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Monday 18 April 2016

TASTY TECH EYE CANDY OF THE WEEK LXXXIV


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Tasty Tech Eye Candy of the Week (April 17)
By Tracy Staedter,
Discovery News, 17 April 2016.

This week on Tasty Tech, we have a vertical rollercoaster, a giant field of light and a canoe that is really a casket.

1. Amazon's New Headquarter

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Amazon's downtown headquarters started taking shape last year, and there's been some buzz about three intersecting spheres under construction. Not yet named, the domes will serve as the visual focus and heart of the company and give employees 65,000 square feet of green space.

2. Vertical Coaster

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The new GaleForce coaster, which is opening this summer at Playland’s Castaway Cove amusement park in New Jersey, is the latest in a growing list of vertical coasters that pack fun and thrills into a small footprint. Instead of long meandering tracks, these coasters offer shorter rides with more vertical excitement.

3. Light Blooms

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Artist Bruno Munro created a beautiful light display in the Red Desert of Australia. Munro named it Tili Wiru Tjuta Nyakutjaku, which means “looking at lots of beautiful lights” in Pitjantjatjara, the language of the Aboriginal locals. Munro used a web of fibre optic lights and acrylic orbs in various colours to create the field of lights. See more here.

4. Leopard Tree

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You might not know by looking at it, but these structures are part of an outdoor workout facility. Called Leopard Tree, the structures are made from fibre-reinforced concrete, stainless steel and high quality wood. The nine stylish workout islands were designed by Vito Di Bari for the company My Equilibria and can be seen at the Salone Del Mobile in Milan, Italy.

5. Personal Pods

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In the last 15 years, the city of Gurgaon, India, has gone from 173,000 people to nearly one million. As a result, getting around is a major challenge. A pilot project for rapid transit is underway to relieve the congestion. If funded, the Metrino personal rapid transit will connect Gurgaon to New Delhi, eight miles away. The driverless taxi pods will hold five passengers each and travel between 16 stations on elevated tracks.

6. Vertical Sky Farm

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Designers of this hyperboloid tower want to bring farming to the city. The London firm Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners conceived of a bamboo-framed building that has water tanks and wind turbines at the top and markets and restaurants at the bottom. The tower can support aquaponics as well as traditional soil-based gardening and produce its own clean energy.

7. Canoe Casket

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Phoenix Boatworks wanted to challenge the idea that a casket has just one purpose. To that end, they offer handcrafted canoes that can serve multiple purposes. In life, it can function as a beautiful bookcase and then when the time comes, offer a final resting place for that last bon voyage.

8. Living Chandeliers

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Artist Mark Sturkenboom's crystallized art evokes a future thousands of years from now when possessions of the present are covered in mineral deposits. Called Overgrown, the pieces are covered in a solution that promotes crystal growth over time. You can purchase them here.

9. E-Skin

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This ultrathin, ultraflexible sensor from researchers at Tokyo university was made using organic light-emitting diodes. It displays biological readings measured through the skin, such as a person's blood oxygen level and heart rate.

10. Stronger than Graphene

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An exotic and unstable form of carbon called carbyne could now be the strongest of all known materials. Using computer models, a team of Austrian researchers found a way to stabilize carbyne atoms into a monodimensional chain twice as strong as carbon nanotubes and stronger than graphene.

Top image: The proposed five-story biodome for Amazon's Seattle Headquarters. Credit: NBBJ.

[Source: Discovery News. Edited. Some links added.]

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