One of the world’s tallest buildings under construction in China — the Pearl River Tower — is being billed as the most energy efficient superskyscraper ever built.
With wind turbines, solar panels, sun-shields, smart lighting, water-cooled ceilings and state-of-the-art insulation, the 310-metre tower is designed to use half the energy of most buildings of its size and set a new global benchmark for self-sufficiency among the planet’s high rises.
Officials in Maryland have come up with an innovative, cost-saving way to protect the environment: they use goats to mow the grass.
The State Highway Administration came up with the novel idea while building an 85-million-dollar road bypass near the town of Hampstead, northwest of Baltimore, after it found that the construction site was home to bog turtles, the smallest turtle in the United States and a threatened species.
Mental Health Minute: A New Column By Cristina Frick… This new Monday Morning weekly column will showcase recent news developments and topics in the area of mental health from a positive and inspirational perspective as well as provide information that can help those who may be struggling with mental health issues.
I would like to dedicate this column to my wonderful, kind, and supportive father, who was a Humanistic psychologist and with whom I was very close. He died when I was fifteen, but I know he is looking down on me from Heaven and is very proud.
Scientists say a natural supplement made from tomatoes, taken daily, can stave off heart disease and strokes.
The tomato pill contains an active ingredient from the Mediterranean diet – lycopene – that blocks “bad” LDL cholesterol that can clog the arteries.
Preliminary trials involving around 150 people with heart disease indicate that the pill can reduce the oxidation of harmful fats in the blood to almost zero within eight weeks.
There may or may not be a God, but there certainly are good people in the world.
Bailey, 11, tied a letter to God to a helium balloon and sent it flying into the sky, asking what it was like in heaven and whether miracles actually happened.
While God never replied, a Brampton criminal lawyer did, and their unlikely paths have created an experience neither will forget.
(Continue reading in the Toronto Star)
Photo courtesy of incurable hippie on flickr
The hospital needed a miracle as it faced a $20 million deficit. It looked like 600 layoffs were inevitable. And most of those would be the lowest-paid employees, people who needed their jobs the most. But when asked, all 6,300 employees were willing to pitch in to save the jobs of their co-workers.
The 13 department heads took pay cuts that totaled $350,000. And doctors took out their checkbooks: The checks came in, some for $500, some $10,000 or $15,000. 401-K matching funds were turned down.
Now most of the cooks, janitors and cashiers have been rescued, thanks to the compassionate hospital CEO who wanted to do the right thing and the workers who agreed.
GNN reported months ago on this story, but this week, CBS news produced a follow-up with the latest news on Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
Read the story at CBS News, or watch the video below…
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(Photo, above, courtesy of Sun Star)
Now we know we’re HOT. . . The Good News Network made Rolling Stone magazine’s Hot List for 2009!
Listing their HOT INTERNET picks on page 89, only two websites are mentioned, with the Good News Network headlined as HOT WISHFUL THINKING.
“Economic meltdown, Shmeconomic shmeltdown,” is how the short article begins.
“People want good news now more than ever,” says GNN founder Geri Weis-Corbley, who says the site got its biggest traffic spike since 9/11 the day after Lehman Brothers tanked.
The reporter who interviewed me said this issue is always a top seller on news stands, and with Lady GaGa on the cover, this year should be no different.
I hope to use this HOT LIST award to springboard into landing a spot on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and eventually, the Ellen show (which I believe just went on summer break).
Detroit may be hit hard by the economic downturn and the troubled auto industry, but the Red Wings are giving the city a lift as they soar to the the Stanley Cup hockey finals and a win in game one last night.
Hear what fans are saying as they packed the house Saturday for the opening game.
Video below may take a moment to load…
The musician former known as Cat Stevens talks about his new album ‘Roadsinger,’ which came about because of a musical he’s been working on for six years, called, Moonshadow.
Yusuf Islam says when he picked up a guitar after so many years, it was magical.
Video below may take a moment to load…
Mazda is still pushing forward with its hydrogen dreams by delivering the first of its Premacy Hydrogen Rotary Engine Hybrids.
The new Premacy (a model Americans know as the Mazda5) has twice the range, running on both hydrogen and gasoline, making it a much more viable vehicle, as a person too far from a hydrogen refilling station can operate on petrol for the time being, solving range anxiety problems.
English businessman Jeremy Taylor had just lifted off from his timber yard in his helicopter when he spotted a suspicious white van. He quickly figured out that he was being burglarized. Noticing the helicopter, the van sped off but Taylor followed him — down roads and into town.
Taylor said, “I was determined to catch him because I have had break-ins before, and it annoys me that people are prepared to break into other people’s property.”
(Read the rest of the story at Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association)
A team from the University of New South Wales in Sydney has harnessed the power of stem cells to improve the loss of vision caused by corneal disease.
They removed small samples of stem cells from the eyes of two men and a woman with corneal disease and grew them on a contact lens.
The groundbreaking operation brought significant improvements in vision within a matter of weeks.
The Netherlands is closing eight prisons due to a decline in crime that has left many cells empty. The Dutch ministry’s research department expects the decline to continue.
(Read more in the NRC Handelsblad)
Now, I wonder if other countries can’t figure out how this happened and try to replicate it…
(photo courtesy of Sun Star)
The Obama administration unveiled a $4bn plan to upgrade public housing for low-income Americans, as part of an ambitious green job-creation project.
The renovation program will replace windows, insulation and even light bulbs in aging and neglected housing stock.
The labor secretary, Hilda Solis, will also announce $500m to train up workers for the new jobs. Of those funds, $50m will be directed to regions that have been hardest hit by the recession – such as the rustbelt state of Michigan where the unemployment rate is now 12%
Even in the face of a worsening economy, the nation’s 717 community foundations raised their giving by an estimated 6.7 percent in 2008 to a record $4.6 billion, and outpaced corporate foundation funding for the first time, according to Key Facts on Community Foundations, a May 2009 report from the Foundation Center.
A church in Dallas, Texas has made it their mission to help people who are struggling financially.
Earlier this year the pastor of Crossed Timbers told members to take money from the collection plate if they needed it, even though church donations were down. That day they had the largest collection ever.
Video Below, from KDAF and CNN.com
Thirteen-year-old Kavya Shivashankar of Olathe, Kan., has claimed the title of the nation’s top speller. Kavya aced the word ‘Laodicean’ Thursday night to win the 82nd Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Video below may take a moment to load…
Proof of Sir Richard Branson’s dedication to low carbon emissions will be displayed next year when Virgin Galactic’s two spacecrafts, Mothership Eve and SpaceShipTwo, perform test flights together using non-carbon based fuels. Virgin Fuels is working on biofuels made from algae to power the space ships, providing a tiny carbon footprint compared to even normal airplane travel.
New orders for long-lasting U.S. manufactured goods saw their biggest gain in 16 months in April, according to data on Thursday that suggested the deep recession was abating.
How many new species would you guess are discovered by scientists in a given year? Would you believe, a tally of more than 18,000 species in 2007 alone?
From among the more than 10,000 newly spotted species each year, scientists have named the top 10 new species — the most colorful, weird and surprising of them all.
The Arizona State University ‘s International Institute for Species Exploration along with a committee of taxonomists – scientists responsible for species exploration and classification – tallied their votes to come up with the list for 2008, which includes a pea-sized seahorse, caffeine-free coffee and bacteria that live in hairspray.
The top 10 new species also include the world’s tiniest snake just 4 inches long, an insect as big as a dog, a ghost slug from Wales, a deep blue damselfish, and a palm that flowers itself to death.
According to Quentin Wheeler, an entomologist and director of the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University, a new generation of tools are coming online that will vastly accelerate the rate at which we are able to discover and describe species.
“Most people do not realize just how incomplete our knowledge of Earth’s species is or the steady rate at which taxonomists are exploring that diversity. We are surrounded by such an exuberance of species diversity that we too often take it for granted,” says Wheeler, who also is ASU vice president, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and a professor in the School of Life Sciences.
