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Earth

Walgreens To Build First Self-Powered Retail Store 186

Posted by samzenpus from the all-in-one dept.
MojoKid writes "We hear about green deployment practices all the time, but it's often surrounding facilities such as data centers rather than retail stores. However, Walgreens is determined to go as green as possible, and to that end, the company announced plans for the first net zero energy retail store. The store is slated to be built at the corner of Chicago Avenue and Keeney Street in Evanston, Illinois, where an existing Walgreens is currently being demolished. The technologies Walgreens is plotting to implement in this new super-green store will include solar panels and wind turbines to generate power; geothermal technology for heat; and efficient energy consumption with LED lighting, daylight harvesting, and 'ultra-high-efficiency' refrigeration."
Medicine

Alcoholism Vaccine Makes Alcohol Intolerable To Drinkers 350

Posted by Soulskill from the spike-the-punch-with-it dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Ariel Schwartz reports that researchers are working on an alcoholism vaccine that makes alcohol intolerable to anyone who drinks it. The vaccine builds on what happens naturally in certain people — about 20% of the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean population — with an alcohol intolerance mutation. Normally, the liver breaks down alcohol into an enzyme that's transformed into the compound acetaldehyde (responsible for that nasty hangover feeling), which in turn is degraded into another enzyme. The acetaldehyde doesn't usually have time to build up before it's broken down. But people with the alcohol intolerance mutation lack the ability to produce that second enzyme; acetaldehyde accumulates, and they feel terrible. Dr. Juan Asenjo and his colleagues have come up with a way to stop the synthesis of that second enzyme via a vaccine, mimicking the mutation that sometimes happens naturally. 'People have this mutation all over the world. It's like how some people can't drink milk,' says Asenjo. Addressing the physiological part of alcohol addiction is just one piece of the battle. Addictive tendencies could very well manifest in other ways; instead of alcohol, perhaps former addicts will move on to cigarettes. Asenjo admits as much: 'Addiction is a psychological disease, a social disease. Obviously this is only the biological part of it.'"

Comment Re:Where does extra energy go? (Score 3, Interesting) 162

Actually, the object does have _potential_ energy. I've wondered about OP's question before. I think the answer has to do with the fact that these "teleporters" don't transport matter in the conventional sense. Suppose you did have have a teleporter that could take an object and teleport it 100 ft up a hill. If you dropped the object, collected the potential energy (like in a waterwheel), and teleported it again, you shouldn't be able to violate conservation of energy or make a perpetual motion machine. So, I figure it's either A) impossible, or B) requires an energy input at _least_ equal to the change in potential energy. \\ Of course, I'm talking about gravitation potential energy, but that's just one field. There's also electromagnetic. Conversely, if it took more energy in than the net change in potential energy, where would that energy go? So I suppose the net energy input should be equal to the change in potential energy. \\ This also raises other issues, like if I teleport very far away, or two a more massive planet, I might need to input a lot of energy on this side. \\ A possible resolution to this problem is that the kind of teleportation here is just informational--that is changing one particle's state to match (or oppose) the one on the other side. Thus no mass (or charge) is transported anywhere, and everything is happy energy-wise.

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