#Louisville: All-electric Zerobus Fleet Launches Mayor Greg Fischer joined TARC and other local officials today at the Louisville Slugger Museum to kick off the start of Zerobus service in downtown Louisville.
Zerobus TARC all-electric fleet is now providing fare-free rides for passengers along Main Market and Fourth streets.
The zero-emissions all-electric buses replace diesel-powered trolleys the highest polluting TARC vehicles. erobus changes the game for public transportation in downtown
and represents the type of progress and forward-thinking focus we are embracing to improve our citysaid Fischer who joined TARC Executive director J. Barry Barker
and others on a maiden Zerobus trip. ouisville is the first city in this part of the country to have a fleet of all-electric buses in operation putting us at the leading edge of high-technology cleaner greener transportationbarker said. e
encourage everyone to hop on a Zerobus and stop along the way for some of the best Louisville has to offer in restaurants museums
and entertainment. he vehicles with free wi-fi onboard arrive at stops frequently#from every 10-18 minutes depending on the
time of day#and offer a quiet ride. With expansive windows an oval shape and a colorful blue and green design theye a distinctive addition to downtown. he city replica oonervilletrolleys have helped downtown revitalization over the years
and all-electric buses can help take us to the next levelfischer said. The all-electric system#10 buses and two charging stations#is an $11 million investment with the bulk of funding from federal and state grants.
Louisville Metro contributed $500000. he Federal Transit Administration congratulates TARC on the launch of its new Zerobus fleetsaid Therese Mcmillan Acting Administrator of the FTA which contributed $8. 7 million in federal
funding for the new buses. arry Barker and his team continually seek creative opportunities to serve the people of Louisville.
Putting these zero emission buses on the street will connect residents with jobs education and other opportunities while improving air quality and offering 21st century transportation options to the region growing population for years to come.?
This investment in new technologies is not just about improving public transportation in Louisville; it is also a down payment on ensuring healthier cleaner air and a more energy independent futuresaid Congressman John Yarmuth.
The Zerobus recharges in just a few minutes along the route while passengers load and unload at a charging stop.
Each time a Zerobus pulls up to a charging stop it automatically connects to an overhead high-capacity charger.
Charging stops are on the south side of Market street between Eighth and Ninth streets and on the west side of South Third street between York and Breckinridge streets.
Since 2010 Proterra Inc. of Greenville S. C. has produced 38 of these type of vehicles
which are operating in eight other states mostly on the east and west coasts. roterra is honored to partner with Louisville Metro TARC
and the Federal Transit Administration on this innovative projectsaid Ryan Popple president and CEO of Proterra Inc. s an American technology company and the U s. market leader in electric buses for public transit wee especially proud
to see this newest fleet of Proterra vehicles providing high performance zero-emission service in Louisville.
We are pleased that Proterra could share in your city vision to promote a sustainable cost effective transit solution protecting the environment for generations to come. he five oldest trolley buses combined now emit a total of about 1135 pounds of carbon monoxide in a year compared to zero emissions from the all-electric buses.
TARC will also save thousands of dollars each year in lower operating costs. In fuel costs alone each electric bus will save TARC an estimated $10000 per year.
Main-Market Zerobuses circle between 10th and Campbell streets. On Fourth Street the buses travel between Breckinridge Street and the Galt House circling around Fourth Street Live!
by taking Fifth street northbound and Third street southbound. South of Broadway the buses travel south on Third street and north on Fourth Street.
Zerobuses operate on Fourth Street from 7 a m.#7 p m. and on Main-Market from 7 a m.#8 p m. on weekdays.
Buses run on both routes from 10 a m. 6 p m. on Saturdays. The Main-Market route features red Zerobus stop signs.
Green bus stop signs are on the Fourth Street route s
#Watch Bill gates Drink Water From Human waste We know that Bill gates made a lot of money from Microsoft
and since he left the company, he been very busy spending it. One of the latest projects he funding is the Omniprocessor,
which turns human waste intorenewable energy and drinkable water. How drinkable? Gates demonstrated by drinking a glassful himself. watched the piles of feces go up the conveyer belt
and drop into a large bin, said Gates. hey made their way through the machine, getting boiled and treated.
A few minutes later I took a long taste of the end result: a glass of delicious drinking water.
The occasion was a tour of a facility that burns human waste and produces water and electricity (plus a little ash).
I have visited lots of similar sites, like power plants and paper mills, so when I heard about this onet part of the Gates Foundation effort to improve sanitation in poor countries was eager to check it out.
The water tasted as good as any Ie had out of a bottle. And having studied the engineering behind it,
I would happily drink it every day. It that safe. The Omniprocessor was created to simultaneously address the issue of poor sanitation indeveloping countries
and their frequent lack of adequate drinking water and electrical power. Waste piles up in latrines or in open fields
or it trucked away and dumped somewhere, maybe in a nearby body of water, causing the spread of disease.
But western-style toilets require sewage lines and treatment plants that aren feasible in many places.
The Omniprocessor, designed by Seattle-area engineering firm Janicki Bioenergy, reinvents the sewage treatment plant. In the Omniprocessor, sewer sludge is fed into tubes
and boiled, producing water vapor which is purified for drinking. The dry solids are fed then into a fire,
which creates steam to fuel a steam engine that drives an electricity-producing generator. That energy in turn fuels the machine
with excess available for other needs. The water burns the waste at temperatures of 1000 degrees Celsius, so high that there no smell.
The next generation of the machine could process waste from 100,000 people and produce about 22,700 gallons of drinkable water and 250 kilowatts of energy a day. f we get it right,
it will be a good example of how philanthropy can provide seed money that draws bright people to work on big problems,
eventually creating a self-supporting industry, said Gates. ur foundation is funding Janicki to do the development.
It really amazing to see how theye embraced the work; founder Peter Janicki and his family have traveled to Africa
and India multiple times so they can see the scope of the problem. Our goal is to make the processors cheap enough that entrepreneurs in low-and middle-income countries will want to invest in them and then start profitable waste treatment businesses.
Sewersludgethe Omniprocessor turns sewage into water and electricity. Photo credit: Gatesnotes. com Those entrepreneurs would make money from the sludge they remove from the environment,
and the water and electricity they create. Later this year, Janicki will set up the first Omniprocessor in the field in Dakar,
Senegal. heyl study everything from how you connect with the local community to how you pick the most convenient location,
said Gates. hey will also test one of the coolest things I saw on my tour:
a system of sensors and webcams that will let Janicki engineers control the processor remotely
and communicate with the team in Dakar so they can diagnose any problems that come up.
If things go well in Senegal, wel start looking for partners in the developing world. he history of philanthropy is littered with well-intentioned inventions that never deliver on their promise,
he said. opefully, these early steps will help us make sure the Omniprocessor doesn join the list. e
#Wind turbine Trees Generate Renewable energy for Urban Settings French entrepreneur Jérôme Michaud-Larivière decided to do something about that.
His company New Wind has created the rbre à Ventor ind tree, to tackle the issue of
what they refer to as n environment marred by machines that are too big, too noisy and quite unsightly.
The 26 x 36 foot tree features 72 eavesthat act as miniature silent turbines with integrated generators,
each producing a small amount of electrical power. Because the leaves are small and light, they are set in motion by winds as light as 4. 4 miles per hour,
capturing light winds that large vertical turbines can and potentially producing power as many as 280 days a year.
And while each tree produces only 3. 1 kilowatts of power, a streetscape lined with them could power all the nearby streetlights or a small apartment building. aking use of the slightest breeze,
the Arbre à Vent is able to exploit all types of wind, in a 360 degree radiusurbulences, vortexes,
drays and other wind phenomena found in urban and rural environments, says the company. he Arbre à Vent is part of the energy harvesting movement,
and powerful enough to ensure the electrical autonomy of a family of four. The trees are designed
and constructed to be durable, reliable and lasting in a variety of outdoor conditions. The generators connected to the leaves are sealed in protective casing,
and the unit is designed so that if one leaf breaks down, the others will still function.
The trees won fool anyone into thinking they are real but they could easily pass as a piece of outdoor sculpture. he biomorphically inspired Arbre à Vent,
your own personal windmill, is a truly eco-friendly solutiono more line drops, no more energy carrying costs, an extremely low carbon footprint, virtually invisible technology and completely silent operation,
the company boasts. he distinctive yet human-scale design promises to reconcile the consumer with his means of generating electricity.
Prototypes have been installed on several private properties with a demonstrator tree to be installed in Paris on the Place de la Concorde this coming May.
Theye expected to cost about $36, 500 a piece. Also on the drawing board is oliagethat can be installed on rooftops and balconies and along roadsides to power variable-message signs.
A scaled-down ind bushis also in the works s
#Spotting inherited heart disease before it strikes CM affects one in 2500 adults, with an annual incidence of between 5%and 8%per 100 000, says INHERITANCE coordinator Professor Eloisa Arbustini of the Foundation IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo. t is one of the leading causes
of heart failure due to systolic dysfunction, being responsible for 10 000 deaths per year in Europe, and it is the most common indication for cardiac transplantation in adolescents and adults.
Early diagnosis and management of the disease is fundamental, but in spite of the fact that it is inherited in up to half of all cases,
few patients are aware of the familial risk and less than 1%get genetic testing. Familial DCM is enetically heterogeneous says Arbustini.
That means several different genes may cause the disease. INHERITANCE researchers have worked to characterise different types of DCM,
and they undertook genetic studies to explore the molecular makeup behind the different mutations that cause the disease.
Arbustini says thousands of patients with DCM throughout Europe took part in the research project.
In addition, using some of the most innovative, next-generation genetic sequencing techniques, researchers have analysed 84 genes in more than 700 of those patients.
The results have enabled successful preclinical and pre-symptomatic diagnosis meaning researchers can identify family members at risk before they develop the disease.
They have developed also ground-breaking, family-tailored and optimised clinical and genetic work up, enabling a more cost-effective use of medical resources. ver the course of three years, says Arbustini,
e have obtained important new information with immediate relevance to everyday clinical practice. The greatest contribution has been our characterisation of patients with aminopathies a subtype of DCM caused by mutations in the gene encoding for the nuclear envelope protein.
This kind of DCM, she says, affects some 8%of all cases and carries a high risk of ventricular arrhythmias,
even in the early phases of the disease. nother major achievement of INHERITANCE has been to provide policy makers with a healthcare model that can be applied across the continent,
she says. Using this model to diagnose and care for families identified with genetic DCM allows doctors to provide tailored monitoring,
treatment and preventive care, reduce discomfort for patients and cost compared to other treatment. Patients can receive treatment as outpatients
and avoid unnecessary hospitalisation. Arbustini says the subject of the study, familial DCM, is not only an important healthcare problem in its own right but can also serve as a model for developing improved and tailored treatments for other inherited diseases.
28th february 2014 Rare Diseases Day 2014 Project details Project acronym: INHERITANCE Participants: Italy (Coordinator), France, UK, Nederlands, Spain, Denmark, Germany, Sweden FP7 Proj.
N°241924 Total costs:##4 028 394 EU contribution:##2 870 791 Duration: January 2010-December 201 a
#Adapting to climate change Mediterranean style Climate change is global -but affects people locally. An EU-funded project is giving Mediterranean businesses
and local governments the information they need to plan ahead by taking the impact of local climate change into account.
The project is also helping to build a Europe-wide climate information service. The Mediterranean area is particularly sensitive and vulnerable to climate change.
The Intergovernmental panel on climate change predicts that the region will experience rising sea levels, an increasing number of extreme weather events including storms and drought and more frequent wild fires,
affecting society, locals and visitors alike. Local businesses and policymakers need accurate, tailored information to plan for these events so they can adapt to the expected impacts.
The EU-funded CLIM-RUN project developed methods to improve the details and the reliability of climate information for the Mediterranean area and to communicate it in an effective way to local users.
CLIM-RUN designed its method to support a future World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) climate services network designed for the entire planet.
The project team followed the guidelines of the Global Framework for Climate Services established by the WMO
and adapted climate change models to needs identified by local businesses and policymakers. Users then access the modelling results via CLIM-RUN web portal
which relates the modelsresults to their specific industries and regions. Project coordinator Paolo Ruti of Italy ENEA (Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development) says:
his is the first European project on climate services that focuses on consumer needs. It aims to bridge the gap between users and climate services.
To help users benefit as much as possible from the climate service, the team also developed information sheets explaining how they produced their predictions
and how to interpret the CLIM-RUN data. The information sheets are available in English, French, Italian, Spanish and Greek.
English versions are available on the CLIM-RUN website, which will be online until at least 2017,
while versions in other languages are available from ENEA, says Ruti. He declares the team will continue to distribute information to users even after the project stops maintaining the website.
User-driven design CLIM-RUN was unique in that it designed its service around user demands,
says Ruti. Using face-to-face meetings, surveys, social networking and workshops, the CLIM-RUN team asked potential users to identify the main types of information that would be most useful to them.
The energy industry particularly wind and solar energy tourism and wildfire prediction services emerged as the areas of strongest demand.
Target users told the team they were interested in predictions by season and decade up to 2050, allowing them to plan for natural variations in weather as well as variations due to man-made climate change.
Consulting with businesses and local government the team then selected case studies for energy, tourism and natural hazards, covering the different types of landscapes in the Mediterranean mountainous regions, coastal areas and islands.
These case studies helped CLIM-RUN refine its modelling methods and communication style to disseminate relevant information
and make it as accessibly as possible. With the final product in place, Ruti explains that the project has anchored the idea that climate information can be useful, especially for the energy sectors and those living in coastal areas.
Next steps Climate information services already exist in the United kingdom and Germany. But large parts of Europe
especially Southern Europe, still lack information that they can use to prevent or solve climate-related problems.
CLIM-RUN modelling and communication methods, says Ruti, could be the basis for a single climate information service for the whole of Europe and for training new experts in communicating climate knowledge.
Ruti also considers that it could help develop a market in climate information services globally, building on existing WMO services in developing countries.
He says, urope has a strong interest in climate issues and has the ability to interact with global organisations such as the WMO.
Because of the way it is organised the EU can bring together institutions and create networks. Climate Forecasting for Renewable energy:
CLIM-RUN FP7 project Youtube-Video Project details Project acronym: CLIM-RUN Participants: Italy (Coordinator), Cyprus, France, Spain, Germany, UK, Belgium, Croatia, Tunisia, United states Proj.
N°265192 Total costs:##4 680 340 EU contribution:##3 489 333 Duration: June 2011-May 201 a
#Smart sensors that harvest power from sun heat or vibrations European researchers have developed advanced energy harvesting technology that allows wireless sensor networks to power themselves from the sun, heat or vibrations.
The innovation is a key enabler for smart cities, environmental and pollution monitoring, and effective disaster management, among many other applications.
From monitoring weather and pollution to empowering mart citiesof the future, wireless sensor networks promise to make our lives more comfortable, safer and more productive.
But while many of the challenges to deploying networks of tiny sensor devices have been addressed, one key issue remains:
how to power them. Like any electronic device, sensors need energy to operate. Until now this has largely been solved by hooking them up to the grid
or using batteries, but both approaches have considerable drawbacks. Grid-connected sensors need cables, limiting where they can be used,
and contribute to electricity consumption and CO2 EMISSIONS, while battery-powered ones only last as long as their battery life.
But what if sensors could harness energy directly from their environment from the sun, from ambient heat, from radio waves or vibrations?
The result would be sensors and sensor networks that can be set up anywhere with ease
and in theory would operate perpetually with little or no maintenance or environmental impact. And that is precisely what a team of EU-funded researchers are achieving in the SWAP('Symbiotic Wireless Autonomous Powered system')project.
Supported by almost EUR 1 million in research funding from the European commission, four companies and research institutes from Italy
and Spain have combined their skills and expertise to develop the next generation of innovative, autonomously powered wireless sensors. n recent years,
wireless sensor networks have enjoyed a tremendous upsurge and the field has reached a level of maturity, says Professor Michele Rossi from Consorzio Ferrara Ricerche and the University of Padova,
Italy. here were many technical limitations in terms of communication capabilities that have been solved and the communication aspect of the network no longer represents the main challenge.
The main challenges now revolve around the self-sufficiency of networks. What is needed are networks of devices that can survive by scavenging the energy they need from the environment."
"Harvesting the sun, vibrations and radio waves The SWAP team are studying, testing and deploying novel technologies that enable sensors to use solar
and thermal energy as well as radio waves and vibrations to power themselves. They are focusing on making energy harvesters more efficient
and are integrating multiple energy harvesting and sensing circuitry into individual devices. The researchers are also developing intelligent algorithms (small programs) to efficiently manage the energy obtained from the environment.
The algorithms are used then with advanced signal processing techniques to reduce the amount of data that has to be sent for a given monitoring application.
This approach in turn, reduces energy consumption. Apostolos Georgiadis, a senior research associate and the SWAP coordinator at CTTC in Spain, says the design of energetically self-sufficient networks differs sharply from that of standard battery-powered ones. he goal is no longer to minimise energy draw so as to maximise the lifetime of the battery reserve,
but rather to use energy when it is available and save it when we know it will be scarce,
so that the system will remain operational ideally forever, "he says. Combining the expertise of the academic and industrial partners,
the SWAP team has developed an advanced sensor platform to validate the approach, and the industrial partners are incorporating the algorithms and hardware innovations into commercial products.
In the longer term, Nicola Bui, the former CEO of Patavina Technologies, a project partner based in Italy,
sees such efficient energy harvesting systems playing a crucial role in the Internet of things, the concept that in the future myriad different devices,
or hings will form interconnected networks for a wide range of potentially revolutionary applications. For example, autonomous sensor networks that can be deployed quickly
and easily anywhere will greatly improve disaster and emergency management, enabling first responders to have a much better understanding of the impact and scale of any event.
Sensor networks already play a crucial role in environmental weather and climate monitoring. Making them better will serve to improve the efficiency of such applications.
The introduction of these technologies will allow for a new class of applications involving large-scale monitoring of real-time situations, such as forest fires,
or in agriculture and water management, suggests Ignasi Vilajosana, CEO of Worldsensing, a project partner based in Spain. n the context of smart cities, for example,
sensing technologies will allow the introduction of new services for citizens that will benefit quality of life, such as traffic and pollution monitoring,
smart water metering and even smart parking guidance systems that help drivers to quickly find parking spaces,"
"he predicts. Project details Project acronym: SWAP Participants: Spain (Coordinator), Italy FP7 Proj. N°251557 Total costs:#
#991 149 EU contribution:##991 149 Duration: August 2010-July 201 r
#Safe to fly A fresh way of analysing security information is being developed with the help of Heathrow Airport.
Known as TASS-it brings together different sources of data and offers security experts a single interface to see what is happening on the ground.
Andy Cowen, Security Development Manager at Heathrow, described the new technology:""The TASS system is a new way of taking data
and feeds from existing airport systems bringing them all into one place. Any big airport could benefit from it.
It could deliver information to a single user, could have the opportunity to bring synergies across lots of systems,
and also potentially reduce manpower by decreasing the amount of resources that are required to operate
and monitor these systems on an ongoing basis."The airport operator programmes the system to make connections between data sources and highlight potential threats in real time.
Gideon Hazzani, Director of New Business Technologies at VERINT (the company behind the project explained the benefits of the system:"
"If there is an emerging threat the alert will be shown in real time. Different alerts will be displayed with different colours representing different risk levels,
red is high risk. The other screens can show different information, for example there is a 3d visualisation, all the terminal,
indoor and outdoor, is modelled by one of our technological partners.""The TASS test sensors at Heathrow monitor everything from cargo to car parks added Hazzani:"
"We have the location of the different vehicles, even the location of passengers-anonymously-but we can see the flow of passengers inside the terminal.
We may also see the location of airplanes.""The system-conceived in an EU research project-is designed to complement existing airport security systems already in place e
#Putting the citizen at the centre of flood prevention Social media has broken down barriers between information providers and consumers.
An EU-funded project is seeking to capitalise on this by enabling citizens to monitor
and report on their own environment, and thus become the first line of defence against flooding. Recent events in England, Central europe and elsewhere have underlined once again the human and economic costs of flooding.
The number of people who will be affected is predicted to double over the next 70 years, with annual damages increasing from EUR 7. 7bn to EUR 15bn.
Europe ability to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change is therefore one of the challenges of our time.
The EU-funded Wesenseit project was launched in October 2012, with the aim of strengthening Europe response to water management and to directly engage with citizens and communities on the front line.
So far the project team has tested successfully the concept of engaging citizens to monitor water levels.
And one of the project partners is seeking to market a social media analysis tool developed by the team in 2013.
A citizen observatory When it comes to floods, citizens have often been thought of as mere consumers of information;
potential threat warnings would trickle down from authorities to those living in areas at risk.
But couldn citizens and communities be given a more active role and become part of the solution to better water management?
This is why Wesenseit is developing the concept of a citizen-based water observatory, where communities form part of a two-way information chain.
The advent of mobile phones and social media means that citizens can be fully active in capturing,
evaluating and communicating valuable information on water levels, creating cost efficiencies and acting as early warning systems for overstretched local authorities. here are so many rivers that it would be impossible to monitor them all with sensors,
explains project coordinator Fabio Ciravegna from the University of Sheffield in the UK. ot all necessary information can be captured with sensors.
Moreover cost is a major issue: often the cost of the communication infrastructure to transmit data dwarves the cost of the sensors themselves.
Citizens such as volunteer flood wardens in the UK or civil protection volunteers in Italy can help by taking measurements using new apps currently being developed by the project
and sending information and images by phone. They can also help by reading existing sensors
and sending authorities the data via mobile apps. The collected data will be made available through the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS.
New technologies and approaches to water management are being tested and validated in three EU countries: the UK, The netherlands and Italy. or example, we are developing mobile apps
so that flood wardens in the UK can walk along river banks, and take tagged pictures if think there is something of concern,
in order to allow an unexploded World war Two bomb to be diffused. Sensing business opportunities Wesenseit also has a strong focus on creating new economic opportunities
which carries out large scale social media analysis to help emergency responders during large scale floods, found an application in monitoring large city wide events in England.
Businesses stand to benefit hugely from being able to apply developed technology to such an important issue. he long term impact of this project will be the development of a new way of understanding the environment;
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