Tuesday's data, which also showed gains in groundbreaking for single-family homes, was the latest sign of a quickening of an economic recovery that still faces risks both at home and abroad.

"Investors should take heart that if Europe doesn't melt down and Congress figures out how to extend the payroll tax cut, the economy can continue to gain momentum," said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pennsylvania.

Housing starts surged 9.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 685,000 units, the highest level since April last year, the Commerce Department said. Economists had forecast a 635,000-unit rate.

Washington, DC - (Dec. 8, 2011) - LEED-certified existing buildings are outpacing their newly built counterparts, according to the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). As of this month, square footage of LEED-certified existing buildings surpassed LEED-certified new construction by 15 million square feet on a cumulative basis.

Every story about green building is a story about people.

Project Haiti Orphanage and Children's Center is about the people of Haiti who are facing ongoing devastation following the earthquake of January 2010. It's about a replicable, resilient model for rebuilding.

There are hundreds of thousands of orphans living in Haiti. Project Haiti will tell many of these children for the first time in their lives they are valued, they deserve to breathe clean air, they have the right to live in comfort and they are cared about - just like any other child, in any other place in the world. It will provide for the immediate health and emotional needs of orphans and offer a pathway to adoption.

The surest way to increase your income, create greener buildings, and help the planet is by increasing your education. Think about it, who has a better chance of making a difference a high school drop out or a PhD. Education always pays. Green Building Pro exist to help you be better informed and to prosper. Now we challenge you take your career to the next level and get your LEED accreditation.

Green Building Pro’s 2011 LEED Challenge – We challenge every green building professional to get LEED accredited by January 2012. If you’re new that means earning your LEED Green Associate. If this isn’t your first rodeo, we challenge you to step-up your LEED AP accreditation(s) and take your career and sustainability goals up a notch.

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine are working on a new project to utilize the currently considered useless, but also most abundant mineral in the earths crust, iron pyrite, known as fool’s gold, as a potential bonanza for the solar industry.

UCI researchers believe they are on the cusp of creating a new method of processing this mineral, one that is typically regarded as garbage, so that it might convert sunlight into electricity at roughly the same rate as existing silicon technology.  

The team plans to process the pyrite into a thin film that can be used for photovoltaic cells.  This will set up iron pyrite as serious competition for the current, but scarce and toxic earth minerals used for cell phones and touch screens, such as indium, a costly mineral selling at about $300 a pound.  This high demand mineral is currently only mined in a single California location, but plentiful in China, who is now stockpiling and prohibiting its exportation along with cadmium and amorphous silicon.  Some of these minerals are rare, super toxic, and not all that efficient.