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From the Delft University of  Technology in the Netherlands, self-repairing concrete which uses bacteria that excrete calcium, developed by faculty member Henk Jonkers:

Instead of costly humans having to maintain and repair the concrete, it would be ideal if the concrete would be able to heal itself. This is now possible with help of special bacteria. These bacteria are called extremophiles, because they love to live in extreme conditions. In dry concrete for example they will not only live, but they will actively produce copious amounts of limestone. With this calcium carbonate-based material the little construction workers can actively repair occurring cracks in a concrete structure.

This novel type of self-healing concrete will lead to enormous savings on maintenance and repair costs. Also the sustainability of concrete will increase dramatically, because of a lower demand for natural resources such as cement. This will lead to lower CO2 emissions and change our way of reasoning. Instead of building against nature, biological materials and processes will be integrated into traditional engineering materials and processes.

Via William Myers in his post Growing Respect for Dirt, on the Design Blog at the Cooper-Hewitt, the Smithsonian’s National Design Museum.

Moreover, Mr. Read’s understatement – the entire post is three short grafs and two images – makes his post more affecting, rather than less.

Here’s a NASA image of the affected area as of August 14, 2009 (Mr. Read, without saying so, anticipates speculation that this caused by seasonal variation):

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One year and one day later, August 15th, 2010:

Max Read’s exemplary post, The Satellite Pics of Pakistan’s Devastasting Floods, from Gawker.com

Matthew McDermott at Treehugger reports a 1.55 gigawatt / 1,550 megawatt wind farm – probably the world’s largest wind farm in the Mojave Desert.

From 1,550 MW Wind Farm, World’s Current Largest, Breaks Ground in Mojave, California

It will boost California’s Wind Power Capacity 25%, and blows $Billions into the local economy

Ned Farquhar, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Land and Minerals Management, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, addresses the guests at Terra-Gen Power’s ground breaking ceremony for Alta Wind Energy Center in Mojave, California. Photo: Rod Thornburg

It’s been a while since we’ve seen an honest to goodness gigantic wind power project actually start construction, so this is definitely worth noting: Terra-Gen Power has announced it has begun construction on what it’s calling the world’s largest wind energy project, the 1,550 megawatt Alta Wind Energy Center, in Mojave, California. At double the capacity of the next largest completed project, the wind farm will generate enough power to electrify 275,000 homes.

When completed, AWEC will consist of 600 Vestas turbines, increase the installed wind power capacity in California by 25% and, according to Terra-Gen, conserve more than 888 million gallons of water annually–presumably based on had an equivalent amount of energy been generated via non-renewable energy.

via 1,550 MW Wind Farm, World’s Current Largest, Breaks Ground in Mojave, California : TreeHugger.

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According to Reuters, via NYTimes.com, Reporting by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Eric Beech, President Chavez has threatened to cut off the U.S. oil supply. Here’s the entire copy which constitutes the piece, and the hed:

Venezuela’s Chavez Threatens U.S. Oil Supply Cut

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday threatened to cut oil supplies to the United States in case of a military attack from Colombia, in an escalating spat over charges Venezuela harbors leftist rebels.

There are, of course, reasons to be worried about energy independence, and this threat is one of them.

# 1 Saudi Arabia: 10,250,000 bbl/day 2007 Time series

# 2 Russia: 9,876,000 bbl/day 2007 Time series

# 3 United States: 8,457,000 bbl/day 2007 Time series

# 4 Iran: 4,033,000 bbl/day 2007 Time series

# 5 China: 3,725,000 bbl/day 2008 Time series

# 6 Mexico: 3,501,000 bbl/day 2007 Time series

# 7 Canada: 3,425,000 bbl/day 2007 Time series

# 8 United Arab Emirates: 2,948,000 bbl/day 2007 Time series

# 10 Venezuela: 2,667,000 bbl/day 2007 Time series

# 11 Kuwait: 2,613,000 bbl/day 2007 Time series

# 12 Norway: 2,565,000 bbl/day 2007 Time series

# 13 Nigeria: 2,352,000 bbl/day 2007 Time series

# 14 Brazil: 2,277,000 bbl/day 2007 Time series

# 15 Algeria: 2,173,000 bbl/day 2007 Time series

# 16 Iraq: 2,094,000 bbl/day 2007 Time series

# 17 Angola: 1,910,000 bbl/day 2008 Time series

# 18 Libya: 1,845,000 bbl/day 2007 Time series

# 19 United Kingdom: 1,690,000 bbl/day 2007 Time series

# 20 Kazakhstan: 1,445,000 bbl/day 2007 Time series

Henry Marsh

Henry Marsh spends his holidays working 18 hour days for free in a Kiev, using the household drill

The young man lies back on the hospital trolley and waits patiently as his head is secured in place with a vice.

Marian Dolishny’s nervous smile and worried, flicking eyes, betray the certain knowledge that what he is about to undergo will be anything but pleasant. But he also knows that time is short: if the enormous tumour inside his head is not removed, it will soon kill him.

Minutes later the team of doctors, including one of Britain’s most eminent brain surgeons, begins to break into the skull of their fully conscious patient – with a £30 Bosch PSR960 handy-man’s cordless drill.

Amazingly, and despite the low-voltage tool running out of power halfway through the process, Dolishny’s operation is a success, with his tumour skilfully excavated at the hands of Henry Marsh.

Related Links

* Brain surgeon operates with DIY drill

The procedure, captured as part of a documentary to be screened on BBC2 later this month, was a routine triumph for Marsh, who regularly takes time off as a consultant at St George’s hospital in south London to travel to Ukraine and save lives despite having access only to primitive tools.

In Britain, the same operation would only be undertaken with the benefit of a £30,000 compressed air medical drill.

Speaking about the trials of his visits to Ukraine, Marsh said: “I’m not recommending that we should all use Bosch do-it-yourself drills in England, but it shows how with improvisation you can achieve a lot.”

Marsh’s life-saving exploits in Ukraine began 15 years ago when he visited a state hospital in the former Soviet republic to give a series of lectures. Little could have prepared him for the conditions endured by both doctors and patients. “It was like being in a horror film,” he said. “It was so awful it didn’t seem real.”

Patients with benign tumours, which would have been diagnosed early and quickly dealt with in Britain, were only treated once they had caused blindness or were bulging grotesquely off the sides of patients’ heads.

In Ukraine so little money is invested in the state health system that Marsh has to drill through the skulls of patients under local anaesthetic because no one is sufficiently trained to fully sedate them.

Marsh said he had watched aghast as patients died while doctors were locked in bureaucratic meetings. “I couldn’t bear to stand by and do nothing,” said Marsh, 58. “A Ukrainian doctor told me I couldn’t do anything to help but I wasn’t prepared to accept that.”

Then he met Igor Petrovich, a Ukrainian neurosurgeon who wanted to fight against his country’s bankrupt medical system. Impressed by his willingness to speak honestly about the atrocious conditions in a climate where no one criticised the state, Marsh championed Petrovich and organised for him to come to Britain to learn more.

Since meeting Petrovich, Marsh has been making at least two private trips a year to work voluntarily with him at his neurology clinic in Kiev. On each visit, he takes a raft of disused equipment that has been thrown out by the NHS, and helps Petrovich make diagnoses and perform operations.

“I’ve taught him everything I know,” said Marsh, who has given Petrovich an advanced compressed air drill to replace his Bosch. “He’s now able to do things that I can’t.”

For all its failings, some aspects of the Ukrainian health service compare favourably with the NHS, Marsh said.

At the time of their first meeting, Marsh was a senior surgeon at the specialist Atkinson Morley hospital in Wimbledon, operating on 10-15 patients a week. “I was completely free; I made clinical judgments and was trusted to treat patients to the best of my ability.”

Today, though, their roles have more or less reversed, he said. “Igor is now doing a huge amount of operating, far more than me, while I, as with all senior doctors on the NHS, am struggling under a tsunami of regulation and bureaucracy.”

Working in Ukraine has also brought the wastefulness of the NHS into focus for Marsh. Drill bits used in brain surgery that cost the NHS £80 a piece are thrown away after a single use to help prevent the spread of prion-related diseases such as CJD.

In Petrovich’s practice, a drill bit will be used for up to 10 years, perfectly safely. “We never used to throw them away in the UK,” says Marsh. “They would be sterilised and reused. Now they just end up as landfill, and Igor’s rates of infection are no worse then ours. It’s insane.

“I am one of the government advisers on prion disease. In the case of the skull perforators, skull and scalp is not an at-risk tissue for surgical treatments. So that argument does not apply.”

The English Surgeon will be shown on BBC2 on March 30

via Handy Henry Marsh: brain doctor uses DIY drill – Times Online.

sand table exercises – Google Search.

Henry Marsh is handy with tools.

His favourite hobby is woodwork: “I love to work with my hands,” he says.

That is just as well, because when not working with the lathe, Henry is wielding scalpels in the operating theatre as one of the UK's most respected neurosurgeons, or, sometimes, boring a Bosch drill into the brain of a conscious man.

Fifteen years ago, Henry visited Ukraine to give a series of lectures on brain surgery.

He was shocked by what he witnessed.

Decades of under-investment in medical services in the former Soviet state had left it with little infrastructure or expertise in neurological conditions.

Horror film

Patients with the kind of benign tumours which would be quickly identified and excised in the UK had been left untreated with terrible results.

That is the problem with what we do – we can often kill people

Igor Petrovich

“It was like being in a horror film,” he recalls, as he watches home video images of the huge tumours growing on the heads of the patients.

On his trip, Henry met one Ukrainian surgeon who was trying hard to make a difference.

Igor Petrovich had been enduring constant threats and harassment as he tried to reform his department at the Military Hospital in Kiev.

Petrovich combines a revolutionary zeal with a droll wit: “That is the problem with what we do,” he has remarked to Henry, “We can often kill people.”

He impressed Marsh so much that Henry brought him to London for further training.

Ever since that fortuitous meeting, Henry has been visiting the Ukraine at least twice a year to share his expertise and undertake complex operations with Igor.

He normally arrives bearing gifts – disused medical equipment from St George's Hospital, Tooting – often packaged in boxes made in his shed at home.

via BBC NEWS | Health | Brain surgery with a DIY drill.

Because plastic bags are light and compressible, they constitute only 2 percent of landfill, but since most are not biodegradable they will be there for decades.

According to the International Herald Tribune, “By ‘bagging it,’ Ireland rids itself of a plastic nuisance“by Elisabeth Rosenthal,

There is something missing from this otherwise typical bustling cityscape.

There are taxis and buses. There are hip bars and pollution. Every other person is holding a cellphone to his ear. But there are no plastic bags, the ubiquitous symbol of urban life.

In a determined attempt to deal with litter, Ireland passed a plastic bag tax in 2002 – now 22 euro cents, about 33 U.S. cents – at the register if you want one with your purchases. There was an advertising awareness campaign. Then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts.

Within weeks, there was a 94 percent drop in plastic bag use. Within a year, nearly everyone bought reusable cloth bags, which they now keep in the office and the back of their cars. Plastic bags became socially unacceptable – on par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after your dog.

“When my roommate brings one in the flat, it annoys the hell out of me,” said Edel Egan, a photographer carrying a load of groceries in a red backpack.

Countries from China to Australia, cities from New York to San Francisco, have promulgated laws and regulations to address the problem, with decidedly mixed success. Continue reading →

Portable Armored Wall System Replaces Sandbags

February 2010

By Austin Wright

Marines in Afghanistan might soon scrap the sandbags. Instead, they’re snapping together armored walls that connect like Legos.

The Marines Corps in December spent $797,400 on 14 kits of McCurdy’s Armor, a patent-pending portable wall system. The service has already tested 25 kits.

The 6.5-foot-tall units can be assembled into bulletproof walls and forts — a process that can take less than an hour. This could save days’ worth of work digging trenches, laying sandbags and constructing outposts, according to the manufacturer, New Jersey-based Dynamic Defense Materials. “We’ve seen them used on everything from a podium to a guard tower to a long wall,” says Joe Dimond, a product specialist for the company.

The product offers protection from mortars, grenades, rockets and improvised explosive devices. It has aluminum frames that connect using steel pins, and the units can be arranged in several formations: U-shape, V-shape, J-shape or a wall.

It also has ballistic windows that open and close so service members can fire downrange. Four men can assemble one unit in less than 10 minutes without any tools or equipment, according to the company’s website.

“If you’re worried about armor-piercing rounds, you can also put on a second layer of armor,” Dimond says. “And you can add more if you’re going to be there a while.”

The product was named for Ryan S. McCurdy, a Marine who was killed in 2006 by insurgents in Iraq while pulling a wounded friend to safety.

via Portable Armored Wall System Replaces Sandbags.