Californian garage receives huge green wall

A new lush green wall, designed by the company's Engineering, Natural Seasons give life to a huge garage in California, United States. This is one of the largest living walls in the country â€" with 372 square meters, incorporates more than 40 species of plants in Aqua Felt, a synthetic fabric specially intended to promote healthy growth in vertical gardens.

Located in the city of Irvine, this wall was commissioned by Edwards Lifesciences, a company that studies the development of heart valves and hemodynamic monitoring. Guided by the passion to promote public health worldwide, the company opted for creating a healthy environment for your employees.

Besides the aesthetic value, green walls offer many health benefits, from stress relief to improve air quality.

The Inhabitat explains that the Seasons Natural Engineering is a design company specializing in living walls that do grow green rugs on your Aqua textile Felt. Composed of 100% recycled synthetic fibres, the Aqua Felt is promoted as being a more flexible and breathable alternative to traditional soil-based systems.

Rot resistant, lightweight technology also encourages healthy growth of roots and a more uniform distribution of the water. The greatest benefit to the system, says the owner and landscape architect Scott Hutcheon, is the ability to have layers to create a facade that facilitates healthy maintenance of vertical ecosystem.

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USA: who to call to a conductor can be held responsible for possible accident

Imagine this situation: combined a date with a friend, who comes from automobile, and sends you an SMS saying that will come later even though he is certainly driving. If your friend has an accident while reading this SMS, the reader can be blamed for the disaster.

In New Jersey, a court said this week that Yes: If someone distracted, with a SMS or phone call, another person who knows be driving, can be held responsible for the consequences.

The case that led to this sentence occurred in 2009 in Mine Hill Township, New Jersey, when the teenager Kyle Best, who was driving a van, dodged the median when sending a SMS. Best shocked with Linda and David Kubert, who were traveling on a motorcycle and lost each one leg in the accident.

The Kuberts agreed with Best by accident, but also sued the person who he was texting, Shannon Colonna. According to the Court, Best and Colonna 62 exchanged messages before the crash. The following demonstrates that Best was distracted and that Colonna sent a last post less than a minute before the crash.

Second the Kuberts, Colonna would "present electronically" in the car and, therefore, helped and encouraged the disaster. Still, the Court ruled in favor of Colonna, since this said he didn't know that Best was driving and the content of messages does not help to dispel the doubts.

However, and in doing so, two of the three judges disagreed with the lower court and thus argued that someone send SMS to maybe be driving has the legal responsibility to not distract who's behind the wheel.

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New York will have program trading trash for food

Several cities are implementing projects that encourage people to recycle through a bonus, almost always connected to the power supply. One of the best-known cases is this project, developed in Mexico City.

Now, the idea came to New York, with a little retouching: what is at issue is the separation of organic waste. In exchange thereof who participate receive fresh fruits and vegetables.

The program is called Hello Compost, was designed by students from the Parsons School of design and is intended for low-income families who live in the city. Initially, the organizers will distribute heavy duty trash bags, to prevent the proliferation of the stink. All organic waste separated worth food.

The initiative has as a partner the Project EATS, a network of gardens and urban farmers within the city. Are they who receive the scholarships of the families participants, the pesa and offer the respective credits (equivalent to the weight of each bag), which can be used to buy food they produce.

The major concern of these families is the guarantee of food every month, and this can help to change mentalities. In this case, the associated with recycling.

In parallel, the Hello Compost promotes the consumption of fruits and vegetables and the adoption of healthier eating habits, how do you explain the sustainable planet.

Photo: under Creative Commons license

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Campaign tortures people to elucidate on the testing of cosmetics on animals

The Lush Cosmetics joined the Humane Society of the United States and Humane Society International to launch the largest ever global campaign aimed at ending cosmetic tests on animals. But the news that's not all: in order to emphasize your point of view, the purveyor of handmade products became a showcase in London in a mirror of cruelty, where the artist Jacqueline Traides 10:0 underwent torturous procedures regularly used by the beauty industry â€" was not a pretty sight, wasn't even supposed to be.

Despite the cosmetic tests done on animals being banned across Europe about 20 years ago, the sale of products tested on animals is still allowed in the United Kingdom and other countries of the continent. In the United States, federal law requires that companies ensure that their products are safe, but does not prohibit the tests in animals. What happens is that certain manufacturers continue to test your new cosmetic ingredients in this way and these travel all over the world.

Most consumers are unaware that some shampoos and lipsticks that have home yet involve the chemical poisoning of animals such as rabbits and rats. "The science now allows us to go beyond that and there is no place for testing of cosmetic products on animals in modern society", argues Kate Willett, Director of regulatory toxicology, risk assessment and alternatives of the Humane Society of the United States.

The Fighting Animal Testing emerges as an awareness-raising campaign and also as a petition. The initiative comprises 48 countries and more than 700 Lush stores in the u.s., Canada, Europe, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Russia, all of which people are invited to sign petitions in national physical stores or online, demanding the end of practice â€" can perfectly support the cause on the site if they so understand.

"The animals (...) must be protected by strong laws requiring all companies to adopt humane method to supply their products to the market, "reinforced Brandi Halls, American campaign manager for Lush.

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Baby wipes clog sewers of Denver, in the United States

The Americans call it "fatbergs" â€" or icebergs of fat â€" and these clumps of dirt are clogging up the sewers of the city of Denver, Colorado, in the United States.

According to the Manager of the sewage system of the city, Lupe Martinez, these clumps of dirt are, basically, leftovers mixed with baby wipes and cooking oil. They'll be blocking more than 1,600 kilometres of sewers of Denver and compel the workers right down the more than 15 yards away, one by one, the wipes that prevent the "iceberg" to continue its path.

According to Martinez, of rest, workers will perform this task once per month, so this is not a one-off problem.

"Recent mothers are throwing everything into our system. Seniors are using increasingly wipes and do the same thing, they throw them to the toilet and pull the flush. That's what is causing the problem, "said Martinez.

According to the charge, the wipes tend to unite under the ground, forming a mass motionless and which can only be removed by hand.

On the other hand, an inhabitant of Warren Avenue complained that the sewage was coming out. After a brief inspection, officials found that this same citizens spilled cooking oil to your sink, and that it was blocking the drain. The same situation was discovered in early August, in London. In this case, the iceberg had 15 tons of dirt.

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Part of the heat that leads to the melting of Greenland comes from the interior of the Earth

Greenland's ice is melting, in part, due to the heat from the Earth's mantle. This is the theory of a team of German investigators, who claims to have found a link between the thaw and the high heat flux from the planet's mantle.

The Greenland ice sheet is often considered an important contribution to the future global sea level rise during the next century â€" or more. In total, the island contains a quantity of ice that would lead to an increase of more than seven feet, if melted completely.

It is known that the ice loss has increased in the last decade. International IceGeoHeat research, led by the German Research Centre for Geosciences, GFZ advocates now that the effect of the Earth's crust and upper mantle in the current climate modeling is too simplistic.

Scientists have modeled the Earth's mantle in overlap with the ice pack and found that the fusion occurs in a given area due to the composition of the mantle underneath it. The group argues that this effect cannot be overlooked at the meeting of the data about climate change.

GFZ scientists combined climate models and previous ice with your new thermomechanical model for lithosphere of Greenland. The conclusions are that the temperature at the base of the ice and, therefore, the current dynamics of the Greenland's icy layer, is the result of the interaction between the flow of heat from inside the Earth and temperature changes associated with the glacial cycles.

The current climate is influenced by processes that go far back in the history of Earth: the lithosphere of Greenland is between 2.8 to 1.7 billion years ago and has only about 70 to 80 Km thick.

Researchers believe that the junction of ice dynamics models with models Thermo-mechanical attacks of solid Earth provides a more accurate overview of the processes that are taking to thaw.

The Greenland ice sheet loses about 227 giga tonnes of ice per year and contributes about 0.7 mm for the current change of the mean sea level of about three millimeters per year.

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Has sleep at the Office? Blame it on CO2 excess

The Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems in Duisburg, in Germany, researchers are working on a way to improve the indoor air pollution of buildings. This is because carbon dioxide levels tend to accumulate in divisions over time, while oxygen levels decrease, creating a stale, stuffy environment and less productive for people.

If you ever worked or works in an Office with a post-modern building, then you probably know this scenario: you are in a long meeting and the combination of fluorescent lighting with the dearth of fresh air lets a little sleepy. In fact, a study last year by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory concluded that CO2 levels are worse in meeting rooms, such as in classrooms.

At the same time that there has been an improvement of insulation, airtight Windows and construction heat savings-oriented as a result of greener building practices, indoor air quality suffer a degradation.

Normally, the CO2 levels abroad are around 350 parts per million â€" already in the meeting rooms of offices, the levels can soar to thousands of parts per million, usually due to lack of ventilation.

The Fraunhofer Institute, working with the company, then threw a fence Athmer for doors measuring CO2 concentrations of spaces. A sensor is responsible for registering the CO2 levels and, when a limit is reached, the ventilation system comes into action, providing new oxygen to their brains tired.

According to the creators, the system results in a compromise between indoor air quality and the optimal use of energy efficiency.

Already exists also on the market a series of portable CO2 sensors, some of which emit a beep to let you know when the levels are rising enough to make him sleepy.

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