I wonder if this new floating-in-air wind turbine would work as renewable electricity for Auroville and India?

The Magenn Power Air Rotor System (MARS) is an innovative lighter-than-air tethered device that rotates about a horizontal axis in response to wind, efficiently generating clean renewable electrical energy at a lower cost than all competing systems. ...   more »

After years of promise, the market for [PV] solar power is finally taking off, with annual demand expected to increase to as much as 2,500 megawatts by the end of 2008, from about 1,000 megawatts now (which is the size of a large nuclear power plant). -- While most of the industry has a conversion efficiency of around 14 percent, the SunPower photovoltaic cell will reach 21 percent, a 50 percent advantage that translates into both cost and performance leads for the company. [It] will need that performance, because increasing demand will lead to more efficient solar cells from larger competitors like the Japanese manufacturing giant Sharp. -- There are other hurdles to overcome as well. Producing 35 million silicon wafers requires more than 700 tons of silicon. Already, the simultaneous booms in the computer chip and solar-cell industries have combined to produce a global supply shortage of crystalline polysilicon, a material that is forged into tubular ingots and then sliced into thin wafers to make both fingernail-size silicon chips and palm-size wafers. ...   more »

...man-made cells used to harvest light--so-called solar photovoltaics and other technologies--lose more of the sun's energy than they absorb, and they require tremendous amounts of energy to manufacture. One alternative, known as dye-sensitized solar cells, offers similar energy capture and lower cost but had relied on potentially toxic liquid components, preventing its widespread use. Research presented at the American Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco on September 12, however, has shown how such cells can be made from safer liquids and pointed to possibilities for a more bountiful light harvest. ...   more »

There is a growing consensus that distributed photovoltaic systems that provide electricity at the point of use will be the first to reach widespread commercialization. Chief among these distributed applications are PV power systems for individual buildings. -- Interest in the building integration of photovoltaics, where the PV elements actually become an integral part of the building, often serving as the exterior weather skin, is growing worldwide. PV specialists and innovative designers in Europe, Japan, and the U.S. are now exploring creative ways of incorporating solar electricity into their work. A whole new vernacular of Solar Electric Architecture is beginning to emerge. ...   more »

One is only micrometers wide. The other is billions of light-years across. One shows neurons in a mouse brain (quite similar to human neurons). The other is a simulated supercomputer image of the universe as a whole. Together they suggest the surprisingly similar patters found in vastly different natural phenomena. ...   more »

We focus on understanding the root causes of unsustainable behavior in complex systems to help restructure systems and shift mindsets that will help move human society toward sustainability. Our staff includes biologists, writers, social scientists, system dynamics modelers, and facilitators bringing a wide variety of experiences and skills to our work. ...   more »

I think these new developments in portable virtualization technology bear close watching indeed, especially for their potential impact in Asian countries like India.

...With MojoPac, you have to install applications on your device before transferring data, to safeguard intellectual property. -- Once you’ve made these installations, though, it takes two minutes to transfer data, via your iPod to any other PC. That means you can use the same iTunes music wherever you go. And if you install your Outlook and VPN solution, it becomes your virtual office — where you can check your email, for example. -- Appajodu says he expects MojoPac to have good adoption in Asia, where people have fewer laptops, and rely on public computing facilities, such as cyber-kiosks.

"PCs are increasingly hard to manage and hard to use, even for sophisticated users. moka5 brings a whole new approach that is much simpler and more powerful for the user, and has the potential to redefine the PC business." -- Vinod Khosla, Founder of Khosla Ventures ...   more »

ARTI is an NGO based in Maharashtra, founded by a group of scientists and social workers in 1996. The mission of the organisation is to serve as an instrument of sustainable rural development through the application of scientific and technological knowledge.

ARTI undertakes research to study, develop, standardise, implement, commercialise and popularise innovative appropriate rural technologies with special emphasis on making traditional rural businesses more profitable and also on generating novel employment opportunities in rural areas. We have now nearly 25 standardised and field-tested technologies to offer to rural entrepreneurs through our Rural Entrepreneurship Development Centre (REDC). Our sphere of activities is no longer restricted to Maharashtra, but has spread to other states including Goa, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pardesh, Sikkim, Tripura and Kerala. Some of our technologies are also being tried out in other developing countries in Asia and Africa. ...   more »

ThinkCycle is an academic, non-profit initiative engaged in supporting distributed collaboration towards design challenges among underserved communities and the environment. ThinkCycle seeks to create a culture of open-source design innovation, with ongoing collaboration among individuals, communities and organizations around the world.

How does one apply an Open Source approach to Hardware Products and Engineering Design? How can a global community of distributed domain experts and stakeholders collaborate towards evolving solutions to critical problem domains? –– That is the driving motivation behind the ThinkCycle Initiative. ...   more »

For centuries, the heart has been considered the source of emotion, courage and wisdom. At the Institute of HeartMath (IHM) Research Center, we are exploring the physiological mechanisms by which the heart communicates with the brain, thereby influencing information processing, perceptions, emotions and health. We are asking questions such as: Why do people experience the feeling or sensation of love and other positive emotional states in the area of the heart and what are the physiological ramifications of these emotions? How do stress and different emotional states affect the autonomic nervous system, the hormonal and immune systems, the heart and brain? Over the years we have experimented with different psychological and physiological measures, but it was consistently heart rate variability, or heart rhythms, that stood out as the most dynamic and reflective of inner emotional states and stress. It became clear that negative emotions lead to increased disorder in the heart's rhythms and in the autonomic nervous system, thereby adversely affecting the rest of the body. In contrast, positive emotions create increased harmony and coherence in heart rhythms and improve balance in the nervous system. The health implications are easy to understand: Disharmony in the nervous system leads to inefficiency and increased stress on the heart and other organs while harmonious rhythms are more efficient and less stressful to the body's systems...

Our research and that of others indicate that the heart is far more than a simple pump. The heart is, in fact, a highly complex, self-organized information processing center with its own functional "brain" that communicates with and influences the cranial brain via the nervous system, hormonal system and other pathways. These influences profoundly affect brain function and most of the body's major organs, and ultimately determine the quality of life. ...   more »

India is moving towards a Knowledge Based Society (KBS) with the help of Information Technology (IT). IT enablement of the villages is critical for empowering the rural India and to bring about eR-Commerce. The villagers of Hansdehar have taken this initiative to bridge the gap between the Government and the Citizens through this web interface for all the stakeholders involved in the development and upliftment of the village. This initiative is not a government initiative and is purely an effort of the village community to create itself an 'Empowered Knowledge Village' which can escalate its problems to the stakeholders through the IT.   more »

This is a fascinating website, full of excellent annotated references to recently published books re "a once and future encounter with an embryonic, numinous universe." Provides an ongoing update of Sri Aurobindo's seminal idea of a universe endowed with an innate evolutionary dynamic toward consciousness and transcendence.

"...A Creative, Organic Universe: From this holistic vista, the over fifteen hundred references posted here can testify to a once and future encounter with an embryonic, numinous universe. Science began by reading nature as a sacred book. The endeavor went on to explore and catalogue atom, cell, species and star. But its necessary method of looking down into matter and back in time reduced and lost life along the way. Earth and human were removed from privileged regard to a rare, contingent blossom not to appear again. This physical agenda, lately in search of a quantum theory of everything, seems almost Ptolemaic in its efforts to shore up an inadequate model and misplaced emphasis.

As the references attest, a growing number of researchers and scholars advocate a quite different scenario. An organically self-organizing universe is increasingly understood which can return life and intelligence to a central significance. In a biological cosmos whose innate properties give rise to sentient beings on cellular planets, its essence is most evident from whom they may become. No longer a random tangent, the manifest emergence of life, mind and informed selves can define a vectorial arrow of cosmogenesis. People are once more of cosmic notice, this time as its leading, creative, spiritual edge." ...    more »

Check out this article re the new 3-wheeled ecocar unveiled today in Britain. It's been developed over the past three years by a collaborative team of nine European partners from industry and academia, funded by the European Union.

I think cars like this offer a possible path to a sustainable transportation future, especially in compact urban areas.

I wonder if Auroville could partner with these folks for a real-life test of a few of these cars? Fact that they use compressed natural gas would fit right in with Auroville's current extensive use of CNG. Sounds like their crash protection would help cut down the high injury rate of motorcycles & scooters. - I'll bet they're quieter than our current motorbikes so would cut down on the AV noise pollution problem.

Hmmm, we may have to involve India's government to allow us to drive them on the roads around Auroville, e.g. Pondicherry. Anyone have any ideas re ways to follow-up on these possibilities?   more »