Today's Interesting Engineering

[DaveM]

In today's Interesting Engineering we have the following

Watch a microwave oven make plasma!



Of all the appliances in your home, your microwave oven is potentially the most dangerous one. The YouTube channel Kreosan, recorded a magnetron (the component that generates the microwaves) in action to show us the real power of the microwave oven. You can see incandescent bulbs begin to melt, since the gas present inside it heats up to the point of becoming plasma. It’s also possible to easily observe the pattern of the waves passing through the object for a few seconds before it simply explodes.


The effect on fluorescent lamps is a little different, but not less impressive. This is because, although they also begin to melt after a long exposure, the microwaves are able to give so much energy to the lamp that it lights up much brighter than they normally would.

Indeed, the destructive potential of a microwave oven is so big that China has come to develop a ray gun using the same principles to boil the water in the human body and inflict unbearable pain. If you thought the most a microwave oven could do was heat up last night’s pizza, then check out the video to see how powerful this appliance really is.

Via: Sploid

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[DaveM]

In today's Interesting Engineering we have the following

LUTZ Pathfinder: the first self-driving vehicle to hit the streets of the UK

UK’s first self-driving vehicle was unveiled this week; The LUTZ (Low-carbon Urban Transport Zone) Pathfinder was designed to travel short distances, carrying small objects and people who wouldn’t have access to a car otherwise, such as the young, elderly, and disabled people.



The autonomous car runs on an electric motor and can go for about six hours without refueling. The first prototype was shown to the public in Milton Keynes this week, before it started testing in public areas. It was developed by auto maker RDM in partnership with Oxford University’s Mobile Robotics Group (MRG).

The Pathfinder can reach a maximum speed of 24 kilometers per hour and uses sensors, radar and video cameras to scan the streets in order to avoid people and objects. The vehicle will initially be directed to manual mode to map out and “recognize” its environment before going at it on its own – but with a person inside at all times ready to take control in the event of a technical malfunction.



The Pathfinder attracted interest from around the world, and a company in China has already expressed their interest in ordering 3000 units.



“This is a very exciting day for everybody involved in the LUTZ Pathfinder project, because it signals the completion of the manufacturing phase and the effective start of the autonomous technology trial,” said Transport Systems Catapult CEO Steve Yianni.

“When you consider that there wasn’t even a design in place for this vehicle less than 18 months ago, it has been a really quick turnaround to now have our first research vehicle ready to start work, and this has only been possible as a result of our successful collaboration with RDM, MRG and Milton Keynes Council.”


Via: Catapult Transport Systems

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[DaveM]

In today's Interesting Engineering we have the following

How to make a “bionic” cardboard arm



If you have always wanted to have a robotic arm like the ones you see in sci-fi fiction, this is your chance! YouTube channel crazyPT made a nice tutorial on how to make your own cardboard arm. Of course you can always use the kids as an excuse to make this without looking ridiculous.


To do this project at home, you will need:
– A piece of large cardboard
– Clear pen barrels or clear straws
– Elastic bands
– String
– Hot glue

Don’t forget to cut the elastic band slightly smaller than the size of the fingers, and to calculate the string size considering the middle of your hand. Get to work and have fun!

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[DaveM]

In today's Interesting Engineering we have the following

China and the U.S become partners as high-speed trains set to join LA and Las vegas

China has finally struck a deal with the U.S. on the construction of high-speed trains in the United States. This is the first rail line project to be done by China in the United States. It will connect Los Angeles and Las Vegas with the trains expected to travel at a speed of 150 mph.

It is called XpressWest. When XpressWest first brought up the idea of bringing high-speed trains to connect Las Vegas and Los Angeles, they tried but failed to secure funds from private investors within the U.S. In fact, they also failed to secure a federal loan of $5.5 billion to realize their project and then everything seemed to stall. Fortunately, after four years of negotiations, XpressWest finally secured a partnership with China Railway International.


[Image Courtesy of XpressWest]


China Railway International agreed to join XpressWest in constructing the rail line and the construction of the 230-mile rail line is expected to start as soon as next September. China Railway International has already provided an initial capital of $100 million to start the project. A completion date or any information regarding the duration of the whole project has not yet been released. The total time it will take for the journey between Las Vegas and Los Angeles is estimated to be around 80 minutes with XpressWest, much shorter than the four hours it would otherwise have taken in a car ride.

A lot of controversy and debate has taken place regarding the construction of high-speed trains in the United States, like this one for example. Some people believe that it’s a good thing, highlighting facts such as the creation of new jobs, the convenience the train would bring to a lot of people and the U.S. keeping up with the current standards of technology all over the world. However, others believe that a project like this would be too costly for the value it proposes.

SEE ALSO: Dutch trains expected to run solely on wind energy in the next three years

Yang Zhongmin, a deputy chief engineer at China Rail Group, was very pleased with the deal. While speaking at a conference in Beijing, he said, “This is the first high-speed railway project where China and the U.S. will have systematic cooperation, it shows the advancement of China-made high-speed railways.”

Source: XpressWest, Gizmodo, Bloomberg



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[DaveM]

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Concorde might return to the skies thanks to a fan-club

Retired since 2003, the Concorde supersonic jet will return to the skies, at least as long as it relies on its group of fans with loads of cash in hand. The Concorde Club – which includes the aircraft’s former pilots, frequent flyers and others aviation enthusiasts – has big plans to get the aircraft flying again.

According to “The Telegraph“, the club intends to buy two units of the aircraft. One of them will be exhibited in London by 2017, on a platform on the Thames, as part of a tourist attraction that will include a restaurant that will have on the menu dishes served in the Concorde flights. To fund the purchase, the group claims to have £40 million available.



But the other Concorde, which the group wants to see taking off by 2019, will require more work and – consequently – more money. The club says it has access to reserve fund worth £120 millions to buy and renovate the Concorde exposed in La Bourget airport in Paris. When it’s ready to fly again, the Concorde would be used for special events, private chartering and demonstrations at air shows.

The date chosen for the possible return of the Concorde to the skies was not random, it marks the 50th anniversary of the inaugural supersonic flight in 1979. If successful, the club doesn’t rule out possibility of purchasing yet another jet to fly.

After nearly three decades of service, operated by British Airways and Air France, the Concorde ended its history in 2003. The history of the Concorde was also marked by tragedy. In July 2000, the Air France supersonic jet crashed on a hotel shortly after taking off from Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris. A total of 113 people were killed, among which were all the passengers and crew and four people who were on the ground.

Via: The Telegraph

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[DaveM]

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Check out these hypnotizing kinetic wooden sculptures



After getting his degree in physics in 1974, David C. Roy allied his fascination with mechanics and movement with the artistic influences of his wife and since then has created more than 130 kinetic sculptures.


The artist’s website is extremely informative – in addition to photos, we can see videos, documents with assembly instructions, the process of creation, information about preserving the parts and so on.

The parts are made of wood and the movement is generated from springs. Has anyone here ever wound up clock? Younger ones might not remember, but our clocks didn’t use any batteries back in the day and had to be wound up every day.

​

Same as those clocks, Roy’s sculptures stop moving after a certain time and you need to wind them again. However, Roy has perfected them so much that they can run from five to 40 hours on a single wind.

Via: Gizmodo

Images and video: David C. Roy/Wood That Works



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[DaveM]

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Trefecta Mobility is a high-tech military e-bike

E-bikes are a rising phenomenon, and they owe that fact largely to recent advances in battery technology. Initially a rather expensive and tiny niche market, now e-bikes can be found everywhere from specialized retailers to the ubiquity that is Walmart. E-bike prices range from a few hundred bucks for generic, low end models, to tens of thousands for more exotic, custom offerings. One of the companies leading that exotic charge is Rimac Automobili, founded by inveterate garage tinkerer Mate Rimac, and home of the Green Monster, the fastest electric vehicle out there to date. Rimac developed some fairly exotic batteries and energy management systems for their cars. After refining that technology, they decided to take a swing at an e-bike of their own, and developed the Greyp, which they market as the “the world’s most advanced electric bicycles.” All that said, Rimac may now have legitimate competition for that title – Trefecta Mobility e-Bikes.



Back in 2013, an “international team of Dutch, German and Swiss engineers” with an eclectic range of aerospace and automotive engineering experience pooled their expertise with the intention of creating, according to company founder Haiko Visser, “the ultimate e-bike,” one that could, fundamentally, withstand the rigors of daily use by the military. That pursuit has lead to the Trefecta DRT and URB models.



The Trefecta variants are intended for off-road, (the DRT), and city use, (URB). The heart of the Trefecta is a 4kW electric motor working through a combination of a Rohloff 14 speed gearbox and a proprietary ‘Smesh Gear Pedelec System.’ This provides power through low speeds by human peddling if needed or desired, as well as manual and automatic gear shifting when taking the bike up to its genuinely stunning top speed of 70 km/h. That system provides up to 250 Nm, (184 ft. lb), of torque to the bike’s rear drive wheel. Pedaling is tied to a regenerative power loop, as is braking, thereby extending the vehicle’s cruising range. This is a drive system that provides “conversion efficiency of electrical to mechanical power of more than 90%,” according to the company.



Electrical power for that motor comes from a fast swappable, 60-volt lithium-ion battery pack that can drive the bike for up to 100 km. Full charging of the battery pack takes about three hours, and again, the onboard regenerative system can provide charging power as well while the bike is in use. In keeping with the company’s stated intent of providing a military grade platform, all that power is encased in a twenty inch, injection molded frame of 7075 aluminum, a rather expensive alloy containing zinc, magnesium, and copper, often used in aerospace applications. The frame fully encloses the bike’s battery pack, motor, and gearbox, cables and components in a waterproof, dustproof, truly rugged skeleton capable of handling up to just shy of 160 kg of rider and gear. Wheels are 26″, six spoke, carbon fiber composite. The whole bike weighs in at about 28 kg, sans rider.



Rider control is focused on the handlebars and a proprietary fly-by-wire computer mounted in between. A Trefecta designed iOS app links the computer to an iPhone for navigation, bike and trip data, and fitness applications. The computer allows users to alter shifting and gear selection, as well as suspension parameters. Full trip functions are also viewable, from battery life to speed and distance.

Rider fit and comfort are handled by well designed componentry; a 180mm front fork, a seat post with 125mm of such, and a rear shock with a 200 mm damping range. Schwalbe mountain bike tires, disc brakes by Hope, and Ergon saddle and grips fill out the package.

And that package, by the way, will set a lucky owner back to the tune of €22,500 for a base model. Naturally there is plenty of customization available – a fully tricked out, CNC machined version will run you something more along the lines of €33,500. In other words, like Rimac automobiles, the Trefecta is clearly in that range wherein if we have to ask the price, we likely can’t afford it. When asked about the price point, Haiko Visser points out that the Trefecta is a unique vehicle, designed from scratch by his crew, and intended for some pretty serious use, should the world’s military bodies get on board. Let’s face it, serious military hardware isn’t cheap, even if it comes in civilian version; ask any Hummer owner if that’s a fact.

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[DaveM]

In today's Interesting Engineering we have the following

How is this Rock Paper Scissors robot unbeatable?

Japanese students have created a Rock Paper Scissors robot that just can’t be beaten at the Ishikawa Watanabe Laboratory in Japan. This robot has gone up against the best players in the game and it never failed to beat them. Not even once.

So how did our Japanese friends pull it off? The interesting thing about this robot is that it actually recognizes the opposition’s movements as they perform them and then decides on what corresponding move to make. This process is performed so fast the you won’t even notice that the robot is actually reading your movements.


[Image Courtesy of Ishikawa Watanabe Laboratory]


In fact, what is more interesting about this robot is that although it reads your movement before making its move, it actually executes its move before you have executed yours. To be more precise, it makes its move one millisecond earlier than its human counterpart.

SEE ALSO: Meet HERMES, MIT’s new robot that mimics human movements

How does it pull it off?

This isn’t mind reading per se. The Rock Paper Scissors bully actually tracks the hand of its opposition with the aid of two high-speed technologies, the 1ms Auto Pan-Tilt and the Lumipen 2. These technologies make it possible for the robot to track the movement and shape of the human hand at high speeds regardless of the nature of the movement of the human hand. These technologies also help to improve the synchronization between the movement of the hand of the robot and that of the human hand.


[Image Courtesy of Ishikawa Watanabe Laboratory]


High-speed vision is just one side of the story. The other side is high-speed actuation, meaning that the robot hand can actually move really fast as well. By coupling high-speed vision and high-speed actuation, the Rock Paper Scissors champion ensures that it wins the game 100% of the time.

According to their website, it is said that, “This technology is one example that show a possibility of cooperation control within a few miliseconds. And this technology can be applied to motion support of human beings and cooperation work between human beings and robots etc. without time delay.”




Source: Ishikawa Watanabe Laboratory



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[DaveM]

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GoPro lost in space is found 2 years later with breathtaking space footage!

Using a high-altitude weather balloon, a group of students at Stanford University, sent a GoPro into space to gather data for an aerospace engineering dissertation. The launch took place about 32.2 km from the Grand Canyon, back in June 2013 and the GoPro reached 30 km in altitude during its 1h38m flight. Due to a technical problem, the group lost control of the machine despite being equipped with a GPS, and it landed 80 kilometers from where it was supposed to.



“We were supposed to recover the GoPro and the phone two hours after the launch, but it ended up being two years,” Bryan Chan said. “The GoPro and phone was projected to land in an area with cell coverage, but the problem was that the cell service coverage maps we relied on weren’t accurate, so the phone didn’t have signal as it came back to Earth. We couldn’t get the text it was supposed to send with the coordinates of where it landed.”



By sheer luck, “TWO YEARS LATER, in a twist of ironic fate, a woman who works at AT&T was on a hike one day and spotted our phone in the barren desert. She brings it to an AT&T store, and they identify my friend’s SIM card. We got the footage and data a few weeks later!” Chan said in a post on Reddit.

Now, we can see a bit of the project in its entirety, with all the amazing videos and photos captured.


Via: ABC News

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[DaveM]

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Scientists at UC Berkeley create super-thin invisibility cloak



Aside from Harry Potter and his pals, no one has really managed to go invisible yet. However, it seems that this trick could be a reality in the near future – at least that’s what indicates a new research developed at University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Xiang Zhang and his team have succeeded in creating an invisibility cloak in their lab. It is only 80 nanometers thin and, for now, has only been used in microscopic objects, but the future looks promising. In the tests, they were able to make an object of 36 square micrometers – which is equivalent to a small amount of live cells – disappear.

The invisibility cloak consists of small gold “nanoantennas” that reflect the light waves away from the object. According to the study, “the skin cloak comprises a metasurface with distributed phase shifts rerouting light and rendering the object invisible.” The operating principle of this cloak should also work on larger objects, but needs to be further developed of the creation of a larger prototype, since any movement would break the invisibility “spell” .

It is worth noting that this is not the first time that a research shows the possibility of creating invisibility covers, but this one is especially promising because of its ability to adapt to different environments and bodies. Nevertheless, This technology still needs a lot of development, since it is not yet able to reflect all the wavelengths in the visible spectrum.

Source: Science

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[DaveM]

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Mercedes Benz unveils new Intelligent Aerodynamic Automobile concept

This time, it’s all about the future. Recently, Mercedes Benz unveiled a new design concept, the Intelligent Aerodynamic Automobile (IAA). This design is unlike anything we have ever seen before from Mercedes.

The IAA is a 5 meter long vehicle that is designed to take just four people in unparalleled comfort. Although the visual design is quite impressive itself, the main focus point of the IAA design is it’s aerodynamic abilities.

When the IAA reaches a speed of 50 mph, or at the push of a button, the car literally transforms in various places. You might ask, “well, what’s the point?”. Well this transformation causes the reduction of the car’s coefficient of drag from 0.25 to an impressive 0.19!


[Image Courtesy of Mercedes Benz]


How the IAA transforms after 50 mph

According to Mercedes, “the Mercedes Benz ‘Concept IAA’ (Intelligent Aerodynamic Automobile) performs a fascinating transformation in which the captivatingly beautiful four-door coupé turns into an aerodynamics world champion: eight segments extend at the rear, increasing its length by up to 390 millimetres; front flaps in the front bumper extend by 25 mm to the front and 20 mm to the rear, improving the air flow around the front end and the front wheel arches; the Active Rims alter their cupping from 55 mm to zero; and the louvre in the front bumper moves 60 mm to the rear, improving the underbody air flow.”


[Image Courtesy of Mercedes Benz]


This might seem like Sci-Fi for a minute but actually, there is a car that does something similar out there – the Bugatti Veyron. The Bugatti Veyron is the world’s fastest production car and it also alters its shape at high speeds to improve its aerodynamic properties. But of course the main difference is that the IAA breaks the limit of automobile shapeshifting.

“Fascinating and technically sophisticated cars form the core of Mercedes-Benz. The ‘Concept IAA’ applies intelligent innovations to resolve the conflicting aims of functionality and aesthetics and shows that we still have plenty of ideas on how to achieve further improvements in efficiency,” said Prof. Dr Thomas Weber, a member of the Daimler Board of Management responsible for Group Research and Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars Development.


[Image Courtesy of Mercedes Benz]

Other useful Information

The IAA has a top speed that is electronically limited to 150 mph. It is 5040 millimeters long in the normal mode and 5430 millimeters in the aerodynamic mode. The wheelbase is measured at 2975 millimeters while the front and rear track widths are 1710 and 1770 millimeters respectively. The car will be powered by a hybrid system that runs on both petrol and electricity.

Source: Mercedes Benz

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[DaveM]

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IKO – Kids Are Imagining Their Own LEGO Prosthetic

Designer Carlos Arturo Torres had an interesting idea that would make it possible for kids to create their own prosthetics according to their own personal needs. In 2014 his idea became IKO. What inspired Torres in the beginning are the 3269 Colombian civilians who have been injured by landmines in the last 24 years and 20% to 30% of those are children.​

Losing a limb or an appendage for any person at any age has difficult physical challenges as well as mental challenges but the social impact of amputation on children is severe. Torres wanted to find a way to include the families and friends of the children in the making of their prosthetic. This would allow the children to express themselves socially with the tools that can be attached to it.​

(Source: Design Awards.core77 )​

For expert support he didn’t mess around and hastily approached CIREC and Lego FutureLab and they hopped right on board. One of their initial thoughts was that it would be important for the children to be involved early on in the process with the prosthetics team. In the beginning of the rehab process (with an age suitability of 7+ years) a Lego WeDo software interfaced starter kit for robotics was very helpful. The kids are able to express themselves with these early tools and add vital insight to the making of their own prosthetic as well as any future prosthetics that are made.​

(Source: Design Awards.core77 )​

(Source: Design Awards.core77 )​

The project focused on upper prosthetics and more specifically a creative 8-year-old boy named Dario who has a congenital malformation of the right forearm. Working together, it was important to Torres that Dario be focused on his potential super-abilities rather than what was missing and this meant that Dario’s imagination was the key!​

(Source: Design Awards.core77 )​

The team came up with a final sleek well-fit design that can be broken down into 6 parts; the Hack or Create area, the Battery, the Socket Charging Station which isn’t just functional it’s habit forming so the prosthetic always has a home to go to at the end of the day, the Muscle and the Hand.

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[DaveM]

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Hyundai helps astronaut’s daughter send message to dad in space

The creativity of Hyundai’s marketing people are flying high. Literally. The auto maker created an ad in which a 13-year-old sends a message to her father, an astronaut orbiting the Earth.


[Photo by Hyundai]


The idea was to recreate Stephanie’s hand-written note in a size large enough to be seen from the International Space Station at an altitude of 400 km, where her father is. The sweet message was scanned and reproduced in a 5,5km² area of the Delamar Lake in Nevada, USA. To write the message, Hyundai Motor dispatched 11 Genesis cars with special tires to leave a visible trace in the sand.


[Photo by Hyundai]


With the help of computers and an extremely accurate GPS, the 11 cars rode side by side in formation with only a few centimeters of each other. They then waited until the ISS passed by – at a speed of 7,6 km/s. From above, Terry Virts, Stephanie’s father and commander of Expedition 43, took a photograph of the message and thanked the gesture.

[Photo by Hyundai]


Everything, of course, was recorded and became a creative advertisement and has even been officially recognized as ‘the largest tire track image’ ever by Guinness World Records.


[Photo by Hyundai]


Via: Forbes

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[DaveM]

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Friends create first to-scale Solar System model in the desert

The solar system is huge. It’s so gigantic that it barely fits in our imagination. And although illustrations and models give us some sense of the size of the planets and the positioning of their orbits, they all fail miserably when it comes to distance. Yes, we are much farther from the Sun and the Moon, for example, than we have been taught.


In an attempt to fix it, Wylie Overstreet and his friends decide to create a model of the solar system to scale in a desert in the state of Nevada (USA), showing the correctly scaled sizes and distances and giving us a more precise idea of how insignificantly small we really are when comparing to the universe. The model was built on a scale of 1 astronomical unit (AU, or distance from the Sun to Earth) of 176 meters. In order to get it done, they needed an area of 11 km, 36 hours of work and a lot of precision.



After marking each orbit, the planets – represented by lamps and marbles, the sun – a ball of 1.5 meters in diameter and the moon were all put in place. Lights traveled each orbit in order to show the planet’s movement in the video time lapse, showing a perfect scale operation of the solar system.



“That’s what I really wanted to try and capture,” says Overstreet. “We are on a marble, floating in the middle of nothing. When you come face to face with that it’s staggering.”



All images by Wylie Overstreet and Alex Gorosh

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[DaveM]

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Hitler’s secret weapons during World War II


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Angela Belcher Programs a Virus To Grow A High Powered Battery

(Source: BBC )​

Angela Belcher, Professor at the Department of Material Science and Engineering and Department of Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is using nature to grow batteries!

(Source: Wikimedia, Abalone shell )​

Belcher begins her TED Talk with an abalone shell. Naturally constructed from 98% Calcium Carbonate and 2% protein by mass this bio composite material is roughly 3000 times tougher than its geological counterpart and could be used like chalk.

The abalone shell creates structures which are macroscopic but they use a genetic-level coded protein which allows them to make these structures at the Nano-scale. Using this as inspiration Belcher posed some questions “What if you could grow a battery in a Petri dish? What if you could give genetic information to a battery so that it could become better as a function of time? And do so in an environmentally friendly way.” The other criteria were that it must be grown at room temperature and pressure.

Abalone shells are male and female and pass their genetic codes down to their offspring which means that the recipe for and instructions on how to build the structures are passed down and can be improved upon over time. Because of this, Belcher wondered if she could use biology to work with something else on the periodic table.

​

(Source: TED Talk, screenshot)​

Speaking of the periodic table if you watch her TED Talk she tells a charming little story involving President Obama at 4:45 .​

OK, so nature can create these structures on the nano-scale already but it took millions of years to go from a soft structure to a hard one so Belcher needed to brainstorm on a way to speed up the process. The answer was a virus which is an easy biotechnology according to Belcher.​

M13 is a non-toxic bacteriophage whose job it is to infect bacteria. It has a simple DNA structure so you can cut and paste additional DNA sequences into it and that allows the virus to express random protein sequences. This can be done a billion times with different tips (a single sequence that codes for one protein). Then the billions are placed into a single drop of liquid where an interaction is forced between them and an element from the periodic table. The process is called selective evolution. You just pull the one that you’d like to make a battery or solar cell from.​

(Source: TED Talk, screenshot)​

In her lab Belcher and her team successfully grew a high powered battery by engineering a virus to pick up carbon nano-tubes. One part of virus grabs the nano-tube and another part has a sequence that can grow an electrode material for a battery and then it wires itself to the current collector. At first the battery was not good, then it got better, and finally it’s evolved into a high powered battery. Belcher’s dream for this battery is to scale it for a Prius!​

(Source: TED Talk, screenshot)​

Also, in her lab the team successfully made a solar cell and clean fuel.​

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[DaveM]

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How to turn your smartphone into a hologram projector

You probably never thought that your old CD cases might come in so handy. However with some common household items, you can actually turn your phone into a hologram projector. Remember how Star Wars teased us with their holograms like the one in the picture below? How about you make yours too?


Star Wars Hologram [Image Courtesy of International Business Times]


The attractive thing with this hologram projector you’re about to see is that it is very simple to create. All you need to do is follow five simple steps. But first of all, here is the list of equipment you will need.

Equipment

1. A graph paper
2. CD case
3. Pen
4. Tape
5. Scissors
6. A glass cutter or utility knife

Now carefully follow the following steps in order to make your home-made hologram projector.

Step 1

Draw the following figure on a graph paper carefully. Notice the dimensions and draw accordingly. Feel free to scale the dimensions if you want to make a bigger or smaller version of the hologram projector.


[Image Courtesy of Mrwhosetheboss]


Next, using a pair of scissors, cut out the rhombus shape as shown below.


[Image Courtesy of Mrwhosetheboss]


Step 2

Break off the edges of the CD case to make a nice, flat and transparent piece of plastic. Please note that if the CD case has too many scratches, the quality of the hologram might decrease.


[Image Courtesy of Mrwhosetheboss]


Step 3

Take the rhombus-shaped graph paper you just cut out and place it on the plastic. Carefully trace the shape of the rhombus over the plastic and use a utility knife or glass cutter to cut out the rhombus shape from the plastic. Once you’re done, cut out three more rhombus-shaped pieces of plastic from the CD case to make a total of four.


[Image Courtesy of Mrwhosetheboss]


[Image Courtesy of Mrwhosetheboss]



Step 4

Connect the four pieces together as shown in the figure below using a tape or any form of glue. Once you have done this, your hologram projector is ready by now.


[Image Courtesy of Mrwhosetheboss]


Step 5

Now that your hologram projector is ready, search for a hologram video on Google or Youtube. You can simple type “hologram video” in the search bar or anything similar would work. Hologram videos are actually a special kind of videos that are specifically made to be viewed on a hologram projector like the one we have just made.

Once you have found a video you like, open if in landscape mode on your smartphone and place your hologram projector on the screen as shown below. Finally get your popcorn, sit back and enjoy your show.


[Image Courtesy of Mrwhosetheboss]


For a more descriptive guide on how you can make your own hologram projector, have a look at the video below. Video credit goes to Mrwhosetheboss.


Source: Digital Trends





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[DaveM]

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Former WWII bomb shelter turned into futuristic hydroponic farm

How nice it is to see things evolving and changing in a positive way in the midst of this chaotic world. Like the futuristic hydroponic farm Growing Underground in London, which makes use of a former bomb shelter 30 meters underground to produce food with zero carbon emissions, helping the environment and our health.



The space was originally built to serve as a bomb shelter designed to house and protect the lives of nearly 8,000 people from air strikes during the WWII, but has remained abandoned for more than 70 years. These long tunnels in Clapham are now home to vertically stacked hydroponic plant beds, resulting in nutritious pesticide-free produce.



The initiative of entrepreneurs Richard Ballard and Steven Dring proves that the absence of the sun can very well be compensated by LED lighting technology and reduce water consumption by 70% compared to open fields. A computer is responsible for automatically maintaining the appropriate air flow, temperature and nutrients, which directly influence the quality of the product.

Currently the site grows watercress, radish, pea shoots, coriander, mustard leaves, among others. The farm is estimated to produce between 11,000-44,000 pounds of crops annually its fully operational.



Via: Bloomberg

Source and Images: Growing Underground

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‘Fully Grown’ is molding trees into furniture



Concerned about deforestation and the environment in general, British designer Gavin Munro sought out ways to make more sustainable furniture. But between demolition wood, recycling and so many other existing options, he developed an innovative and brilliant project: using recycled plastic molds to train trees to grow in the form of chairs, tables and lamps.



With his Full Grown project, Munro has fields of tables and chairs in his backyard and expects to grow about 400 pieces by 2017. He found that a Willow takes three to four years to grow into a furniture piece, while the oak takes six to ten years.



“In essence its an incredibly simple art. You start by training and pruning young tree branches as they grow over specially made formers. At certain points we then graft them together so that the object grows in to one solid piece – I’m interested in the way that this is like an organic 3D printing that uses air, soil and sunshine as its source materials.” Munro says in his website.

The result is not only a beautiful and unique piece of furniture, it’s also incredibly sustainable and environmentally friendly.



Source and images: Full Grown

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Oregon’s mysterious ‘Lost Lake’ disappears through a strange hole every year

A mysterious lake in Oregon, in the United States, has drawn the attention of researchers, biologists and scientists over the years. What attracts so much curiosity to the “Lost Lake” at the Willamette National Forest is that every year the lake water simply disappears after being drained through a hole on the lake’s north side.

[Image Source: Justin Renshaw]

Nobody knows for sure where all the lake water goes, leaving it to a meadow between spring and summer. During the winter, it fills up again when the input from precipitation exceeds the rate of draining. Scientists believe that this phenomenon is due to the volcanic zone where it is located, above an extinct lava tube – a tunnel-like structure created to drain lava from a volcano during an eruption. Therefore, the water disappears through the 6-feet-wide hole, seeps through the volcanic rocks and into the subsurface.

[Image source: Stephanie Stott]

“The lakebed begins to fill in the late fall, when the amount of rain coming in starts exceeding the ability of the lava tubes to drain off the water,” Jude McHugh, a spokeswoman for the Willamette National Forest in Oregon told Live Science. “And it continues to fill all winter long in a series of rain or snowstorms.”

[Image Source: Ryan Brennecke]

With over 5 million views, a video on Youtube shows water draining away quickly through the hole, like a bathtub left unplugged. But for now, they believe there is no concern for the lake since it always ends up restoring itself after a while.

[Image via]

Via: Live Science

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