Date archives "April 2018"

Oxygene: Goodyear’s living green tire made from moss and rubber

The company’s gone sort-of biotech, with living moss at the center of the tire. It draws in moisture from the road (not sure how that will fare in Arizona), eats CO2 and puts out oxygen — basically just doing what plants do. Goodyear estimates a that if every car in Paris had these tires, it would remove some 4,000 tons of CO2 each year. That’s equivalent to removing about 4,500 cars from the road there.

The plant-filled center is also biohacked to extract a small amount of electricity from photosynthesis.

Going further, Goodyear imagines these tires would use something like Li-Fi to engage in vehicle-to-infrastructure communication.

[Not to be confused with the classic electronic music album by Jean-Michel Jarre.]

Photo courtesy Goodyear

 

Prison In Norway: A Different Model

Norway has a… different approach to prisons.

Norway saw a decrease in recidivism rates after they began treating inmates more humanely. North Dakota is adapting the same to make a dent in prison reform.

 

Most recently, David Byrne has celebrated and contrasted Norwegian and USA prison systems in his ‘Reasons To Be Cheeful’ blog.

https://www.reasonstobecheerful.world/article/2018/3/15/prison-reform

Solar Geoengineering To Fight Climate Change

It sounds like the stuff of science fiction: the creation, using balloons or jets, of a manmade atmospheric sunshade to shield the most vulnerable countries in the global south against the worst effects of global warming.

But amid mounting interest in “solar geoengineering” – not least among western universities – a group of scientists from developing countries has issued a forceful call to have a greater say in the direction of research into climate change, arguing that their countries are the ones with most at stake.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/apr/05/scientists-suggest-giant-sunshade-in-sky-could-solve-global-warming

Header photo by Artur Dyadchenko on Unsplash

Beach Cleanup Fertile For Turtles

Hatchlings from a vulnerable turtle species have been spotted for the first time in decades on a Mumbai beach that was rejuvenated in the past two years by a massive volunteer cleanup operation.

At least 80 Olive Ridley turtles have made their way into the Arabian Sea from nests on the southern end of Versova beach in the past week, protected from wild dogs and birds of prey by volunteers who slept overnight in the sand to watch over them.

Versova has undergone what the United Nations has called the “world’s largest beach cleanup project” over the past two years, transformed from a shin-deep dump yard for plastics and rubbish to a virtually pristine piece of coastline.

Header photo: Jeremy Bishop

 

Recycling Ocean Plastic Waste Into Sports Shoes

Adidas designed its shoes alongside Parley with the Oceans, an initiative that strives to bring awareness of the ocean plastic problem to stakeholders and collaborate on projects that can improve the situation. Writing for Triple Pundit last year, Leon Kaye explained Adidas’ goal:

“Adidas says its work with Parley rests on a three-point strategy: avoid the use of virgin plastic, gather plastic waste from the environment when possible, and redesign footwear and apparel so that it is both sustainable and performs better.”

More:

 

Protopia: encouraging change rather than enforcing it

What, then, should replace the idea of utopia? One answer can be found in another neologism—protopia—incremental progress in steps toward improvement, not perfection. As the futurist Kevin Kelly describes his coinage:

Protopia is a state that is better today than yesterday, although it might be only a little better. Protopia is much much harder to visualise. Because a protopia contains as many new problems as new benefits, this complex interaction of working and broken is very hard to predict.

https://qz.com/1243042/utopia-is-a-dangerous-ideal-we-should-aim-for-protopia/

Image: Cai Zhenhua
Header Image: Wang Liuying ; Xin Liliang; Wu Shaoyun; Jin Zhaofang; Meng Muyi; Yu Weibo; Xu Jiping; Lu Zezhi; Zhang Biwu

Venus: Rich Atmosphere Could Host Microbial Life

A new study from an international team of scientists proposes that microbial life could exist in the clouds of Venus. The exciting hypothesis suggests mysterious dark patches seen in the atmosphere could be something akin to algae blooms seen in oceans on Earth. …..

Around 30 miles (48 km) above the planet’s surface is a lower cloud layer with temperatures around 60° C (140° F) and pressures similar to that of Earth (unlike the planet’s surface with a pressure of 90 atmospheres, equivalent to the pressure felt over a half a mile beneath the ocean). It’s not impossible to think that microbial life could exist in this atmospheric Goldilocks zone, after all, here on Earth microorganisms have been found alive at altitudes as high as 25 miles (41 km).

In addition to these incredibly suitable environmental conditions, it’s a strange and inexplicable atmospheric phenomenon that is really driving the hypothesis. As long as we have had telescopes good enough to observe Venus in detail, we have witnessed mysterious dark patches moving through its atmosphere. These dark patches seem to be composed of sulfuric acid, alongside unknown particles that absorb ultraviolet light.

“Venus shows some episodic dark, sulfuric rich patches, with contrasts up to 30–40 percent in the ultraviolet, and muted in longer wavelengths,” says planetary scientist Sanjay Limaye. “These patches persist for days, changing their shape and contrasts continuously and appear to be scale dependent.”

Original article at Astrobiology
Header photo: NASA

 

Robot ‘Bees’ For Mars Exploration

NASA has announced that it has awarded funding to a combined team of researchers from the University of Alabama and an unnamed team in Japan for development of a new kind of Mars explorer. The project team has been awarded $125,000 to develop what NASA calls Marsbees: a swarm of robot bees that could fly in the thin Martian atmosphere and deliver information from their sensors.
Marsbees would be a swarm of “bumblebee size” flapping robots that could cover a far greater distance (with a lot less effort) than a rover could. But that doesn’t mean a rover would be left out: a rover would serve as a recharge station and main communications hub for the bees.
(Header image courtesy NASA)

 

#TwitterTuesday: The Story of @Dog_Rates: Meet the DogFather

For @dog_rates, Nelson usually tweets twice on weekdays, at noon and 8 p.m. He’s never scheduled a tweet, and he’s the only one who has ever posted (except Blake Shelton, who took over the account for a day last September).

It usually takes about 20 minutes to perfect a caption. Once a tweet goes up, Nelson says he’s “glued to it” like a TV network executive in a control room, watching the number of favorites and retweets climb into the thousands.

But Nelson’s empire is built on more than that. His brand of humor has become world-wide-web famous. For example, his dog ratings almost always exceed 10/10 — because, as he once fired back at a critic upset at inflated scores, all dogs are “good dogs.” The @dog_rates community enjoys a host of inside jokes, like the one in which Nelson frequently faux-reprimands followers for sending in animals that aren’t dogs. He even played a role in developing the language DoggoLingo, popularizing puns like “pupset” and censoring “heck” to “h*ck.” Because dogs just don’t curse.

http://time.com/money/5225272/weratedogs-matt-nelson-interview/

 

It’s the Future, where’s my *%$&% Jetpack???

Attached to the backpack and positioned above the wearer’s head is a multirotor system—not unlike those you’d find on a drone. This engages to give the wearer extra lift so he can jump two to three times as high as he normally would before eventually floating back to the ground. The overall effect is to make it look as if the person is walking on the moon.

Header photo courtesy Lunavity