NEWS : TECH (NFPC)

Pollution Levels At Your Fingertips

Pollution is invisible and knowing how much is around you is not always easy. But a new system called Citisense, which consists of a mobile air quality sensor and smartphone app, could one day give people real-time information about the air around them. 

"Asthmatics, who number in the millions, would find this valuable to their immediate health," said William Griswold, a computer science professor at UC San Diego, who lead the group that developed the system. "What we found is that people are very interested in their personal exposure, even if they are not asthmatic."

The system, which is still in the research stages, has a mobile sensor that a person wears while walking or biking around a city. The sensor detects the levels of pollutants in the air and sends the information to a server that uses machine learning to analyze the information for the app. Users with the app can see maps that display levels of pollutants, estimates of a user's exposure to those pollutants as well as a color-coded scale for air quality that uses EPA standards, i.e. green for good and purple for bad.

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The sensors were tested for four weeks by 30 people all over San Diego, most of them faculty at the university. According to the press release, one tester found that she was exposed the most to pollutants while she rode her bike to work. 

Griswold said in the release that, “The people who are doing the most to reduce emissions, by biking or taking the bus, were the people who experienced the highest levels of exposure to pollutants.” The field tests also found that pollution levels varied throughout the day, depending on variables like traffic.

For the most part, the sensors are mobile and proximity to them is necessary for the app to receive data. However, Griswold said in an email to Discovery News that if enough sensors were put out into an area, personal sensors wouldn't be necessary to receive feedback on the pollutants nearby. "With the machine-learning component in the backend," he said, "it will be possible to get an estimate of your exposure from the machine learning estimates, even if you don't have a sensor."

Toward the end of the testing phase, a few fixed sensors were tested, but Griswold said that they didn't affect the user experience enough to continue.

One of the hurdles facing the project now is battery life. The data exchanges between the sensors and mobile devices takes up a lot of power. When testing, users had to carry around two chargers, one for the sensor and one for the smartphone. Currently, the team is experimenting with replacing constant updates by spacing out times when data is transferred to every 15 minutes to save battery life, or making it a transfer that occurs on demand.

Griswold said in an email that sensors like this will be start appearing on mobile phones in about a decade or so.

via CleanTechnica

Credit: Jacobs School of Engineering

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Giant 'Dandelion' Is An Anti-Mine Device

By Jan Hennop, AFP

 

The device has 150 bamboo legs screwed into a central metal ball. Wind blows the lightweight object across a minefield, where it detonates hidden bombs. Credit: Massoud Hassani

Childhood toys lost in a war-torn field have inspired an odd-looking invention which its young Dutch inventor hopes can help save thousands of lives and limbs in his native Afghanistan.

Decades of war, notably the 1979-89 Soviet invasion, have left the rugged Afghan countryside littered with landmines that continue to exact a merciless toll, mainly on children.

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Now, in a small workshop in the industrial heart of the southern city of Eindhoven, the 29-year-old Massoud Hassani screws in the last leg of an ingenious, wind-driven gadget he built to clear anti-personnel mines. He calls the device, the size of a golf buggy, a "mine kafon".

"The idea comes from our childhood toys which we once played with as kids on the outskirts of Kabul," Hassani told AFP as he rolled out the device for a demonstration.

Short for "kafondan," which in Hassani's native Dari language means "something that explodes," the kafon consists of 150 bamboo legs screwed into a central metal ball.

At the other end of each leg, a round, white plastic disk the size of a small frisbee is attached via a black rubber car part for drive shafts, called a CV-joint boot.

Assembled, the spherical kafon looks like a giant dandelion head. And like the dandelion puff it moves with the wind: the kafon is designed to be blown around, exploding anti-personnel mines as it rolls on the ground.

With the legs made from bamboo, they are easily replaceable. Once they are blown off it's simply a matter of screwing on others, which means the kafon can be used over and over.

Inside the steel ball, a GPS device plots the kafon's path as it rolls through an area that may be mined and shows on a computerized map exactly where it is safe to walk.

Hassini is still in the testing stages, notably to make sure there is 100 percent contact between the kafon's "feet" and the ground, so no mine is missed.

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But initial trials -- some using explosives with the Dutch Defense Force -- and an in-the-field rolling test in Morocco this year showed promising results.

"We know this is a working prototype and that we need to do lots of testing still," said Hassani, saying the kafon would not be deployed in real situations until it was 100-percent proven.

The designer and his brother Mahmud, 27, are now looking for sponsors, notably through an online platform called Kickstarter. They hope to raise 123,000 euros (US $160,000) in donations by next month to fund development and take the device to Afghanistan in August for more trials.

It will be the brothers' first time home after fleeing Taliban-ruled Kabul, Massoud first in 1998 then Mahmud two years later, in arduous treks through Pakistan and Uzbekistan. They finally made their way to the Netherlands, where they were accepted as refugees and today hold Dutch citizenship.

Massoud landed a place at the Design Academy Eindhoven -- regarded as one of the world's foremost industrial design schools -- where he first conceived the project in 2010.

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"I had to design a toy from my childhood," said the shaggy-haired inventor as he sipped a cup of tea.

"I went back into my childhood in a dream. I saw the toys we made and how they rolled into a minefield," he told AFP. "We could never get them back."

Despite huge progress in mine-clearing in Afghanistan in recent years, it remains one of the most-mined countries in the world.

Since 1989, around 650,000 anti-personnel mines, 27,000 anti-tank mines and more than 15 million other pieces of unexploded ordnance have been collected, according to the UN-funded Mine Action Coordination Centre of Afghanistan (MACCA).

In June this year, the UN said there were still 5,233 "danger zones" covering 588 square kilometers (227 square miles) putting more than 750,000 people at risk.

At least 812 people were wounded or killed last year by mines, victim-triggered improvised explosive devices and other ordnance left over from the Afghan wars, Nobel Peace Prize-winning organisation Handicap International said. More than half of the victims were children, it said.

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"People are killed almost daily in my home country -- and tragically it's often kids, like what happened on Monday," said Hassani, eyes clouded with painful memories from his own childhood.

His reference was to a December 17 tragedy when 10 Afghan girls collecting firewood were blown apart in the country's east after one accidentally struck a mine with an axe.

"There is no silver bullet to solve all the problems associated with mine clearing," conceded Mary Wareham, a senior advisor at Human Rights Watch Arms Division. But "we appreciate every effort," including the kafon's invention, she told AFP.

For Hassani, his gadget is more than just a new way to fight a deadly scourge.

"This," he said, "will be our revenge on the war that has torn up our country."

 

Happiness Machine Prints Warm Fuzzies

Here's a nice little idea from U.K.-based digital artist Brendan Dawes. It's called the Happiness Machines and it's a device that searches the Internet for mentions of the word "happy" and then prints out those thoughts randomly at the touch of a button.

Some of the thoughts come from Jonathan Harris's crowd-sourced website We Feel Fine. Since August 2005, this site has been combing blog posts for the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling." When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence up to the period, and identifies the feeling expressed in that sentence, whether it be sad, happy, depressed, etc.

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Now, it's possible that someone will mention the word "happy" in a thought that's not entirely positive. But since the phrases are randomly generated and printed on actual paper, the sentiments are explicitly human.

Dawes presentd his machine at the London Design Festival 2012.

Credit: Brendan Dawes

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Rinse Cycle Turns Clothing into Pollution Buster

Steadfast environmentalists determined on saving the planet with their greener-than-thou efforts usually wear their heart on their sleeves. But why limit the heart to just the sleeve, especially now that it can be worn on every part of one's clothing?

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Catalytic Clothing has been working on pollution-eating clothing prototypes for a while now, but their new laundry additive is set to hit retail stores soon, although the deal is pending.

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Put the additive in the final rinse cycle of your wash and it'll coat your clothes in nano-sized particles of titanium dioxide that trap and convert nitrogen oxide pollutants in the air into harmless byproducts that can be easily washed away on laundry day.

According the company, one person wearing clothes coated with the additive could remove approximately five grams of nitrogen oxides from the air over the course of a day. That may not sound like a planet-saving number, but considering that's roughly twice the amount that a passenger vehicle gives off in a typical day, I'd gladly step into a wardrobe coated in this stuff.

BLOG: Dress Helps Purify The Air

The pollution-gobbling threads will be on display at the Manchester Science Festival in Manchester, England from October through November 4.

via Yahoo!

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Solar Panels Light Up the NFL

 

The next time you sit down to watch a NY Jets home game, take a minute during those overhead shots to look at the MetLife Stadium's ring of colorful lights. Those are solar panels, part of a renewable energy push from the NFL to make stadiums more energy efficient.

The 1,350 panels change colors from green to blue, depending on who is playing. The panels aren't just for looks, though. They generate 350,000 kilowatt hours of power, about 10 percent of what the stadium needs on a typical game day, and 25 times the electricity needed to power the LED lights that illuminate the stadium.

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According to National Geographic, the power sector-focused company NRG Energy is responsible for this effort and many other renewable energy projects in sports. This includes a solar canopy still under construction at the New England Patriots' sports complex called Patriot Place and the 8,000-panel project in the parking area of the Redskins' FedEx Field in Maryland.

David Crane, CEO of NRG Energy, told National Geographic that projects like these are a good way to bring attention to sustainable efforts and building fan's team pride. He said that he understood fans weren't going to football games to look at rooves, but that when they do see the panels “fans will look at them and say, ‘my team is doing the right thing.’ It’s really about raising awareness with the fan base.”

via National Geographic

Credit: NRG

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Sun-Powered Oven Makes Salt Water Drinkable

What if getting clean, drinkable water to developing countries was as simple as using a resource they already have in abundance? Sunlight. Designer Gabriele Diamanti believes this simple idea is key to solving the world's water problem -- so much so, that's he created the Eliodomestico oven, which turns salt water into drinkable water.

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Diamanti explains the oven by saying it works like an "upside down coffee maker." A boiler is filled with salt water and left out in the sun. As the temperature rises, pressure increases in the sealed oven producing steam, which is forced down through a pipe. The lid of the oven collects this steam and condenses it into drinking water. This oven only uses heat from the sun and requires absolutely no electricity.

Diamanti wants the project to remain open-sourced, meaning that it will always be evolving because anyone, from designers to local communities, can modify or improve it.

While a finished product is still in development, the oven has earned a Core 77 Design award and accolades from others in the design industry. The hope is that the recognition will lead to funding and help move this project out of the development phases and into the homes of the families that need drinkable water most.

Check out the video below for a full description from Diamanti.

Credit: Humans Invent

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Shop and Do Good with this App

SocialVest iPhone App: Free

Sure, some companies donate shoes or clothes to needy kids every time you make a purchase, but there’s only so many pairs of canvas shoes you can own. Socialvest is an app that has partnered with major retailers to donate money to nonprofit organizations. The company has a site with a browser app that alerts online shoppers when a store they are browsing is active with them to collect donations.

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If the person decides to buy something, 1 to 15 percent of that purchase will go to a Socialvest account. Money from this account can then be donated to a non-profit of the user’s choice. By partnering with major retailers like Home Depot, Target, Nordstrom and Best Buy, the company might have just found a way to combat all of that consumerist guilt so many of us feel after an online shopping binge.

via CNET

Credit: SocialVest

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Recycled Bottles Illuminate Dark Homes

Many great projects abound to aid the less fortunate and shed light on the issues they face all over the world. One organization, Liter of Light, is literally shedding light on dark communities in the Philippines by organizing people to build “solar bottle bulbs.”

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The light is made from a liter-sized plastic bottle that contains water and bleach. The bottle is sealed in an iron sheet and installed into a small hole in the roof of home. The bottles absorb sunlight and emit about 55-watts of light into a dark interior. About 3 million homes in Manilla, the Philippines, are in the dark and have to rely on kerosene lamps for light. Those who do have electricity live in homes with faulty wiring and can sometimes not afford their bills. These bottles provide a cost-effective and environmentally safe way to provide light to these families during the daylight hours.

Check out the video below to see how the lights are installed and how amazingly bright they are. Check out their site to donate and have a light installed on your behalf.

 

via Inhabitat

Credit: MyShelter Foundation

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PETA's 'Porn' Site Now Live

Now that we've got you here, let us turn you on to what we're really about.

So says the banner that greets you when you log on to PETA's new NSFW website. Back in September, we told you how the animal rights advocacy group was planning to launch a XXX domain in effort to lure people with risque images then confront them with graphic footage of animal cruelty. 

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Well all you lascivious lads and ladies, peta.xxx is live. Not only that, they've enlisted some of the biggest names in the porn adult entertainment industry to help them do so.

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"This site has some of the most explicit and jaw-dropping videos I have ever seen, and that says a lot," says iconic, harmonica-playing porn star Ron Jeremy in the site's welcome video. That's right, Ron Jeremy playing a harmonica.

"Peta.xxx is a lot more than just sex appeal," Jeremy continues against schmaltzy-saxophone background music. "You may get a little more than you bargin for. So sit back, relax and allow us to turn you on. You may get the ride of you life and you will never be the same again."

Other high-profile names baring themselves for the site include Jenna Jameson who invites you to "Discover the pleasure of pleather." Sasha Grey, now a serious actress, also reminds you that "too much sex can be a bad thing" and, oh yeah, "have your cats and dogs spayed and neutered."

Visitors to the site are given a variety of links to click on. The 'Sexy Photos' link includes various images of scantily clad vixens publicly stumping for PETA while the 'Sex Tips' link makes the case that vegetarians make better lovers.

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However, the 'Hardcore Videos' link is the most extreme. And by 'hardcore,' PETA means videos of animal cruelty that are "so 'offensive' that no TV stations have dared to run them." It's here where the site's bait-and-switch is best achieved. Those seeking videos of the primal act are instead given videos of what PETA considers the primal sin.

Videos include those of slaughter houses, abused circus animals and giggling lab rats, as well as lizards being decapitated in Indonesia.

Think PETA compromised their ethics by teaming up with the smut business? Here's their defense:

PETA's mission is to put an end to animal suffering, and we use every available opportunity to spread this message -- we always have, and we always will. Unfortunately, this is not always an easy task. Unlike our opposition, which is mostly made up of wealthy industries and corporations, PETA must rely on getting free "advertising" through media coverage. It's a safe bet that many visitors to PETA.xxx didn't set out to learn about how animals are mercilessly slaughtered on today's factory farms; understandably, such topics are convenient to ignore. That's why PETA must make our message impossible to forget -- and launching a website with a .xxx domain name is one way that we can achieve that goal.

via Gizmodo

Credit: PETA

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Adjust Your Prescription With Sliding Lenses

They may not be the hippest frames in the world, but when it comes to providing affordable eyeglasses for people living in the developing world, fashion always takes a back seat to function.

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Eyejusters, an Oxford-based technology company, is bringing their SideLens adjustable lens technology to the masses, particularly those who can't afford the often high price tag of eye wear.

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Users adjust their 'prescription' by turning dials located on the sides of the frames. The dials control two lens that are overlaid on one another.

"By sliding one element over the other, the lens changes its 'prescription' to give clear vision instantly," explains Eyejuster's website. "We've obsessively modelled, simulated and measured them to provide outstanding optical clarity and comfort."

Eyejusters creators added: "Each SlideLens is a pair of lenses with a special shape that you are able to see if you hold the lens on its side and reflect light from the surface. When these lenses are slid across each other (left-to-right), their combined shapes act as if they were one lens with a changing spherical surface."

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The adjustable eyewear comes in two types: negative power to correct poor distance vision and positive power to correct near and far-sightedness.

Developers are now taking pre-orders and say their distribution kits are ideal for NGO's and local advocacy groups. Interested parties can contact Eyejusters here.

 

via Eyejusters

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