September 2007
The Kerala Model
Bill McKibben on Kerala from a few years ago.
So… Kerala. Avg income of, what, $300 a year, with long life, high literacy, and general decency.
Why does it work?
I’m not sure this article has the core of the thing. I’m not sure anybody does.
Needs further analysis.
More press on the Hexayurt at Burning Man
Kris Vagner writing on Burning Man for the Reno News and Review
This year, the Sugar Cubers are taking a break from building demos, but expect to see examples of the gleaming Hexayurt. It looks like a cross between a solar oven and a space-age yurt. It’s designed by a Scottish-Indian-Icelandic architect named Vinya Gupta and made of insulated silver panels and tape. It’s light enough to be carried by two people but sturdy and efficient enough that it’s being taken seriously by the American Red Cross and the Department of Defense as a form of emergency shelter.
Awwwww. 
D. Brian Burghart for the Chico News and Review
Sending a good message at the Silicon Village camp were representatives of PlayaTech and HexaYurt.
HexaYurt is nothing short of fantastic.
And they go on to say lots more nice things, as well as discussing the Playatech furniture and interviewing Sunshine.
Anyway, I was really pleased with these pieces - very nice things said, and they got the general picture right.
I’m still waiting for somebody to pick up the Networked Domestic Disaster Response plan, for doing mass evacuation, earthquake, flood, terror etc. response using the existing building supplies sitting on loading docks all over America to house maybe up to half a million Americans per day in the even of a massive crisis. It’s not a scheme that works abroad because of the way our building industry works, but here it’s a very plausible plan.
The Hexayurt on the Playa
The Hexayurt they built on the playa (pic from Tonx, click for origional)
They did a really nice job on it - wish I’d been there!
If you’re wondering what a hexayurt is and why it won the Treehugger Prize the answer is simple: it’s a cheap shelter for refugees that would cost about $100 in mass production, and it can be made from environmentally friendly materials. And it’s an open source project, no product, no patents, so anybody can build one, including you.
Full details at that link.
There’s also a well-accredited plan for using hexayurts for evacuating the Bay Area or other areas in the event of natural disasters. That’s at the link too, and is worth a read.
Same day visit medical scheduling algorithms
Slate on Operational Research in a medical environment
The road to reform is called “open access” (or “advanced access” or “same-day scheduling”). Dozens of papers have been published showing how practices around the country have done it, starting in 2000, when Dr. Mark Murray and colleague Catherine Tantau wrote about their experience of reducing the wait at a Kaiser Permanente clinic near Sacramento from 55 days to just one. Since then, clinics in Texas, Illinois, Minnesota, and elsewhere have similarly cut down patients’ waiting times. The Palo Alto Medical Foundation offers same-day appointments, as does the Veterans Administration, the Mayo Clinic, and even some solo physicians.
Fixing the division between Solar Water Pasteurization (heat) and Solar Water Disinfection (UV)
Here it is.
Now, what this is, you see, is a tube that looks a lot like a fluorescent light tube.
But, actually, it’s double walled. The inside wall is black, the outside wall is clear, and there’s a vacuum between the two. It’s a big flask, but clear rather than being either silvered or made of stainless steel.
Here’s how it works.
Energy from the sun falls as photons. They pass straight through the clear glass outside tube, then hit the black surface, and get turned into heat - vibrating atoms. The vibrating atoms can’t pass their vibration on to neighboring atoms because of the vacuum. there are simple no atoms to vibrate.
So the heat that fell from the sky is now trapped inside of the tube, and it can’t get out, except by black body radiation - some infrared is emitted by the tube.
But if the tube was surrounded by a partial reflector, which concentrated the sun, and also reflected back that heat, this might be an absurdly efficient energy collection device.
So, that’s the tube as it stands.
Here is the refinement for water purification purposes.
Now, here’s the kicker. Glass can be adjusted in many aspects. One of them is the amount of UV light which will pass through the glass. So if somebody can make a glass which absorbs visible light but lets UV light straight through, it should now be possible to create a highly efficient solar water purification system which combines the UV purification of SODIS and the pasteurization of Solar Water Pasteurization.
Now, glass is delicate, and this sounds expensive, but it might be one of those things which produced by the mile of product is fairly cheap. And these units would last until broken.
Interesting. Heeger’s solar panels may make all this academic (think UV leds in a world with nearly-free electrical power anywhere there is daylight) but that does not mean this is not worth thinking about.
Extending Lifestraw
Lifestraw is a water purifier.
It’s a plastic tube filled with magic. You suck on one end, and out comes clean drinking water from the other.
Just one problem: kids younger the five, the elderly, some kinds of disabled people, people who are really sick cannot use one. And, hello, that’s actually your most vulnerable population.
This is a major, major issue: the lifestraw cannot protect the people you who are most likely to die.
It’s not a hard fix.
It’s a plastic tube, about three feet long. You stick one end over the lifestraw. You suck on the other end. The tube fills up with liquid.
If you want more protection, use a shaped piece of plastic, like a bottle. Have the mouth of the person sucking on the tube a fair distance from the water accumulating in the reservoir, perhaps incorporating a goose neck or even a valve so that you don’t get contamination from the person sucking in the water supply.
When the reservoir is filled enough, pour the water out, probably by disconnecting the bottle from the lifestraw, but possibly by unscrewing a cap on the side and pouring the water out there (or a spigot would do.)
Simple, elegant, cheap - distribute 10% as many of these as lifestraws and you should be fine.
An even better approach is to disconnect the reservoir from the lifestraw and hand it to the person who will use it, so that the clean water is not poured into a dirty container. How to prevent bacterial recontamination of the water in the container is a hard problem, but Microban might be the answer. This might also have applications for the Potters for Peace Filtron.
Addis
This guy caused us no end of inconvenience. The Hexayurt was in the pavilion because we won the Treehugger contest, and the Pavilion was closed all week because somebody, Addis allegedly, set the Man on fire.
That was a big deal. Far fewer people got exposed to the technology, and to the hope it offers, that should have been. However you dice it, it was a category A lost opportunity, and there have been far, far too many of those where this project is concerned.
But then you listen to what he has to say.
I want to dislike him, but he’s right. We’re partying in the desert - or at least you are, I got deported - and there’s a war on, and people are dying.
More than that I can’t say but it’s a thought.
STANDARRD - new group blog
STANDARRD which is a group of sustainable technology people including most of Appropedia, Mel from OLPC, Smari from Fablabs, Andy from Sleepbreeze, the folks from TIDES (national defense university), and Lindsey and myself from the Hexayurt project, of course.
Should be fairly low volume, mainly dedicated to personal and project updates, and that mostly by links home to the respective main blogs.
Enjoy, and please subscribe!
Immigration
Another horrible immigration disaster
a lot like mine, goddammit.
Comments Page on The Hexayurt Project homepage
The Hexayurt Project home page has a link to this page so that you can comment and discuss the hexayurt and associated ideas.
Enjoy,
Vinay
PS: comments are moderated and I can’t figure out how to turn it off so you can see your post immediately for just this post, so I’ll keep an eye on the que so you can chat.