nature

The 2012 Ford Focus Electric, 2012 Honda Civic Natural Gas, 2012 Mitsubishi i, 2012 Toyota Prius v, and 2012 Volkswagen Passat TDI are all finalists for 2012 Green Car of the Year, Green Car Journal announced today in a press release.

The winner will be announced during a press conference at a Los Angeles Auto Show press day on November 17. This marks the seventh consecutive year the award has been given out.

Green Car Journal editors considered dozens of models that were designed to reduce their environmental impact and be more energy-efficient. According to the press release, the cars … Read more

NORWOOD, Mass.--Trucks and other fleet vehicles are the unsung heroes in the move to alternative fuels.

Operators of fleet vehicles are important leading-edge users of everything from electric cars to natural gas-fueled trucks, say auto industry analysts. As more auto technologies come to market, fleet operators expect that each will fill a specific role, rather than have one technology fit every need, fleet operators said yesterday at the AltWheels Annual Fleet Day here.

All-electric delivery trucks used for city routes, for example, are more comfortable to drive and are cheaper to fuel compared to convention diesel trucks. Hybrids, meanwhile, … Read more

When your swimsuit goes out of style, you may tuck it away in the closet, toss it in the trash, or donate it to Goodwill. Or, if you have one of designer Linda Loudermilk's new compostable swimsuits, you could just bury it in the garden.

The eco-conscious swimsuits debuted at the Haute Natured sustainable-swimwear show during Fashion Week in Miami this month. The show featured swimming outfits from various designers made from repurposed parachutes, recycled plastic bottles, and wood pulp.

Loudermilk's swimwear is made from plant starch. "Not only can we produce sex appeal from compostable materials, but also classic suits in all sizes in affordable volume with Luxury Eco style," Loudermilk said about her collection.

It can take up to 180 days for the bikinis to break down, once buried underground. That means you should have no fears about your suit melting away into the pool in the middle of a refreshing swim.

Finally, someone is creating swimwear with both bikini models and little old lady gardeners in mind.… Read more

This week's giveaway is really something to talk about. The winner will score Nuance's Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11.5 Home Edition for Windows, an upgrade from Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11.

Nuance promises that the software refresh, released last month, delivers faster, better speech recognition. In fact, the company says this version boasts 15 percent greater accuracy out of the box than Dragon 10, and can reduce recognition errors by up to 35 percent compared with Dragon 9.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11.5 Home Edition also features new voice commands that let you post to Facebook and Twitter (get ready to start talking in 140 characters), along with new formatting and editing commands and more shortcuts.

Normally, Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11.5 Home Edition for Windows would cost $99.99, but you have the chance to get it gratis. That's a great deal for anyone who suffers the perils of too much typing--or really, really likes to talk. … Read more

You get what you pay for, or so the saying goes. In the case of SmoothDraw, that particular truism isn't so true. This free painting and drawing software delivers features and quality that we'd only expect to find in something we'd have to pay for, and we think that anyone who likes to create digital art should check it out.

The program's interface is intuitive, with toolbars down the left side and across the top. SmoothDraw comes with a wide variety of tools, including various pencils, pens, airbrushes, paintbrushes, hatch brushes and so on. There are … Read more

Set in 2054, "Minority Report" revealed a future in which natural user interfaces play a major role. A memorable scene features Tom Cruise controlling a large interactive screen with illuminated gloves, gesturing back and forth to navigate through an NUI.

Less than a decade after the movie hit theaters, we now have Microsoft's $150 Kinect accessory for Xbox 360, which provides a similar experience to the one seen in the movie--without requiring special gloves or a multimillion dollar computer setup.

People have primarily used a mouse and keyboard to interact with computers for decades; this seems silly considering that nearly every other computer component has evolved significantly in the same time frame. Now that the Kinect SDK is available for Windows 7, natural user interfaces have more opportunity than ever to change how we interact with computers.

Supportive technology such as speech recognition (which has already matured greatly, as this week's launch of Google Voice Search for desktop computers highlighted), Microsoft Surface, and 3D Immersive Touch are all stepping stones to something far greater in the evolution of computer interaction. It's inevitable that years from now, aspects of these technologies will work together to free us from pressing keys and clicking buttons.

So, what do you think the most exciting possibilities for natural user interfaces are? Vote in our weekly poll. And please be sure to elaborate in the comments section.… Read more

For natural gas, the stars are aligned for it to play a far more substantial role in the world energy mix, according to a pair of reports this week.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology today published its report on natural gas, which it characterized as an abundant and reasonably priced resource able to act as a bridge to a low-carbon future. The International Energy Agency released its own study (PDF) Monday, where it said natural gas is poised to enter a "golden age."

The key driver for the optimism around natural gas is supply as well as societal … Read more

A power plant planned for Turkey will use a combination of energy sources--wind, solar, and natural gas--to deliver round-the-clock electricity service.

General Electric today said that it will supply the equipment for a 508-megawatt plant to developer MetCap Energy, which expects to complete the project by 2015. The plant in Karaman, Turkey, is projected to power more than 600,000 homes.

The project is unusual in that a single facility will draw on three sources to deliver "baseload" power, or the power needed to meet the continuous energy demand for the area. GE said that the plant's … Read more

When it comes to power plants, General Electric sees natural gas as solar and wind energy's best friend.

GE today said that it has licensed solar thermal technology from California-based eSolar for use in power plants that use both solar and natural gas. As part of the deal, GE has invested an undisclosed amount in eSolar.

Under the agreement, GE will offer a power plant that incorporates eSolar technology with GE's natural-gas turbines designed specifically for operating with large-scale solar and wind installations. The FlexEfficiency combined cycle natural-gas plant is designed to ramp power generation up and down … Read more