An Epic debate is underway in our country. Proposed climate legislation would have a far-reaching impact on your standard of living and give government a portal into every aspect of our lives. The affordable, dependable and abundant energy upon which any great civilization is build is about to be rationed. Climate Chains is our effort to engage the culture, to petition a more reasoned approach to the intellectual debate that to often gets lost or overlooked in the irrational rush to pass climate legislation in an atmosphere of national and global panic. When you’ve built the greatest civilization in human history, fundamental changes in the economics of that system must be made with the most sober of consideration.
Featuring Chris Horner, Dr. Patrick Michaels, Dr. Marlo Lewis, Bob Ferguson, Todd Wynn, and Not Evil, Just Wrong’s Ann McElhinney,
Creative Curved River Sinks Flow through Countertops by Elkay.
Elkay
has created a number of creative sinks for virtually any style or
occasions, coming in a variety of shapes, styles and sizes for both
residential and commercial use. The Mystic flowing sink, however, has
to be their best yet.
As shown above, this sink design curves and winds its way through a
chosen surface. It can be set into something that is shaped like it is
or can be set against the more standard rectangular surfaces found in
most kitchens. It can be filled with ice, fruit and/or beverages for
parties.
Other sinks by Elkay come in all kinds of innovative forms with
various purposes. Some are borderline kitch, shaped like things such as
martini glasses which are great for parties but hard to envision in
most homes. Others have creative drying surfaces or other additional
functions.
A BALD, child-like creature dangles its legs from a chair as its shoulders rise and fall with rythmic breathing and its black eyes follow movements across the room. It’s not human – but it is paying attention.
Below the soft silicon skin of one of Japan’s most sophisticated robots, processors record and evaluate information. The 130cm humanoid is designed to learn just like a human infant. The creators of the Child-robot with Biomimetic Body, or CB2, say it is slowly developing social skills by interacting with humans and watching their facial expressions, mimicking a mother-baby relationship.
“Babies and infants have very, very limited programs. But they have room to learn more,” said Osaka University professor Minoru Asada, as his team’s 33kg invention kept its eyes glued to him.
The team is trying to teach the pint-sized android to think like a baby who evaluates its mother’s countless facial expressions and “clusters” them into basic categories, such as happiness and sadness. With 197 film-like pressure sensors under its light grey rubbery skin, CB2 can also recognise human touch, such as stroking of its head. The robot can record emotional expressions using eye-cameras, then memorise and match them with physical sensations, and cluster them on its circuit boards, Prof Asada said.
Since CB2 was first presented to the world in 2007, it has taught itself how to walk with the aid of a human and can now move its body through a room quite smoothly, using 51 “muscles” driven by air pressure, he said. In coming decades, Prof Asada expects science will come up with a “robo species” that has learning abilities somewhere between those of a human and other primate species such as the chimpanzee. And he hopes that his little CB2 may lead the way, with the goal to have the robo-kid speaking in basic sentences within about two years, matching the intelligence of a two-year-old child.
By 2050, Prof Asada wants a robotic team of football players to be able take on the human World Cup champions – and win. Welcome to the cutting edge of robotics and artificial intelligence. More than a decade since automaker Honda stunned the world with a walking humanoid P2, a forerunner to the popular ASIMO, robotics has come a long way. Researchers across Japan have unveiled increasingly sophisticated robots with different functions – including a talking office receptionist, a security guard and even a primary school teacher.
Electronics giant Toshiba is developing a new model of domestic helper, AppriAttenda, which moves on wheels and can fetch containers from a refrigerator with its two arms. Last month also saw the debut of Japan’s first robotic fashion model, cybernetic human HRP-4C, which can strut a catwalk, smile and pout thanks to 42 motion motors programmed to mimic flesh-and-blood models.
A Tokyo subsidiary of Hello Kitty maker Sanrio, Kokoro – which means heart or mind in Japanese – has also produced advanced talking, life-size humanoids. “Robots have hearts,” said Kokoro planning department manager Yuko Yokota.
“They don’t look human unless we put souls in them. When manufacturing a robot, there comes a moment when light flickers in its eyes. That’s when we know our work is done.”
Honda Research Institute in coordination with Advanced
Telecommunications Research (ATR) and Shimadzu Corporation. Have
achieved robotic thought control using a sensor cap to measure
electrical potential on the scalp and cerebral blood flow. We’ve
seen much of this Brain Machine Interface (BMI) tech applied to video games in the past. Honda
claims its technology achieves the world’s highest accuracy at 90% without special training.
Not a flying car, but a roadable aircraft, the Terrafugia Transition took flight for the first time March 5, 2009. Visit http://www.avweb.com and search for “Terrafugia” for more.
Is it just me or is there suddenly more interest in flying cars recently? Here’s yet another example. Unlike the moller skycar the Terrafugia is more like a plane. So you would need an airstrip for take off! (tad inconvenient) Then as I previously posted there is also the crazy brit’s with there Parajet Skycar, who are still currently on the adventure from London to Timbuktu. Best of luck to all the projects out there, it’s always nice when talking about a future with flying cars to actually have examples such as these.
Is it a car? Is it a plane? Actually it’s both. The first flying automobile, equally at home in the sky or on the road, is scheduled to take to the air next month.
If it survives its first test flight, the Terrafugia Transition, which can transform itself from a two-seater road car to a plane in 15 seconds, is expected to land in showrooms in about 18 months’ time.
Its manufacturer says it is easy to keep and run since it uses normal unleaded fuel and will fit into a garage.
Carl Dietrich, who runs the Massachusetts-based Terrafugia, said: “This is the first really integrated design where the wings fold up automatically and all the parts are in one vehicle.” read more..
01.Genpet™ The Only Bioengineered Buddy. Available in 7 different personality types.
02.Color Coding Each personality type of the Genpets has been linked to its respective colour, and that color is then used as a base for each package. (Read more)
03.Heart Monitor Each package has a built in low cost heart monitor that is fully functional, with green LED lights and built in speaker. (Read more)
04.Fresh Strip Every single package includes an easy to use “fresh gauge”. Four simple blue LED lights display the status of the Genpet™. The display will also display if the Genpet™ has been sitting on the store shelf too long, or if the package circuitry has malfunctioned in some way. (Read more)
05.Bio-Genica IV System While the Genpets hang on the store shelves they are in a form of hibernation. Each Genpet™ package has a special nutrient feeding tube attached to it, supplying our specially formulated mix and keeping them healthy and asleep.
06.Genpet™ Restraints Restraining the pets in their packaging ensures no damage to the product, as well as allowing for optimal consumer viewing.
(*Genpet™ life may vary depending on temperature and Genpet ™ freshness)
It’s been about 20 years since Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web on the back of the internet. For more than a billion people on the planet, the web today is an alternate, digital universe that is gradually overtaking the analog, physical world as a source of information and connections. Earlier this month, the Pew Research centre for the People & the Press conducted a survey that rendered two obvious conclusions: The internet has overtaken newspapers as a source of national and international news, and television, led by CNN, continues to serve as the main source.
According to the Pew survey, 40 per cent of respondents (versus 24 per cent in 2007) said the internet is their primary source for national and international news. That compares with 35 per cent (versus 34 per cent 2007) who rely on newspapers and 70 per cent (versus 74 per cent in 2007) who use television as their main source. Given the historic presidential campaign and economic woes this year, the large percentage increase year-over-year for the internet is not surprising.
Among Americans under 30, 59 per cent (versus 34 per cent in 2007) said they get most of their national and international news from the internet. Television tied with the internet at 59 per cent for that group, but that was a decline from 68 per cent in 2007 (the figures add up to more 100 percent, by the way, because people could offer multiple answers).
Television and printed newspapers are clearly stressed by financial pressures, which have been amplified by the ailing economy. While some of the newspapers have leading web sites, their financial staple – classifieds and job and real estate listings – has been dominated by independent internet services such as Craigslist, Monster.com, and Redfin. Mainstream television is competing with the likes of YouTube for eyeballs and is still trying to figure out how to swim with the internet fishes and generate revenue, which at this point is a rounding error.
Most newspapers have figured out that you create content for the web first and that the print edition is a byproduct of that output. Television programming can be viewed on a TV, PC, smartphone, or digital billboard. But as NBC’s Jeff Zucker said recently, “People had been counting on digital exposure. I had been trying to talk about the fact that even as it grew, it was not necessarily the big growth engine for legacy media companies that were trading those analog dollars for digital dimes. We’re now up to dimes. That’s an improvement. It’s still not a dollar for a dime kind of business that I would like to be in.”
While the internet is growing as the place where people go for news, the revenue simply isn’t catching up fast enough. The less obvious part of the internet overtaking newspapers as the main source for national and international news is that much of the seed content – the original reporting that breaks national and international news and is subsequently refactored by legions of bloggers – comes from the reporters and editors working at the financially strapped newspapers and national and local television outlets.
New publishing entities, such as Politico, the nonprofit ProPublica, the Huffington Post, and numerous blogs are making original contributions to national and international news, and some are trying to make money while they’re at it.
As the financial pressures mount – the outlook for 2009 is dismal – and the cost cutting continues, we can only hope that the original news reporting by top-flight journalists is not a major casualty.
Jerry Woodall an engineer from Purdue University, has designed a new Hydrogen road car. I look forward to seeing the progress of this car and hopefully more car companies will take on his technology.
Jerry Woodall, an engineer from Purdue University,
has developed a method that uses an aluminum alloy to extract hydrogen
from water on contact. This process eliminates the need to transport or
store hydrogen gas, 2 things that have been major obstacles to
achieving the much anticipated hydrogen economy.
Hydrogen is generated spontaneously when water is added to pellets of
the alloy, which is a mixture of aluminum and gallium. Aluminum has
been used for a long time in chemical production of hydrogen, but the
addition of gallium makes this alloy far more effective as a catalyst.
As aluminum oxidizes, a skin forms on it’s surface preventing further
contact between the aluminum and the water. The gallium prevents this
skin formation, allowing the reaction to continue until the aluminum
has been used up. The aluminum has a strong attraction to the oxygen in
the water, and when water is added to the pellets the oxygen is
stripped out of the water molecules, leaving free hydrogen gas as a
byproduct.
This technology is being looked at to allow the conversion of cars and
trucks to hydrogen, but the prospects aren’t quite as good as a first
glance might suggest.
Because the alloy is used up during the reaction, new pellets need
to be added periodically and the waste materials need to be recycled.
Internal combustion engines are only about 25% efficient so
existing engines would require more frequent fueling than with hydrogen
fuel cell electric vehicles.
Additional energy and effort is required to replace the pellets and process the alloy after use
However, using the pure hydrogen generated from this process, a fuel
cell system would run at closer to 75% efficiency, reducing the
previously mentioned problems by 2/3. Fuel cells have long been touted
as being the ultimate in power generation for mobile uses, but the
complexity, inefficiencies and cost make them remain impractical for
general transportation uses when compared to the simplicity of battery
electric vehicles for urban use. The technology does become far more
favorable when used with fuel cells instead of internal combustion
however. For general urban transportation, I favor
solar/wind/geothermal powered battery electric vehicles, but there are
several other applications for which on-demand hydrogen fuel cell
systems would be ideally suited:
Rural vehicles that wouldn’t have easy access to a charging station
Emergency response vehicles that require operation at all times
Larger devices such as lawn mowers, tillers, chainsaws, backup generators, cooking devices, etc
Emergency power generation in case of a natural disaster
These applications would benefit from the ease of fueling (just add
water!) and clean operation that on-demand hydrogen would provide.
Because they would not be part of normal urban usage, the hindrances of
the system would be minimized and would remain cost-effective.
Source: the green geek
I was so amazed at the LightDrops Umbrella, the way Sang-Kyun Park has made the energy from rain water falling on your umbrella power a LED light…not only is it a great safety feature when walking at night, light your path at your feet it looks so cool.
I found this great article at stylecrave.com
Rain power, baby. The LightDrops umbrella transforms the potential energy of falling water into electrical energy by using a PDVF conductive membrane. This electrical energy then powers an array of LEDs, making the umbrella glow bright in the dark. Designed by Sang-Kyun Park, the LightDrops Umbrella is both stylish and energy conscious, a symbol of all the power in the world that we can harness if we put our minds to it. Beyond the symbolic, we have to admit– this umbrella looks nothing short of fresh. [via Yanko]
