Could Worm glue repair broken bones?

bioengineers have looked beyond metal hardware and have now duplicated a natural glue secreted by the tiny sandcastle worm.

Posted: Jeremy Kerbs

Xerox develops silver ink to print low cost circuit boards

What does this mean? everything!

Soon we may print stuff for electronics inexpensively for prototyping.

Posted: By Jeremy Kerbs

I am going to start packing one of these and charging $1 a shot

Handpresso Wild is at the core of the NOMADIC ESPRESSO. Simple, light, elegant and compact, it works without electricity. It has all the basic qualities to make a premium quality coffee anywhere.

Travels with you
Small and handy, it travels with you on holiday, at weekends, on trips… With Handpresso Wild, you can enjoy your espresso inside as well as outside, thus creating a recreational and friendly moment wherever you want.

Makes perfect coffee
Handpresso Wild prepares a tasty espresso with a perfect crema. An outstanding quality obtained by a high-pressure extraction, a patented Handpresso system. “ A fine and smooth crema, subtle aromas, a structured body, a lengthy finish: a “vintage” coffee!”


Packs away
Light and well-made, Handpresso can be stored easily in a drawer or hung with the kitchenware. It requires no maintenance and guarantees a premium quality in every cup.

How does it work?
Nothing is easier! Just pump the machine to 16 bar, add hot water from a kettle or a thermo insulated bottle and an E.S.E. pod. Then, serve a premium quality coffee in your cup by pushing the button.

Eric Collins

Neat packaging

Unique tea packaging!




posted by Helen Ice

Oil Rig Hotels

Jetson Green published an article back in February talking about an innovative reuse for oil rigs; convert them to luxury eco-hotels. The "green-ness" of the idea becomes a little more apparent when you read the article and find out that the standard disposal method for abandoned oil rigs is to blow them up. When you consider that in the Gulf of Mexico alone there are about 4,000 of these bad boys, the concept starts to have some green merit.

It's an interesting thought. I don't exactly know what your demand generators would be, but I suppose it could be neat. Maybe it's the trendy rooms, or if not, it's definitely the water ski performers that would push me over the edge. You just don't see too many good water ski performers these days...

Better Batteries

Venom introduces world's first carbon neutral alkaline battery

Posted: Jeremy Kerbs

CO2-neutral transport is on the horizon

Much of our consumption that produces greenhouse gases can be blamed from transportation of goods. An initiative in Sweden is working towards a co2 neutral alternative.


Posted: Jeremy Kerbs

Plastic Concrete: Building Bricks Made From Landfill Waste

Recent RPI Masters of Architecture graduate Henry Miller has devised a way to reuse waste plastic as an aggregate in cement, circumventing the energy-intensive process of plastic recycling. By grinding up landfill-bound plastic and mixing it with portland cement, Miller was able to create a material just as strong as traditional concrete made with mined aggregate. The ingenious solution netted miller first place in the “Component Category” of the second annual Concrete Thinking for a Sustainable World competition.

Using recycled materials is so hot right now, but using them as aggregate is hotter than Hansel in a black shirt on a summer Sunday. While living in Albany, Miller saw many areas cut their plastic recycling programs for the cheaper (now) solution of landfills, and noticed the astounding number of brownfield sites that were simply being abandoned. Miller’s idea: Why not use plastic waste as an aggregate in concrete and create a more sensible product. By mixing together ground-up plastic with cement and soil reclaimed from the brownfields, Miller was able to create a material just as strong as conventional concrete.

The Concrete Thinking for a Sustainable World competition only asked students to conceptualize a design, but Miller he was not satisfied with a mere idea. He actually used his plastic concrete to build a screen and a wall. In doing so he showed that his ideas were viable alternatives to the status quo and that there was no excuse to merely fall in line.

Describing his project, Henry Louis Miller states: “Recycling plastics is a difficult, energy intensive process, and yields a product that is inferior to the virgin material. I have researched the possibility of using granulated, post consumer waste plastics as the aggregate in concrete. In this application, unlike plastics can be universally mixed with no adverse affects, heat driven re-amalgamation is not required, and my early test results show the resulting product is as strong as conventional concrete mixes (between 3000 and 5000psi.) As a result of using plastic rather than conventional aggregate, the mining of new material to serve as aggregate is not necessary.”

posted by Helen Ice

The End of Driving

From Driving to Riding
Research revealed that self-driving cars, once a fantasy requiring an entirely new infrastructure, are now technologically possible, even inevitable. Savvy robotics are here and real. Advances in GPS, sophisticated sensors, and navigation databases will allow driverless vehicles to operate on the same roads we have today.

Jed

Google removes Pirate Bay from index

gooooooooglebay.jpgThe irony being that searching for "Pirate Bay" now brings up the infinitely shiftier piratebay.com. From the Google results:

In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 4 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org.

The DMCA complaint isn't yet available at Chilling Effects. But plenty of real piratebay.org pages still show up; presumably the DMCA claim wasn't well-formed enough to actually accomplish its objective.

New electronic shift system for road bikes

coming in 2009

Wired's Eric Hagerman reports on Shimano's planned launch of an electronic gear-shifting system for expensive bicycles:

By replacing the conventional levers that pull wound-steel cables through protective housings with solid-state switches and rubber-coated wires, there's no chance for road gunk to clog things up and interfere with shifting, or, for that matter, your post-ride beer.

The principle of an electronically controlled drive train is to execute perfect shifts every time, thus "reducing mental overhead," in the words of Shimano marketing manager Devin Watson. This is a resource cyclists find in short supply during epic rides.

The system, called Di2, will be available in January, marking the end of a years-long development process. Says one anonymous source: "The shifting is mind-blowing: I mean, you just touch the button, and it shifts."

Photo: Wired

Shimano Shuns Cables for Full Electronic Shifting [Wired]

Soon, even our bicycles will need to hooked up to a computer in order to fix.:(

posted by Helen Ice

Teddy Bear Cracker

Gizmodo: Step away from the limousine, or I’ll shoot you with this … teddy bear? The Teddy Bear Gun capitalizes on a cutesy trend in Japan where wedding guests throw teddy bears at wedding receptions instead of rice or bouquets.

If teddy bear throwing sounds like a lot of work to you, here it’s made easy with a simple touch of a button. Pull the trigger and the tiny plush bear is catapulted into the air, and once airborne, it’ll float safely back to earth thanks to its tiny parachute. Made by paintball gun manufacturer Sunamiya, the party crackers will go on sale this month.

posted by Helen Ice

Emoticon T-ShirtEmoticon T-Shirt

Let your feelings shine out.

This cool light-up t-shirt features four different emoticons that you can choose to illuminate depending on your mood or the message you wish to convey. Emoticons are the way that you can convey emotion over the internet or in text messages and now you can select a light-up emoticon to display on the front of your t-shirt. You can show a happy face, a sad face, a winking face or a surprised face, depending on how you feel. A glow in the dark/UV reactive screen print completes the effect.

posted by Helen Ice

TheFunTheory.com

I've never embeded a vid before...I don't know how to save a file from youtube.
Click the link above to go to youtube.

Or, here it is again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw&feature=related

posted by Helen Ice