Page 7 - Green Builder Magazine July 2015 Issue

Green Builder Captures Gold 5

Green Builder Media earns two gold www.greenbuildermedia.com 07.2015
awards in the annual NAREE real
estate journalism competition. CREDIT: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

For the third year running, the National Association of
Real Estate Editors (NAREE) honored Green Builder Media
with the Best Residential Trade Magazine Gold Award at
NAREE’s 65th Annual Journalism Awards. The company
was also presented with the Best Web Site Gold Award. The
competition, which includes such heavy hitters as Inman
News, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times,
recognizes excellence in reporting, writing and editing
stories about residential and commercial real estate.

“We were especially pleased about this year’s win
because it included our year-long Celestia Project, our
vision of living abundantly in the year 2100,” says Matt
Power, Green Builder Magazine’s editor-in-chief. “We took
a lot of risks making forecasts and predictions, but they
seemed to resonate with both our print and online readers.”

A panel of expert judges from the E.W. Scripps School of
Journalism at Ohio University selected this year’s winners.
Here are the judges’ comments: “This magazine has a
clear and reader-friendly design along with strong graphics
and presents data in a useful and accessible format. It
also has striking photography. It addresses an important
audience segment.”

Water Vapor Harnessed for Energy

Columbia University team uses water
vapor-powered engines to generate

Rsmall amounts of electricity.
ESEARCHERS AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
have figured out how to use water vapor
to power tiny engines. The system utilizes
water vapor at room temperature, assisted
by hygroscopy-driven artificial muscles, or
HYDRAs. These tiny “muscles” consist of layers
of bacterial spores overlaid on a series of thin tapes. The
bacteria—and consequently, the tapes—contract and expand
with small changes in relative humidity; this mechanical
energy can be harnessed to produce rotary or piston-like
motion. The engines start and stop automatically when
placed at an air-water interface, and they operate until the
air is saturated. The team used these engines to produce
electricity to power both an LED light and a tiny car. Possible
applications include robotics, sensors and machines that
function in the natural environment.
The Columbia team’s research results were published in
the journal Nature Communications.

Read the full report here: http://bit.ly/1GbIKcB