Currently, the only purveyor of natural pools in the US is Total Habitat of Kansas. They admit that natural swimming pools may cost slightly more to build than a standard swimming pool, but that have lower maintance and chemical costs. Also, conventional pools can be converted to natural pools; a post on naturalswimmingpools.info encourages the possibility of a DIY natural pool.
Chemist's Glue Borrows Unique Amino Acid from Mollusk: Chemists combined an exotic form of an amino acid -- used by mussels to stick to rocks -- with soy flour to make a new, high-strength adhesive. The new glue helps in manufacturing natural-looking plywood without cancer-causing chemicals such as formaldehyde.
"(WASHINGTON - JANUARY 29, 2009) - March 31, 2009 will be the last date that candidates will be able to register for the current LEED for New Construction (NC) v2.2 and LEED for Commercial Interiors (CI) v 2.0 LEED Accredited Professional (LEED AP) credentialing exams. As part of the changes to the accreditation process announced at the end of 2008 the LEED NC designation will be replaced with the LEED Building Design and Construction (BD&C) designation and the LEED CI designation will be replaced by LEED Interior Design and Construction (ID&C). Read the FAQs for more information about these changes. In order to maintain alignment with the new LEED 2009 Ratings System for BD&C and ID&C, new exam registrations will not be accepted by GBCI to take the current LEED CI and LEED NC exams after March 31, 2009 (11:59 PM, Eastern Time). Prometric's scheduling and rescheduling services for the current LEED NC and LEED CI version 2.0 AP exam registrations will still be available after the March 31, 2009 registration deadline with more specific information to announced later in 2009."
