This week, we present a host of tech meant to save people and perhaps save the planet.
1. Carbon Nanofibers
Carbon nanofibers are grown in labs under extreme conditions, namely inside a vacuum chamber filled with ammonia gas and heated to 700 degrees Celsius. This week, researchers from North Carolina State University demonstrated that they could grow vertically aligned carbon nanofibers without ammonia and using ambient air. The advance will make the process cheaper and safer. The nanofibers could one day be used like wires to power tiny electronics.
2. Green Machine
Deserts are taking over the planet. The UN estimates that more than 1 billion people in some 100 countries are threatened by desertification, which consumes more than 46,000 square miles of arable land each year. The Green Machine concept, designed by Malka Architecture and Yachar Bouhaya Architecture for the Venice Biennale, is a rocket platform that would be commissioned as a mobile oasis to roam over dry lands and plant seeds.
Giant balloons would capture water condensation from the air, while the treads would inject seeds, fertilizer and water into the ground. Power would come from solar panels, wind turbines and other renewable energy sources. Enough electricity could be generated to support a small community. The architects are working on a project to address desertification on the Moroccan side of the Sahara Desert.
3. Solar Cells Harvest Infrared Light
Most solar cells convert the visible part of the sun's spectrum into electricity. But the infrared part of the spectrum remains elusive. Now researchers in Spain have created photovoltaic spheres just a micrometre or two across that trap infrared light until it's absorbed by the silicon and turned into electricity. That could improve the efficiency of solar power and make solar panels more cost effective.
4. Sand Babel Tower
This year's eVolo Skyscraper Competition churned out an amazing list of futuristic architecture. Take this piece from Chinese designers Qiu Song, Kang Pengfei, Bai Ying, Ren Nuoya and Guo Shen, who won honourable mention for their Sand Babel Tower. The twisting structure is built from sand using a 3-D printing manufacturing process and it's powered by the sun.
5. Mirror Culture
For those of us who still have cassette tapes collecting dust in closets, it's a little hard to believe that CDs and DVDs are about to join them. Instead of packing them into a box, though, one group of artists in Bulgaria turned them into a work of art. Mirror Culture is a curtain of 6,000 optical discs strung up over the entrance to the Sea Garden public park in Varna, Bulgaria. Borislav Ignatov of Ignatov Architects, lead the project and describes it as a "literal reflection and recording of our time.”
6. Buoyant Airborne Turbine
The most powerful winds are located higher in the sky than land-based wind turbines can reach. That's why Altaeros Energies is sending an inflatable, high-altitude floating wind turbine 300 meters over the skies of Fairbanks, Alaska. The Buoyant Airborne Turbine is a helium-filled ring with a wind turbine suspended inside. It has a power capacity of 30 kilowatts and will create enough energy to power about 12 homes.
7. WarkaWater
These sculptures look like giant wicker baskets but they're actually water harvesting structures that can turn atmospheric water vapour into more than 25 gallons of potable water per day. The WarkaWater, designed by Arturo Vittori and inspired by the Warka tree, could hydrate the more than than 750 million people around the world that do not have access to safe drinking water.
The structure has two layers: an external semi-rigid exoskeleton built from juncus or bamboo and an internal plastic mesh. Dew forms on the mesh and then drips into a basin at the base. Each tower costs about US$550 and can be built in less than a week. Vittori is currently looking for financing to build two WarkaTowers in Ethiopia by 2015.
8. Cybathlon Parathletes
A new competition, the Cybathlon, is being organized for people with disabilities that use advanced assistive devices, including robotic technologies. The event, conceived of by ETH Zurich and the Swiss National Competence Centre of Research in Robotics, will take place in 2016 and be comprised of different disciplines that apply the most modern powered knee prostheses, wearable arm prostheses, powered exoskeletons, powered wheelchairs, electrically stimulated muscles and novel brain-computer interfaces.
9. StratoBus
This autonomous airship is being developed to carry out long endurance missions 12 miles above the Earth’s surface. Designed by French-Italian aerospace company Thales Alenia Space, alongside Airbus Defense & Space, Zodiac Marine, and CEA-Liten, the rigid blimp-like aircraft will work something like a satellite, conducting observations, maintaining security as well as improving telecommunications and broadcasting signals.
10. 3D-Printed Skull Cap
A 22-year-old Dutch woman with a medical condition that causes her skull to constantly grow thicker and compress her brain just received a transplant of her entire cranium. The surgeons relied on a 3D-printed plate that accurately mimicked the shape of her natural skull.
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