Life on Board a Gulf of Mexico Oil Drilling Platform

From fastcompany.com...

"The people of Ursa, Shell's $1.45 billion oil-and-gas platform, live 65 miles offshore, in an environment that is demanding and dangerous, and that could drive them crazy. Here's how they work -- and how they cope."

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MIT Media Lab to Handle Chaos, Meshing Ideas: Review

From Bloomberg.com...

"As I pondered a 12-legged robot in the new Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I marveled at how architect Fumihiko Maki, who creates buildings of elegant, serene dignity, accommodated the messy endeavors here.

As academic research goes, it doesn’t get more untidily free-form. I watched researchers with little finger extensions project data onto a screen and manipulate it. A video showed a man bounding along a sidewalk with scarily flexing poles attached at his feet and waist, an experimental exoskeleton intended to augment failed legs."

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China Longyuan to Spend $13 Billion to Lead Wind Power League

From Bloomberg.com...

"China Longyuan Power Group Corp, plans to spend about 92 billion yuan ($13 billion) over the next five years to become the world’s No. 1 wind-power producer as global demand for clean energy increases.

The Hong Kong-listed company aims to install at least 16,000 megawatts of wind turbines in China and overseas by 2015, President Xie Changiun said in an interview after a climate conference in Beijing today.

The expansion plan comes as the Chinese government encourages the use of renewable energy to cut reliance on more polluting coal. The Beijing-based company in December raised a net HK$16.7 billion ($2.2 billion) from the sale of 2.14 billion shares in Hong Kong in the world’s third-biggest IPO by an alternative energy company."

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Electricity-Generating Shock Absorbers

From Technology Review published by MIT...

"Shock absorbers that generate electricity, which are being developed by Cambridge, MA-based Levant Power, can lower fuel consumption by 1.5 to 6 percent, depending on the vehicle and driving conditions. The system can also improve vehicle handling.

Levant has demonstrated the technology in road tests with a Humvee and will expand testing to trucks, buses, and other vehicles this summer. The shock absorbers look like conventional ones from the outside, except for a power cord coming out of one end, and they can be installed in ordinary vehicles by mechanics. They plug into a power management device that can also manage power from other sources, such as regenerative braking systems, thermoelectric devices that convert waste heat into electricity, or solar panels. The power is then fed into the car's electrical system to reduce the amount of load on the alternator."

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A skyscraper designed to make a rotten river run clean

From CNN World...

"Imagine a skyscraper that -- instead of hosting offices -- houses a system that purifies the water of a polluted river, employs the people living in surrounding slums and gives them a home in which to live.

That's the revolutionary idea behind an architectural concept that aims to solve the problems generated by the polluted Ciliwung River in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia."

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Searching for Value in Ludicrous Ideas

From FastCompany.com

"How I first came to discover Johnson's work is a long story, but I was instantly enamored with it. His Nod Office, for example, is an ingenious piece of furniture that integrates a bed into a desk. Who among us has not wished for such a thing? He takes the idea of integration further--much further--with concepts such as Road Office ("for those wishing to catch up on work at the roadside ... or [in a] traffic tie-up," he says), the Treadmill Workstation (now that's productivity!), and any number of mobile workspaces, such as the chauffeur-driven executive suite or the Read Life Vehicle, an SUV that features rotating seats, pull-out computer stations, file cabinets, and laundry facilities."

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Information Processing: Has global warming stopped?

From Technology Review published by MIT...

"The current period is most likely a local minimum with respect to the last peak and one just need wait another 12 months or so, when we will return to increasing global monthly anomalies which then will be about +1 degree C in amplitude."

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