers, and global warming has hit them hard - nearly one-fourth of Peru's glaciers have melted in the last 30 years, threatening the continued livelihood of millions of Peruvians who depend on them for fresh water.

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You might be alarmed to learn a homemade nuclear reactor is being built next door. But what if this form of extreme DIY could help solve the world's energy crisis?

By day, Mark Suppes is a web developer for fashion giant Gucci. By night, he cycles to a New York warehouse and tinkers with his own nuclear fusion reactor.

The warehouse is a non-descript building on a tree-lined Brooklyn street, across the road from blocks of apartments, with a grocery store on one corner. But in reality, it is a lab.

Fusion power is considered the "Holy Grail" by many. It is believed that the power would be cheap and safe. I hope its true. However, until someone manages to do it we will not know for sure.

Currently no-one has found a way of making fusion reactors produce more energy than they consume to run.

Mark is the 38th independent amateur physicist in the world to achieve nuclear fusion from a homemade reactor, according to community site Fusor.net. Others on the list include a 15-year-old from Michigan and a doctoral student in Ohio.

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