core77-join – Page 2 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

A Great Product Idea Undone by Human Factors: The NoMix Toilet

When it comes to recycling, pee and poo oughtn’t mix. We think of them as the same thing—human waste—but in fact they are not mixed within the body and shouldn’t be mixed afterwards, though we often do so out of convenience and the design of modern toilets. The reason they shouldn’t mix is because urine is rich in nitrogen and phosphorous while feces are carbonaceous. Separated, these can be valuable resources, but combined they become a useless sludge that needs to undergo laborious and energy-intensive processing before anything can be reclaimed. And we are literally flushing resources down the toilet. As an article in the farmer’s information website A Growing Culture points out, it would be better if we could easily extract nitrogen and phosphorous from separated urine rather than taking it out of the Earth: Modern agriculture gets the nitrogen it needs from ammonia-producing plants that utilize fossil fuels such as natural gas, LPG or petroleum naphtha as a source of hydrogen. This energy-intensive process dumps carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, it consumes a finite hydrocarbon resource, and it is not sustainable. Modern agriculture gets the phosphorous it needs from phosphorous-bearing rocks. But these reserves are rapidly dwindling and increasingly contaminated with pollutants such as cadmium. In as little as 25 years apatite reserves may no longer be economically exploitable and massive world-wide starvation is predicted to follow. If we are serious about achieving sustainability in this regard, our first, and perhaps most important duty, lies in not mixing urine with feces. Enter the NoMix toilet, developed in Sweden in the 1990s. The NoMix’s bowl is designed in such a way that the urine is collected in the front, the feces in the back, and both are whisked away through separate plumbing, with the latter being disposed of in the conventional manner and the former recycled. While that raises new infrastructural challenges, the concept was interesting enough for EAWAG, a Swiss aquatic research institute, to intensively explore the NoMix’s feasibility in research trials. Running from 2000 to 2006, that project was called Novaquatis , and during their seven years of testing, Eawag shrewdly realized that “An innovation for private bathrooms can only be widely implemented if it is accepted by the public”: For this reason, all Swiss NoMix pilot projects were accompanied by sociological studies. 1750 people were surveyed – and their attitudes towards urine source separation are highly favourable. Despite a number of deficiencies, the NoMix toilet is well accepted, especially in public buildings. Things looked even better by 2010, when CNET reported that “Of the 2, 700 people surveyed in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark, 80 percent say they support the idea behind the technology, and between 75 and 85 percent report that the design, hygiene, smell, and seat comfort of the NoMix toilets equal that of conventional ones.” (more…)

Wrap Your Head Around This One: Potentially Immortal Bacteria That Eat Electricity and Could Become Living Batteries

One of the stranger (and little known) facts of nature is that our living cells are electric, or can carry electricity. Every thought, feeling and movement we have comes from an electric spark. And we find this in complicated beings like us, as well as in the most basic forms of bacteria. But there is something that bacteria can do that no other living thing on Earth can: Consume pure electricity for their own energy. Sounds Frankensteinian but it’s real. Scientists have been luring all sorts of bacteria deep in rocks and mud with electric juice. And they’ve found that these creatures are eating and then excreting electrons. Now this isn’t all that crazy, considering that, as I mentioned, we are made of electric pulses. And this process is fueled by food (specifically ATP, the molecule that provides storage for energy.) Electrons can and are taken from every food we eat, and they are carried by molecules throughout our bodies—this is a necessary process for life. The difference and extraordinary thing about bacteria is that they don’t need the “food” middleman. They consume pure electricity! Just like our (non-living) laptop plugged into the wall. (Think of this next time we consider how far removed we think we are from robotic devices.) But what are the practical implications for innovative designers? Scientists have been able to grow all kinds of what they are calling “electricity breathers” in areas where you might not find other life forms. Researchers are saying this opens up a previously unknown biosphere. A biosphere of very useful, self-powered helpers. (more…)

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Wrap Your Head Around This One: Potentially Immortal Bacteria That Eat Electricity and Could Become Living Batteries

Onboard Storage Design: Why Vikings Never Fought For Overhead Bin Space

Vikings loved to brawl, with both their enemies and with each other. Viking sagas are filled with tales of even longstanding friends happy to settle disagreements with steel. But as they piled onto their longships to go pillaging, their boarding process was a good deal more civilized than the melee that is modern air travel. For one thing, their storage was one-to-one; when 30 Vikings got onto a ship, there were 30 places to store things. That’s because they carried their seating on board with them, and their seating doubled as their storage. Prior to boarding, the decks of a ship were bare. Each Viking plunked his chest down at his own rowing position. Enough Viking chests have been found, and replicas made, that we can take a look at their design. It’s both intelligent and purposeful. The first thing you notice is that the tops were rounded to shed water, and perhaps to provide a modicum of comfort. (more…)

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Onboard Storage Design: Why Vikings Never Fought For Overhead Bin Space

Big-Ass Screen: LG’s Envy-Inducing 34" Monster Monitor

Images via Robbie Khan / PetaPixel While I’d previously caught wind of LG’s new 34″ monitor , the company’s hero shots showed little more than a rectangle covered in Photoshopped fake screens and devoid of local scale. But I just came across photographer Robbie Khan’s write-up on his , and seeing it with actual work on it drives home how gi-normous this thing is. Like many of us creatives Khan spends long stretches in front of a monitor, and the 34UM95’s 21:9 aspect ration and 3440×1440 resolution would go to good use in his work editing panoramic photos. LG’s product copy points out that they’ve included a “Screen Splitter” feature (both Windows and Mac compatible) that automatically tiles out four screens with a single click… (more…)

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Big-Ass Screen: LG’s Envy-Inducing 34" Monster Monitor

Core77 Design Awards Spotlight: Personal EKSO, an Exoskeleton Designed to Replace the Wheelchair

Although the perennial buzz around 3D printing has yet to materialize into a proper industrial revolution, the increasingly powerful technology has gained some traction in the medical world, where customizability and on-site availability trump the constraints of cost and scale. It may come as no surprise, then, that one of the 2014 Core77 Design Awards honorees that caught our eye was developed by a previous winner, whose work we’d covered as far back as 2010, before the the inaugural awards program. This time around, Scott Summit took Professional Runner Up in the Social Impact category with the EKSO personal exoskeleton , a mecha-like medical device at the intersection of robotics, rehabilitation and digital fabrication. As a replacement for a wheelchair, the device has the potential to revolutionize mobility for paraplegic individuals. Summit shares credit with Gustavo Fricke, 3D Systems and Ekso Bionics, all of whom worked together to print parts that connect a person to their robot as naturally and respectively as possible. “This is an unusual design effort on every front, ” designer Scott Summit says. “We had challenges with the technical details, since these are massive files, and almost entirely organic, but very precise. It’s also very tricky to scan a paralyzed person, and expect the data to be exactly as desired. We found that even the slightest detail could lead to dangerous bruising.” All of that considered, the prototypes have been met with a great response. The test pilot loves it so much, she wants to use it all of the time. But like many of these things go, the team has to wait until the design is FDA certified to be worn daily. (more…)

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Core77 Design Awards Spotlight: Personal EKSO, an Exoskeleton Designed to Replace the Wheelchair

More Anamorphosis: Bernard Pras’ Amazing 3D Trompe L’Oeils

I hate to write this, but “You’ll never believe what happens next!” Speaking of anamorphosis , check out French artist Bernard Pras’ nutty room-sized sculpture below. Pras practices the cylinder-free variant of anamorphosis, and the results have to be seen to be believed: (more…)

How to Improve the Audio Quality of Vinyl Records with Wood Glue

One of the first things you learn in the ID shop at design school: Wood glue is for joining wood, welding is great for joining metal, acetone is the thing for fusing plastics together. But when you need to attach one of these materials to another, you’ve got to switch over to hard fasteners or something more clever, since wood glue won’t stick to plastics, et cetera. While that’s occasionally a hassle for building multimaterial objects, record lovers have figured out that wood glue not sticking to plastic provides a huge benefit: You can use wood glue to clean LPs. Because Titebond won’t stick to vinyl, but will stick to all the microscopic specks of dust hanging out in the grooves, a layer of wood glue will become like a Biore strip for records. Observe, and be sure to listen to the before and after—the amount of snaps, crackles and pops the glue removes from the audio is astonishing: (more…)

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How to Improve the Audio Quality of Vinyl Records with Wood Glue

California Oil Spill Turns Out to Be a Freakishly Massive Amount of Fish

Earlier this week in La Jolla, California, what appeared to be a massive oil spill in the water began creeping towards the beach. However, closer inspection revealed that the inky cloud was not a batch of Exxon-Mobil’s finest at all, but an enormous school of fish. Specifically, anchovies. (more…)

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California Oil Spill Turns Out to Be a Freakishly Massive Amount of Fish

Making a Murano Glass Horse in Minutes with a Fiery Finish

Photo by Saffron Blaze via Wikimedia Commons Anyone who has witnessed a glassmaking demonstration can surely appreciate the skill that goes into a craft that dates back to 2, 000 BC. Named after the island from which it originates, Murano glass has been among the very best since the Renaissance, though the market has declined precipitously over the past few decades: according to The Guardian , the number of Murano sculptors has melted from “6, 000 in 1990 to less than 1, 000 [in 2012].” Even so, it’s hard not to be impressed by the practiced hands that churn out the souvenirs, kitschy though they may be, and at least one maestro has added a little flourish to the predictably well-documented process of sculpting a glass horse . This one is well worth watching in full: Post by Francisco Lopez Serrano . (more…)

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Making a Murano Glass Horse in Minutes with a Fiery Finish

How Will the iPhone 6’s Sapphire Screen Hold Up to Abuse? Watch and See

Tech reviewer Marques Brownlee somehow got a hold of what is purportedly the screen for Apple’s forthcoming iPhone 6. Made of sapphire rather than Gorilla Glass, the screen has been rumored to be a big step up in durability. The material-minded will recall that Apple’s current iPhone features sapphire covers for both the camera and the home button/fingerprint sensor, and in those roles it is crucial the material not be scratchable, otherwise the functionality would be compromised. But how will it hold up with a much larger surface area, comprising the entire 4.7″ screen of the 6? On his YouTube channel MKBHD, Brownlee puts it to the test by working it over with a knife and a set of keys, before finally attempting to bend and break it. Have a look: (more…)

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How Will the iPhone 6’s Sapphire Screen Hold Up to Abuse? Watch and See