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Tibetan prayer wheels. Who hasn’t seen pictures of the huge wheels in motion as person after person, tourist after tourist, penitent after penitent, walk the line spinning each prayer wheel as they pass mumbling prayers.
Tibet's prayer wheels are believed to generate positive energy that helps refresh the soul and helps carry the petition from the penitents’ lips to God’s ear. An enterprising student has found a way that they can be used to harness another form of energy. One that refreshes the earth – kinetic energy.
Taikkun Yang Li, a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s GFRY Studio, inventor of the Prayer Wheel Energy Generator, has entered it in the Milan Furniture Fair. The Prayer Wheel Energy Generator uses parts that are available globally – used bicycle parts and a discarded fan motor – making it ideal for third-world countries.
The idea couldn’t be simpler! Each spin generates a small amount of energy. The Prayer Wheel Energy Generator would harness that energy sending it straight into the electrical grid of the nearest county.
The picture below shows the inner workings of the Energy Generator.
Set in the midst of the 86th Chelsea Garden Show is a fascinating and thought-provoking social experiment. The Garden Show is the pinnacle of the horticultural social scene boasting such attendees as the Queen and various celebrities on Opening Day.
The surprise entry at this year’s show is The Key – a major garden developed through a collaboration between a government agency working with the homeless, prisoners and the Eden Project. The Key is a worthy contender for Best In Show.
Paul Stone, the designer, member of Architecture sans Frontieres--U.K., developed it with Places of Change, a capital improvement programme. This programme was funded by government agencies seeking to improve services for people who are homeless or otherwise disenfranchised. Stone wanted the garden to symbolize the journey anyone could find themselves taking in these challenging economic times.
The garden is laid out with the intention of making the viewer experience the feeling a homeless/disenfranchised person feels trying to survive in the world today. When one enters the garden, they are overwhelmed with a feeling of foreboding. It is overgrown and decaying, with narrow winding obstacle paths. It is meant to show the hardship of working through life on the outside.
Take a close look at this bench!
There are brambles and thorns and poisonous plants in the garden. They reflect the difficult journey that prisoners must take. Mid-way are huge reclaimed timber pieces set into the ground much like totem poles. They are the storywall. Painted on them is a poem on homelessness done by a homeless person. They welcome you to the back area of the garden.
At the back it turns into a large, open, welcoming social space with a big table and chairs. There is a feeling of inclusion, abundance and bounty. There are vegetables growing and herbs in a shelf unit with a car's windshield as a protective roof.
Old keys are scattered all over the garden floor. They represent the key into society and a return to the real world.
Ninety per cent of the plants were grown from seed by the homeless. They also built the garden physically on site, dug the holes and made the structures. The garden is completely sustainable, the materials are from recycled sources and it will be broken down and reused afterwards.
Will it be prize worthy? There are many who think so.
When most people think of animals changing colour, the first one that pops to mind is the chameleon. However, very few people think of the cuttlefish – a member of the squid/octopi family. Not only can cuttlefish change colours in less than a second; but, they can make various patterns, such as waves of colour. Check out the videos below to see more of the amazing cuttlefish.
Science has for many years been interested in biomimicry – the adaptation of naturally-found processes to solve problems mankind has made themselves. Scientists at MIT are using the cuttlefish as inspiration to build electronic-ink and TV screens that could use less than one-hundredth the power of traditional television screens; yet, remain cheap, easy and safe using polystyrene.
"Cuttlefish change their color by secreting different chemicals to change the spacing between membranes," said Edwin Thomas, a professor at MIT. Thomas recently co-authored a paper describing his team's new screen in the journal Advanced Materials.
"We have created an artificial electrical system to control the spacing between layers," he said which enables the changing the colors on the screen.
The current screen prototype is several square inches across but only one micron thick. Crammed into that narrow space are 20 to 30 layers of alternating "dirt cheap polystyrene that doesn't do anything," said Thomas, and "responsive" poly-2 vinyl.
At rest, with no electrical charge, the screen is clear. As the voltage increases, the poly-2 vinyl expands, becoming thicker and thicker while reflecting ever longer wavelengths of light, starting with blue and finishing with red at 10 volts.
There are several drawbacks with the present screen: the viewing angle can be limited; the screen needs to be viewed it a lit room; in a dark room the screen would remain blank. However, this is “early days” yet; and, there is plenty of time to fine-tune the screen. Meanwhile, it can still be used in certain specialized applications.
The screen is so easy to assemble, said Thomas, that he that is working with a Boston area science teacher to produce a version cheap enough, safe enough and simple enough for middle and high school students to build in chemistry class.
Apparently, MIT isn't the only institution working on these reflective screens. Microsoft, Sun Chemical Corp., the University of Cincinnati and Cornell University are all actively researching the reflective screen research units. Each group is pursuing these screens for a variety of different purposes. Electronic ink applications, pressure sensors and advertising billboards are only a few of the potential applications.
"The tune-ability of these systems is fantastic," said Stephen Foulger, a professor at Clemson University also working on reflective screens. "There is a huge span of colors and applications."
I have included two videos that show the cuttlefish's amazing ability to change colour. There is nothing wrong with your speakers. The first video is silent.
dRMM Architecture has been an innovator in home design for many years; but, possibly their most ambitious and an eco-interesting design so far is the Sliding Home featured in the above video.
dRMM Architecture based in London, England built the home to fit the English countryside. You might be tricked into thinking that you are looking at a typical European barn-style home with a 45 degree pitch to the roof. However, if you watch it for a day, you will notice that it changes form and shape to match the season, weather or time of day.
The Sliding House transforms between a glass and a solid exterior. The glass exterior houses the actual living space while the solid exterior pulls over the glass exterior much like a letter slides into an envelope.
The result is a home that can take full advantage of the sunlight and its warmth; show off a starry night to its best advantage; or close itself off, allowing maximum protection from the elements.
The solid exterior moves by a track system with wheels and four tiny electric motors connected to standard 12-volt car batteries. The entire transformation (open to closed) takes about 6 minutes.
Life's a beach ... the chicken-sized maleo now lives exclusively on Sulawesi island. Photograph: Julie Larsen Maher/Wildlife Conservation Society/AP
Inroads are being made into the conservation of some of the lesser-known endangered species on this planet.
One of these lesser-known endangered species is the Maleo bird shown in the picture above. The amazing Maleo is able to fly immediately after hatching from eggs buried beneath the tropical sand. The chicks struggle to the sand’s surface and can fly with no encouragement or training from the parents.
Maleos are chicken-sized birds that have a prominent black helmut-like forehead: reminiscent of the dinosaurs, I feel. In the wild, this species numbers somewhere 5,000 – 10,000; but, can only be found on Sulawesi Island in Indonesia. They rely on sun-baked sand or volcanically-heated soil to incubate their eggs.
The US-based Wildlife Conservation Society said it has teamed up with a local environmental group to purchase and protect a 14-hectare (36-acre) stretch of beach in northern Sulawesi that contains about 40 nests. The groups paid $12,500 for the beach-front property on Sulawesi, one of Indonesia’s 17,000 islands.
"The protected area is already helping raise awareness about this bird," said John Tasirin, WCS programme coordinator on the island. He added that one of the greatest threats to the Maleos’ survival is none other than mankind. The natives often harvest the eggs shortly after being laid and use them as an important source of protein for both themselves and their families.
The Maleo lays a gigantic egg for its size and the chicks emerge able to defend and/or fend for themselves the moment their beaks break the surface of the sand. This again is reminiscent of the dinosaur to me.
"The population of maleos are decreasing quite steadily," Martin Fowlie of the UK-based BirdLife International said of their new white-sand beach. "So any protection is going to be a good thing."
The following video is not of a Maleo bird; but, of a mutant budgie that was born in New Zealand. You have to see this guy. So without further ado, here's Whipper, the mutant budgie.
I'm fortunate to have several passions in my life. I am absolutely an eco-nut. I am always trying to find new ways to reduce, reuse, recycle. We, as a species, have done more harm to this planet in the short time we have been here, than any other catastrophe or happening ever has. It's up to us to fix it.
I care about the environment whether it is as small as a single cell or as large as the universe.
I adore creativity and think we can all do more with much less. This earth has enough resources for us all to live comfortably if we all learn to share. Wasn't that a lesson we were supposed to learn in kindergarten?
I also love the bizarre, unusual, the weird and the strange. Be prepared for the odd "different" blog.
Photo courtesty Inhabitat 
Photo courtesty Inhabitat
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