Neither projectbrainsaver nor hightechheadhelper is any form of organisation, company, profit making group, in fact anything other than an idea or way of looking at things regarding possible other uses of modern technology for personal benefit. Anyone can build any of these possibilities with the right building blocks available in today's market place. Thousands of people have added input into the project over the many years that it has been running.
The good people of Swaffham liked their first turbine (at the Ecotech Centre) so much that their Town Council asked us to build another one.
And when it hadn’t happened quickly enough for their liking they wrote to us to complain…..we kid you not.
It tickled us, to be nagged by a council to build a windmill.
We were of course happy to oblige, but these things take a little longer than we often hope. In this case the District Council stood in the way and forced an appeal, by public enquiry..! We have no idea why. Then they pulled out at the last minute. Crazy people.
It’s a great example of two truisms of wind energy in the UK – firstly that people want wind energy and secondly that planners don’t reflect real public opinion with their decisions. It’s always been thus.
Green electricity is the people’s choice – but the planning system is just plain undemocratic.
A capsule filled with cannabis oil the size of a rice grain has turned Edith Neuts' life around.
The 50-year-old woman was on an 18-pill-a-day cocktail to deal with constant pain, a heart condition, depression, anxiety and high blood pressure.
"It's going on four months now. I've completely weaned myself off painkillers and off anti-depressants," said Neuts. "I am currently weaning myself off the anti-anxiety medication and I'm back to work full time."
Neuts feels the proposed changes to the Medical Marijuana Access Regulations (MMAR) will send her back into a "non-life" because she won't be be able to afford the cannabis oil.
Dave Van Kesteren, MP for Chatham-Kent Essex, said the MMAR program lacks checks and balances to ensure the criminal element isn't using the legalized grow-ops to distribute marijuana.
"Health Canada is studying the effects of how this program has worked. They are looking at having grow-ops that would be controlled," said Van Kesteren. "They would have the proper securities, they'd have the proper licences in place so that we know what's going out, what's being used for medicinal purposes."
Joanne, who wished to withhold her last name, is a licensed grower and user of medicinal marijuana. She fears her prescription will cost upwards of $80 a day if the government switches to corporately run grow-ops.
"My pension is less than what it would cost for me to just get what I need for the month to make the oil," said Joanne. "It's going to make it unaffordable, unaccessible to everyone, because we're all on disability."
Joanne, 56, suffered for 20 years with debilitating arthritis after a lifetime working in a heavy truck manufacturing plant.
A year ago she became licensed to grow her own prescription of medicinal marijuana. Six months ago she started using the oil capsules.
"I don't think I can live without the oil; I don't want to go back that way," she said. "I feel it's important enough to tell people there's a gentle way of getting rid of the pain without having to be on these oxycontin and morphine. People need an option."
Van Kesteren agrees medicinal marijuana is working for some people, but said the government is concerned about the risk to individual growers from groups that would exploit them.
"What are we doing to protect that person even from getting approached by a criminal element saying you are now going to give us eight plants a month?" said Van Kesteren.
Health Canada has opened up public consultations on the matter until the end of March, said Van Kesteren.
"The majority of people I'm convinced are totally legit like Joanne. They're making good use of this and it's making a beneficial impact on their life and making a real change," said Van Kesteren. "Unfortunately, it's gotten a little out of hand and we need to have better control."
He said the changes will be taking place in early 2014.
Joanne hopes the government can find a solution allowing the individual grow-ops to maintain their status alongside the corporately run facilities.
"They need to embrace it, it's here, people want this for their health. This is not about getting high, we're not concerned about that. People are using it for life-altering changes to get a better health," said Joanne. "If they want to have corporations supply it, that's fine but don't take the personal grow licences away. There's room for both."
Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired
Customer service software provider Zendesk announced a security breach that allowed attackers into its system, where they could access data from three customers this week. Wired learned those three clients were Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr.
The San Francisco-based company announced the breach in a blog post published early Thursday night. Tumblr notified affected users in an email at approximately 6:35 p.m. PST; Twitter and Pinterest are expected to do so shortly. Zendesk declined to comment beyond its blog post, titled, appropriately, “We’ve been hacked.” The post reads in part:
We’ve become aware that a hacker accessed our system this week. As soon as we learned of the attack, we patched the vulnerability and closed the access that the hacker had. Our ongoing investigation indicates that the hacker had access to the support information that three of our customers store on our system. We believe that the hacker downloaded email addresses of users who contacted those three customers for support, as well as support email subject lines. We notified our affected customers immediately and are working with them to assist in their response.
Zendesk allows companies to outsource many of their customer service functions to it via software tools. It has more than 25,000 clients, according to its website.
Zendesk noted that a hacker downloaded e-mail addresses of users who contacted those three customers for support, along with the e-mail subject lines. Wired’s source claims some customers also may have had their phone numbers revealed, but no passwords, password hashes, or even encrypted passwords were revealed. Neither Twitter, Pinterest nor Tumblr are aware of any user accounts that were compromised by the attack.
The e-mail sent by Tumblr states:
Important information regarding your security and privacy
For the last 2.5 years, we’ve used a popular service called Zendesk to store, organize, and answer emails to Tumblr Support. We’ve learned that a security breach at Zendesk has affected Tumblr and two other companies. We are sending this notification to all email addresses that we believe may have been affected by this breach.
This has potentially exposed records of subject lines and, in some cases, email addresses of messages sent to Tumblr Support. While much of this information is innocuous, please take some time today to consider the following:
The subject lines of your emails to Tumblr Support may have included the address of your blog which could potentially allow your blog to be unwillingly associated with your email address.
Any other information included in the subject lines of emails you’ve sent to Tumblr Support may be exposed. We recommend you review any correspondence you’ve addressed to support@tumblr.com, abuse@tumblr.com, dmca@tumblr.com,legal@tumblr.com, enquiries@tumblr.com, or lawenforcement@tumblr.com.
Tumblr will never ask you for your password by email. Emails are easy to fake, and you should be suspicious of unexpected emails you receive.
Your safety is our highest priority. We’re working with law enforcement and Zendesk to better understand this attack. Please monitor your email and Tumblr accounts for suspicious behavior, and notify us immediately if you have any concerns.
The e-mail Pinterest is sending its users reads:
An important notice about security on Pinterest
We recently learned that the vendor we use to answer support requests
and other emails (Zendesk) experienced a security breach.We’re sending you this email because we received or answered a message from you using Zendesk. Unfortunately your name, email address and subject line of your message were improperly accessed during their security breach. To help keep your account secure, please:
Don’t share your password. We will never send you an email asking for your password. If you get an email like this, please let us know right away.
Beware of suspicious emails. If you get any emails that look like they’re from Pinterest but don’t feel right, please let us know—especially if they include details about your support request.
Use a strong Pinterest password. Hackers can sometimes guess very short passwords with no letters or symbols. If your password is weak, you can create a new one.We’re really sorry this happened, and we’ll keep working with law enforcement and our vendors to ensure your information is protected.
Twitter’s message to its affected users notes:
Twitter – along with a number of other companies – uses a customer support portal called Zendesk. Zendesk recently blogged about a significant security breach. In order to ensure those who may be impacted by this breach are notified as quickly as possible, we are sending this notification to all email addresses, including this one, that we believe could have been involved.
Zendesk’s breach did not result in the exposure of information such as Twitter account passwords. It may, however, have included contact information you provided when submitting a support request such as an email, phone number, or Twitter username. Further information about the breach can be found in their blog post.
We do not believe you need to take any action at this time but wanted to ensure that you were notified of this incident.
Options Peter Tatchell Say NO to Nigeria's "Jail the Gays" Bill. It proposes one of the most draconian homophobic laws in the world, harsher than the anti-gay bill in Uganda in some respects but without the death penalty. Support Nigerian LGBTIs in the Diaspora. READ & DONATE: http://bit.ly/12BrWx9 The anti-gay bill is coming back to the Nigerian parliament soon. Read the background to the Bill: http://bit.ly/Vz5CjA SIGN the AllOut petition: http://bit.ly/ZFBV1g
Nonprofit ocean protection group Oceana took 1,215 samples of fish from across the United States and genetically tested them in order to bring us the following astonishing facts:
If you’ve ever wondered why the sushi in the display case is so affordable, given thedire state of the world’s tuna supply, well, now you know.
One in three women will be a victim of violence – being raped, beaten or abused in her lifetime. In some parts of the world a girl is more likely to be raped than learn how to read. It's time to put a stop to this worldwide injustice.
This March, the UN's Commission on the Status of Women will meet to discuss violence against women and girls. Britain's Secretary of State for International Development,Justine Greening, is calling for action:
"This year, the international community has a vital opportunity to tackle this issue once and for all. We owe it to girls and women everywhere to send a clear signal that the world stands with them."
Lynne Featherstone - the UK's champion for tackling worldwide violence against women - believes 2013 is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a real difference:
"We must do everything in our power to defend the hard-gained progress on women's rights. We must ensure that the international community agrees a set of global standards to help protect women and girls everywhere from violence."
Help us to end violence against women and girls. Tell global leaders it's time to take action. Take the pledge, share it with your friends and let the world know that one in three is one too many.
Amazing news - we reached our goal! More than 10,000 of you have backed our pledge to help stop violence against women. Thank you for all your support!
Every voice counts. So let's keep up the momentum. Let's show the UN we're all behind this. Let's double our target! Please keep sharing with your friends and spread the word to help us get 20,000 pledges: http://bit.ly/StopVAW Together we can get the UN to take action.
"Given the scope of the allegations to date, we are not talking simply about the occasional corrupt individual. We are talking about something verging on a corrupt business model." -- U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, NYT, May 27, 2011
As the evidence mounts, the raison d'être for Occupy Wall Street is proving correct. Much of high finance, it seems, is based on a "corrupt business model." Here's
| Posted: Feb 18th, 2013 | |
World Economic Forum identifies top 10 emerging technologies for 2013 | |
| (Nanowerk News) New challenges need new technologies to tackle them. Here, the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies identifies the top 10 most promising technology trends that can help to deliver sustainable growth in decades to come as global population and material demands on the environment continue to grow rapidly. These are technologies that the Council considers have made development breakthroughs and are nearing large-scale deployment.
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 OnLine Electric Vehicles (OLEV) Wireless technology can now deliver electric power to moving vehicles. In next-generation electric cars, pick-up coil sets under the vehicle floor receive power remotely via an electromagnetic field broadcast from cables installed under the road. The current also charges an onboard battery used to power the vehicle when it is out of range. As electricity is supplied externally, these vehicles need only a fifth of the battery capacity of a standard electric car, and can achieve transmission efficiencies of over 80%. Online electric vehicles are currently undergoing road tests in Seoul, South Korea. | |
 3-D printing and remote manufacturing Three-dimensional printing allows the creation of solid structures from a digital computer file, potentially revolutionizing the economics of manufacturing if objects can be printed remotely in the home or office. The process involves layers of material being deposited on top of each other in to create free-standing structures from the bottom up. Blueprints from computer-aided design are sliced into cross-section for print templates, allowing virtually created objects to be used as models for “hard copies” made from plastics, metal alloys or other materials. | |
 Self-healing materials One of the defining characteristics of living organisms is their inherent ability to repair physical damage. A growing trend in biomimicry is the creation of non-living structural materials that also have the capacity to heal themselves when cut, torn or cracked. Self-healing materials which can repair damage without external human intervention could give manufactured goods longer lifetimes and reduce the demand for raw materials, as well as improving the inherent safety of materials used in construction or to form the bodies of aircraft. | |
 Energy-efficient water purification Water scarcity is a worsening ecological problem in many parts of the world due to competing demands from agriculture, cities and other human uses. Where freshwater systems are over-used or exhausted, desalination from the sea offers near-unlimited water but a considerable use of energy – mostly from fossil fuels – to drive evaporation or reverse-osmosis systems. Emerging technologies offer the potential for significantly higher energy efficiency in desalination or purification of wastewater, potentially reducing energy consumption by 50% or more. Techniques such as forward-osmosis can additionally improve efficiency by utilizing low-grade heat from thermal power production or renewable heat produced by solar-thermal geothermal installations. | |
 Carbon dioxide (CO2) conversion and use Long-promised technologies for the capture and underground sequestration of carbon dioxide have yet to be proven commercially viable, even at the scale of a single large power station. New technologies that convert the unwanted CO2 into saleable goods can potentially address both the economic and energetic shortcomings of conventional CCS strategies. One of the most promising approaches uses biologically engineered photosynthetic bacteria to turn waste CO2 into liquid fuels or chemicals, in low-cost, modular solar converter systems. Individual systems are expected to reach hundreds of acres within two years. Being 10 to 100 times as productive per unit of land area, these systems address one of the main environmental constraints on biofuels from agricultural or algal feedstock, and could supply lower carbon fuels for automobiles, aviation or other big liquid-fuel users. | |
 Enhanced nutrition to drive health at the molecular level Even in developed countries millions of people suffer from malnutrition due to nutrient deficiencies in their diets. Now modern genomic techniques can determine at the gene sequence level the vast number of naturally consumed proteins which are important in the human diet. The proteins identified may have advantages over standard protein supplements in that they can supply a greater percentage of essential amino acids, and have improved solubility, taste, texture and nutritional characteristics. The large-scale production of pure human dietary proteins based on the application of biotechnology to molecular nutrition can deliver health benefits such as muscle development, managing diabetes or reducing obesity. | |
 Remote sensing The increasingly widespread use of sensors that allow often passive responses to external stimulae will continue to change the way we respond to the environment, particularly in the area of health. Examples include sensors that continually monitor bodily function – such as heart rate, blood oxygen and blood sugar levels – and, if necessary, trigger a medical response such as insulin provision. Advances rely on wireless communication between devices, low power-sensing technologies and, sometimes, active energy harvesting. Other examples include vehicle-to-vehicle sensing for improved safety on the road. | |
 Precise drug delivery through nanoscale engineering Pharmaceuticals that can be precisely delivered at the molecular level within or around a diseased cell offer unprecedented opportunities for more effective treatments while reducing unwanted side effects. Targeted nanoparticles that adhere to diseased tissue allow for the micro-scale delivery of potent therapeutic compounds while minimizing their impact on healthy tissue, and are now advancing in medical trials. After almost a decade of research, these new approaches are finally showing signs of clinical utility. | |
 Organic electronics and photovoltaics Organic electronics – a type of printed electronics – is the use of organic materials such as polymers to create electronic circuits and devices. In contrast to traditional (silicon-based) semiconductors that are fabricated with expensive photolithographic techniques, organic electronics can be printed using low-cost, scalable processes such as ink jet printing, making them extremely cheap compared with traditional electronics devices, both in terms of the cost per device and the capital equipment required to produce them. While organic electronics are currently unlikely to compete with silicon in terms of speed and density, they have the potential to provide a significant edge in cost and versatility. The cost implications of printed mass-produced solar photovoltaic collectors, for example, could accelerate the transition to renewable energy. | |
 Fourth-generation reactors and nuclear-waste recycling Current once-through nuclear power reactors use only 1% of the potential energy available in uranium, leaving the rest radioactively contaminated as nuclear “waste”. While the technical challenge of geological disposal is manageable, the political challenge of nuclear waste seriously limits the appeal of this zero-carbon and highly scalable energy technology. Spent-fuel recycling and breeding uranium-238 into new fissile material – known as Nuclear 2.0 – would extend already-mined uranium resources for centuries while dramatically reducing the volume and long-term toxicity of wastes, whose radioactivity will drop below the level of the original uranium ore on a timescale of centuries rather millennia. This makes geological disposal much less of a challenge (and arguably even unnecessary) and nuclear waste a minor environmental issue compared to hazardous wastes produced by other industries. Fourth-generation technologies, including liquid metal-cooled fast reactors, are now being deployed in several countries and are offered by established nuclear engineering companies. | |
| This list has been compiled by the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies, of which David King is currently chair. For a full list of the Council’s members see here |
| Source: World Economic Forum |
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