Long lasting fast charging electric car battery (6 min charge time, 600 km range)

Many people think that battery technology has not advanced much. Indeed, when one thinks of battery electric cars, their batteries are considered slow to charge, and do not last long.

On the 31st October 2010, the website Taranfx (new Geeknizer), along with other websites, reported about an important breakthrough which a Berlin company called DBM Energy has made. DBM Energy already manufacture batteries which allow forklift trucks to operate in warehouses for 28 hours between charges. Working with Berlin energy supplier Lekker Energie, DBM Energy has invented a Lithium Metal Polymer battery, the KOLIBRI, which has had brilliant results when test driven in a car, with just a 6 min charge meant the car was able to travel 600 km, a new world record for an electric vehicle.

Signage improvements: Traffic calming, warning of pedestrians

In this article, we look at signage improvements for traffic calming, including give way to oncoming traffic, priority over oncoming traffic, and humps . Also shown in this article are improvements to signs warning of pedestrians, including making the graphic for zebra crosssing actually look like a zebra crossing among other things.

In general, the improvements shown here (as in our other signage improvement articles) are to metricate, and either remove wordy supplementary plates, or to replace wordy supplementary plates with symbolic supplementary plates.

Signage improvements: Give Way and Stop signs

This article focuses on improvements to Give Way and Stop signs, specifically to approach signs.  The Stop sign itself does not need to change, and the approach to stop only needs metrication which alone will make it easier to understand.  The Give Way sign will benefit from not only metrication but being made wholly symbolic (by removing the words Give Way), after all an inverted red triangle always means Give Way and does not need to be translated (for example in Wales).  Example signs to illustrate are shown in this article.

GM soya increases poverty, threatens health in South America

Further to our previous articles about organic food, and about Monsanto and GM, this post is about an article in GM Watch, which in turn showed an English translation of the original Svenska Dagbladet (or SvD for short) news article about the disastrous effects of GM soya cultivation in South America. Indeed, the conversion of South American agriculture to large-scale, industrial farming of genetically modified soya harms the environment, increases poverty, and threatening human health, two leading advocates for small farmers' rights have said to SvD during a visit to Sweden.