Smoothy recipie

Lauren's Sweet & Tart Smoothie

1 container of organic raspberry yogurt
1 banana
1 cup strawberries
1/4 cup blueberries
1.5 ~ 2 kiwi's
1 cup lemonade
(you can add a squirt of lime if needed for extra tangy)

ice, 1/2 to 1 cup, amount depends on the potency and consistency you desire

Courtesy of Lauren Neighbors, my sister

Reflection on "Food Inc"

The movie “Food inc” was very upsetting to watch, but to me the parts that disturbed me were not so much as the animal cruelty, but the fact that there were laws that were emplaced to keep these acts in place, as well as destroy the major companies competition. The cruelty is bad, I agree with that, but the fact that these laws were developed that had the reaction of destroying legitimate and small owned farms and businesses pissed me off. The examples I show below are the biggest elements that made me mad from the movie.
The farmers that have neighbors containing crops of GMO infected their farm and had to pay a fine for the GMO crop's contamination. This seems ridiculous to us in the beginning for why we would ever emplace a law such as that, but this law started out to be not so bad as an idea. This law started out for GMO companies to make money from their developments, the farmers would only have to plant the crop once save the seed and give it out for free. Another law was emplaced to intercept those people who save the seed and punish them with a fine. Although this law was a great idea, it left a loophole for those who got infected with their GMO crop. This loophole was great for the company to make extra money from hopeless victims. There are 25 such intercepters from one company alone, with other intercepters from other companies, farmers do not have a change, nor a hope of winning. Those that fought against the “machine” were eventually ran down until they could not pay their bills any longer.
More bills were passed that blocked other people from discriminating the company. An example of that would be the case with Opera Winfrey with a meat producing company. On one of her shows, she critiqued the meet industry for something. This quote dropped the meet companies income and she eventually went to court. She won, but shows how much laws have changed.

My Outline

1. Intro

   1. Energy

      1. Our current energy consumption

         1. 3.3TW US

         2. 13TW World

      2. Our Projected Statistics

         1. 28TW World

      3. Our current mediums to extract energy

         1. Coal 51%

         2. Renewable 1%

      4. Reason why we are trying to go solar

         1. Too much CO2 Emissions

         2. Escalating our Ozone greenhouse effect

      5. Thesis: Based on scientific data, our resources for non-renewable fuel is both destroying our ecosystem as well as exhausting our supply for our resources. With the need for clean and renewable resources to fuel our planet, solar and wind farms are needed to become the or a major energy producer.

2. Body 1: Solar Pros

   1. Free energy

      1. Requires Sun

   2. The sun's rays can fuel our planet for an entire year for only one hour of required exposure time

   3. Compact can go on rooftops

   4. Can supply energy in remote areas

      1. http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/members/2007/115-4/innovations.html

         1. Cooling vaccines using Solar power in places like Africa

         2. Cooling Vaccines need a constant temperature

            1. Excludes places that already have constant power

            2. For places that have little or no reliable power, this would be used

3. Body 1: Solar Cons

   1. Cost of the item

   2. Sun Exposure

      1. Washington

      2. Oregon

      3. Cloudy weather

      4. http://www.arpa.mil/sto/smallunitops/vhesc.html

         1. “east-west field of view (FOV) ≥ ±60°, a north-south FOV ≥ ±25° , a system power efficiency (SPE) ≥ 40%”

   3. Amount produced by a unit

4. Body 2: Wind Pros

   1. Free energy

   2. Clean energy

   3. Can place on farms and forget

   4. Can run at night

5. Body 2: Wind Cons

   1. Requires electric grid to be laid down before instillation

   2. Big upfront cost

   3. Wind is not a reliable and constant source

   4. Noise

6. Body 3: Which one is better?

   1. State → which one is better?

   2. Based on location and purpose

      1. Location

         1. Sun → Solar

         2. No sun → Wind

      2. Purpose

   3. Each need technical advances to be considerable

      1. Solar with solar paint

         1. Nate Lewis

7. Body 4: Possible Applications: Solar Street signs

   1. http://repository.up.ac.za/upspace/bitstream/2263/6510/1/Coetzee.pdf

   2. Fixes to street lights:

      1. Halogen → LED

      2. Solar

      3. Fixing when lights die

   3. Uses in places without electricity

      1. http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/members/2007/115-4/innovations.html

      2. Seen above

8. Conclusion

   1. Address the need for improved technology

      1. Solar

         1. Solar paint

         2. Solar farms

      2. Wind

   2. They cannot be the leading producer at the moment, but transitioning would be great

Peer review

http://www.arpa.mil/sto/smallunitops/vhesc.html
Gives specifications on how to get a really accurate solar panel. I could not get the rest of the article, but it seems very promising to look further into.

http://repository.up.ac.za/upspace/bitstream/2263/6510/1/Coetzee.pdf
This one caught my eye from the start with a very common question, "Solar Panel Traffic Signals". 629-644pg. Goes in depth with the power usage of all the traffic lights (halogen and LED versions) and the savings. Gives the most effective locations, and how much it would cost to fit those locations with solar panel traffic lights. It also states in the conclusion that solar panels will help the traffic lights in the event of a blackout, which could provide to be quite useful in some cases.

http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/members/2007/115-4/innovations.html
Even though this is criticized in places where electricity is readily available, this option still proves useful everywhere else. As the article explains, the Vaccines need to be cooled to 3~5 degrees Celsius, without power variation for the best results. Unfortunately, this is good news for places where power is hard to some by, and has a lot of sun.

Mr Energy aka Nate Luis

Nate Luis was very detailed in his research and will help me a lot as I do my own. As I was looking through my research I could not decide which green energy or other energy solution I should choose. I was tied between wind and solar for quite a while as wind will probably be introduced on the Neighbors ranch, and solar panels were almost installed on our house. In the video, he showed that wind power does not provide that much power, even if we covered our planet with it. Then showing us the amount of solar panels we would need.

Although he pointed out that not all the solar panels would be concentrated in one location, I believe that that option would be the highest potential at this time. But we are still behind in finding options about transportation of that energy. Our solutions range from local panels on each house and stored by battery to further options such as a globalized source running large high gauge cables.

Too concentrated of a power facility (taking up a state his his map) seems a little bit unfeasible as it is like "putting all your eggs in one basket". Creating a threat if that one facility had to replace a crucial component, terrorist incident, cloudy day and so fourth... Paint on houses seem like a great option, but towns without sun (such as Oregon and Washington that rain every other day) are in for a big surprise. A mixture of transportation and localized solutions need to be addressed.

Touching on Harmatz' topic for a second, I believe that we need a major break though in that technology to even be considered a possibility 50 years in the future, let alone 100 years. If we somehow stumble upon some miracle reaction, than this option could possibly knock itself into a placement, but it would have too be monumentally better. (then again, so would solar)

More sources

"NRG Expands Its Renewable Energy Business - WSJ.com." Business News & Financial News - The Wall Street Journal - WSJ.com. N.p., 27 Nov. 2009. Web. 13 Feb. 2010. http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20091127-704709.html>.

This article is more of an inspiration article showing the NRG cooperation about to heavily invest in Solar technologies in 2009 and expects to be finished some time in 2009. The companies only interest in renewable energy is due to the tax cuts. Including a “30% investment tax credit and loan guarantees” as it quotes in the article. Not exactly breaking away from the companies numerous coal and nuclear plants it uses to gather electricity.

This article makes me want to focus towards Solar panels (NRG's choice for renewable energy), because they find it to be the best investment right now. Getting a company such as NRG to make a choice to place in solar panels instead of the many other choices shows that solar panels have a lot of potential (at least from their business research).

[As a side note: I didn't realize why they called the company NRG until the very end of the article, that was sad]

Allen, Pam. "GE's renewable business adds 650 jobs - The Business Review (Albany): ." Business News | bizjournals. N.p., 1 Feb. 2010. Web. 13 Feb. 2010. .

This article explains what GE plans to do to increase jobs for renewable resources. It explains that they hope to make 650 jobs with an average salary of $75,000. But it seems that the only reason why GE is going this route is due to the company receiving money from the government to do so. As well as to get public attention to buy their product to ring in the buyers head when they product that “they did the right thing by buying from a company that supports renewable resources.

With the grants from the government “$750,000 grants from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to help offset construction costs of the $45 million building.”

"Economic Crisis and Renewable Energy - News Summary." Sustainable Business, Green Business, Renewable Energy, Organic & Green Investing, Green Capital. N.p., 13 Oct. 2008. Web. 13 Feb. 2010. .

Going a little bit back in time to see their predictions (October 2008). This article was published right when the stock market crashed all the way to the bottom (and while it was still declining). The article was a little worried that due to the stock market crash, some of the stocks for renewable energy went down about 30%. That's quite a lot and hindered the green energy companies.

It seems to me that from the articles I posted from the last blog and these articles that solar panels seem to be the most promising. The solar panels are favored over wind due to the small compact spaces it can fit (as well as out of site on roofs). Solar panels are very effective option I have seen yet. Wind Power is still a great option, but not for the heavily populated areas such as San Diego. Wind power has to be strategically placed in very windy regions.

For my project I will I am heavily considering showing the public the way we should make our population look like with green energy. The path of energy we are on is getting better as we constantly increase our technology towards greener energies such as solar and wind; but it is not enough where we can let it slide. We are running low on our dominant fossil fuel resources which generate our cars and create electricity. Without another energy alternative, we will either run out, or we will suffer other consequences from our atmosphere.

There are many categories of energy to cover and each need its own energy solution.

• House

• Portable / Hand-held devices

• Automobiles

• Aircraft

• Business'

• Sea Transportation

• City lights

• and more

With a lot to cover, we need to get started to finish all that in time.

To show all this information in a presentable project, I am thinking about showing two countries in contrast to another, one that successfully went green, and one that kept the old ways. The new ways looking like a combination of a big city with solar panels on the sky scrapers. No flying cars, but maybe cars that look like the Prius (but with a different sticker).The other side, well, that's not too hard to get.

Aloe Vera

Aloe Vera

Tending

1. Requires very little water to grow
2. (cannot grow in heavy snow or cold weather, not a problem for us)
3. Impervious to many insects
   

Medicinal Purposes:

1. Treat wounds (*1)
   
2. Treat burn wounds (*1, 2nd degree only)
3. Treat heartburn
4. Irritable bowel syndrome
5. Anti-bacterial
6. Improves blood glucose levels in diabetics
   
7. Used with dentifrice, significantly reduces plaque and chance of gingivitis.
   

*1: limited and contradictory

Other purposes:

1. Gell for lotion
   
2. Drink?