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Green architecture – LUMENHAUS

By Damir Beciri
22 November 2010

lumenhaus-1Although we tend not to write about prefabricated homes, here is an article about a house that was recently exhibited in Millennium Park, Chicago. Inspired by the glass pavilion-style Farnsworth House designed by Bauhaus architect Mies Van Der Rohe, the folks from Virginia Tech came up with LUMENHAUS – a prefabricated house which features a… »

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Spiral sound beacon for simpler navigation of underwater robots

By Damir Beciri
One Comment19 November 2010

spiral-beacon-underwater-navigationWith the increased use of underwater robotics, underwater navigation becomes more and more important. A research team from Naval Research Laboratory, the University of Washington, and Naval Surface Warfare Center has developed and tested an underwater navigation system that uses a spiral shaped acoustic wave to determine aspect. The single stationary beacon can provide a… »

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Racetrack memory could significantly speed up computing

By Damir Beciri
One Comment18 November 2010

racetrack-memory-chipImagine a computer equipped with shock-proof memory that’s 100,000 times faster and consumes less power than current hard disks. Professor Mathias Kläui from EPFL and PSI is working on a new kind of “Racetrack” memory, a high-volume, ultra-rapid non-volatile read-write magnetic memory that was invented at IBM and may soon make mentioned features possible. Although… »

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BacillaFilla bacteria can repair cracks in concrete

By Damir Beciri
One Comment18 November 2010

bacillafilla-newcastle-university-igem-teamA bacteria that can knit together cracks in concrete structures by producing a special ‘glue’ has been developed by a team of students at Newcastle University. The genetically-modified microbe has been programmed to swim down fine cracks in the concrete. Once at the bottom, BacillaFilla produces a mixture of calcium carbonate and a bacterial glue… »

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Engineered plants could produce raw material for plastics

By Damir Beciri
15 November 2010

john-shanklin-plastics-from-plantsIn a first step toward achieving industrial-scale green production, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators at Dow AgroSciences reported engineering a plant that produces industrially relevant levels of compounds that could potentially be used to make plastics. The research is reported online in Plant Physiology, and will appear… »

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Could Vocaloid virtual singers steal the spotlight from pop stars?

By Damir Beciri
11 Comments13 November 2010

vocaloid-megurine-lukaMost of the today’s popular music artists use technology to add effects or adjust their singing in order to make it more interesting to new generations of listeners. A program called Vocaloid can synthesize singing of male or female voices which have been used for choruses and it has been around since 2004. One of… »

Gadgets| Tech»

Indian school children to test new, low-cost electronic notepad

By Damir Beciri
3 Comments11 November 2010

i-slate-for-india-1Thanks to a partnership between Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Houston’s Rice University and an Indian nonprofit, Villages for Development and Learning Foundation (ViDAL), some of the estimated 100 million Indian children who attend schools without electricity may soon have access to one of the world’s most advanced electronic notepads. Dubbed I-slate, the device is… »

Architecture| Tech»

Green architecture – Semiahmoo Public Library green wall

By Rob Aid
8 November 2010

project-semiahmoo-library-outdoor-green-wall-1In one of our previous articles we already wrote about a green wall built on PNC Financial’s headquarters, and in this article we’re going to write about the currently largest and most biologically diverse outdoor green wall in North America. Designed and planted by Green over Grey designers, it is covering the Semiahmoo Public Library… »