TCCB

theremina: Living Wall These vegetated surfaces don’t just look...

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 15:54:46 -0400

Living Wall

These vegetated surfaces don’t just look pretty. They have other benefits as well, including cooling city blocks, reducing loud noises, and improving a building’s energy efficiency.What’s more, a recent modeling study shows that green walls can potentially reduce large amounts of air pollution in what’s called a “street canyon,” or the corridor between tall buildings.

For the study, Thomas Pugh, a biogeochemist at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, and his colleagues created a computer model of a green wall with generic vegetation in a Western European city. Then they recorded chemical reactions based on a variety of factors, such as wind speed and building placement.

The simulation revealed a clear pattern: A green wall in a street canyon trapped or absorbed large amounts of nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter—both pollutants harmful to people, said Pugh. Compared with reducing emissions from cars, little attention has been focused on how to trap or take up more of the pollutants, added Pugh, whose study was published last year in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

That’s why the green-wall study is “putting forward an alternative solution that might allow [governments] to improve air quality in these problem hot spots,” he said.Compared with reducing emissions from cars, little attention has been focused on how to trap or take up more of the pollutants, added Pugh, whose study was published last year in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

That’s why the green-wall study is “putting forward an alternative solution that might allow [governments] to improve air quality in these problem hot spots,” he said.

Full Gallery

wishedfornone: adulthoodisokay: i can’t deal with how adorable...

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:24:32 -0400

wishedfornone:

adulthoodisokay:

i can’t deal with how adorable this dog is

Omg the happiness on this dogs face. SO CUTE

tenpercentoriginal: ever heard of a suspended coffee? rather...

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 10:45:17 -0400

tenpercentoriginal:

ever heard of a suspended coffee?

rather than try and explain it, this little story will do a much better job. props to bulgaria and hopefully more people get on board.

‘We enter a little coffeehouse with a friend of mine and give our order. While we’re aproaching our table two people come in and they go to the counter : ’Five coffees, please. Two of them for us and three suspended’

They pay for their order, take the two and leave. I ask my friend: ’What are those ‘suspended’ coffees ?’

‘Wait for it and you will see”

Some more people enter. Two girls ask for one coffee each, pay and go. The next order was for seven coffees and it was made by three lawyers - three for them and four ‘suspended’. While I still wonder what’s the deal with those ‘suspended’ coffees I enjoy the sunny weather and the beautiful view towards the square infront of the café. Suddenly a man dressed in shabby clothes who looks like a beggar comes in throught the door and kindly asks ’Do you have a suspended coffee ?’

It’s simple - people pay in advance for a coffee meant for someone who can not afford a warm bevarage. The tradition with the suspended coffees started in Naples, but it has spread all over the world and in some places you can order not only a suspended coffee, but also a sandwich or a whole meal.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/25/italian-tradition-of-suspended-coffee-takes-hold-elsewhere-in-tough-economic-times/

amordragon: Since her death in 1979, the woman who discovered...

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 10:30:02 -0400

amordragon:

Since her death in 1979, the woman who discovered what the universe is made of has not so much as received a memorial plaque. Her newspaper obituaries do not mention her greatest discovery. […] Every high school student knows that Isaac Newton discovered gravity, that Charles Darwin discovered evolution, and that Albert Einstein discovered the relativity of time. But when it comes to the composition of our universe, the textbooks simply say that the most abundant atom in the universe is hydrogen. And no one ever wonders how we know.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, a truly extraordinary woman.

archaictires: 1934 Rolls Royce Phantom I Aerodynamic Coupé by...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:02:50 -0400

archaictires:

1934 Rolls Royce Phantom I Aerodynamic Coupé by Jonckheere

There’s something strangely cool about those round doors, just look at how the windows open and close like scissors

nationalpost: Homeless no more: Strangers reward Good Samaritan...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:04:58 -0400

nationalpost:

Homeless no more: Strangers reward Good Samaritan who found and returned $10,000
The world is full of stories of misery, but there are precious moments when human goodness shines through: The New York cop who bought shoes for a homeless guy without them; the Toronto man who conjured up $800,000 for a bullied bus monitor in Rochester, N.Y., through an Internet plea.

And then there is the woman from Calgary, a woman who went above and beyond the call of duty, her story made all the more remarkable because she was herself homeless.

She was down on her luck and living in a YWCA homeless shelter and feeling desperate; 62-years-old. She needed a break and found a purse on the street stuffed with $10,000; a woman whose first thought upon finding the loot wasn’t — ‘Yippee! I just won the lottery’ — but: “How can I return this to the person it belongs to because they must be frantic to find it?” (Keith Morison for National Post)

"Why do we have an abortion rate 20% higher than France’s (and more than twice as high as Germany’s),..."

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 13:45:22 -0400

“

Why do we have an abortion rate 20% higher than France’s (and more than twice as high as Germany’s), especially considering most doctors here won’t perform them? The answer is any country that has universal health care, where contraception is free, where child care is free or inexpensive, where there is less poverty because people don’t become bankrupt over medical bills — those societies are simply going to have fewer unplanned and unwanted pregnancies.

And there the mask gets pulled off the Bart Stupaks and the “Christians.” If the statistics show that countries with government-provided universal health care and nearly-free abortions are, in fact, the countries with the fewest abortions, then why on earth wouldn’t the Right be the first in line to support universal health care?

Because it isn’t about “universal health care.” It’s about controlling women, period. It’s about sticking your nose in other people’s business. It’s about pushing your religious beliefs on everyone else because voices in your head tell you your Jesus is The One — even though your Jesus never said one single solitary word in any of the four gospels of the Bible about abortion or fertilized eggs being human. You’ve just gone and made it up about “life beginning at conception.” Jesus never said that. The little voice in your head said that, the same little voice that wants your grubby paws on women’s uteruses. You need help. Please get some help and leave the rest of us alone, Mr. Stupak and friends.

”

- Michael Moore: My Congressman, Bart Stupak, Has Neither a Uterus Nor a Brain (via veruca-assault)

I wish I could reblog this 1,000 times.
(via evangotlib)

Photo

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 19:40:46 -0400

mistermausters: just found a plastic bag of about 20 mulberry...

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 10:27:24 -0400

mistermausters:

just found a plastic bag of about 20 mulberry streets, #bsides&raritease

Sir, I would like one of those please. Unless you can sell them and give the money to hungry people, then do that instead.

Photo

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 10:25:15 -0400

harvestheart: HH: Very sweet kitten. That last shot is...

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 11:39:48 -0400

harvestheart:

HH:
Very sweet kitten. That last shot is perfect.

vurtual: Baby in mother’s arms (by Masashi Mochida)

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 10:09:39 -0400

vurtual:

Baby in mother’s arms (by Masashi Mochida)

lizardking90: Giving a helping hand -Rona Helvrich

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 10:08:13 -0400

lizardking90:

Giving a helping hand

-Rona Helvrich

Video

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:07:03 -0400

Neat!

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 14:36:10 -0400

Neat!

nationalpost: Holy Spock! BlackBerry inventor now wants to...

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:27:28 -0400

nationalpost:

Holy Spock! BlackBerry inventor now wants to build Star Trek-like tricorder
Mike Lazaridis, inventor of the BlackBerry smartphone, is starting a $100 million quantum technology fund that’s aiming to turn devices like the medical tricorder from “Star Trek” into reality.

“What we’re excited about is these little gems coming out,” Lazaridis said in an interview in Toronto. “The medical tricorder would be astounding, the whole idea of blood tests, MRIs — imagine if you could do that with a single device. That may be possible and possible only because of the sensitivity, selectivity and resolution we can get from quantum sensors made with these quantum breakthroughs.”

ricktatorship: Tom Hardy in Driven to Extremes

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 11:39:31 -0400

ricktatorship:

Tom Hardy in Driven to Extremes

nationalpost: ‘Toilet Bike Neo’ goes where no john has gone...

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 11:23:20 -0400

nationalpost:

‘Toilet Bike Neo’ goes where no john has gone before
Japanese toilet maker TOTO rolled out a “Toilet Bike Neo” to raise awareness about bathroom emissions and water savings. The eco-friendly three-wheel 250cc motorcycle with a specially customized toilet-shaped seat runs on bio-fuel from the discharge of livestock or waste water. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

She inspired a novel and a movie starring Robert Redford when...

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 11:22:59 -0400

She inspired a novel and a movie starring Robert Redford when in 1949 she lured a major league ballplayer she’d never met into a hotel room with a cryptic note and shot him, nearly killing him.

After the headlines faded, Ruth Ann Steinhagen did something else just as surprising: She disappeared into obscurity, living a quiet life unnoticed in Chicago until now, more than a half century later, when news broke that she had died three months earlier.

The story, with its elements of obsession, mystery, insanity and a baseball star, made it part of both Chicago’s colourful crime history and rich baseball lore. (Photo: AP/Files)

nationalpost: With a wolf’s jaws clamped around her neck, Dawn...

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 11:19:00 -0400

nationalpost:

With a wolf’s jaws clamped around her neck, Dawn Hepp survived by just keeping calm
Stay calm was what Dawn Hepp, a medical secretary in Thompson, Manitoba, kept telling herself to do on March 8 when a large and presumably hungry timber wolf pounced, locking its jaws around her neck on a lonely stretch of highway near Grand Rapids, about 400 km north of Winnipeg.

“A car had passed me on the road and a little further on they were stopped,” Ms. Hepp tells me from her mother’s home in Ashern, Man. “You are in the middle of nowhere. I thought maybe they were having car trouble. I pulled over and off in the distance I could see a wolf. He was maybe a mile away, and this being wolf country, bear country and coyote country, I thought nothing of it.

“I talked to the people. And they were fine. And I like to talk. It is my nature, and so I kept talking and as I turned back to my truck all of a sudden this wolf jumped me, and all I could feel was fur on my face and jaws around my neck. There was no growling. He was just suddenly there, wrapped around my neck. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t yell. So I put my arms by my sides and relaxed.” (Photo: Courtesy Dawn Hepp)

Cue Duran Duran