Thursday, October 30, 2008

Vroosh

Try this new metasearch engine. It has a very clean add-free look and works well for searching for Australian sites.

ASU Global Institute of Sustainability

Located in on the US greenest universities, this Institute has set up a tool, Campus Metabolism, to help anyone track energy and resource usage throughout the campus. They are also investing in solar panels and wind turbines to provide clean and sustainable energy.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

The Mammal Family Tree

ABC catalyst programme (23/10/2008)

The Mammal Tree is a graphic presentation demonstrating our relationship to the other mammals and how long ago we shared a common ancestor. After a decade of complex computing researchers came up with this "tree" which grows from the centre out to the edges which represent the present day. The centre represents that point in time, some 166 million years ago when all living mammals shared a common ancestor.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

City Green Buildings

An alphabetical listing, from Absorption Chiller to Worm Bin (”System for on-site management of food scraps and other organic materials. Similar to a compost bin, a worm bin uses worms to digest organic wastes, in a process known as ‘vermicomposting’.”)created by the City of Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development. The site also includes resources for those who wish to “build green”

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Renewable Energy Atlas of Australia

The Renewable Energy Atlas is designed for everyone interested in renewable energy, including government policy makers, decision makers in the renewable energy industry and educational and community institutions who wish to learn more about renewable energy in the Australian context. The Renewable Energy Atlas is designed to provide enough information to give a high level overview with appropriate contact details for those who wish to pursue their investigations further.

Botanical and Cultural Images of Eastern Asia, 1907-1927

The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University
“This collection of eastern Asian photographs represents the work of intrepid plant explorers who travelled to exotic lands in the early years of the twentieth century and returned to the Arboretum with not only seeds, live plants, and dried herbarium specimens, but also with remarkable images of plants, people, and landscapes.”

Climate Change Series

This news series "looks at the politics of climate change." Includes stories related to the developed world and emerging economies, opinion pieces, and interactive features on climate change agreement and mapping carbon dioxide emissions. Provides links to stories on the science aspects of global warming. From the website for the UK newspaper the Financial Times

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Encyclopaedia of Life

The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is an ambitious project to organize and make available via the Internet virtually all information about life present on Earth. At its heart lies a series of Web sites—one for each of the approximately 1.8 million known species. Each site is constantly evolving and features dynamically synthesized content ranging from historical literature and biological descriptions to stunning images, videos and distribution maps. Join us as we explore the richness of Earth’s biodiversity!

Vertical Farm

Project developed by Dr. Dickson Despommier who advocates using skyscrapers for farming. The site includes news updates, presentations and designs.

IUCN World Congress

Barcelona, 5-14 October 2008

More than 8,000 of the world’s leading decision makers in sustainable development: from governments, NGOs, business, the UN and academia. Together in one place for 10 days: to debate, share, network, learn, commit, vote and decide. The objective: ideas, action and solutions for a diverse and sustainable world.

World database on Protected Areas

Source: UNEP
"The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) is compiled from multiple sources and is the most comprehensive global dataset on marine and terrestrial protected areas available. It is a joint venture of UNEP and IUCN, produced by UNEP-WCMC and the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas (IUCN-WCPA) working with governments and collaborating NGOs. Over the last 12 months UNEP-WCMC, supported by the Proteus Partnership, has been redeveloping the World Database on Protected Areas. Using the latest GIS, web and database technologies the WDPA has been extensively redesigned into a web-enabled spatial database platform with custom data editing, downloading and analysis facilities. Over the course of the next 16 months, the opportunities to interact with the new WDPA will be slowly unveiled."

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Oxford Digital Library

Oxford University is in the process of digitizing items in its collection and this page gives access to some samples of the treasures amongst which there are images from Flora Graeca for the 21st Century, John Gould’s Ornithological Works and Key 19th Century Entomological Literature

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program

The National Library of Australia, in collaboration with the Australian State and Territory libraries, has commenced a program to digitise out of copyright newspapers. The free online service will enable full-text searching of newspaper articles. This will include newspapers published in each state and territory from the 1800s to the mid-1950s, when copyright applies. The Beta service now contains 150,000 newspaper pages from 1803 onwards. Additional pages are being added each week. The Courier-Mail has been digitised from June 1846 to December 1899 to date.