Army of smartphone chips could emulate the human brain

Original post : http://www.newscientist.com/

04 May 2010 by Paul Mark

Magazine issue 2758. Subscribe and save

For similar stories, visit the The Human Brain Topic Guide

IF YOU have a smartphone, you probably have a slice of Steve Furber's brain in your pocket. By the time you read this, his 1-billion-neuron silicon brain will be in production at a microchip plant in Taiwan.

Computer engineers have long wanted to copy the compact power of biological brains. But the best mimics so far have been impractical, being simulations running on supercomputers.

Furber, a computer scientist at the University of Manchester, UK, says that if we want to use computers with even a fraction of a brain's flexibility, we need to start with affordable, practical, low-power components.

"We're using bog-standard, off-the-shelf processors of fairly modest performance," he says.

Furber won't come close to copying every property of real neurons, saysHenry Markram, head of Blue Brain. This is IBM's attempt to simulate a brain with unsurpassed accuracy on a Blue Gene supercomputer at the Swiss Institute for Technology, Lausanne. "It's a worthy aim, but brain-inspired chips can only produce brain-like functions," he says.

That's good enough for Furber, who wants to start teaching his brain-like computer about the world as soon as possible. His first goal is to teach it how to control a robotic arm, before working towards a design to control a humanoid. A robot controller with even a dash of brain-like properties should be much better at tasks like image recognition, navigation and decision-making, says Furber.

"Robots offer a natural, sensory environment for testing brain-like computers," says Furber. "You can instantly tell if it is being useful."

Called Spinnaker - for Spiking Neural Network Architecture - the brain is based on a processor created in 1987 by Furber and colleagues at Acorn Computers in Cambridge, UK, makers of the seminal BBC Microcomputer.

Although the chip was made for a follow-up computer that flopped, the ARM design at its heart lived on, becoming the most common "embedded" processor in devices like e-book readers and smartphones.

But coaxing any computer into behaving like a brain is tough. Both real neurons and computer circuits communicate using electrical signals, but in biology the "wires" carrying them do not have fixed roles as in electronics. The importance of a particular neural connection, or synapse, varies as the network learns by balancing the influence of the different signals being received. This synaptic "weighting" must be dynamic in a silicon brain, too.

To coordinate its 'neurons' the chip mimics the way real neurons communicate using 'spikes' in voltage

The chips under construction in Taiwan contain 20 ARM processor cores, each modelling 1000 neurons. With 20,000 neurons per chip, 50,000 chips will be needed to reach the target of 1 billion neurons.

A memory chip next to each processor stores the changing synaptic weights as simple numbers that represent the importance of a given connection at any moment. Initially, those will be loaded from a PC, but as the system gets bigger and smarter, says Furber, "the only computer able to compute them will be the machine itself".

Another brain-like behaviour his chips need to master is to communicate coordinated "spikes" of voltage. A computer has no trouble matching the speed at which individual neurons spike - about 10 times per second - but neurons work in very much larger, parallel groups than silicon logic gates.

In a brain there is no top-down control to coordinate their actions because the basic nature of individual neurons means that they work together in an emergent, bottom-up way.

Spinnaker cannot mimic that property, so it relies on a miniature controller to direct spike traffic, similar to one of the routers in the internet's backbone. "We can route to more than 4 billion neurons," says Furber, "many more than we need."

While the Manchester team await the arrival of their chips, they have built a cut-down version with just 50 neurons and have put the prototype through its paces in the lab. They have created a virtual environment in which the silicon brain controls a Pac-Man-like program that learns to hunt for a virtual doughnut.

"It shows that our four years designing the system haven't been wasted," says Furber. He hopes to have a 10,000-processor version working later this year.

As they attempt to coax brain-like behaviour from phone chips, others are working with hardware which may have greater potential.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon's research arm, is funding a project called Synapse. Wei Lu of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, is working on a way of providing synaptic weights with memristors, first made in 2008 (New Scientist, 3 May 2008, p 26).

Handily, their most basic nature is brain-like: at any one moment a memristor's resistance depends on the last voltage placed across it. This rudimentary "memory" means that simple networks of memristors form weighted connections like those of neurons. This memory remains without drawing power, unlike the memory chips needed in Spinnaker. "Memristors are pretty neat," says Lu.

Their downside is that they are untested, though. "Synapse is an extremely ambitious project," says Furber. "But ambition is what drives this field. No one knows the right way to go."

OH MY GOD ! Dominic Michaelis + Alex Michaelis Energy Island

OH WOOOOW !!!!!
THIS IS SO EXTREMELY CLOSE TO WHAT WE ARE DEVELOPING in the Instinctive_Architecture and Nomadic_Ecosystem labs:

Our actual design :





and what I just found on the internet googling for "very large floating structures" !

http://www.e-architect.co.uk/energy_island.php

Architects: Dominic Michaelis + Alex Michaelis


Aerial view of Energy Island Module Centre, showing Otec Electric power and desalinated water production plant room, with base of pole of surface furnace receiving all radiation falling on roofs of factory / office / greenhouse buildings crowned by heliostat mirrors following the sun, aerogenerators on the platform deck.


Alternative to platform-mounted aerogenerators, where generators are placed at a suitable distance from an inhabited platform. These aerogenerators have a prolonged tubular shaft below sea level, the bottom part of which is ballasted, so that the aerogenerator, independently moored, can't be blown flat, since all pressure on the blades is resisted by the moment created by the shaft's displacement from the vertical.


Geotec: in this application, the energy island is placed above a geothermically active area, in this case, a visible volcanic linear eruption along a tectonic fault line. Octagonal turbogenerators are lowered by underwater rovs, containing enough air to make them buoyant, so that they can be anchored at a reasonable distance above the fault. They will be using water at 300C or more as the heat source, umbrellas along the line brining more hot water. The condensors use cold water at 5C drawn in by long buoyant tubes. Generated electricity is cabled up to the Energy Island.


Energy Island perspective view of a single hexagonal module showing different energy converter systems and overall functional disposition.


Energy Island perspective view, showing the floating platform hexagonal module surrounded on its wave front energy converters, in the lee of which is the protected island, and behind that, a harbour serving the island. To the left is a platform for staff housing, and at its left extremity, a geothermal drilling rig, to which rise two electric cables, one from the sea current turbines, another from a series of turbines lowered down to recover geothermal energy from geological fault lines resulting in very high water temperatures capable of efficient electricity generation.


2 Otec Energy Islands with additonal module for high energy industrial process factory, or for leisure combined with education facilities.


General view of Energy Island with overall functional diagram and open cycle Otec system diagram.

Images from Dominic Michaelis May 2008








View along axis of 8 Otec modules supplying 2000 MWe, the equivalent of a very large nuclear power station, and 2400 million litres of desalintaed water per day, sufficient for 8 million US households.


Aerial view of linear array of 8 x 250 MWe Energy Islands forming a 2000 MWe power plant, possibly electrolysed to hydrogen fuel, and a desalination plant of 2.4 million cubic meters per day capacity (total desalination capacity of the Kingdomof Saudi Arabia - 3 million cubic meters per day).


Sea level view of 8 Otec 250 MWe Energy Islands with 2000 MWe power output.


The Lilypad twin membrane wave energy converter consists of an upper floating flexible membrane following the wave motion, provided on its udnerside with load distributing flanges taking upward loads to a number of linearly disposed fixation points to which are attached arrays of hose pumps. Hose pumps operate on the principle that as they are elastically elongated from their original large diameter cylindrical shape, they gradually reduce in volume, pressurising the working fluid within them.
At their base, the hose pumps are fixed to load distribution cables which are in turn fixed to the bottom membrane, which is both weighted and valved, so that it will resists upward movement as it is pulled up by the passing wave, flexible flaps closing against a mesh below them.
After the wave has passed, the bottom weighted membrane sinks downards by gravity, the valves opening upwards, and returns to its initial position, ready for the next cycle.
The hose pumps extend as the wave passes, expelling working fluid, normally seawater, that runs to and along high pressure pipes to a hydraulic generator. Electricity is generated typically at 65% efficiency by a hydraulic trubogenerator. This mode prevails till the hose pump is partially or fully extended by the wave crest. As the wave passes, the upper membrane descends, gradually releasing pressure on the hose pump, which elastically returns to its shorter and larger cylindrical shape, drawing in seawater through a one way valve. This allows the lower membrane to descend to its original position, ready for the next upward stroke.
The membranes run perpendicularly to prevailing significant wave direction, the size and length of hose pumps being related to wave length and amplitude. Spacing of hose pumps and width of marine platform structure.



Sustainable Building News

Marine platform structures are designed to resist the impact of waves, which vary in intensity from location to location. They must be capable of resisting the strongest storms, and in some areas, rogue waves that can reach twice the height of the strongest normal waves of that location.

15 meter high waves are known to occur in many parts of the oceans, and the corresponding rogue wave, occurring where currents are strong, which may be a 1 in 1000 year chance, will reach 30 meters, the height of a 10-storey building. In other more fortunate areas, where there are no currents and no strong winds or cyclones, it might be 5, 10 tor 20 meters high.

A marine platform cannot be designed as a floating raft, because in very heavy seas, its inertia will be such that it will not have time to react to high wave onslaught, and risks being submerged.

The proposal presented is a minimal structure based on tetrahedral geometry occupying the space where the wave impact and its energy are deployed, the structure transferring to the platform the forces from the buoyancy tanks that are in “protected” waters, and insure the platform buoyancy, allowing the structure to rise or to descend according to the amount of air with which they are fully or partially filled.

The top of the buoyancy elements is shaped to resist the wave impact, allowing the tetrahedral structure to be reduced in height. The shape also makes it easier for the overall structure to rise if there is some unforeseen upward pressure on the underside of the deck.

This section through two flexibly jointed juxtaposed marine platforms illustrates the structural principle adopted, showing the upper tetrahedral structure designed to be “transparent” to oncoming waves, the buoyancy elements taking the point loads from the structure above, and transferring the forces they exert through the tetrahedral structure to the deck above. The buoyancy elements can be increased in depth according to the loads carried by the deck, the tetrahedral structure needing to be reinforced accordingly.

ENERGY ISLAND

“The sea, the sea, ever renewed...” Paul ValÈry

The Seas reveal many vast and diverse energy sources which are too often considered individually, for instance the energies of wind, wave, sea currents, tides, solar energy including marine photosynthesis, geothermal and ocean thermal differential energy. Also, some renewable energy sources, often converted on land, can be more efficiently sea based, wind energy being a typical example, where land features reduce its intensity and limit its locations. Land based wind farms have proved themselves to be visually unacceptable to many, whilst solar farms often occupy too much valuable land.

To best profit from the many renewable energy sources available at sea, the concept is to create an “Energy Island” which would take the form of a floating platform designed to harvest all usefully available energy sources available to it, none acting in isolation, but all being brought together so that each acts to complement the other, adding its contribution to the whole.

A typical “Energy Island” may be of hexagonal shape plan, of any size up to 500 meters along its shorter axis, having a surface area of 22 hectares, the hexagonal shape allowing islands to be joined in cluster or linear modes according to planning intents. Such an island is designed to provide a total of 250 MW, with 1/3 of the energy being contributed by ancillary sources and 2/3 by OTEC. It is designed to intercept the following:-

Wave Energy. On the winward sides, the island features linear wave energy converters, WECs, which can take the form of one of the many different systems invented, whether the oscillating water column, the “lagoon”, or another system, these converters playing two parts, firstly protecting the island from the heavy seas, and then providing hydraulic energy to the platform to induce fluid flows, or to generate electricity. One new departure is the all flexible “twin membrane” Lilypad WEC which Energy Island is promoting.

Wind Energy. Wind energy at sea is at its strongest, unaffected by land masses. The “Energy Island” module is provided with six large aerogenerators, three being at a lower level to intercept the sea hugging wind flow, whilst three are higher to capture the upper wind flows, the hydraulic masts being able to adjust the heights of the aerogenerators to best harvest the wind potential from different directions.
If they are unacceptable on the island because of electromagnetic radiation, they can be floating ballasted structures moored independently sufficiently far from the island.

Sea Currents. Sea currents are powerful energy sources and can be interceped by “nets” made up of linear arrays of cowled turbine units held up below the “Energy Island” by moored buoys between which they are stretched, each unit having its own separate flotation buoy, the array taking up a slight catenary curve under pressure from the current, the main moored buoys having the capacity to be relocated below the island to accomodate shifts in the current direction. The array is positioned at a depth where it is little affected by wave energy which is mostly expressed down to a depth equivalent to 1/6 ths of its wavelength.
Marine turbines can be fitted to the base of the support platform.

Solar Energy. Solar energy at sea level is at 950 Watts/sq.m, when the sun is directly overhead, and can be collected in many different ways. The hexagonal plan of the “Energy Island “ suggests the possible use of a centrally located “power tower” furnace onto which are focussed a field of orientable heliostats or mirrors, giving furnace temperatures around 900_C which allow relatively efficient electricity generation, with the possibility of waste heat recovery above the boiling point of water, which can be used and stored to assist thermal processes that are part of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion.

OTEC Electricity generation OTEC in tropical waters is the main electricity generation source, with a combination of closed and open cycle systems for efficiency at different temperatures combined with desirable sea water distillation for a number of on board activities. All waste heat from the solar farm is used to enhance a working fluid temperature, the surface water being channelled to the centrally located power plant along the six radial canals going to the outside apexes of the hexagon where floating dark membrane solar collectors optionally enhance the inlet temperatures. All warm and cold water pumping being carried out uses the ancillary energy sources deployed, these measures to increase Carnot efficiencies and to prevent OTEC from wasting the energy it is itself generating.

OTEC seawater desalination OTEC, in certain configurations, will produce vast amounts of desalinted water, often proportional to the electric power generation capacity. In the open cycle mode, OTEC will produce 1,2 million litres of desalinated water per MW. This effectively makes OTEC plants act as both power stations and desalination plants, effectively doubling their value.

Geothermal Energy The Energy Island can be purposefully located above geothermal energy resources. These can be tapped by drilling for hot aquifers or pumping water through fissured hot rocks . Alternately, hot volcanic flumes can produce water at 300_C that cannot boil because of the high pressure, but into which can be lowered turbogenerators using the cosiderable temerature difference from water drawn by arms reaching out for nearby cold water, unaffected by the flumes, thzat often follow linear tectonic faults.

Apart from its electric and desalinated water contributions, the “Energy Island” is designed also to produce :-

Hydrogen. Because of the fluctuation of renewable energy resources, an energy storage system is required. The “Energy Island” relies on a hydrolysis plant to produce stored hydrogen and oxygen, part of which can be used by fuel cell technology as necessary to balance the power output, matching it to requirements both external and internal, and part being used as a fuel that can , in some cases be tankered or pipelined to other destinations, when the electricity produced is not totally used by cable links to nearby destinations. The “Energy Island” will also produce a base for:-

Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) and Mariculture.
In tropical latitudes, greenhouses need to be protected from the sun, a role performed by the heliostats, and well ventilated or evaporatively cooled. The 22 hectare platform can therefore be used for CEA, using part of the distilled water from the open OTEC cycle for hydroponics. If the floor is trellissed, light can reach the seawater below, where pens can contain various forms of marine life below.

Harbours and Housing. On the leeward side of the island or islands, The “Energy Island” needs to provide housing for staff , social facilities, workshops and harbours. Cold wter at 5_C can be used for air conditioning.

Leisure and Tourism Energy Islands can be dedicated to energy self sufficient holiday destinations, where also fish, fruit and vegetables are produced “on board”, the islands having the advantage of being located as desired close to attractions that can be reached by boat, by helicopter, or by air, if a short landing strip is provided.

The “Energy Island”, intercepting many diverse renewable energy sources, brings their converted powers together in the most efficient way to provide electricity for the grid, and, by hydrolysis, hydrogen fuel for transport to nearby or distant population centres, where it can be used efficiently by fuel cell technology.

The “Energy Island” can become a major supplier of electricity and hydrogen fuel for a pollution free society, and liberate the world from the perils of nuclear power generation, and from its political, economic and polluting dependance on dwindling fossil fuels, providing vast amounts of desalinated water as a bonus.

The “Energy Island” constitutes a new departure, all the more necessary because of the visible and invisible, but predicted signs of universal pollution and global warming, and the frightening fact that world energy use is expanding exponentially, having doubled in the last thirty years.

Action is needed to bring about change, promote a new fuel and turn the tide.


http://www.biomarine.org/index.php/gb/content/download/1590/14458/version/1/file/Dominic+Michaelis.pdf 


http://www.solarenergyltd.net/


http://www.energyisland.com

xMAx for the Energy_Animal communication device

Broadband On Radio Waves Speeds Beyond Wi-Max: xMax is Next. Thanks to Joe Mauriello for this link.

http://www.masternewmedia.org/broadband/broadband_technologies/wireless/xMax_radio_based_wireless_broadband_20050707.htm

A new wireless communications technology that symbiotically rides on existing public broadcast radio frequency waves could revolutionize the way we could connect to the Internet or provide broadband access to remote areas that are too expensive to be served by cable or present-day data-transmission technologies.

This latest innovation in broadband communications, is a "discrete" radio-frequency-based data transmission system that leverages traditional television, radio and pager systems bands without ever interfering with them.

The new system effectively extends what was thought possible until now, extending our ability to deliver data at lower cost and over greater distances than existing technologies.

The new technology may also come to be appreciated for its non-harmful effects on humans. The new radio-based approach may in fact spare us quite a few health risks (nobody ever talks about this side of things) which are instead a constant factor when we deal with today's popular very high-frequency transmission bands, like the ones used by mobile phones and other wireless transmission systems.

Overall, the advantages offered are then not only the fact that the public radio spectrum can be stretched in its capacity while not requiring the use of additional frequencies, but also the fact that at the lower frequency bands in which this new technology works data can travel much farther while having greater ease to pass through buildings walls and physical barriers than other existing competing wireless technologies.

Long range and high-speed are two of the key characteristics of xMax, a cutting edge radio-waves-based broadband solution which appears to be even better than Flash-OFDM, an alternative broadband system approach for remote and rural areas.

As a wireless data distribution system, xMax promises a reach of over 40-square miles while being able to serve between a minimum of a few hundred users to a theoretical maximum of a thousand or more.

xMax leverages a unique approach to data distribution via radio frequencies by embedding a very weak signal within the selected radio carrier band. The signal used is so weak that it cannot be easily picked-up by traditional radio antennas.

By using unique receiving units equipped with special filters, xMax-enabled devices can detect and receive the weak radio signal embedded in the radio wave without ever interfering or disturbing the main carrier.

Though prestigious academics like Princeton University Professor Schwartz have declared xMax not a very efficient way to send data over the airwaves, they also concluded that the results that can be achieved are indeed effective.

Obviously such a technology could represent a boon to many Internet service providers and telecom operators who would be able to offer and utilize this cost-effective technology to serve wireless broadband to rural and geographically remote areas which other competing operators would find too costly to cover.

Present third-generation mobile phone networks need base-stations to relay the signals every few miles. With xMax that can be significantly improved as the new technology offers a 400 to 500 percent improvement in range over more traditional technologies.

With WiMax and Flash OFDM, which need dedicated radio frequency bands, if you they are set to operate at frequency ranges above 1GHz, the signal used has no comparable effectiveness in penetrating physical obstacles and building walls as well as being able to have reach greater than a few miles.

XG Technology, the Florida-based company behind this revolutionary invention company behind xMax, has already been talking to multiple chip makers to make this new technology become a market reality. According to the company, xMax-enabled radio chips should cost $5-$6 when built in large quantities while base stations will be around $350,000.

Stay tuned.

Exelent news for openet.org and the Energy_Animal.

Technical drawings for Ars Electronica

All our technical drawings ! Get the original .jpg and .pdf here.

Junkraft

http://junkraft.blogspot.com/







A very impressive and quite similar project to Open_Sailing, the Junkraft, by Dr Marcus Eriksen, Joel Paschal and Anna Cummins. They sailed from California to Hawaii on a raft made with plastic bottle to raise awareness about the topic of the plastic sea, as the plastiki is doing now. How is it actually made? Do bottles resist that much long exposure to salty sea environment? Can we rely on these bottles?

New drive to harness wave power

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8400441.stm

By David Shukman
Environment correspondent, BBC News

Advertisement

Meet green monsters of the deep

In a bleakly beautiful island landscape, some strange new sights are emerging.
In the turbulent waters off the shores of Orkney, in the far north of Scotland, an array of bizarre machines is being deployed in a drive to harness the power of the sea.
The European Marine Energy Centre at Stromness is playing host to nearly a dozen experimental devices designed to capture the energy of the tides and the waves.
It is too early to tell if any of them will work on a large scale or ever succeed commercially.
But during lucky breaks in Orkney's fearsome winter weather, I got the chance to see two of the devices in action.
There is the "Oyster", a giant flap twice the height of a double-decker bus which swings back and forth with the waves.

There is huge potential - absolutely huge amounts of energy out there Neil Kermode European Marine Energy Centre

Every time the flap moves, the action compresses hydraulic pumps which force water through a pipe to the shore where it drives a generator.
As we approach through a heavy swell, the bright yellow top of the flap rears up above the surface of the sea before being plunged back down by the next wave.
The machine is the work of the Scottish firm Aquamarine Power. Operations manager Frances Tierney, on board with us, says that its first few weeks have proved it can work.
"It was quite nerve-wracking installing it but we're really pleased with how the Oyster has performed so far."
The company's hope is to set up "farms" of Oysters, with 2MW of electricity being generated for every three machines, according to company officials.
'Huge potential'
Matthias Haag, Aquamarine's chief operating officer, told me that, in theory, 1,500 Oysters could yield one gigawatt (1GW) of electricity - about the output of a typical fossil fuel power station.
"Our studies have identified sites where the waves mean we could generate 5GW of electricity - it's got huge potential."
Another approach is to harness the power of the tides. Between Orkney and the Scottish mainland, the Pentland Firth sees high-speed currents surging from the Atlantic to the North Sea and back again.
These can reach more than eight knots - nearly 10 miles per hour - and the flows last six hours in each direction.
In a notoriously fast-flowing channel known as the Fall of Warness, the Irish firm OpenHydro has deployed an enormous undersea turbine - a fan with a diameter of 6m.

The Oyster wave power machine swings back and forth with the waves

Fitted between black stilts, this huge device sits near the sea-bed right in the path of the currents.
As the waters surge, the massive blades start spinning and drive a generating system fitted within the machine's frame. The electricity is then piped ashore.
During our visit, the turbine is lifted out of the sea so we can film it. Rising slowly from the choppy grey waters, it looks like something from a Bond film.
Operations manager Sue Barr tells me that this is the company's fourth version of the turbine. The plan is for a 10m-diameter device which could generate 1MW of power.
"We're great fans of all forms of renewable energy but tidal is the only one that's predictable. We predict it with the sun and the moon - that's a very persuasive argument for investment."
Winners and losers
Other marine schemes involve systems of underwater propellers to spin in the tides or giant "snakes" whose joints move with the waves and generate power.
There is no doubting the ambition. But this is a watery, green equivalent to the start of the steam age: lots of clever ideas but the inevitability that there will be winners and losers.
The technologies are in their infancy, the costs at this stage are very high and still unknown are the practical implications of deploying hundreds or thousands of machines at sea.

There are many ides for capturing the power of tides and waves

And unresolved are the costly and controversial challenges of having to run new cables into the National Grid and then onto major population centres.
Neil Kermode of the European Marine Energy Centre is keen to be realistic about the prospects and not to hype expectations.
State funding, relatively meagre until now, is being increased and private funds are being raised too.
"We're at the stage of needing to see which of these technologies works and whether they can be scaled up. That requires steady investment.
"Look what the Danes did with wind: investments year after year paid off and now they earn billions in exports.
"There is huge potential - absolutely huge amounts of energy out there - in fact we don't know how much but it is epic."
Mr Kermode's concern is that funding remains consistent so that the different systems can be developed - and given a chance to prove themselves - in the UK.
"There is an absolute risk that we could fail to develop the technology that gets the energy out of the sea.
"If we're not careful we could end up buying this technology from overseas later on, which would be silly."
With its island heritage and experience of North Sea oil and gas, Britain should be ideally placed to pioneer marine energy.
As we leave in the dark of mid-afternoon, a storm drives rain across the runway. I think of the waves pounding the brave new machines out at sea.
Are they the first foot-soldiers of an impending energy revolution or costly forays into the deep that may never really succeed? The next few years will tell.

Will this thing even float? The craziest boats on the oceans!

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/01/mainsail.fantastic.boats.2009/index.html

By Anouk Lorie for CNN

December 1, 2009 -- Updated 1235 GMT (2035 HKT)

London, England (CNN) -- From catamarans made out of plastic bottles hoping to cross the Pacific Ocean to the recession-busting extravagance of billion-dollar superyachts, 2009 has been the year of crazy boats.
When it comes to design, famed architect Sir Norman Foster's spectacular "Ocean Emerald" stands out. The 41-meter superyacht is so precious it is not the property of any one owner, but split into 64 shares.
Design house, Hermes also got in on the act with a designer for a superyacht that looks like a floating island, complete with on-board "beach."
Perhaps the most mind-blowing design of the year was the superyacht that looks like an enormous shark or a killer whale. Seventy-six meter long "Oculus," projected to cost $95 million remains at the design stage currently.
2009 has also been a very green year, with many yachts proving their eco-credentials with novel, and at times, surprising innovations, like the luxury vessel designed to work like a wind farm.
Even more unusual was heir and maverick adventurer David Mayer de Rothschild's plan to cross the Pacific Ocean on a boat made of reclaimed plastic bottles.
In France, a group of friends turned a gas-guzzling tug boat into an eco-vessel, adding sails and solar panels to the "Manguier." They plan to use the boat to traverse the perilous, ice-filled Arctic sea passage that links the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific.
Eco-design hasn't been restricted green voyages. The team behind "Planet Solar," is currently building the world's largest and fastest fully solar-powered boat in preparation for a round-the-world challenge. It is projected to cross the Atlantic in only two weeks.

The ultimate prize for extreme boats this year must go to "Eclipse," the 160-meter (525-feet) monster yacht built by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. In a time of world-wide economic hardship, Abramovich is said to have splashed out $1.2 billion on his latest toy. "Eclipse's" militaristic appearance has also spurred news that the super-rich are arming their boats with military-grade defense systems.

Sun Curve

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVn0Jdc4LnQ



tags : sun curve hydroponic solar wind students learning Maker Faire #mf09
thanks to Menka Parekh

Deux pêcheurs birmans rescapés après 25 jours dans la mer : Le Point

Deux pêcheurs birmans ont survécu pendant près d'un mois dans des eaux infestées de requins en flottant dans un grand réfrigérateur après le naufrage de leur bateau, ont déclaré leurs sauveteurs.
Les deux hommes, âgés d'une vingtaine d'années, étaient employés avec 18 autres marins sur un bateau de pêche thaïlandais qui a chaviré le 23 décembre au large de la côte nord de l'Australie, a précisé Tracey Jiggins, porte-parole de l'autorité australienne de sûreté maritime.
"Ils n'avaient pas d'équipement de survie, pas de balise, pas de moyen de communiquer et ils ont dérivé pendant 25 jours", a-t-elle ajouté. Le réfrigérateur, utilisé par les bateaux de pêche, avait la "taille d'un bureau".
"C'est stupéfiant qu'ils aient été repérés dans une telle masse d'eau." C'est un avion de la garde-côte australienne qui a vu les deux hommes samedi. Ils ont été hélitreuillés et hospitalisés sur l'île de Thursday Island.
"Dès qu'ils sont montés, ils ont bu chacun deux litres d'eau en quelques secondes", a raconté le pilote d'hélicoptère à la télévision.
Les deux rescapés étaient affamés et déshydratés mais leur état n'inspire pas d'inquiétude et ils devraient sortir rapidement de l'hôpital.
Ils seront alors interrogés par les autorités qui se demandent comment ils ont survécu et ce qu'ils ont mangé et bu pendant près d'un mois.
Tracey Jiggins a déclaré que les autres marins à bord avaient certainement péri et qu'aucune recherche ne serait entreprise.
"Ce qu'ils nous ont dit, c'est qu'ils ont vu les autres membres d'équipage dans l'eau, sans gilet de sauvetage. Nous pensons qu'il est impossible de survivre dans l'eau pendant 25 jours."

A Mobile Mesh Network Goes Nuclear

Backpacks that detect nuclear material form a wireless mesh network.
Technology review By Kristina Grifantini


Credit: Joseph Tumminello

Nuclear option: This backpack (top) contains sensors that detect radioactive materials. Coupled with a mesh network, it automatically builds a map showing hazardous materials in the area. A mesh node wirelessly transmits results from nuclear sensors to handheld devices (bottom), such as a wrist-worn display or a PDA.

New mesh-networking technology will allow soldiers to more quickly search an area for signs of nuclear contamination. A company called Rajant has combined mesh radio transmitters with radiation-sensing backpacks to create a system that automatically sets up a communications mesh and displays a map of radiation across a region.

Mesh networking offers a fast, cheap way to construct a communications network. Instead of sending messages via a central command point, information hops from one node to another until it reaches its destination. A number of companies use static mesh networks for tasks such as traffic monitoring and environmental sensing, but creating reliable mobile mesh networks is more challenging. This is because each node must constantly track its moving neighbors to figure out how best to pass on a message while also preserving energy and bandwidth. Rajant addresses this problem by having nodes monitor just a few of their closest neighbors at any time.

For the detection system, Rajant's communication nodes, called BreadCrumbs, are connected to backpack sensors that detect radioactive material including plutonium and enriched uranium; the sensors are made by a company called Nucsafe. Team members wearing the sensors branch out and perform reconnaissance of an area. Data from each node hops back to a main computer, which builds a map showing the position of each node and its radiation data while individual users can see a map of their pack's results on a wrist-worn display or a laptop. Rajant presented the newest version of the system at the 2009 Soldier Technology Conference in Florida last month.

Each BreadCrumb can communicate with a peer that is up to five miles away, says Glenn Booth, vice president of marketing for Rajant. He adds that the mobile network has enough bandwidth to transmit a video stream or VoIP, even with hundreds of nodes all moving in different directions. The company already sells the wireless technology to mining companies and the military, and a single BreadCrumb device costs up to about $5,000.

"Building a reliable network is difficult because of mutual interference between radio nodes," says Dipankar Raychaudhuri, who works on mobile mesh networks for vehicles at Rutgers. Networks work with a certain density of radios, he says, but "can fall apart if radios move out of range in uncontrolled settings."

"The problem with completely mobile networks is that there is no guarantee of connectivity," adds Nader Moayeri, who works on mesh and ad hoc networks for the National Institute of Standards and Technology. "One other challenge is the capacity of the network," says Moayeri. Normally, as each node moves, it has to recalculate the best routes for a message. "That's considerable overhead," he says. "It eats up bandwidth you could be using for sending actual data."

Another way to improve a mobile network is to use several radio transmitters. For example, a company called MeshDynamics has developed transmitters that use two radios to send and receive data instead of just one.

40 knots to know, more later

By Martin Gautron

Yes we CanDOCK !

Just looking at this amazing floating dock products :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw4MHzwsaiI

It is beautiful how a modular system can follow the movement of the waves !

You need to watch their great corporate video as well.
The basic module is simple and good :





That's a cool docking system. But it is ... EXPENSIVE !!!!

Ok, maybe that's the good time to bring it up : a long time ago, last autumn we did some test of structures :




This one was pretty, the weight keep the moving parts together, but the tension on the cable made amplified unecessarily the movement of the structure.







The simple tripod behaved pretty well.





The star-shaped structure with long arms was a real catastrophy : the waves flipped it over, the arms folded on the structure, it landed miserably violently on the beach ...



The best structure was the platform + ballast. Simple, cheap, very, stable, reliable, at one with the sea.
For the nomadic eco-system is easy to think of semi-enclosed applications as well.



So, I would advocate a ballast system under the gardens too. Cheaper and more reliable than a solid ballast. Some sand can be added in the bag too anyway.

Individual proprietary solution VS open collective solution

We got a new member! Today we talked to Ed and again, the project took a refreshing turn. Ed's suggestions are roughly described below, to which I added some notes... Where's the "edit" button.

We can make the choice to survive on our own and design an individual system, but what's the point of it? We don't want to be forever on our own, and we have observed that many people are excited about the perspective we are forming.
We technically can survive on the oceans, but we can only do it together, so we want to design collectively the system the community will use and modify over time, we need to build the community.
But we cannot wait for everybody to agree on our model, so we need to propose some ideas, designs (compatible standards), constitution, an architectural API.

Ed says :

A modular society can only function efficiently if there is an API (application Programming Interface) standard that all entities joining the society adheres to.

Flows:
Solids
Stability
Continuity

Liquid:
Water pipes ø
Fuel pipes ø
Waste ø
Data ø
see http://lifecable.org/
economy, see http://liquideconomy.org/

Data:
Human languages
Academixml : http://www.academixml.org/
EEML, Extended Environments Markup Language (http://www.eeml.org/)
Pachube, http://www.pachube.com/

Rules:
share knowledge
security
Property (intellectual, see creative commons)

Philosophy:
Ethics
All people equal...

Cesar made a presentation on the theme of APIs and there application in the context of the "Open Sailing platform" at Future Karaoke, a lot about the same topic...

Appropriate technology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriate_technology

http://www.villageearth.org/

http://www.appropedia.org/Welcome_to_Appropedia

http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Environmental_community_building

http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Appropriate_technology_designs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar-Panel-Cooker-in-front-of-hut.jpg

Appropriate technology (AT) is technology that is designed with special consideration to the environmental, ethical, cultural, social and economical aspects of the community it is intended for.[neutrality disputed] With these goals in mind, AT typically requires fewer resources, is easier to maintain, has a lower overall cost and less of an impact on the environment compared to industrialized practices.[1][neutrality disputed]

The term is usually used to describe simple technologies suitable for use in developing nations or less developed rural areas of industrialized nations.[1] This form of appropriate technology usually prefers labor-intensive solutions over capital-intensive ones, although labor-saving devices are also used where this does not mean high capital or maintenance cost. In practice, appropriate technology is often something described as using the simplest level of technology that can effectively achieve the intended purpose in a particular location. In industrialized nations, the term appropriate technology takes a different meaning, often referring to engineering that takes special consideration of its social and environmental ramifications.[2]