Gizmorama
October 4, 2010
------------------------------------------------------------
Silly Shaped Bands are Traded & Collected all over the world.
http://pd.gophercentral.com/u/1095/c/186/a/474
------------------------------------------------------------
Good Morning,
Many new technological devices have been released in the
last couple of years to make things like music, movies,
internet browsing, and books easier to obtain and manage,
but are these advances breaching tradition? A study,
summarized in the second article, looks at how children
are "embracing" e-readers.
Until Next Time,
Erin
Questions? Comments? Email me at: mailto:gizmo@gophercentral.com
Email your comments
P.S. You can discuss this issue or any other topic in the new
Gizmorama forum. Check it out here...
http://gizmorama.gophercentral.com
------------------------------------------------------------
Italian towns profit from green energy
TOCCO DA CASAURIA, Italy - More than 800 communities in
Italy are making more power than they use with wind and
solar installations, and many are making a profit from it,
officials say. One such community is Tocco Da Casauria,
where selling excess renewable energy has meant the town has
no local taxes and charges no fees for services like garbage
removal, The New York Times reported Wednesday. In the town
of 2,700 people in Italy's poor mountainous center, wind
turbines sprout from its olive groves while solar panels
generate electricity at its cemetery and sports complex as
well as at a growing number of private residences, the news-
paper said. "Normally when you think about energy you think
about big plants, but here what's interesting is that local
municipalities have been very active," Edoardo Zanchini of
the environmental group Legambiente said. "That this can
happen in a place like Italy is really impressive." Like
many towns, Tocco was motivated to become an early adopter
of renewable energy because Italy has some of the highest
electricity rates in Europe, nearly three times the average
in the United States. Tocco is now generating 30 percent
more electricity than it uses. Production of green electri-
city earned the town more than $200,000 last year.
Poll: Children embracing e-books
NEW YORK - Children would read for fun more often if they
could obtain e-books, but two-thirds say they still wouldn't
give up traditional print books, a poll indicates. In a study
by Scholastic, the American publisher of the Harry Potter
books and the "Hunger Games" trilogy, about 25 percent of the
children surveyed said they had already read a book on a dig-
ital device, while 57 percent of those ages 9 to 17 said they
were interested in doing so, The New York Times reported
Wednesday. The report was "a call to action," one Scholastic
executive said. "I didn't realize how quickly kids had em-
braced this technology," Francie Alexander, the chief aca-
demic officer at Scholastic, said of e-readers and other
portable devices that can download books. "Clearly they see
them as tools for reading -- not just gaming, not just
texting. They see them as an opportunity to read." A senior
fellow at the George Lucas Educational Foundation agreed.
"The very same device that is used for socializing and
texting and staying in touch with their friends can also be
turned for another purpose," Milton Chen said. "That's the
hope."
Student builds solar-power motorcycle
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A Purdue University student has cre-
ated a street-legal solar powered motorcycle he says can
carry a commuter for a penny a mile. Physics major Tony
Danger Coiro spent $2,500 redesigning and retrofitting the
1978 Suzuki bought for $50 to create the vehicle that has a
top speed of 45 mph, a university release said Wednesday.
"The riding experience is surreal," Coiro said. "I get in-
stant, silent, constant acceleration that outpaces urban
traffic. It's like riding a magic carpet." The lead acid
batteries that get power from the bike's solar cells can
also be charged by plugging into household current. Coiro,
along with two other solar-power vehicle enthusiasts, has
started the Purdue Electric Vehicles Club to help like-
minded students expand environmentally friendly transpor-
tation options. "Purdue Electric Vehicles will encourage
enthusiasm for, and knowledge and development of, electric
vehicles by students and the community," Coiro said. Coiro
is already designing a 100-horsepower motorcycle that will
travel up to 100 miles per charge, top 100 mph and draw even
more of its energy from the sun, he said. "I've learned a
lot building this first bike, and now I'm ready to make a
game-changer," Coiro said.
First 'habitable zone' exoplanet found
WASHINGTON - U.S. astronomers say they've detected a rocky
planet in another solar system with the basic and essential
conditions needed to support extraterrestrial life. Scien-
tists for years have predicted the existence of Earth-like
exoplanets in what is called the "habitable zone" around a
star, but the identification and measurement of one has been
called the beginning of a new era in the search for life
beyond Earth. "This is our first Goldilocks planet -- just
the right size and the right distance from its sun," astron-
omer Paul Butler with the Carnegie Institution of Washington
told The Washington Post. "A threshold has been crossed," he
said. The new exoplanet, called Gliese 581G, is quite close
at 20 light years from Earth. Because of its size and its
distance from its sun, it is considered to be in its star's
habitable zone. Its distance from the star that it orbits
means any water on the planet will be in liquid form, scien-
tists say, and the planet is large enough to have the gravi-
tational pull to hold an atmosphere around it. The star
Gliese 581 is now known to have six and perhaps seven planets
orbiting it in circular paths and lined up by type in a way
similar to our solar system. "As we collect more data, we
can see the system looks like our own -- with an inner clutch
of rocky, terrestrial planets and then a big loner like
Jupiter further out," Steven Vogt of the University of Cali-
fornia at Santa Cruz said.
------------------------------------------------------------
Check out Viral Videos on the Net at EVTV1.com
http://www.evtv1.com/
EVTV1.com