This is another big step by the industrial age: Two big nations finally managed to significantly pollute the pacific ocean (said to be the biggest ocean of the planet).

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a gyre of marine litter in the central North Pacific Ocean located roughly between the US and Chinese coast. Its size is estimated to be twice the size of Texas.

Thousands of tons of bottle caps, bags, wrappers, abandoned fishing nets and micro-pellets used in abrasive cleaners are carried from the west coast of North America in about five years, and debris from the east coast of Asia in a year or less. Some of the trash have labels written in Chinese and English.

According to Katsuhiko Saido (Nihon University, Japan), plastic actually does decompose, releasing potentially toxic chemicals that can disrupt the functioning of hormones in animals and marine life.

Plastics have entangled birds and turned up in the bellies of fish. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates 100,000 marine mammals die trash-related deaths each year.

Wikipedia: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Found at Yankodesign.com: In ten years from now, there probably will be no war amongst manufacturers with regards to display; coz there simply will be NONE! Holograms will replace the screens! Trou Hologram Mobile Phone relies totally on 3D holograms being projected in the vacant display area. Tiny projectors line the inner surface of the hollow and bring to life the many aspects of the technology. Imagine seeing 3D maps of a particular area and much more..

See also:

• Hack a day: The Lego iPod hacking robot

Environmental activists held a hoax press conference Monday morning, pretending to be the business group — and pretending to announce that the chamber was dropping its opposition to climate-change legislation now in Congress..

Sources:

• les Yes Men s’invitent dans la bataille législative américaine
• The Yes Men at U.S. Chamber of Commerce

It is said that we throw away millions of tonnes of food a year – a quarter of all we buy. Enter the ‘freegans’ – campaigners like Tristram Stuart who are tackling the scandal of global waste by digging around in supermarket bins for their weekly shop..

Sources:

• Guardian.co.uk: The freegans
• Guardian.co.uk:Why do we throw away vast amounts of food?

Did you know that holding a mobile phone to the ear for extended periods of time could lead to a cubital tunnel syndrome ?

The cubital tunnel syndrome is a new syndrome brought to you by the technological age. Also known as cell phone elbow, this syndrome is a condition in which the nerve serving the hand is stretched at the end of the funny bone and as a result it can “choke the blood supply to the nerves.” and “could impede your writing ability..”

Source: Healthy Pages: Cell Phone Elbow?

Researchers at Stanford University are trying to design high-altitude wind turbine kites that fly so high that airliners would have to fly around them. Flying an expected 30,000 feet above the Earth, the tethered kites would be able to reach powerful jet streams that can flow 10 times faster than winds closer to the ground.

According to Ken Caldeira, «If you tapped into 1% of the power in high-altitude winds, that would be enough to continuously power all civilization». He added that to generate the same amount of power, solar cells on the ground would have to cover roughly 100 times more area than a high-altitude wind turbine..

Source: Computerworld

See also:

• Making clouds to fight global warming

A group of hunters aboard a small boat out of the tiny Alaska village of Wainwright were the first to spot what would eventually be called “the blob.” It was a dark, floating mass stretching for miles through the Chukchi Sea, a frigid and relatively shallow expanse of Arctic Ocean water between Alaska’s northwest coast and the Russian Far East. The goo was fibrous, hairy. When it touched floating ice, it looked almost black.

But what was it? An oil slick? Some sort of immense, amorphous organism adrift in some of the planet’s most remote waters? Read more..

See also:

• How sunblocks are damaging coral reefs

Found in Larry’s blog: Researchers at the MIT are planning to use mobile sensors to track garbage around the world. Trash is donated by volunteers in New York, Seattle and London.
The researchers believe they’ll be able to track the garbage no matter where in the world it ends up. Particularly useful in tracking electronic waste, often shipped to Africa and disposed of incorrectly.

See the interview with BBC News.

Also in Larry’s blog:

• Green Technology and Conservation Reduce Poverty, Improve Health in Rural China
• Interior Secretary Places Temporary Ban on Mining Near Grand Canyon