Until now, turning post-consumer waste into power required large centralized plants. Power magazine offers a mobile waste-to-energy conversion system that's only 8 ft high. The self-contained system fits in a storage container and produces power from up to 3 tons of waste daily. It feeds on paper, plastic, food, wood, and agro materials.

Many power plants will be fueled with natural gas, so optimizing gas turbine operation is critical. Power Engineering International says turbine optimization models are insufficient as they don't include remaining plant equipment. But software vendors now offer optimization models allowing gas turbine data to be integrated with balance-of-plant models.

One drawback to widespread electric vehicle (EV) adoption is non-standardized connectors. Fast Company reports that Ford, GM, Volkswagen, Fiat, Toyota, and Mitsubishi have agreed on a plug standard for charging electric vehicles. This means that all EVs will be able to top up from common-design roadside 400V charging stations.

New products make it easier to test, measure, and control external equipment from a PC's USB port. One of the latest is a USB multi-function module with four relays, four analog to digital converters, and four digital optically isolated inputs. EDN says that each relay is single pole, single throw, and rated for 15 amps at 240 VAC.

Laptops use touchscreen overlays on their trackpads to sense single finger pressure. PCWorld says Sharp's optical sensor trackpad can sense pressure from multiple fingers simultaneously. This allows more sophisticated input such as drawing Japanese kanji characters or pictures, turning e-book pages, or controlling animated on-screen displays.

Even in this dismal economy, some markets are still growing. According to IDTechEx, the RFID market will reach $5.56 billion in 2009, up from $5.25 billion in 2008. A large amount of the increase is due to government-led RFID plans for transportation, animal tagging, and national ID programs that use contactless cards and passports.

Control magazine says wireless sensing systems using energy harvesters must optimize three main components. The sensor and radio must be very power-efficient. The battery or capacitor requires high-power density. The energy harvesting components must maximally convert available vibration, heat, or light into power.

Aptly named researcher Richard Rabbitt discovered how quiet sounds are magnified by bundles of tiny hair-like tubes in the ear. Small Times reports that the tubes act as nanoscale flexoelectric motors that amplify sound mechanically. The ear has a mechanical amplifier that uses electrical power to do mechanical amplification.

Jobs are getting harder to find. Jobs — or unemployment — have become the number one concern globally, and especially in the U.S. According to a recent U.S. survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, public concern about the environment takes precipitous drops when other issues arise. In their latest poll, the two top priorities were the economy and jobs. Concern for the environment and global warming ranked 16th and 20th respectively out of 20 issues.

Bicycles used to be simple devices. They had one speed and you pedaled backwards to stop them. But today's bikes are sophisticated engineering marvels employing complex technologies. Click the first link on the referenced home page to download a podcast that explains how the specialized independent test lab puts bike frames through their paces to find the best mix of stiffness, weight, and performance. Lab data is important, but all findings must also be verified by road testing.

Is Green a Luxury, a Fad, or a Fixture?

Surveys show that green issues go back burner when the economy is weak. Is green just a luxury item, affordable only by rich countries in flush economic times?