Tired of the drunken revelers who use their streets as one big public urinal, the residents of St. Pauli, the party quarter of the German city of Hamburg, have decided to fight back in a novel way. A St. Pauli community organization coated numerous walls throughout the quarter in superhydrophobic coatings that cause urine to splash back at urinators, making public urination a far more uncomfortable and complicated endeavor!
Some of the walls treated with the substance have signs labeling them, but others haven’t been labeled, so, as expected, your best bet in St. Pauli (if you’re prone to public urination) is to actually seek out a proper bathroom!
The whole campaign has a silly air to it, but it seems like it might actually work. As one St. Pauli resident warns in the campaign’s video, “it’s peeback time.”
About 8 years ago, an electrical engineer and his counselor wife started throwing around an idea to replace asphalt on highways and byways throughout the US with electricity-producing solar panels that were tough enough to be driven upon. The idea blossomed into a project, where the panels featured built-in LEDs that could "paint the road" with markings and warnings, and could be heated to prevent snow and ice build up. The US Federal Highway Administration paid for the couple to produce a working prototype, which they did, and then again to expand the concept into an operational parking lot setup. As the latter contract comes to an end, the Solar Roadways project has released photos of the (almost) completed installation at its Idaho electronics lab. Now the team is dipping into crowd-funding waters with a campaign to raise funds for the move into commercial production.
Many roads, highways, parking lots or driveways can spend much their daytime unused. Sunlight can even break through gridlock to the road below. In 2006, Scott and Julie Brusaw hatched a plan to make use of all that untapped energy by replacing asphalt with toughened PV panels that would also include embedded lighting to act as road markings and driver alerts, as well as communication and power cables to replace overhead lines. The project received funding from the US Dept of Transportation to the tune of US$100,000 in August 2009, and work began on the first proof-of-concept prototype.
By February 2010, the first 12 x 12 ft (3.7 x 3.7 m) road panel (made up of 16 smaller connected panels) was ready, complete with embedded LEDs that could be programmed to deliver custom messages. The proof-of-concept Phase I prototype didn't include any PV cells and lacked the custom-hardened glass with integrated heating element for the upper face, but it served to demonstrate that the proposed electronics worked as promised. The team also built smaller crosswalk panels featuring load cells to test a pedestrian/wildlife detection mechanism, which would flash instructions to slow down when a weight was detected on the surface.
Around this time, Scott Brusaw was invited to give a TED talk in Sacramento (which is worth a watch as it details much of the project's inspiration, history and aims), and the project went on to win first prize in two of GE's Ecomagination challenges.
After entertaining the world media circus for a while, and traveling around the country to deliver talks on the project, funding was secured in June of 2011 for the second phase of development – to create fully functional parking lot.
Work on the electronics began immediately, and a site next to the electronics lab prepared for ground breaking. The Brusaws and their small, but dedicated, team of volunteers revealed a new hexagonal road panel design in July 2013, that would allow them "to handle curves easily and we designed the shape, macro and micro textures for stability, traction, strength." The first batch of the completed new panels were ready for installation and testing by September.
Spin forward to the end of last month, and the first photos of the now operational Solar Roadways parking lot were released. Each of the new panels features PV cells and circuit boards, 128 programmable LEDs, a heating element to help deal with ice and snow, and are topped with "super-strength" textured glass (which has exceeded expectations in load, traction and impact resistance testing).
"Half of our prototype parking lot is mono-crystalline, while the other half is poly-crystalline," Julie Brusaw told Gizmag. "The parking lot is equivalent to a 3600-watt solar array. The power collected is dependent upon the amount of sunshine received. So as with all solar, it will produce more in some parts of the country and world than others."
"We've moved power and data cables to a Cable Corridor alongside the road/parking lot," she continued. "This provides easy access the power/data companies. It will give the cables a home and eliminate the need for overhead wires that are unsightly and subject to ice/breakage. The other way the power companies are handling it now is to bury them (sometimes right next to gas lines) in the dirt and dig them up with a shovel for access. So we can make utility companies' work much easier and safer. Our system can also eliminate cell phone dead spots by installing a 'leaky' cable in the Cable Corridor. Our corridor can be a home for all kinds of cables including TV, fiber optic for high speed internet, phone, etc."
A section in the installation's Cable Corridor has been included to store, treat and redistribute storm water, and the Brusaws sourced recycled glass and were able to incorporate 10 percent in the aggregate of the base layer of the prototype.
Currently, some 69 percent of the layer directly under the glass of each hexagonal unit is made up of photovoltaic cells, but that will increase to 100 percent prior to commercial production. Before that can happen, though, the Solar Roadways project has hit Indiegogo (starting, appropriately enough, on Earth Day) to help raise enough money to hire a team of engineers and other professionals, streamline the production process and move into manufacturing proper.
A lofty funding target of $1 million has been set, and the project will receive all funding, even if the campaign goal is not met. Rewards include t-shirts, coffee mugs, a backer's name engraved on one of the prototype's 396 mounting hole covers, and samples of the toughened glass.
The campaign video below brings the Solar Roadways story bang up to date.
This Slovakian Company is making history, and everyone has their eyes on these guys. If this is not a sign we are living in the future I don’t know what is! This creation has all the things a normal car has, the only difference is that if your stuck in traffic, you can go where there are no roads…
Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, has confirmed that he is gay.
While you could say it's no one's business who the mind behind your iPhone sleeps with at night, it actually is. There are so many kids, proud nerds like me and Tim Cook, who are in high school right now, crushing on the quarterback instead of the head cheerleader. And that's who he's coming out for, not anyone else.
Here's a video giving you a little bit of background on Tim Cook's public declaration:
The RoboSimian disaster-response robot has four limbs, seven cameras and a LiDAR system.
When we imagine the robots of the future, they often look and move like humans, standing up on two legs and using a pair of arms to grab and move objects. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is working on a different kind of robot for disaster response that's designed to move like an ape.
Headless but covered with seven cameras that act as "eyes," the RobotSimian has four identical limbs that do double duty as arms and legs. Together, they ably move the robot across rough terrain and rubble but can also pick up and manipulate objects. It has wheels it can coast on if the surface is smooth enough.
The RoboSimian is JPL's final entry into the DARPA Robotics Challenge, a 27-month-long competition among some of the world's top robotic talent to create an emergency response robot. In situations such as a nuclear disaster, one of these robots could go into environments too dangerous for human rescue workers and execute simple tasks such as lifting debris off survivors or turning off a valve.
In June, RoboSimian and up to 18 other finalists will have to make their way through an obstacle course that simulates eight common scenarios. Each robot will attempt to drive a car, move across rubble, use a tool and climb stairs, all without a human controlling it. DARPA says the final competitors should be as competent as a 2-year-old child. The winning team will receive a $2 million prize.
JPL used leftover parts from RoboSimian to create another robot called Surrogate. The more traditional upright robot has a flexible spine, head and two arms. While better at manipulating objects, Surrogate ran on tracks and wasn't as adept at traversing the complicated terrain that is common in a disaster. After considering both candidates, the team decided to take RoboSimian to the finals.
One trade-off is that RoboSiman is slower than many other competitors. JPL's team is working with the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Caltech to increase the robot's walking speed.
"It is intentionally the tortoise relative to the other hares in the competition. We feel that a very stable and deliberate approach suites our technical strengths and provides a model for one vital element of the 'ecosystem' of robots that we expect to be deployed to disaster scenarios in the future," said JPL's Brett Kennedy, who is supervisor of the Robotic Vehicles and Manipulators Group.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is most known for designing robotics for space exploration, such as the Mars rovers. But the DARPA competition was an opportunity for the JPL group to take its existing robotics research and compare approaches directly to other talented teams.
NASA also has a long history of taking technology developed for space exploration and using it here on Earth.
RoboSimian software was influenced by programs used to control the Mars rovers. In both cases, the system is designed to let the robots work as autonomously as possible when communication with a human operator is dropped. Spotty communications are common in disaster scenarios (and on Mars).
The team has thought hard about all aspects of RoboSimian's design, even making sure it has the right look.
"We included industrial designers in the team in an effort to create a robot that looked professional rather than either threatening or overly cute," said Kennedy. "Basically, we wanted the perceptual equivalent of a St. Bernard."
While JPL is focused on perfecting the ape-like design for Earth-bound applications for now, this is just one stop in the circular life of NASA technology.
"We intend to spin the technologies developed for the terrestrial RoboSimian back out to applications in space," said Kennedy.
"These tasks include assembly and maintenance of orbital structures; exploration of low-gravity bodies like asteroids, comets, and moons; exploration of caves and cliffs on Mars or our moon; and even preconstruction of habitats wherever humans care to venture in the solar system."
These days you can't go anywhere or do anything without someone recording the moment on their smartphone, a tendency one woman has addressed in a new short film.
In I Forgot My Phone, director and star Charlene deGuzman is shown doing activities like hiking at sunrise, celebrating a birthday and lying in bed with a man - all of which are disrupted by someone's incessant phone use.
Depressingly accurate short film shows how we miss out on real experiences by recording every moment:
John Holcroft is a well-known British illustrator who has worked for BBC, Reader’s Digest, The Guardian and the Financial Times, among others. However, what makes him famous are not his employers, but the brilliant satire reflected in his illustrations and the retro style he uses to create them.
Everytime Holcroft publishes a new drawing, they inevitably go viral and spread all over the Internet. His style is based on advertisements from the 50’s, and he reproduces everything from their visual design style down to their aged vintage feel.
The content of these illustrations, however, is anything but old-fashioned – social issues and modern behavior drawn in a satirical way. The issues he focuses on include our dependence on technology, society’s greed and the devaluation of workers, just to name a few.
If you think your commute is stressful, you really need to take a look at this remote village in China. Both adults and children of Yushan take a villager-made cable car to and from work and school. At one 1 kilometer long and over 1,500 feet above the ground, this cable car system makes whatever you take to get around look like a sports car. This is all before you factor in how the cable cars don't provide any sort of warmth or shelter.
Yushan resident lubricating the wire to keep things running smoothly.
What powers the entire line.
A family gets ready to go for a totally routine journey.
They don't look nervous at all.
I guess it's a lot easier to have faith in a contraption like this when the people who made it also rely on it for transportation.
Off they go!
Every person in Yushan relies on these cable cars.
For the most part, people don't entirely enjoy the prospect of limitations. Being limited is seen as a hindrance, or an obstacle to be overcome. In reality, some of the most creative and innovative ideas in art and technology were inspired because of limitations.
Designers at PKMN Architectures took the ethic of finding inspiration within limitations and created something amazing. "All I Own House" is the title of a revolutionary apartment design that allows a smaller space to be functional, practical, and versatile. Located in Madrid, this apartment makes use of its space like no other I've ever seen. It is a truly innovative design.
This is the home of Yolanda R. Pila in Madrid, Spain. It is a single story house, and somewhat small, but has a beautiful garden and belonged to Yolanda's grandmother.
Through an innovative design, one of Yolanda's rooms is now able to become many rooms.
Using a simple slide system by Hepcomotion, these storage units function to create multiple rooms depending on how Yolanda arranges them.
The structural engineering was done by Mecanismo SL, and the design allows for functional storage and easy use of its many facets.
Yolanda runs a studio called ERREPILA that specializes in graphic design and communication. With a quick shift of the storage units, a room with a blackboard and sitting space opens up where she can meet and chat with artists and designers.
Another shift in the storage units and a kitchen opens up, complete with kitchen appliances and a fold-out table that can be used for preparing food.
Don't worry, this innovative design didn't forget the most basic of necessities - a place to sleep. With a combination of moves shifting the storage units along their tracks, Yolanda can open up her bedroom, complete with a bed that folds out from one of the units.
You have to see this place in action - check out the video below.
It's a nightmare scenario: You're sitting at your favorite restaurant surrounded by friends and family. It's your birthday and the drinks are flowing. Everyone's having a killer time. All of a sudden, your heart starts to give out. And it hits you with a pain unlike anything you've felt before.
You're having a heart attack.
There's little chance you'll survive, unless by some miracle there's a defibrillator around. But that's about to change.
Meet the answer to your prayers. The flying defibrillator!
"Around 800,000 people suffer a cardiac arrest in the European Union every year and only 8.0 percent survive." Momont, 23, said at TU Delft University. "The main reason for this is the relatively long response time of emergency services of around 10 minutes, while brain death and fatalities occur with four to six minutes. The ambulance drone can get a defibrillator to a patient within a 12 square kilometre (4.6 square miles) zone within a minute, increasing the chance of survival from 8 percent to 80 percent."Readmore
Robots will, one day, replace us. This goes without question. I know that sounds like a science fiction thing, but it's real life for sure. I'm talking Terminator. I'm talking I, Robot. I'm talking Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Don't believe me? Here are some of the creepiest developments in artificial intelligence that scientists made and will surely destroy us all.
1.) CB2: The Robot That Will Replace Your Kids.
Professor Ishiguro at the Science and Technology Department of Japan's Osaka University created (for whatever reason) a 4-foot tall robot with the same intellect and personality as a 2-year-old. This robot has no practical purpose, unless you feel like hanging out with a terrifying droid toddler.
2.) WD-2: The Robot That Can Mimic Your Face.
The "Face-Bot" uses 17 key points of mobility to shape-shift into any human face and expression smoothly. If others can harness this technology, it will be hard for us to tell the difference between humans and Cylons.
3.) The Nautilus: The Robot That Can Predict The Future.
The Nautilus scans through news stories and finds patterns to predict when and where things will happen. It predicted the location of Osama Bin Laden just by perusing articles written about the terrorist. Nautilus narrowed him down to Abbottobad, Pakistan, the exact location of Bin Laden's compound. The Nautilus also accurately predicted when uprisings in the Middle East will occur.
4.) Robots Who Evolved To Evolve: Real Life Deceit-icons.
The Laboratory of Intelligent Systems created an experiment presenting robots with a choice between a food source and poison. It didn't take long for the robots to realize that you could just follow blue lights of other robots to find the food source. So most of the robots, to get more points in the experiment, turned off the blue lights to fool other robots. Some would even lead the other robots away from the source with their blue light, and kept the food source to themselves.Readmore
For the U.S. military, laser guns aren't sci-fi tech; they're a reality.
In its most recent test, a 10-kilowatt laser gun developed by Boeing for the U.S. Army shot down more than 150 drones, rockets and other mock enemy targets, according to Boeing officials. Known as the High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL MD), the weapon uses directed beams of energy to destroy its targets in midair. Read more the link below
The folks over at Fysikshow decided to take the Rubens’ tube to another level by building a two-dimensional ‘Pyro Board’ with 2500 holes. “Sound waves are transmitted through a flammable gas creating alternating high and low pressure zones. This creates the flame pattern.”
Having trouble cooking and counting calories? The Smartypan teaches the recipe step by step and even monitors the amount of calories in the dish. The new invention is now seeking crowd funding on Indiegogo. The pan has weight, humidity and temperature sensors and the data obtained from them is displayed to the cook through a smartphone app. This also allows the user to see more than a thousand recipes and share recipes that they created. Read more the link below
Research scientists have announced a battery that is able to charge to around 70% of its capacity in just two minutes. The battery has an expected lifespan of around twenty years and if it arrives on the market it could change the electric industry from small devices like smartphones to bigger machines like electric vehicles. Read more the link below
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