Jan Lee

Jan Lee splits her residence between the rural lands of Idaho and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Her articles on business, eco-travel, history and culture have been published in the United States, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. Visit her blog at multiculturaljew.polestarpassages.com

Posts by This Writer

3 years 6 months ago

(3BL Media/Justmeans) - Bioplastics is a booming business these days, especially in Europe, where the industry that brought us things like biogradable dishes and recyclable plastic is positioned to grow by more than 300 percent by 2018. Made from renewable sources like corn, vegetable starches and cooking oil, these "green" biobased polymers offer an ingenious replacement to petroleum products that take much longer to break down in landfills and are harder to recycle.

But as many scientists will...
3 years 8 months ago

A woman in Kenya digs drinking water out of the sand.(3BL Media/Justmeans) - When I was a kid traveling with my family in the tropics of Latin America, there were two essential tools my mom and dad insisted we carry: A pot for boiling untreated water and bleach in case there was no way to use the former. Many of the towns and small rural villages we visited didn't offer treated water and my father, who was a clinical nutritionist took pains to educate us on the fact that clean, plentiful water was a luxury. It was our responsibility to ensure that the water we drank...
3 years 8 months ago

(3BL Media/Justmeans) - Could it, or could it not? The perennial discussion as to whether organic food production could actually feed the globe is back at the debate table. And the data culled for this latest report suggests that turning to increased organic food production to feed the globe isn't really a far-fetched idea.

The report, Organic Agriculture for the 21st Century, authored by Washington State University Regents Professor of Soil Science and Agroecology John Reganold and doctoral student Jonathan Wachter, compares the efficacy of organic and non-...
3 years 9 months ago

 

(3BL Media/Justmeans) - Some scientists are calling the El Nino weather that is barreling through Latin America an indicator of what’s to come in the future. And that’s particularly worrisome because the Zika virus’s epic spread in recent months is considered an offshoot of changing weather patterns.

A couple of years ago, when scientists picked up the indicators of a looming El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO – the scientific acronym for the warm, eventually rainy conditions we call El Niño), some predicted that global warming and climate change could intensify the phenomena. That’s because...
4 years 3 months ago

(3Bl Media/Justmeans) - In a windy, protected sound off the north coast of Scotland ,a power generator is being built to harness energy from Scotland’s most abundant resource: the ocean. The generator is owned by MeyGen, majority-owned by Atlantis Resources, LTD, and is slated to be the largest tidal array in the world, with the capacity to power as many as 175,000 homes. Plans are for 269 turbines to churn the water below the ocean’s surface, in what experts say surprisingly, is the most stable environment in which to generate electricity.

Some 350...
4 years 4 months ago

(3BL Media/Justmeans) - This summer, a small armada of vessels from all over the globe will converge in the Pacific Ocean. Their arrival is expected to herald what arguably can be called one of the more creative environmental cleanup projects. As many as fifty boats consisting of everything from research vessels to private cruisers, sailboats and commercial fishing vessels will track the Pacific's Great Garbage Patch as it makes its rocky journey through currents between Hawaii and the California coastline.

The mega exploration, as the team at the nonprofit organization, The Ocean...
4 years 7 months ago

(3BL Media/Justmeans) - Kraft Food Group's (KRFT) stocks continue to show improvement   after its announcement that it has accepted a merger with H.J. Heinz Co. The buyout by Brazilian corporation 3G Capital Partners sets the groundwork for the world's third-largest food company, Kraft Heinz Co. The $35 billion is expected to have annual revenue of more than $28 billion.

Kraft is best known for its buffet of instant-style macaroni, nuts and cheese products. Many of those products have continued to show strong sales despite the increased success of organic and "healthier"...
4 years 8 months ago

(3BL Media/Justmeans) - The concept of a flying car has always seemed like an intangible hallmark of technological progress. Even when the Hollywood sleeper Blade Runner broke on to the screen in the 1980s showcasing a mocked-up version of a flying taxi (and a much younger and grittier looking Harrison Ford), the concept of a flying car seemed more fantacy than plausible.

But not any more.

Slovakian designer AeroMobil has unveiled the prototype of the world's first flying car, a...
4 years 8 months ago

(3BL Media/Justmeans) - Gesture recognition technology has been fascinating researchers for years. The concept that we could one day control the TV, sound system and utilities in our homes with a wave of a hand, has helped to transform the home entertainment market.

It’s also fascinated consumers, whose drive for “smarter” homes has been helping to make gesture recognition into a billion-dollar industry.

Last November, Israeli pioneer eyeSight Technologies released its latest success: "singlecue." Formerly named "onecue," the tabletop-size device allows the user...
4 years 9 months ago

(3BL Media/Justmeans) - Solar and wind installations were on the rise last year, thanks in part to the gradual introduction of the federal Clean Energy Plan, which was formally unveiled last year. Areas like the Pacific region and the New England states saw the greatest gain in new construction in 2014, according to the 2015 Sustainable Energy Business Factbook (Bloomberg New Energy Finance and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy), which points out that while utility-grade construction has helped to create this uptick, the value of small-...