When Elisa Teipel, and her collaborators began their study many years ago, their aim was to take an agricultural waste item of tiny value—in this case, fibers extracted from coconut husks—and turn it into an environmentally-friendly, useful commodity….
When Elisa Teipel, and her collaborators began their study many years ago, their aim was to take an agricultural waste item of tiny value—in this case, fibers extracted from coconut husks—and turn it into an environmentally-friendly, useful commodity.
Equally significant, Teipel, along with colleagues Ryan Vano, husband Blake Teipel, and Matt Kirby wanted the project to support the local economies exactly where they obtained the raw materials.
Now their new enterprise, the College Station, Texas-based Essentium Supplies, is turning out automotive trunk liners, load floors (battery pack covers in electric cars), and living wall planters, among other factors, with technologies they created that produces a composite material produced of coconut husks combined with recycled plastics.
The result is greener and price neutral, as effectively as stronger and stiffer, than the standard all-synthetic plastic fibers, and with all-natural anti-microbial properties due to a higher lignin content material.
“The coolest part is seeing some thing that was once just waste come to be a new resource,” Teipel says. “Also, it is benefitting both the atmosphere and the communities in establishing nations exactly where the coconuts are grown.”
The researchers estimate that replacing synthetic polyester fibers with coconut husk fibers, identified as coir, will reduce petroleum consumption by 2-4 million barrels and carbon dioxide emissions by 450,000 tons annually.
Also, the improved functionality and reduced weight of these supplies will lead to cost savings through increased fuel economy, saving up to 3 million gallons of gasoline per year in the United States, according to Teipel.
Ninety-5 % of the 50 billion coconuts grown worldwide are owned by ten million coconut farmers whose typical revenue is less than $2 a day, she says. Furthermore, about 85 percent of the coconut husks at the moment build pollution when they are treated like trash. “The productive adoption of these new composite components inside North American markets would in a lot of situations double the annual revenue for these farmers,” she says.
Essentium’s work is supported by a $1,018,475 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) through its modest enterprise innovation investigation system (SBIR) in the directorate for engineering.
Coconut (whole) and cross-section, displaying the outer husk, inner nut shell, and white coconut meat (or copra). Credit: Essentium Supplies, LLC”Projects that use waste supplies as a feedstock to make value-added merchandise are a best match for NSF SBIR due to the fact we look to support entrepreneurs who can ‘do excellent by carrying out nicely,”‘ says Ben Schrag, the project’s system director at NSF. “We think that little corporations with revolutionary technologies hold the crucial to solving lots of of the broader societal and environmental difficulties faced by the nation and the globe.
“New material ideas that incorporate waste supplies are also becoming increasingly appealing to lots of consumers and organizations,” he adds. “This is creating substantial opportunities for shrewd and dedicated technologists and entrepreneurs.”
The idea to use coconut husk material originated about seven years ago when Teipel was in graduate college.
“We were definitely interested in seeing how we could support people today in other parts of the planet with financial improvement perform,” she says. “Initially, we have been looking in Papua New Guinea. A former professor of mine, Walter Bradley, who has because retired from Baylor University, recommended we look at accessible components and what we could do with them, initially to generate electrical energy.
“Coconut was a single of the most readily accessible materials that farmers and people today in the neighborhood had access to,” she adds. “So we took a appear and wondered no matter if coconut was a viable engineering material, and what we could do with it.”
At the time, farmers harvested coconuts only to produce coconut milk and coconut oil, when the husks and fiber were viewed as waste. Yet the students believed they could take the fibers and convert them into a usable item whilst “elevating both the dignity of the people and the dignity of the resources,” she says.
It was a process of trial and error to develop the material in the lab, then try it in a production setting. “The initial phase of the analysis was to attempt to comprehend the inherent properties of these waste materials to establish viable applications,” Teipel says. “We discovered that coconut fiber, for instance, is a big, stiff fiber with a really high elongation (25-40 %), creating it a all-natural decision for molded automotive items.”
The group then worked with numerous manufacturing providers to develop distinctive material blends and densities, testing out material blends, such as experimenting with diverse binder fibers, and processing procedures. “In the course of the industrial development phase, it was crucial to guarantee that these supplies with all-natural content material could pass the strict automotive requirements such as odor and flammability in order to be approved for use in vehicles,” she says.
Enlarge Ford Concentrate Electric Loadfloor produced with coconut fiber composite. Credit: SPE Automotive DivThese days Essentium performs in the Philippines with regional neighborhood development groups to extract the fibers from the husks and shells, perform performed close to the plants where the coconut milk and meat processing occurs.
The fibers are separated from the husk then packed and shipped to the United States where they are combined with other fibers, typically recycled and reclaimed fibers, and turned into a material that resembles felt. This nonwoven felt can then be molded or formed into components that can go into a automobile.
“The coconut fiber nonwoven material, the first product from the EssenTex™ line, was launched in the Ford Concentrate Electric vehicle in the load floor,” Teipel says. “There are other parts that should really be released in the subsequent 12 months. Outdoors of automotive, the EssenTex™ line has discovered a household as a moisture mat absorber in the BrightGreen living wall planter available at Williams Sonoma and House Depot nation-wide.”
Essentium also has coconut waste solutions from the coconut shell in a bio-recycled component on the Ford F-250 Super Duty, and in a kitchen cutting board referred to as “Coco-poly” readily available at Bed, Bath & Beyond, she adds.
“Our company was built kind the idea that you can turn waste into resource,” she says. “New components supply opportunities for engineering applications worldwide and far more importantly for farmers abroad waste can be new found treasure.
“As supplies folks, we recognize the significance of selecting and developing the right supplies for the job, and recognize that there are a lot of waste streams that can be utilized to create new and improved materials and merchandise that have extra positive aspects than just much better performance,” she adds. “In the end, our company is about transforming waste in order to transform people’s lives. We want our engineering decisions to increase people’s lives and make the planet a improved location.”
John Arroyo conducting research about art, culture, and civic space at the historic confluence of the Los Angeles River and the Arroyo Seco in Northeast Los Angeles. Credit: Allegra BovermanJohn Arroyo’s first exposure to the 51-mile, concrete-walled Los Angeles River came in riding mass transit downtown from his East Los Angeles home, past a riverside cityscape of industrial structures, graffiti, and piles of debris.
Yet despite the river’s hard-knock appearance, it has been a center of creative expression for artists. When Arroyo left Los Angeles in 2008 to pursue a master’s in city planning at MIT, he continued looking critically at the river as a new paradigm of urban planning.
“Although my community saw relatively little promise in the river’s ecological future, they saw great potential in its ability to elicit cultural engagement,” Arroyo wrote in the preface to his 2010 thesis, “Culture in Concrete: Art and the Re-imagination of the Los Angeles River as Civic Space.”
Today Arroyo is a doctoral student and Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP). A self-described “nontraditional” urban planner, his work before grad school as a journalist and as a longtime arts advocate has encouraged him to incorporate methods from ethnography, sociology, and critical cartography into his research.
“At a very basic level, it’s recognizing that there are different specific physical, social, and cultural needs that planners, designers, and policymakers must pay attention to,” Arroyo says. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all sort of situation.”
For planners to accommodate diversity, they need to understand the people they’re planning for. That’s where Arroyo’s research—which has involved Mexican immigrants from urban and rural environments, and even transient populations of Mexican immigrants who are so closely tied to their homes that their communities become campaign stops for Mexican politicians—comes in.
This means, he says, that planners should take greater care to understand the needs and wants of various groups before actually planning for them. Arroyo’s research has revealed how transnational Mexican migration has dramatically influenced the built environment on both sides of the border—something he calls “place bilingualism.”
Existing streams of thought often assume, he says, that Mexican immigrants all want the same things, and the same civic environments. “And my research is saying, ‘I don’t know if we can say that,’” Arroyo says. “Do people want public spaces that remind them of their place of origin? Which physical dimensions of their lives in the U.S. do they export back to Mexico? When and how do people develop a sense of agency, or become complacent, when faced with a radically different built environment, compared to what was previously familiar?
“Before we’re reactive, I’d like to be proactive so that we know what we don’t know,” Arroyo adds. “It requires a fundamental change, behaviorally, in the way planners work. People are living in the city; plans and policies should be dictated by them, especially when it comes to the built environment. That can be scary for a planner who’s used to having control.”
Close to home
Much of the inspiration for Arroyo’s research comes from his personal experiences. By the time he entered high school, he realized that the name of his unincorporated East Los Angeles neighborhood provoked a reaction in people.
It was a neighborhood that some might call “tough” or “blighted”; Arroyo calls it “underresourced.” He lived with his family in a small two-bedroom house that accommodated up to 20 people during the agricultural season, when relatives migrated from central Mexico to work transient jobs picking strawberries and oranges. Gang violence often kept Arroyo indoors; when he did get out, he found a concrete environment with few parks and little greenery.
Yet despite its imperfections, Arroyo was infatuated by his neighborhood. He attended Loyola High, a top-ranked Jesuit school that attracted students from all over Los Angeles; for many classmates, Arroyo’s neighborhood was just a place they heard mentioned on the news. One message about his humble upbringing was drilled into his head over and over, he says: “All you need to do is get out. When you get the opportunity, just go and never look back.”
“I didn’t necessarily agree with that,” Arroyo says. He loved the vibrant Mexican community, and the artistic and culinary cultures. He decided to attend the University of Southern California as an undergraduate so that he could stay in Los Angeles and look more closely at “troubled” neighborhoods. “Was L.A. really as bad as everyone said?” he asks. “Or was it really much better, filled with lots of potential?”
Not just on paper
“A lot of planning schools have become policy schools. They’re disconnected from design,” Arroyo says. “MIT is so applied. You don’t have to lose sight of how both policy and design affect professional practice. Not only do you not have to—you should not.”
Arroyo has stayed on the front lines of urban arts culture and advocacy. He has worked with the Los Angeles Urban Rangers, a group of artists and advocates who lead tours showcasing some of the city’s lesser-known natural and urban features. He has also worked with an MIT group called the Community Innovators Lab (CoLab), which showcases research by DUSP students in an informal, applied manner via CoLab Radio. Many of the projects he’s worked on for CoLab—capturing soundscapes in European cities, or interviewing longtime residents of Los Angeles’ Skid Row—return him to his journalistic roots.
“Someone once asked: ‘Are you a journalist, or are you a planner?’” Arroyo says. “After I came to MIT, I wondered, ‘Why can’t I be both?’ Storytelling has such a major purpose in what we’re doing.”
It seems fitting that Arroyo’s latest project has returned him to Los Angeles and its eponymous river. Known as Play the LA River, it was started by Project 51, a group of artists and scholars whose goal is to inspire civic engagement with the river. Starting this September, the collective will hold events large and small to draw people to sites all along the river.
Researchers have created an ice cream that changes colour with each lick.
Spanish physicist Manuel Linares set out to create a type of ice cream that would change colour in response to temperature changes and acids found in the human mouth.
Linares signed up for training with Asociacion Empresarial Nacional de Elaboradores Artesanos y Comerciantes de Helados y Horchatas-a craftsmen and businessmen association in Spain that offers mentored coursework-and came up with the colour changing ice cream in just a week. Linares worked with his friends to develop the final product, which reportedly has a similar taste to tutti-frutti, and has been named Xamaleon, `Phys.org’ reported.
The ice cream starts out as periwinkle blue, then changes to pink and eventually becomes purple, as it is licked.
The change in colour is believed to be due to the types of fruit that are used and a secondary ingredient, a spritz called the “love elixir“ that gets sprayed onto the ice cream after its been scooped into a cone, which Linares has hinted, accelerates the colour changing process.
Development Authority (DDA) has handed over possession of one of the three alternate sites to DTC for relocation of the Rs 60 crore Millennium Depot, which was built on the Yamuna bank area ahead of the 2010 Commonwealth Games.“Nearly 20 acres of land has been demarcated by the DDA in north Delhi’s Rohini, near Rani Khera area. We have handed over possession to the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) to begin with, for the relocation of the depot,“ a senior official in DDA’s land management department said. The department is still working out the payment options, he added.The bus depot, spread over nearly 50 acres along the western banks of the Yamuna, was built by the then Sheila Dikshit dispensation on a temporary basis.After petitions filed by environmentalists, saying the site was damaging the ecologically sensitive zone, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) took cognisance of the case and the matter went to the Delhi high court.In January , the former Kejriwal-led government had told the court that it would relocate the bus depot within nine months.
In May , DDA had told the court that it will be giving three separate plots, Rohini being one, to the city government for shifting the depot. “The depot is located in `Zone O’ (river plains) and there were demands for its shifting. A meeting was held at Raj Niwas to ascertain the status of the pending allotments to the DTC, where this decision was taken,“ DDA’s vice chairman Balvinder Kumar said. PTI
NEW DELHI: Thousands of Delhiites turned up for the fourth Raahgiri Day at Connaught Place on Sunday, celebrating their newfound freedom to walk, sing, dance, and play on the streets.
People came armed with their rollerskates, footballs and cricket kits. Some participants also got bicycles to ride in the Inner Circle. The idea, they said, is to reclaim the streets and bring physical activity back in vogue. A S Bhal, economic adviser in the urban development ministry, said, “It’s an exciting initiative that has gained a lot of traction. It focuses on the fact that roads are meant for all and not just motorized traffic.”
The Raahgiri initiative has been organized by Delhi Police and New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), with Embarq India. It is supported by The Times of India.
M M Miglani, who lives in a highrise apartment at Patparganj, east Delhi, said his morning walks and exercise are usually limited to the verandah of his flat, which is on the fourth floor. “There is little space downstairs and the parks are often too crowded for old people to walk comfortably. Raahgiri has given us an avenue and the space to fulfil our desire,” said the 81-year-old management consultant, who cannot walk without support as his knees and hip are damaged.
M L Kshetrapal, another participant, said he came to show his grandchildren how refreshing a morning walk could be. “When we were young, we used to walk, wrestle, play cricket and table tennis. These days even kids are so busy with schoolwork, tuition, and the internet that they have almost given up on outdoor activities. Raahgiri has been an eye-opener,” he said.
Participants said CP, because of its central location and connectivity, is ideal for the event. “There’s an aspiration in each one of us to be up and about early in the morning. Also, there’s nothing like cycling on a breezy morning like this,” said Priya Sachdev, a software engineer, who had come all the way from Gurgaon. A morning walk is the best way to de-stress, she said.
A puppet show on road safety and cricket league between top officials of different government departments were the notable additions. The graffiti wall had glowing descriptions of the event. Those who had brought fitness equipment promised to return with more.
Organizers are anticipating a greater rush in the coming weeks. “When we started the Raahgiri Day in Delhi on July 13, the turnout was approximately 5,000. It has more than doubled since then,” said a senior NDMC official.
NEW DELHI: Raahgiri Day has also become a stage for people to show their talent. On Sunday, puppeteers from Kathputli Colony put up a show on road safety.
The audience was told a story of two school students, Sanjay and Anjali. Anjali ignored Sanjay when he told her not to listen to her iPod while crossing the road. “One day, while crossing the road, she met with an accident because she could not hear the bus honking,” the ‘sutradhar’ (narrator), a large puppet, explained. He went on to elaborate on traffic rules and the need to follow them.
Mihika Sharma, a second-year student of SRCC, said most of these puppeteers are giving up the art with a decreasing appeal for such shows.
“Some of them have taken up jobs as labourers or perform at marriage functions. Now, they earn good money by putting up shows on socially relevant issues,” she said.
Professor Abhay Kumar, the faculty advisor for this social initiative, said the idea is to rebuild sustainable business models for this age-old art.
“They will hold shows on dengue awareness from Monday at health camps organized by a private hospital,” he said.
The Mangalore Traffic police will soon put in operation ‘Speed Hunter’, a new tripod mounted device, which will identify over-speeding on the city roads.
The Mangalore Traffic police will soon put in operation ‘Speed Hunter’, a new tripod mounted device, which will identify over-speeding on the city roads. These devices will be in addition to the traffic interceptors that Mangalore police have had for nearly three years.
Assistant Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Uday Nayak said the ‘Speed Hunter’ was an improvement over the camera used in a traffic interceptor. Unlike the interceptor, the ‘Speed Hunter’ detects speeding vehicles based on the speed limits set by the police. “It identifies on its own the number of vehicles that are over-speeding.” In interceptors, Mr. Nayak said, police had to manually ascertain the speed.
Mr. Nayak said the new device works on the Windows system. It also has the Global Positioning System facility. Like in the interceptor, the ‘Speed Hunter’ provides wireless connection to the printer used to print challans along with images of the speeding vehicle.
The Mangalore traffic police have been given two devices — one for the city and another for the newly opened Mangalore Traffic (North) police station in Surathkal. The police were being trained in the use of them. “These new devices will be in action in the next few days,” Mr. Nayak said.
Interceptors
The city traffic police have two traffic interceptors – one in the city and another in Panambur.
These interceptors have not been of much use for traffic enforcement. “There have been problems with the device and hence it has not been of much use,” Mr. Nayak said.
By the end of 2015, the city will be placed under the watch of 8,000 cameras, announced Delhi Police Commissioner B.S. Bassi on Sunday.
At present, the Delhi Police have just over 4,000 cameras which are installed mainly in busy market areas, traffic intersections and borders for round-the-clock surveillance. The footage captured by these is monitored at the district control rooms by the traffic wing and at the Delhi Police’s Command, Control, Communication, Computing and Intelligence (C4i) centre.
Mr. Bassi was speaking while inaugurating a CCTV Camera Project at Civil Lines under the Delhi Police Neighbourhood Watch Scheme at Shah Auditorium here. Under the project, funded by Residents’ Welfare Association Club Class, 67 CCTV cameras have been installed at various places including the market area, all the entry and exit gates of Civil Lines, and other important points.
What makes this project the first of its kind in Delhi is that the footage captured in these cameras can be viewed at a control room in Civil Lines police station in real time. In all other localities where RWAs have placed cameras, the footage is first recorded and then the recordings are made available to the police on request.
The total cost of the project is around Rs.20 lakh.
Mr. Bassi said the technology used by the Delhi Police is far more advanced and a similar project, if taken up by the Delhi Police, would have cost between Rs.70 lakh to Rs.80 lakh. He also acknowledged that in the past, funds sanctioned for such purposes have never been enough to cover entire Delhi under CCTV surveillance.
He said: “It is good that city residents are coming up with surveillance projects fully funded by themselves. It will be of great help to the police in combating crime in the Capital.”
Deputy Commissioner A.B. Ibrahim on Thursday instructed officials of some government departments to ensure that select public transport vehicles fix global positioning system (GPS) equipment by the end of September.
Deputy Commissioner A.B. Ibrahim on Thursday instructed officials of some government departments to ensure that select public transport vehicles fix global positioning system (GPS) equipment by the end of September.
It applied to vehicles transporting rice, wheat, sugar and kerosene under the public distribution system (PDS), vehicles of oil companies transporting diesel, petrol, kerosene and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), sand transporting vehicles and private and KSRTC buses.
The equipment in vehicles under the PDS system would help monitor the movement of vehicles and to ascertain whether they had delivered the goods to all fair price shops or not. It would also help monitor the parking of such vehicles en route for long time without valid reason.
Deputy Director of Department of Mines and Geology Nagendrappa told the meeting that about 700-800 vehicles transporting sand had the equipment fixed now.
An official of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd. said 180 vehicles of the company had the equipment fixed. An official of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd. said the company had 80 vehicles for which the process of fixing the equipment was under progress.
The DC instructed that all buses, including private and KSRTC, should fix the equipment, as it would help to know if they were plying on the routes permitted or not. It would also be known if the buses covered the distance allotted or cut short the trips.
Canara Bus Owners’ Association president Rajavarma Ballal said the association had fixed the equipment to all buses under it in 2010-11 at an estimated cost of Rs. 17 lakh. But there was none under the Regional Transport Authority or Regional Transport Office to monitor their movements, hence the system and their maintenance had failed. Mr. Ibrahim said a proper monitoring system would be ensured this time.
Source:The Hindu
Written by ITW Editor · Filed Under About, GPS, Tech
The Hindu Old Bus Stand at Hampankatta which is the proposed site for multi-storeyed vehicle park, in Mangalore on October 22, 2008. Photo: R. Eswarraj
Keeping a multi-level car parking-cum-commercial complex proposal at Hampankatta alive, the MCC has decided to take it away from the MUDA and go on its own or through a public private partnership (PPP).
Keeping a multi-level car parking-cum-commercial complex proposal at Hampankatta alive, the Mangalore City Corporation (MCC) has decided to take it away from the Mangalore Urban Development Authority (MUDA) and go on its own or through a public private partnership (PPP).
The council of the corporation on Thursday gave its approval to withdraw the proposal given to the MUDA.
Now the corporation is focusing on the project for which the State government is expected to sanction 50 per cent of the project cost.
Mayor Mahabala Marla said that it was more than five years now since the proposal was given to MUDA.
Of the 215.50 cents of land available in the old service bus stand at Hampankatta, the civic body owns 155 cents and the remaining 60.50 cents – where there are five buildings – belong to three private parties.
Mr. Marla told The Hindu that the matter had been taken up with the Minister for Urban Development Vinay Kumar Sorake, who has promised support of the State government. The corporation is yet to decide whether to take up the project on its own or through a PPP model.
Blueprint
The Mayor said that now the corporation would ask a consultancy to prepare a blueprint of the proposed project. The matter would be discussed in the development committee of the civic body and a decision would be taken on how to proceed with the project.
Mr. Sorake told The Hindu over phone that the government could sanction 50 per cent of the project cost through the Directorate of Urban Transport Authority (DUTA) under the Urban Development Department. The government planned to reduce the density of vehicles in city corporations in the State. Hence DUTA had been constituted with an objective to coordinate planning and implementation of urban transport projects and programmes, he said.
He said his department would verify the Hampankatta project once the MCC sent a proposal and project report to the government.
The Mayor said the corporation was also examining if it was possible to introduce a single parking fee payment facility in the central business district area in the city. With this, a driver should be able to park his or her vehicle at three for four notified places on roadside by paying a parking fee at any one place. Then drivers and owners need not pay parking fee every time they parked vehicles within a radius of two or three kilometres.
Source:The Hindu
Written by ITW Editor · Filed Under About, Parking
