johnsonic

Moodle is a Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It is a Free web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites. - johnsonic

PHPXref is a developer tool that's designed to ease the process of working on large PHP projects by making it very fast and easy to browse the code documentation along with the code itself. - johnsonic

A major difference between OCLC and the Open Library is that OCLC is building a catalog to share among libraries, while Open Library is building a catalog to share freely and openly with the public, with the hope that this will get more people involved in using libraries and, in the long run, generate new data that will be useful to the library community.-- One web page for every book. The Internet Archive and OCLC have discussed working together, and hopefully this will yield a joint project, but nothing has been finalized yet. The plans for Open Library have been actively shared with OCLC and its records are available to OCLC. - johnsonic

Project Gutenberg is the place where you can download over 33,000 free ebooks to read on your PC, iPad, Kindle, Sony Reader, iPhone, Android or other portable device. - johnsonic

Republican and Democratic senators expressed support May 12 for a voluntary retrofit program to increase the use of cleaner-burning diesel engines, and one senator went a step further by introducing legislation to help reduce air pollution from off-road diesel equipment used on federally funded highway projects. - johnsonic

In lobbying Obama to enact the highest CAFE bogey currently under consideration, the groups say the move would save an average family some $513 over a typical summer of driving, based on $4-per-gallon gasoline. But at what price? The government estimates it would cost auto makers about $3,500 per vehicle to meet the 62-mpg standard – about seven summers of savings under the environmentalists’ modeling. And that’s the conservative estimate. Others peg the tab closer to $10,000, suggesting the industry would need to rely heavily on expensive electrification to meet such an extreme mileage goal. - johnsonic

The report finds that TCMs affect GHG emissions in four specific ways: one, by changing the number of trips drivers take; two, by changing the vehicle miles traveled per trip; three, by changing the manner in which people move (including taking transit); and four, by changing the speed of travel. According to the report, TCMs that would result in “a measurable regional reduction in automobile trips and [vehicle miles traveled] are those which affect regional mode share and speeds, and would consequently have the highest impact on regional emissions.” - johnsonic

Earlier this year, ARB, EPA and the U.S. Department of Transportation agreed to roll out their standards for 2016 to 2025 by Sept. 1. All those agencies are currently in the process of assessing technologies and weighing how high to push the next round of emissions levels. - johnsonic

The DOE plan is being released as the administration is touting the role of corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards developed jointly by EPA and Dept. of Transportation (DOT) as a key driver in the development of cleaner vehicle technologies such as advanced battery-powered vehicles, fuel cell vehicles, more efficient hybrid-electric drive trains and ultra-efficient internal combustion engines. DOE’s goal to advance Obama’s 2015 target for EV deployment would correspond with the EPA and DOT effort, say White House officials. And EPA is on track to release its proposal for the next round of fuel economy standards for 2017-2025 vehicle models on Sept. 28, according to EPA officials. - johnsonic

The bill (S. 948) from Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) joins a similar measure under consideration in the House. The Senate bill would create a Department of Energy program offering grants of up to $250 million for communities that can demonstrate a plan for deploying at least 400,000 electric vehicles through the use of government incentives, charging infrastructure, private-sector involvement and local policy. - johnsonic

Industry groups challenging EPA's greenhouse gas (GHG) permitting rules are citing a landmark, decades-old federal appeals court ruling on the agency's prevention of significant deterioration (PSD) program as boosting their case, even as EPA and activists also appear poised to cite the ruling as bolstering their defense of the climate rules. - johnsonic

Free 40-page guide from Bridgestone Bandag Tire Solutions explains how speed, load and axle configuration affect your fuel economy. Also, the effect of tread patterns, depths and wear, wide base tires, casing design, inflation, retreading and maintenance. - johnsonic

This season, NASCAR is bringing something new to the tracks: race cars with a 15 percent ethanol blend. - johnsonic

BRUSSELS—EU member state registries for trading carbon dioxide emission allocations under the European Union's Emissions Trading System (ETS) should be closed down one year earlier than previously planned and replaced with a single European registry, the European Commission said May 10. - johnsonic

This report provides information on the effectiveness of travel efficiency measures for reducing criteria and greenhouse gas emissions at the national scale. The report describes an approach that uses regionally derived travel model data and other travel activity information, and sketch-planning analysis to estimate potential emission reductions from urban areas of varying size and characteristics. The results are applied to other urban areas in the U.S. of similar characteristic to estimate national emission reductions. - johnsonic