Earth Hour 2012: 8.30pm, Saturday 31 March, celebrate your action for the planet with the people of world by switching off your lights for an hour. A collective display of commitment to a better future for the planet. Think what can be achieved when we all come together for a common cause. We only have one planet. You can help protect it.

Sign up to commit here: www.worldwildlife.org

Stefani Bardin created a video that was shown at TEDxManhattan about her latest "smartpill" project on processed and unprocessed food.

Stefani is producing a body of work that explores the influence of corporate culture and industrial food production on our food system. These investigations take the form of single and multi-channel videos and immersive and interactive installations. Her current project is working with gastroenterologist Dr. Braden Kuo at Harvard University where they just completed the first ever clinical study to use the M2A™ and SmartPill devices to look at how the human body responds to processed versus whole foods. She is an Honorary Resident at Eyebeam Art +Technology Center in New York and teaches in the School of Art, Media and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design and in the Food Studies Program at The New School for Public Engagement.

Astronomers say that each of the 100 billion stars in the Milky Way probably has at least one companion planet. Until the first part of the 20th century, scientists believed our home galaxy was the entire universe and, until 1994,that the planets in our solar system were the only ones we knew. With the aid of the Kepler Spacecraft, launched in 2009, an international team of 42 scientists has been surveying millions of stars in the Milky Way. They've discovered that planets may be as plentiful as grains of sand on a beach, and that many stars likely host planets with mass five times that of earth. Some stars are home to gas giants like Jupiter. And some planets may circle not one but two stars--a phenomenon so unlikely it was previously only considered in science fiction. We may need to keep searching for ET, though; none of the planets detected so far appears suitable for conventional carbon-based life as known on Earth.

Read more here: online.wsj.com

Underwater filmmaker Mike deGruy has spent decades looking intimately at the ocean. A consummate storyteller, he takes the stage at Mission Blue to share his awe and excitement -- and his fears -- about the blue heart of our planet.

So sad, Mike deGuy died in a plane crash in eastern Australia on February 4, 2012. An enourmous loss. www.salient-news.com

Robert Redford calls on the Obama Administration to stop Shell from drilling this summer off the coast of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- our nation's largest onshore birthing ground for polar bears. www.StopShell.org

Photos: NOAA
Produced by: Susan Emmet Reid

The global average surface temperature in 2011 was the ninth warmest since 1880, according to NASA scientists. The finding continues a trend in which nine of the 10 warmest years in the modern meteorological record have occurred since the year 2000 (1998 was also in the top ten).

The average temperature around the globe in 2011 was 0.92 degrees F (0.51 C) warmer than the mid-20th century baseline.

Reds indicates temperatures higher than the average during a baseline period of 1951-1980, while blues indicate lower temperatures than the baseline average. The start year, 1880, is the year that scientists call the beginning of the “modern record.”





While average global temperature fluctuates from year to year, scientists focus on the decadal trend. As greenhouse gas emissions and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to rise, scientists expect the long-term temperature increase to continue.

The carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was about 285 parts per million in 1880, when the GISS global temperature record begins. By 1960, the average concentration had risen to about 315 parts per million. Today it exceeds 390 parts per million and continues to rise at an accelerating pace. www.nasa.gov

Chief Almir of the Surui tribe in Brazil came up with the idea when he first came in contact with Google Earth. He saw it as a great tool to visualize the devastation of the rainforest. With the help of Google he started a project to protect the Surui tribe's ancient rain forests and provided an unfiltered perspective never seen before.

Time lapse dandelion flower to seed head /dandelion clock filmed continuously over a period of one month. Intervals between 5-45 minutes. Aphids continue to feed on the dandelion whilst the seeds mature.

This sequence was filmed for the interactive on-line plant identifier and pruning guide encyclopaedia www.rightplants4me.co.uk
The website is designed to help find and identify the right plants for every aspect of a garden and seasonal need and help you create a garden design with colour and interest.

Music is called Attrition, by Debbie Wiseman
Filmed by Neil Bromhall

Bjarke Ingels - Designer of Ecosystems...
Bjarke Ingels' architecture is luxurious, sustainable and community-driven. At TEDxEast he shows us his playful designs, from a factory chimney that blows smoke rings to a ski slope built atop a waste processing plant.

Bjarke Ingels is principal of BIG, based in Copenhagen. An alumnus of Rem Koolhaas' OMA practice, Ingels takes a similar approach: experimenting with pure space, but never losing sight of the building as a solution to a real-world problem. His manifesto "Yes Is More" takes the form of a giant cartoon strip, 130 meters long, that reminds people to keep thinking big -- to see all our modern problems as challenges that inspire us.

His deeply-thought-out and often rather large works -- including several skyscrapers and mixed-use projects in a developing section of Copenhagen, plus a project for a new commercial harbor-island --  work to bring coherence to the urban fabric and to help their occupants and users lead better lives. His most famous works include: the Stavanger Concert House, Tallinn’s city hall and the VM Houses. He recently won a competition to design Copenhagen’s waste-to-energy plant with a design that will place a ski slope on top of the structure.

During Farm Sanctuary's 25th Anniversary year, Martha Stewart included President and Co-Founder Gene Baur on her Vegan Show. She also recorded this powerful message about the cruelty of factory farming.

Scientists estimate that at least 100 species go extinct each day. You never know what might be next.

In zoos, in private collections, and in the field with biologists around the world, Joel Sartore is trying to photograph as many species as he can by using a portable studio with black and white backgrounds. This black-and-white background technique gives all species equal weight and importance. A tiny beetle is as interesting as a lion, and a two-toed sloth as cuddly as a panda bear (see photos at left). The clean background, combined with nice light, allows the viewer to look every species in the eye, the window to the soul. I hope these portraits will connect with viewers and get them to understand that all creatures have at least a consciousness as well as a basic right to exist. www.joelsartore.com

Algae plus salt water equals … fuel? Bilal Bomani wants to create a biofuel that is "extreme green"— sustainable, alternative and renewable. At NASA's GreenLab Research Facility, he uses algae and halophytes to create a self sustaining, renewable energy ecosystem that doesn't consume arable land or fresh water.

Bilal Bomani currently serves as the lead scientist for NASA's biofuels research program focusing on the next generation of aviation fuel. The intent is to use algae and halophytes with the goal of providing a renewable energy source that does not use freshwater, arable land or compete with food crops.

The Vanishing Cultures Project team will embark on an audacious, 20,000 mile journey across America with one of the largest film cameras ever made to capture the amazing faces, history and regalia of cultures that are vanishing before our eyes.

For more information visit:
thefpac.org
facebook.com/pages/Vanishing-Cultures-An-American-Portrait

Art makes us aware...

KTLA's Heal the Bay: Protect What You Love

Filmed at Good Works Space/ZeroMinusPlus at Fred Segal, Santa Monica, CA.

A close-up view of the Sun's edge shows vast loop structures made of superheated plasma, just one of which is the size of several Earths. These loops can have a wide range of temperatures, many reaching several million degrees Kelvin.

The upper one of a pair of new, solar active regions that just rotated into view offered a beautiful profile view of those cascading loops spiraling above it (Jan. 15-16, 2012) following a solar flare eruption. With its ability to capture the Sun in amazing detail, SDO observed it all in extreme ultraviolet light. This particular video clip used an image every minute to present the motion.

A January 23rd solar flare was rated an M9-class eruption, which placed it just short of being an X-class flare, the most powerful type of solar storm. M-class sun storms are powerful but mid-range, while C-class flares are weaker. The sun's activity waxes and wanes on an 11-year cycle. The star is currently in the midst of Solar Cycle 24, and activity is expected to continue ramping up toward the solar maximum in 2013.

Credit: NASA SDO

Welcome to the dirtiest place on Earth! Breathing the air in Linfen in China for a day is like smoking three packets of cigarettes. This shocking report reveals why Climate Change may be here to stay.

Linfen, located at the heart of the Shanxi Province, is one of the mining centres that have been central to China's rapid economic growth. It is an endless landscape of factories and smoking towers, which is constantly emptied by thousands of trucks, taking its coal to the rest of China's cities. Linfen, as Ailun Yang from Greenpeace China points out, is the dark side of China's economic miracle. "There's something fundamentally wrong with the economic model. That's why the more the economy grows, the more the environment starts to get worse." Not only is the air toxic, but the water is so polluted that many towns in the area have become so-called 'Cancer Towns'. "Many illnesses are common to this area: pesticide exposure, high blood pressure, heart disease, lung problems..." But for the 4 million inhabitants of Linfen, it was only 20 years ago that their city was nicknamed 'The fruit and flower town of Shanxi Province'.The environmental impact of coal exploitation has destroyed the environment and with no way back the people of Linfen are paying a high price for China's economic progress.

Watch complete 26 minute video here: www.youtube.com

Prefabricated modular building built in 360 hours.
The Chinese building company, Broad Group, builds a 30-story tall hotel prototype in 360 hours, after building a 15-story building a week earlier.

Prefabricated modular buildings have advantages over conventional buildings.

Higher precision in fabrication (+/- 0.2mm).
More coordinated on-site construction management.
Shorter construction time span.
Lower construction waste.
Also many other health and energy features are included in Broad Sustainable Buildings (BSB)

The building was built over Christmas week and finished before New Years Eve of 2012.

Magnitude-9 earthquake resistant, 5x more energy efficient, 20x purer air, 90% factory-built, and 1% construction waste.
Broad Sustainable Buildings (BSB), Xiangyin County of Hunan Province in Southern China, with 220,000sqm workshops, 12,000 employees, and in 2013 with 360,000sqm workshops and 19,000 employees, reaching an annual production and installation capacity of 10 million sqms.

The crows snow tube in Russia! Metal roofs or ice required. If there were more metal roofs in the northern U.S., I'm sure this would be a sport in the States as well.

Thailand's Western Forest Complex (Huai Kha Keng Wildlife Sanctuary) is one of the last havens for breeding tigers and also shelters elephants, clouded leopards, gaurs and other rare species. As a result, it's a top protection priority for Wildlife Conservation Society and the Thai government.

That's why we were so thrilled by recent camera trap footage from the forest. It demonstrates what WCS staff already know: with proper protection from poaching, wildlife will flourish.
These show the incredible diversity of species that can flourish once the proper protections are in place: a tigress and her cubs feeding on a kill, leopards and dholes investigating scents, and a clouded leopard – normally so heavily camouflaged that it can hide in plain sight – walking by. Then write your members of Congress urging them to continue U.S. support for efforts like these that combat the illegal international wildlife trade. secure3.convio.net

Environmental Defense Fund's Oceans VP Amanda Leland looks at a new idea that’s helping fish populations rebound and catches increase up to 40%. www.edf.org