Health care is a costly affair and the best method to reduce a nation’s medical expenses, is to prevent its citizens from getting sick in the first place. Therefore space settlements should focus on preventive medicine in their health policies. Continue reading Health policy
No sitting, no kidding
Here a video by CBS about a Californian elementary school that does not allow sitting.
On downloading
A couple of years ago we proposed the idea of a general data download tax to fund an alternative compensation scheme. Under this tax people would pay a charge for each, say, gigabyte of data they would download. Though the concept itself is rather simple, it becomes complicated if one needs to take into account businesses, libraries and internet cafés. Continue reading On downloading
Omega-3 against crime
Earlier we discussed the link between environmental lead concentration and criminal behaviour. New research lead by Jill Portnoy has indicated that another substance might have significant effect on criminal behaviour: omega 3. Continue reading Omega-3 against crime
Refuse-derived clothing
Two Italian fashion designers have developed a technique to make a silk-like fabric from citrus waste, called Orange Fiber. The orange juice industry produce a very large amount of waste in the form of peels. The use of citrus peels as a resource for the production of textiles, is interesting as it increase the value of citrus fruits and hence potentially increasing the income of citrus farmers.
Sewage and Algae
In the previous post I did not discuss particular technologies to purify waste water and to turn it into clean water. One way to remove minerals from waste water are algae.
As orbital space settlements will get most of the energy from solar power, there is little use for biofuel. However, algae have a lot of other useful applications. Continue reading Sewage and Algae
Sewers and Taxes
Sewers are the summit of human civilization and taxation is the price of civilization. So we are supposed to pay sewer tax, right? No, not really. In this post I will explain how space settlements could fund a sewage and waste water treatment system without having to collect sewer charges. Continue reading Sewers and Taxes
MycoFoam
Here another use of a fungal materials. Ecomotive is using organic waste and fungi to make a bio-degradable alternative for plastic packaging materials.
MycoLeather
US company MycoWorks has developed a technology that turns fungi into an excellent alternative for leather. This fabric is actually made of mycelium, which is the fiber network of a fungus. According to this business their product is highly customizable. Continue reading MycoLeather
Public FOSS Repositories
The recent acquisition of open source platform GitHub by the notorious company Microsoft has caused a lot of unrest among the open source community. Fortunately there are alternatives like GitLab and SourceForge, but those could also be acquired by companies with a disputable reputation at some point in the future. Continue reading Public FOSS Repositories
