I rode the 300-pound electric tricycle that could be the future of urban deliveries

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Piloting Rad Power Bikes’ hefty e-tricycle was intimidating at first, but it was quickly clear what an important tool it will be in replacing vehicles in cities.

One of the first things that Brian Rinckenberger, commercial sales director for Rad Power Bikes, tells me as I sit perched on the saddle of one of the company’s massive electric tricycles is that regular cyclists usually freak out at this point.

I am no exception. I’m in Golden Gardens, a waterfront park on the northwest edge of Seattle overlooking the Puget Sound. And I’m about to try to pedal 500 pounds–a 300-pound tricycle, piled with 200 pounds of cargo in the truck-bed attachment behind me–across the parking lot. For reference, my road bike, which I ride daily, is 22 pounds. I can’t stop moving my feet from the pedals to the ground in an unnecessary attempt to stop the tricycle from tipping over, as I’m convinced it will.

Continue reading… “I rode the 300-pound electric tricycle that could be the future of urban deliveries”

Transparent solar panels will turn windows into green energy collectors

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A team of researchers from Michigan State University managed to develop a fully transparent solar panels – a breakthrough that could lead to countless applications in architecture, as well as other fields such as mobile electronics or the automotive industry. Previous attempts to create such a device have been made, but results were never satisfying enough, with low efficiency and poor material quality.

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Generator that creates electricity from gravity could revolutionize renewable energy

A Dutch inventor has successfully created a contraption that generates electricity from gravity – and it could revolutionize the future of renewable energy.

Dutch architect Janjaap Ruijssenaars, from Universe Architecture, has developed a method to generate free energy in a sustainable way at home. The patent-pending technique, whereby energy is released by perpetually unbalancing a weight, offers an alternative to solar and wind technology.

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Milk without the Cow. Eggs without the Chicken

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Yeast-derived “animal products” may soon be part of an environmentally balanced diet.

In 2008, the biotech industry had fallen on tough times: capital was drying up and businesses were struggling to survive. That’s when Ryan Bethencourt saw an opportunity. A biologist with an entrepreneurial streak, he and a couple of friends started buying equipment from bankrupt companies and setting up their own small labs. By 2013, he had co-founded Counter Culture Labs, a “biohacker” space in Oakland, California. There, DIY-biology enthusiasts are now working on, among other projects, making real cheese in a way that bypasses the cow.

Bethencourt is part of a growing group of scientists, entrepreneurs, and lab tinkerers who are forging a bold new food future—one without animals. But they’re not asking everyone to give up meat and dairy. Thanks to advances in synthetic biology, they’re developing ways to produce actual animal products—meat, milk, egg whites, collagen—in the lab. And in doing so, they are shrinking the carbon footprint and slashing the land and water requirements of these goods with the goal of meeting the world’s growing protein needs more sustainably.

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The home of the future isn’t smart — It’s ‘Living’ and green

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The varied universes of science fiction often offer inspiration for emerging technologies, or at least fitting leads for articles to describe them. Take the spaceship Moya from a sci-fi series called “Farscape,” which follows the adventures of a ragtag team of aliens very much in the spirit of “Guardians of the Galaxy.”

Moya is a biomechanical ship, part of an alien race called Leviathans that’s been described as a cross between a stingray and a horseshoe crab. She comes equipped with her own version of the warp drive and repair drones, but is also capable of producing offspring, giving a whole new meaning to the term “mothership.”

This hybrid of biology and technology is a fantastical spin on real-world concepts that come with labels like organicism, biotecture, or living architecture. The basic idea of these theories is simple: Integrating biological systems into our living spaces, whether it’s the home, the office, or the first rocket carrying humans to Mars, is imperative for creating more sustainable and healthier environments.

“To develop a more sustainable relationship with the natural world, we need to allow chemical exchanges that take place within our living spaces, and between the inside and the outside,” wrote Dr. Rachel Armstrong, a professor of experimental architecture at Newcastle University who also holds a medical degree.

Continue reading… “The home of the future isn’t smart — It’s ‘Living’ and green”

Giving up gas: China’s Shenzhen switches to electric taxis

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SHENZHEN, China (AP) — One of China’s major cities has reached an environmental milestone: an almost entirely electric-powered taxi fleet.

The high-tech hub of Shenzhen in southern China announced at the start of this year that 99 percent of the 21,689 taxis operating in the city were electric. Last year, it still had 7,500 gasoline-powered taxis on the roads. A few can still be found, but electric ones far outnumber them.

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Microorganisms that eat seaweed can create biodegradable plastic

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Ocean Of Opportunity

Earth’s oceans contain tens of millions of tons of plastic pollution. But a new technique that creates biodegradable plastics out of seaweed could finally give the oceans relief.

Bioplastics are plastics manufactured from biomass sources instead of fossil fuels. Many degrade far more quickly than traditional plastics, but creating them typically requires fertile soil and fresh water, which aren’t available everywhere.

Now, researchers have found a way to create a bioplastic using seaweed, a far more accessible resource — a promising new approach that could both reduce strain on the plastic-clogged oceans and reduce the Earth’s dependence on fossil fuels.

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Harbor town in Germany unveils urban- chic hostel made out of repurposed shipping containers

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Berlin-based Holzer Kobler Architekturen and Kinzo Architekten have collaborated on Germany’s first upcycled hostel and its nothing short of spectacular. The Dock Inn is made out of multiple repurposed shipping containers that have been carved out to create 64 guest rooms which all feature a vibrant interior design that mixes urban chic with industrial charm.

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High-tech hemp homes: Australia’s 3D-printed green building revolution

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A Dutch town will host the world’s first liveable 3D-homes, with residents set to move in next year. Photo: Project Milestone

From 3D-printed buildings to hemp-panelled homes, a hi-tech green building revolution is under way across the globe.

An Australian company has revealed plans to roll out 3D-printed hemp homes, thanks to pioneering technology that could transform residential and commercial building.

Positioning itself at the forefront of Australia’s growing hemp industry, Perth-based bio-technology company Mirreco is pursuing a vision of a world where “the dire consequences of global-warming have been averted because we have seized the opportunity to act now”.

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Plastics recycled for use on roads

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As plastic increasingly chokes the world’s landfills, and China announced last year it didn’t want to buy recycled plastic anymore, the what to do with it all has become a pressing question.

Why not recycle it and use it to build roads?

Bound together with plastic polymers, the asphalt will be cheaper and last longer than conventional pavement, according to independent experts.

One European firm already is combining plastic pellets with hot-mix asphalt to resurface roadways. A U.S. company says that once it finds financial backing, its product “could be deployed within six months” with a process that combines asphalt milled from the road’s surface with plastic urethane.

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Battery idea: Hydroelectric pumped storage, but with bricks

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Company called Energy Vault has an agreement to build a pilot tower in India in 2019.

A mock-up of what Energy Vault’s tower looks like.

Energy Vault

A company called Energy Vault has proposed a new utility-scale battery that is both old and new at the same time. The “battery” is mechanical, rather than chemical, and stores energy much like pumped hydro does, but it does it with bricks.

If you’re not familiar with pumped hydro, it works like this. The system pumps water from a lower elevation to a higher elevation when electricity is plentiful and cheap. When electricity becomes more expensive, operators release that water through a hydroelectric turbine to give the grid some extra juice. Similarly, Energy Vault wants to build a system of six cranes, which will electrically stack heavy bricks into a tower when electricity is cheap and plentiful. When electricity becomes more scarce and expensive, the cranes will release each brick and harvest the energy from their fall.

Continue reading… “Battery idea: Hydroelectric pumped storage, but with bricks”

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