Miracle Of The Honeybee

As we know, honey bees produce much more than the needs and store it in honeycombs. Have you ever thought that why bees construct hexagonal honeycombs?


(All the bees on Earth know that combs have to be constructed according to very specific angles.)

Mathematicians looking for answer to this question reached an interesting conclusion: "Hexagonal geometric shape best suited for maximum utilization of a field." Hexagonal cell, storing the maximum amount of honey, wax for the construction of which requires at least figure. So the bee uses the most appropriate way.

The method used in the construction of the comb is a very surprising: Bees honeycomb construction, starting from different places, doing the same size as hexagons, honeycomb In a twist by adding them to each other at the end of the meet in the middle. Joints made ​​of hexagons so skillfully that it contains no trace of sight when they are added later.

Wooden Funny Robot (You Can Download Plans)

The Magnetic Levitation Trains

The magnetic levitation trains exclude influences of the friction caused by ordinary rail-wheel contact, so the engineers should worry only about the friction from the air. So the aerodynamics is the reason why this train looks so futuristic. The front car is 92 ft (28 m) long, the aerodynamic nose took the front 45 feet of it. Behind that is seating for 24 passengers, and the rest of the train will consist of another 13 cars, with a total capacity for 864 seating passengers.

Maglev trains use magnetic repellence to lift the train above the track, eliminating friction. The picture above shows the first production prototype of the train that will carry passengers between Tokyo and Nagoya. Like any maglev, the train needs a special track that allows it to levitate slightly, negating the majority of the friction that traditional trains have to overcome and making amazing speeds possible. It gets top speed of 311 mph, or 500 km/h. With such speed the distance betweenTokyo and Nagoya will be passed in 40 minutes, which is twice faster than a conventional bullet train.Building the new section of maglev railway will start in 2014, but this train will start carrying its first passengers in 2027. But building won’t stop and till 2045 Japan’s maglev railway will be extended to Osaka.

Climate "changing before our eyes": World Meteorological Organization

The fact that Arctic sea ice has melted this year to its lowest recorded level shows, along with other weather extremes, that "climate change is taking place before our eyes", the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Wednesday.

The first 10 months of 2012 were the ninth-warmest since records began in the mid-19th century, with early months cooled by a "La Nina" weather event in the Pacific, according to the report, issued at global climate change talks in Doha.

Many regions have faced extremes of droughts, floods and heatwaves. The number of cyclones worldwide was around normal but some, such as Superstorm Sandy, which lashed the Caribbean and the United States, were especially devastating, the WMO said.

"The extent of Arctic sea ice reached a new record low. The alarming rate of its melt this year highlighted the far-reaching changes taking place on Earth's oceans and biosphere," said Michel Jarraud, head of the Geneva-based WMO.

"Climate change is taking place before our eyes and will continue to do so as a result of the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which have risen constantly and again reached new records," he added in a statement.

Natural cooling events such as La Nina "do not alter the underlying long-term trend of rising temperatures due to climate change as a result of human activities," he said.

The WMO is an agency of the United Nations and has a membership of 190 member states and territories.

Greenhouse gases

He said climate change will continue "as a result of the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which have risen constantly and again reached new records."

The report said that the global land and ocean surface temperature for the first nine months of 2012 was about 0.45 degrees Celsius (0.81 Fahrenheit) above the corresponding 1961-1990 average of 14.2 degrees C.

Worldwide, it said that tropical cyclones was near the 1981-2010 average of 85 storms, with a total of 81. Typhoon Sanba which hit the Philippines, Japan and the Korean peninsula was the strongest.

The Atlantic basin had an above-average hurricane season for a third consecutive year, it said. Most notable was Sandy, which hit island nations in the Caribbean and the United States.

High temperatures affected especially North America, southern Europe, western and central Russia and northwestern Asia, it said. Heatwaves hit much of the United States and Europe from March to May.

About 15,000 daily heat records were broken across the United States. Droughts also affected much of the United States and parts of Russia, Europe and China.

"Many parts of western Africa and the Sahel, including Niger and Chad, suffered serious flooding between July and September because of a very active monsoon," it said.

NASA gadget finds ice on Mercury

Despite searing daytime temperatures, Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, has ice and frozen organic materials inside permanently shadowed craters in its north pole, NASA scientists said November 29.

Earth-based telescopes have been compiling evidence for ice on Mercury for 20 years, but the finding of organics was a surprise, say researchers with NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, the first probe to orbit Mercury.

Both ice and organic materials, which are similar to tar or coal, were believed to have been delivered millions of years ago by comets and asteroids crashing into the planet. “It’s not something we expected to see, but then of course you realize it kind of makes sense because we see this in other places,” such as icy bodies in the outer solar system and in the nuclei of comets, planetary scientist David Paige, with the University of California, Los Angeles, told Reuters.

Unlike NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, which will be sampling rocks and soils to look for organic materials directly, the MESSENGER probe bounces laser beams, counts particles.

Flying Yacht

Eventually, this machine would be put into production in 2025. This concept is a hybrid between sea ship and airplane, and uses the so called “ground effect” (probably “surface effect” is more correct to be called) where aircrafts fly easily while they’re close to the surface.

During the last years of the Soviet Union, the Russian military forces built and tested ekranoplane called “KM” (short for “Korab Maket”, or “Ship Model”, instead of the American translation which called it “Caspian Monster”). Their vehicle was designed to carry soldiers, tanks and military technique and weighed 550 tons. Its production stopped with the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

However, the Ekranoyacht should have civil usage only. It is flying at height of 4m above the water surface and is able to fight with up to 3.5m high waves. The yacht’s propulsion system is a hydrogen powered engine that can produce top speed of 400km/h (248mph). The vehicle would have longitude of 36 meters and would offer full comfortable travel for 6 people. As the designer Jaron Dickson (student in the Australian Monash University) stated, the yacht was designed to be able to replace the ordinary houses and places for living: „The interior design was a very important part of the project, because if people are going to give up their static home living arrangements, there can’t be any sacrifice moving on to the Ekranoyacht.”.

via:[autoevolution.com]

World’s Largest Aircraft: Antonov An-225 Mriya

Bigger than a Boeing 747 and Airbus A380. Longer & heavier than the Hughes H-4 “Spruce Goose.” The Antonov An-225 Mriya (Dream) is a strategic airlift cargo aircraft developed by the Antonov Design Bureau in the Ukraine. The plans were first laid out in the early 1980’s and the first operational flight occurred on December 21st, 1988. Only one aircraft has been built; a second craft was partially constructed but never finished. The An-225 requires six turbofan engines to keep its payload in the air.

The Antonov An-225 was originally designed to function as a Russian Space Shuttle carrier aircraft, assisting the Buran space shuttle of the Soviet Space Program. Known for its immense carrying capability, the An-225 can carry 550,000 lbs. internally or 440,000 lbs. on the upper fuselage. Initially plans were to build several An-225s, but the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 saw the cancellation of the Buran space program and the Antonov contracts.

By 1994, the lone Antonov An-225’s future was in doubt. The engines were removed and it was placed in storage along with the second, unfinished An-225. In 2000, the need for strategic heavy equipment lifting brought the An-225 back into service. By 2006, demand was great enough to warrant plans to finish the second An-225 but numerous delays left the aircraft unfinished in 2009.

 So just how substantial is this aircraft? It requires six Ivchenko Progress D-18T turbofan engines to fly. The landing system has thirty two wheels.  The maximum gross weight is 640 tonnes (1,410,000 lbs.). The largest single piece of airlifted cargo ever recorded was on an Antonov An-225: a generator for a gas power plant in Armenia which was 53.2 ft long, 14 ft wide and weighed 416,900 lbs.

The Antonov An-225 is still in use today. Even the United States contracts the An-225 for military transport. From chimney ducts to generators to tanks to wind turbine blades, the Antonov has carried just about every large object that has required a transcontinental move.

source: www.sometimes-interesting.com

What Is Aquaponic Gardening?

Aquaponic gardening is aquaponics enjoyed by the home gardener.  The subtle difference is that while a commercial farmer is interested in production and profit, a home gardener is more interested in flexibility around what plants and fish can be grown, and ease of setup and maintenance.  A media based aquaponic garden gives you all these things and more.  Because the media grow bed mimics an organic garden bed, complete with red worms and natural microbes and bacteria, you can grow just about anything in a media bed that you could grow in your dirt garden…without the weeds!  Successful set-up is easy to achieve IF you follow some basic guidlines oulined in this book.  And daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance is minimal, again, as long as some basic rules are followed.

Aquaponic Gardens are typically media based, although more extensive aquaponics systems can have a raft (or Deep Water Culture DWC) component to them.  They can be set up in greenhouses, patios, basements or swimming pools.  They can be as small as a storage tub on top of a child’s aquarium to an extensive system set up to provide healthy produce to a community, become a multi-disciplinary teaching tool for a school or become a vocational training center for physically or mentally challenged people.

Above all, aquaponic systems are self-contained ecosystems providing fresh fish and produce, life and fun, to all those who decide to make them an integral part of their home food growing environment.

Engineering Project In Africa

The last three years have been full of uncertainty for many in the engineering and construction industry. However in Africa, one noticeable constant has been the insatiable demand for infrastructure in all forms. Partly fueled by the necessity to access and extract resources, implementation of grand infrastructure projects has also been mandated by governmental policies. Such is the case in Kenya where a major pillar in the government-sponsored development blue-print is infrastructural development.  To quantify the progress in the implementation of this vision, Kenya’s infrastructural pillar encompasses several flagship projects all slated for completion before the year 2030 deadline. Two of these projects have been included in this list.  As in Kenya’s case, most countries in Africa have recognized that sound infrastructure is the lifeblood of a modern economy.

The following projects represent some active projects in Africa which are not only grand in nature but also present opportunities for enhancing trade, connecting people,  fostering social cohesion, promoting regional integration and poverty reduction.

Kenya‘s  Lamu Port and New Transport Corridor Development to Southern Sudan and Ethiopia

The Lamu Port and Lamu Southern Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor (LAPSSET) better known as The Lamu corridor is a transport and infrastructure project in Kenya which when complete will be the country’s second transport corridor.  The Lamu corridor includes the following key projects:

• A port at Manda Bay
• Standard gauge railway line to Juba, South Sudan
• Road network
• Oil pipelines (Southern Sudan and Ethiopia)
• Oil refinery at Bargoni
• Three Airports
• Three resort cities (Lamu, Isiolo and Lake Turkana shores)

Ethiopia-Djibouti Railway

Ethiopia’s Djibouti Railway is a $1.2 billion project expected to reduce transportation cost for landlocked Ethiopia. The line will be a 656 km long and will connect Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa with Djibouti.  The railway network will have eight main routes connecting about 49 urban centers by 2015.

Nigeria’s Lagos Metro Blue Line

The 27 km railway line is funded by the Lagos State government in partnership with private firms. The railway line is expected to ease transport in Lagos State which boasts a population of 16 million. Eko Rail won the tender to provide equipment including rolling stock, signaling, and electric power, recouping its investment of around $400 million from passenger fares through a 25-year build operate transfer concession.

South Africa’s Durban waste-to-energy project

This $12 million project is funded by the city of Durban, the departments of trade and industry and energy, and the French Development Bank. The project involves the conversion of methane gas into electricity. The energy generated by this project is supplied to over 6,000 low income households in the municipality.

Kenya‘s Thika Highway Project

The Nairobi-Thika Highway Improvement Project in Kenya seeks to achieve the following three objectives: improve road transport services along the Nairobi-Thika corridor and reduce traffic congestion; develop a sustainable urban public transit system for the Nairobi Metropolitan Area; and boost private sector participation in the development of road infrastructures. The already completed project will certainly increase the pace of doing business between areas in Kenya which contribute the biggest value to the national economy.

source:http://www.engineeringdaily.net

Electric Skateboard

Boosted Boards surpassed their Kickstarter fundraising goal and created the latest generation electric vehicle – what they call the “lightest electric vehicle that has ever been made.” One of the major motivations behind the project is the fact that most of our travel happens within close distance, arround a few miles. Boosted Boards provides a low cost, eco-friendly method to get people to their destination.

Shipping in September 2013 is Boosted’s 2000W motor-powered longboard. It has a top speed of 20mph while cruising around town and can climb succesfully inclines of up to 15%. The Lithium ion battery is fully charged for about 2 hours and you can pass through a distance of up to 6 miles. Or conserve power and push like a standard skateboard. There is regenerative braking system with built-in motor, which means that your energy and momentum will not be wasted but rather help recharge the battery. Boosted Boards provided and a wireless hand controls. The unit weighs more than an average longboard – between 12-15 pounds – but still very light weight you can pick it up with no worries. The price tag is$1,299, which looks slightly higher but it won’t be an obstacle for the one who really want it.















via: [coolest-gadgets.com]

Marmaray

This is a railway transport project in Istanbul, which consists of construction of a railway tunnel along the bottom ofBosphorus strait and modernization and upgrading of already existing urban railways. It is building with the purpose to connect the two halves of Istanbul across the Sea of Marmara, from Halkali on the European shore to Gebze at the Asian coast. There is also provision of 440 new vehicles for the underground passenger traffic, delivered by Hyundai.

The name of Marmaray comes from combination of Sea of Marmara, which lies southward, and ray, which in Turkish means rail.


The project includes building of 13.6km tunnel, crossing the Bosphorus strait and renovation of 63km urban railways. The tunnel at the bottom of the sea will be protected from earthquakes by a 1.4 km log tube. The tube consists of eleven parts,8 are 135m long, two are 98.5m long and the last element has length of 110m. In order to place the tube properly, in the bottom was dug a channel with depth of 4.6m. When finished, the facility will allow transportation of 75 000 passengers per hour in both directions.

The building of Marmaray started in 2004 and the tunnel was finished on September 23th, 2008. Overall completion of the project was expected to be in 2009, but it was delayed several times. At present it is expected to be finished in October, 2013.

Capital Gate, Abu Dhabi

This is another proof that the engineering thought in the Arab world is developing with giant leaps. Essentially the building is a 160-meter tall skyscraper with 18-degree incline to the west, so it is also called “The Leaning Tower of Abu Dhabi.” Standard skyscrapers are being built by rising concrete core in the center, around which the floors are built. In this case, to compensate for the slope of the building to the west, the core is tilted in the opposite direction and this provides structural stability of the building. The concrete core is built level after level, each concrete level is pierced by overlapping and highly tensioned steel ropes, which provides some flexibility to the building.

Glazing and floors are built using the first in the Middle East diagrid (comes from diagonal grid and is a building made of triangular steel structures with diagonal support connecting rods), designed to retain and channel powers generated by wind and seismic pressure. The diagrid uses smaller amounts of steel than standard deigns. Some other buildings utilizing the diagrid are the Shukhov Tower in Russia, Hearst Tower (New York), CCTV Headquarters (Beijing) andSeattle Central Library.

Capital Gate was completed in 2011 and is expected to accommodate business offices and 5-star Hyatt Capital Gate hotel. The building also has a restaurant and pool at the higher levels.

Extraordinary Telescope Ring

This is a cool addition to the steampunk style and the people who like this style. It is great that there is no official character associated with it, so you’re free to apply it into a costume of your choice. However, it would fit better into sailor or pilot thematic. The manufacturers call this ring Captain Jules’ Extraordinary Telescope Ring and let the client decide who is/was Captain Jules and what his adventures are, and also why the client currently wears his extraordinary telescope ring.

The material used to create this cast metal ring is lightweight aluminum with an aged bronze layer with black patina above. The two lenses fold out at angle of 180 degrees and then slide apart, forming a small telescope. If you want a closer look, the large lens doubles as a magnifying glass. In the central section of the ring, right under the lens when folded, is placed small magnetic compass. It is forwarded to the client in a stylish tin suitable for gifts.

There are additional attachments that are able to change the size of the ring in three modes:
Size 5 (small, 15.75mm), Size 8 (medium, 18.2mm), Size 11 (large, 20.6mm).

Miracle Of The Honeybee

As we know, honey bees produce much more than the needs and store it in honeycombs. Have you ever thought that why bees construct hexagonal honeycombs?

(All the bees on Earth know that combs have to be constructed according to very specific angles.)

Mathematicians looking for answer to this question reached an interesting conclusion: "Hexagonal geometric shape best suited for maximum utilization of a field." Hexagonal cell, storing the maximum amount of honey, wax for the construction of which requires at least figure. So the bee uses the most appropriate way.


The method used in the construction of the comb is a very surprising: Bees honeycomb construction, starting from different places, doing the same size as hexagons, honeycomb In a twist by adding them to each other at the end of the meet in the middle. Joints made ​​of hexagons so skillfully that it contains no trace of sight when they are added later.