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Futurology #122
Monday, 07 December 2009
Concrete Cloth house in no time: A flexible cloth is easily transported, but transforms into a sturdy concrete shelter. Just add water.
UK company Concrete Canvas created Concrete Cloth, a concrete-impregnated material that's flexible and becomes hard only when wet. The fabric can be molded into various shapes, letting people erect a sturdy building with little more time and effort than they would a tent. In addition to fulfilling your end-of-the world needs, the Concrete Cloth has current military and humanitarian uses as barracks, emergency shelters and food storage.
Concrete Cloth won the Material of the Year Award from Material ConneXion, which supports innovation in materials science.
[Comment: never mind the quality – feel the width of the living room]
New lenses for better eyes: Patients in the U.K. are having their eyes fitted with an artificial lens that allows them to see in high definition.
Surgeons implant the lens into the eye using the same type of procedure used for cataracts. Made from light-sensitive silicone, the lens can give patients vision better than 20/2.
The lens not only cure cataracts and far-sightedness, but can be fine-tuned for focus. By shining ultraviolet light on parts of the lens, surgeons can change its shape and curvature and alter vision. In a way, writes Smart Planet, the lenses are like rewritable CD-ROM discs: they can be adjusted several times until perfected, and a final blast of UV light permanently fixes the lens’ shape.
[Comment: I can see climate change coming!]
Fins heat Christians with data: In the chill of a massive cave beneath an orthodox Christian cathedral, a city power firm is preparing a very green data centre.
Excess heat from hundreds of computer servers located in the bedrock beneath Uspenski Cathedral, one of Helsinki's most popular tourist sites, is to be captured and channeled into the district heating network, a system of water-heated pipes used to warm homes in the Finnish capital, reports the Independent.
[Comment: righteous!]
Samso goes self sufficient: Inhabitants on the small Danish island of Samso have collaborated to form a social energy revolution. The small Baltic island has become one of the first industrialised places in the world to qualify as being totally energy self-sufficient.
There are pictures and movies on the Power and Energy site.
[Comment: If a cold island can do it ...]
Two-mother mice live longer: In the case of mice, it seems that having two mothers means they live longer than mice with one male and one female parent. It could help explain why women typically live longer than men.
Japanese researchers manipulated mouse eggs to grow mice that were bi-maternal, having genetic material from two female parents but no male.
The bi-maternal mice and the control mice were kept in the same conditions and fed the same diet, but the bi-maternal mice were significantly smaller and lighter, seemed to have better immune systems, and had an average lifespan 186 days longer than the control mice.
[Comment: what would you rather be, big or longer lived?]
Artificial larynx sounds more natural: South African researchers are working on a new type of artificial larynx that offers a more natural kind of speech, doing away with the “robot voice” that characterises current implants.
Using a palatometer, which looks like an orthodontic plate and is normally used for speech therapy, the new system tracks the contact between the tongue and palate using 118 embedded touch sensors to determine which word is being mouthed.
[Comment: an Apple Magic Mouse for the throat]
Battery from green algae clever, thinner ... A new biodegradable battery made of cellulose promises to offer thin, flexible, lightweight, inexpensive and environmentally-friendly batteries made without metal parts.
The battery is made from Cladophora, a green algae found along freshwater beaches around the world, and offers better recharge, hold and discharge capabilities.
[Comment: clean up the beaches and use the results]
New spacesuit is one-size-fits-all: No longer will astronauts have to spend hours making sure their spacesuits fit properly for missions. Engineers are working on a suit that'll use pneumatic muscles to seal the suits shut automatically, and the suits offer a lot more.
David Akin and Shane Jacobs, engineers at the University of Maryland in College Park, are aiming to create a spacesuit that will allow astronauts to be ready "in seconds," with artificial muscles not just helping to make the suit a snug fit, but also lowering the amount of exertion needed to move in space. And that's not all; their prototype also includes an in-helmet video screen and LCD spectacles (just in case the video screen isn't showing anything too exciting, we guess).
[Comment: lock and load.]
New flexible antennas will change device design: Smartphones or GPS navigators that can be rolled up and stuffed into a back pocket are inching closer to reality.
A new breakthrough suggests another critical component for most gadgets — antennas — are set to get bent. Or bendable, anyway.
Using a new combination of alloys, researchers have created shape-shifting antennas that could be embedded into materials such as textiles, bandages and bendable displays to bring in a new generation of flexible devices, writes Wired.
[Comment: wireless everywhere]
Dutch grow meat in vats: Want real meat that's completely cruelty free? Scientists have grown a pork chop in a laboratory. The breakthrough could lead to a future of meat that could be harvested without killing animals.
Researchers at Eindhoven University, backed by funding from a sausage manufacturer and the Dutch government, have grown pork from cells harvested from a live pig. Although meat from goldfish has been grown from a lab, this is the first time mammal meat has been grown in-vitro.
[Comment ... and to the extinction of cows.]
