The New Flagship University provides an expansive vision for leading national universities and an alternative narrative to global rankings and World Class Universities that dominate the attention of many universities, as well as government ministries. The New Flagship model explores pathways for universities to re-shape their missions and academic cultures, and to pursue organizational features intended to expand their relevancy in the societies that give them life and purpose. In this quest, international standards of excellence focused largely on research productivity are not ignored, but are framed as only one goal towards supporting a university's productivity and larger social purposeānot as an end unto itself.
Ocean waves and tidal currents are one of the most untapped and important, clean, cheap, rich, and reliable sources of renewable energy on the earth.
UC Berkeley professor Reza Alam and his team at the TAF Lab
(Theoretical & Applied Fluid Dynamics Laboratory) have developed a "wave carpet" which can extract the energy of ocean waves and turn it into electricity and freshwater for households and cities.
See the Wave Carpet project on the science crowdfunding site, Microryza: http://bit.ly/1eeBFy2
Video produced by Roxanne Makasdjian & Phil Ebiner
Full story: https://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2014/01/28/seafloor-carpet-catches-waves-to-harness-energy/
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