Gravia: Gravity Powered LED Lamp Design
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Clay Moulton, a Virginia Tech student, has come up with a design with some serious environmental gravity. An LED lamp powered by gravity to be specific. This innovative design won him the the runners-up honor at the Greener Gadgets Design Competition.
The lamp, he dubs "Gravia" is powered by a falling weight. The weight starts at the top of the cylindrical lamp and as it slowly descends it turns a highly efficient ball screw which spins the generator located at the base of the lamp, which in turn lights the LEDs. This process take about 4 hours at which point it needs a little human power to get the weight back to the top.
He originally calculated that the lamp would produce 600-800 lumens (about a 40 watt bulb), but since winning the award there has been a lot of criticism that his calculations were not correct. In a press release Moulton acknowledged that the currently state of the technology is not sufficient to make a working model. But this is all part of the design process, and we look forward to seeing where this project goes. [via]
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Schools Continue the Green Paper Movement
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McDaniel College is going green. The school has launched a plan to neutralize its harmful effects on the environment by next year, joining other colleges and universities in Maryland and throughout the country.
The 1,600-student school is surveying faculty, staff and students to find out how detrimental their driving, paper use and wasteful eating habits are to the environment.
The amount of printing paper used at libraries has been cut in half since the school began charging students 5 cents per page after they use 400 pages, said Donnella Folendorf, the school’s information technology office manager.
And a printer cartridge hasn’t been emptied yet this year; usually seven are drained every month, Folendorf said.
In addition, bins for recyclables have been placed next to trash cans throughout the campus — a convenience for which many residents have recently clamored.
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Healthcare and electronics applications to lead nanotechnology growth
Posted by George Elvin
Driven by an expected exponential growth in commercialization successes in the healthcare and electronics sectors, worldwide revenues from products incorporating Nanotechnology are projected to exceed US$2.78 trillion by end of the year 2015.
Chemical industry currently dominates the Nanotech arena in terms of maturity of R&D efforts and actual product commercialization, and worldwide revenues are projected to exceed US$82 billion in 2008. Pharma & Healthcare industries for instance are projected to post the fastest annual growth rates in terms of annual revenues from nanotech-incorporated products over the next ten years, at a CAGR of 88.2% over the years 2006 through 2015. Revenues from products incorporating nanotechnology in the semiconductors/electronics arena are projected to exceed US$1 trillion by 2014.
Source: nanotech-now.com
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Green Office Tips
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- Cut paper use in half through duplex (double-sided) printing and copying.
- Replace hard-to-manage desktop printers, copiers and scanners with one efficient multifunction system that can reduce energy use by 50 percent.
- Use the scan to e-mail capabilities of modern multifunction systems to reduce the need to print and mail hard-copy documents.
- Switch to solid ink color printers (if it is the right application to suit your printing needs) to reduce waste up to 90 percent and eliminate the need to recycle toner cartridges.
- Use recycled paper or sustainable stocks. Look for papers with certification from the Forest Stewardship Council. These papers are made from trees harvested in a way that protects endangered forests.
- Use Lean Six Sigma tools and methodologies to analyze your enterprise-wide document infrastructure and identify ways to optimize it in terms of environmental sustainability, operating costs and efficiency.
- Outsource document management to experts who will help you improve quality, lower costs and reduce energy and paper use by taking advantage of industry best practices and the latest technology.
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Tags: LED, technology