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From TED

Graham Hawkes has created a new generation of high-tech undersea vessels that truly augment the way terrestrials experience the immense, otherworldly habitats of the oceans. His Deep Flight submersibles look like airplanes and behave like ocean creatures, using their wings and unique propulsion to gracefully soar and somersault into the deep — giving their pilot an unprecedented 3D perspective. According to his website, Hawkes’ designs account for a “significant percentage of manned and unmanned vehicles used by science and industry.”

Hawkes leads Hawkes Ocean Technologies, whose submersibles were featured in James Cameron’s 3D IMAX film, Aliens of the Deep. His company also produced the WASP and Mantis Atmospheric Diving Suits, built to facilitate undersea pipelaying. Hawkes currently holds the world record for the deepest solo dive — 3,000 feet — using one of his own inventions, the Deep Rover submersible.

“We’re throwing billions of dollars into the void and ignoring a rich frontier much closer to home: Earth’s oceans. They’re awash with unknown life, unclaimed territory, and immense natural resources. Perhaps the future of mankind isn’t out in space but in our sea.”

Graham Hawkes, WIRED

http://www.deepflight.com/
http://www.covari.com/PPL/

I like this article very much. More crunches ahead?

Fear The Coming Nature Crunch
By George Monbiot, 17 October, 2008, from Monbiot.com

This is nothing. Well, nothing by comparison to what’s coming. The financial crisis for which we must now pay so heavily prefigures the real collapse, when humanity bumps against its ecological limits.

As we goggle at the fluttering financial figures, a different set of numbers passes us by. On Friday, Pavan Sukhdev, the Deutsche Bank economist leading a European study on ecosystems, reported that we are losing natural capital worth between $2 trillion and $5 trillion every year as a result of deforestation alone. The losses incurred so far by the financial sector amount to between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion. Sukhdev arrived at his figure by estimating the value of the services - such as locking up carbon and providing fresh water - that forests perform, and calculating the cost of either replacing them or living without them. The credit crunch is petty when compared to the nature crunch.

The two crises have the same cause. In both cases, those who exploit the resource have demanded impossible rates of return and invoked debts that can never be repaid. In both cases we denied the likely consequences. I used to believe that collective denial was peculiar to climate change. Now I know that it’s the first response to every impending dislocation.

Gordon Brown, for instance, was as much in denial about financial realities as any toxic debt trader. In June last year, during his Mansion House speech, he boasted that 40% of the world’s foreign equities are now traded here. The financial sector’s success had come about, he said, partly because the government had taken “a risk-based regulatory approach”. In the same hall three years before, he pledged that “in budget after budget I want us to do even more to encourage the risk takers”. Can anyone, surveying this mess, now doubt the value of the precautionary principle?

Ecology and economy are both derived from the Greek word oikos - a house or dwelling. Our survival depends on the rational management of this home: the space in which life can be sustained. The rules are the same in both cases. If you extract resources at a rate beyond the level of replenishment, your stock will collapse. That’s another noun which reminds us of the connection. The Oxford English Dictionary gives 69 definitions of “stock”. When it means a fund or store, the word evokes the trunk - or stock - of a tree, “from which the gains are an outgrowth”. Collapse occurs when you prune the tree so heavily that it dies. Ecology is the stock from which all wealth grows.

The two crises feed each other. As a result of Iceland’s financial collapse, it is now contemplating joining the European Union, which means surrendering its fishing grounds to the common fisheries policy. Already the prime minister, Geir Haarde, has suggested that his countrymen concentrate on exploiting the ocean. The economic disaster will cause an ecological disaster.

Normally it’s the other way around. In his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond shows how ecological crisis is often the prelude to social catatrosphe. The obvious example is Easter Island, where society disintegrated soon after the population reached its highest historical numbers, the last trees were cut down and the construction of stone monuments peaked. The island chiefs had competed to erect ever bigger statues. These required wood and rope (made from bark) for transport, and extra food for the labourers. As the trees and soils on which the islanders depended disappeared, the population crashed and the survivors turned to cannibalism. Diamond wonders what the Easter islander who cut down the last palm tree might have thought. “Like modern loggers, did he shout ‘Jobs, not trees!’? Or: ‘Technology will solve our problems, never fear, we’ll find a substitute for wood.’? Or: ‘We don’t have proof that there aren’t palms somewhere else on Easter … your proposed ban on logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering’?”.

Ecological collapse, Diamond shows, is as likely to be the result of economic success as of economic failure. The Maya of Central America, for instance, were among the most advanced and successful people of their time. But a combination of population growth, extravagant construction projects and poor land management wiped out between 90% and 99% of the population. The Mayan collapse was accelerated by “the competition among kings and nobles that led to a chronic emphasis on war and erecting monuments rather than on solving underlying problems”. (Does any of this sound familiar?) Again, the largest monuments were erected just before the ecosystem crashed. Again, this extravagance was partly responsible for the collapse: trees were used for making plaster with which to decorate their temples. The plaster became thicker and thicker as the kings sought to outdo each other’s conspicuous consumption.

Here are some of the reasons why people fail to prevent ecological collapse. Their resources appear at first to be inexhaustible; a long-term trend of depletion is concealed by short-term fluctuations; small numbers of powerful people advance their interests by damaging those of everyone else; short-term profits trump long-term survival. The same, in all cases, can be said of the collapse of financial systems. Is this how human beings are destined to behave? If we cannot act until stocks - of either kind - start sliding towards oblivion, we’re knackered.

But one of the benefits of modernity is our ability to spot trends and predict results. If fish in a depleted ecosystem grow by 5% a year and the catch expands by 10% a year, the fishery will collapse. If the global economy keeps growing at 3% a year (or 1,700% a century), it too will hit the wall.

Iam not going to suggest, as some scoundrel who shares a name with me did on these pages last year, that we should welcome a recession. But the financial crisis provides us with an opportunity to rethink this trajectory; an opportunity that is not available during periods of economic success. Governments restructuring their economies should read Herman Daly’s book Steady-State Economics.

As usual I haven’t left enough space to discuss this, so the details will have to wait for another column. Or you can read the summary published by the Sustainable Development Commission (all references are on my website). But what Daly suggests is that nations which are already rich should replace growth - “more of the same stuff” - with development - “the same amount of better stuff”. A steady-state economy has a constant stock of capital that is maintained by a rate of throughput no higher than the ecosystem can absorb. The use of resources is capped and the right to exploit them is auctioned. Poverty is addressed through the redistribution of wealth. The banks can lend only as much money as they possess.

Alternatively, we can persist in the magical thinking whose results have just come crashing home. The financial crisis shows what happens when we try to make the facts fit our desires. Now we must learn to live in the real world.

http://weburbanist.com/2008/03/05/16-sweet-and-scary-building-demolitions-in-action/

Can building destructions be inspiring for building constructions? Just reverse it : it all unfolds beautifully doesn’t it? There is definitely something there…

download the video 74mb

Working from principles of differential geometry, physicist Garrett Lisi is developing a new unified theory that purports to explain all the elementary particles, and gravity, in one elegant model. His theory is based on a mathematical shape called E8. With 248 symmetries, E8 is large, complex and beautiful — and Lisi believes the relationships of its symmetries correspond to known particles and forces, including gravity.

His work, explained in his paper “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything,” and in an ongoing discussion on FQXi, is still on science’s speculative fringe. But some physicists believe he could be pointing the way toward a truly unified theory.

“This is an ‘all or nothing’ kind of theory — meaning it’s going to end up agreeing with and predicting damn near everything, or it’s wrong. At this stage of development, it could go either way.”

Garrett Lisi on physicsforums.com

In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine. Daniel Nocera describes new process for storing solar energy:

See the video.

Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today’s announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun.

“This is the nirvana of what we’ve been talking about for years,” said MIT’s Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. “Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon.”

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera’s lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun’s energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.

The key component in Nocera and Kanan’s new process is a new catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; another catalyst produces valuable hydrogen gas. The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity – whether from a photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source – runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced.

Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.

The new catalyst works at room temperature, in neutral pH water, and it’s easy to set up, Nocera said. “That’s why I know this is going to work. It’s so easy to implement,” he said.

‘Giant leap’ for clean energy

Sunlight has the greatest potential of any power source to solve the world’s energy problems, said Nocera. In one hour, enough sunlight strikes the Earth to provide the entire planet’s energy needs for one year.

James Barber, a leader in the study of photosynthesis who was not involved in this research, called the discovery by Nocera and Kanan a “giant leap” toward generating clean, carbon-free energy on a massive scale.

“This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind,” said Barber, the Ernst Chain Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College London. “The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem.”

‘Just the beginning’

Currently available electrolyzers, which split water with electricity and are often used industrially, are not suited for artificial photosynthesis because they are very expensive and require a highly basic (non-benign) environment that has little to do with the conditions under which photosynthesis operates.

More engineering work needs to be done to integrate the new scientific discovery into existing photovoltaic systems, but Nocera said he is confident that such systems will become a reality.

“This is just the beginning,” said Nocera, principal investigator for the Solar Revolution Project funded by the Chesonis Family Foundation and co-Director of the Eni-MIT Solar Frontiers Center. “The scientific community is really going to run with this.”

Nocera hopes that within 10 years, homeowners will be able to power their homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power their own household fuel cell. Electricity-by-wire from a central source could be a thing of the past.

The project is part of the MIT Energy Initiative, a program designed to help transform the global energy system to meet the needs of the future and to help build a bridge to that future by improving today’s energy systems. MITEI Director Ernest Moniz, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems, noted that “this discovery in the Nocera lab demonstrates that moving up the transformation of our energy supply system to one based on renewables will depend heavily on frontier basic science.”

The success of the Nocera lab shows the impact of a mixture of funding sources - governments, philanthropy, and industry. This project was funded by the National Science Foundation and by the Chesonis Family Foundation, which gave MIT $10 million this spring to launch the Solar Revolution Project, with a goal to make the large scale deployment of solar energy within 10 years.

Original article by Anne Trafton, News Office July 31, 2008

Very nice, simple and reliable “Expandable Hydroponics System from Junk - Flood and Drain” on instructables, by “Wiley Coyote“.

URBAN SPACE STATION Sofia, Madrid 2008 from cesar harada on Vimeo. All documentation on http://urbanspacestation.org.

Scattered House, Usman Haque & Adam Somlai Fischer from cesar harada on Vimeo.

“[source] Scattered House is an architectural experiment founded on a truly contemporary notion of space, where issues of ubiquitous connectivity, family diasporas, design-by-occupant, and public control technology come together in an installation assembled from inexpensive electronic toys and gadgets. 
We are inviting members of the public to visit the Hungarian Cultural Centre and contribute to elements of the “house” —  they can either bring toys and gadgets that will become part of the amalgamated whole or we will also have a selection of items that they can try hacking themselves. Architects and interaction designers Adam Somlai-Fischer and Usman Haque, authors of the online manual “Low Tech Sensors and Actuators” [download 1MB], will be on hand to advise and assist in this process, as well as Bengt Sjölén, artist from Stockholm.
The three day event will be suitable for families and accompanied children, as well as design (or non-design) students who would like to be part of the event. The public will help design and build fragments of the interactive “Scattered House” which will be exhibited internationally later in the year. People will be able to open up toys and gadgets (that they have either brought along or which are provided for them), gain a simple understanding of how they work, and learn how to connect them directly into the installation themselves.  
No experience is necessary, though enthusiasm for hacking open toys is welcome!”

It was a brilliant experience, I just regret I don’t have so much footage of the installation at the Hungarian Embassy, but a lot of interview instead, so here is a quite similar experiment the same people did, if you want to see more in detail the hacked electronic components: 

Reconfigurable House 2 at Place@Space at Z33.be from Adam Somlai-Fischer on Vimeo.

[source : technology review]

This week, IBM announced plans to build the world’s largest “noise free” nanoelectronic fabrication facilities in Switzerland. By shielding equipment from external electromagnetic, thermal, and seismic noise, the new facilities should help advance research in a wide range of fields, such as spintronics, carbon-based devices, and nanophotonics, says IBM.

“Once you move into atomic-scale research, you are dealing with very low energy levels, and so you need very sensitive instruments,” says Kaiserswerth. And the more sensitive the instrument, the more responsive it is to disturbances in the environment. “Every time we bought a new piece of equipment,” says Paul Seidler, IBM Zurich’s science and technology manager, “we would find ourselves having to think hard about which lab was most suitable.” {by Duncan Graham-Rowe for Technology Review, Friday, June 27, 2008}

[source of the image]

I find this very interesting that IBM needs this kind of facility for new technologies : seeking an absolute model of precision to cope with Moore’s law as if it was a production imperative… I think I am going in the precise opposite direction of IBM, by letting entropy increase, extremely noisy architecture. Giving space to nature and openess in the experiment we might obtain non-mesurable yet invaluable results.

Still I think a clever compromise between chaos and order must be found, the Urban Space Station Sofia (june 2008) in Madrid is one, but I can’t stop thinking of alternatives, or derivated, that may be more in the “jungle” direction, even more open, cheaper, progressive, informal… The way is open in front of us.