The first solar-powered boat

The spacecraft reached a speed of 6 knots and carry up to 170 pounds. It was designed and built by an inventor of the town of San Lorenzo Santa Fe, and is the first boat of its kind in the country that runs along the Paraná River without polluting the environment.
The new boat or catamaran multihull layout that is used for recreational boating and various water bodies is driven by an electric motor powered by photovoltaic modules that are responsible for transforming the sun's light energy into electrical energy, "he told Telam its inventor Lucas Hazzi.
The eco catamaran, named "Sun" (sun in English), measures 5.07 meters in length by 1.9 meters wide, and has a range of 24 hours, according to battery capacity.
Its structure is made of plastic reinforced fiberglass, developing a final speed of 6 knots (about 10 miles per hour), and can carry up to 170 pounds. Hazzi Lucas, who is a musician, soloist, teacher and scholar of solar energy, said it took just over three years to build the boat.

The first solar-powered boat

"Seven years ago I have been researching clean renewable energy and so I developed this boat powered by an electric motor powered by 10 solar modules, which generate energy and store it in an electrochemical battery," he said.

The engine then transforms electrical energy into mechanical spinning the propeller to produce the thrust required for the movement of the ship.
The catamaran has two hulls hydrodynamic symmetrical high-performance, cross-linked by two aluminum tubes attached to the helmet by clamps, and a central platform or basket that is used to take the helm, and the boat with solar panel is important, for the occupant or items of need on board. Hazzi said his idea of building the vessel is associated with the particular geography of the region. "I wanted to invent something in order to navigate through the different bodies of water in the area without causing any environmental impact."
"So I dedicated myself to investigate the potential energy of the sun, on time to the study of photovoltaics and its application in various areas," he told the inventor, who in line with environmental protection and study of other energy alternatives, sailed from 1989 to date only on sailing boats.

Ecologic Boat with solar panel 

The inventor Santa Fe, a member of the NGO Civil Entrepreneurs Association of San Lorenzo, said his idea is to continue the study, development and construction of other renewable energy projects, such as a hydraulic generator (extracts energy from the river), and electric motorbike which is currently in the stage of completion. Also anticipated that soon begin to develop "a draft boat hybrid (wind / solar) of larger tourist purposes, in order to generate future jobs." In this context, Hazzi stated that "as an environmentalist, I have a social responsibility to raise awareness and guide humanity towards the care, preservation and respect for the environment, essential to our life and that of future generations." That commitment was completed during a course of strengthening Social Responsibility (CSR), through which, Hazzi said "one realizes the magnitude of the environmental impact that we are producing, irreversible and increasingly catastrophic results. The future will be impossible to live on a planet in such weather, "he said. for this reason is important the boat with solar panel.
On July 20 last, the catamaran "Sun" was presented at the 1st Entrepreneurs Bicentennial exhibition 2010, held in San Lorenzo. The "Sun" as well and was successfully tested in the waters of the Parana River, where he held out waves of almost five feet tall. The ship also has a notable feature for the solar panel boat : "Never is sinking, and that having a helmet alongside the other stays afloat," said its inventor. Hazzi's invention has already been declared "Municipal Interest" in San Lorenzo, and soon the government of Santa Fe, also declared the "Provincial Interest."

Ecological account of the Earth is in the red

If all the world's population had the level of an average Spanish life, it would take three planets like Earth to achieve a sustainable balance between consumption and environmental regeneration.
In the event that the standard of living to reach out of a U.S. citizen, the number of planets required would be five, while production of the Earth could be halved if the global population lived as an Indian citizen and the ecological account of the earth.
These are the data that the organization has provided an independent British New Economics Foundation, reflect the ability of the planet to sustain life that it develops and show that the Earth is an ecological limit per year to generate products and absorb pollution.

Ecological account of the Earth

Exceeded this limit is consumed by overfishing, according to director Efeverde Environmental Economics New Economics Foundation, Aniol Esteban. Speaking to EFE, a Spanish Esteban explains that the site generates first day of the year as many CO2 emissions as a citizen of Tanzania in the next twelve months.
On the other hand, according to Stephen, this consumption is the basis of the paradox that economic benefits generated unsustainable consumption. An example being, says the director, the Gulf of Mexico, considered the largest oil spill in U.S. history, which, however, generates economic benefits for a portion of the population by paying for cleaning services .

The U.S. environmental organization Global Footprint Network analyzes the overall situation to determine the ecological footprint mankind leaves each year nd the ecological account of the earth, and provides the numbers that determine where the boundaries of nature.
The quantities consumed fish, meat, cereals and vegetables are transformed into land surface is needed to generate and is recorded, among others, energy consumption and CO2 emissions for the production area that corresponds to each citizen of the world .

The latest data from Global Footprint Network show that are almost two hectares per person, and the ecological account of the earth. but only in Spain each citizen consumes a production of approximately six hectares of land.
Esteban explains, mankind has lived for centuries in equilibrium until, about three decades ago, we started to eat and live on credit, bringing our balance to an extreme point each time. The organization warns: the greening of the planet has entered the red.

Mexico City against plastic bags

The consumption of plastic bags in Mexico City is estimated at 20 million a day starting this Thursday and will be charged for them because of the new Law on Solid Waste.Want a bag? For two pesos. Or three, or one, or determine what each business. What is certain is that it will not be free in Mexico City from Thursday, with the entry into force of the new Solid Waste Act.
So the city government hopes reduce consumption of plastic bags, estimated over 20 million a day only in the Federal District.
The traditional bags that supermarkets often offer are produced using oil and depending on its thickness, can take hundreds of years to degrade themselves.
To soften the environmental impact from the August 19 merchants in Mexico City should charge customers for plastic bags, which also must be biodegradable.
Otherwise, they risk being punished with an arrest for 36 hours and fines ranging from 1,000 to 20,000 days of minimum wage.

Mexico City against plastic bags

The Solid Waste Act was passed in August 2009. Thereafter, the Environment Committee of the Legislative Assembly of the City had one year to study and determine the details of the standard.
But now that the date is in the offing, nor many of the capital's businesses are ready for change, nor is there consensus on the rules of law.

"We do not know. I still have not told us anything," he said Tuesday in a grocery store workers who help put the purchase and against to plastic bags.And that, in one of the major supermarket chains in Mexico.
In the "24 hours" in the corner, also belonging to a well-known business group, also had much more information unless they are "waiting for the company send a statement with the details".
Just a day before the entry into force of the law, neither biodegradable bags were available, no idea how much it would charge each.The law has been widely criticized. The National Association of Plastics Industries (Anipac) perhaps could be expected, but even the Green Party itself has strong objections.
From both perspectives agree that the wording of the law is ambiguous and therefore inapplicable consider sanctions.
"Just developing the regulations may be established by law as such," he told BBC Alberto Couttlolenc, Green Party deputy chairman of the Committee on the Environment of the Federal District Legislative Assembly.

Nicaragua develops renewable energy project to produce

In the province of Madriz, Nicaragua, the former scene of civil war between the Sandinistas and the contras in the '80s, a group of women farmers has replaced wood and fossil fuels with kitchens that work with solar panels, energy clean and renewable.
In Nicaragua, which is abundant sunshine. With this detail, for eleven years, the American engineer Susan Kinne, with the support of the Nicaraguan State University, drove in the mountainous province of Madriz, a former stage of the civil war of the 80s, a project aimed at reintegration into the working life of farmers crippled by landmines.
The project, designed by Susan Kinne and Programme of Alternative Sources of Energy's National Engineering University (PFAE / UNI), was that some victims of the accidental explosion of numerous mines in this region during the war, working in promotion, production and research of solar energy as alternative energy source to fossil fuels.
The idea was to train mine victims in the production and installation of photovoltaic panels, while giving them a job for these people, spreading the use of sustainable sources of alternative and clean energy in rural communities without access to electricity , told EFE reports Nimia-Lopez, manager of the cooperative "Solar Totogalpa Women."
In the tropical Nicaragua, a country of 5.8 million inhabitants, the sun, and abundant resource, and has become an alternative energy in rural communities, where it is estimated that more than half a million people lack access to electricity, according to official figures.

Nicaragua solar energy project

Rural women in the community of Sabana Grande, Totogalpa, welcomed this project as his own, although it was initially aimed at the maimed by mines, after realizing that in addition to power generation, solar rays can be used for cooking.
A group of them formed in 2003, the cooperative "Solar Totogalpa Women," which brings together 19 women and one man, in order to produce and disseminate the use of kitchens and panels that use solar energy, which is clean and sustainable Instead of wood, which helps large-scale employment to the destruction of forests, and that generated by petroleum products, of which so much depends Nicaragua.
"A housewives (of Totogalpa) we like solar cookers, as it saves fuel, time to cook, no dust and smokeless," said Nimia Lopez, in his case also uses a solar oven, manufactured by the cooperative with its limited means and to some extent by hand.
"The process is cleaner: we do not burn, and preserves the nutrients and vitamins," added the peasant, who emphasizes that the use of solar energy for cooking instead of using firewood, also contribute to prevent deforestation to preserve the environment and do not generate greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

The benefits of the sun

In populations also mired in poverty, in which the hoard scarce economic resources to cover basic needs, this system also saves.
Yelba Maria Lopez, another Nicaraguan peasant cuisine that uses a powered by a solar panel, told EFE-intended reports before about five dollars a month to buy firewood for cooking. But today, thanks to solar cooking in her house, located at the foot of a mountain, not the expense.
Although it does have electrical service, has also reduced by up to 85 percent of the electricity bill by using solar panel says. Yelba, mother of two children, says that was the kitchen and the solar panel in exchange for working at the Solar Center, the headquarters of the cooperative, where women make with your hands all these devices that run on renewable energy.
The administrator of the Cooperative states that "Women Solar Totogalpa" not only aims to achieve economic self-sufficiency, but also work for the sustainable development of the community, "to create jobs with dignity that promote renewable energy and protect the environment."

Solar Unrestaurante

Soon, members of the community of Totogalpa have plans to build a restaurant, a hotel, a small school and a kindergarten. The restaurant will provide meals made with solar energy, will be sponsored by the United Nations Programme for Development (UNDP) and the Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries (Hivos), the Netherlands.
"The idea is to show that we can use other alternative energies to not depend on conventional and thermal energy," says Lopez Nimia also Production Coordinator Solar Center.
By contributing to sustainable development, rural women's cooperative that has earned numerous local and international awards, including the Seed Award.

Giant balloons could be cleaned the spacegarbage

Everyone knows the helium balloons lifting capacity, but could also be an effective way to bring non-operational satellites back to Earth, according to a team of engineers.
The satellites that no longer work represent a hazard to spacecraft orbiting the earth. In 2009, one of them crossed the path of an operational satellite, destroying both aircraft leaving behind thousands of pieces of space junk.
One way to prevent these collisions is to make the satellites start your engines at the end of its useful life to enter Earth's atmosphere, which would be incinerated. But to achieve this you need to give them extra fuel, which means an additional mass increases the price of launch.
Faster Destruction
The balloons would be a cheaper way to solve the problem the spacegarbage, this team of engineers. Kristin Gates Global Aerospace Corporation in Altadena, California, presented the idea Tuesday at the Astrodynamics Specialists Conference in Toronto, Canada.
Any new satellite could be launched into space with a balloon attached to the cover. Once the satellite reaches the end of its useful life, would fill the balloon with helium or other gas, increasing the drag force when the ball hits the Earth's atmosphere.

A balloon of 37 meters could take a satellite to an altitude that would allow its disintegration in less than a year, while without the balloon would take decades, the team of engineers.

Balloons for clean the space garbage

According to Brian Weeden, the concept is feasible but would not work with all the satellites. For his part, Kerry Nock, President of the Secure World Foundation in Washington, concedes that the concept is possible to do, but with limitations. The balloon would only work below 1500 km, but adds that this means that it would cover a very congested area, which lies between 800 and 1,500, in which the accident occurred, 2009

BP successfully clogs drain your well located in the Gulf of Mexico

The oil company BP said Thursday it has completed its well plugging with cement damaged in the Gulf of Mexico, in an operation close to the U.S. government bringing an end to the worst environmental disaster in its history.
The success of capping assumes completion of the operation 'static kill' (static phase), the most ambitious oil company has undertaken so far to stop the leak.

However, retired Adm. Thad Allen, who coordinates the response to dumping by the U.S. government said Thursday in a press conference that this "is not the end" of the disaster that has ravaged the waters of Gulf, but "a key step to ensure that no more oil is poured into the ocean."
Allen BP gave the green light to proceed with the introduction of cement into the well on Wednesday, hours after the company announced the success of the first phase of the strategy of sealing, which was to push the oil to the bottom of the tank with the injection of more than 2,300 barrels of heavy mud.

Engineers working for the sealing of the leak were inclined to proceed with the fuel tank cap without waiting to complete the excavation of an auxiliary shaft, which is considered the ultimate solution to landfill.
The auxiliary shaft of about 5,500 meters deep, will close the bottom of the tank that caused the spill by a process dubbed "bottom-kill '(removal from the bottom), through a new round of heavy mud and cement .
The foundation of the auxiliary shaft, provided by BP on 15 August, will be the real beginning of the last phase of the operation to seal the well, which has shed 4.9 million barrels of oil into the ocean since April, when a platform the company collapsed and fell on the tank.

74% of the total crude oil released into the ocean since been collected, burned, vaporized or decomposed by natural processes, according to a scientific report presented on Wednesday the energy adviser to the White House, Carol Browner.
However, according to Browner, the clean and "the help of Mother Nature" will be crucial in the coming months to offset the crude oil that remains on the coast and floating in a residual microscopic particles in the ocean.

The U.S. president, Barack Obama said Wednesday that the fight to contain the spill "is finally coming to an end" and praised the efforts to stem the black tide "has turned on its head" the lives of thousands of people.
On the other hand, Allen said Thursday that the administration "will continue its efforts to compensate" for those affected in the southeastern states of the country and will continue to press BP to assume "full responsibility" in the disaster.
It should be noted that the engineers who carried out the injection of heavy mud yet to determine whether there is any leakage outside the main duct, a process that requires complicated shots of measuring pressure fluctuations in the well failed.
"It seems that the mud pump step directly from the pipeline", on Wednesday said Kent Wells, executive vice president of BP. "We've reached a good point, but we must now make it permanent," he said.

Hackers look for ways to attack power plants

Hackers have a new target in the sights: the powr plants and other basic infrastructure around the world, which want to control operations. This has intensified efforts to strengthen security measures dilapidated and vulnerable systems.
Cyber criminals have long sought - sometimes successfully - to penetrate network of major facilities. In July, the researchers found a computer code called "worm" (worm), created specifically to take control of the systems that run the internal operation of industrial plants.
The vulnerability is probably larger in countries like the U.S., where 85% of critical infrastructure in private hands, which control power plants and nuclear power, transportation systems and other vital services.

"The ability to interfere with industrial control systems has increased," said Sean McGurk, director of the office of security control systems of the Department of Homeland Security of the United States. "This type of malicious code and others we've seen in recent times strike the physical components of a system, the devices that open and close doors, which make cars. Do not simply point to the ones and zeros (computer codes ), take aim at the aircraft by physical processes "of a plant.
It is unclear whether the "worm" has already affected some system of operations.

In the past, hackers trying to penetrate the computer systems of a firm to steal or manipulate information. Such interference sometimes caused the suspension of operations.
But last year the threat increased when hackers began exploiting weaknesses in the systems that control the operation of a plant.
The "worm" latest, called Stuxnet, more disturbing still, because they are creating code that can assume control of systems.
Often plants operating systems and other facilities are old and are not fully independent computer networks that employ firms to manage their business operations or control access to the internet itself.
That connection administrative network control systems give hackers the ability to insert code, viruses or "worms" harmful programs that operate the plants.
The "worm" was discovered in Germany and has been used in several attacks, especially in Iran, Indonesia, India and the United States, according to Microsoft. Stuxnet tried to infect 6,000 computers to mid-July, according to Microsoft.
The virus could penetrate some operating systems that contain software designed by the German company Siemens AG, exploiting a vulnerability in several versions of Microsoft Windows program.

Both Microsoft and Siemens are taking steps to tackle the problem.

The U.S. authorities have prepared reports detailing the vulnerabilities of industrial computer systems and has called on firms to improve their security measures, using the latest software, change and keys, restricting access to critical systems and using firewalls to isolate the networks that control the basic systems.

The Department of Energy United States warned in May that a successful attack on control systems "can cause catastrophic damage."
In the past year, the Homeland Security Department sent to different parts of the country teams of experts to analyze the vulnerability of industrial control systems. That unit set up four teams and plans to form another ten in the next year.These experts identified nine cases of infiltration, including one in which a corporate executive went to a conference and copied the presentation to a memory stick (flash drive).
One document was infected with the virus Mariposa, which has been detected in 12 million computers worldwide, including 40 large banks.

When the executive returned to his office and his computer connected to the corporate network, the virus spread and attacked another 100 computers.

Environmentalists call for a 'Law of Climate Change "to force to reduce CO2

The environmental organization Friends of the Earth considers essential the creation of a 'law against climate change' on Spain, which regulates and establishes the safe reduction of emissions of polluting gases into the atmosphere as the only way to tackle this serious problem.

So says the report 'Opportunities for Climate Change Law in Spain based on carbon budgets', which have submitted and which have designated as priority projects to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) and the constitution legal legislative framework.

For the charge of the area of climate change Friends of the Earth, Alejandro González, is "setting annual targets for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases of at least 3% and force governments to fulfill their commitments."
For carbon budget, say the ecologists, the term "the establishment of an emission limit that can be released in a given period of time by a group of sectors or entities."The Kyoto Protocol, which entered into force in 2005 and ended in 2012, sets limits on emissions of greenhouse gases in industrialized countries and Spain committed (within EU) condemned Gonzalez not to increase their emissions GHG in the period beyond 15% over 1990. "

The impact of the crisis

The evolution of gas emissions in Spain has been increasing until the year 2007 that were released into the atmosphere 437.677 million tonnes of CO2, to start a drop from 2008 when they fell to 405 048 tonnes of CO2, complaint Friends of the Earth, citing figures from the administration.

The NGO attributes this reduction in 2008 "to a significant increase in renewable energy and economic wear by the economic crisis in Spain but not suffer a serious government policy."
For environmentalists, the solution lies in implementing a climate change law based on carbon budgets that help establish the foundation for climate justice. "
Since the organization is to strengthen the national and international policy framework and put a cap on GHG emissions in each sector issuers for a period of time annually.

Environmentalists call for a Law of Climate Change

Thus, there is a mechanism for secure and controlled reduction with each responsible for the emissions has a legal obligation to reduce them and agrees to budget planning in advance by creating a predictable economic scenario in the long term.
The report is part of the campaign of Friends of the Earth's climate SOS, called "The Big Ask" in Europe, demand in 18 countries national legislation to reduce GHG emissions annually.

This report is the first to introduce these concepts in Spain, "said Alejandro González and" we expect the approach to policy-makers, economic sectors and the Spanish civil society. "