Welcome to Vol. 7 No. 9 of Design Science News, the e-bulletin of the Buckminster Fuller Institute
Design Science News brings you news from around the world related to humanity's option for success and comprehensive design solutions. It also features updates from BFI and periodic special offers for our members.
BFI UPDATE
Fuller-Inspired contemporary music at the Noguchi Museum
Sunday, October 8th at 3pm
The Noguchi Museum
9-01 33rd Road (at Vernon Boulevard), Long Island City, New York
Join us in closing the groundbreaking Best of Friends exhibit with an intimate and rare performance of Spheres and Attraction, a special piece created by internally-acclaimed composer Petr Kotik for voice, strings and percussion with texts by R. Buckminster Fuller. This work premiers in its revised form at The Noguchi Museum on October 8th beginning at 3:00pm.
For more information about the Best of Friends exhibit and the Noguchi Museum, please visit: http://www.noguchi.org
To read press reviews of the work of Petr Kotik and the S.E.M. Ensemble, please visit: http://www.semensemble.org/press.html
New in Dymaxion Artifacts, the online store of the Buckminster Fuller Institute
A Safe and Sustainable World, The Promise of Ecological Design by Nancy Jack Todd
In the late sixties, a pioneering group founded a small nonprofit research and education organization they called the New Alchemy Institute. They wanted to build a safer and more sustainable world. In the ensuing years, along with scientists, agriculturists, and a host of enthusiastic amateurs and friends, the group set out to develop innovative ways to meet the basic human needs of food, shelter, and energy. A Safe and Sustainable World is the story of that journey, as it was and as it continues to be.
Heavily influenced by the work of Buckminster Fuller, the living machines created by the New Alchemy Institute offer inspiration and hope for creating a world that truly works for 100% of humanity.
Visit our online store today to purchase A Safe and Sustainable World at the special rate of $19.95, for a limited time only.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
"I am confident that in the world of music and in the world of art, human beings have attained much spontaneous and realistic coordination. Artists are really much nearer to the truth than have been many of the scientists."
— R. Buckminster Fuller, Utopia or Oblivion 1969, p. 77
TRENDS & PERSPECTIVES
United States has vast renewable energy potential, says report
The Worldwatch Institute and the Center for American Progress (CAP) launched a report Monday detailing the progress and potential of renewable energy in the United States. According to the report, "American Energy: The Renewable Path to Energy Security," technologies that harness renewable energy sources--including wind, solar, geothermal, and bio-power--are or soon will be cost-competitive with conventional fuels. And while renewables provide just 6 percent of U.S. energy today, that number is likely to expand in the near future, notes the report. Cumulative global investment in renewables since 1995 has reached nearly US$180 billion. (Source: Worldwatch Institute)
Click here to view the full report
Web journals threaten peer-review system
Scientists frustrated by the iron grip that academic journals hold over their research can now pursue another path to fame by taking their research straight to the public online.
Instead of having a group of hand-picked scholars review research in secret before publication, a growing number of Internet-based journals are publishing studies with little or no scrutiny by the authors' peers. It's then up to rank-and-file researchers to debate the value of the work in cyberspace.
The Web journals are threatening to turn on its head the traditional peer-review system that for decades has been the established way to pick apart research before it's made public. (Source: Examiner)
Click here to read the full article
PlayStation's serious side: fighting disease
Kids aiming to persuade their parents to buy the PlayStation 3 have some new ammunition -- donating their PS3's down time to researchers could help cure Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or mad cow disease.
The PS3's chip is the same one IBM is using in a supercomputer it's building for the Department of Energy. That computer is expected to reach speeds of one petaflop, or 1,000 trillion calculations per second.
"It has so much horsepower and, of course, when you're playing a game all that horsepower will be used for the game. But there are a lot of times during the day when somebody's not playing the game," said Sony's Richard Marks. "It seemed like a good idea to be able to use that horsepower for something else that is, in this case, good for mankind."
Sony worked with Stanford University's Folding@home project to harness the PS3's technology to help study how proteins are formed in the human body and how they sometimes form incorrectly. (Source: CNN)
Click here to read the full article
RESOURCES
For more information and to sign the petition, please visit: pluginpartners.com
The 2030 Challenge
From Architecture2030.org: Slowing the growth rate of greenhouse gas emissions and then reversing it over the next ten years will require immediate action and a concerted global effort. As Architecture 2030 has shown, buildings are the major source of of demand for energy and materials that produce by-product greenhouse gases. Stabilizing emissions in this sector and then reversing them to acceptable levels is key to keeping global warming to approximately a degree centigrade (2C) above today's level.
To accomplish this we are issuing the "2030 Challenge" asking the global architecture and building community to adopt the following targets:
That all new buildings and developments be designed to use 1/2 the fossil fuel energy they would typically consume (1/2 the country average for that building type).
That at a minimum, an equal amount of existing building area* be renovated annually to use 1/2 the amount of fossil fuel energy they are currently consuming (through design, purchase of renewable energy and/or the application of renewable technologies).
That the fossil fuel reduction standard for all new buildings be increased to:
I.D. Magazine's Student Design Review 2006
Idealists with grand notions of changing the world are always welcome in the Student Design Review, but it was the entries that achieved big things in small ways that most impressed this year's jurors, Charlie Lazor, Kali Nikitas, and Luke Williams. Such projects, which reflected what Williams called "thinking attention" to areas that have previously been ignored, included a robot that races past traffic to detect and put out fires in tunnels. The concept was so obvious the jurors were astonished it didn't already exist. Other intuitive designs that reached the competition's honors list were the Bold Cane walking aid and N-One wearable intravenous fusion pump, both of which turned objects closely associated with illness into stylish accessories.
Where last year's jury voiced concerns about the paucity of green entries, this panel thrilled to the plentiful display of social consciousness. Industry may respond to client and market demands, Williams noted, but "students see concerns that are on the horizon. They are very, very good at capturing the zeitgeist." A main preoccupation was conserving resources. Two solutions, each with a smart-home vibe, were the Hot Fridge, which transfers heat produced during the refrigeration process to a separate compartment for warming food, and the Janus Resource Awareness system, a hub that monitors in dollars the energy expenditure of every outlet and light switch in a home.
http://www.id-mag.com/sdr06/
Plug-In Partners
Plug-In Partners is a national grass-roots initiative to demonstrate to automakers that a market for flexible-fuel Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) exists today.
The National Campaign will demonstrate the viability of this market by:
Special thanks to Design Science News reader Jonathan Peretz Chance for submitting this resource!
Have you come across interesting Design Science news articles, resources, or events?
We invite you to forward them so we can consider them for inclusion in future e-bulletins. Send them to: designsciencenews (at) bfi.org
If we use your suggestion for future e-bulletins and you would like to be credited by name, please indicate it in your e-mail.
Thank You!
If you prefer to receive a text-only version of the ebulletin, please send an email to designsciencenews (at) bfi.org with the subject heading "text-only"
To subscribe to this free e-bulletin, go to BFI.ORG and subscribe from the box on the home-page
PRIVACY STATEMENT: BFI respects your privacy, so we will never share any personal information without your consent.
