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As mind-blowing as science is these days, it's probably safe to say that we're not going to invent a time machine within the next century. Through the magic of code, though, there is an entertaining alternative in the world of interactive maps. Obviously, The Smithsonian is on it.

The magazine recently dipped into David Rumsey's collection of over 150,000 maps to find some of the best representations of American cities over the past couple hundred years. With some simple programming, they were able to overlay images of vintage maps of some major cities onto satellite images from today. The results are fascinating.

See maps of New York City, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, and Washington, DC

weww.atlantadailyworld.com - August 15, 2013 - Foluke Nunn

'A group of African American citizens filed suit today against their city government in Rochelle, Ga. for discharging the city’s raw sewage onto their properties.

White residents of Rochelle live predominately on the south side of the city’s railroad track. African Americans live largely on the north.  The residents say the city has repaired and updated its sewage pipes on the south side of the tracks but has let repairs lag on the African American side.  As a result, untreated sewage backs up and overflows into the streets and the yards of residents on the north side of the tracks. 

The residents are being represented by Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law organization whose Florida office is handling the litigation. The Clean Water Act suit, filed in the United States District Court, Middle District of Georgia, seeks to stop the unpermitted discharges of raw sewage from manholes, broken pipes and a ditch.' ...

submitted by Albert Gomez

energymanagertoday.com - August 7, 2013

With commercial building operators facing pressure to reduce energy consumption and IT-based controls and monitoring becoming widespread, a perfect storm of factors has led to new software platforms for building energy management systems (BEMS), says Navigant Research, which predicts that the BEMS market will grow from $1.8 billion to $5.6 billion by 2020.

The Navigant report, Building Energy Management Systems — IT-Based Monitoring and Control Systems for Smart Buildings: Global Market Analysis and Forecasts, says the BEMS market represents one of the fastest-growing and most promising waves of innovation ever to occur in the building industry.

It cites factors such as the increased knowledge and proliferation of digital controls within the building stock in the industry, the high priority focus on energy efficiency among corporations and governments, and the advent of cloud-based data management and Big Data as the reason behind the explosive development of the BEMS market.