Canadians urged to turn off the lights for Earth Hour

Canadians coast to coast were urged to join people around in the world in marking Earth Hour by turning off the lights on Saturday night.

People are being asked to flick off the switch between 8:30 and 9:30 p.m. local time with utilities joining the driving force behind the event, the Washington-based WWF fund, to plead for people to power down.

B.C. Hydro made a pitch on its website, urging consumers to join in and also make plans to reduce energy use year around. Last year's response shows what people can do, the utility said on its website.

"British Columbians turned off the equivalent of 7.8 million 15-watt compact fluorescent light bulbs for the hour," the utility said. "If everyone in B.C. implemented the same conservation measures for just one hour every evening, the combined savings would be enough to power close to 4,000 homes for an entire year."

Ontario electricity provider Hydro One said it would mark Earth Hour by turning off non-essential electrical equipment at its office facilities across the province.

A couple of candlelight walks are planned for Toronto and some hotels are planning to turn off their lights for the hour and have candlelight dinners or candlelight swims.

Hockey fans taking in Saturday night's NHL games in Vancouver and Toronto might notice the lighting is a bit dimmer than normal. The league says non-essential lighting will be turned off for an hour at all games scheduled for Saturday night and the league's New York City headquarters will also observe Earth Hour.

Last year in Canada there was some concern that fewer people may have been observing Earth Hour compared to previous years. Disappointment was expressed in Toronto when many stores stayed brightly lit and there were few public celebrations compared to previous years.

Events were taking place across the world and Australians were among the first to mark Earth Hour with Sydney's iconic Harbour Bridge and Opera House going dark Saturday night.

WWF said the number of countries and territories participating has grown from 135 last year to 147 this year.

10 Ways to Green Your Retail Store

1. Switch to energy-efficient lighting. You may be able to reap some cost savings and reduce energy use by trading incandescent or older fluorescent light bulbs for newer light-emitting diode (LED) or compact fluorescent (CFL) lights, says Chris Lynch, director of the Business Environmental Program at the University of Nevada-Reno. "If you have five years left on your lease, the savings could pay for the project before the lease ends."

Be on the lookout for grant programs that might help with the initial costs. At Mugshots Coffeehouse & Café in Philadelphia, owner Angela Vendetti applied for a 2010 energy-reduction grant through the U.S. Department of Commerce, which covered half the $4,176 bill for energy-efficient lighting in two of her three shops. She estimates energy cost savings will let her break even on her share of the lighting costs within two years.

2. Clean greener. If you purchase your store's cleaning supplies, it shouldn't cost much to simply switch to less-toxic products as you run out of current stocks, Lynch notes. Or you can make your own. Simply using a combination of water and distilled vinegar can give you a home-made cleaning spray in no time.

3. Buy used fixtures. A great way to both recycle and save money is to scavenge for salvaged fixtures -- ideally ones made of natural materials -- rather than spend big for new shelving made from metal or petroleum-based plastics, says Julie Gabrielli, owner of the green-business consulting and architectural firm GOfor Change. Where Gabrielli lives in Baltimore, she points to men's apparel store Sixteen Tons, which uses antique wood cabinets and shelves throughout its store.

4. Create a living wall. Improve air quality with a wall full of indoor plants placed under air-conditioning vents, recommends Gabrielli. This is an especially good move at indoor malls, where air can be recirculated and stale.

5. Make bags and receipts optional. Gabrielli recommends getting rid of plastic bags and substituting reusable or recycled paper bags. Then, ask customers if they need a bag at all. Also, ask them if you can save a tree and email the receipt. The bonus: You capture emails for future marketing.

6. Buy energy-efficient equipment. If you're purchasing a new fax machine, computer, printer or other equipment, compare Energy Star ratings and buy the most efficient item, advises Jennifer Kaplan, author of Greening Your Small Business and owner of the consulting firm Greenhance. She also notes that countertop point-of-sale machines use a lot of electricity, but you could reduce energy consumption by switching to mobile payments on smartphones or tablets paired with a device such as Square.

7. Turn it off. Many businesses leave cash registers, computers and other devices on day and night. Instead, shut everything off each night, says Kaplan, to avoid sucking "vampire power" to dormant equipment.

8. Turn it down. Put timers on lights in sporadically used areas such as bathrooms, says Kaplan. Also, see if you can use less overhead lighting during the day, at least in parts of the store near windows.

9. Stock green. Examine the materials lists on the merchandise you sell for petroleum byproducts, metals and other nonreplenishable materials, says Kaplan. Investigate whether similar products made from renewable resources are available. Take a look at where goods are made, too. If possible, switch to products made closer to your store to reduce the environmental costs of transportation.

10. Cut packaging. Encourage existing vendors to ship products in less elaborate packaging and consider switching to suppliers that are less wasteful, Kaplan says. For the waste you do receive, try to expand your recycling efforts and compost if you have a restaurant.

United States Losing the "War on Hackers"

The Wall Street Journal has brought to light the fact that the US law enforcement community, led by the FBI, thinks it is losing some sort of "war" with hackers. Who declared this war and why did they declare it? It seems like yet another phony use of the term "war" in hopes of getting attention. We have the war on drugs, for example, and the war on terrorism. Who surrenders in these sorts of wars? Who signs the papers? And now, we're waging a vague war on hackers.

Of course, there is no war. Hackers hack and they will continue to hack. Someone will always try to stop them. Let me assure you burglaries are more frequent and generally more damaging to the man on the street yet nobody has declared a war on burglary.

Hackers are essentially burglars. They get into a system like burglars would break into a house. Then, they rummage around to see what they can find. If burglars modeled themselves after hackers, instead of the other way around, they would plant bugs and cameras in the house. But they don't. At least, I do not think they do.

So, what do you do to keep burglars out and how does that apply to computer security? Well, you put better locks on the doors and perhaps an alarm system. Maybe a dog would do the trick. The most effective means is to make sure you are home. Securing a computer is similar―although I am not sure what the dog equivalent is.

When the hackers went after Sony last year, it was because Sony has shown little inclination to take security seriously. It was as if Sony owned a huge mansion and never locked the doors. Then, after having been robbed, it still left the doors unlocked.

The Bradley Manning hacking scandal was similar to a crime in which someone in the house works with the burglar. There is very little you can do about an inside job like this, although you can keep your eye on someone who is suspicious.

The analogies are endless and, of course, no one is winning the war because it is not winnable in any way. Law enforcement has been fighting against burglaries since the first person put a hatch door on a mud-hut. They were robbed.

I don't see stories about how we are losing the war against burglars or car thieves or bank robbers, so why should this be any different? The government says this is a national security issue in some instances, but that is part of a bigger stupidity, if true. It needs to take security more seriously.

I mean, you could put a chain link fence with barbed wire around your home. You could unleash your dogs all over the yard and position guards around the perimeter. With that sort of defense, I can assure you that your house would not be broken in to, but this is overkill for a private home. Even museums housing multi-million dollar paintings do not get that carried away―although they could!

This is not a war to win, but it is a battle that can be fought well. It will not be fought well, though, unless everyone is mindful of security, keeps up with trends, and looks out for oddities. None of what is happening is anything new. There have always been espionage and theft, only now it's all remote. It is not a war by any means. It's just a common struggle.

Camera Peers around Corners

A new imaging system could use opaque walls, doors or floors as 'mirrors' to gather information about scenes outside its line of sight. In December 2012, MIT Media Lab researchers caused a stir by releasing a slow-motion video of a burst of light traveling the length of a plastic bottle. But, the experimental setup that enabled that video was designed for a much different application: a camera that can see around corners.

In a paper appearing in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers describe using their system to produce recognizable 3-D images of a wooden figurine and of foam cutouts outside their camera's line of sight. The research could ultimately lead to imaging systems that allow emergency responders to evaluate dangerous environments or vehicle navigation systems that can negotiate blind turns, among other applications.

The principle behind the system is essentially that of the periscope. But, instead of using angled mirrors to redirect light, the system uses ordinary walls, doors or floors ― surfaces that aren't generally thought of as reflective.

The system exploits a device called a femtosecond laser, which emits bursts of light so short that their duration is measured in quadrillionths of a second. To peer into a room that's outside its line of sight, the system might fire femtosecond bursts of laser light at the wall opposite the doorway. The light would reflect off the wall and into the room, then bounce around and re-emerge, ultimately striking a detector that can take measurements every few picoseconds, or trillionths of a second. Because the light bursts are so short, the system can gauge how far they've traveled by measuring the time it takes them to reach the detector.

The system performs this procedure several times, bouncing light off several different spots on the wall, so that it enters the room at several different angles. The detector, too, measures the returning light at different angles. By comparing the times at which returning light strikes different parts of the detector, the system can piece together a picture of the room's geometry.

"Four years ago, when I talked to people in ultrafast optics about using femtosecond lasers for room-sized scenes, they said it was totally ridiculous," says Ramesh Raskar, an associate professor at the MIT Media Lab, who led the new research.

Andreas Velten, a former postdoc in Raskar's group who is now at the Morgridge Institute for Research in Madison, WI, conducted the experiments reported in Nature Communications using hardware in the lab of MIT chemist Moungi Bawendi, who's collaborating on the project. Velten fired femtosecond bursts of laser light at an opaque screen, which reflected the light onto objects suspended in front of another opaque panel standing in for the back wall of a room.

The data collected by the ultrafast sensor were processed by algorithms that Raskar and Velten developed in collaboration with Otkrist Gupta, a graduate student in Raskar's group; Thomas Willwacher, a mathematics postdoc at Harvard University; and Ashok Veeraraghavan, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Rice University. The 3-D images produced by the algorithms were blurry but easily recognizable.

Whitpain Township Taking Proactive Step Against Billboards

Whitpain Township Board of Supervisors and residents gathered at Tuesday night's board meeting to discuss the proposed draft of the Off Premises Outdoor Advertising Zoning Overlay District and billboard regulations for the township.

James Garrity, Township Solicitor, told residents, "The Board and township staff don't like billboards anymore than you do."

However, he continued that according to Pennsylvania law, billboards must be accommodated for as a viable business. "The courts have said very, very clearly" that billboards are a business, Garrity said.

Garrity added that there has been "an explosion" of challenges in the Philadelphia suburbs. A local firm has over 15 challenges in litigation and they have publically stated that they have more planned.

The roads in the Philadelphia suburbs are seeing more and more traffic every day and they present a captive audience for billboard advertising. And with the beginning of LED advertising, billboard companies can display up to 15 advertisements per billboard.

With billboard audiences up, revenues have also increased.

Billboard companies, both small local companies and larger companies, have attacked municipalities that had total billboard exclusions first and then attacked municipalities that had defacto exclusions next.

"[The Township] could be a little bit better protected," said Garrity of the township's current ordinance.

Garrity told residents that the billboard companies have typically applied for 685 sq. ft. billboards in the municipalities that they come into. He said with that kind of risk, it was worth looking at the current ordinance.

"We can rely on our existing ordinance and roll the dice, or we can be proactive," said Garrity.

Garrity told residents that the township cannot prohibit LED billboards if LED signs are permitted in the township, which they are. He also said that LED billboards do not contain any gases, tubes, argon or mercury.

Garrity and the Board reminded residents that just because the township zoned land for this specific use, it doesn't mean that a billboard will suddenly pop up in the township.

Ed Lane, Chairman of the Zoning Hearing Board, said, "The Supervisors should be applauded for taking a proactive approach."

Supervisor, Adam Zucker, said, "[We are] protecting the township from this potential threat."

Supervisor, Fredrick Connor, called the proposed ordinance, "A prudent, reasonable, proactive step."

Melissa Murphy Weber, supervisor and an attorney who fights for municipalities in billboard cases, said, "I do have to emphasize the importance of a township taking proactive steps."