The future of vertical buildings. Robots and daily life. Urban planning and crime. Walkable cities. Novel parks. Living concrete. Labour unveils plan to promote food-growing culture in Britain. The UK should have fruit trees blossoming around housing estates, schools with access to vegetable gardens and council allotments for growing fresh vegetables, Labour said on Wednesday while setting out its strategy for the future of food policy.
Energy generating colored glass opens up new opportunities. Colorful glass panels capable of generating electricity have taken a step closer to becoming fully commercialized.
Oxford Photovoltaics, a spin-off clean tech company from Oxford University, has announced a £2 million investment from MTI Partners that will enable it to develop its technology, which enables transparent solar cells to be printed directly onto glass in a range of colors suitable for building facades. This latest investment will allow the firm to build on its experienced technical and commercial teams and construct its own product development and test facilities at the Begbroke Science Park near Oxford. Class-Divided Cities: New York Edition - Richard Florida.
This is the first post in a series exploring class divides across America's largest cities and metros.
Social class, an inescapable presence in American life, influences almost every aspect of our culture. It is inscribed on our very geography. Although our cities are more than ever our most powerful economic engines, they also are becoming more divided along class lines, creating distinct experiences within a given city. This divide is seen most clearly in where members of each class live. A recent report from the Pew Research Center found that residential segregation between upper- and lower- income households has risen in 27 of America's 30 largest metros over the past several decades. This growing socio-economic divide is not just an American phenomenon. To get a better sense of the scale of the divide in American cities, my research team at the Martin Prosperity Institute — relying on data from the U.S.
We begin today with New York. The geographic divide is pronounced. Mid-town miners: The hunt for urban treasure - environment - 05 June 2013. (Image: Peskimo) WHEN Mats Eklund goes metal prospecting he takes his life in his hands.
But it’s not raging torrents or grizzly bears he has to worry about. His main concerns are crumbling warehouses and frenzied rush-hour traffic. An environmental engineer at Linköping University in Sweden, Eklund is one of a new breed of prospectors who prefer to head downtown rather than out into the wild. Their target is “urban ore” – forgotten supplies of metals that lie in and under the city streets.
Eklund has spent several years tracing abandoned cabling and long-lost pipework beneath roads and pavements. Of course, reusing old metals is just a form of recycling, and there’s nothing new in that. High-Speed Trains Provide Environmental, Social Benefits, Study Says. The Gray Lady's Faith In Government Social Programs. The Gray Lady's Faith In Government Social Programs Eduardo Porter of the New York Times nicely encapsulates the American left-liberal world view when he finds an inconsistency between conservative support for larger families and conservative opposition to taxpayer subsidies for poor families.
But there is an odd inconsistency in conservatives’ stance on procreation: many also support some of the harshest cuts in memory to government benefit programs for families and children. The liberal mind in a nutshell: if you are for something and you are not for government support of something then you are being inconsistent. They can not imagine another way of looking at it.
They can't imagine private sphere activities independent of government policy. Porter likens government spending programs to investments. And the 2014 budget passed by Republicans in the House cuts investments in children further Sorry, did I say cynical? Eduardo Porter is an enemy of humanity. Randall, Residential lawns efflux more carbon dioxide than corn fields, study finds. Apr. 23, 2013 — More carbon dioxide is released from residential lawns than corn fields according to a new study.
And much of the difference can likely be attributed to soil temperature. The data, from researchers at Elizabethtown College, suggest that urban heat islands may be working at smaller scales than previously thought. These findings provide a better understanding of the changes that occur when agricultural lands undergo development and urbanization to support growing urban populations. David Bowne, assistant professor of biology, led the study to look at the amount of carbon dioxide being released from residential lawns versus corn fields in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. His co-author, Erin Johnson, was an undergraduate at the time of the study and did the work as part of her senior honors thesis. For Bowne, the study allowed him to look beyond the obvious impact of losing agricultural fields to development -- the loss of food that was once produced on the land.
Media Centre: Feeding nine billion in 2050. During the next 40 years the world’s population is projected to reach more than nine billion people. 12 April 2013, Dublin/Rome - During the next 40 years the world's population is projected to reach more than nine billion people.
Demand for food is expected to increase by 60 percent under business-as-usual assumptions. Competition for land, water, and food could lead to greater poverty and hunger if not properly addressed now, with potentially severe environmental impacts. The Food Security Futures conference will bring together senior researchers from the CGIAR and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), as well as representatives from the private sector, civil society and other research organizations to examine the contribution that public research must make to food security and nutrition, natural resource management, and climate change in order to meet the challenges of the coming years. A space revolution in housing? Urban Light Causes Birds to Bloom Early. European Blackbird (turdus merula).
Image courtesy of IbajaUsap / shutterstock City lights at night make pretty views from space, but they’re not so good for sleeping. To overcome a messed up inner clock, many urban dwellers have learned to use light-blocking curtains or eye masks. But people aren’t the only ones who have to adjust to this unnatural illumination. Blackbirds, too, are exposed to this nighttime glow, and it actually makes them mature and moult sooner.
Reproduction is a seasonal ritual for birds, hence the term mating season, and they take their cues from their environment. In a recent study, researchers set out to find out the effects of nighttime lights on male reproductive maturity in European blackbirds. What the researchers found was dramatic. The concept of birds’ sensitivity to light is not new. Early bloomers could have an advantage by getting to females faster, but if the females aren’t physiologically ready to breed yet, these males are out of luck. Artificial light at night advances avian reproductive physiology. + Author Affiliations e-mail: ddominoni@orn.mpg.de Abstract.
Ageing-Report_full. How urban heat islands are making India hotter. It is bitterly cold in Delhi.
A bone-chilling wind has left temperatures below 3C (37F), the lowest since records began in 1969, and at least 100 homeless people are said to have died. But temperatures in the mega-city that is now home to an estimated 18 million people can be expected to rise to a sizzling 46C if there is a heatwave in May, and the city is often unbearably hot by the time the monsoon arrives at the end of June.
Now, Indian government-backed research shows that both Delhi and India's biggest city, Mumbai, are becoming "urban heat islands", with significantly different climates to their surrounding rural areas. Preliminary findings from the Delhi-based Energy and Resources Institute (Teri) show that temperatures in both cities have risen 2C-3C in only 15 years. The ongoing study, based on Nasa satellite readings, also shows the cities to be 5C-7C warmer than in the surrounding rural areas on summer nights.
Will today's suburbs become tomorrow's power stations? At what point will it become cheaper to generate your own electricity than to buy it from the grid? At what point will it become more cost effective to purchase photovoltaics and an electric vehicle than to continue purchasing fossil fuels for your car? Professor Hugh Byrd Energy experts believe suburban areas are set to play an increasingly important role in electricity generation… In the future, suburban solar energy will play a key role in compensating for dwindling fossil fuel supplies, according to the findings of an international study. Cat-caf-is-coming-to-london-after-public-donates-100000-in-a-feline-frenzy-8507660.