globalbriefs
Solar Socket Portable Power from Any Windowpane
The Window Socket, a new device that at- taches to any window using a suction cup, provides a small amount of electricity to charge and operate small devices from its solar panel. Inventors Kyuho Song and Boa Oh, of Yanko Design, note, “We tried to design a por- table socket so that users can use it intuitively, without special training.”
Even better, the charger stores energy. After five to eight hours of charging,
The Socket provides 10 hours of juice to charge a phone, even in a dark room. The device is not yet available in the United States.
Find more information at
Tinyurl.com/WindowSocket.
Feathered Friends Food Shortages Guide Behavior
A new report published in American Naturalist by a pair of ecologists, W. Alice Boyle and Courtney J. Conway, at the University of Arizona, in Tuc- son, has determined that the primary pressure prompting short-distance bird migrations comes from seasonal food scarcity, not their amount of eating or living in non-forested environments, as was previously thought. “It’s not just whether they eat insects, fruit or nectar, or where they eat them; it matters how reliable that food source is from day-to-day,” says Boyle. A universal assumption has been that short-distance migration is an evolution- ary steppingstone to longer trips. The team’s work contradicts that idea by showing that the two are inherently different. They also found that species that forage in flocks are less likely to migrate. “If a bird is faced with food scarcity, is has two op- tions,” Boyle notes. “It can either forage with other birds or migrate.”
Oil Alternative Bio-Breakthrough
Research- ers at Vir- ginia Tech, in Blacksburg, attest they have suc- ceeded in using xylose, the most
abundant simple plant sugar, to pro- duce a large quantity of hydrogen in a method that can be performed us- ing any source of biomass. “Our new process could help end our depen- dence on fossil fuels,” projects Y. H. Percival Zhang, the associate profes- sor of biological systems engineering who is spearheading the initiative. This environmentally friendly method of producing hydrogen utilizes re- newable natural resources, releases almost zero greenhouse gases and doesn’t require costly heavy metals. Most hydrogen for commercial use is produced from natural gas, which is expensive to manufacture and generates a large amount of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. “It really doesn’t make sense to use non-renewable natural resources to produce hydrogen,” says Zhang. “We think this discovery is a game-chang- er in the world of alternative energy.”
Can Reduce Fossil Fuel Use
24 Collier/Lee Counties
swfl.NaturalAwakeningsMag.com
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