Green ideas

THESE INVENTIONS ARE REALLY AWESOME. Hotel offers free meal to guests who are willing to generate electricity The Crown Plaza Hotel in Copenhagen , Denmark , is offering a free meal to any guest who is able to produce electricity for the hotel on an exercise bike attached to a generator. Guests will have to produce at least 10 watt hours of electricity - roughly 15 minutes of cycling for someone of average fitness. They will then be given meal vouchers worth $36 (26 euros). Disco pub gets electricity produced by people dancing at specially modified dance floor All the flashing strobes and pounding speakers at the dance club are massive consumers of electrical power. So Bar Surya, in London, re-outfitted its floor with springs that, when compressed by dancers, could produce electrical current that would be stored in batteries and used to offset some of the club's electrical burden. The club's owner, Andrew Charalambous, said the dance floor can now power 60 percent of the club's energy needs. Company creates a desktop printer that doesn't use ink nor paper Who says printers only use paper to print documents? It's time for you to meet the PrePeat Printer then. Different from conventional printers, PrePeat adopts a thermal head to print on specially-made plastic sheets. These plastic sheets are not merely water-proof, but could be easily erased, just feed the sheets through the printer again, and a different temperature will erase everything or just write over it. Also claimed by the manufacturer, such one sheet could be used up to 1,000 times so that you'll reduce your expenses on paper for sure. University constructs a green roof as a gathering place Green design is an enormously popular trend in modern architecture, just take a look at this amazing green roof at the School of Art , Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore . This 5-story facility sweeps a wooded corner of the campus with an organic, vegetated form that blends landscape and structure, nature and high-tech and symbolizes the creativity it houses. The roofs serve as informal gathering spaces challenging linear ideas and stirring perception. The roofs create open space, insulate the building, cool the surrounding air and harvest rainwater for landscaping irrigation. Planted grasses mix with native greenery to colonize the building and bond it to the setting. Designer creates a sink that uses wasted water to grow a plant Made of polished stained concrete, the Zen Garden Sink has a channel that allows the water used while washing your hands to water a plant. Created by young Montreal designer Jean-Michel Gauvreau the sink comes in single or double basin model. The sink is designed in a way you won't get your plants all soapy. There is a main drain at the bottom of the basin for soapy grime. Your little plant friend just gets whatever you choose to dole out. Designer creates a shower that forces you to leave when you've wasted too much water 20% of our total domestic energy usage is from hot water for showering and bathing. That's over 6 times the energy usage of domestic lighting. So designer Tommaso Colia came up with his eco-friendly shower design that will force you to get out when you take too long and waste much water. The eco_drop shower features beautiful concentric circles that will rise to force you to stop showering when you take too long, and accordingly save water. Designer creates light-switch that changes colors to teach children how to save energy Teaching the importance of energy conservation is the goal of this design from Tim Holley. He calls it Tio, and it's a ghost-shaped light switch that gives kids a visual reminder of how much energy they've used by leaving lights on. Tio starts out green and smiling. If the light is left on for more than four hours, he turns yellow and looks shocked. And if you dare to leave that light on for more than eight hours, sweet little Tio turns into a raging red hulk, complete with frowny mouth and angry eyes. But he won't just visually remind your kids about their energy habits; information from the light switch is sent to Tio's computer program so the entire family can see how they're doing. In a brilliant piece of visual positive reinforcement, Holley's program lets kids grow a “virtual tree†which gets bigger and healthier the more energy they save. Environmental company creates a staple-free stapler to avoid staple pollution Staples are supposed to be so bad to the environment that a company decided to create a staple-free stapler. This product promises to make collation eco-friendly. Instead of using those thin metal planet-killers, the staple-free stapler "cuts out tiny strips of paper and uses the strips to stitch up to five pieces of paper together." You can even order them customized with your corporate logo so you can, you know, brag about what your company is doing to stop the staple epidemic. Designer creates an iPhone charger powered by a hand grip A green idea that gives you a great hand workout as well. Charge your iPhone by a hand grip! This concept is called You can work it out, designed by Mac Funamizu.

Winner never quits

Winner never quits!

In 1962, four nervous young musicians played their first record audition for the executives of the Decca Recording Company. The executives were not impressed. While turning down this group of musicians, one executive said, "We don't like their sound. Guitars are on the way out." The group was called The Beatles.

When Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, he tried over 2000 experiments before he got it to work. A young reporter asked him how it felt to fail so many times. He said, "I never failed once. I invented the light bulb. It just happened to be a 2000-step process."

Wilma Rudolph was the 20th of 22 children. She was born prematurely and her survival was doubtful. When she was 4 years old, she contacted double pneumonia and scarlet fever, which left her with a paralyzed left leg. At age 9, she removed the metal leg brace she had been dependent on and began to walk without it. By 13 she had developed rhythmic walk, which doctors said was a miracle. That same year she decided to become a runner. She entered a race and came in last. For the next few years every race she entered, she came in last. Everyone told her to quit, but she kept on running. One day she actually won a race. And then another. From then on she won every race she entered. Eventually this little girl, who was told she would never walk again, went on to win three Olympic gold medals.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired and success achieved.

You gain strength, experience and confidence by every experience where you really stop to look fear in the face. And remember, the finest steel gets sent through the hottest furnace. A winner is not one who never fails, but one who NEVER QUITS IN LIFE.

Mars Rover

6 Hard Facts About NASA's Next Mars Rover

NASA's next Mars rover, the car-size Curiosity, is coming together piece by piece.
The Mars rover Curiosity, also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, will launch in late 2011 and land on the Red Planet in August 2012. Its main goal is to assess whether Mars ever had an environment capable of supporting microbial life, NASA officials have said.
Here are six basic facts from NASA about Curiosity and its $2.3 billion mission:



1) It's the size of a car
Curiosity is about the size of a Mini Cooper — much bigger than its golf-cart-sized rover predecessors, Spirit and Opportunity, and the smaller Pathfinder rover. [Graphic: Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity] Curiosity is twice as long (about 9 feet, or 2.8 meters) and four times as heavy as Spirit and Opportunity, both of which landed in 2004. Pathfinder, which was about the size of a microwave oven, touched down on the surface of Mars in 1997.



2) Landing zone not final
In November 2008, NASA narrowed the choices for Curiosity's Mars touchdown landing sitepoint to four finalists. Each of the candidates is linked to the planet's ancient wet conditions, making it an attractive Martian stop.The agency will pick one that it believes could preserve a geological record of an environment favorable for life.The final landing site must also meet safe-landing criteria, which brings us to Curiosity's landing method.

3) No airbags on this rover
Since Curiosity is too heavy for the airbag-landing systems that were installed on previous Mars rovers, NASA has devised something completely different. The rover will use something similar to a sky crane heavy-lift helicopter to drop it down to the Martian surface.After a parachute slows the rover's descent toward Mars, a rocket-powered backpack will hover above the surface and lower the rover on a tether during the final moments before landing. The Mars sky crane will fly a short distance away after lowering Curiosity to avoid hitting the rover when it finally crashes.



4) Curiosity has a laser
Curiosity will use 10 science instruments to examine rocks, soil and the atmosphere, including a laser to vaporize patches of rock. Another instrument will search the resulting dust cloud for carbon-based molecules, which are the building blocks of life as we know it.
Mast-mounted cameras will study objects from a distance, and gears mounted on Curiosity's robotic arm will allow the rover to get a closer look at any interesting targets. Finally, analytical instruments on the rover's body will be able to determine the composition of rock and soil samples acquired with its powdering drill and scoop.



5) Rover has 6-wheel drive
The Curiosity rover should be a Mars off-road champ.Each of the rover's six wheels has an independent drive motor, with the two front and two rear wheels equipped with individual steering motors. This setup should give the rover good agility, allowing it to make 360-degree turns while standing in place.The wheels are big, too. Each is 20 inches (51 centimeters) across — twice as wide as those on Spirit and Opportunity. The rover should therefore be able to roll over obstacles up to 30 inches (75 cm) high.



6) Curiosity powered by plutonium
Previous Mars rovers have been solar-powered, limiting their exploration to sunny seasons and places.
Curiosity, on the other hand, will use a radioisotope power system that generates electricity from the heat emitted byplutonium's radioactive decay. This means that Curiosity will be able to roam, in darkness and in light, year-round.Not since NASA's Viking landers launched in the 1970s has the space agency dropped a nuclear- powered probe on Mars.The rover has a primary mission that is expected to last an entire Martian year (687 Earth days), much longer than the planned 90-day missions of Spirit and Opportunity. The added power should allow the rover to drive longer and farther than any rover to date, mission managers have said.