A few years back, BMW and Mercedes benz had to turn off some of the onboard electronics on their high-end cars
The Internet of things and the subsequent world of smart systems, from smart cars and smart highways to smarter cities and smart homes is mostly overblown,
the taxi driver who talked enthusiastically and endlessly about food but did not eat pork.
they have the ability to take millions of cars off the road. Here are some other factors,
trains carry pollen into heavily populated areas, and there may be fewer pesticides in urban areas. In other words, Colony Collapse Disorder is not the only thing affecting bees.
is comprised of off-the-shelf roadway sensors linked to software that tracks the speed and volume of vehicles oe either cars or bikes oe moving over the sensors.
But with Ullrich's iteration, a local cycling organization could track existing throughways for bike traffic,
as a means of designing user-friendly bike lanes and better understanding vehicular traffic flow. A bike-sharing company might use it,
too, offered Ullrich, to figure out where to site their bike racks based on existing bike traffic patterns.
You could deploy a bunch of these around a city and gather than data in one day
instead of someone standing around with a clicker, manually counting each bike they see. One of the most innovative ideas on display was the P-Planter,
The parking lots in Oakland are not that different to where he grew up in Kenya, a country home to deserts and arid land.
World s cheapest light bulb Innovative bike tire can inflate itself Finally, a urinal for girls Invention uses sunlight to produce clean water New irrigation system helps farmers conserve water
Weighing what trash is worth at Mexico city'Bartering Market'MEXICO CITY oe Sunday morning brings swarms of people to Chapultepec Park to walk, run, bike or just meander among the trees and the vendors of snacks
contact lenses, Â parking spaces, Â phones, Â clothes, trash, stores. The list could go on. So it's not surprising that they're now on honeybees to help solve a major problem.
and the current biodiversity crisis. The IYB has been the driver of many biodiversity-centric events including meetings, conferences, film screenings, panels, international policy discussions and instruments around the world.
They are drivers of important humanitarian crises. So biodiversity can influence culture? Beyond those impacts of biodiversity loss on the functioning of ecosystems, human cultures around the world have been,
Initially, a major source of carbon offsets will be created those by J. B. Hunt through their shift from trucking to rail transportation.
the challenges of transporting by rail and the benefits of getting trucks off the road.
Mr. Hunt, the founder of the company--he was a truck driver and had basically an eighth grade education.
He was having trouble finding enough truck drivers and realized the trains could pull 200 of his loads.
He struck a handshake deal with the Atchison Topeka and Santa fe Rail (ATSF. Mr. Hunt said we need to make this transparent to our customers;
they shouldn t see a difference between going on a truck the whole way and intermodal. Last year, the J. B. Hunt organization celebrated 20 years with the ATSF.
But typically--behind driver wage--fuel is second highest expense. The fuel efficiency of the railroad--it s metal on metal:
so it s a great way to reduce driver wage and fuel. Every time you burn diesel fuel you re generating greenhouse emissions.
So what do these trains run on? Most of them also burn diesel fuel. In different applications, some will use all electric engines.
But for the most part the trains that runs across the country are using diesel. How much are you saving by using rail?
We d likely pick it up in A j. B. truck, load it into a container,
Then A j. B. Hunt driver will go to the rail yard and pick up the container. Huge cranes put it back on A j. B. Hunt chassis. Then our driver hooks up to that
and takes it to the Wal-mart distribution center. So that might be a 3, 000 mile shipment,
But if the truck does more, the carbon reduction is less. If the train does more,
the reduction can be more. What are some of the logistical challenges with shipping by rail?
Typically, trucking can be faster than the train. On that same shipment, you could be part of a driving team
So this truck could run 60 miles an hour, 24 hours a day and we could get there in three to four days.
A train would take five to six days, so customers have to be willing to wait a little longer.
And there s always been the perception that the service isn t equal to that of trucking.
A truck will on average, arrive as promised 96 percent of the time. With rail, it s less than that.
We ve worked hard to get the transit time and level of service as close to the truck as possible.
So there are some products that can t be shipped by train because of the extra time. Let s say ipods they re small, they re very expensive,
The strawberries that come out of the farm fields in California wouldn t be something we d typically ship because of the lack of refrigeration on the trains,
when things are shipped by train? Yes, it s slightly less. Most rates are per mile,
so the rate per mile will be slightly less than the rate for trucking. And for our industry it s standard to have a fuel surcharge,
and it s about half for the train. So they save on the line haul rate and the surcharge.
Has there been pressure from cities to reduce the number of trucks in terms of traffic and accidents?
Getting trucks off the road has a small positive benefit to society. Truck transportation gets safer and safer every year,
but by not being on the highway, you ve eliminated the chance of an accident.
Also, when we put those 200 loads on the train, there s not chance we ll have a fuel spill.
Your car runs on gasoline. There s no easy way to change that, but you can buy the J. B. Hunt carbon offsets
which take about 35 minutes by car, without traffic, or well over an hour on public transportation with multiple transfers,
TV spots starring Roscoe the bed bug sniffing dog, mattress encasement ads on the subway, commercials with people freezing bugs,
which made its name from the launch of the Nano compact, the world's cheapest car,
In San francisco, Mexico city native Monica Martinez is working on a taco cart concept called Don Bugito,
When people approach the cart, some are shocked, she said. But people after the first bite are like,
How will the trains for this new line be different? It will be a leaner, meaner, quieter, smaller rail car.
One of the less appealing things is that the original line has very long, clunky cars that are not low to the ground,
so you have to get on special ramps. This new light rail line is looking at systems that are in place in Portland and Seattle.
Part of it is going to be a surface portion where cars will share the road. Its been a hard sell
Å Lets cater to the automobile, save manufacturing and separate uses, like commercial and residential.
No more new surface parking lots downtown, period. New zoning codes will ease restrictions on community gardens
but a train chugging down the track on cow fat gave me some pause yesterday.
For the next year, Amtrak's Heartland Flyer passenger train will make the 206-mile trip between Fort worth
Each day Amtrak runs more than 300 trains over about 21,000 miles of track in North america. Should B20 become functionally and economically feasible,
however, I'd rather Americans just choose trains over planes and cars when they can.
Still if it works, I'm okay with the bovine fuel as long as Americans don't start claiming domestic energy as an excuse to eat (even more) cheeseburgers.
Algae can impact our environment, consumer electronics, cars, military--you name it. But the debate really comes down to this:
She rolls her eyes every time the edible insects are mentioned. Shes somewhat frustrated with how little Australians know about their native foods.
where it's not uncommon to see unused parking lots with grass growing through cracks and boarded up windows.
Gary Dodge, director of science and certification at the nonprofit Forest Stewardship Council, which has led a global push for lumber certification.
said Dodge. The scheme seems a bit labor intensive and expensive, but verifying the origins of wood could help sellers fetch higher prices at the market for lumber.
 The poo source Thrice a month, the two brothers set out on a motorbike to collect 1000kgs of dung from the elephant quarters behind the Amber fort.
But it didn't. The Lincoln administration's funding of a transcontinental railroad--$16, 000 in bond subsidies to rail companies for each mile,
Trains and planes and ships revolutionized the food market, he said. It really transformed the way people move
Then came the automobile. While taking pains to note that it was  Gottlieb Daimler who invented the automobile and internal combustion engine, not Henry ford,
Chu said that it was Ford's assembly line that took the car to the mass market.
Productivity per worker went up enormously, he said. ENERGY Chu said he saw similarities to Ford's assembly line
when he visited a Suntech solar plant in China. With four stories of automated production lines and the record for polycrystalline silicon efficiency, the company was executing on the mantra,
Clean energy technologies can positively impact the environment the same way that automobiles did. Not that cars don't produce smog,
of course--but the major environmental pollution problem at the turn of the century was the millions of pounds of manure in city streets produced by horses used for transport.
does America want to merely invent new technologies like Gottlieb Daimler, or manufacture it to great success like Henry ford, too?
If you put a lot of it in a car, you need to retrofit your vehicle to handle it.
We look at food creation in the same way as you look at making subway stops, said Lynn.
or driving an electric car laminated wood costs more than steel and concrete. However, it allows for saving during the construction process.
That s the same amount of gas given off by 118 cars in just a single year of driving.'
Drivers: energy security, rural community growth, fewer greenhouse gas emissions, food constraints, green jobs. Binetti outlined the advantages of cellulosic ethanol:
The main driver for the switch from manual, paper-based processes is cost-savings and efficiency,
Other vendors have been jumping on the green bandwagon, and many across the industry are pressing data center operators
but in the future you may see it on your TV or in your car. Click here to see Bayer s TED Talk last summer.
Chief scientist and cofounder Gavin Mcintyre just won a half a million dollar proposal to adopt this same platform for automobile interior trim parts and cushions.
Enterprise Rent-a-car removed airbags from fleet cars, sold them, didn't inform customersenterprise Rent-a-car, the nation's largest private buyer of new cars and seller of used ones, is in hot water today after the company chose to remove a standard safety feature--side-curtain airbags--from thousands of Chevrolet Impala fleet vehicles
and then sold them on the open market without disclosing the alteration. After the company rented out 66,000 of the 2006 to 2008 models,
Enterprise and other dealers offered them for sale on the open market without disclosing that the standard safety feature had been removed,
Further, the company said it will offer to buy back the cars, regardless of condition, at $750 above Kelley Blue book value.
000 Chevrolet Cobalt and Buick Lacrosse models were also subject to the factory modification--they were the only vehicles mislabeled.
the rental car business has been criticized for its bureaucratic red tape, complex insurance policies and high fees. Still, I wonder
said Lincoln Saunders, director of the Garden on the go program, which hit the street in early May in Marion County near Indianapolis.
Believe it or not, Icelandic geothermal to power European cars Fuel efficient cars: What a waste Meanwhile up in the sky,
says Alison Van Eenennaam, professor of animal science at the University of California, Davis. The question is:
Van Eenennaam and other scientists, as well as biotech executives and shareholders, worry that if the United states can't approve a gene-altered animal for consumption,
One of the most promising is a program in Van Eenennaam's department. It is aimed at genetically altering goats
Van Eenennaam says. China is already working on a growth hormone for farmed fish. Creating the Frankenfish The Aquadvantage salmon is a voracious over-eater
Animal scientist Van Eenennaam says the market indeed is the best predictor of what the public wants
looking for a non-food feedstock to produce fuel for jets and automobiles. In the Pacific Northwest, forest biofuel has been touted as a potential job creator,
Born out of a collaborative effort of former NASA, Apple and BMW engineers the $11, 000 Blossom One Limited features the kind of high-tech precision that's sure to appease the taste buds of even the most discriminate of coffee snobs.
Car runs on coffee smashes speed record Users can program the Blossom One Limited with presets for various flavors of coffee.
An electric airplane for only $34, 000 Flyboard jetpack lets you perform dolphin aerial tricks video Futuristic motor home is ultra luxurious,
While most of us have thought at least about curtailing the fuel use of cars, we ignore global warming consequences
-I ride the designated quiet cars on British trains because I can t stand the tinny sound that leaks out of the ghastly things (go ahead
The researchers took a road trip in a red Ford explorer to scale most of the state,
and are greater than those of all  cars, trucks, planes, ships, and trains worldwide.
The program is in testing right now, but Google. org plans to make it available within the year,
and even a totally necessary bike-dry for bicycle commuters to place their soggy bikes to dry during the work day
a midsize produce delivery company that uses about 65 trucks to deliver fruits and vegetables to Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Wisconsin.
and application in 20 trucks before deploying them to the entire 65-vehicle fleet a few months later.
The drivers were briefed in advance on what the systems were prolonged tracking, specifically idling (which is a waste of gas)
(even though the drivers are, in essence, customer service representatives and are encouraged to talk to clients, there is a limit to chitchat).
If every truck makes six to 10 stops per day and each idling period is 10 minutes, on average,
By bringing the implications of excessive idling to drivers'attention, Indianapolis Fruit was able to reduce fuel costs by an average of 8 percent to 9 percent per vehicle,
The Navman Wireless technology quickly helped reduce the amount of time that drivers spent offloading their trucks at each stop.
Gilbert said that many drivers were willing to explore new areas because they had the comfort of knowing where they were going.
and treat it accordingly--washing down their cars on a daily basis (which explains why I never saw a dirty car in that decidedly dusty environment),
hosing down outside spaces, maintaining lush gardens, and so on. Indeed, energy in general is too cheap in Abu dhabi at about $1. 80 for a gallon of gasoline
I wrote that drivers in the U s. will be forced to simply hand over the keys to new drivers in developing countries as competition for oil increases.
Bus and train ridership increased by 2. 3 percent in 2011 over 2010 according to new data from the American Public Transportation Association, reaching one of the highest levels America has seen since 1957, according to the Washington post.
Subway ridership was up 3. 3 percent nationwide. Intercity transportation is also moving away from air and rail and toward buses, according to research by the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at Depaul University in Chicago.
Bus service between cities has been growing steadily since 2006, and was the only form of intercity transportation to grow appreciably in 2011.
Boltbus, which opened in 2008 to some fanfare for its gimmick of selling one seat on each bus at random for just one dollar
Smaller operators offering more deluxe accommodations, such as Limoliner, Lux Bus America and New york Shuttle also expanded service in 2011.
Rail passenger seat-miles rose just 1. 2 percent but train-miles fell by 1. 1 percent.
Accurate passenger traffic statistics are not available for the intercity bus sector due to the fact that no federal government agency compiles
Of necessity this will mean a shrinking industry and a gradual transition to buses and long-distance rail for overland transport,
Trucking and delivery services Next to airlines, long-haul trucking companies are arguably the most vulnerable to fuel price shocks.
There's no way that the trucking industry can absorb fuel costs it can't happen, trucking company owner Jim Ganduglia told ABC News. Where he operates in Fresno, California,
diesel is running from $4. 25 to $4. 35 a gallon this week. So there's a fuel surcharge
Nowhere is the cost of trucking more evident to consumers than at the grocery store. Fresh produce and other perishables must be shipped promptly no matter
Local drivers for repair services, florists, cleaning services, pizza shops, mobile food businesses, and so on are feeling the pinch even more.
so drivers don't have to travel as far on each call. With up to 2, 000 house calls per week
using GPS devices to track their drivers on a minute-by-minute basis . But such tools are generally beyond the reach of small businesses.
Optimizing the behavior of drivers is another fuel-reduction strategy advocated by companies like Dubai-based Dynamic Technical Training.
By training drivers to shift strategically and avoid hard acceleration or hard braking, they have shown that fleet operators of 100 vehicles can save $31, 500 annually in fuel costs.
For national delivery services like UPS who have optimized already their drivers'habits and engaged in a long campaign to upgrade the fuel economy of their fleets,
Another 15 minutes by bus and all around are farms. But this isn t mass-scale agricultural land that disappears into the horizon.
and runoff spills into ground floors and down subway stairs. Other days, turning on the faucet yields only the gurgle and hiccup of pipes that have run dry as the city periodically shuts off water to one or another neighborhood.
is going on year 12 in Portland without a car and says Portland, Ore.,is certainly a model for sustainability,
Their bike network is unparalleled in the country. It s an amazing infrastructure. You can see their commitment to getting people to where they need to go without the automobile.
They re doing really well. They ve also incorporated sustainability into every aspect of people's lives, down to chickens and beehives in people's backyards.
It s one of the only Amtrak services where you can get Wifi and lobster rolls.
which alternatives we re doing to expand on â express bus service or commuter rail. What else is happening in Portland?
Do you have a bike share program, or bike lanes? We ve been expanding our network with bike lanes.
We have a new trail that was a rail line. Portland Trails was one of the lead groups.
We haven t really gotten all that much into bike share. We have some private companies that rent out bicycles.
We have a car share program through U Car Share. Do people bike year-round in the snow?
Yep, I m one of them. I ve been car-free for most of the time
I ve been in Portland the last 12 years. I haul everything around in a trailer behind my bike.
What are your personal green goals? I ve been fixing up an 1840s house for the last 10 years,
and my goal is to make this house as energy efficient as possible. One of the goals I had was to get the house off heating fuel (it was an old cast iron steam system with an oil burner,
30-story hotel built in just 15 days Volkswagen car goes 1, 626 miles on a tank of gas China s new bullet train is world s fastest, smashes record Video:
sets world record video Is this 400-mile electric car battery for real
Icon Carol Bartz, former CEO, Autodesk and Yahoo! Carol Bartz isn't afraid to get her hands dirty.
Every evening trucks carrying half-eaten cabbage, decomposing Kung Pao Chicken, and other food discarded in restaurants
With one truck, you can carry six or seven of these in the space of one container,
Here in Argentina, train transport is not that common. Transportation is done with trucks, which has high financial and ecological costs.
What's different about us, besides being foldable, is that someone, with one truck, can take more than one,
Alter says. Carrizo and Alter Carrizo gives the example of a mining company in Argentina that last year transported ten containers from Buenos aires to a mining camp in San juan, near the Chilean border.
because with two trucks you take them all, he says. The use of readily available materials is also typically Argentine,
During our drive back to the city a stray one wandered out of Moran's shirt and onto the car seat;
has made its way to KFC, Subway, Dominoes and Pizza hut. These chains have grown as more Indians can afford to eat out.
Bholu Ram lives in the Sangam Vihar slums of Delhi and works as a bus handyman with a monthly salary of Rs 4
and poor Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh are leaving the river basin to become laborers and rickshaw pullers in cities.
or a cab driver's horn or even human voices, make us flinch. We recoil naturally,
but it's only a reader with a Ford-like display: you can have any color you want
we had big ol gas-guzzling cars, and paid 30-something cents a gallon. People didn t know any better.
We have too many people with too many cars. Who creates the problems? It s the human beings, not the animals.
it s like coming out for a football game being 0-12 for the season and the coach saying, Å OK,
Lamborghini SUV supercar may be a game-changerone good way of getting a better understanding of the kind of world we live in now is to take a look at the Lamborghini Urus, a SUV supercar concept vehicle unveiled yesterday at the Beijing Auto Show.
Behind the wheel, drivers will also discover a carbon-fiber interior, paddle-shifting technology and a four-seat configuration.
the Volkwagon-owned automaker is only the latest luxury sportscar brand to break from convention with an intention to introduce a family-friendly model into their lineup.
Rival Ferrari has started already producing the four-seat FF while Tesla has announced plans to roll out an electric SUV.
while still appealing to sports car purists who also happen to be quite wealthy. Beyond that, the latest addition to the Lamborghini family of cars gives the brand an opportunity to redesign their image--from being
for the longest time, an icon of excess to demonstrating to the world that six figure sports cars can
not only be fun, stylish and luxurious but also environmentally-Responsible for instance, Volkswagon has stated that they plan to ensure that Urus debuts as the greenest luxury SUV (translation:
and emotion, says Stephan Winkelmann, the president of Automobili Lamborghini. The Urus is a very concrete idea for the future of Lamborghini.
Want more? Check back here tomorrow for a special preview of a car from the future.
via Forbes) Related: Super limousine is the world's fastest Superbus hopes to turbocharge mass transit Supertruck big rig design doubles fuel efficiency More game-changing car tech:
Believe it! Car gets 3, 000 miles per gallon Futuristic motor home is ultra luxurious, fuel efficient The world's first 3-D printed car video Bipod flying car works like a Chevy Volt Can air hybrid cars make it on the mean streets?
New electric car may signal the end of the road for gas guzzlers
Laser-etched'tattoos'an alternative to sticker labels on fruityou'd think there would be a better way to label
and identify fruit than those ubiquitous little stickers, but so far, that age-old solution has been a bit...
well, sticky. Scientists at the Agricultural research service and University of Florida have devised a better idea --and it comes with the help of lasers.
Laser etching that can effectively'tattoo'produce has been found to be effective to help identify fruit at the supermarket.
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