From November 2008 the London Science Museum will be celebrating the work of graphic designer Kenya Hara and architect Shigeru Ban and their eminence in car design. The ‘Japan Car’ exhibition will run until next April and will be exhibiting cars that reflect ‘the soul and spirit of Japan’, and give us a few more ideas in alternative transportation.

Andrew Nahum, principle curator of Technology at the Museum has said, “these cars intrigue us and prompt us to ask whether this is a glimpse of the future of road transport.”

The models on display will feature the Nissan Cube, the Daihatsu Tanto and the spectacular Toyota I-Real(pictured). The Japanese companies NTT DoCoMo, Nissan and Sharp have also developed prototypes for an Intelligent Key System that opens and starts a car, which the user can operate from their phone. Here are more glimpses into tomorrow’s world of road transport:

Source Science Museum

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Since 1990, Dutch kinetic artist Theo Jansen has been creating and nurturing the evolution of large new life forms called Strandbeest. At once awkward and strangely beautiful, these sand beasts are born of the technological age, unrelated to any animal or plant now living on the planet. Their habitat is the beach, and their food is the wind.

Seeing the animals walk across the sand is a sight to behold. They know that they cannot swim so they do not brave the surf. They also know that they cannot climb the dry sand dunes and so they stay safe within the confines of the wet sand of the beach, moving as the wind moves them.

Image: Roel

Still young and dependent on their creator for guidance, Jansen hopes that in a couple of years he will be able to release the beasts onto beaches where they will be able to survive and breed on their own. In order to achieve this goal, Jansen uses the principles of selection and evolution by running computer simulations to produce genetic algorithms that tell him which beasts are ‘fittest’ for the beach environment. Jansen builds the beasts out of plastic tubes, connecting the various lengths of tubes into different beasts based on their ‘genetic codes’.

Image: artfutura

The animals are then taken out to the beach for a romp, and the ones with the best designs are bred to create the next generation of beasts. Successive generations have wings that can capture and store wind energy in old lemonade bottles for later use; noses can be buried in the ground to ensure they won’t be swept away by a huge gale of wind; and feelers can detect and avoid obstacles.

And although most beasts are lightweight side-shuffling skeletons, the innovative way in which Jansen has built his creations enables them to also carry large and heavy loads. The Animaris Rhinozeros, for instance, is a 3.2 ton titan that can move easily on the beach with the aid of the wind, and it can also venture onto the open road with the help of a single person pushing or pulling it along.

Image: Edgar Gonzalez

The possibilities for these animals seem endless in this amazing intersection of art and engineering. It’s not certain whether Jansen will be able to achieve his vision to one day have these animals survive and multiply on their own but it will sure be an interesting journey to watch these beautiful moving sculptures evolve over time.

For more on Jansen’s moving sculptures take a look at this 2007 TED Conference presentation.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

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The nifty new ‘plantbot’ is a plant pot with the ability to seek out sunlight as it moves and changes over the day; ensuring optimum sunlight for indoor plants.

Created by London design group The Play Coalition, details of the plant bot’s inner workings are scarce but we suspect it uses a robot that constantly takes images of its surroundings, then evaluates whether the space next to it would have more sunlight than its current position. We’re not entirely sure whether it also senses furniture and errant pets but if it does then it’s pretty impressive.

Martyr, the Energy Saving Fundamentalist

The Play Coalition’s better known creation is ‘Martyr’, a monkey-shaped energy-saving lightbulb. The ‘energy saving fundamentalist’, as its creators have labelled it, is a simple visual reminder that we should be pulling all appliances out of their sockets when not in use – an environmental statement for your home as well as a conversation piece.

Unfortunately you won’t be able to find either of these creations in stores or online any time soon, however, if you absolutely love these and want to pressure their creators into making them available to the rest of us, head on over to The Play Coalition website to see these and some of their other environmentally-savvy designs.

Source: 1, 2

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Andy Green, an RAF wing commander, broke the sound barrier in a jet car called ThrustSSC in 1997. Now, a new car capable of breaking the sound barrier is in the making with a lofty goal of 1,000 miles per hour for its top speed.

Entitled Bloodhound Project, the invention is being spearheaded by the original car’s developer, Richard Noble. The car will use not one, but two Spey turbofan engines from the British F-4 Phantom II fighter, and while the last vehicle peaked at 763 mph, the new model will hit Mach 1.4. Not only will it set the land speed record, but they also plan to break the low altitude aircraft speed record of 994 mph.

The rocket-shaped creation is expected to accelerate from 0 to 1,050 mph in around 40 seconds, and by the time the car reaches its top speed, the pressure on the car will exceed 79,500 pounds per square foot. To counteract this enormous amount of pressure the body is made of ultra-strong carbon fiber and titanium.

If the car manages to hit its target speed it will be the fastest-ever land-based vehicle. Even more amazing is that the car will make the largest incremental leap from one highest speed to another – the 263 mph gap will be the greatest surpassing speed ever recorded.

Sources: 1, 2

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It is one of the most sought after answers in modern science: where did life come from? How did those first molecules put themselves together in such a way as to form molecular machinery capable of reproducing itself and thereby fueling the creation of the vast and amazing diversity we see on this planet today? Up until recently it was assumed that life first arose on this planet, and on any other where it might exist, in water. It’s a very sensible assumption. Water is critical to all forms of life and almost all the biological functioning that we know of would be impossible without it. But what if we were looking at the wrong type of water, what if life arose in solid ice?

This counterintuitive hypothesis has a small but growing representation in the scientific community. The notion that life may have formed in ice instead of liquid water is significant in that there is ice almost everywhere in the solar system, while water seems to be rare. Lots of planets and many of their moons have plenty of observable ice, and if solid H2O proves to be the most hospitable place for the formation of the precursors to modern life then our chances of encountering biology of some form or another somewhere else in our solar system increase significantly.

Image: justmakeit

To understand this theory we need to go back to basic chemistry. Solid water - ice - can be compared to a highly polished military unit on parade review, all the H2O molecules know exactly where and how to stand in relation to each other and they do their best not deviate from that pattern. Now imagine injecting impurities (say a bunch of drunks and anarchists) into that regiment of soldiers at attention; the drunks are probably going to have a hard time fitting in.

The sots and anarchists in this analogy are a mix of metals and organics and basically any molecule that isn’t good old H2O. What happens, in both ice and imaginary military units analogous to ice, is that all the impurities end up slowly trudging through the ranks until they run into other impurities. Eventually all of the interesting oddball molecules are forced together into millions of little pockets; this even causes some of the surrounding solid H2O to break ranks and turn into liquid water. What you then end up with is essentially millions of discrete test tubes surrounded by solid ice, stuffed chock full of every interesting atom in the vicinity. The close confines then constantly force the molecules to run into (react) with one another in ways not really possible in any other natural setting. On top of that you even have a supply of liquid water. Sounds like the perfect recipe for organic life if there ever was one.

Image: concertayouch

So far there have only been a few laboratory experiments testing the foundations of this hypothesis, but the results have been encouraging. While it will likely be a very long time before anybody figures out exactly how life first arose, if solid ice is where it first happened, alien life might be much closer than we think.

Source:1,2,3

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The flag dropped this month on the first-ever clean, green motorsports racing series at Road Atlanta’s 11th Annual Petit le Mans. That’s right. Green racing. Eco-conscious and a hell of a lot faster than prototype solar-racers. The need for speed is satisfied by three ‘street-legal’ alternative fuels including E10 Ethanol, Sulfur-free diesel, like Sweden’s EcoPar, and mean, green(er) American corn-based E85.

Clemson

The American Le Mans Series features two classifications of racer, GT1 and LMP:

LMP vehicles, or Le Mans Prototypes, are built to precise specifications used by both the European Le Mans and American Le Mans racing series. Custom-built and crafted for endurance, the 3.4-liter V-8 Porsche RS Spyder continues to stand out as teacher’s pet in this, the fastest in closed-wheel class racecar design. Penske Racing sponsored this year’s LPM class winner in their No 6 Porsche, placing first-in-class in the earth-friendlier competition.

The GT1 class, the time-honored superspeed race-purposed vehicle, counts a real celebrity in its ranks with the Corvette C6.R which topped all others at this year’s Green Challenge. This bad boy boasts the LS7.R 7-liter small-block V-8 engine with 505 horsepower. Translating gear-head to English, those are some major guts.

Mulsanne

The overall winner was driver of nine-time champ Audi R10 TDI prototype, which came a respectable 5th in the Green Challenge, and along with green miles covered, lower carbon emissions and pure adrenaline the success of Petit Le Mans proved that eco-racing has a real future within the sport, and within the hearts of racecar fans worldwide.

Source 1, 2

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Clubbers, joggers and hikers, watch out for this: Gotwind’s Dance Charger that uses human movement to charge mobile phones.

Trialed at this year’s Glastonbury music festival, and sponsored by Orange, this clever gadget can be strapped to your arm while you dance the day and night away, and is plugged directly into your phone when it needs charging.

To get technical, the mechanical energy from arm movements is converted into electrical energy by a tiny generator. After converting the current to DC and boosting it, the Dance Charger can charge any portable electrical device you need. Efficiency is estimated at 85%, which is not bad at all when compared to other chargers.

The Dance Charger is still in the concept stage: an hour of vigorous activity registered two bars of battery life on a Nokia N95. However, Gotwind is continuing to develop the idea for greater conversion efficiency and broader uses.

We can’t wait for these to come out, imagine your parents doing a jig to generate some juice, or your boss bopping for battery power in the middle of a meeting. Hours of entertainment.

Source: Gotwind

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The list of medical uses for marijuana (Cannabis Sativa) continues to grow. The Journal of Natural Products recently published a paper outlining the newly isolated antibiotic effects of the class of molecules known as cannabanoids. This group includes the non-psychoactive cannabichromene, cannabigerol, and cannabidiol but also includes the well-known and definitely psychotropic tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).

Researchers believe that the powerful antibiotic effects of cannabanoids can be enlisted in the increasingly difficult fight against MRSA (Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus) and other ’superbugs’ that have evolved resistances to most modern antibiotics. MRSA is perhaps the best known of these superbugs, often running rampant in hospitals, with estimates of up to 1.2 million hospital patients becoming infected and possibly over 100,000 patients dying each year in the United States due to lack of effective medicines against them. The known effectiveness of cannabanoids and the fact that they have not been used before, and therefore no bacteria has yet developed a resistance to them, could prove to be a very valuable tool in the arms race against these constantly changing bacterial strains.

Image: Current Global News

In some ways the notion of cannabis having antibiotic effects is counterintuitive. This is because it has been proven that the act of smoking marijuana actually increases vulnerability to infections. This vulnerability however seems to be a result of inhaling marijuana smoke or even smoke in general and likely has little to do with the presence or absence of cannabanoids.

Contrastingly, cannabis sativa itself, when not smoked, has been known since the 1950s to have strong antibacterial properties. However, as the technology of looking into how molecules are structured and how they interact was in its infancy at the time, the researchers were unable to determine which marijuana compounds were actually causing the antibacterial effects. As the social and research climates started to grow increasingly hostile to the investigation of black-listed substances in the US and around the world, antibiotic cannabis studies were soon shelved and ignored until they were finally picked up again fairly recently by modern science.

Image: Chemung County

With all of the advances in chemical analysis made since the fifties, the new batch of scientists studying cannabis related antibiotics were now able to pinpoint the basic backbone structure that is common to all cannabanoids, to be the active component in killing off bacteria. Now that the bio-active section of the cannabanoid molecules has been identified, researchers and drug makers are busy developing and testing antibiotic drugs as well as considering potential uses for cannabanoids in various soaps and cleaning products. At present they are focusing their efforts on the derivatives of the non-psychoactive cannabanoids. This is presumably because the US FDA, and other governing bodies world-wide, might have a hard time with people getting high in order to cure a bacterial infection; not to mention getting high by just washing their hands.

Sources:1,2,3

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Written by new contributor, Jonathan Fincher

Do you see that photo above? As far as photos of our universe go, it’s pretty blurry and not all that spectacular, except for one little detail: this is the first photo of a planet orbiting a star outside of our solar system. Ever.

The image was taken by three University of Toronto scientists using the Gemini North telescope trained on the distant star (lovingly named ‘1RXS J160929.1-210524′). Up until this point, the only planet-like objects scientists had clearly observed in space did not appear locked in orbit around a star much like our own sun. This could shake up some widely held astronomical theories though, since the supposed planet is located farther from it’s ’sun’ than researchers thought possible. That is, if continued observation can confirm that this large mass actually is orbiting the star. According to scientist, Dr. David Lafrenière:

“Of course it would be premature to say that the object is definitely orbiting this star, but the evidence is extremely compelling. This will be a very intensely studied object for the next few years!”

Source: Gemini Observatory

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About the author: Jonathan grew up travelling throughout the world and has made a point of continuing that whenever possible. For the time being, he’s based in Oregon, where the weird and wonderful seem to thrive. He probably knows more about video games than the environment but still finds it interesting and loves to learn more about it.

Some muscley mastermind at a gym in Portland, Oregon has devised an ingenious way of getting out of paying the lecky bills – by getting his customers to generate the energy for him.

Adam Boesel’s newly opened gym uses human-power to create real energy from four spin bikes at a rate of 200 to 600 watts per hour, depending on how fit the rider is. The energy produced is then stored in a battery that’s used to run the rest of the gym’s equipment, along with solar-power.

Green Microgym, which opened September 1, joins a growing number human-powered gyms and includes includes state-of-the-art elliptical trainers and treadmills, which currently use 30% human-power and 70% solar-power, a yoga room with a cork floor and energy-saving ceiling fans are also in place.

Similar gyms are already in full swing in Hong Kong and California where fitness fanatics power the lights as well as the equipment.

Source 1, 2

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