Category: Design and Technology

Design and Technology

Can ceramics make our air cleaner?

Take a look at out your front window at the smog that hangs in the distance. Then direct your gaze at the ceramic vase on your coffee table. There’s an unexpected link between the two ? one may eventually come to deal with the scourge of the other.
Scientists in Britain have developed a way to use ceramic to potentially slash the amount of climate-changing greenhouse gases pumped into our atmosphere by fossil fuel-fired power plants, which continue to dominate the electricity-generation landscape in North America.

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Design and Technology

Ottawa can’t shift green rebates into gear

More than four months after announcing rebates for those who buy fuel-sipping cars and trucks, the federal government has not paid a cent to buyers of 2006 and 2007 models that qualify, and automakers are voicing complaints as 2008 models flow on to dealers’ lots.
The ecoAuto feebate program set up in the March federal budget, offers rebates of up to $2,000 and also slaps a maximum levy of $4,000 on gas guzzlers. But it is angering consumers and growing increasingly messy for the auto companies, associations representing the major automakers operating in Canada say in a letter to Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Environment Minister John Baird.

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