Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will head the U.S. delegation to the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, also known as Rio+20, which will take place June 20-22 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Secretary also plans to meet with key world leaders while at the conference.
Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, will serve as alternate head of delegation, and Todd Stern, Special Envoy on Climate Change, will serve as chief negotiator. This conference commemorates 20 years since the June 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (the “Earth Summit”).
Off-Grid 'Tornado House' Protects Inhabitants From Nature's Fury | Earthtechling
Studies predict that increasing global temperatures will make massive natural disasters, like Hurricane Katrina, last year’s Japanese tsunami, and the flock of tornadoes that torn apart the Midwest, a common occurrence...
That doesn’t help the millions of us that will soon overflow into these areas, eventually out of necessity as well as ignorance. For Hong Kong-based architecture firm 10 Design, accepting the fact that humans are determined to live where Nature never intended was the first step in designing the solution.
...The firms concept, called “Tornado House,” is a demonstration in something it calls “kinetic design.” A series of simple hydraulic levers would be used to push the home in and out of the ground and deflect and warp the outer skin inresponse to external stimulation. The key activators of this motion would be high velocity winds associated with thunderstorms and tornadoes. The creators say the House’s ambulatory design was inspired by a combination of existing items, including garage doors, flowers, and the way a turtle draws its head into its shell when threatened.
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