Scientists at Delft University in the Netherlands have developed a self-healing polymeric material that is both reusable and durable, and can be our solution to make regular plastic bags obsolete. CB26KJW2DS54 Y23HY9RTZ79W

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Most people are aware of the ongoing crisis with plastic bag build up all over the world. Plastic is one of the hardest materials to recycle, and is not easily biodegradable. The average plastic bag has a lifespan of 20 minutes, before it is thrown away. This massive build up has had a negative effect on the environment, but in the future this will change.

Ever since the mass usage of plastic bags became an environmental problem, many stores have come up with some helpful solutions. Green-wise is a shopping bag that does not rip, and can be used over and over again, unlike those flimsy, thin plastic shopping bags that often break after the first use. Along with Greenwise bags, some superstores are giving consumers the choice to use paper bags as well.

A team of scientists at the Delft Centre for Materials, at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, led by co-chairman Sybrand van der Zwaag, have developed a thermally self-healing polymeric material which is made by using a simple and efficient processing method. This material can be reused countless times, and can save millions of tons of waste each year. This new type of plastic is hard, and allows ground up post consumer pellets of their invention to be turned into “virgin” materials at a higher temperature.

This material is an innovative way of solving the world’s waste problems, as it will allow for products to be easily recycled and reused.

More Info:

• http://www.selfhealingmaterials.nl/

New technologies are not only changing our everyday lives and how we work and communicate with others; they are also bringing new customs to our societies. The National Texting Championship, held in New York City, is an example of such a phenomenon. The idea is simple: whoever can write the fastest text message wins.  There have only been three competitions so far, but the event is quickly attracting more and more Americans.

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Do you know what was written in first text message ever sent? “Merry Christmas”. It was the Christmas of 1992, and 22 year-old Neil Papworth sent his Christmas greetings to his colleague Richard Jarvis, who at that moment was at a holiday party near Vodafone’s complex in Newbury, England. To send the message Papworth used the keyboard of a computer. Little did he know what sort of technological revolution he had actually started.

18 years later, the number of text messages sent is now more than 2 trillion. Text messaging has not only created a new way of connecting with people, but it has also brought with it a new way of speaking and new cultural norms. In order to fit an entire message into only 160 characters, people have created new vocabulary, have begun including symbols into everyday speech, and have given numbers a new functionality. Teenagers are the original inventors of this new way of speaking, and their national texting champion for 2009 is 15 year-old Kate Moore. So what does it mean to be the texting champion? A first-place trophy, $50,000, and…bragging rights for the rest of the year.

LG’s US National Texting Championship is no easy feat: there are several elimination rounds, which include a text obstacle course, blindfolded texting, and texting while being hassled. Kate, who averages 14,000 messages a month with bills just under 300-pages long, beat over 250,000 texters to win.

What does this new and innovative competition mean for our future societies? It stands to demonstrate how our culture is evolving quickly. We are constantly looking for better and more efficient ways of communicating and existing in this world. Undoubtedly, the texting trend has grown exponentially, as more adults are beginning to also use text messaging as their main form of communication.

More Info:

• http://www.lgtexter.com/past_winners.php

The Universal Exposition of 2015 will change the city of Milan, as well as Italy as whole. Expo 2015 brings with it great potential for both Italy and the future.

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“In 2015, Milan will transform into a magical city,” This is how I explained the 2015 Universal Exposition on the program Nea Polis on the Italian TV network Rai 3. Milan is a magical city full of new technology that will soon become a reference of innovation and design.

Many Expos in the past have left large changes for the host city. Brussels was given the Atomium, and France was left with the Eiffel Tower. This iron monument was completely innovative for its time. It was avant-garde, unexpected, and even unappreciated by some. It now stands as a monument of innovation and art. This Expo in 2015 will stand in history as the point in which Italy redefines itself as not only a nation of ancient art and ancient civilizations; it will show that it is a nation that is headed for the future and that it has what it takes to be one of the front runners, one of the very best in the fields of engineering, innovation, and design.

When I was planning the project for the Italian candidacy for Expo 2015, I designed innovations such as sidewalks with built in sensors to adapt to you and your feet as you walk, buildings painted with nanotechnology infused paint that changes color as the day progresses, and sunglasses which allow you view the city as it was centuries and millennia ago. At the Expo, we will be marveled by technologies and innovations that seem as unreal as these ideas. But that’s how we move forward, by taking ideas and figuring out how to make them reality. But when people ask me which solutions, out of the 25 that I designed, I treasure the most, my response is the first holographic park in the world that will be capable of displaying buildings and monuments up to 30 meters (about 98 feet) high. It will show the things that made Milan the city it is, the people that helped found it, but it will appear out of thin air, and can be shut off like a light switch.

An exposition that demonstrates where the world is going. That is how the 2015 Expo in Milan is being referred to. We’ll refer to that date to come up with new innovative solutions. We have a lot to look forward to and much to watch out for at the 2015 Expo that is only 5 years away. Milan will most definitely be magical with all of the wonderful and never-before-seen technology at the Expo. There will not be any card ticks or rabbits being pulled out of hats; the magic is in the innovation it took to bring all of those ideas to life.

More Info:

• http://www.milanoexpo-2015.com/indexe.htm

Scientists at UC Berkeley, California have engineered materials that can modify the natural visible direction of light, and make the object appear invisible to human eyes. These 3D materials curve light waves around the object in which they are applied. Thanks to this new technology, it may actually be possibility to walk around with an invisibility cloak in the near future.

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It was 1961 when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby designed “The Fantastic 4”, giving life to a very popular series of comedies, including personalities that entertained millions of readers. Out of you readers, who has heard of the adventures of Susan Storm, the “invisible woman”. After around 40 years, the fiction that seemed to remain confined to comics, spread to scientific laboratories.

Some interesting trials have been conducted since 2006. Researchers from Duke University, directed by Prof. David Smith, created a “meta-material”, made from electromagnetic waves, which rendered objects visible only to specific detectors. In only 3 years, this field has taken a giant leap forward.

At the University of Berkeley in California, a team of scientists led by Prof. Xiang Zhang, from the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center put together for the first time a 3-D material capable of deflecting the natural direction of visible light through infrared lighting. Xiang has created a carpet cloak from nanostructured silicon that conceals the presence of objects placed under it from optical detection.

This discovery could contribute to further create a base material that will have an optic effect on images and render them invisible. A creation like this would be a hit with fantasy film fanatics. One can only wonder than limitless possibilities and applications that will come from this discovery, and hoping that not only the military sector will benefit from the innovation.

More Info.:

• http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/08/11_light.shtml
• http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/01/15/invisibility-cloak.html
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4zwzlnExVU
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ-aLyiU_i0&NR=1
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja_fuZyHDuk
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeiFcJC7diA

San Francisco designer, Joanna Borek-Clement has created an innovative architectural urban design that could alleviate pollution and overcrowded streets. Sky-Terra is a structural system based on the concept of adding a new and eco-friendly level to major cities, adding new public spaces to already crowded cities.

Although skyscrapers might be beautiful, complaints have come from some of them ruining the horizon, by sticking out like a sore thumb in the middle of a vast wilderness. Look around any large metropolis and you will note the same things: no room for expansion, pollution, crowded city streets, a vast array of buildings that take away sunlight from the avenues below. They cast an ominous, eerie shade on the city below, taking away the suns warmth, and replacing it with the shades chillier temperature. The need for public spaces is crucial in any busting metropolis.

Joanna Borek-Clement is a designer from San Francisco who has envisioned a new way of constructing high-rises using a new architectural design. Her design is inspired by the shape of a neuron cell, and would allow the streets below to be filled with parks, and recreational community buildings. Her idea shows buildings sprouting up from the ground, and branching out wider towards the sky, sort of like building an alternate layer far away from the ground. These interconnected towers would also be built of mass-produced materials that would allow for the conservation of critical energy and precious resources.

I like this project: it makes a lot of sense for the environment and for bettering the general life of city dwellers. I find that its practicality could lead the project to materialize into something concrete within the next several years. A new, intricate layer in the sky could better the quality of life for the ones who seek to stay below it.

More Info.:

• http://joannaborek.com/index_welcome.html

Moy, the futuristic car created by Croatian designer Elvis Tomljenovic, is a concept car for a technologically-driven generation. Moy is completely customizable, made with polycarbonate layers and LED fibers. The driver is once again the commander of his vehicle, as he is able to choose any design or pattern for his car.

Henry Ford, at the time of the presentation of the Ford T in 1908, said that the cars would be available in every color as long as it was black.

The imposition to the market of a single car color coincides with the beginning of marketing interpreted as “product orientation”.

The 1900′s was the century of mass production: standardized product, thought of to please as many people as possible. The new millenium on the other hand, started a new trend: personalization. Today at the center of the production process, lie our desires, and that is what leads companies to design products which allow us to express our inner creativity.

100 year have passed since the release of the Ford T, and today we can change the color of our car anytime we want.

It is called Moy, and it was projected by the Croatian designer Elvis Tomljenovic, who won a contest for the Automotive Design Conference in Zagreb.

Moy is the concept car for the “generation that will use technology as a basis to express themselves and to communicate”. The body of Moy is composed of thin layers of polycarbonate that contain a layer of liquid crystals, also with LED’s and electro-chromed fibers. Outside of the technical specifications the principle is the same as a screensaver, all one needs is a computer. One picks an image he likes, or creates one, and then sends it via wi-fi to the car, which applies it to the car’s body. The concept surely will draw interest, even because Tomljenovic thought of equipping the car with an electric motor, to demonstrate his support for environmental sustainability, which is now in the DNA of this young designer.

The real test now is to make the Moy secure while driving in the bustling traffic of our crowded streets, and to transform it from being a brilliant idea to an actual successful product. Aesthetically pleasing, personalized, with an electric motor, respectful for the environment, safety. Will this be the car of the future?

More Info.:

• http://www.yankodesign.com/2009/04/08/have-a-different-car-everyday/
• http://tomljenovic.carbonmade.com/projects/2271356

Looking for a car that is both innovative and resilient? Then look no further than BMW’s new car, GINA. Designed by Chris Bangle, GINA, which stands for “Geometry, Infinity, and Adaption”, is the car of the future. With its fabric-skinned shape-shifting concept, GINA is the beginning of a new style of motor vehicle.

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In this interview, Chris Bangle announces the fascinating “Gina Light Visionary Model”: the amazing new concept developed by BMW, right before he resigned as head of design. An automobile of the future that introduces to us a philosophy of innovative manufacturing, not compared to vehicles of the past, but also to ones being designed for the future.

Chris Bangle is an automobile designer, known best for his work as Chief of Design for BMW Group.

Bangle started his career at Opel, he later moved to Fiat and then became the first American chief of design of BMW on October 1, 1992, where he designed the Z9 Gran Turismo concept car. His styling themes have generated intense controversy among automotive designers, and have often had a polarizing effect.

On February 3, 2009, Bangle announced that he was to quit both his position at BMW and the auto industry altogether, to focus on his own design-related endeavours.

Chris explains that GINA – is an acronym for “Geometry and Function in “N” adaptations. His design matches the fantasy of BMW’s owner while also inspiring many who see the intricate design. The structure of the auto can be modified thanks to an electro-hydraulic system in real time. Other than its velocity, the tail end of GINA can change form, and the motor and doors open in a way never seen before, with surprising effects. Even the seats change form, and the headlights are hidden beneath a feline mask.

Individualization and flexibility are the two main factors in the project. To get noticed by buyers, the car will be customizable like no other, and will be “personalized to the fullest extent possible”, which will make this vehicle a metaphorical extension of our own bodies, and an object of our wildest imaginations.

Swedish designer Camilla Diedrich has found a way to combine wallpaper with electric lights in order to create a fashionable and innovative way of illuminating a room. By incorporating fiber optics into wallpaper, Diedrich delivers a beautiful and interesting way of brightening our homes in a way never thought possible.

Wallpaper and illumination systems allow us to decorate our homes with plenty of space to express our inner designer. Today however, thanks to optic fibers we can integrate the two together.

In 1879 the era of artificial lighting was born under Thomas Edison. Not only was the first prototype of a lamp and an incandescent light bulb created, but also the acceleration of an entire industrial sector. Very few people remember that optic fibers are contemporary to the light bulb, and that significant progresses in the field were only starting to be made in the 1960’s. In reality, the optic fibers are very efficient conductors of electricity, and in this case, also a potential lighting alternative.

Nature Ray Charles is special wallpaper that entwines strings of optic fiber in a luminescent flower pattern, giving the room a truly amazing look. The Swedish designer, Camilla Dietrich, idealized the concept with the intent to find an innovative way to illuminate any room without having to use electrical lighting methods. The Swedish stylists are committed to rendering the design accessible to the public.

Imagine what type of scenarios we would be able to surround ourselves with if this optic fiber was powered by solar energy and sold at a cheaper price. The price of this wallpaper is still too high to be considered a product entering the mass-market, but the energy saving advantages it has will certainly draw public interest.

More Info.:

• http://online.diedrich.se/

Roger Harrop directs Speakers With Content, an American group that connects audiences with experts and specialists who provide practical information, solutions, and materials in an inspiring and insightful manner. Based on experiences and personal observations, Roger Harrop outlines the 10 key concepts of a successful entrepreneur.

As the Group Chief Executive of Servomex for seven years, Roger Harrop helped the company become the world leader in gas analysis. Now the President and Fellow of the Professional Speakers Association, Harrop is a keynote speaker for international corporations, business leaders groups, and associations. Here are his ten tips for our leaders:

1. Know what your weaknesses are, and always have a number 2, someone that can complement you and your weaknesses.
2. Know what your purpose is. What is it that you want to achieve? Knowing one’s purpose can help direct people in the right direction.
3. Belief is of upmost importance. If you don’t believe in yourself and your work, people will see right through you.
4. Passion is key. If you don’t have passion for your work, it will never be as good as it could be.
5. Demonstrate courage by taking risks in order to move the business forward.
6. Respect people. There aren’t any successful entrepreneurs who treat people badly.
7. Always have a Plan B. Never forget Murphy’s law: if a project takes a bad turn, be ready with another plan.
8. Keep it simple.
9. Work smart, not hard. Clever people know how to get the job done in the most efficient way possible.
10. Enjoy what you are doing, and above all, make the most of life.

You can hear all about Roger Harrop’s tips from the man himself in the following interview:

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More Info.:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh7c_o9xI6s

According to Pete Alcorn, we are only 150 years away from a new Enlightenment period due to a decrease in population and raised wages and opportunities. We should be looking towards the future with more optimism than ever before.

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This is Pete Alcorn’s theory. At the beginning of his explanation, he admits that he was once a follower of Malthus, but now he understands the need to overcome this way of thinking. In 1798, the English economist published An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it affects the future improvement of society, in which he explained his theory that population was held within resource limits by two types of checks: positive ones, which raised the death rate, and preventative ones, which lowered the birth rate. The positive checks included hunger, disease and war; the preventative checks, abortion, birth control, prostitution, postponement of marriage, and celibacy. Population, according to his theory tended to grow in a geometric progression.

Malthus’ theory, while seemingly negative, is not without justification. Pete Alcorn, at a conference held by TED (a non-profit group that organizes events and conferences), invites us to step away from Malthus and embrace his theory on the new Enlightenment. According to economic models, a declining population has two main benefits. One benefit is a reduction in land prices, which lifts a burden off of the poorer populace. Secondly, a drop in population brings about a scarcity of labor, which then creates wage increases. After 30% to 60% of Europe’s population was killed during the Black Death in the 14^th century, Europe saw these changes come about, including technological innovation and the birth of the middle class. The immense decline in population gave rise to a forward social-economic movement in Europe: the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Pete Alcorn, the head of podcasting for Apple, believes that we are only 150 years away from another Enlightenment period.

Alcorn points out that according to the UN’s population data, the world’s population is expected to top off at about 10 billion in the late century. It is also projected that the population will most likely begin to decline afterwards. Although it seems natural to assume that a declining population is a negative thing for our society, it is, in fact, going to lead to positive social movements.

More often than not, we tend to romanticize the past, while fearing the evitable downfall of the future. Instead, Alcorn believes that we need to start romanticizing the future, for he foresees only positive changes for our world. One should consider, however, that it is crucial that people keep a positive outlook; transitions in any form are dangerous times and often lead to rash decision-making. With all of our technological and scientific advancements, coupled with a declining population, we should look forward to the fact that our future generations will be able to benefit from the 22^nd century Enlightenment.

More Info.:

• http://www.ted.com/speakers/pete_alcorn.html
• http://www.ted.com/talks/pete_alcorn_s_vision_of_a_better_world.html