Environmentalists rejoice, progress is being made to remove lab mice from their questionable occupations. In Europe—and especially France—the highly successful cosmetic industry is facing new legislation regarding animal testing. While no formal ban has yet come into effect, manufacturers are rapidly trying to find a replacement for these tiny test subjects.

Soon to be on the market are glass chips by Douglas Clark, a professor at the University of California. Douglas’ chips are composed of two glass slides containing human cells from skin or other organs within the human body. Cosmetics would then be applied to the slide and potential reactions could be predicted from the death or disease of the cells.

While these slides (called Meta and DataChips) show a lot of promise for research and product development, these state-of-the-art slides have their short comings. These chips are not adequate predictors of cancer growths or changes in appetite and subtle development. Regardless of their shortcomings, the creation of these tissue slides marks a great move from primitive testing methods to the testing of the future.

Recently, I have been scouting locations for a party in south Florida. During my quest for a venue suitable to a crowd of 60+ I came across a wonderful little park in Boca Raton. Monday through Saturday this park is open from 8am until 11 pm and the cost for one of the park’s pavilions is only $16 for county residents.

The park has basketball courts, playgrounds, fitness trails, softball and baseball fields, and 17 tennis courts. The park is beautiful and well maintained, and I have to wonder, how on Earth does it stay this way? I’ve seen city parks before, and they are either too sparse to be usable or too dirty to be pleasant. Yet this park has multiple fields and is still a wonderful and clean place to bring your kids.

Making this park even better is its complete ban on smoking and alcohol, and it has a park-wide lightning prediction system. Those other city parks need to turn their eyes to Patch Reef, not only is it safe but it’s fun. Finally, a decent place and clam place to escape our otherwise hectic city.

Alternative energy sources, wind power, water power, solar power. These methods are lauded by some and condemned by others. One in particular, wind power, has potential for wide spread use—just about everywhere has wind—but because of space demands and mechanical inefficacy many places will never see a day of wind powered products; until now at least.

The Windbelt, a new generation of wind harvesters, can bring an easy, dependable, and durable way to harness wind power. The Windbelt is a small mechanism composed of a frame with a tight membrane stretching from end to end. At each end of the frame has metal coils on the inside top and bottom. Affixed to the membrane between these coils is a small magnet that moves up and down as the wind blows. This design allows for maximum wind power with little energy lost to friction and resistance.

The Windbelt is the brain child of Shawn Frayne, a 28 year old MIT grad, who saw a need while volunteering in Haiti. Inventions like Shawn’s are a godsend to the average $2 a day worker in Haiti. Shawn’s success is not surprising seeing his education. At MIT, Shawn studied under another inventive scientist, Amy Smith. Smith is a professor at MIT who does her part in rural Brazil, Haiti, and India with inventions such as sugar cane charcoal and electricity-free incubators. Its great to see that science and innovation does not need to come with a million dollar price tag.

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