Skylights for lower energy use

Daylighting - The practice of letting natural light into a building to reduce energy costs

What it is all about:

Windows and skylights are used to illuminate a home or office to reduce use of light bulbs and lower overall energy consumption.

When you combined energy efficient windows with a proper design, the use of artificial lighting will be reduced during the daytime hours without needed to use more energy heating/cooling the space.

How to implement:

South facing windows are best for day light and maintaining a comfortable temperature throughout the different seasons. The south facing windows will let plenty of light into he home during winter without letting in direct light in the summer. North windows are also and okay option for day light, but east and west will let in too much direct light. The east and west windows are necessary for cross ventilation however.

Does it work:

 Of course! When a building maximizes its natural light while keeping seasonal temperature change to a minimum without using energy it is always a win. If you need more plenty studies have been conducted about humans and work productivity in a naturally lit environment. Humans thrive in natural light.

Terms to be familiar with:

Tubular Daylighting Device (Tubular Skylight): Something like a compound skylight. A tubular model will use mirrors and lenses to spread light within a building.

Lighting Power Density: a means to measure the electrical lighting installed in a building with a mathematical formula.

Indirect Lighting: Lighting that is a result from reflection...like some of the light from a tubular skylight.

Building Envelope: The external boundary of a building. Walls, entrances, windows, and roofs.

Take Some Time to Enjoy Nature

Another great picture from my adventures in Wyoming. Everyday was pretty much the same, bright hot sun with a cool breeze. Walking around nature like this put me at peace...after a few days out here without the hustle of current technology a calming peacefulness replaced anxiety and I could not help but enjoy myself.
I like to take a bunch of these mountain pictures and set them as my desktop background at work to help me feel like I am not stuck in a cage.

Mountain Landscape

New type of atomic bond confirmed - vibrational bond

This is a total mind blow. Most armature scientists know of the main types of bonds, and most of us agree things happen faster when everything is hotter. Well scientists working on a atomic accelerator noticed something a bit strange.

What does this mean in the real world? No idea but I could lead to further findings and maybe the secret to the speed of light.

Read the whole story here http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chemists-confirm-the-existence-of-new-type-of-bond/

Chemistry has many laws, one of which is that the rate of a reaction speeds up as temperature rises. So, in 1989, when chemists experimenting at a nuclear accelerator in Vancouver observed that a reaction between bromine and muonium—a hydrogen isotope—slowed down when they increased the temperature, they were flummoxed.

Donald Fleming, a University of British Columbia chemist involved with the experiment, thought that perhaps as bromine and muonium co-mingled, they formed an intermediate structure held together by a “vibrational” bond—a bond that other chemists had posed as a theoretical possibility earlier that decade. In this scenario, the lightweight muonium atom would move rapidly between two heavy bromine atoms, “like a Ping Pong ball bouncing between two bowling balls,” Fleming says. The oscillating atom would briefly hold the two bromine atoms together and reduce the overall energy, and therefore speed, of the reaction. (

The world economy doesn't need us anymore

Just read this on reddit. Our economy doesn't need us anymore. This article explains how technology will save us all in the long run, but right now technology is killing us all slowly...the rich will continue to get rich and everyone will be left behind in this void space. I suggest you invest in solar panels and learn how to grow food for yourself as soon as possible.

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-problem-with-the-economy-is-that-it-doesnt-need-you-anymore-2009-9

Roughly speaking the world's economy has always worked as a giant pass-along-game between the planet’s citizens. Person A needed stuff from person B and person B needed stuff from person C and person C needed stuff from person A. So everyone needed everybody. It has been a kind of giant circle of needs.

But as a smaller and smaller number of people are needed to make the basic things that people need for survival, from food to energy, to clothing and housing, the less likely it is that some people will be needed at all. 

When you read in the press the oft-quoted concept that “those jobs aren’t coming back” this “reduction of need” is what underlies all of it. Technology has reduced the need for labor. And the labor that *is* needed can’t be done in more developed nations because there are people elsewhere who will happily provide that labor less expensively.

Grand Tetons Mountains | Beautiful landscape

Grand Tetons

This day was amazing! It was a littile cold, but the view totally made up for any discomfort. A few of us even managed to do a little fly fishing in this area. Not much was caught though ....one thing to remember when fly fishing is to try and see what color/shape the bugs are around you.
There is not reason you can't take a few minutes out of your day to take in the beautiful landscape. If this image doesn't help you find peace don't know what will. Please enjoy and dont forget to set something beautiful as the background to your computer. It will make you feel better while you are working!

Genetically Modified | the future of the world

Genetically Modified

Thousands of researchers will descend on Boston this fall for an event billed as the world’s largest gathering of synthetic biologists. The field is evolving so rapidly that even scientists working in it don't agree on a definition, but at its core synthetic biology involves bringing engineering principles to biotechnology. It’s an approach meant, ultimately, to make it easier for scientists to design, test, and build living parts and systems—even entire genomes.

If genetic sequencing is about reading DNA, and genetic engineering as we know it is about copying, cutting and pasting it, synthetic biology is about writing and programming new DNA with two main goals: create genetic machines from scratch and gain new insights about how life works.

In Boston, scientists and students will showcase so called “synbio” projects developed over the summer, including systems ranging from new takes on natural wonders, like the conversion of atmospheric nitrogen to a useful form (nitrogen fixation), to newly imagined functions, like an odorless E. coli cell meant to crank out a lemony, edible “wonder protein” containing essential amino acids.