A service dog smelled a fire overnight and alerted his hearing-impaired owner of the danger. Roscoe jumped on the bed to wake him after a fire broke out in the Orlando duplex.
The man then ran next door, awoke his neighbor and pulled him out of the burning building.
The number of jobs in America’s emerging clean energy economy grew nearly two and a half times faster than overall jobs between 1998 and 2007, according to a report (PDF) released last week by The Pew Charitable Trusts. The report also found that this promising sector is poised to expand significantly, driven by increasing consumer demand, venture capital and government infusions of cash, and federal and state policy reforms.
Pew found the count of the actual jobs in the clean energy economy grew at a national rate of 9.1 percent, while traditional jobs grew by only 3.7 percent between 1998 and 2007. Across all 50 states green job growth outperformed overall job growth in 38 states and the District of Columbia.
The report finds that the emerging clean energy economy is creating well-paying jobs in every state for people of all skill levels and educational backgrounds. Included in Pew’s definition are jobs as diverse as engineers, plumbers, administrative assistants, construction workers, machine setters, marketing consultants, teachers and many others, with annual incomes ranging from $21,000 to $111,000.
Iran’s supreme leader today ordered an investigation into allegations of election fraud, marking a stunning turnaround by the country’s most powerful figure and offering hope to opposition forces who have waged street clashes to protest the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In a new citywide effort to encourage street vendors to bring fresh vegetables and fruit to low-income neighborhoods, New York City has approved 1,000 new mobile food carts for neighborhoods in the five boroughs that have long been isolated from traditional supermarkets, grocery stores and farmers’ markets offering fresh produce at reasonable prices.
So far, 200 of the carts are now on the streets, though it will take a while to determine whether there is enough demand to keep all the vendors in business.
Many creative people suffer from mental illness. Some, however, are unable to produce due to the severity of their disorder. Are the two traits linked?
A wealth of research suggests that mood disorders are linked to increased creativity. Creative people have a higher rate of bipolar disorder and depression than the general population, and one study found that children of parents with bipolar disorder scored higher on creativity tests than those whose parents did not have the illness. Creative types also have more personality traits in common with those who have a mental illness than with less creative individuals.
Scientists in Stuttgart have found a way of obtaining drinking water from air humidity. The system is based on solar collectors, making it an entirely energy independent source of water — productive even in the desert.
Demonstration models are being constructed of various sizes to serve both the individual family and large community. (Read more in Science Daily)
RELATED from GNN:
Turning Air into Water? Gadget Does Just That
When a Tokyo neighborhood watch group found that there were fewer burglaries in buildings on flower-lined streets, one city official in decided to kick off Operation Flower and asked volunteers to plant seeds on side streets and in front of their homes.
The efforts, which also include added security cameras and volunteer patrols, have paid off, with the number of burglaries falling to 390 in 2008, down almost 80 percent from 2002.
Two years of research on the attitudes, values and behavior of Canada’s teens uncovered hopeful trends:
For instance, today’s teens have more “close friends” than any previous generation but they can be continents away; they consider it wrong to park in a spot reserved for the disabled; they have a better relationship with their parents; and they’re not nearly as sex-crazy as people think. Most teens engage in sex about as often as seniors. Fifty-six per cent say they never engage in sex.
Former foes Congo and Rwanda have agreed to a joint project to produce 200 megawatts of power from methane gas reservoirs in the lake on their shared border, a senior Congolese power official said on Friday.
The joint power generation deal is the latest sign of improved relations between Rwanda and the much larger Democratic Republic of Congo, who have fought wars, largely over mineral resources in Congo’s east, during the last 15 years. (Continue reading at Reuters)
Alaska’s Rat Island is finally rat-free, 229 years after a Japanese shipwreck spilled rampaging rodents onto the remote Aleutian island, decimating the local bird population.
Now there are signs that several species of birds, including Aleutian cackling geese, ptarmigan, peregrine falcons and black oystercatchers, are starting to nest again on the 10-square-mile (26-sq-km) island.
(Continue reading Reuters report via Yahoo)
Photo credit: Alaska Fish and Wildlife Service
In a corner of the New Mexico desert, the largest solar plant in the United States, the Suntower, will provide power to some 74,000 homes when it opens in 2011.
The 92 megawatt solar thermal plant will look like a giant sea of mirrors surrounding large towers that will house the steam created to push the turbines.
Video from Business Center TV may take a moment to load…
When Washington manicurist Lidia Schaefer returned to her native village in Ethiopia, she was troubled by what she saw: children walking three hours each way to attend classes held not in a school, but under a tree.
After learning in 1998 that one of the girls she’d met — Medhine — had been attacked and killed by a hyena after falling behind other children during the long trek home from school, Schaefer knew she had to act.
She began setting aside a third of her salary and all of her tips, and later sold her house and car, to raise enough money to build a school for the village.
An important but seldom-taught lesson is the value of gratitude. In a culture like ours, where the norm is always to want more, it’s important to encourage children — especially teens — to think about being thankful and to feel fortunate for what they already have. When they do, they often get a boost of happiness and optimism. So do adults, claim researchers.
(Read more by Tom McMahon in Contra Costa Times)
Photo courtesy of Sun Star
Dow industrials are in positive territory for 2009 for the first time since January, ending Friday above its 2008 close of 8,776.39.
Markets have rallied for three months straight, since bottoming March 9. In that time, the Dow has gained just over 34%, the S&P 500 40% and the Nasdaq 47%, as of Friday’s close. Bets that the pace of the recession is waning have helped fuel the advance.
A New York City transit conductor says she went to catch a train and caught a baby instead. Bretta Sykes helped a woman who went into labor in a subway train at a lower Manhattan station.
Watch her tell the story of what happened… (Video may take a moment to load.)
President Obama turned on the charm at an event in Wisconsin when an audience member told the president that his daughter was missing school to come hear him speak about healthcare reform. He asked if she needed a note for the teacher, and then obliged, writing, “She’s with me.”
Video may take a moment to load…
As fire season approaches, Oregon-based Evergreen International Aviation demonstrated its new 747 Supertanker, billed as the world’s largest and fastest firefighting aircraft.
Vdeo below may take a moment to load…
The Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says the country could get rid of its nuclear weapons if other nuclear powers are ready to abandon them too.
“What do we need nuclear arms for?” Putin said during talks with visiting German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Yoga is one of the newest ‘secret weapons’ in the US Armed Forces for soldiers suffering from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
Beck’s petrel, a small seabird relative of albatrosses and shearwaters, was rediscovered in 2007 by Israeli ornithologist Hadoram Shirihai in a group of Pacific islands near Papua New Guinea. There hadn’t been a confirmed sighting of the bird since 1929. Read more in Wikipedia. – June 11, 2009
