No Place Like Home, GPS shoes | Dominic Wilcox The left shoe points in the desired direction, the right shoe acts as a progress bar. Connect the shoes to the laptop via USB. Plot on the map where you wish to go and press Upload to Shoe. Sole etched with Dominic Wilcox drawing. Preparing the leather Integrating electronics Growing Plants in the Dark While sunlight contains all colors, the dominant type of chlorophyll in plants only needs purple light to function. This simple fact has big implications for the future of farming. Crops planted in soil, of course, depend on the sun, while commercial greenhouses use white light to grow their crops. All that extra red, green and yellow energy is wasted on the plants. PlantLab has taken advantage of chlorophyll’s little quirk. By using red and blue LEDs to create purple light, they have dramatically cut the energy needed to grow plants indoors. Watch the introductory video here.
MIT's New Self-Assembly Lab Is Building A Paradigm Shift To 4-D Manufacturing Sitting on a table in Skylar Tibbits’s lab, at MIT’s new Center for International Design, is a 200-gallon-fish tank--it's large enough to hold one of Damien Hirst’s pickled sharks. If Tibbits’s experiment goes according to plan, within the next few weeks, it will be the scene of a sort of fractal monster movie. A 50-foot-long strand of coded mystery material will be dumped into the water-filled tank, and transform--without benefit of human hands!--into a sweet little 8-inch square Hilbert curve. How long will it take? Nobody knows. “It will probably depend on how hot the water is, or if I add a little salt,” jokes Tibbits, the 28-year-old wunderkind architect-designer-computer scientist behind what may be the next wave in manufacturing: 4-D printing. The concept of self-assembly isn’t new: It has been used at nanoscale for years. On the wall is a large aluminum and polyethylene structure called a Voltadom, bent into curves that mimic a vaulted ceiling. But Tibbits is no ordinary grunt.
Cassava 'offers climate change hope' for Africa 28 February 2012Last updated at 11:58 Cassava performed best compared to potato, maize, bean, banana, millet, and sorghum The cassava plant could help African farmers cope with climate change, a scientific report says. "It's like the Rambo of the food crops," report author Andy Jarvis, of the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture, said. He told the BBC: "Whilst other staples can suffer from heat and other problems of climate change, cassava thrives." The root crop is already one of the most widely consumed staple foods on the continent. But the report also stresses the need for more research to make cassava more resistant to pests and disease. Last November, UN scientists warned that a virus was attacking the crop, nearing an epidemic in parts of Africa. Viral infections have periodically wiped out the crop in some regions leading to famine. 'Fallback crop' Continue reading the main story “Start Quote End QuoteAndy JarvisInternational Center for Tropical Agriculture
3 | Students Design An AR Device To One-Up Google Glass The strange thing about Google Glass is and isn’t its lame design. Google has produced something that, however clumsily, genuinely attempts to alter the body’s sensory perception. But the product doesn’t fully realize its potential. Eidos, a different kind of augmented reality (AR) device, claims to do just that. Eidos differs from Google Glass in one fundamental way: The device lets users tune into specific perceptions, be they sounds or images, and scale their magnitude to the exclusion of rival stimuli. The two prototypes that the team presented in February at the Royal College of Art’s Work In Progress were the result of months of intense work. The visor, which wraps around the eyes and temples, contains a camera that feeds live footage to an external processor; it then applies special effects to visuals in real-time, teasing out patterns or movements from, say, live sports and entertainment events.
Sun-dried tomatoes linked to hepatitis A outbreak 5 March 2012Last updated at 11:21 GMT Four of the seven infected people had consumed sun-dried tomatoes UK health experts believe sun-dried tomatoes could be the cause of a recent outbreak of hepatitis A. The Health Protection Agency and the Food Standards Agency fear contaminated samples were to blame for the infection that hospitalised four people and caused illness in another three people in late 2011. Hepatitis A virus is carried by human faeces and can be passed on through contact with food or water. Severe cases can lead to liver failure. All of the seven people infected have since made a recovery. One of the strains of hepatitis A identified in two of the patients was identical to a strain that caused a similar outbreak linked with sun-dried tomatoes in the Netherlands in 2010, says a report. Four of the patients in this latest outbreak in England said they had consumed sun-dried tomatoes. Continue reading the main story Hepatitis Officials are on the alert for further cases.
7 | Dyson’s Latest Coup: A $1,500 Sink Faucet That Dries Hands, Too It took 125 engineers three years and 3,300 prototypes to develop Dyson’s latest innovation, a hand dryer called the Airblade Tap that seeks to “reinvent the way we wash our hands.” The company unveiled the stainless-steel Tap alongside two other hand dryers: an update to their successful Airblade and a sleeker, smaller model called the Blade V. At first glance, the Tap might seem like it’s trying to do too many things at once. But as James Dyson explained at a press event last night, the combination was based on a behavioral insight about restrooms. Along with the Tap, Dyson showed off the Blade V, a sleeker dryer that’s 60% thinner than the somewhat cartoonish first-gen Airblade. Hand dryers might not seem crucial to some product designers, but for Dyson, they present a fascinating engineering challenge that pits airspeed against decibels. The Tap will cost around $1,500 when it goes on pre-sale today.
Parents back pre-watershed junk food advertising ban 7 March 2012Last updated at 03:29 By Katherine Sellgren BBC News education reporter The Children's Food Trust says parents need more help to discourage unhealthy eating habits Many parents would like to see a ban on the advertising of unhealthy foods and sugary snacks before the 2100 watershed, a survey suggests. The poll of more than 1,000 parents found more than half thought adverts for junk food made it harder for them to give their children healthy diets. The survey, commissioned by the Children's Food Trust, found many parents felt pestered to buy poor food. The majority (69%) admitted they could do more to promote a healthy diet. Two-thirds (65%) of the 1,015 parents surveyed said there should be a ban on television advertising of products which were high in fat, sugar or salt before 2100. This should be regardless of whether the programming was aimed at children or adults, they said. Almost half (45%) admitted that they let their children influence them when buying food for the family.
Nike Vapor Laser Talon: Football’s First 3-D Printed Shoes The name almost sounds made up--the Nike Vapor Laser Talon--like it was spit out by some Spike TV show title generator. But the Nike Vapor Laser Talons aren’t just real, they can claim a world’s first, as they’re the first football cleats to be equipped with a 3-D printed sole. Weighing a mere 5.6 ounces, the shoes were designed to enhance a player’s “zero step,” to increase the speed of off-the-line launch, which feeds into a player’s maximum momentum. Given that a laser has a fairly flexible path, the side effect of this process is that design iterations could be tested “within hours instead of months.” But of course, the most compelling possibility of such a new process is customization. See more here. [Hat tip: designboom]
Cassava - big business in South Sudan Replacing imported barley with locally-grown cassava starch for beer brewing has created a market in South Sudan© SABMiller, OneRedEye/Jason Alden Two hours drive from South Sudan's main city of Juba, the Jujumbo Farmer Field School might seem an unlikely partner for one of Africa's leading brewing companies. But this well-organised group of 20 smallholders is among 2,000 South Sudanese farmers who from July 2012 will be selling their cassava crop to Southern Sudan Beverages Ltd (SSBL), part of the South Africa-based SABMiller drinks company. In so doing, and if all goes well, they will be providing a valuable illustration of how the private sector can become a key player in boosting small-farmer productivity. Replacing imported barley with locally-grown cassava starch for its beer brewing has created a market in South Sudan for a crop that in the past has been widely regarded as a poor man's food and an insurance against drought. Cassava champions Collective marketing