Inhabitat’s Week in Green: salad spinners, diapers, and solutions to the Deepwater catastrophe

The Week in Green is a new item from our friends at Inhabitat, recapping the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us.

This week renewable energy received a giant jolt forward as Google unveiled plans to invest $40 million in North Dakota wind farms. Solar power is also having a moment in the sun as MIT unveiled the world’s first solar cells printed on paper – we can’t wait to see a post-it version that we can stick to our walls! Meanwhile a team of Swiss researchers are harnessing rays of light for an entirely different purpose — they’ve figured out a way to create rain clouds by shooting laser beams into the sky.

With the Deepwater Horizon oil spill still saturating the sea weeks after the leak sprung, we also looked at an array of innovative solutions for cleaning up the catastrophe. The first step to stemming the spill’s damage is predicting its spread, which is why scientists are harnessing advanced virtual reality models to aid in cleanup efforts. We also took a look at the BP’s first massive oil containment dome, which the company plans to lower 5,000 feet below the sea to plug up the leak.

This week we also looked at several ingenious inventions that find incredible new uses for everyday items. Two students at Rice University have transformed a simple salad spinner into a centrifuge that can save lives by diagnosing diseases, and a Japanese company called Super Faith has invented a machine that can transform used adult diapers into an energy source.

Finally, we were dazzled by two high-tech garments that harness LEDs to light up the night. Katy Perry recently took to the red carpet wearing a shimmering gown studded with thousands of blinking rainbow lights, and we were impressed by this LED-laden coat that keeps bicyclists safe when they hit the streets at night.

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: salad spinners, diapers, and solutions to the Deepwater catastrophe originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 May 2010 03:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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