Foot-powered washing machine made from recycled materials costs just $4 Living in the developing world has its own perks that includes access to clean water, electricity and appliances that make our lives a lot easier. However, the conditions are just the opposite in many parts of the developing world where people have to work hard for even the most basic of facilities. According to research people living in the rural parts of Africa have to walk for many hours just to get clean water. While there are lots of problems that the governments of developing and underdeveloped countries have to tackle, a couple of industrial design students at the Philadelphia University, Aaron Stathum and Eliot Coven, have developed a prototype low-cost washing machine for the developing world that if mass produced will cost as less as $4. The washing machine has been developed after brainstorming on a variety of ideas and the final product is made using a simple 5-gallon bucket, a plastic fiber rope, old water pipes, and a neoprene cover.
Permaculture with Jack Spirko Part 13 - Understanding the Hydrology of Swales Classroom Materials | Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center The materials below were developed by teachers and professional educators associated with the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center with input from our scientists. The materials are designed to engage students in learning about science and engineering challenges associated with producing sustainable biofuels. All materials are aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and designed to fit within the curriculum of standard K-16 science courses. Materials include investigations, shorter stand-alone activities and readings, as well as longer integrated units. Use the sort and search features to find materials that meet your needs. Alternatively you can browse a list of our materials sorted by NGSS Performance Expectation or browse the NGSS performance expectations for each activity. For additional bioenergy labs and activities developed through participants in our Research Experience for Teachers program, visit the RET Projects page.
Kangouro AfriGadget | Solving everyday problems with African ingenuity Installing Swales Part 1 Marking Contour Lines Video hhmi Chloroplasts (here colored yellow) are organelles in cells of plants and algae that capture energy from sunlight and convert it to chemical energy by photosynthesis. We are dependent on photosynthesis because it is responsible for most of the world's primary productivity, and also because fossil fuels are mostly from remains of prehistoric plants. A typical plant cell contains about 10 to 100 chloroplasts. Chloroplasts are descended from early in evolutionary history when a eukaryotic cell incorporated photosynthetic cyanobacteria. 2015 has been designated as the International Year of Light Technical details: Different color stains were used to see various structures in the plant cells: nuclei (colored red/cyan/white), cell walls (colored green), and chloroplasts (colored yellow). Links:
permaculture articles by paul wheaton FarmHack: Collaboratively Retooling Agriculture FarmHack is a network for sharing open source know-how amongst the distributed fringe of DIY agricultural tech aficionados and innovators. In the same vein as Appropedia or Open Source Ecology, a collaborative digital knowledge-base facilitates the harvest of crowd wisdom to address challenges and inefficiencies in modern ecological (and economical) farm operation. It is a project of Young Farmers Coalition and somewhat angled to the exuberant and tech-savvy eco-preneurial demographic, but inclusive and supportive of all open earthy inhabitants. A primary focus of the organization is toward intensive development meet-ups, teach-ins, and hackathons, in person, on the farm. Just after landing at my new rural summer farm home and hack-factory in Vermont, I learned of one such get-together nearby on Lake Champlain. Close to 30 attendees converged from across New England, bearing pedigrees ranging from electrical engineering to graphic novel artist.