Researchers At MIT Have Developed A New Method For Harnessing Energy Generated By Very Small Bending

What´s new about the new science of cities?

Paint job transforms walls into sensors, interactive surfaces

Smart walls react to human touch, sense activity in room

Walls are what they are – big, dull dividers. With a few applications of conductive paint and some electronics, however, walls can become smart infrastructure that sense human touch, and detect things like gestures and when appliances are used.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Disney Research found that they could transform dumb walls into smart walls at relatively low cost – about $20 per square meter – using simple tools and techniques, such as a paint roller.

These new capabilities might enable users to place or move light switches or other controls anywhere on a wall that’s most convenient, or to control videogames by using gestures. By monitoring activity in the room, this system could adjust light levels when a TV is turned on or alert a user in another location when a laundry machine or electric kettle turns off.

“Walls are usually the largest surface area in a room, yet we don’t make much use of them other than to separate spaces, and perhaps hold up pictures and shelves,” said Chris Harrison, assistant professor in CMU’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII). “As the internet of things and ubiquitous computing become reality, it is tempting to think that walls can become active parts of our living and work environments.”

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Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Kenneth Boulding

Solar and Wind Just Passed Another Big Turning Point

It has never made less sense to build fossil fuel power plants.

This is on Bloomberg, this is not about the people who do things out of an ideal for the greater good but out of self interest. Once those fuckers are captured, as they are the ones calling the shots, progress can happen fast. Potentially!

Iceland to Help Develop Geothermal Energy in Ethiopia

What I didn’t know at the time was that this is what time is like for most women: fragmented, interrupted by child care and housework. Whatever leisure time they have is often devoted to what others want to do – particularly the kids – and making sure everyone else is happy doing it. Often women are so preoccupied by all the other stuff that needs doing – worrying about the carpool, whether there’s anything in the fridge to cook for dinner – that the time itself is what sociologists call “contaminated.” I came to learn that women have never had a history or culture of leisure. (Unless you were a nun, one researcher later told me.) That from the dawn of humanity, high status men, removed from the drudge work of life, have enjoyed long, uninterrupted hours of leisure. And in that time, they created art, philosophy, literature, they made scientific discoveries and sank into what psychologists call the peak human experience of flow. Women aren’t expected to flow.

Brigid Schulte: Why time is a feminist issue

Well! This is interesting. 

(via jillianpms)

Oh my god this is exactly what I try to explain to my husband and he never gets it. 

(via magesmagesmages)

And even if you have a good partner who is supportive, it doesn’t help as much as you might think. This sort of thing is baked into the cultural expectations of being female. 

(via gothiccharmschool)

“A little chocolate won’t do any harm.” You’ve likely heard your chocolate-loving friend utter this sentence on more than one occasion, or maybe it’s a mantra that you use yourself. But frankly, it undersells chocolate’s myriad benefits. This sweet is capable of much more than simply “not harming” you – it can help you. In fact, there are scientifically-backed studies that prove chocolate can help you live a better life (and we’re not just talking about the happiness you derive from its deliciousness).

On a fossil-hunting trip with her family, five-year-old Daisy Morris found the remains of a previously undiscovered dinosaur, which is now named Vertidraco daisymorrisae. The new dino is not only a previously unknown species, but an unknown genus, making Daisy’s find a really big deal. It’s a pterosaur — a winged flying dino — about the size of a crow, which lived 115 million years ago. 

New Perovskite “Soccer Ball” Solar Cell Could Drive Down Costs

Low cost perovskite solar cell with tandem architecture and low cost fabrication…

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Photo credit (cropped): “Highly efficient semi-transparent Perovskite solar cell partners with CIGS thin film solar cell” via Empa Pictures/flickr.com.