NEWS : TECH (NFPC)

Parking Jerks Beware!

Oh, hey there guy in the the throes of a mid-life crisis. Say, that silver Benz with the scissor doors you're driving is a real screamer. It's sick, yo! Did you just wax it? Because it's shinier than your rhinestoned Ed Hardy t-shirt. Dig your spray-on tan too, bro.

With a car like that it's obvious you're well-endowed with an enormous...bank account and sense of self-pride. You've earned it, working hard to sell people subprime loans over the last few years. Reward yourself. In fact, reward yourself with both of those parking spots. Straddle that line. A Mercedes like that needs some breathing room. You don't want some beater-driving peasant parking too close and dinging up that paint job, now do you?

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Every time I'm in a parking lot and I see some clown with bleached teeth and frosted tips take up two spaces with his status symbol, the above internal monologue courses through me like battery acid. And I'm willing to bet I'm not the only one.

In fact, I'm not. God bless the folks at Moscow-based online newspaper, The Village. They've created a new Android app, eloquently named "Parking Douche." Their modus operandi? Simple: stop the parking jerks by publicly shaming them in the online news and on social media.

When users see someone who has taken up two spaces or parked on a sidewalk, all they have to do is snap a picture with their phone and upload the image to the Parking Douche database.

“The data is streamed live to banner ads that are targeted through an IP address, so people that live or work close to locations where these cars were parked see it.”

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Unfortunately, these banners pop up on websites and "interrupt you while you're trying to read an online article." To get rid of the pop-up ads, users must relay info about the offender on social media. This may be a cool app, but you're not going to win me over with annoying pop-up ads. Still, its creators do seem aware of this by taking measures so users aren't overwhelmed with pop-ups.

However, I don't think being humiliated on social media is enough to make offenders change their ways. I mean, their tolerance for humiliation is obviously quite high. That's why I'm fond of tweezing a dirty diaper out of a near-by trash can and dropping it on their windshield.

 

via Mashable

credit: The Village

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Shock Absorber Gets Power From Bumpy Rides

If your car is going to hit bumps in the road, it might as well get a little power.

At SUNY Stony Brook, mechanical engineering professor Lei Zuo invented a shock absorber that converts the kinetic energy from vibrations into electricity.

Electric and hybrid cars already convert the kinetic energy from braking in to electricity that's used to recharge the car's battery. But in those cases, the energy that's captured is the regular, predictable motion of braking.

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Zuo took that idea a step further, and designed a system of gears that collects the energy of irregular motion to ultimately produce electricity. He calls the device a mechanical motion rectifier, or MMR.

"While working on vibration energy harvesting at large scale, I was thinking what is the fundamental challenge? What makes this different from the wind energy technology?" He told Discovery News. "It is the irregular velocity-alternating motion. Then we came up this MMR idea, to convert the irregular oscillatory motion into unidirectional rotation."

The idea of energy harvesting is one that Zuo has been working on for some time. Last year he won an award for an energy harvesting shock absorber that used magnets to generate a small amount of electricity every time they slid past the stationary part of the shock absorber. The MMR setup improves on that idea, using mechanical energy instead of the magnets.

Generating electricity reduces the load on the alternator and engine, which not only drive the car but also power accessories such as the windshield wipers and radio. Generally, a regenerative suspension system could supply anywhere from 100 to 400 watts. A typical car might draw 200 to 300 watts depending on whether the lights or the radio are on.

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Removing the load from the engine could save about 4 percent of the gas most drivers use every year, and 8 percent of the gas used in a hybrid vehicle. Recouping the investment in a new part would take three to four years for conventional cars and two to three for a hybrid.

And the MMR is being commercialized, though it won't be on the shelves of your local auto parts store just yet. Harvest Energy, a California company, is working on manufacturing and is speaking to equipment and auto manufacturers. CEO Henry Mariano told Discovery News that the technology could go beyond shock absorbers. It could also be applied to infrastructure as well, so that roads and floors could harvest the kinetic energy from cars and even human steps.

via PhysOrg

Credit: Hill Street Studios / Getty Images

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Transformers Theme Park Gives Warm Fuzzies

If you're sick of sitting through Michael Bay's CGI schlock fests and, like me, demand a little more reality out of your Autobots and Decepticons, then you might want to consider taking a trip to east China's Zhejiang Province.

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Once your plane touches down, hail a cab to the city of Jiaxing. There you'll find Mr. Iron Robot, a Transformers-themed amusement park on 556 acres of what used to be an abandoned factory. The park, which features 600 Transformer-esque sculptures made from salvaged vehicles and machine tools, is the brainchild of 49-year old Zhu Kefeng.

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The park features old favorites likes Optimus Prime, Bumble Bee and Megatron, as well as dragons and cartoon figures. Just to dwarf your shrimpy human form, some of the sculptures are over ten feet tall. 

The park "has been very popular with the kids," Zhu told Xinhuanet. "I feel very glad when the children visit my park and enjoy the happiness here. I still remember the joy when I played with "iron toys in my childhood…" Joy shared with others, he said, is "more enjoyed."

If that last line isn't enough to convince you of Zhu's lotus-like aura, then get a load of this photo. But don't let his satorial demeanor fool you. Zhu is certainly down for letting sparks fly to build wicked tough sculptures like this one.

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Zhu began building his theme park in 2010 with money used from selling commissioned sculptures on the side. Him and his team spent ten years making the theme park's sculptures after distributing large recycling bins to collect iron and steel scraps.

Mr. Iron Robot was officially granted status as a tourist attraction on March 20, making it China's first theme park to feature artworks made of recycled iron and steel.

If anyone is interested in carpooling to Jiaxing, give me a holler. Trust me, you're going to welcome my monetary pitch-ins. It's a long drive and keeping the tank full of gas is going to be brutally expensive.

via Inhabitat

Credit: Xinhua/Yu Yu

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Window 8 App Controls Police Cars

The "Worldwide Public Safety Symposium" doesn’t sound like the place to be for the latest in cool gadgets. But last week in Redmond, Wash., the event picked up some press for showcasing a Windows 8 app geared toward police cars.

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Developed by Modularis, a maker of automation and architecture for OEMs and the government, the app turns whatever tablet it’s installed on into a remote control for a cloud-connected police car. This gives the user control over the car’s sirens, lights, doors and information stored on the Windows Azure-provided cloud. Check out the video demo from GeekWire to see the app in action.

 

Via: GeekWire

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Nanotech Tank Could Boost Natural Gas Vehicles

One of the major obstacles to making natural gas powered cars cheaper is storing the stuff. Natural gas used in automobiles has to be stored at high pressures, on the order of 3,500 pounds per square inch. that requires strong and big tanks.

3M says it may be able to solve part of that problem. Using carbon composite and nanoparticles, the company says it can build tanks that are strong and small enough for use in vehicles.

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The carbon composite is made of woven threads of carbon, like a rug, held together with epoxy. The nanopartices are put into the epoxy to add strength and stiffness. To finish it off, the walls of the tank are lined with plastic. 

Anything that could cut the size of a compressed natural gas (CNG) tank would be welcome, since in most vehicles the tanks are so large that they take up a good portion of the trunk space. The lack of capacity in the average car also limits the range, and since there are only a tiny number of CNG filling stations.

That's been a major reason why consumers haven't taken to natural gas cars and the big buyers have been fleets, such as city bus companies, where range matters less.

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3M has its sights on other technologies, though. Rick Maveus, the company’s global business manager for advanced composites, told the New York Times that 3M is also looking ahead to hydrogen power. That's an even bigger challenge than natural gas, since the pressure to store useful amounts of hydrogen has to be even higher, on top of requiring cryogenic temperatures.

Image: Wikimedia / U.S. Navy Photo by Photographer's Mate 2nd Class Susan Cornell

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Electric Cars a Health Hazard in China

Buying an electric car to be green? If you live in China, think twice: The electricity used to power that car comes primarily from coal in China, making the negative impact on health greater for e-cars than traditional, gasoline-powered vehicles, a new study says.

With e-car sales rising in China, researchers analyzed the environmental health impacts of five different vehicles in 34 cities in China. Previous studies have focused on emission factors and greenhouse gas emissions, but the authors believe this is the first study that analyzes the proportion of emissions actually inhaled by individuals.

“We had an idea that the emissions are farther away from people in China, and we thought it was appropriate to look at the health effects,” said Julian Marshall, Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Minnesota.

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Although emissions occur where the electricity is generated as opposed to where an e-car is driven, 85 percent of electricity production is from fossil fuels in China, and about 90 percent of that is from coal. Overall, those emissions harm public health more than emissions from gasoline-powered cars, says the study published in Environmental Science and Technology.

“Even in rural areas in China, there are still more people living nearby” power plants than in the U.S., Marshall said.

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Don’t cancel your alternative vehicle shopping just yet, though: When clean energy is used, e-cars are much more environmentally friendly than gas-powered vehicles. It’s unclear how e-cars in the U.S. impact health.

And, “we can clean electric systems,” Marshall pointed out. “It doesn’t mean it will always be this way.”

The study also showed that e-bikes yield the lowest environmental health impact -- and e-bike sales are skyrocketing in China, outnumbering conventional vehicles 2-to-1.

Credit: Liu Liqun/Corbis

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SmartCap Monitors Trucker Fatigue

Yellow Jackets. Black Beauties. Mini-Thins. These were all names of various ephedrine and caffeine-based trucker speed that was legally bought in pill form at truck stop cash registers everywhere. Fatigue is a constant struggle and often causes drivers to seek more chemically enhanced options for staying awake, to say nothing of those who just try and drive through the drowsiness. But then the government started restricting ephedrine since it's a common ingredient used for cooking methamphetamine.

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And Australian company, EdanSafe, thinks they have a better option for long-haul truckers, who typically log 4,000 miles a week, while driving 10 hours a day. They've developed SmartCap, a hat that measures a worker's fatigue in real time by monitoring brain waves.

The washable cap is equipped with waterproof sensors that use custom algorithms to determine a person's level of alertness. The data in transmitted via Bluetooth to a display monitor -- either a smartphone or a SmartCap touchscreen monitor -- where the user can keep an eye on their fatigue level. If that level dips to dangerous levels, audible and visual alarms are activated.

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Developers are hoping the system can be used by supervisors to monitor employee fatigue levels so that no unnessary risks are taken. The system's SmartCap Fatigue Manager Server allows for the monitoring of multiple caps in real time and the option to review an emplyee's past shift to survey what levels of fatigue they experienced.

The SmartCap is still being tested but should be available sometime this year. Also in production are headband and hard hat versions.

[Via GizMag]

Credit: SmartCap

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World's First Self-Healing iPhone Case

Nissan recently announced they were creating the world's first self-healing iPhone case that uses their "Scratch Shield" paint originally designed for cars.

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Taking a cue from Swamp Thing sprouting new limbs and geckos regrowing their tails, Nissan originally developed their self-healing paint back in 2005, using a highly elastic resin to prevent scratches on the inner layers of a car's paint job.

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Now the company says they are doing trial runs on a batch of iPhone case prototypes, marking the first time self-healing paint has been tested on non-automotive products in Europe.

The paint is made from polyrotaxane, which has a chemical structure capable of mending itself by changing back to its original form and filling in gaps from scratches. Small scratches can "heal" in an hour, while deeper scratches might take up to a week. Nissan also says the paint offers better grip due to its more gel-like surface -- good news for all of us butter fingers out there with shattered smartphone screens.

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"We like to think laterally by taking the great innovations we've got from an automotive point of view, and looking at how they could be applied to improve everyday issues," Bob Laishley, Program Director of Business Development in Europe, said in a Nissan press release.

The Scratch Shield iPhone cases are currently compatible with the iPhone 4 and 4S. If trial runs of the prototype go well, Nissan plans to release the cases later this year.

 [Via GizMag]

Credit: Nissan

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Dish Soap Helps Slide New Bridge Into Place

Who knew that dish soap was the secret ingredient to bridge building?

Engineers from around the United States, the Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) and its partners all gathered on Tuesday to watch something truly remarkable. Two bridges on Interstate 15 near Mesquite were replaced in a matter of hours using hydraulic jacks, metal beams and cleaner of greasy casserole dishes everywhere: Dawn dish soap.

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Traditional bridge construction can take anywhere from eight months to a year, but this new accelerated method for bridge replacement reduces construction time exponentially. In fact, construction crews said they only had to detour traffic for 56 hours.

The overpass slabs were built on metal frames right next to the bridges being retrofitted. Hydraulic jacks and cranes were used to lift and slide the slabs onto Teflon rails lubricated with dish soap. Each slab slid about five feet at a time until secured into place.

But don't work yourself into a lather over the technical details of this method, because as you can imagine, there's no real engineering guidelines for sliding a bridge into place with dish soap.

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"It’s kind of an art at this point," Marty Strganac, NDOT's resident engineer, told the Las Vegas Sun.

The bridge slide is part of the I-15 West Mesquite Interchange Project, a $14 million endeavor to improve the interstate's connectivity.

Along with NDOT, W.W. Clyde and Company, Horrocks Engineers and the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada contributed to designing and building the bridges.

More than six bridge slides have been performed in Utah, where the design companies are based. This was the first bridge slide in Nevada.

[Via Las Vegas Sun]

Credit: Julie Duewel, NDOT Photographer

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Earthquake-Proof Bridge Being Built In San Francisco

Within the next 30 years, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 6.7 or higher is expected to hit San Francisco. That's why the Bay Bridge, which connects San Francisco and Oakland, is undergoing major seismic renovations.

During 1989's Loma Prieta Earthquake, which registered 6.9 on the Richter scale, a section of the Bay Bridge collapsed, killing a motorist. Since then, major studies were conducted to determine if California's largest bridges were seismically safe.

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Results of those studies showed the Bay Bridge -- which is bisected by Yerba Buena Island -- needed major improvements. A one-mile stretch on the west span needed three on- and off-ramps replaced, while the entire east span needed to be completely replaced.

Construction began in 2006 on a 2.2. mile stretch. Its main architectural feature will be a single-tower Self-Anchored Suspension span (SAS). When completed in late 2013, its 1,263-foot main span length will make it the longest, single-tower, self-anchored suspension bridge in the world.

Enhancing the bridge's form and function is the 525-foot single tower that is capable of withstanding a major earthquake. The steel tower is actually composed of four separate towers that are connected by shear link beams designed to move separately and act as shock absorbers in the event of a quake.

Also unique to new SAS is that one continuous main cable will help support the deck, as opposed to traditional suspension bridges that have two separate main cables.

This new design will include a nearly one-mile-long main cable anchored on the Oakland side of the bridge. It will then be carried over the single tower and, as it extends down, the cable will loop around two decks and their foundations on Yerba Buena Island, and back to the original anchor.

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This compresses the entire span and allows for a level of cable tension to be sustained. In traditional suspension spans, any tension in the main cables is resisted by anchor points in the soil.

The estimated $6.281 billion project will also feature cantilevered bicycle and pedestrian paths and special lighting to accentuate the bridge's asymmetric design.

Last month, the 28th and final deck section of the east span was fit into place. Main cable installation is tentatively scheduled to start in early 2012.

 [Via NewScientist]

Credit: Courtesy of Caltrans

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