From the article:

Self-healing "smart building materials" have the potential to reduce structure repair costs, lower cement-production carbon emissions and even save lives. One barrier that has kept these materials from being commercialized, however, is their potentially labor-intensive and thus expensive production process. Recently, an engineering student from the University of Rhode Island (URI) announced that she has developed a self-healing concrete that would be inexpensive to produce.

Michelle Pelletier, collaborating with URI Chemical Engineering Professor Arijit Bose, created a concrete matrix that was embedded with a micro-encapsulated sodium silicate healing agent. When cracks formed in the concrete, the capsules ruptured and released the agent into the adjacent area. The sodium silicate reacted with the calcium hydroxide already present in the concrete, and formed a calcium-silica-hydrate gel that healed the cracks and blocked the concrete's pores. The gel hardened in about one week.

When Pelletier's concrete was stress-tested to the point of almost breaking, it proceeded to recover 26% of its original strength. By contrast, conventional concrete only recovers 10%.

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Iceland's energy mix has the highest share of renewables of any country, giving it the lowest emissions intensity of any developed nation that doesn't use nuclear power. And Reykjavik Energy plays a very important role in this. "In a nutshell, Reykjavik Energy provides electricity, geothermal water for heating, and cold water for consumption to its customers," says Eirikur Hjalmarsson, CPO - Management Committee. "We also harness hot water from geothermal fields within Reykjavík itself and distribute it to our customers."

Reykjavik Energy, he says, operates geothermal plants at Hellisheiði and Nesjavellir, where it heats groundwater and distributes it to the district heating; it also produces electricity by using geothermal, high-pressure steam at those same plants.

Maybe we should follow their lead.

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The Voglreiter Auto Residence is an unusual car-shaped house located near Salzburg, Austria. This unique dwelling has been created by designer Markus Voglreiter, who initially purchased a 70's style house but wanted it to look different than all other houses in the area.

Even with the unique layout, every modern efficiency and sustainability technology has been incorporated into the design.

Every day it seems that science fiction from my childhood becomes more of an everyday reality. Now a company called Shimizu Corporation is vetting the idea of putting a ring of solar panels around the entire 68,000 mile lunar equator.

Sunlight would be converted into electricity by the solar panels, which would be transmitted via cables to facilities closest to the earth where it will be converted into microwaves or laser power in order to be transmitted to the earth.

This company dreams big! If you would like to see more of their ideas, follow the related link below.

Glenn Old tops up with water


"We have developed our HHO generator with safety first, designing a unit that produces enough hydrogen to safely gain up to 60 per cent increase in fuel economy and up to 30 per cent reduction in carbon emissions," Mr Old said.

"We have gained national display rights to our product. Our purpose is to reduce the public dependency on foreign oil and we believe on a large scale with our device we will be able to remove smog from our capital cities within five years.

Our unique patented device simply converts water from H2O into a gas called HHO, this gas is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. Thus turning any vehicle into a water/petrol or water/diesel hybrid.

Although this technology has been available for some time, its new application hasn't. This gas is then fed into any current engine, petrol or diesel. The gas mixes with the current fuel and increases the flame burn rate and reduces GHGE.

During testing at a government-approved air care facility in Vancouver, Canada, a reduction of 51.5 per cent of emissions was achieved on a 5.9 litre Cummins turbo diesel engine.

One of the best features of our product is that the gas is produced on demand, so there are no storage requirements of hydrogen. You start your vehicle it produces the gas, turn the vehicle off (and) production ceases."

This product should cost under $1000 and became available May 30, 2010. Follow the related link below for more information. Please note that while this makes sense to me, I have not reviewed it in detail and am not in any way endorsing this product. Proceed at your own expense.