Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
S-O-M wins master plan competition for Beijing redevelopment
Architectural practice SOM’s 17.6-sq km master plan for Beijing Bohai Innovation City has won an international design competition for the redevelopment of the region. The design is focused on a redevelopment corridor along the high-speed rail connection between Beijing, and the port of Tianjin. Though incorporating existing infrastructure, the scheme constitutes an ambitious planned city, and one which, if fully realized, may set a new standard for environmentally-conscious urban planning.
Half of the allocated site will be green in the literal sense – devoted to natural and other open areas. But perhaps the plan’s greatest claim to environmental soundness is its commitment to greener modes of transport – high speed rail for getting in and out of the city, but with a focus on foot traffic within the urban center itself…
But the plan by no means relies on pedestrians. A rapid transit bus system and electric car fleet are envisaged. Streets are designed to be cycling-friendly, and SOM hopes that combined, the bus system, walking and cycling will account for 80% of private inner city journeys.
SOM (short for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP) additionally claims that its scheme sets “aggressive goals for water, energy, waste, renewable energy and building design efficiency”, incorporates a wetland park habitat, and incorporates a storm water filtration and cleaning system to return uncontaminated water to the region’s rivers…
The competition was entitled “Beijing Bohai Rim Advanced Business Park“, held by Beijing Tongzhou District Taihu High End Headquarters Construction Management Committee and Beijing Xinghu Investment and Development Co. Ltd. In winning it, SOM have further cemented their reputation as leaders in the field of Chinese development, having carried out numerous projects in Tianjin, and submitting an award-winning master plan for the the expansion of Beijing’s central business district.
Bravo!
Asus warranty won’t cover damages in case of alien invasion
Do you lie awake at night expecting aliens to invade our planet? Perhaps you have nightmares after watching “Mars attacks!” or think Jell-O is now yuck after seeing “The green slime.”
Chances are, regardless of whether you are anxious about aliens or not, that it’s not something you think about when you buy a new computer or gadget. For example, have you ever thought about whether the warranty of your brand new computer is valid if (when?) the aliens arrive?
If that’s you, you should definitely not expect Taiwanese computer, component, and gadget manufacturer Asus to help.
Under the heading “Exclusions from your ASUS Warranty Extension Program including the WEP On-Site NBD Limited Hardware Warranty Service” we can read some of the usual things you would expect to find in this text…
But as we continue down the list of exclusions something more unusual appears: “There is damage caused by natural disaster, intentional or unintentional misuse, acts of war, space invasions, abuse, neglect, improper maintenance, or use under abnormal conditions.”
Uh, OK.
Thanks, Ursarodinia
Slideout goes out the back of VW van
It was over thirty years ago that Volkswagen first started offering “pop tops” on its camper vans. In the years since, the soft-sided interior height-extenders have become a common sight on VW vans parked in campgrounds all over the world. Now, Welsh company Overlander Motorhomes is offering what it sees as the logical compliment to the pop top – it’s the DoubleBack, a sliding insulated pod that extends the interior length of Volkwagen’s T5 Transporter van.
The company starts with a stock 2.0TDI 140PS Long Wheelbase T5 van, then adds its patented DoubleBack pod package. When on the road, the pod stays tucked up inside the back of the vehicle. Once the driver stops and decides they’d like to settle down someplace, however, it electrically extends out of the rear in under 45 seconds, adding approximately two meters (6.5 feet) of useable interior space. Two legs also fold out from the bottom of the pod, which allow it to support up 600 kilograms (1,323 lbs), and to self-level on uneven terrain.
T5 Transporters receiving the DoubleBack treatment also include an elevating roof, a fold-out double bed in the pod itself, a kitchenette, and other home-on-the-road features.
Slideout is part of the language of grayheads. I’ve forwarded the article to my father-in-law who’s somewhere in Southern California with his 5th-wheeler as I post this. Yup – 2 slideouts. No slidebacks.
Eye in the sky — cleared to fly and keep an eye on you…
Daniel Gárate’s career came crashing to earth a few weeks ago. That’s when the Los Angeles Police Department warned local real estate agents not to hire photographers like Mr. Gárate, who was helping sell luxury property by using a drone to shoot sumptuous aerial movies. Flying drones for commercial purposes, the police said, violated federal aviation rules.
His career will soon get back on track. A new federal law, signed by the president on Tuesday, compels the Federal Aviation Administration to allow drones to be used for all sorts of commercial endeavors — from selling real estate and dusting crops, to monitoring oil spills and wildlife, even shooting Hollywood films. Local police and emergency services will also be freer to send up their own drones.
But while businesses, and drone manufacturers especially, are celebrating the opening of the skies to these unmanned aerial vehicles, the law raises new worries about how much detail the drones will capture about lives down below — and what will be done with that information. Safety concerns like midair collisions and property damage on the ground are also an issue…
“As privacy law stands today, you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy while out in public, nor almost anywhere visible from a public vantage,” said Ryan Calo, director of privacy and robotics at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University…
Drone proponents say the privacy concerns are overblown. Randy McDaniel, chief deputy of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department in Conroe, Tex., near Houston, whose agency bought a drone to use for various law enforcement operations, dismissed worries about surveillance, saying everyone everywhere can be photographed with cellphone cameras anyway. “We don’t spy on people,” he said. “We worry about criminal elements.”
Who determines who is an “criminal element”? You got it. Sheriff Randy McDaniel.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups are calling for new protections against what the A.C.L.U. has said could be “routine aerial surveillance of American life…”
“We see a huge potential market,” said Ben Gielow of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a drone maker trade group.
Anyone else see a huge potential for Uncle Sugar to watch over every waking moment of our lives spent outdoors?
$6 Trillion of fake U.S. Bonds seized in Mafia plot to buy plutonium
Similar bonds seized in arrest in 2009 at Malpensa Airport in Milan
Italian anti-mafia prosecutors said they seized a record $6 trillion of allegedly fake U.S. Treasury bonds, an amount that’s almost half of the U.S.’s public debt.
The bonds were found hidden in makeshift compartments of three safety deposit boxes in Zurich, the prosecutors from the southern city of Potenza said in an e-mailed statement. The Italian authorities arrested eight people in connection with the probe, dubbed “Operation Vulcanica,” the prosecutors said.
The U.S. embassy in Rome has examined the securities dated 1934, which had a nominal value of $1 billion apiece, they said in the statement…
The financial fraud uncovered by the Italian prosecutors in Potenza includes two checks issued through HSBC Holdings Plc in London for $325,000 – checks that weren’t backed by available funds, the prosecutors said.
As part of the probe, fake bonds for $2 billion were also seized in Rome. The individuals involved were planning to buy plutonium from Nigerian sources, according to phone conversations monitored by the police…
Most of the early reports this morning don’t have anymore information than this. No doubt there will be updates coming from Italian authorities. A helluva a counterfeiting plot. The cunning bit is that counterfeiting old securities reduces the requirement to meet contemporary anti-counterfeiting technology.
What I’d like to hear more about is what the frack were these gangsters planning on doing with plutonium? Is the Mafia getting ready to build their own nuclear weapons?
Newlywed woman refuses to move in until her hubby installs a toilet
A newlywed woman in a village in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh has won her struggle to have a toilet at her husband’s home.
Anita Narre left husband Shivram’s home two days after her marriage in May last year because the house had no toilet. She returned eight days later after Shivram, a daily wage worker, built one with savings and aid from villagers.
An NGO announced a $10,000 reward for Mrs Narre for her “brave” decision and forcing her husband to build a toilet.
More than half-a-billion Indians still lack access to basic sanitation. The problem is acute in rural India and it is the women who suffer most.
Shivram said he was not able to build a toilet at home because of lack of money. He admitted that his wife returned home only after he constructed one with his savings and “some support from the village council”.
“It is not nice for women to go outside to defecate. That’s why every home should have a toilet. Those who don’t should make sure there is one,” Mrs Narre told the BBC.
I’m with you Mrs Narre, Lots of younger folks won’t remember how primitive toilet accommodations can be. Even an outdoors privy can be made usable with care and good design. It’s always worth the effort in terms of health and sanity.
I still remember when my grandparents were building their home on a farm in upstate New York and my parents wouldn’t bring the family up to visit until they had at least built a two-holer out beyond the environs of the house.
And we had a hell of a celebration when they finally installed the indoor crapper. Made winter visits practical.
Police in Colombia are hard at work training bomb-sniffing rats
At a Colombian National Police base in the outskirts of Bogota, the nation’s capital, a new recruit is being trained.
This new recruit is unlike any other. It stands on four legs, has white hair all over its body and weighs slightly less than a pound. Its name is Rattus Norvegicus — but it’s more commonly known as a lab rat.
During a recent training session, trainers set the white rat on a patch of grass where they had hidden an explosive device underground. It took the rat less than a minute to find it. The rodent was showered with praise. Its trainers also gave it its favorite reward, a treat.
Though safer than a decade ago, Colombia is a country where landmines and car bombs are still a threat. Earlier this month, six people were killed by a car bomb targeting a police station in the town of Villa Rica in the southern province of El Cauca. The day before the February 2 bombing, nine people were killed and 70 were injured by another explosion in the neighboring province of Narino…
In the past, Colombian police used bomb-sniffing dogs; but the dogs’ weight would often trigger the explosives. That’s not a problem for lab rats that weigh slightly less than a pound.
And according to the trainers, their sense of smell is just as good as a dog’s…
Ramirez says that the only disadvantage he can think of about using rats is their short life span.
“These animals live only three to four years, which is a relatively short period of time from a human perspective. On the other hand, they’re very prolific. They reproduce themselves exponentially in a very short time,” Ramirez said.
So far, the rats have been trained to detect seven different kinds of explosives including ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, gunpowder and TNT…
Mendez also says the rats are much more cost-effective than their canine counterparts. “With the money it takes to feed a dog per day, you can feed seven rats for seven days,” Mendez said.
The money-savings alone is enough roll this project along. Nothing makes a bean-counter bureaucrat happier than saving a whole lot of 9′s. Having obedient rats instead of lovable dogs would be a plus, as well.
European Space Agency’s Vega launcher makes first flight
Europe’s new Vega rocket has completed a flawless first flight.
Controllers at the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana ignited the rocket at 07:00 local time (10:00 GMT), and it completed its mission 70 minutes later…
For its first outing, Vega placed nine payloads in orbit, including a physics experiment to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity…
The vehicle is intended to guarantee access to space for an increasingly important class of satellite weighing less than 2.5 tonnes. At the moment, these smaller spacecraft, which include many Earth observation satellites, tend to ride converted Russian nuclear missiles to get into orbit. European operators can sometimes wait many months to get a launch slot on these ICBMs, however.
Vega should allow them to have more control over the schedules of their space projects. It also means that the value of what it is an immensely high-tech enterprise will return to the European economy, not to foreign industry…
Monday’s mission was intended to qualify the overall Vega system, including the rocket vehicle itself and all its ground infrastructure and operations systems.
Pic of the Day — and more
One World Trade Center rises over the skyline of Lower Manhattan at sunset in New York, February 7, 2012
I hadn’t quite realized how far along the replacement for the Twin Towers had come. A stunning building, a structure worthy of replacing those lost in the cataclysm of 9/11.
How to tie your shoelaces
Thanks, Ursarodinia
