Other resource-efficient projects like New York's 4 Times Square office building, Atlanta's EarthCraft House and Village Habitat Design's cohousing conservation communities include such innovations as energy-efficient insulation, water and air filtration, or hydronic heating, aiming for healthy, nontoxic construction processes and buildings for humans and the environment.

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Briefly, efficiency innovations make current work more efficient, in terms of time, effort or other resources needed.

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While solar panel technology has been around for a long time, recent innovations have made the panels portable and efficient enough for folks to use as everyday personal power generators.

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Their work and innovations make the world more informed and more efficient (Sergey Brin and Larry Page), more connected (Mark Zuckerberg), and more thoroughly entertained (John Malone).

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Savvy mobile users will not be satisfied with slow performance or short battery life, and innovations such as hardware-accelerated multimedia engines, more efficient power management techniques and multi-core architectures will all be key to ensuring that devices are able to fully take advantage of the newly broadened data pipe.

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