Cockatoos ridding telescopes in Narrabri, Time Lapse Video

When we think of telescopes we usually think of  stunning images of the cosmos, but rarely, if ever think of the ecological systems that they are situated in. A newly appointed Duty Astronomer at the CSIRO's Compact Array Telescope, near Narrabri in country New South Wales Australia experimentally has created his first smooth time lapse video.

Among the flora and fauna visage you may spot in the video below are the Eastern Grey Kangaroo; Apostle-birds (bird playing with twig and grooming each other); Sulphur Crested Cockatoo's and a cutely appearing Green Tree Frog.

The video maker recommends switching the settings at the video's transport slider from 360p to 1080p and setting on full-screen mode to get the full effect of the video.


I found the accompanying music piece "Song of Sorrows" by Alexander L'Estrange & Dan Hewson, somewhat annoyingly paced and therefore less entertaining, then the smooth transitions between scope to ground to sky to wildlife etc.!

Protei, Autonomous articulated Sailing Robot To Clean Up Oil Spills

A collaborative team of sail boat engineers, computer hardware and robot scientists are researching and developing a low cost open source hardware platform or sail boat skimmer to more efficiently collect oil from waterway oil spillages.The sailing boat is being specifically designed to autonomously sail  upwind, intercepting oil sheens going downwind.

"Spilled oil moves downwind from its source following surface currents. Traditional oil skimmers pull oil-absorbent booms and trace random linear paths in a sea of oil. But a better way to capture this oil is to sail upwind, intercepting the oil sheens traveling downwind. Protei harnesses the wind in order to power an unmanned sailing drone, pulling a long oil-absorbent ‘tail’ upwind. A fleet of many Protei will work automatically as a swarm, or be remotely controlled by coastal residents and on-line gamers."

The Protei team need more funds to continue to develop the project and are seeking financial assistance from anyone who either simply wants to donate, invest or even build their own vessels. The video here demonstrates a critical understanding of the issues, the international flavor of the collaboration, and a developmental line of the technology. Although the video suffers from poor sound quality, at least at the beginning of the video, it oughtn't be to difficult for you to do a little knob twiddling whilst watching this ecologically sound and environmentally friendly idea.

The art of the eco-mindshift; from Natalie Jeremijenko

Creative ecology activist Natalie Jeremijenko puts art to work, to address environmental issues by combining engineering know-how, public art and a team of volunteers. Among her real-life experiments are; walking tadpoles, texting "fish," planting fire-hydrant gardens and more.

She outlines a paradigm shift in how we administer medical health in order to usurp the ecological disaster we are continually creating in our globally warming world. In the video below she interprets health as outside of the body and a collective effort rather than an individual one.

She clearly exemplifies how displacement is  the wrong method to use in dealing with environmental pollution, in relation to the oil containment's running down the roadways and gutters of Lower Manhattan.

In this fast paced wordy but articulate TED lecture Natalie interweaves art, engineering, environmentalism, biochemistry and more to create real-life experiments that enable social change.



Natalie Jeremijenko is based in New York, but currently in Sydney until December 10 working on her latest collaboration: Remnant/Emergency ArtLab project.

"The focus will be on the issues surrounding the long-running attempt to remove a large colony of Grey Headed Flying Foxes ('fruit bats') from the Sydney Botanical Gardens. It will be conducted between the 17th-30th November in Sydney with outcomes presented both at the UTS Gallery and at the International Participatory Design Conference at UTS. "

I'm certain many a Botanical gardens enthusiast will be crossing their fingers and hoping with baited breath that she succeeds with her project !

Willie Smits, on Saving Rain-forests with Tapergy

Biologist Willie Smits has discovered a method of sustainable energy production: using the forest to generate biofuels with a carbon-positive impact. His idea is grounded on his experience of having lived and worked in Indonesia for the last thirty years searching for ways to restore fragile ecosystems.

"The world is in need of bio-fuels, but most have many problems, Tapergy's does not. It is produced from a previously untapped, efficient and sustainable resource —the Sugar Palm, a tree that is three times more efficient than sugar cane and yields more than seven times the productivity of corn. Sugar Palm grows best in a bio-diverse forest environment and does not compete with food crops for valuable agricultural land. Our proprietary, zero-waste process is scalable and can satisfy a significant part of the world's energy needs while providing meaningful, everyday employment in developing countries across the tropical forest belt. Degraded land is reforested, watersheds protected and our carbon positive approach moderates our global climate."



Simultaneously, Willie is also working on saving orangutans in Borneo.

Shark Whisperer trances a predator and holds it in his lap

Some people may view the subject of the video below as animal abuse but others may think that it's cute that a tenacious predator can be made docile, if only by an experienced shark whisperer from Cuba.

"After diving for 35 years, Dr. David E. Guggenheim, the "Ocean Doctor," takes his first dive with many sharks in Jardines de la Reina, Cuba as part of a collaborative research and conservation project. What he sees when he surfaces he still can't believe !"

The video was made as part of the ongoing research for the Ocean  Foundation by 1planet1ocean  which,

"is a nonprofit organization, founded to explore, restore and sustain the oceans through strong international partnerships, offering solutions to the problems our oceans face."



In case you weren't aware its Shark week, visit this page to make some cool shark portraits of yourself and or check out more video's about sharks.

Man builds his own island home in Mexico

A carpenter has created his own ecologically sound island from discarded plastic bottles, which is situated about 50 ft off the shore in a bay in Puerto Aventuras, Mexico. Evident in the documentary styled video seen below, the carpenter's diy island home is basically a food producing self-sufficient house boat, with alarming charm.

Since Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour you've got to wonder how many more industrious individuals might decide to build their own island !

Alternatively others could try to imitate David de Rothschild's adventurous plastic bottle yacht, Plastiki, which coincidently, as reported here, made land fall today.

"After sailing more than 8,000 nautical miles and spending 128 days crossing the Pacific, the world’s largest ocean, in a boat made of 12,500 plastic PET bottles, the Plastiki expedition and her crew have safely and successfully reached their planned destination of Sydney to cheers of welcome and support."

Ecosia, An eco-friendly search engine ?

is a search engine, which works just like Google or Yahoo except that it donates at least 80% of its search revenue to a rain-forest protection program run by the WWF.

They claim in the video that Ecosia  users can save about 2m² of rain-forest for free with every search they do!

"If only one percent of global internet users accessed Ecosia for their web searches, we could conserve a rain-forest area as big as Switzerland every year."

This is all very cute but apparently the site is
powered by bing and yahoo ?

A Hummingbird Hawk Moth ?

Seriously ?
Well yes,  Macroglossum stellatarum is hairy with a dark, white-spotted abdomen, mousy-grey fore-wings and golden-orange hind-wings. It can be easily mistaken for a hummingbird as it hovers, probing flowers for nectar with its long proboscis. In fact, it is smaller than any hummingbird.

They fly during the day and can be seen throughout lowland Britain in the summer. Hummingbird hawk moths cannot survive the British winter, so migrate to and from southern Europe in autumn and spring.

After they emerge from caterpillars, they are about 50 mm long, and have a green or reddish-brown body with white dots, white, dark and yellow horizontal stripes and a blue, yellow-tipped horn.

So, how or why did this curious creature come about ? Scientists believe it is something called convergent evolution.  This is when two completely different species may evolve very similar physiologies because they inhabit a  near identical ecological niche. 

So I wonder if we, humans are a result of convergent evolution ?

H2oil 3 animated sequences

I'm totally convinced since watching these animated sequences by Dale Hayward that people the world over are completely unaware of the amount of water that is required to make one barrel of oil!

In the vast, pristine forests of Western Canada, the ‘war for water’ has already begun…

"Thanks to Alberta’s Athabasca oil sands, Canada is now the biggest oil supplier to the United States. A controversial billion-dollar industry is heavily invested in extracting crude from the tarry sands through a process so toxic it has become an international cause for concern. Four barrels of glacier-fed spring water are used to process each barrel of oil, then are dumped, laden with carcinogens, into leaky tailings ponds so huge they can be seen from space. Downstream, the people of Fort Chipewyan are already paying the price for what will be one of the largest industrial projects in history. When a local doctor raises the alarm about clusters of rare cancers, evidence mounts for industry and government cover-ups. In a time when wars are fought over oil and a crisis looms over access to clean fresh water, which resource is more precious? And what price are we willing to pay? " Gisèle Gordon.

Read more about this animation, here.

Sustainable Electric boating

Retired Queensland academic and marine industry researcher Gary Fooks says;

"Outboard engines are doing far more environmental damage than the oil spill from the container ship Pacific Adventurer... (and) ..weekend boaties using old technology two-stroke engines on their outboards dumped more than 3000 tonnes of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the form of fuel and oil each year into South-East Queensland waterways.." Source

Thus it stands to reason that small boat or yacht owners ought look at swapping out their gasoline outboard motors for carbon free electric power units, specifically in the light of the video here of the  Re-E-Power Electric Outboard. The companies website carries all the information a boatie would need to purchase and install one of their kits.

Although the units may seem somewhat expensive,  the short term benefits of the electric drive provides instant torque and cheaper fuel especially if one utilizes a solar or wind powered generator. Whereas the benefits in the long term are no smelly or fire hazard chemicals to deal with or carry plus helping make the marine ecology are healthier place.

Whilst researching this post, I found this amusing electric powered recreational barbecue party boat.

Yuck ! Badly Polluted Romanian River

Recently a friend returned from a working holiday in Romania and wrote me that he never saw the sad condition of the downstream section of the Argeş River. But here in this video we see one mighty impactive outcome caused by improper regulation of the environment.

"I actually traveled beside that river but upstream in the Fagaras mountains (from Curtea de Arges to Victoria) - it's dammed further upstream about 20 km before you cross the Transfagarasan pass at Lake Vidraru. So I didn't see the polluted part of it. There are lots of places in Romania which leave a lot to be desired in terms of concern for the environment. You see a lot of plastic just strewn everywhere - especially bottles and shopping bags etc. I can imagine after winter when the snow melts and runs off a lot of that plastic & rubbish ends up in the rivers."

We must remember that this video only shows the flowing surface of the Arges river, and at best, we can only imagine what types of habit destructing chemicals may also be fettered within it. I think its likely that we may have forgotten that there are enormous ranges of petro-chemical plastic bottles floating around the rivers and oceans everywhere, huh ?

Via: The Presurfer

David de Rothschild; heading for Sydney on a plastic bottle boat !

Eco adventurer David de Rothschild is in the process of building a boat made entirely of recyclable plastics with the technology needed to sail 10000 miles across the Pacific.

"A highlight of the trip will be a visit to a region of floating plastic trash and particles known as the Eastern Garbage Patch. De Rothschild and his team will collect water samples to study and, using a satellite phone, post photographs and video clips on the Web site of Adventure Ecology, an environmental organization that he founded. His goal is to call attention to the perils of ocean polluting and to suggest a solution: waste as a resource" read on

Here, in this video de Rothschild and members of the crew talk about the building of the boat, at Pier 31 in San Francisco, California, using compressed co2 gas inside plastic drink bottles for the hull.

I hate to think that this vessel doesn't break up during a hurricance,cyclone or stormy weather. He does however say in an interview, that;

"when we all arrive safely in Sydney, finger’s crossed, the entire vessel will be broken up and each element wherever possible will be up-cycled into another product or developed into another use. It would entirely defeat the purpose of the expedition if we were to dock and leave the boat to the chipper."

Unreal Rock Balancing !

Bill Dan is an artist from San Francisco, California, who has a truly amazing knack of balancing rocks. His ecologically safe "marine rock garden" creations seen in this video are truly unreal !

According to the Wikipedia:
"Bill Dan is a sculptor and performance artist specializing in rock balancing. He creates seemingly impossible, temporary balanced sculptures from un-worked rock and stone in public spaces near his home in San Francisco.  Dan was born in Indonesia, and worked as a warehouseman before discovering the artistic possibilities of rock along the San Francisco Bay shoreline and his emergent skill in manipulating them." continue reading

I envy Bill's artistic talent, if only I had the knack of getting my writing to sit as well as Bill can with his profound balancing skill.

Vertical Farming Concept

"By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban center's. Applying the most conservative estimates to current demographic trends, the human population will increase by about 3 billion people during the interim. An estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20% more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue as they are practiced today. At present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use (sources: FAO and NASA). Historically, some 15% of that has been laid waste by poor management practices. What can be done to avoid this impending disaster ?" (read on)

Dr Dickson Despommier in this video proposes city based fruit and vegetable farms that are housed in office towers. We have to keep in mind here that the good Doctor, at most is sketching a concept and ought not be held for lacking details and or a hard edge plan !

I'm guessing that city planners in arid countries like Dubai may already be considering vertical farms !

Entanglement

happens, as is evident in this video, to a huge number of marine and bird species like the Stingray pictured here, strangled by fishing tackle. Similarly far too many seabirds consume and suffocate having ingested on a feast of plastic pellets, bottle caps, polystyrene, et al.

There is a huge acreage of swirling plastic debris collectively drifting off the West coast of North America via the worlds natural oceanographic currents. This insidious plastic swirling soup in the North Pacific is being investigated by a team of researchers and scientists, Project Kaisei who are looking into ways to remove the plastic debris and turn it into fuel.
"We're working on capture technology, all in our effort to figure out the most energy efficient way to collect the debris in the ocean,"

Their first task is to invent a successful capture technology that can be scalable, thus the plastic could go from ocean trash to recyclable treasure.

Michael Jackson memorial gathering, Sydney

Here is a video that Peter Murphy made at the MJ flash mob in Martin Place Sydney on Saturday night, July 4, 2009.


You might also like these recent stories about MJ

Michael Jackson to become the King of Posthumous Pop

Michael Jackson filmed 'groundbreaking' 3D video

Michael Jackson Had a Patent

Was Michael Jackson the World's Biggest Environmentalist?

Thomas Traxler's The Idea of a Tree : : An Autonomous production device

is a solar-powered system that fabricates objects from epoxy, dye and string, by turning a spindle. Solar energy generates electrical energy, which drives the motor, draws the string through the dye and onto the spindle: a chain of analog transductions produce an object that manifests specific changes in its local environment.

"The installation is powered by a couple of solar cells which power the entire device, causing the process to move faster or slower depending on the amount of available light. The speed of the process determines the amount of saturation of the thread, giving a visual recording in the resulting object."

Its a kind of self styled 3D Printer depending on the armature or frame one chooses, but the finished product births the notion of locality, into the object, each day records the color intensity of the thread.

Thomas Traxler recently graduated from the IM Masters department of the Design Academy Eindhoven.

Sand and Reef Marine Life of Point Vicente California

Some of the sand and reef dwelling marine life located around Pt. Vicente California. (Los Angeles area) Taken with a Sony HC7 and LED lighting. Shot February 2009.

This video is by Mike Meagher, who just loves underwater photography and has been an active diver since he was a kid beginning in 1976.

Go see a slide show of his extensive portfolio of still images from California, Puget Sound, and the Caribbean, here.

Plastic Contamination of the Worlds Oceans

The issue of plastic contamination in the ocean is rapidly gaining a lot of attention. The repercussions are first and foremost affcting the ocean’s eco-system. Beyond that, plastics function as a magnet for chemicals such as PCB’s in water. Fish which swallow both the small and large bits of plastic, ingest the chemicals, and in-turn are ingested by humans.


"Capt. Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation first discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch -- an endless floating waste of plastic trash. Now he's drawing attention to the growing, choking problem of plastic debris in our seas."

Watch Captain Charles Moore in this video shed more light on the daunting ramifications of our throw away plastic debris into the oceans


Related Post

Earth Hour This Saturday : : Bound With Twine

"This Saturday on 28 March 2009 from 8:30-9:30 pm Sydney time, people around the world switch off the lights, they will be participating in Earth Hour. Created and organized by the World Wildlife Fund, the goal is to raise awareness about the climate crisis and how it's affecting the world we live in. For one hour, with the participation of millions, Earth Hour is an effort to help push critical legislation that pertains to the global climate treaty."



The video / song 'Bound With Twine' is an original kind of minimalist ambient animation by John McVean


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