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Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Someone Built the Perfect Green House in a Perfect Paradise [Architecture]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5609575/someone-built-the-perfect-green-house-in-a-perfect-paradise

Playa Carate, Peninsula de Osa, Costa Rica. 5% of the world biodiversity is in this place, a perfect paradise on Earth. Somehow, someone built this house in it. Loaded with green technology, it's not only pretty but 100% self-sufficient.

Created by Robles Arquitectos, the house is so isolated from civilization that it has no access to public power cables, sanitation, or water. For the latter, the house uses water from the forest, which also serves as a power source thanks to two low-impact hydroelectric turbines that crank 800kWh. In addition to the generators, the roof can provide up to 10,800kWh of electricity thanks to its panels. Additional panels heat up the water.

Everything else in the house has been designed to be energy efficient and easy to maintain:

All the proposed materials were tested in order to evaluate its behavior on the difficult environment that the Osa peninsula has because of its humidity, high percentage of rain, mould, fungi and its flora and fauna.

The whole house—which is 1 meter over the ground so it's away from its humidity—uses thermal panels, built around a steel structure. The structure itself has been designed following the same principles that make insects energy efficient, to enhance ventilation, reduced sun exposure, and provide with natural illumination for as long as possible during the day.

According to the architects, the house is the "first stage" of the ISEAMI Institute (Institute of sustainability, ecology, art, mind and investigation):

The house is the main area of the institute, therefore, it's design will serve as a multifunctional place in order to host activities as Investigation, meditation, training, Yoga and joy at the terrace located in the first level. At the same time, the Institute director will habit the house on the second level.

This whole institute feels like an excuse to build an amazing house in an amazing place, but whatever. I want to join it as much as I wanted to join those bastards of the Dharma Initiative. [Archdaily]

The Sun May've Belched Plasma, But the Sky Looked Gorgeous [Image Cache]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5609916/the-sun-mayve-belched-plasma-but-the-sky-looked-gorgeous

The Sun May've Belched Plasma, But the Sky Looked Gorgeous Last week's geomagnetic storm produced some wild photos of aurora borealis, otherwise known as the Northern Lights. Thankfully Flickr users were on hand to shoot the effects of the sun's expelled plasma, like this one seen here.

This particular photo, shot by Shawn Malone from LakeSuperiorPhoto.com, shows the aurora borealis over the Lake Superior in Marquette, Michigan. My absolute favorite though is Ian Diamond's, who was out shooting in Quebec, Canada.

The Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory Ahead telescope at NASA shot an impressive HD video of the sun's ejection of plasma, which chucks 10 billion tons of the charged gas into the air. Over the course of three and a half days, the gas soared the 93 million miles from the sun to the Earth, resulting in some amazing affects only seen by those living in the Northern parts of the world. [National Geographic via Boing Boing]

Image Credit: LakeSuperiorPhoto

Google Alarm for Firefox Screams Every Time Google Spies You [Privacy]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5610018/google-alarm-for-firefox-screams-every-time-google-spies-you

Not many people are aware about how many times Google collects personal browsing data whenever you visit a web page. If you have Firefox, now you can install Google Alarm and make this fact painfully and annoyingly clear.

The Google Alarm Firefox add-on will scream and show an alert every time your personal information is sent to Google servers. Since this happens almost everywhere—thanks to spying bugs like Google Analytics, AdSense, YouTube embeds, Google API calls, and who knows what else—you may just want to look at the demo:

But if you want to get into "Fuck You Google"-mode, go and install the add-on now. It will play an alarm, show a visual notification, and maintain stats of the percentage of sites that send information to Google. And then, imagine what they can do with all that information. [Jamiedubs]

Metamaterials used to focus Terahertz lasers, make them useful

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/10/metamaterials-used-to-focus-terahertz-lasers-make-them-useful/

Forget old and busted X-rays, T-rays are the future, man! It was only recently that we were discussing Terahertz lasers and their potential to see through paper, clothes, plastic, flesh, and other materials, but that discourse had to end on the sad note that nobody had managed to make them usable in a practical and economically feasible way. The major hurdle to overcome was the diffusion of Terahertz radiation -- which results in weak, unfocused lasers -- but now researchers from the universities of Harvard and Leeds seem to believe they've managed to do it. Using metamaterials to collimate T-rays into a "tightly bound, high powered beam" will, they claim, permit semiconductor lasers (i.e. the affordable kind) to perform the duties currently set aside for sophisticated machinery costing upwards of $160,000. Harvard has already filed a patent application for this innovation, and if things pan out, we might be seeing body scanners (both for medical and security purposes), manufacturing quality checks, and a bunch of other things using the extra special THz stuff to do their work.

Metamaterials used to focus Terahertz lasers, make them useful originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Aug 2010 11:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Screen Grabs: EVO 4G captures illicit in-progress surgery on The Closer

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/10/screen-grabs-evo-4g-captures-illicit-in-progress-surgery-on-the/

Screen Grabs chronicles the uses (and misuses) of real-world gadgets in today's movies and TV. Send in your sightings (with screen grab!) to screengrabs at engadget dt com.

The Sprint badge on our EVO 4G definitely isn't lit up in florescent yellow, but the logo on Sgt. David Gabriel's sure is. During last night's episode of The Closer, Brenda's right hand men were instructed to bust out their cellphones in order to videotape a crime in progress, with the "crime" being the removal of a rapist's heart for transplant into a young, innocent lady back at the hospital. We'll spare you the gory, sticky details, but suffice it to say this 8 megapixel shooter definitely proved valuable when it came time to show and tell. Oh, and didn't 4G just go live in the Los Angeles area? Man, talk about a timely appearance...

Gallery: HTC EVO 4G appears on The Closer