Aug 11, 2010

Forget emotion for a moment. If you were to base your next new car purchase purely on logic, what would it be? If you live in America, you most likely would buy either A) a V8-powered pickup or B) a fuel efficient hybrid. Why? Because either you need to move stuff around (pickup) or just yourself (hybrid). Yet for all their fuel-saving frugality, most hybrids don’t pay back the extra cost spent on the technology very quickly.

Except perhaps one. A Canadian study of 16 different hybrids found that just one, the Mercedes Benz S400 Hybrid, cost less to own and run than its gasoline counterpart (that would be the regular S400). How is that so?

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Jun 2, 2010

America, lets be honest with ourselves for a moment. When it comes to our material possessions, we tend to be a picky bunch. How else can you explain the variety of choices we have when we buy just about, well, anything. This is especially true about cars.

And oh how our tastes do change. Just a few years ago, people were buying big gaudy SUV’s and were more concerned with cup holders than fuel economy. But once again, our priorities have changed, and a new study suggests quality and fuel economy are now top concerns among new car buyers.

(more…)

May 22, 2010

Is the downturn getting you down, are you feeling the credit crunch, do you want something to make you feel like a millionaire!

Booboomobile has designed a BlackBerry theme for those of us looking to put that Bling Bling back into ours lives and at a incredibly small price for a limited period.

This has to be the Blingiest BlackBerry theme I have ever seen, it certainly brightened my BlackBerry up. My fiancée has now demanded I buy her one also. She wants the Bling and she wants it bad.

So orders is orders and I’m of the Mobihand to purchase her one or two, better get the mother in-law one!

Bling BlackBerry Theme

This has to be the Blingiest BlackBerry theme I have ever seen, it certainly brightened my BlackBerry up. My fiancée has now demanded I buy her one also. She wants the Bling and she wants it bad.

I now feel like a million dollars for what its worth, not a lot at the moment but nether the less, oh what the hell, a billion dollars that’s still worth something? right! Anyway for such a small price its well worth it, to look so cool, my BlackBerry has officially been pimped big style!

Buy one or two at Mobihand:

http://www.mobihand.com/product.asp?id=45822&n=Bling-Berry-Zen-BlackBerry-Theme

Apr 24, 2010

Researchers examine the educational and social effects of making one laptop per child available in selected classrooms, and the impact on student outcomes

Glen Iris Elementary School was the first Birmingham City school to receive XO laptops. Credit and Larger Version

April 14, 2010

Students in Birmingham City Schools, Ala., are building their technological skills and interests while engaging in collaborative learning thanks to XO laptop computers. XO computers are rugged, low-cost, low-power laptops that have become familiar to people around the world through the One Laptop Per Child project. In Birmingham, the laptops were distributed by the local government to help reduce a “digital divide” separating Birmingham students from those in more affluent areas in terms of available technology and the opportunity to become proficient in its use.

In a study funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through a Small Grants for Exploratory Research (SGER) grant, Shelia Cotten, associate professor of sociology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and her team are examining the educational and social impact of using XO laptops in Birmingham public schools, and the effects on student outcomes.

The XO laptop is unique because the design caters to children.  According to Cotten, the design of the laptop “is more intuitive for children and how they learn. They are also sturdier, more durable, and more interactive than many other existing laptops.”

These laptops use a Linux operating system and a Sugar user interface, which together allow users to identify other groups and users of XOs in geographic proximity. Cotten explained that this encourages learning and collaboration because users can collaborate and work in groups easily.

Birmingham was introduced to the XO laptops in early 2008, when the city government purchased 15,000 XO laptops for the students in Birmingham City schools. Each student in grades first through fifth received a XO laptop to keep as his or her own. Cotten explained that the goal was “to decrease the digital divide in Birmingham and to provide students with the technological skills to make them effective participants in our information and technologically driven society.”

According to Cotten, the majority of the children receiving the laptops come from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. “Free and reduced price lunch rates are greater than 70 percent in the majority of the schools,” said Cotten. ”For [the children], there was minimal hope that their families would be able to purchase computers for them.  The giving of the XOs to these children gave them hope for a brighter future and a chance to become a cyber-participant in our society.”

Both the students and their families were touched by this opportunity.  “I can tell you that the students were incredibly moved by receiving these laptops,” said Cotten. “The joy was evident on their faces, and tears were flowing among many of the children.  From what I have observed, family members were excited that their children were receiving the XO laptops. This represented an opportunity for their children and their families that they most likely would not have had otherwise.”

While teachers “appeared to be excited about having the opportunity for their students and themselves to become more involved in the cyber world … I think there was also some apprehension on their part as the XOs used a different operating system than what they are accustomed to using,” said Cotten.

Prior to distribution of the laptops in Birmingham, some members of the Birmingham City School System received training.  However, during the 2008-2009 academic year, there was limited money for training and more effort was spent preparing the XO laptops to be distributed to schools.  More extensive training was scheduled for this school year, since the Birmingham City Council approved giving the school system close to $1,000,000 to buy new XO laptops.

Further training can help explore the diverse XO applications and the possibilities in developing effective and creative lesson plans to motivate additional technological interest. “Many students don’t become aware of programming until taking a computer science course later in their educational training and by this point it is often too late to garner their interest in learning about programming,” explained Cotten. “By having them work with applications in elementary school, they may see the work they do as fun and exciting and they may not fear computer programming when they have other opportunities later in their educational career.”

The range of applications includes Internet browsers, a word processing program, an instant messaging program, a program to record audio, pictures and video, a paint program, an audio mixing and editing program, a calculator, a measure/graphing frequency program, a memorizing game, an acoustic tape measure and various programming languages tailored to children.

Lesson plans could include various creative projects, explained Cotten. Examples of activities made possible through the laptops include using the Acoustic Tape Measure to measure the distance between XO laptops in math and science classes, or using the Memorize application to create memory games to help students learn vocabulary, math concepts and other subject matter.

Preliminary results of Cotten’s study reveal the effects of technology use on students.  Technology in this case includes the XO laptop and additional non-XO computer use, plus other types of technologies and communication channels the students use to communicate with friends. Findings include:

• More frequent use of computers for research was associated with gains in personal expression, freedom and accomplishment.
• Higher grades on projects was associated with students perceiving that the XO laptops helped them communicate and work with other students in their classes.
• Entertainment use of computers was associated with lower grades when students were tested after adoption of the laptops.
• An increase in using computers for research was associated with greater odds of students reporting that they would like to take more computer classes and would like to learn more about computers.
• Students who had more favorable perceptions regarding the XO (e.g., they enjoy doing homework more when using the XO; they report that the XO helps them learn) were more likely to want to take more computer classes and learn more about computers than were students who had less favorable perceptions.
• Preliminary findings indicate that there is significant variation in the impact of teachers on XO laptop usage in the classroom. Having teachers who use the XOs more frequently and who are more skilled in this use is associated with greater use, diversity of use, and more positive attitudes of XO laptops by students.

Additional analysis is underway. “Over the next few months, we will begin to examine in-depth the relationships to be investigated per the NSF SGER grant,” said Cotten.  “In particular, we plan to further examine the importance of teacher and school level factors, as we suspect there will be important differences across teachers and classes in the outcomes to be examined.”

Cotten received another NSF grant that further examines curriculum usage with the XO laptops.

“As in the NSF SGER grant, we focus on fourth and fifth grades,” Cotten explained. “During Year 1, we have already done in-depth observations in two pilot schools to see how teachers are using and/or not using XO laptops, interviewed school administrators at the two pilot schools regarding barriers and facilitators to integrating XOs into the curriculum in their schools. We’ve also begun developing lesson plans that utilize XO laptops and link to the Alabama Course of Study objectives, which Birmingham City School (BCS) teachers use.”

Future plans in this study include conducting nominal group technique sessions with teachers from two pilot schools to get feedback on the lesson plans, which will be revised and utilized in a series of workshops for students and teachers from six additional schools in summer 2010. Workshops and professional development activities will also continue in Years 2-5. By completion of the project, approximately 200 teachers and 8,000 students in the Birmingham City School System will have been directly impacted.

Investigators
Casey Borch
Shelia Cotten
Jeffrey Gray
Michael Howell-Moroney
Catherine Nelson
David Radford
Scott Snyder
Thamar Solorio
J. Michael Wyss
Julian Daily
Shani Daily

Related Institutions/Organizations
University of Alabama at Birmingham
g8four

Locations
Alabama

Related Programs
Discovery Research K-12

Related Awards
#0918216 Integrating Computing Across the Curriculum (ICAC): Incorporating Technology into STEM Education Using XO Laptops
#0819063 SGER: Assessing the Educational, Career, and Social Impacts of the XO Laptop Program in Birmingham, AL City Schools

Total Grants
$1,147,163

Related Websites
You Tube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inxOg-dt6rw

Apr 18, 2010

Solar power in southeastern Ontario has the potential to produce almost the same amount of power as all the nuclear reactors in the United States

Solar power in southeastern Ontario has the potential to produce almost the same amount of power as all the nuclear reactors in the United States, according to two studies conducted by the Queen’s University Applied Sustainability Research Group located in Kingston, Canada.

Heliostatos SOLÚCAR

These studies, led by Queen’s mechanical engineering professor Joshua Pearce, are the first to explore the region’s solar energy potential. Professor Pearce was surprised by how many gigawatts could be produced.

“We came up with enormous numbers and we were being conservative. There about 95 gigawatts of potential power just in southeastern Ontario – that shows there is massive potential,” says Professor Pearce, who specializes in solar photovoltaic materials and applied sustainability.

One study, accepted for publication in the journal Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, discovered that if choice roof tops in southeastern Ontario were covered with solar panels, they could produce five gigawatts, or about five per cent of all of Ontario’s energy. The study took into account roof orientation and shading.

Arizona State University goes solar!

“To put this in perspective, all the coal plants in all of Ontario produce just over six gigawatts. The sun doesn’t always shine, so if you couple solar power with other renewable energy sources such as wind, hydro and biomass, southeastern Ontario could easily cover its own energy needs,” Professor Pearce says.

A second study, published in May issue of the journal Solar Energy, looked at land in southeastern Ontario that could be used for solar farms. The study considered land with little economic value – barren, rocky, non-farmable areas near electrical grids – and concluded it has the potential to produce 90 gigawatts.

“Nuclear power for all of the United States is about 100 gigawatts. We can produce 90 on barren land with just solar in this tiny region, so we are not talking about small potatoes,” Professor Pearce says.

The professor conducted the studies to provide policy makers solid numbers on solar energy potential, as well as find possible solar farm locations for developers.

Also contributing to the studies were Queen’s civil engineering student Lindsay Wiginton and mechanical engineering student Ha Nguyen.

Apr 14, 2010

TOKYO, Japan, April 13, 2010 – Honda Motor Co., Ltd. revealed the latest prototype of the EV-neo electric scooter and announced plans to begin lease sales in Japan in December 2010 to businesses and individual business owners who provide mainly delivery services.

Honda developed the EV-neo, an electric scooter designed to provide the durability necessary for business use, envisioning a wide range of uses by businesses such as delivery services. Equipped with a lithium-ion battery and a brushless motor, EV-neo realizes excellent environmental performance with zero CO₂ emissions in use. The battery is rechargeable using a household power source with attention given to the range per charge. Moreover, EV-neo provides performance equivalent to that of mass-market under-50cc gasoline engine motorcycles realizing a powerful ride even with cargo by leveraging the characteristics of a high-torque motor even at a low speed ride.

Under the key words of “quiet and clean” Honda held the world premier exhibition of the EV-neo concept model (under the name EVE-neo) at the 41st Tokyo Motor Show in 2009 as one of Honda’s new-generation personal mobility products which will contribute to the realization of a low-carbon society while transporting people and cargo. The mass-market model of EV-neo is currently under development.

Honda will continue providing products with excellent environmental performance to more customers in order to contribute to global CO₂ emission reduction efforts.

[ Key specifications of EV-neo Prototype ]

Apr 12, 2010

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have identified a new class of silver-based catalysts for the production of the industrially useful chemical propylene oxide that is both environmentally friendly and less expensive.

Plastic Chairs

“The production of propylene oxide has a significant amount of by-products that are harmful to the environment, including chlorinated or peroxycarboxylic waste,” said chemist Stefan Vajda of Argonne’s Materials Science Division and Center for Nanoscale Materials. “We have identified nanoclusters of silver as a catalyst that produce this chemical with few by-products at low temperatures.”

Propylene oxide is commonly used in the creation of plastics and propylene glycols for paints, household detergents and automotive brake fluids.

The study is a result of a highly collaborative team that involved five Argonne Divisions and collaborators from the Fritz-Haber-Institut in Berlin and from the University of Illinois in Chicago, including a collaboration between the experimental effort led by Stefan Vajda and the theoretical analysis led by materials chemist Larry Curtiss and nanoscientist Jeff Greeley.

Large silver particles have been used to produce propylene oxide from propylene, but have suffered from a low selectivity or low conversion to propylene oxide, creating a large amount of carbon dioxide. Vajda discovered that nanoscale clusters of silver, consisting of both three atoms as well as larger clusters of 3.5 nanometers in size, are highly active and selective catalysts for the production of propylene oxide.

Curtiss and Greeley then modeled the underlying mechanism behind why these ultrasmall nanoparticles of silver were so effective in creating propylene oxide. They discovered that the open shell electronic structure of the silver catalysts was the impetus behind the nanoclusters selectivity.

“Propylene oxide is a building block in the creation of several other industrially relevant chemicals, but the current methods of creating it are not efficient,” Curtiss said.

“This is basically a holy grail reaction,” remarked Greeley. “The work opens a new chapter in the field of silver as a catalyst for propene epoxidation,” added Curtiss.

Mar 30, 2010

Big changes in business models, information technology systems and energy sources create new norm for utility production, transmission and distribution.

Only 8 percent of utilities around the world have completed their smart grid technology implementations while 37 percent have projects underway and more than half haven’t yet started, according to a new Microsoft Corp. survey.

The Microsoft Worldwide Utility Industry Survey 2010, released today at CERAWeek 2010 in Houston, surveyed almost 200 professionals within electric, gas and water utilities and related companies around the world. The survey highlights a range of challenges — from financial and regulatory to technology and return on investment — for utilities already unsure of the right path to building the smart grid.

“As this study clearly shows, the disruptive nature of the smart grid revolution, and the innovations it brings, has caught many in the industry by surprise, including many utilities that already have embraced smart grid technologies,” said Jon Arnold, managing director for the Worldwide Power & Utilities Industry at Microsoft, who was recently named one of the 100 People You Must Know in Smart Grid by Greentech Media Inc. “Some incorrectly assert that the utility industry is unwilling to change, but the survey shows the opposite. It’s the magnitude of change to everything from business models to systems that’s overwhelming, especially given utilities’ existing asset and technology investments combined with the need to ensure profitability and reliability.”

Distribution Management and Smart Metering Are Critical

The survey shows that utilities professionals and executives perceive distribution management and smart metering solutions as the most important technologies for successful smart grid implementations. Integration of renewable energy sources into the smart grid and consumer energy management solutions follow closely. However, 63 percent of the respondents in the Americas think the information technologies available today are not sufficient to address future challenges, while only 45 percent and 42 percent of respondents in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Asia Pacific respectively believe they are insufficient.

“The clear objective is to optimize current power generation and delivery assets to help utilities improve grid reliability; achieve demand response, environmental and conservation goals; and avoid unnecessary capital expenditures,” said Julie Hance, vice president of software solutions for Itron North America, a Microsoft partner. “It will take close industrywide collaboration — from the smart meter into the home and the smart meter back to the array of generation sources — to complete this complex task and achieve a smarter, more sustainable future.”

Respondents worldwide cite financial concerns — both costs and return on investment — as the main challenge to smart grid development. They also cite regulatory factors as the most influential to smart grid technology deployment decisions. However, the economic climate is tied with regulatory factors as the two biggest influencers among Asia Pacific respondents.

The survey reveals that 42 percent of the respondents are currently incorporating distributed generation sources such as wind and solar on rooftops and another 25 percent will begin to incorporate these sources in the next one to three years. Also, by early 2013, half of the respondents expect to offer time-of-use pricing to all of their residential customers.

Only 8 percent of respondents believe their utility has a technology architecture that is adequate to support new business processes and new technologies. To fund all of these investments, 77 percent of respondents expect their budgets for smart grid technologies to increase over the next two to three years.

“The inevitability of change combined with financial and regulatory uncertainty makes it critical for utilities to begin implementing the right technology capabilities now to meet the challenge of any regulation, energy source or distribution need in the future,” Arnold said.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Mar 28, 2010

K.R. Sridhar holds the fuel cell technology that is equivalent to 25 watts of power. Photo Credit: Bloom Energy

K.R. Sridhar used to spend his time as a researcher at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., looking at the sky and dreaming of ways to sustain life on Mars. Now, CEO of Bloom Energy, Sridhar heads a company that just unveiled new technology that could make energy cleaner, cheaper, more reliable and accessible to everyone in the world.

The journey from NASA to Bloom Energy started with Sridhar and a small team of university researchers working to build a fuel cell powered module to go to Mars. When their NASA project ended, the team left academic life, opened a research and development office in NASA Research Park, and began working to commercialize the fuel cell technology with a new company, ION America, which became Bloom Energy.

“NASA is a tremendous environment for encouraging innovation – it’s all about solving problems that are seemingly unsolvable. After realizing that we could make oxygen on Mars, making electrons on Earth seemed far less daunting. We’re grateful to NASA for giving us a challenge with serendipitous impact for mankind,” said Sridhar.

Invented over a century ago, fuel cells have been used in practically every NASA mission since the 1960s. However, they have not gained widespread acceptance because of their inherently high cost. Traditional fuel cell technology used precious metals but this technology uses sand. Sand is inexpensive, which Sridhar asserts makes the Bloom Energy technology affordable and easy to mass produce.

Bloom Energy servers at eBay. Each server is the equivalent size of one parking spot. Photo Credit: Bloom Energy

As more people consume more energy, Sridhar became aware that the world was heading in the wrong direction. “We would be handing our children and their children a broken planet,” ventured Sridhar. “I didn’t want to sit on the sidelines and do nothing.” Sridhar believed that conservation alone was not enough and that there was a “calling to our generation to find a different way to create energy.”

“To make clean reliable energy affordable for everyone in the world,” is the mission of Bloom Energy. “One in three humans lives without power,” Sridhar asserted. “Energy demand exceeds supply. Global population is growing quickly.” Keeping these three facts in mind, Sridhar is working to bring energy to parts of the world that don’t have power.

On Feb. 24, 2010, Bloom Energy held a press conference at the eBay town hall in San Jose, Calif. “This is a day that I have been looking forward to for a long time,” Sridhar commented. Representatives from companies that were early adapters attended, including Larry Page from Google, Inc., Bill Simon from Walmart, Brian Kelly from The Coca-Cola Company, and John Donahoe of eBay, Inc.

Former secretary of state, Colin Powell, and Arnold Schwarzeneggar, California governor, also attended the event. “This technology is an excellent example of the wave of green innovation washing over the state of California,” said Schwarzeneggar. “He [Sridhar] is someone shaping the future of energy not just for California but for the world.”

Feb 16, 2010

• Ford and its utility partners are testing one of the industry’s first vehicle-to-electric grid communications and control systems, which enables electric vehicles to interface with the grid for optimal recharging
• The new technology allows the vehicle operator to program when to recharge the vehicle, for how long and at what utility rate. For example, an operator could choose to charge only during off-peak hours when electricity is cheaper, or when the grid is using renewable energy
• Since 2007, Ford and its research partners in the utility industry have conducted more than 75,000 miles of plug-in hybrid testing to advance the commercialization of electric vehicles
• Ford introduces a pure battery electric Transit Connect commercial van in 2010, a battery electric Focus compact car in 2011, and a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle and next-generation hybrid electric vehicle in 2012

DEARBORN, Mich., Aug. 18, 2009 – Ford Motor Company announced today that it has developed an intelligent vehicle-to-grid communications and control system for its plug-in hybrid electric vehicles that “talks” directly with the nation’s electric grid.

This new technology – which builds on Ford’s advancements such as SYNC®, SmartGauge™ with EcoGuide and Ford Work Solutions™ – allows the vehicle operator to program when to recharge the vehicle, for how long and at what utility rate.

“Electric vehicles are an important element of our strategy for improving fuel economy and reducing CO2 emissions,” said Bill Ford, Ford’s executive chairman. “This vehicle-to-grid communication technology is an important step in the journey toward the widespread commercialization of electric vehicles.”

Feb 10, 2010

Audi is showing an uncompromising purist compact sports car with all-electric drive at the first major auto show of 2010. The Detroit showcar Audi e-tron is the name of this 3.93 meter (154.72 in) long and 1.78 meter (70.08 in) wide but just 1.22 meter (48.03 in) tall two-seater; just a few months after the debut of the Audi e-tron at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show, this is now the second electric concept vehicle from the brand with the four rings.

Coupled with the Detroit showcar Audi e-tron’s low gross weight of around only 1,350 kilograms (2976.24 lb), high-torque power units driving the rear wheels guarantee commensurate road performance. Two electric motors with a combined output of 150 kW (204 hp) and 2,650 Nm (1954.54 lb-ft) accelerate the coupe with ASF-design aluminum body from 0 to 100 km/h (62.14 mph) in just 5.9 seconds. The Audi e-tron accomplishes the sprint from 60 to 120 km/h (37.28 – 74.56 mph) in a mere 5.1 seconds.

The Detroit showcar Audi e-tron is able to distribute its electric motors’ high torque between the wheels entirely as required. Its “torque vectoring” is the key to a thrilling level of active precision and excellent traction. Thanks also to its low weight, short wheelbase and perfect weight distribution for dynamic handling, the Audi e-tron has all the drivability of a go-kart – agile, good on bends and neutral right up to the very high handling limit.

Lithium-ion batteries, located for an optimal center of gravity behind the passenger compartment and ahead of the rear axle, make an effective energy content of 45 kilowatt-hours available. This makes an operating range of up to 250 kilometers (155.34 miles) realistically possible.

As previously with the first e-tron concept car shown in Frankfurt, Audi again bases all components in this electric vehicle on an integral concept with many revolutionary details: a heat pump as an efficient means of heating up and maintaining the interior temperature. The drive system, power electronics and battery have innovative thermal management – crucial for maintaining a high operating range coupled with outstanding interior comfort.

Design and package
Audi is presenting a further variant of an electric vehicle in the form of the Detroit showcar Audi e-tron. The vehicle body has a powerful, wide and muscular stance on the road, and looks extremely compact and puristic not least thanks to the typically short sports car wheelbase of just 2.43 meters (95.67 in) – a whole 22 centimeters (8.66 in) shorter than the R8.

The sweeping line of the front end and the flat curved roof immediately identify the two-seater as an Audi. The sides reveal familiar contours: The way the dynamic line is tailored above the sill and the prominent wheel arches, as is typical for an Audi R, combine the front, side and rear into a monolithic entity and strongly emphasize the typical Audi feature of round wheel arches enclosing the large 19-inch wheels. The highly tapered front end gives the Detroit showcar Audi e-tron distinctly wedge-shaped basic proportions.

1.78 meters (70.08 in) wide, just 3.93 meters (154.72 in) long and 1.22 meters (48.03 in) tall – those are the classic proportions of a sports car. That leaves space ahead of the rear wheels for the 399 kilogram (879.64 lb) battery unit, with converter and power electronics.

The two electric motors, which have their own cooling system, are mounted on the rear axle. This special package, featuring a 40:60 weight distribution, ensures perfect balance, which contributes to the driving dynamics of the Audi e-tron.

The trapeze of the single-frame grille dominates the distinctly wedge-shaped front end and is flanked by two large air intakes. The top of the grille merges into the flat strips of the adaptive matrix beam headlight modules with their clear glass covers. All light units use ultra-efficient LED technology.

Feb 1, 2010

A Peace Corps volunteer’s project in Guatemala salvaged trash from several villages to construct an entirely new schoolhouse.

You’d never know it just from looking, but the new bright orange schoolhouse in Granados, Guatemala has walls built with used plastic bottles—and so much other plastic waste that the team who built it had to go to neighboring villages to collect waste because they used up all the trash in their own.

Peace Corps volunteer Laura Kutner was inspired to start the project because of the plastic trash that she noticed everywhere in Guatemala, and because schools had classrooms with no walls. So she borrowed the idea of using bottles as a construction material from Pura Vida, and with materials and labor from local businesses as well as help from Hug it Forward, they set to work.

The team filled individual bottles with plastic grocery bags, chip bags, and other waste they had collected, and after placing the bottles inside metal fencing (for shape), they used trash again to fill spaces between the fencing and the bottles. We needed A LOT of plastic trash,” said Laura—if the empty spaces weren’t stuffed with trash, “then it flew right through to the other side when we threw the cement on. We used so much trash that we could not find anymore in the town and had to go to neighboring villages to get some of theirs. It was awesome!”

After the fencing was stuffed with waste, three layers of cement were placed on each side—creating the look and stability of any other wall. Essentially, the bottles just serve as insulation.

The orange building is the completed school—the bottles are inside the orange wall. Lined up in front of the school with Laura (in the blue dress), are the team leader and two members of Hug it Forward/Abrazos Gratis, Laura’s Peace Corps replacement Rebecca Wike and another Peace Corps volunteer. Reyna Ortiz de Ramirez, the director of the primary school and the project’s co-leader with Laura, is fourth from the left, and the others dressed in purple are the teachers who work at the primary school and who helped see the project through.

Laura called the project “truly the perfect example of a team effort. If the entire town had not participated, it would not have happened!”