Germany Sets New Solar Record By Meeting Nearly Half of Country’s Weekend Power Demand

Germany fed a whopping 22 gigawatts of solar power per hour into the national grid last weekend, setting a new record by meeting nearly half of the country’s weekend power demand. After the Fukushima disaster, Japan opted to shut down all of its nuclear power stations and Germany followed suit after considerable public pressure. This seems to have paved the way for greater investment in solar energy projects. The Renewable Energy Industry (IWR) in Muenster announced that Saturday’s solar energy generation met nearly 50 percent of the nation’s midday electricity needs AND was equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity!

Read more: Germany Sets New Solar Record By Meeting Nearly Half of Country’s Weekend Power Demand | Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building 

Social network for kids focuses on sharing DIY creations

Targeting “kids who make,” DIY aims to give creative children an online space to celebrate and share their creations.

 28th May 2012 in Lifestyle & Leisure.

We’ve already seen several social networks aimed at kids, but recently we came upon one with an interesting twist. Targeting “kids who make,” DIY aims to give creative children a place to celebrate and share their creations.

Aimed at kids aged six and up, DIY is an online community for kids that strives to give them a place to collect and share everything they make as they grow up. Animal avatars protect kids’ privacy, but there’s ample opportunity to show off creations so that family, friends and grandparents can respond. “Recognition makes a kid feel great, and motivates them to keep going. We want them to keep making, and by doing so learn new skills, use technology constructively, begin a lifelong adventure of curiosity, and hopefully spend time offline, too,” the California-based site explains. By providing an online space dedicated to showcasing kids’ creations, and a place where they can receive positive feedback, DIY could help boost children’s self-esteem from a young age.

Eventually, DIY plans to let kids customize their avatars with tools and clothes for an even more unique and creative identity. Though the site is currently free to use, paid memberships will ultimately offer extra features. How could your brand cater to the “maker kids” of the world?

Website: www.diy.org

This Compound Butter is Awesome on Steaks

Cilantro Jalapeño Compound Butter
 Makes 4 to 6 servings

4 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons finely chopped jalapeño pepper, seeds and ribs removed
2 teaspoons finely chopped shallot
2 tablespoons (packed) chopped cilantro
1 tablespoon lime juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Cut butter into chunks and place in a bowl. Bring to room temperature (if you’re a little impatient, and the butter’s still a little stiff, that’s OK). Mix the remaining ingredients in a separate bowl (this will help distribute their flavors more evenly throughout the butter). Add the cilantro jalapeño mixture to the butter and mash with a fork until thoroughly combined. The lime juice won’t completely mix into the butter, but that’s okay.

Form the compound butter roughly into a ball or log shape in the bowl with the fork and transfer it to a sheet of plastic wrap. Wrap the compound butter in the plastic wrap, shaping it into a log. Place the wrapped compound butter in a bowl and refrigerate (the bowl will catch any stubborn lime juice that escapes from the plastic wrap). Chill for at least a few hours to let the butter re-harden and the flavors swap around. You can make your compound butter a day or more ahead from when you want to use it.

Remove the compound butter from the fridge while the steaks are cooking. When you plate the steaks, top them with a slice of the butter. Serve.

The Secret Life Of California’s World-Class Strawberries

But in fact, one state — California — supplies 80 percent of America’s strawberries, and the percentage is growing.

The reason? California’s fields are stunningly productive. They yield ten times more strawberries, per acre, than strawberry farms in Michigan; twenty times more than farms in the state of New York. And there’s a complex web of reasons why.

It’s a miracle of agricultural technology. But that technology is not as universally loved as the fruit.

It starts with the plants themselves. That strawberry you just bought at the supermarket traces its ancestry to a microscopic particle of plant tissue that somebody cut from the tip of a growing strawberry stem five years ago.

That tiny bit of strawberry stem went into a little glass petri dish and grew into a new plant. Then it sent out dozens of little daughter plants called “runners.”

So every year, a month before planting time, fumigation machines move slowly across California’s strawberry fields. They inject chemicals into the soil and seal the fumes into the soil with sheets of plastic. EDIT: YIKES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The chemicals kill practically everything in the soil: Insects, weeds, and fungi like the fungus that strawberry grower Daren Gee has been fighting this year. That particular disease is calledFusarium Wilt.

More HERE

CARPOOLERS: THE DAILY COMMUTE CAPTURED FROM ABOVE

Not everyones daily commute includes a comfortable air conditioned environment, morning talk radio and an office at the end. Mexican photographer Alejandro Cartagena captures many of these people from overpasses near his home-base in Monterrey, just as the trucks that carry them pass under his talented lens. These workers head to construction sites, landscaping jobs and field work packed into the back of truck beds with the tools of their trade, while they catch a few last minutes of sleep before the long day of manual labor. It captures a world that many of us miss… even as they pass us on the freeway.

Cartagena’s photographs gently reveal to us many of the deep social, urban and environmental issues our world faces. In this case, through their cleverly repeated compositions, his images subtly reveal a poignant world of people who too often go overlooked, yet make much of our society function the way it does. It draws us into one moment of important lives, begging us to look closer and wonder about what the rest of their day holds and igniting curiosity about their hopes, dreams and aspirations for life.

Specially-developed soil sustains live plants in bus stop ad campaign

UK-based eco media agency CURB has helped Clear Channel to encase living flowers inside advertising shelters in a campaign for allergy relief brand Piri.

 28th May 2012 in Marketing & Advertising.

UK-based eco media agency CURB has already demonstrated an innovative use of living organisms as a form of advertising with its DesignGrass, which requires neither soil nor watering to provide a natural way of communicating with a wide audience. Now involved in a new campaign, the company has helped Clear Channel to encase living flowers inside advertising shelters in a campaign for allergy relief brand Piri.

Between 14 May and 27 May, twelve bus stops and ad stands across the UK – in cities such as Cardiff, Liverpool, Birmingham and London – had the plants housed inside bespoke units installed in place of those usually containing print media. Collaborating with pharmaceutical producer GlaxoSmithKline and media marketing firms MediaCom and Kinetic, Clear Channel filled the spaces with a variety of flowers and a specially-developed soil that is able to hold water for long periods of time, in order to advertise Piri’s range of anti-hayfever tablets. Fans inside the small spaces maintained temperature and humidity to allow the plants to survive throughout the two-week period. The idea behind the campaign was that the cases provided a barrier between the viewer and the live flowers, paralleling the way Piri’s products help stop pollen affecting hayfever sufferers.

Just like Whirligro and Agricell, previously featured on Springwise, the technology implemented in this campaign could be developed to allow a more permanent way of growing plants with limited space and natural soil. Governments around the world – could this technique be used to boost the amount of public greenery in urban spaces?

Website: www.clearchannel.co.uk