| Green idea pays: Inventor's furnace design earns grant
Almost 25 years after Laurence Green of Gildford invited a group of state officials to his workshop, trying to convince them of the benefits of his smokeless wood-burning stove, he still believes in his invention. Recently Triangle Communications of Havre agreed to give Green, 90, and his wife Helen, 82, a $1,000 Community Vitality Grant to help him out with his concept, now referred to as a smokeless furnace. .
SC resurrects Bhagat Singh
The Supreme Court of India may well be on its way to scripting a historic exchange with its counterpart in Pakistan. At the heart of this exchange is Bhagat Singh - our shared heritage. Last month, the apex court wrote to the Supreme Court of Pakistan, asking it to loan to India all the original documents related to the Lahore conspiracy trial involving Bhagat and his comrades. The deal looks good, with the Pakistani authorities responding positively so far. If it works out, the original case exhibits will become part of the special exhibition on the historic Bhagat Singh trial, the second in the series of pre-Independence judicial trials conceived in 2006 by the Supreme Court of India. The first in the series of exhibitions, displayed at the Supreme Court Museum in Delhi, was on the Alipore Bomb Conspiracy Case in which Khudiram Bose and Aurbindo Ghose were charged with the conspiracy to kill D.H.
NASA Selects Space Astronomy Missions Involving CU-Boulder For Further ...
NASA has awarded the University of Colorado at Boulder $1 million to lead the study of a space observatory to find Earth-like planets in distant solar systems and open the search for life outside our solar system. A second proposal from the Naval Research Laboratory involving CU- Boulder also was selected for $500,000 in NASA funding. The proposal would place a low-frequency radio telescope on the far side of the moon to probe the first structures that formed in the early universe. The CU-Boulder planetary proposal, called the New Worlds Observer, was one of 19 proposals for major new observatories in the coming decade selected for further study. The New Worlds Observer proposal features a giant, daisy-shaped plastic "starshade" to block starlight and allow a telescope to image the faint light from distant planets circling other stars, said Professor Webster Cash, chief scientist on the effort.
CONSTRUCTION: Autodesk buyouts give it more depth in building modeling
San Rafael-based design software developer Autodesk Inc. has taken a big step further into green building with the purchase of two building information modeling, or BIM, software developers.
The company last week announced the acquisition of Green Building Studio, a Santa Rosa company formerly known as GeoPraxis that has garnered excitement among architects for providing solutions for designing projects deemed to be environmentally sustainable.
At the same time, Autodesk said it picked up Carmel Software, a 12-year-old San Rafael company that makes mechanical engineering software for sizing heating and cooling systems.
Both companies have been involved in the BIM movement that is changing the way buildings are designed. In the context of the philosophical and regulatory movement toward more green building, the use of BIM is helping architects and engineers try different orientations of a structure to the sun or configurations of expensive, high-efficiency climate-control systems early in project design.
Letter: Plan should focus on water
The Sierra Club, Yahi Group, has been following and speaking out about water issues in Butte County for several years. The club recognizes, therefore, that it is crucial that Butte County highlight the importance of water in its General Plan process. The best way to do that is to specify that there be a "water element," i.e., a major topic that is separately examined, and not just "submerged," in a general environmental examination of the county. As the General Plan director Tim Snelling has often said, there will be filters that will be used to examine any new developments in the county. What a better filter to use than one of our most important public trusts, i.e., our water — whether it is in our precious watersheds or in the priceless Tuscan aquifer. We need to study just how much water is needed before allowing more to be sent south.
|
