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Sunday, March 13, 2011

Rob Harmon: How the market can keep streams flowing




About this talk

With streams and rivers drying up because of over-usage, Rob Harmon has implemented an ingenious market mechanism to bring back the water. Farmers and beer companies find their fates intertwined in the intriguing century-old tale of Prickly Pear Creek.


Rob Harmon is an expert on energy and natural resources policy -- looking at smart ways to manage carbon, water and the energy we use every day.

Why you should listen to him:
Taking the true measure of our environmental footprint is something that Rob Harmon has been doing for years. Starting as an energy auditor in Massachusetts, Harmon went on to manage an international marketing effort in the wind energy industry and, in 2000, develop and launch the first carbon calculator on the Internet.

Harmon joined Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF) in 1999, and is credited with developing their Green Tag program. In 2004, he was awarded the national Green Power Pioneer Award for his introduction of the retail Green Tag (Renewable Energy Certificates) and his ongoing efforts to build a thriving and credible Green Tag market in the United States. He also conceptualized and directed the development of BEF's national Solar 4R Schools program. His latest venture is the creation of BEF's Water Restoration Certificate business line, which utilizes voluntary markets to restore critically de-watered ecosystems. He recently contributed chapters to the book Voluntary Carbon Markets: A Business Guide to What They Are and How They Work. Rob left BEF in November 2010 to explore his next venture, ConvenientOpportunities.com.

Robot solves Rubik’s Cube in 15 seconds



A Rubik’s Cube has been sitting on Joe Ridgeway’s shelf since he was a child, but it wasn’t until he was studying at Rowan University that he fully embraced its challenge…

In a project that started in a Rowan course, Ridgeway and Zachary Grady, both senior electrical and computer engineering (ECE) majors, have built a robot that solves the cube in 15 seconds.

The Rubik’s Cube-Solving Robot, a year in the making, has earned the duo more than 17,000 hits on YouTube and a congratulatory note from Erno Rubik himself. And though it’s not yet official, they are confident, based on their research, that the robot is the fastest of its kind…

The robot wastes little time – after 17 moves, it twirls the descrambled cube in a modest celebration.

Ridgeway, 21, and Grady, 22, made the machine from scratch, they said, working under the guidance of Mease and ECE chair Shreekanth Mandayam and with mechanical-engineering help from graduate student Karl Dyer.

Meet the DODOcase Team




These Hands from DODOcase on Vimeo.





iPad 2 Wi-Fi Teardown

iPad 2 Wi-Fi Teardown




Geeks On A Plane: Seoul

Japan Earthquake Live

continued...............

Watch the dramatic scenes as the tsunami smashes the Iwate prefecture in Japan.

Smashed by Tsunami


The-explosion-at-the-japanese-reactor