John B. Carnett, PopSci’s staff photographer, is using the latest green technology to build his dream home. This is the first entry in his new blog tracking the build–follow along at popsci.com/green-dream

See: Green Dream: A Solar Power Plant in Your Backyard

The mission of The Pelican Web is to collect and analyze knowledge on both obstacles and incentives for sustainable development and, specifically, integral human development; and to publish the monthly, free subscription, open access PelicanWeb’s Journal of Sustainable Development. The e-journal provides a monthly digest on current research pursuant to enhancing human solidarity, environmental sustainability, democratic governance, supporting technologies, and both secular and religious non-violence.

See:The PelicanWeb’s Journal of Sustainable Development and Knowledge Taxonomy and Links Database

with links to resources on sustainable development and many other subject areas.

The report includes a brief citation to our presentation during the American Society of Engineering Education in Austin, TX.

June 14-17, 2009 – Drexel Smart House and Drexel University’s Library presented a collaborative proposal for information-literacy development to the American Society of Engineering Education in Austin, TX.

See: Drexel Smart House Six Month Report and News and Interests from Drexel Green web site

Visiting US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said she hopes India and the US can devise a new plan to deal with the issue of climate change.

“After visiting a specially designed “green building” of a hotel chain in Delhi, Mrs Clinton said: “I am very confident the United States and India can devise a plan that will dramatically change the way we produce, consume and conserve energy and in the process spark an explosion of new investment and millions of jobs.”

Read the full article at:  Clinton in US-India climate plea

Third place went to Jameson Detweiler and Tom Milewski, who are students in the Drexel College of Engineering. They will receive $4,000 in seed money, more than $6,500 in in-kind support, and space in the Baiada Center’s incubator. Detweiler and Milewski are the brains behind Konnect.me, which is developing Web communities for specific industries. Its first site is green.konnect.me and serves the green building industry.

Read the full article at: Baiada Incubator winners

A post just for a chuckle!

Gwyneth Paltrow, in her lifestyle newsletter GOOP, gives her top recommendations for Green Living. This week’s GOOP newsletter includes recyclable socks ($16) all the way to a full electric car ($12, 500+). As an added bonus, Cameron Diaz drops by to also give her top seven green products and services.

Everyone’s going green!

Abstract:

The Library-Smart House partnership seeks to design and implement a sustainable, virtual
environment for collaboration that will seamlessly integrate project communication and
information access. This virtual environment will provide a means for increased collaboration
between students, faculty, librarians and outside contributors as well as ensure the sustainability
of the project in coming years.
The Smart House is a student-led, multidisciplinary project to retrofit an existing house to be a
living-laboratory. The house will be a platform for testing innovations in the areas of energy,
health, environment, interaction, and lifestyle. The ultimate goal of the organization is to
improve the quality of life for those living and working in an urban residential setting. The
Smart House is a collaborative design project not only across different disciplines, but also
across student year and domain knowledge levels. This collaboration produces a wide array of
student information needs and presents a unique opportunity for library collaboration.
The Library plans to study the effectiveness of information literacy instructional techniques
through the contextual setting of the Smart House. The Library seeks to improve the ability of
participants to access, evaluate, and use high quality research materials effectively through a
variety of instructional strategies. By developing and maintaining a virtual infrastructure for
information awareness and access using relevant technologies, the library will be able to assist
students at their point of need. More direct instruction will be provided through a series of active
learning workshops combined with specialized research consultation. We believe that this project
will promote the lifelong learning skills necessary for the Engineer of 20201 by providing
interdisciplinary collaboration paired with information literacy instruction within the framework
of Smart House design.

Library-Smart House Collaboration for Information Literacy Development:

See: Paper and Presentation

Source:  2009 ASEE Annual Conference – Engineering Libraries Division

The Wall Street Journal published a new round of the paper/plastic/reusable bag debate. It’s a good article, but more telling are the comments from WSJ readers, who mainly seem to think that reusable bags are the worse of their options. The bag backlash is interesting…

Last week, I attended the Entrepreneurship in Libraries conference in Greensboro, NC. I went to a panel discussion about greening libraries. Panel members were from UNC-Greensboro, Wake Forest, and Georgia Perimeter. They recommended installing low-flow aerators into facets, replacing incandescent bulbs with CFLs, and also switching from desktop computers to laptops, which use much less energy.

Website: http://greeningyourlibrary.pbworks.com/

And Facebook page: greenlibraries

Professor Richard Cairncross from the Drexel University Chemical and Biological Engineering Department was recently awarded a Fulbright Lectureship Award to spend four months at the University of El Salvador in Spring 2010. The topic of the lectureship is “Sustainable Engineering – A Multidisciplinary Curriculum for Training the Engineers-of-the-Future.”  Professor Cairncross and the Drexel Chapter of Engineers Without Borders are also involved in sustainable development of a potable water supply system for the small, rural community of Miramar in southwest El Salvador; Professor Cairncross will continue to support this project and explore opportunities for other sustainable development projects during his lectureship.

See: Professor Cairncross Receives Fulbright Scholar Award to Teach Renewable Energy at the University of El Salvador