Making art is hardly easy. We struggle to express truth among the ruins of our culture, to bring beauty into disordered lives. Sometimes, circumstances just roll over us, flattening our creative energies.

What can we do? Much, because the Word became flesh.

At the beginning, our Triune God had worked with such joy and wisdom that his material world was drenched with goodness. Unalloyed goodness. Indeed, we were the pinnacle of his workmanship. But, we crashed…and shattered the relational intimacy for which he had designed us.

End of story? No, there is hope, because the Word became flesh. God’s goodness has graced us. In Jesus, he has freshly dignified our bodies and lifted up the material world.

AEVIA Reveals the Source

The sun has produced energy for billions of years. Solar energy is the solar radiation that reaches the earth. This energy can be converted directly or indirectly into other forms of energy, such as heat and electricity. It is used for heating water for domestic use, space heating of buildings, drying agricultural products, and generating electrical energy.

Solar energy supplies electricity to several hundred thousand people around the world, provides employment for over ten thousand and generates business worth more than one billion dollars. In the future, the pace of change and progress could be even more rapid as the solar industry unlocks its hidden promise.

The benefits of solar power are compelling: environmental protection, economic growth, job creation, diversity of fuel supply and rapid deployment, as well as the global potential for technology transfer and innovation.

The underlying advantage of solar energy is that the fuel is free, abundant and inexhaustible. The total amount of energy irradiated from the sun to the earth’s surface is enough to provide more than 10,000 times the annual global energy consumption. Yet these benefits remain largely untapped; most energy decisions today overlook solar power as a modular technology that can be rapidly deployed to generate electricity close to the point of consumption. Phasing in solar photovoltaics therefore requires a shift from centralized to decentralized power production, offering far greater control to individual consumers.

AEVIA Reveals the Source

In manufacturing terms, exponential population growth means more factories taking up more land, using more raw materials, and allowing more emissions and waste into the environment. Demand for products and services will grow, but the availability of supplies isn’t guaranteed. Competition for Earth’s finite resources will heat up and it’s easy, yet unsettling, to imagine the socio-economic and political consequences.

A variable-speed drive saves energy that the La Union sugar mill in Guatemala is able to sell for additional revenue of $158,480 per harvest season. Source: Rockwell
A variable-speed drive saves energy that the La Union sugar mill in Guatemala is able to sell for additional revenue of $158,480 per harvest season. Source: Rockwell

“To achieve and maintain world-class sustainable manufacturing, you need continuous improvement – not just of your capital assets but the utilization and return on your raw materials, utilities and human resource assets as well,” says John Blanchard, principal analyst for CPG industries at ARC Advisory Group. “Manufacturing companies should recognize that it will become increasingly difficult for manufacturing operations to drive new growth and margin without considering manufacturing ‘sustainability’ in their business decisions.”

The benefits are practical as well as financial. Blanchard explains, “Maximizing the utilization of assets always brings a return on investment. If you can bring a packaging line from 50% efficiency to 80% efficiency without buying new equipment or using more energy, then you have reduced the cost per unit of product and demonstrated one of many approaches toward achieving world-class sustainable manufacturing.”

AEVIA Reveals the Source

Looking for creative depth, poetry, substance, thoughtfulness and leadership in both the culture and the Body of Christ, many believing artists have left evangelical churches and connected with higher liturgical ones. Others have stayed, and find great joy in serving the community of faith in worship leadership or in other expressions of creative worship leadership. Still others are on many places of a continuum in between. They feel like something is missing in themselves, in Christian worldview, in Church as they’ve come to know it, and yet they are tethered to the Body of Christ, knowing it is ultimately the only safe place to growth in health and faith over the course of a lifetime.

A Groaning For Growth, A Desire For Depth

A range of these glories and challenges have been met with the grace and self-reflection for which the ever-emerging Church seems to have a historical capacity. At other times, confusion has arisen in the ranks accompanied by stinging, salty tears, deep divisions and virulent language. Those internal twistings and turnings (much like in any family) have caused many to become quite theologically and culturally conversant in our time, eager to hear from the Scriptures, but also eager to shed extraneous theological baggage the unduly threatens our credibility in a cultural milieu in which adamant faith is increasingly marginalized.

Influencers within the Church who might be called “creative” or “artistic” in their way of being in the world have often led the charge in the quest for a faith that remains both biblical and orthodox, yet challenges the theologies and worldviews that marginalize us from culture, denigrate the dignity of all human beings, and stifle the wild edges of creative action that should inherently mark a Body made in the image of the PanCreator of all things.

AEVIA Reveals the Source

Andrew Bishop of Noggins Corner Farm has turned a quarter-of-an-acre of his cherry crop into an experiment under sheltering tunnels. The 14-foot tunnels arc over the cherry trees, protecting them from birds and rain. Since installing the tunnels, Bishop says these problems are close to non-existent. His trees get water from a small irrigation system, but also from rainwater running through the sloped orchard.

Bishop is helping Josh Oulton recreate his success on a larger, two-acre scale. Oulton’s trees are not yet in production, but the rows of saplings have been planted with their tunneled destiny in mind, growing more ergonomically within the space constraints of the tunnels.

Oulton and Bishop are hoping, in a few years’ time, these trees will see the same – or better – return. The plastic covering the metal structures of the tunnels will go on a bit before they bloom on their first producing season, and stay until after the harvest. The tunnels have to be tough enough to withstand winds, rain – and sometimes even snow, but flexible enough to allow for venting when the trees get too hot.

This new method of cherry production is an example of the diversification farmers must incorporate to stay alive. Bringing in large, flavorful cherries by way of innovative growing techniques is another way small farm markets can offer their customers more choice when they choose to buy local, which seems to be the trend with conscientious shoppers.

Tooling Up for Hydroponics

Specifically designed and built to meet the requirements of Higashi Nihon Ferry, the Incat 112 metre Natchan Rera (Incat Hull 064) delivers a craft well equipped to handle the demanding challenges of a providing a vital ferry service between the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido.

In 1998 Incat conceived that a larger Wave Piercing Catamaran was required to fill a market niche for a larger high speed ferry. After several years of research the 112 metre design emerged as a ship capable of meeting or exceeding all design brief goals.

The Natchan Rera is the first physical result of that research. Ordered in May 2006 the new craft will operate at speeds of approximately 40 knots while offering capacity for up to 355 cars or 450 lane metres of trucks and 193 cars. While Incat’s 112 metre design can accommodate up to 1500 persons the Natchan Rera’s luxurious accommodation has been custom designed and laid out to cater for 800 persons in high levels of luxurious style and comfort.

The largest catamaran ever built in Australia the new ferry will provide greater seakeeping qualities and passenger comfort, even over the world-renowned Incat 98 metre class, on this often turbulent crossing.

The Natchan Rera is powered by four MAN 20V 28/33D diesel engines, each rated 9000 kW at 1000 rpm and delivering a low weight when compared to other engines in its class. The advantages of engine durability, efficiency, low noise and low maintenance costs make it the engine of choice for Incat vessels, not least of all impressive fuel consumption, burning less kg per cargo tonne per hour than any other high speed catamaran. The ship will burn a very frugal 120 grams of fuel for every tonne of cargo per mile travelled.
AEVIA Reveals the Source

The seven projects to receive funding from the Carbon Trust are:

* Aluminium smelting technology with the potential to reduce energy consumption by up to 20% – Coventry University
* Technology to explode paint into moulds, eliminating the need for paint shops in the manufacture of plastic components – Warwick Manufacturing Group
* Energy efficient kilns, which could reduce the energy used in the manufacture of ceramics – Horizon Ceramics
* Natural ventilation systems for large buildings with the potential of halving the energy used by conventional mechanically ventilated buildings – e-stack Ltd.
* Testing of new fully automated biomass combined heat and power unit – Biomass CHP Ltd.
* Steam trap performance sensors with the potential for reducing carbon emissions by more than 750,000 tonnes over ten years – Spirax Sarco Ltd.
* New generation of ultra bright LEDs with improved life expectancy and massive carbon savings over traditional lighting – GlowLed Ltd.
AEVIA Reveals the Source

New phosphors can lead to improved color rendering and significant energy savings in high-efficiency, led-activated lamps and displays according to a project report by the U.S. Department of Energy. The report is available as a PDF through the “Reveals the Source” link below.

AEVIA Reveals the Source

On April 12 the Ellsworth (Maine) American reported that an Ellsworth housewife, Brandy Bridges, dropped and shattered a fluorescent tube-bulb on the carpeted floor in her daughter’s bedroom. Aware that compact fluorescent light bulbs [CFLs) are potentially hazardous, Bridges called the local Home Depot store to ask for advise. Home Depot told her that the CFL contained mercury and advised her to call the Poison Control hotline.

The hotline had her contact the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. The DEP sent Andrew Smith, a toxicologist, to her home. He sealed the room with plastic and told Bridges it would cost about $2,000 to clean up the mess. The levels of mercury toxicity in the downstairs living area were safely under 300 ng/m3. However, the mercury levels spiked to 1,939 ng/m3 in Shayley Bridges bedroom. Bridges daughter could not sleep there because of the toxicity levels were too great. Bridges, a single mom with an overcrowded house and limited financial means, filed a claim on her home owner’s policy. The insurance company denied the claim because mercury is a pollutant that wasn’t covered in her policy.

On April 23 of this year, the Utilities and Commerce Committee voted 7 to 2 to bring to the floor of the California Assembly a measure than would ban the sale, distribution or use of incandescent light bulbs in the State.

AEVIA Reveals the Source

Fewer than one percent of architects in the latest survey of the American Institute of Architects (500 of 58,000 members) listed affordable housing as a primary interest. It takes vision, innovation, and dedication to reconcile good environmental practices with cost-consciousness. Knitting person-centered and earth-conscious values together with affordability and universal access is not unattainable or frivolous. Low-cost housing developers are beginning to accept the creative challenge of finding sustainable solutions to good design, good health, and affordability.

AEVIA Reveals the Source