Japanese Maple Autumn Leaves wallpaper
New machine prints sheets of light
* Sheets owe luminance to organic light-emitting diodes called OLEDs
* OLEDs could be used to make light sources out of everyday objects
* Sheets provide broad, diffuse light sources that bathe rooms in a gentle glow
* OLEDs will not be competitive with fluorescents by 2010, experts says
While OLEDs would have some energy savings over standard incandescent bulbs, they are not as energy efficient as fluorescent and neither is the cost of the lighting itself. They might be worth it for people like me who don’t like that harsh lighting from incandescent or fluorescent bulbs. There are both cost and technological bugs to overcome so we’re not likely to see OLEDs mass marketed for a few years. Since they’re still in their development phase let’s hope they also work a recycling program for the sheets once they’ve ended their lifespan. GE has more info at their web site.
America’s eco-kids keep a keen eye on their parents
Sometimes, Jennifer Ross feels she cannot make a move at home without inviting the scorn of her daughters, Grace, 10, and Eliza, 7. The car she drives? A flagrant polluter. The bath at night to help her relax? A wasteful indulgence. The reusable shopping bags she forgot, again? Tsk, tsk.
“I have very, very environmentally conscious children – more so than me, I’m embarrassed to say,” said Ross, a social worker in Dobbs Ferry, New York. “They’re on my case about getting a hybrid car. They want me to replace all the light bulbs in the house with energy-saving bulbs.”
Ross’s children are part of what experts say is a growing army of “eco-kids” – steeped in environmentalism at school, in houses of worship, through scouting and even via popular culture – who try to hold their parents accountable at home. Amid their pride in their children’s zeal for all things green, the grown-ups sometimes end up feeling like scofflaws under the watchful eye of the pint-size eco-police, whose demands grow ever greater, and more expensive.
I’ve seen a couple of TV sit-coms lately where the kids give their parents grief about things like buying leather instead of cloth purses and turning out lights, etc. Not completely new. When I was a kid one of my parents smoked and I would refuse to bring them their cigarettes, but they were always nagging me about not being wasteful.
tangledwing 