What are combining forms? You can think of them as Lego (from Danish, leg: play + godt: well) bricks of language. As the term indicates, a combining form is a linguistic atom that occurs only in combination with some other form which could be a word, another combining form, or an affix (unlike a combining form, an affix can't attach to another affix).
iridescent (ir-i-DES-uhnt) adjective
Displaying a rainbow of colors that change when seen from different angles.
From Latin irido- (rainbow), from iris (rainbow, iris plant, diaphragm of the eye), from Greek iris. Iris was the goddess of rainbows in Greek mythology. Earliest documented use: 1794.
heterodox (HET-uhr-uh-doks) adjective
1. Different from established beliefs or opinions.
2. Holding unorthodox opinions.
From Greek hetero- (different) + doxa (opinion), from dokein (to think). Ultimately from the Indo-European root dek- (to take or accept), which is also the root of words such as paradox, orthodox, doctor, disciple, discipline, doctrine, dogma, decent, decorate, dignity, disdain, condign, and deign. Earliest documented use: 1619. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

Pneumatic tubes (or capsule pipelines; also known as Pneumatic Tube Transport or PTT) are systems in which cylindrical containers are propelled through a network of tubes by compressed air or by partial vacuum. They are used for transporting solid objects, as opposed to conventional pipelines, which transport fluids. Pneumatic tube networks gained great prominence in the late 19th and early 20th century for businesses or administrations that needed to transport small but urgent packages (such as mail or money) over relatively short distances (within a building, or, at most, within a city). Some of these systems grew to great complexity, but they were eventually superseded by more modern methods of communication and courier transport, and are now much rarer than before. However, in some settings, such as hospitals, they remain of great use, and have been extended and developed further technologically in recent decades. Pneumatics can be traced back to Hero of Alexandria in the 1st century AD, though there was apparently no thought of using them to move objects through pipes. Find images,mentions in fiction, and many links at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube#cite_note-STAN-0

The Avac, manufactured by Envac of Sweden, is New York’s only pneumatic garbage-collection system. Designed in the late nineteen-sixties to service Roosevelt Island’s housing developments, the system runs under all the island’s high-rises. When people throw their garbage down the trash chutes, it piles up for several hours, until a trapdoor opens, sucking the waste into a big underground pipe. Then a complex system of air valves propels the garbage through the pipe at speeds of up to sixty miles per hour. When the trash resurfaces at the Avac center, a squat building at the northern tip of the island, it is dumped into two silo-shaped cyclones, where it is spun like cotton candy and then whooshed down chutes into huge containers. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/11/17/031117ta_talk_taylor

In 1969, officials in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's capital city, raised $12.5 million to build a trash incinerator that generates electricity. Since then, officials have borrowed at least 11 more times, according to the city controller and bond documents, swelling the facility's debt to $310 million. Investment banks, lawyers and advisers collected fees for assembling the deals, and Harrisburg guaranteed most of the debt in return for its own share of the money. Much of the proceeds from bond sales that sank the incinerator deeper into debt went to refinance old bonds and for a retrofit that went awry. Incinerator revenue now exceeds operating expenses, and it has been praised as one of the nation's most successful waste-to-energy facilities. But business isn't good enough—and might never be—to cover debt payments. Harrisburg's plight is an example of how easy money flowed into municipal governments for decades as government officials sought financing for ambitious projects and Wall Street firms obliged by selling the bonds to investors. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903532804576564882240033792.html

Warner Bros.' and director Alan Crosland's The Jazz Singer (1927) is an historic milestone film and cinematic landmark. Most people associate this film with the advent of sound pictures, although Don Juan (1926), a John Barrymore silent film, also had a synchronized musical score performed by the New York Philharmonic and sound effects using Vitaphone's system. It should be made clear that this film was not the first sound film, nor the first 'talkie' film or the first movie musical. The wildly successful "photo-dramatic production" was based upon Samson Raphaelson's 1921 short story "The Day of Atonement" (also the basis for Raphaelson's popular 1926 Broadway play of the same name), and adapted for the screen by Alfred A. Cohn. Although the film was ruled ineligible in the Best Picture category (it was thought unfair for a sound film to compete with silents), Warner Bros.' production head Darryl F. Zanuck was presented with a special Oscar at the very first Academy Awards ceremony in May of 1929, "for producing The Jazz Singer, the pioneer outstanding talking picture, which has revolutionized the industry." The film was remade twice: Warners' and director Michael Curtiz' The Jazz Singer (1952) with Danny Thomas (as Jerry Golding) and Peggy Lee (as Judy Lane), and director Richard Fleischer's The Jazz Singer (1980) with singer-songwriter Neil Diamond in the lead role as the cantor's son with legendary co-star Laurence Olivier as his father.
http://www.filmsite.org/jazz.html

A card sharp (informally cardsharp, card shark, card snark or cardshark) is a person who uses skill and deception to win at poker or other card games. Sharp, Snark, or Shark appears to be interchangeable based on region and local dialect. The label is not always intended as pejorative, and is sometimes used to refer to practitioners of card tricks for entertainment purposes. In general usage, principally in American English and more commonly with the "shark" spelling and much less frequently with "snark", the term has also taken on the meaning of "expert card gambler who takes advantage of less-skilled players", without implication of actual cheating at cards, in much the same way that "pool shark" or "pool hustler" can (especially when used by non-players) be intended to mean "skilled player" rather than "swindler". According to the prevailing etymological theory, the term "shark", originally meaning "parasite" or "one who preys upon others" (cf. loan shark), derives from German Schorke/Schurke ("rogue" or "rascal"), as did the English word "shirk[er]". "Sharp" developed in the 17th century from this meaning of "shark" (as apparently did the use of "shark" as a name for the fish), but the phrase "card sharp" predates the variant "card shark". See pictures of The Cardsharps by Caravaggio and The Cardsharks by van Honthorst at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_sharp

The U.S. is currently home to the largest producers of small wind turbines, and they both export their products and sell them domestically. According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the number of installed micro wind turbines has doubled during the last three years. The organization expects they will have quadrupled by 2015. That amount of capacity would be the equivalent of one nuclear plant’s energy output. http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/wind-industry-sees-big-potential-for-little-turbines/

See descriptions of urban wind energy technology plus pictures from a 2006 survey at: http://extension.ucdavis.edu/unit/green_building_and_sustainability/pdf/resources/arch_wind_power.pdf