Polymer Film Transforms Water Vapor to Electricity
According MIT, Researcher developed a new bio-polymer film that mutates its build after absorbing evaporated water, enabling it to constantly curl up and down. Engineers believe that harnessing this continuous motion could power robotic limbs or create enough electricity to power micro and nanoelectronic devices, like environmental sensors.
Thousands of Frost flowers in the Central Arctic Ocean
This impressive landscape flower laying on water Photograhy by oceanographer Jeff Bowman graduate student and his professor Jody Demin from the University of Washington, is in fact du to a phenomenon when sea ice is formed during the polar winter, it is often possible to observe the growth of frost flowers.
Complex structures are composed fromfrozen atmospheric moisture and frozen brine wicked from the sea ice surface. The transport of brine into these structures means that they are unusually salty, up to 5 times the salinity of the ocean. By this same mechanism other things in seawater concentrate in frost flowers, including bacteria. Although frost flowers are very abundant in the Arctic and Antarctic getting to them isn’t easy. The ice underneath them is often too thin to walk across and prone to drifting with the wind. The basic sampling strategy is to find a place where the water is kept open by winds or currents (called a lead if smaller and short lived, polynya if larger and more permanent).
‘Heart of Glass,’ Sculptures by Gary Farlow
Gary Farlow and his team of 10 at Farlow’s Scientific Glassblowing have reconstruct, the heart and cardiovascular system into an a glass sculpture. Their anatomically correct models can be designed to simulate blood flow, teach placement of catheters and angioplasty devices, or simply test or demo new surgical gizmos. Individual arteries, veins, and capillaries are shaped and fused together, one at a time. Read More…
Asobi Installation by Yasutoki Kariya
For her senior thesis, art student Yasutoki Kariya turned Newton’s Cradle into an ‘Edison’s Cradle.’ The installation features a transference of light and motion from one end of a series of light bulbs to the other
“Asobi” was Kariya’s bright idea. Meaning “play,” the installation is comprised of 11 computer-programmed incandescent light bulbs hung from strings. They playfully re-enact Newton’s Cradle – or more aptly, Edison’s Cradle – visualizing the transfer of kinetic energy, along with a very satisfying click-clack.
Via [Neatorama]
‘Dueling Banjos’ on Tesla Coils
Two Tesla coils perform a rousing rendition of “Dueling Banjos” in this 2010 video by YouTube user FONentertainment.
Fantastic Brine Icicle form at the Bottom of the Sea
BBC team has captured a time-lapse film of the birth of a brinicle . The temperature of this sinking brine, which was well below 0C, caused the water to freeze in an icy sheath around it.
Where “Brinicle” met the sea bed, a web of ice formed that froze everything it touched, including sea urchins and starfish. In winter, the air temperature above the sea ice can be below -20C, whereas the sea water is only about -1.9C. Heat flows from the warmer sea up to the very cold air, forming new ice from the bottom. The salt in this newly formed ice is concentrated and pushed into the brine channels. And because it is very cold and salty, it is denser than the water beneath. Read More…
“PreVue,” Fetal Visualization Device Concept by Melody Shiue
Melody Shiue, an industrial designer of the University of New South Wales has designed a product called, PreVue. It is an e-textile based device that employs latest stretchable display technology over the abdominal region, letting other family members to connect with the fetus in its context. Read More…
Lunar Cubit, Solar Power Generating Pyramids for Abu Dhabi
The energy-generating public art installation Lunar Cubit has won the First Prize at the 2010 Land Art Generator Design Competition. Lunar Cubit is a site specific proposal to be constructed in Abu Dhabi just outside Masdar City, the world’s first zero carbon metropolis once completed. Combining artistic vision with sustainable design and engineering, Lunar Cubit examines the nature of time through nightly contemplation of lunar phases and daily transformation of sunlight into electricity, powering up to 250 homes. Inspired by astronomy, quantum physics and the photoelectric effect, for which Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1921, this work is open to the public, inviting a personal experience where one can literally reach out and touch a 1.74MW utility scale power plant, in the form of nine monolithic pyramids rising from the sands of Abu Dhabi.
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Vision and Illusion
The structure of your individual brain has a lot to do with how you perceive optical illusions. Researchers at University College London asked subjects how they perceived illusions of size such as the one used in this video, and then measured the size of each subject’s visual cortex -the amount of brain matter devoted to processing vision
The primary visual cortex has a far more active role in shaping how we see the world than anyone had suspected. Researchers at University College London discovered this when they were testing a pair of optical illusions on some test subjects. Here’s the first one, known as the Ebbinghaus illusion:
Read more at io9.
350 Earth, Global Climate Art Project by 350.org
As part of the launch for 350 EARTH, the first global art show for the climate is signed by 350.org, founder Bill McKibben; multimedia hip-hop innovator DJ Spooky; renowned urban artist Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada; and director of the Santa Fe Art Institute, Diane Karp.
350 EARTH has issued a call to artists to submit climate change design sketches that will be used to create images viewable from space. The designs will be replicated by human beings, assembled like pixels on a computer screen, to create images so large that they will be seen and photographed by an orbiting satellite. The installations take place in over a dozen cities, including in Europe, South America, and seven locations in North America. Each project is large enough to be visible by space, and will be photographed via satellite. The public can sign up to participate in their city, or make their own art.
Most of the art is developed along the line of “gather-enough-people to-form-a-shape (or message)”: for example, a giant “350″ (representing the optimum levels of parts-per-million of CO2 in the atmosphere); a green footprint; or a polar bear created out of hundreds of red tents. 350.org says aerial images will be made available and displayed at the latest climate talks in Cancun starting on Nov. 29.
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Trees with Glowing Nanoparticles Could Replace Streetlights
Taiwanese researchers have come up with the elegant idea of replacing streetlights with trees, by implanting their leaves with gold nanoparticles. Dr Yen-Hsun Su from Taiwan’s National Cheng Kung University discovered that when you add gold nanoparticles to the leaves of Bacopa caroliniana, it induces a red emission in the chlorophyll. Bacopa caroliniana is a plant widely found in the Southern US, but the same reaction might be possible in other plants and trees. Dr Ye-Hsun points out that this is potentially a win-win-win situation, with the glowing plants reducing power usage, and lowering light pollution, while absorbing CO2.
This ingenious triple threat of an idea could simultaneously reduce carbon emissions, cut electricity costs and reduce light pollution, without sacrificing the safety that streetlights bring.
African Elephants Ambushed by a Nile Crocodile
A baby elephant was taking a drink when a crocodile, hidden under the surface of the water, clamped down on the juvenile’s trunk! Hearing the baby’s calls of distress, the herd of elephants immediately went to its rescue, scaring off the crocodile by trumpeting and stamping the ground. After the attack the herd stayed with the youngster.
When the baby had recovered the herd crossed the waterhole together in safety, only yards from where the crocodile had been hiding. Read More…
Falling from Space Back to Earth
NASA attached a camera to one of its rocket boosters on the space shuttle and recorded the events that take place when a booster is detached from the shuttle. The video takes a while to get going, so if you want to experience the fall from space more quickly, just skip ahead to 1:50.
Via [doobybrain]
New Species Found In Foja Mountains
Foja Mountains are located on the Indonesian island of New Guinea. A recent expedition from Geographic have discovered a bunch of new species, coming with stunning images.
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Biological Lego Blocks
Researchers at MIT Harvard Division of Health Sciences and Technology harnessed Biological Lego Blocks to build new organs. They achieve this by binding cells together into tiny block-like structures, which can recreate human tissues. And on top, the technique doesn’t need expensive machinery.
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Magnet-Like Slopes by Koukichi Sugihara
Koukichi Sugihara, from the Meiji Institute for Advanced Study of Mathematical Science in Japan, designed this cardboard sculpture which won the 2010 Illusion Competition.
via [Neatorama]
The Snow Monkeys of Japan
I know it has nothing to do with architecture or fashion, but may be could we put that monkey in the design category. They are too beautiful and well drawn.
This monkeys have incredible abilities and the strangest habits; food seasoning and hot tub bathing are but a few.
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NASA Delivers Stunning Pictures
Its one of the most deadly place of the solar system, shot like never before by the new Solar Dynamic Observatory of NASA. These first pictures should keep us humble towards the force of the Universe.
NASA’SDO was launched in February for a 5 years mission to study the Sun’s magnetic fields.
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