Image: Conceptual art of the new Amazon headquarters.

submitted by Samuel Bendett

inhabitat.com - September 12th, 2012 - Bridgette Meinhold

Amazon will make its new headquarters not in some sprawling suburb, but in the heart of downtown Seattle. Recent plans for Amazon's campus reveal that it will take up 3 square blocks with 3 towers supported by lower volumes, and will feature lots of open green space—including green roofs. NBBJ, who also designed the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation nearby, is in charge of the massive new project for Amazon.

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Image: Green fuel map application in action.

submitted by Samuel Bendett

gizmag.com - September 11th, 2012 - Antonio Pasolini

Switching to a vehicle running on alternative fuel presents a clear challenge - where do you fill it up? Designed by Leonardo Academy, Cleaner and Greener Fuels is a free app that gives users interactive maps to help them find the nearest alternative fuel stations all over the U.S.

Available for both iPhone and Android devices, the app caters for electric cars as well as vehicles running on CNG (Compressed Natural Gas), Biodiesel, LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas), E85, LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas, also known as propane) and hydrogen.

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Image: New York faces a flooding threat. Photo © David Shankbone

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inhabitat.com - September 12th, 2012 - Lori Zimmer

After last year’s Hurricane Irene, the prospect of many parts of NYC flooding due to rising tides has become a much more tangible worry. Although the Bloomberg administration has dedicated efforts to research the effects of climate change on our city, they might not be moving fast enough. Stony Brook University’s Storm Surge Research Group says that even though NYC has been working hard to prevent future flooding in Lower Manhattan, other areas like the South Bronx and Sunset Park are in danger as well, and not enough is being done about it.

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submitted by Samuel Bendett

Homeland Security News Wire - September 11, 2012

In the days following Hurricane Isaac’s slow march across south Louisiana, Loyola University New Orleans administrators have been reviewing their response with a critical eye to ensure emergency preparations continue to evolve and meet the demands of each situation; beginning Tuesday, 28 August, New Orleans felt the first of Isaac’s high winds and heavy rains – but Loyola University was ready.

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Submitted by Samuel Bendett

Gizmodo.com - September 7th, 2012 - Brent Rose

We generally hear about drone aircraft killing people in war zones. But there's a reverse side to that narrative—an autonomous copter can drop medicine and supplies to people stranded after a natural disaster even when roads have been demolished. A humanitarian group called Ideate recently tested drones' viability as a real-world delivery vehicle in one of the harshest, most brutal environments imaginable—Burning Man.

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Image: Farm worker Jesus Francisco Cayetano feeds pigs a slop made from food scraps from casinos near North Las Vegas, Nev. in 2006.

npr.org - September 6th, 2012 - Eliza Barclay

Last month we heard that a farmer in Kentucky was feeding his cattle discarded chocolate because corn was too expensive. Things are getting weird, we thought.

But it turns out this isn't a total anomaly: Elsewhere in the country, pigs and cattle are treated to bakery byproduct — bread, dough, pastries, even Cap'n Crunch — as our friends over at Harvest Public Media reported earlier this year.

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Image: PlugShare application image.

greenbiz.com - September 5th, 2012 - Derek Top

U.S. cities are well on their way preparing for electric vehicles. Data collected through PlugShare, a mobile app monitoring more than of 11,000 public and private charging stations, shows Portland, Oregon with the highest density of EV charging stations at 11.2 for every 100,000 residents in the city.

Given its green credentials as a city, Portland is a likely candidate, as might be the San Francisco Bay Area, but the growth of EV charging stations is "more than a coastal thing," said Armen Petrosian, CTO with Xatori, makers of the PlugShare app.

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huffingtonpost.com - September 5th, 2012

The number of poor Americans who repeatedly ran short of food shot up by 800,000 in 2011 to nearly 17 million compared with 2010, the U.S. government said on Wednesday.

The Department of Agriculture said in a report that about 5.5 percent of Americans, or nearly 17 million, suffered "very low food security" last year, meaning they had to skip meals or not eat for a day because of a lack of money to buy food. That is a rise of 800,000 over the prior year, it said.

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The New York Times - by Daniel P. Aldrich - August 28, 2012

HURRICANE Isaac, which made landfall in Louisiana last night, has not only disrupted the Republican National Convention but also brought back painful memories of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the Gulf Coast seven years ago this week.

. . . As a political scientist (I taught at Tulane at the time), I decided to study how communities respond to natural disasters. I’ve concluded that the density and strength of social networks are the most important variables — not wealth, education or culture — in determining their resilience in the face of catastrophe.

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Image: A storm surge pounded the seawall Tuesday along the shores of Lake Pontchartrain as Hurricane Isaac came ashore. (Skip Bolen/European Pressphoto Agency)

nytimes.com - John Schwartz, Campbell Robertson, Kim Severson, David Thier - August 29th, 2012

Louisiana officials on Wednesday ordered the evacuation of some 3,000 people in a parish outside New Orleans and are continuing to rescue dozens of others in the same area trapped by rapidly rising floodwaters caused by Hurricane Isaac.

Plaquemines Parish has emerged so far as the area of southeastern Louisiana that has received the most significant damage from the storm, which continues to crawl over the coastal area, carrying with it 75 mile per hour winds and driving rain that has led to calamitous flooding.

sites.duke.edu - Volker Franke, Ph.D.

In an effort to stabilize and reconstruct post-conflict countries and fragile states, the United Nations and the European Union are currently involved in 29 peace operations in communities throughout the world. The Communities impacted by disasters, both man made and natural, or by the growing range of threats to peace, security, and development, require assistance from domestic and international organizations. Donor agencies and academic observers have addressed the importance of partnering with stakeholders in local communities in order to provide aid most effectively for the best possible outcome.

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Allen Williams Sr. found space in a shelter in Belle Chasse, La.  William Widmer for The New York Times

The New York Times - by Campbell Robertson - August 27, 2012

NEW ORLEANS — Huge and slow, Tropical Storm Isaac lumbered up through the Gulf of Mexico from Florida toward Louisiana and Mississippi on Monday, growing stronger by the hour and putting coastal residents on notice of an extremely wet and potentially destructive next few days.

The tracking forecasts reached a consensus by Monday night that the storm, which was a little over 200 miles southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River and on the verge of becoming a hurricane, would land overnight Tuesday somewhere around southeastern Louisiana as a Category 2 hurricane.

But Isaac has been fickle and confounded predictions all along, and its intensification is just beginning.