The Conscious Vibe

France decrees new rooftops must be covered in plants or solar panels

Rooftops on new buildings built in commercial zones in France must either be partially covered in plants or solar panels, under a law approved on Thursday.

Green roofs have an isolating effect, helping reduce the amount of energy needed to heat a building in winter and cool it in summer.

They also retain rainwater, thus helping reduce problems with runoff, while favouring biodiversity and giving birds a place to nest in the urban jungle, ecologists say.

The law approved by parliament was more limited in scope than initial calls by French environmental activists to make green roofs that cover the entire surface mandatory on all new buildings.

The Socialist government convinced activists to limit the scope of the law to commercial buildings.

The law was also made less onerous for businesses by requiring only part of the roof to be covered with plants, and giving them the choice of installing solar panels to generate electricity instead.

Green roofs are popular in Germany and Australia, and Canada’s city of Toronto adopted a by-law in 2009 mandating them in industrial and residential buildings.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson's best quotes may make you fall in love with science all over again

If you've ever listened to StarTalk radio, then you'll know that its host, famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, has a great sense of humor.

But deGrasse Tyson also has a serious side, which he reveals time and again in his books, shows, Twitter page, and popular science articles.

Often, deGrasse Tyson's humor strikes a serious chord that not only makes us laugh but also think. As a popular science educator, deGrasse Tyson is out to inspire generations of innovators to reach for the stars.

While it's tough to narrow down his best quotes, we've taken a stab here. We've also paired some of them with photos of the most impressive science projects of our age:

This is what the entire universe looks like in one image

Logarithms help us make sense of huge numbers, and in this case, huge distances. Rather than showing all parts of the universe on a linear scale, each chunk of the circle represents a field of view several orders of magnitude larger than the one before it. That's why the entire observable universe can fit inside the circle.

Budassi got the idea after making hexaflexagons for his son's birthday one year. (If you haven't seen a hexaflexagon in action, get ready to have your mind blown.)

I Gave Up Alcohol For 31 Days. Here's How It Transformed My Life

Just over a year ago, I was at the airport, returning home from a business trip to London and feeling like crap from the night before. It hit me that l'd been drinking more than I had ever intended.

I realized I desperately needed to reevaluate my relationship with alcohol. In London, I had heard of a new tradition, a government-sponsored initiative called “Dry January." In short, you pledge to take the month off booze while also raising money for charity. Although I would be spending January in the States, I decided to give it a try. I hoped it would help me transform my overall drinking habits.

I quickly realized that approaching the challenge as if it were an “alcohol diet" would be torture. Instead, I need to change my mentality — focusing not on giving up alcohol but on what’s so great about not drinking.

Floating Seabin trash collector could rid the oceans of plastic waste

The automated Seabin marine waste collector demonstrates how sometimes the simplest solutions are the most effective. The rubbish bin, designed to float in marinas, inland waterways, residential lakes and harbors, catches floating debris and liquids by sucking water from the surface and letting if flow out through the bottom of the structure, trapping waste in a catch bag. The designers have even used plastics caught in their first Seabin to create another waste collector. They are now looking to bring the prototype into production through an Indiegogo campaign, where you can make a pledge and help Seabin rid the oceans of waste.

THE COUNTRY OF COSTA RICA RAN ON 99 PERCENT RENEWABLE ENERGY IN 2015

As arguments rage on over whether global warming is anthropogenic or not, the country of Costa Rica just one-upped the rest of the world and achieved 99 percent renewable energy during 2015. Primarily making use of its large river systems and heavy annual rainfall, the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) formally announced that285 days were fossil fuel-less this past year. Moreover, ICE even said 2015 was a relatively dry year for Costa Rica, indicating a potentially easy path for other countries to achieve similar success.

Despite the positivity stemming from such an accomplishment, the country isn’t complacent. Instead, The Costa Rican government remains focused on becoming completely carbon neutral by 2021. In addition to going carbon neutral and officially achieving 100 percent renewable energy, it also plans on cleaning up energy consumption as a whole, staying particularly concentrated on removing fossil fuel dependence from its transportation sector. It also intends on moving away from hydropower dependence by increasing its number of geothermal plants and finding energy from other sources.

Solar-Powered Pod That Allows You to Live Anywhere is Now For Sale

This past spring, we introduced the Ecocapsule, a mobile micro dwelling that allows you to live off-the-grid, anywhere in the world. Developed by Nice Architects, this solar-powered shelter concept has recently come to fruition and hit the market—it’s currently available for pre-order as part of a limited-edition run of 50 pods.

The Ecocapsule comes clad in an insulated fiberglass, rooftop solar panels, and an aluminum shell with four wheels for easy transport. In addition, it has two hooks on the roof to allow for other transportation options: the pod can be moved or dropped in place via a crane or helicopter.

The Internet Allowed Us to Learn Anything—VR Will Let Us Experience Everything

I have something to admit—to this day, I’m in awe of Wikipedia. Humanity has created a massive repository of our knowledge available for free to anyone with an Internet connection. All of our presidents and kings, theories and discoveries, just waiting to be read about and discovered. About once a month I’ll lose an afternoon to some obscure topic.

It’s not just Wikipedia, though. The Internet has liberated information from the constraints of the physical world and essentially made the sharing of information free and unlimited for everyone. From communicating with friends on free Skype calls to taking university-level classes on Coursera and Udacity, our current access and connectivity dwarfs anything we’ve seen before.

Man Recovering from Cancer Discusses the Healing of Magic Mushrooms

Cannabis: The Central Practice of Terence McKenna’s Life

Terence McKenna smoked cannabis for the first time during Easter vacation in 1965 when he was 18 years old. He had inherited “the programming,” as he called it, from his “middle class straight parents” that “the road to hell was paved” with cannabis. But he had also read Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and others who had been more specific, informative, and curious about the plant. It took McKenna “a couple, or three” encounters with cannabis before he figured out what it was doing to him. As an adolescent, he’d been “what they call ‘a nervous child’”; now, as a young adult, it came to him “with the force of a revelation” that:

“The mere smoking of a small amount of vegetable material could completely invert the structures of my personality and socialize me, as it were, into a reasonably functioning member of the community in which I found myself.”

Robert Waldinger: What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness

What keeps us happy and healthy as we go through life? If you think it's fame and money, you're not alone – but, according to psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, you're mistaken. As the director of a 75-year-old study on adult development, Waldinger has unprecedented access to data on true happiness and satisfaction. In this talk, he shares three important lessons learned from the study as well as some practical, old-as-the-hills wisdom on how to build a fulfilling, long life.

THIS ARTIST CAPTURES THE UNIVERSE INSIDE THESE BEAUTIFUL GLASS PENDANTS

Japanese glass artist Satoshi Tomizu manages to create wonderful cosmic scenes by encasing the universe in orbs of glass that are no larger than the human eye. His pendants are known as Space Glass. Each of them is unique and has breathtaking detail. It’s like a mesmerizing microcosm that can be held in the palm of your hand.

Each bauble is blown with a durable glass loop allowing one to wear their personal space-scape around their neck if they wish. Below is  a photograph collection of just a few of Tomizu’s completed works followed by a video of Tomizu’s process in creating his beautiful cosmos orbs and another offering close-up footage of the finished product.

To see more of Tozu’s work, visit: plusalpha-glass.com | facebook