The Health-Conscious and Eco-Friendly Chair

Herman Miller has created what might just be the ultimate computer chair. The Embody chair was designed with expert advice from Physicians and PhDs to not only be comfortable but also be good for ones health and environmentally friendly at the same time. The Embody is said to greatly improve oxygen flow and even reduce your heart rate. The chair promotes good posture, something that can be extremely beneficial for those who spend countless hours in front of a computer. The back of the Embody was built to mimic the spine and is constantly active and can conform to your back through a full range of motions

In addition to its amazing ergonomics, the Embody chair is 95% recyclable, has 42% recycled content, and contains no PVCs. The Embody is Cradle-to-Cradle silver certified, GREENGUARD certified and can even provide credits for LEED certification.

The one major downside of the chair is its hefty price, around $1,600 dollars. Although expensive, the Embody is an extremely well crafted and thought out chair, that is not only comfortable and good for your health, but also better for the environment, they don’t get much better than that.

For more information check out Herman Millers Website

Graphene Promises Increased Energy Savings and Even Greater Storage Capacity

A new discovery by researchers at Rice University promises to be a game changer for the electronics industry. Graphene, which is naturally found in graphite, has been developed into a cutting edge, robust solid-state drive that is said to have a five-fold increase in storage capacity all while using far less energy.

The graphene layers have been engineered to hold circuitry around the size of 5 to 10 nanometers, compared to the 45-nanometer scale in today’s state of the art drives. In addition to the increased space on each 10 atom thick strip of graphene, the layers can be stacked on top of each other further multiplying the overall storage capacity.

If its storage capacity wasn’t exciting enough, the graphene strips work much like an e-ink device; the chips consume virtually no power but still keep data intact. This has huge implications for the comparably power hungry storage devices found in our cell phones and computers today. Graphene generates little heat, has been successfully tested in extreme temperatures, and is even resistant to radiation. Needless to say, large corporations around the world are watching this technology very closely. With its long life, huge potential storage capacity, and energy sipping properties, graphene drives will surely become an indispensable part of our electronics in the years to come.

For more on the graphene drive check out the Rice University Website

Dell Changing the Bulbs

As part of its “commitment to become the ‘greenest’ technology company on the planet”, Dell has announced its intent to convert its entire line of laptop displays to LED technology by 2010, with 80% of models achieving this goal by end of 2009.  Considering the numerous benefits associated with such a move, from ceasing the use of mercury-laden cold cathode fluorescents, to dramatically increasing energy efficiency, while decreasing the heat generation of the computers themselves,  there is certainly reason for laptop users to rejoice.  Hopefully this is a sign of things to come, not just for other computer and electronics manufacturers who will surely do the same, but for manufacturers of all lighting-related technologies, which could make the cumbersome process of mercury sequestration for recycled CFLs a short-lived challenge.  Currently, Apple has transitioned a number of its products to LED technology, and intends to do so for its entire product line in the future, and Hewlett Packard offers a few of their models with optional LED displays.  Surely however, such a dramatic move by Dell will only make them move faster in that regard, leaving the laptop user and the environment to benefit from a competitive ramp-up in “green computing”.  It appears that Dell has heeded the call to become more environmentally friendly, so we can only look forward to more environmentaly friendly yet business-savvy initiatives like this.

Dell

Dell’s press release