Buildings consume more energy and materials than any other human activity – a reality that, for decades, has fueled interest in any improvements able to save energy and reduce costs. As energy prices continue to rise and resources dwindle, interest in “green buildings” has sparked a growing industry. According to a new report from Lux Research, the market for energy saving green buildings technologies will expand from $144 billion today to $277 billion in 2020, representing a 6.1% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). (…)

“The developed world’s 728 billion square feet of residential, commercial, and government floor space account for nearly 40% of its primary energy use, and consume 72% of its electricity,” said Michael LoCascio, a Senior Analyst at Lux Research, and the report’s lead author. “But while there’s increasing interest in cost-saving green building technologies, the market remains poorly defined.” (…)

The report focuses on energy-saving green building technologies, and examines the prospects for more than thirty “established green” and “emerging green” technologies, based on primary interviews with engineers, contractors, architects, and technology suppliers, as well as rigorous secondary research of technology development and pricing trends. Among its key conclusions:

1.) The energy-saving equipment category will gear up to reach $146 billion in 2015. The market’s largest segment, green building equipment, comprises lighting, HVAC and water heating systems; as well as energy-generation technologies, such as rooftop solar, building-integrated PV, and combined heat and power systems. The segment represented an impressive $67 billion in 2009, but new growth in LEDs, smart lighting, and advanced heat technologies will help sustain a 7.3% CAGR through 2015.

2.) The services segment will deliver the most robust growth. The green services category encompasses energy service companies (ESCOs), demand response, building energy management, and smart meters. In 2009, it represented only 11% of the green building market with $16 billion in revenues. But strong expansion of emerging technologies, like demand response, will expand the segment’s revenues to $55 billion in 2020, reflecting a robust 12% CAGR.

3.) Materials are the slowest growing segment, with a few bright spots. Energy-saving green building materials, such as insulation, windows, and structural materials amounted to $62 billion in 2009; the segment will reach $75 billion in 2015, a relatively slight 2% CAGR. Emerging technologies to watch, however, include electrochromic, thermochromic, and thermoreflective windows, which control how much sunlight windows admit.

“The adoption cycle for green building technologies is comparatively long, and growth will rely in part on subsidies,” said LoCascio. “The biggest driving factor, however, is straight-up economics. Technologies that can provide a payback in three years are more likely to be adopted by commercial building owners. Those providing payback in five years, however, are still attractive for government buildings.”

{ Josh Wolfe, Weekly Insider, April 9, 2010 }

{ Jennifer Reed Bike Crash Portrait | Crash portraits | more }

This week, a study found that drinking habits are socially transmissible. Last month, a paper said that both cooperation and selfishness can spread like a virus. In February, a study found that poor sleep and pot smoking are contagious among teens. All of these revelations come from the works of two scientists, Harvard’s Nicholas Christakis and U.C. San Diego’s James Fowler. They first brought fame to contagion in 2007 with a widely publicized paper suggesting that obesity is “socially contagious” and that it can spread like a pox from one friend to another, and then another, and then to one more. More contagions (depression and divorce) are in the works. In their 2009 book, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, Christakis and Fowler write that connection and contagion are “the anatomy and physiology of the human superorganism,” and that “everything we think, feel, do, or say can spread far beyond the people we know.”

The studies have provoked excitement in the public health community but also some head-scratching. Many were surprised by the claim that obesity, for example, could be transmitted from one person to another. We thought we knew the major causes of fatness: genes, for one thing, along with eating too many calories and living a sedentary lifestyle. The finding that loneliness can be contagious also caught some readers off-guard

{ Slate | Continue reading }

photo { Bryan Formhals }

Lines at the grocery store might become as obsolete as milkmen, if a new tag that seeks to replace bar codes becomes commonplace.

Researchers from Sunchon National University in Suncheon, South Korea, and Rice University in Houston have built a radio frequency identification tag that can be printed directly onto cereal boxes and potato chip bags. The tag uses ink laced with carbon nanotubes to print electronics on paper or plastic that could instantly transmit information about a cart full of groceries.

“You could run your cart by a detector and it tells you instantly what’s in the cart,” says James M. Tour of Rice University, whose research group invented the ink. “No more lines, you just walk out with your stuff.”

{ ScienceNews | Continue reading }

logotype { Forest Young }

Deciding what is and isn’t a planet is a problem on which the International Astronomical Union has generated a large amount of hot air. The challenge is to find a way of defining a planet that does not depend on arbitrary rules. For example, saying that bodies bigger than a certain arbitrary size are planets but smaller ones are not will not do. The problem is that non-arbitrary rules are hard to come by.

In 2006, the IAU famously modified its definition of a planet in a way that demoted Pluto to a second class member of the Solar System. Pluto is no longer a full blown planet but a dwarf planet along with a handful of other objects orbiting the Sun.

The IAU’s new definition of a planet isan object that satisfies the following three criteria. It must be in orbit around the Sun, have sufficient mass to have formed into a nearly round shape and it must have cleared its orbit of other objects.

Pluto satisfies the first two criteria but fails on the third because it crosses Neptune’s orbit(although, strangely, Neptune passes).

Such objects are officially called dwarf planets and their definition is decidedly arbitrary. In its infinite wisdom, the IAU states that dwarf planets are any transNeptunian objects with an absolute magnitude less than +1 (ie a radius of at least 420 km).

Today, Charles Lineweaver and Marc Norman at the Australian National University in Canberra focus on a new way of defining dwarf planets which is set to dramatically change the way we think about these obects.

The problem boils down to separating the potato-shaped objects in the Solar System from the spherical ones.

{ The Physics arXiv Blog | Continue reading }

photo { Max Langhurst }

{ Olga Feldman | more }

In safety study, sheep on meth are shocked with tasers.

20% of the world’s population believe that aliens walk among us, disguised as Homo sapiens, according to a Reuters Ipsos poll.

A jury has been asked to decide whether a 12-year-old girl was burned and later developed psychological problems when a convenience store clerk allegedly aimed a hand-held price scanner at her face.

Evil Clown hired for stalking, threats and a pie in the face.

Members of Grace Missionary Baptist Church were preparing for a mens’ breakfast Friday night when they discovered that all the copper pipes had been stolen.

In the years before its collapse, Lehman Brothers used a small company to shift investments off its books. It was like a hidden passage on Wall Street, a secret channel that enabled billions of dollars to flow through Lehman.

Stop the bleeding everywhere. Your business cannot be about generating revenue to repay vendors and keep people employed all the while you get in deeper and deeper.

Paul Krugman vs Andrew Sorkin. The Nobel laureate demands an apology from the author of “Too Big To Fail.” He doesn’t get one. More: Andrew Ross Sorkin: I read your blog post about my column in Tuesday’s newspaper… }

If Amazon could re-run history, here’s how it should have handled pricing best-selling e-books.

Japanese researchers are genetically modifying mosquitoes - vectors of many diseases including deadly malaria - so that they are carriers of a vaccine that could instead inoculate millions for free.

Mind controlling an ant… with a fungus.

Two views of brain function: Reflexive/reactive or Intrinsic/proactive?

A laser weapon that can deliver a deadly blast from a ship is a step closer after the US navy approves preliminary designs.

The coevolution of algorithms and hardware is bringing us closer to interactive computer graphics indistinguishable from reality.

First evidence that quantum processes generate truly random numbers.

Do quasars break the laws of physics?

Mathematicians prove that a three-stranded rope is always 68% the length of its component strands, regardless of the material from which it is made.

A recent paper set out to examine automobile driving skills in people who had previously used Ecstasy but were currently not using.

What alcohol does to your mind.

A new study reveals that the better a woman does in school, the more likely it is she will grow up and abuse alcohol.

Should I become a vegetarian?

How the English breakfast has changed with Britain.

Why feminism favours men.

Did you know? Three decades of research on men’s sexual arousal show patterns that clearly track sexual orientation — gay men overwhelmingly become sexually aroused by images of men and heterosexual men by images of women.

Why Twitter is worth more than Facebook (at least to me)

Window seat or aisle? Ever since I was a small child, there’s been only one answer.

What actually gets taught on a homeopathy course.

The Most Controversial Dictionary in the English Language.

Another NYC coyote invasion expected in fall.

Why do some water fountains produce two streams of water that merge into one?

Steve McQueen: 20 Never-Seen Photos.

David Lynch Favorites Movies and FilmMakers.

An artist used a freeway as his canvas. The fake freeway sign became a real public service.

Wim Delvoye’s Cloaca Factory.

Dimitri Tsykalov, Cultura carnivora.

Noah Sheldon: Cats Wearing Clothes.

Your pet’s portrait will become an instant masterpiece when incorporated into a replica of one of your favorite paintings. [Thanks Daniel!]

French women do get

Perspective nudes.

Dildo of the month club.

…and it may be that the immobility, the inertia, the absence of all active passion or incident or peril which such a retired existence imposed upon man led him to create, in the midst of the world of nature, another and an impossible world, in which he found comfort and relief for his idle intellect, explanations of the more ordinary sequences of events, and extraneous solutions of extraordinary phenomena. (…)

…for him the legend confounded itself with life, and, unconsciously, he found himself regretting that the legend differed from life, and that life differed from the legend.


{ Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov, 1859 | Continue reading }

{ uncredited photo | any thought? }

Black holes may constitute all dark matter

Dark matter is the mysterious stuff that cosmologists believe fills our Universe. The evidence for its existence is that there is not enough visible mass to hold galaxies together. But since galaxies manifestly do not fly apart, there must be some invisible stuff, some missing mass, that generates the gravitational forces holding them together.

But there’s a problem with this idea. Two of them actually. First, physicists’ best guess at the laws of physics give a good description of all of the particles they’ve discovered so far and a few they expect to discover soon. The trouble is that none of these particles have the right kind of properties to be dark matter ie electrically neutral, long-lived and slow moving. But none of the known or reasonably hypothesised particles fits the bill. To make room for a dark matter particle, the laws of physics have to be changed in ways that many theorists feel uncomfortable with.

Second, despite a decade spent searching for dark matter with experiments costing tens of millions of dollars, nobody has laid eyes on the stuff. Most physicists think these experiments have found nothing: zip, zilch, zero.

{ The Physics arXiv Blog | Continue reading }

photo { Nick Waplington, S-M Club Ceiling, 2004 }

{ Todd Fisher }

{ Nick Waplington }

Religious architecture and art were to medieval feudalism what advertising and commercialism are to modern capitalism: A rather effective way to build support for the status quo using aesthetics instead of argument. My claim, in short, is that Notre Dame played the same role during the Middle Ages that fashion magazines play today. Notre Dame was not an argument for feudalism, and Elle is not an argument for capitalism. But both are powerful ways to make regular people buy into the system.

{ EconLog | Continue reading }

In any case, suffering is not something to be sought, but, since it is unavoidable, when one does encounter it, one must learn to use it for good. The person who has gone through suffering, and emerges better from the experience, is strengthened but it was not the suffering but the person’s own moral fibre that made them better.

{ Peter Bolton | Continue reading }

Take psychic suffering first of all. Severe depression is one of the most acute forms of pain known to humanity. Those who have suffered from both depression and serious physical illness are almost unanimous in agreeing that the depression is worse. Does this make them better people? Certainly not at the time. I’ve seen depression close up with several people, and one of them hit the nail on the head when they said that depression makes you really selfish. You can see that it’s taking its toll on people close to you, but you are just too self-absorbed to change how you treat them.

Are they better having come through the depression? I see no evidence for this, I’m afraid.

{ Julian Baggini | Continue reading | More: Does suffering improve us? | The Guardian }

photo { Shane Lavalette }

Tom Bissell was an acclaimed, prize-winning young writer. Then he started playing the video game Grand Theft Auto. For three years he has been cocaine addicted, sleep deprived and barely able to write a word. Any regrets? Absolutely none.

{ Tom Bissell | full story }

installation { Stephen Johnson, Ice Cream Floats, 2005-2007 }

it always makes me perplexed when people refuse eternal youth. […] ulysses: ‘i’m glad someone invented death.’

Most people in most places simply won’t be able to find a toilet when they need one. And for women, the lack of decent facilities is more than a problem. It’s an emergency. Public conveniences are the final battleground in the sex wars, the ultimate declaration of discrimination. (…)

You may think of America as the country that created the allergy, where bathroom culture rules, where germs and dirt are feared more than global warming and where cleanliness is worshipped alongside godliness – but public conveniences in some of its major cities are a disgrace. New York City, for example, is one of the most sophisticated metropolises in the world. Yet its provision of any public toilets at all, let alone clean and decent ones, is woeful. (…)

Today, there are still far fewer public toilets for women than for men in many British cities, in terms of both the number of toilets available and the ratio of male to female facilities. But even if the numbers were more equal, that wouldn’t solve the problem, according to the American sociologist Harvey Molotch, because women suffer “special burdens of physical discomfort, social disadvantage, psychological anxiety” when in public.

{ New Humanist | Continue reading }

photo { Stephen Shore, New York City, New York,September-October 1972 }

Music does not express this or that particular and definite joy, this or that sorrow, or pain, or horror, or delight, or merriment, or peace of mind; but joy, sorrow, pain, horror, delight, merriment, peace of mind themselves, to a certain extent in the abstract, their essential nature, without accessories, and therefore without their motives. Yet we completely understand them in this extracted quintessence. (…)

Music, if regarded as an expression of the world, is in the highest degree a universal language, which is related indeed to the universality of concepts, much as they are related to the particular things. (…)

This deep relation which music has to the true nature of all things also explains the fact that suitable music played to any scene, action, event, or surrounding seems to disclose to us its most secret meaning, and appears as the most accurate and distinct commentary upon it. This is so truly the case, that whoever gives himself up entirely to the impressions of a symphony, seems to see all the possible events of the world take place in himself, yet if he neglects, he can find no likeness between the music and the things that passed before his mind.”

{ Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, 1818 }

photo { Noritoshi Hirakawa }

Founded in 1974 and based in Los Angeles, the Z Channel was the nation’s first pay-cable station, preceding HBO or Showtime. At its pinnacle in the early 1980s, it served only 100,000 viewers, but nonetheless inspired and influenced the movie industry with its eclectic fare, securing a unique place in film history.

{ Netflix }

The Z Channel was known for its devotion to the art of cinema due to the eclectic choice of films by the programming chief, Jerry Harvey. It also popularized the use of letterboxing on television, as well as showing ‘director’s cut’ versions of films (which is a term popularized after Z Channel’s showing of Heaven’s Gate). Z Channel’s devotion to cinema and choice of rare and important films had an important influence on such directors as Robert Altman, Quentin Tarantino, and Jim Jarmusch. In 1989, Z Channel faded to black and was replaced by SportsChannel Los Angeles.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

photo { Otto Obrien }

{ The patterns of links between buyers and sellers of sex in an online forum differs in important ways from other internet related networks, says a new study. This may have important implications for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases | Patterns of Captured in Social Network | full story }

update/related { A top journalist caught on tape with a pile of cocaine and a party girl named Moomoo, an opposition activist filmed handing over a bribe… Who’s behind the spate of mysterious coke-and-hooker entrapment attacks on Russian opposition figures? The Daily Beast | full story }

{ A teenager gave medics a surprise when he walked into casualty with a 10-inch knife stuck right through in his skull - after a row over computer games. }