Biodiversity Hotspots

Conservation International
Biodiversity Hotspots

"Life on Earth faces a crisis of historical and planetary proportions. Unsustainable consumption in many northern countries and crushing poverty in the tropics are destroying wild nature. Biodiversity is besieged."

"To qualify as a hotspot, a region must meet two strict criteria: it must contain at least 1,500 species of vascular plants (> 0.5 percent of the world’s total) as endemics, and it has to have lost at least 70 percent of its original habitat."

Video games waste energy and contribute to global warming

Scientific American
Larry Greenemeier

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"Game consoles (40 percent of U.S. homes have at least one) consume an estimated 16 billion kilowatt hours per year—roughly equal to the annual electricity use of the city of San Diego. This energy usage isn't going to drop anytime soon: Between 2002 and 2007 more than 62 million video game consoles were sold in the U.S. (Wii was the No. 1 seller, followed by PlayStation and the Xbox). The Washington Post reports that the National Institute on Media and the Family found that 92 percent of kids, ages two to 17, play video games regularly."

Greenhouse gases will heat up planet 'for ever'

The Independent
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment
Sunday, 30 November 2008

But one of the main researchers – Professor David Archer of Chicago University – warns that "the climatic impacts of releasing fossil fuel carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will last longer than Stonehenge, longer than time capsules, far longer than the age of human civilisation so far. Ultimate recovery takes place on timescales of hundreds of thousands of years, a geologic longevity typically associated in public perceptions with nuclear waste."

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Rainwater Harvesting Proposal

This posting is originally found from Pruned. For Parque del Lago idea competition, architectural firm, Paisajes Emergentes proposes open amphitheater as a rainwater collection system. As the water level rises, the amphitheater turns into a water pool, and as the water dries up, the amphitheater reveals. Simple and compelling...

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Paisajes Emergentes

The fuel tank of future

This article talks about the new innovation to store hydrogen in the material - mainly carbon nano tubes and graphne - The fascinating part of this article for me is the generative structures formed from carbon nano tubes - wondering if the form has to do with the capacity to hold hydrogen inside of the material, which has to be 6% of all.

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