A Mumbai engineer's "violent elephant control gear" will safeguard against beasts run amok

The "Violent Elephant Control Gear" takes the form of a 16-pound box fitted to the rear leg of an elephant. A human controller can press a remote device button to trigger a power cord that shoots out and ensnares the other rear leg of the elephant.

Matthew's invention can supposedly restrain elephants weighing as much as 2 tons. A spokesman told The Daily Telegraph that the commercial launch will price it at a little more than $664 (or £400 or 30,000 rupees).

The device is also billed as a more surefire method for stopping rampaging elephants, as opposed to the current approach of shooting the elephants with anesthetic darts -- a potentially tricky proposition if several shooters overestimate the dosage.

Fast Company suggests that the device may draw inadvertent inspiration from a certain Star Wars film ... and we have to admit, those Imperial AT-AT Walkers always did look a bit elephantine.

Still, rampaging elephants aren't giant, unfeeling mechanical walkers, but instead manifest the unhappiness of beasts of burden or circus animals. Fast Company also points out that hostile human-elephant interactions only continue to rise as humans encroach on a shrinking wild elephant habitat -- a much bigger problem, beyond the control of any remote-controlled leg manacle devices, no matter how cool.

[via Fast Company and The Telegraph]

The groundbreaking plant produces about enough power to make a pot of delicious coffee

Osmotic power works by separating saltwater and seawater in two chambers separated by a polymer membrane that will only allow freshwater to pass through. The salinity of the seawater draws the freshwater through the membrane, creating a great deal of pressure on the seawater side. That pressure can be used to turn a turbine to create power.

Of course, the Norwegians have no problem going big on their maritime energy projects either. Norwegian energy giant StatiolHydro recently erected Hywind, the world's first floating full-scale offshore wind turbine, and Statiol's Snohvit field in the Barents sea is the world's most environmentally friendly liquid natural gas plant and boasts the world's longest undersea pipeline system.

Just as technological innovations made Hywind and Snovhit possible, advancements in membrane technology have vastly increased the efficiency, as well as lowered the cost, of osmotic power. The Tofte plant cost between $7 million and $8 million, not too shabby for a power plant if, of course, it can offer more than just a pot of coffee. One quick solution: implement osmotic plants near desalination facilities, which produce a briny water twice as salty as seawater as a byproduct.

Double the osmotic pressure potential, and suddenly we're up to two coffee makers. Slowly but surely, progress is made.

[The New York Times]

A Chinese wind-turbine company strikes a deal to become the exclusive supplier for one of the largest U.S. wind farms

The Shenyang Power Group has signed on to supply 240 of its massive 2.5-megawatt wind turbines to a 36,000-acre development in West Texas. The Wall Street Journal reports that the wind farm is also slated to receive $1.5 billion in financing from the Export-Import Bank of China.

This comes as the U.S. has increasingly out-sourced much of its wind turbine development. Less than a quarter of wind turbine components installed in the U.S. came from domestic production, and Europe currently holds the lion's share of turbine manufacturing. A Norwegian firm launched the world's first full-scale floating wind turbine this September.

As a reflection of this, just 15 percent of the 2,800 new jobs from the new wind-turbine development will take the form of U.S. jobs. The U.S. government has tried to help the nation's renewable energy industry with $500 million in grants -- but it will likely take a while for U.S. wind power manufacturers to play catch-up after struggling with an uneven market.

Still, this doesn't mean U.S. companies and entrepreneurs have been complete laggards. General Electric has invested in gearless wind turbines with an eye on tapping the European market, and one of PopSci's previous Inventions Awards went to the inventor of small wind power rotors.

[via Slashdot]

The EPA is testing three types of porous pavement to keep pollutants out of underground water

Most parking lots may resemble a man-made wasteland even with cars sitting on top of them. But now they can serve a dual purpose by helping filter out pollutants in rainwater that might reach underground water sources.

The Environmental Protection Agency kicked off a study this week on how pavement materials can improve water filtration. A 43,000-square-foot section of a parking lot at the agency's Edison, New Jersey facility serves as the test bed for three different types of permeable pavement. The agency also planted several rain gardens this summer to see how vegetation can aid in water filtration.

Storm water runoff can gather large amounts of debris, chemicals (antifreeze, motor oil) and other nasty sediment as it flows across impermeable parking lot and rooftop surfaces. Porous pavement could go a long way toward countering that--EPA employees will even contribute to the experiment during their daily commutes by representing traffic and adding vehicle-related pollution like leaking oil.

The filtered water won't all go into the soil. Certain sections of the porous pavement test beds are lined with geotextile fabric to collect water samples. The impermeable fabric sections also have a perforated pipe to drain accumulated runoff into a dedicated collection tank.

So next time you're watching dirty storm water run along gray pavement, just remember--the EPA's Green Infrastructure Research Program has got your back.

[EPA

After nearly four days, 1,860 miles, and lots of baking Australian sun, a team from Japan's Tokai University edged out 31 other competitors to bring home a solar victory in the 2009 Global Green Challenge

The win shut down a four-win streak by Dutch utility Nuon, which as of this writing was still battling the University of Michigan for second place. The Tokai Challenger, which is equipped with six square meters of 1.8 kW compound solar cells developed by Sharp for outer-space applications, placed fourth in qualifying at an average speed of 50.87mph. During the race, the team reportedly took the lead on day one, and stayed there all the way to the finish line.

Thirty-two solar vehicles from 16 countries made the start of the 2009 Global Green Challenge last Sunday. The bi-annual Global Green Challenge has separate categories for hybrid, electric, and other forms of alternative energy vehicles. Tokai's victory is the first by a Japanese team since 1993 when the Honda Dream II took first.

[via Gizmag]

The car manufacturer creates two flower species to help counter CO₂ created by Prius assembly

The new version of the cherry sage plant can absorb harmful greenhouse gases, such as nitrogen oxide, through its leaves. And Toyota's variant of the gardenia acts as a natural humidifier by creating water vapor in the air, to help cool the factory grounds, reducing the energy required for air conditioners.

The Age reports that Toyota has made a broader effort to reduce the Prius manufacturing footprint on the environment, and has managed to reduce CO2 from its Prius plant by 55 percent since 1990.

Even the grass grows more slowly thanks to some Toyota tinkering. The new grass variant only requires mowing once a year, as opposed to the old version that required mowing three times a year.

The Prius plant also boasts reflective solar tubes in the place of many electric lights, motion-sensitive lights in the toilet facilities, and an air-conditioning system used in moderation. We'd wager that these efforts may contribute more to Toyota's greening goal than flower power, but the genetic engineering is still a pretty stunt.

Toyota has recently debuted its plug-in version of the Prius, as a possible counter to GM's plug-in Volt slated for 2010. No word on whether it's seriously looking at any challenge posed by the electric Hummer, otherwise known as the "Prius-Stomping Green Machine."

[The Age via Autoblog Green]

Written by a group at the experts at Australian insurance consultancy Climate Risk, the transformation to a low-carbon world requires an effort “greater than any other industrial transformation witnessed in our history.” At minimum, the world needs to embrace – and by embrace, they mean to the absolute maximum – low-carbon technologies by 2014. A minimum growth in all green industries of 22% a year is necessary to achieve that goal, according to their research, and that’s just to cut emissions to 63% of 1990 levels by 2020.

But the WWF has more ambitious plans: a reduction to 80% of 1990 levels by 2050, an industrial revolution that would require growths between 24% and 29% every year. This is the best way to stave off the doomsday scenario of 2 degree Celsius (about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warming across the board, according to the report. Unfortunately, we have a long way to go.

The research relied on complex Monte Carlo models of industrial growth, resource allocation, and technological advance, but the basic reasoning is thus: total greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere are estimated 463 parts per million. Scientific research shows that a good comfortable spot for our atmosphere is about 400 ppm. But at around 475 ppm, a threshold that we are dangerously close to crossing, runaway climate change becomes increasingly more likely, at which point it will be difficult if not impossible to put the brakes on global warming.

Now, having said all that, it’s important to note that this isn’t the first doomsday climate change scenario to emerge, especially recently. Just today, two British Cabinet ministers showed off their own doomsday map, detailing rising sea levels and submerged cities that would result from a 4 degree Celsius (7.2 degree Fahrenheit) rise in global temps. President Obama has pledged a greenhouse gas reduction of 80 percent by 2050 (an easy promise to make with a two term limit), while the EU has stated that it will match those efforts if a deal is sealed at December’s UN climate change conference in Copenhagen.

But the WWF report, if taken seriously, places a new urgency on the issue. For one, most climate strategies rely upon an incremental ratcheting down of emissions while slowly transitioning to low-carbon sources of energy all the way up to 2050. According to WWF, this schedule simply won’t hack it. Further, WWF points out that only three of the 20 green technologies they’ve reviewed are moving forward fast enough to hit the 2014 deadline: wind, solar, and biodiesel. Other technological initiatives like low-carbon agriculture, sustainable forestry, and other forms of green energy generation are sorely lacking. The outlook, it seems, is dim.

What happens if we miss the deadline? According to the WWF report, from there things become increasingly difficult. Post-2014, low-carbon industries will need to grow at a minimum of 29% per year, and that’s just to have a better than 50% chance of staving off that nearly 4-degree Fahrenheit spike in global temperatures. But the news isn’t all bad: while the transition will be tough, long term investment in green energies should pay off, with renewable energy savings alone in the period between 2013 and 2050 expected to hit $47 trillion if we cut by 80 percent, a positive number among many grim figures.

Naturally, models are models and scenarios are but scenarios. The most important takeaway is this: no matter whether you believe in runaway warming or not, technology is the way forward in our warming world, and right now we are woefully under-prepared for the transition to a low-carbon future.

[WWF via New Scientist]

A Russian mayor wants to expand cloud seeding to preventing snow in Moscow

Moscow already keeps the Russian Air Force on hire to prevent rain during parades on Victory Day in May and City Day in September. Time Magazine reports that the city easily coughs up $2 to $3 million for the convenience out of its $40 billion budget.

The Air Force arsenal for spraying the clouds includes cement powder, dry ice and silver iodide. Moscow residents can only hope that there's no repeat of an incident that happened in June 2008, when Reuters reported that a Russian cargo plane accidentally dropped a 55-pound bag of cement through a suburban home's roof.

This latest scheme represents only the latest development in Russia's love-hate relationship with winter weather. Moscow residents typically trudge through the snow from November to March, but the harsh winters have historically proved handy at least twice in freezing invaders in their tracks: Napoleon's Grand Armee and Hitler's Panzers each eventually ground to a halt.

So far Luzhkov has touted the benefits of his snow-stop plan for both city residents and farmers outside the city who would receive additional moisture. But suburban residents have begun lodging protests and concerns.

If the idea sounds somewhat extreme, just keep in mind that Russia has no monopoly on wacky schemes -- see the latest geoengineering scheme to reduce hurricanes, courtesy of a certain U.S. billionaire.

[Time Magazine via Yahoo News]

The National Mall was transformed into a futuristic commune for the past two weeks as 20 teams from four countries erected solar-powered homes

Developed in conjunction with the Department of Energy, the 1,500 horsepower machine makes use of regenerative braking for extra power and is also able to recharge in just two hours (requiring calibration once a week).

And here's the best part: Norfolk Southern says it costs the same to make as a traditional locomotive. So from the sounds of it, there's no downside to shoving the old coal-guzzling engines to the side (along with their their significant greenhouse gas emissions).

[via NS Corp via Inhabitat]