Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: sustainability – Page 518

  • Bus manufacturer New Flyer has launched an autonomous technology program to develop and deploy self-driving and driver-assist technology for public transit agencies.
  • In a release, New Flyer said it will focus on building connectivity and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) technology into public roadways. The company also said it will coordinate its efforts with federal agencies and industry groups working on automation, including the Society of Automotive Engineers.
  • “Transit agencies across North America have been asking for progressive technology, regulators have shown commitment and support to technology advancement, and passenger confidence has been increasing as they experience autonomous technology firsthand,” New Flyer president Chris Stoddart said in a statement.

Most major technology research has focused on smaller autonomous vehicles (AVs), with companies eyeing shared autonomous fleets or ride-hailing services. But applying self-driving technology to public transit could hold huge potential, making bus service more energy efficient and safer. Buses travel on defined routes and can be coordinated with connected infrastructure, making them a potentially appealing option for cities fearful of further congestion from autonomous fleets.

Governments have already been exploring driverless shuttles, which carry fewer people than a full-size bus and run on shorter routes. Cities like Detroit, Las Vegas and Austin, TX have all run autonomous shuttle trials. Autonomous buses have gathered more research abroad, with pilots in China and the Netherlands. Volvo recently ran trials for an 85-passenger autonomous, electric bus at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

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3D printing is moving ever closer to gaining a true home in mainstream commercial applications, thanks to the impact the technology is having on consumer fashion products such as jewelry, footwear, and clothing. While 3D printed fashion was still considered to be more of a novelty a few years ago, efforts have been increasing to make it more common – even in the classroom. Additionally, the technology is helping to usher in a more sustainable and eco-friendly way of manufacturing garments…and designer Julia Daviy is helping to lead the charge.

In addition to designing clothes, Daviy is also an ecologist and clean technology industry manager, and uses 3D printing to make cruelty-free, zero-waste clothing. She believes that the technology will change how the world produces clothing, especially when it comes to some of the more problematic issues of garment manufacturing, such as animal exploitation, chemical pollution, energy consumption, and material waste.

“Our goal was never to demonstrate the viability of 3D printed clothing and leave things at that. We’ll have succeeded when beautiful, comfortable, ethically manufactured and environmentally friendly clothes are the standard,” Daviy stated. “The innovations we’ve made on the production and marketing side of the equation are just as important as the technological breakthroughs that have gotten us this far.”

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Dear Colleagues.

ReWheel, Inc. was founded to save energy based on a simple truth that wasting energy is extremely not smart … as well as very damaging to our planet’s health.

Most of us are either scientists or believe in science. And that is how we know that we are losing the war against climate change. This war will not be won by any one technology but by our combined efforts. To protect our planet for our children and their children, and those who comes after, we need to act.

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The farms take donated bodies and bury them or leave them on the surface to decompose. Researchers can also set up and study specific circumstances, for example by placing bodies in water or in a vehicle in the farm. The world’s first and most famous farm opened in 1981 in Knoxville, Tennessee; at least six more sites have opened in the United States. In recent years, researchers have set up body farms in Australia and the Netherlands, and Canada will open one this year.

Sites that allow the study of human remains have long existed in the United States and have started to appear recently in other countries.


Two California designers have won a $1.5 million prize after building a shipping container that can harvest water from the air. David Hertz and Rich Groden were named the winners of the Water Abundance XPrize for their innovative creation, which can produce enough water to satisfy the needs of 100 people.

The competition, which began in 2016, asked designers to build a device that could extract at least 2,000 liters of water a day from the atmosphere while only using clean energy and costing no more than 2 cents a liter. Nearly 100 teams entered the challenge, which was eventually whittled down to two finalists. Hertz and Groden’s team, called Skysource/Skywater Alliance, won the prize because their invention “demonstrated the greatest ability to create decentralized access to water,” per a press release.

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