Is a zero-carbon, zero-waste, zero-car city on the horizon?

Masdar City: Vision of an ecological utopia

The Gulf state of Abu Dhabi, which sits upon eight percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, has caught the world’s imagination with its ambitious plans to create Masdar City, a carbon-neutral community.

With the backing of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, Abu Dhabi’s crown prince ruler, the Masdar Initiative commissioned a team of architects led by Norman Foster to develop the conceptual design of a new city that will house 50,000 people.

In what was until recently desert by the sea, Masdar City will provide employment in business and education, powered entirely by solar or other renewable energy sources. The Initiative is owned by the Abu Dhabi government through the Mubadala investment fund.

After an initial investment of USD 15 billion, the plan calls for Masdar to be self-supporting, in large part by selling the technology and services that it develops along the road to energy self-sufficiency.

Thin-film photovoltaics, spherical PV, beam-down solar towers and thermal storage for solar power are among the technologies expected to emerge as academia and industry bond in pursuit of a renewable energy market valued at USD 6-8 billion in the Emirate alone. Abu Dhabi has pledged that green energy will account for at least seven percent of the country’s total power generation by 2020.

“Masdar will be at the forefront of the research, development and deployment of solutions that will enable governments around the world, including our own, to meet the targets they are setting for the adoption of renewable energy,” says Dr. Al Jaber, CEO of Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company.

Overall responsibility for the Masdar Initiative lies with Jabar, a University of Southern California, Los Angeles educated chemical engineer and MBA who also holds a doctorate in Business and Economics from Coventry University.

To attract entrepreneurs the world’s first zero-waste economy will offer a zero-percent corporate tax rate, supported by a legal structure that protects intellectual property while keeping paper work to a minimum.

Masdar will eliminate the need for cars by combining public transport with an urban planning scheme featuring narrow walkable streets. The city’s design will, according to Foster + Partners, give the world a model to combat low density sprawl, a major cause of energy inefficiency. In many environments buildings have been the responsibility of architects while urban planners have overseen infrastructure. The separation of these two areas of responsibility is now seen as incompatible with sustainable development.

“Masdar looks at the bigger picture, acknowledging that you cannot divorce the issue of energy from architecture and urban planning,” says a representative of Foster + Partners.

The firm sees the project as a blueprint for changes far beyond the Gulf. “Crucially, Masdar’s design springs from the recognition that to survive, we have to change, and with that change can come a better way of life,” she concludes.

Words: Davrell Tien

Living Dead - Ghost or Reality ?

Ghaziabad in India, July 2010

Living man declared dead by hospital

In a shocking case of medical negligence, doctors at a government hospital here declared an accident victim dead and kept him in the mortuary but when his relatives came to take away the body they found him alive.

21-year-old Sanjeev, an MCom student, was on his way to the market to buy books when his motorcycle was hit by a car on Sunday evening. Police rushed him to the MMG Hospital where the doctors declared him brought dead.

However, when Sanjeev's family members arrived at the hospital and rushed to the mortuary they found the youth to be alive and crying painfully.

They raised a hue and cry over the incident demanding stern action against the negligent doctors at the hospital. Chief medical officer A K Dhawan said an inquiry has been ordered into the incident.

Later on, family members of Sanjeev shifted him to Yashoda Hospital where he continues to be critical.

From Capay Valley to Silicon Valley - Farm Fresh to You !

Fresh fruits and vegetables travel from small farms to corporate cafeterias

One peach, two valleys. The delicious taste of summer begins its journey here in the bucolic Capay Valley on a small family farm and ends, slightly more than 24 hours later, in a modern Silicon Valley cafeteria.

Through a new "FarmShares" program, the plump peach delivers an explosive flavor to an eager corporate worker — and returns precious dollars to this region's struggling farms.

"Our employees get fresh local food — and we support farms. It's a win-win," said Chad Kromm of Adobe Systems, who introduced the Capay Valley Farm Shop program to the modern glass-and-granite Cafe Adobe in San Jose, where employees pick up their preordered boxes. "We're developing strong regional connections."

Welcome to Farm Fresh to You !

As people are becoming increasingly interested about where their food comes from and how it was grown, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is becoming a popular alternative for getting high quality food from a trusted local farm. Currently over 6,000 families are participating in our family farm's CSA, Farm Fresh To You. By joining our CSA these families are connecting directly to our farm, Capay Organic, and are receiving regular deliveries of nutrient rich, mouth watering, organic produce delivered directly to their home or office. 

Customer Friendly, Flexible, Convenient

• Cancel Anytime - No Commitment.
• Home Delivery - We deliver directly to your home weekly, every other week, or monthly.
• Customize your delivery - exclude items you do not like and add extra of items you do.
• Receive deliveries starting at only $25.00 per delivery.
• Satisfaction guaranteed.
• Speak with friendly customer service Monday-Friday 8am-5pm.

Rethinking water

Innovative Water Technologies, Inc.'s Solar-Powered Sunspring™ Water Purification Systems have been utilized in remote areas around the globe and are now being sent to Haiti for disaster relief.

The Sunspring™ is a portable, self-contained, solar-powered water purification system that can process water from remote rivers, creeks, lakes, wells and recycled rainwater, producing bacteriologically safe drinking water. The Sunspring™ physically removes bacteria, virus, cysts, particulates and turbidity from the water source, with each system providing purified drinking water for up to 5000 people per day. The systems are self-cleaning, efficient and easy to maintain - perfectly designed for disaster relief.

The Barkers -- Jack, 47, is the inventor; Carmen, 50, runs the business -- are behind the Sunspring, a portable, solar-powered water-purifying system.

Jack: "Everyone was shipping in bottled water to Haiti, but that's not a sustainable option. The Sunspring produces more than 5,000 gallons of water per day, every drop microbiologically safe to drink. The unit is constantly storing energy and can run at night or on a cloudy day. We installed 17 units in Haiti, 10 of them donated by GE."

Carmen: "A natural disaster was never in our business plan. We're working with Artists for Human Rights to install 100 more units in Haiti."

Jack: "One Sunspring costs $25,000, but it lasts for 10 years. If you sell the water at just 4 cents a gallon -- 20% of what water is going for right now in Haiti -- the payback period would be four months. You can create a local microfinance model; NGOs can help support hospitals, community centers, or schools. This can be sustainable within itself."

Original interview was published here.

Yes, you too can help Cure AIDS, Cancer, and World Hunger

The next time you step away from your desk for a quick latte at your local coffee bar, your computer can get to work....doing calculations for AIDS research. Or genome comparisons for drug development. Or sample analyses for better cancer treatments. In fact, your computer can do the calculations while you’re actually using it for something else. It’s possible when you volunteer your PC or laptop’s unused time to World Community Grid (WCG), created by IBM. Grid computing joins together thousands of individual computers, establishing a large system with massive computational power equal to a supercomputer. Because the work is split into countless tiny pieces and done simultaneously, research time shrinks from decades to months.

So why not donate something you don’t need, use or even think about-your idle computer time-and help make the world a better place? Here’s how it works.

Ready to be a volunteer ?

Your first step is to go to worldcommunitygrid.org and download a free, small software agent onto your PC. It is similar to a screensaver. An icon will appear in your lower right-hand icon tray. Your computer is ready to go to work. Then, this agent will request a set of data-or an assignment-from World Community Grid’s servers, located at an IBM facility. These servers send out the “job” assignment (in the form of a data packet) in triplicate-to three separate PCs-as a security measure.

Turn your PC into a tireless volunteer

When idle, your computer performs the calculations and sends the results back to the servers. An average task runs 10-20 CPU hours. The servers wait for the other two sets of identical data to be returned. The results are compared to ensure that they are identical and no hacking has occurred. The servers then send out a new work unit to your PC. Only when your computer is turned on, and the agent senses it’s idle, will it
be “volunteered” for research work according to the guidelines you set. Even when your applications are up, your system is idle about 80% of the time and this power can be used. You’ll know when your computer is being used for research because a screen saver appears, charting the progress on your current task.

Power in numbers: the Grid

As of early February, about 255,000 individuals from 200 countries have registered some 500,000 devices, contributing 75,000 years of run time to the Grid. It ranks among the top five supercomputers worldwide.

The brains of the Grid

Fourteen IBM servers serve as “command central” for WCG. When they receive a research assignment from an organization, they will scour it for security bugs, parse it into data units, encrypt them, run them through a scheduler and dispatch them out in triplicate to the army of volunteer PCs. As results come in, they are  scrubbed, validated and assembled into a file. When all the calculations are returned and the assignment is complete, the data is packaged and sent to a directory for retrieval.

Check out IBM's website for more details.