Jabuticaba Tree

Tree that bear fruits on its trunk...hmmm...does it make harvesting easier?

Jabuticaba: The Tree That Bear Fruits on its Trunk

By Kaushik

Jabuticaba is a Brazilian grape tree found in the states of Minas Gerias and Sao Paulo, in the south of Brazil. The fruit grows directly from the trunk and branches of the tree, which gives the Jabuticaba tree a very unusual appearance. The fruit itself is a small and round, about 3 to 4 cm in diameter, with one to four large seeds, a thick, deep purple colored skin and a sweet, white or rosy pink gelatinous flesh. Naturally the tree may flower and fruit only once or twice a year, but when continuously irrigated it flowers frequently, and fresh fruit can be available year round in tropical regions. During Jabuticaba season in Minas Gerais, thousands of street vendors sell fresh Jabuticaba in small net bags, and the sidewalks and streets are stained the same deep purple by discarded Jabuticaba skins. 

Jabuticaba is largely eaten fresh, but because the fruit starts to ferment just 3-4 days after harvest, they are often used to make jams, tarts, strong wines, and liqueurs. Due to the extremely short shelf-life, fresh Jabuticaba fruit is very rare in markets outside of areas of cultivation. The fruit also has many medicinal uses. Traditionally, an astringent decoction of the sun-dried skins has been used as a treatment for hemoptysis, asthma, diarrhoea, and gargled for chronic inflammation of the tonsils. It also has several potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory anti-cancer compounds.
Although the Jabuticaba grows in most regions of Brazil, it’s found mostly in Minas Gerias. It’s association with the state is so strong that the Jabuticaba tree appears on the coat of arms of the city of Contagem, and another city in Minas Gerais, Sabará, hosts a Jabuticaba festival annually.
















 

Skyscrappers's dark secret

Source: theamusingplanet.com

The Dark Secret of The World's Tallest Skyscrappers
By Kaushik

The title for the world's tallest skyscraper is basically a pissing contest between international developers, and as the Skyscraper Index proposes, building height is tied to booms and busts. But building skyscrapers cost money and requires great deal of engineering expertise. A simple but deceptive way to increase the height of a building is to put a spire on top. Adding pinnacles to skyscrapers allow developers to add meters to the building without adding significant cost, as well as avoiding increase in engineering complexities. Building a spire, after all, is cheaper than building habitable space. The added portion remains unoccupied (and is often incapable of) but still counts when the height of the building is measured.
The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, a not-for-profit organization that tracks the world's skyscrapers, has released some data on the subject. CTBUH found that nearly 60 percent of the world's supertalls wouldn't actually be supertalls at all without the added wasteful space that the organization calls “vanity height”.



The Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world at nearly 830 meters, has 244 meters of unoccupied space. To put that in context, if that 244 meters were itself a building, it would be the 11th tallest in Europe. The worst offender of all is the Burj Al Arab, also in the U.A.E., of which 39 percent is vanity spire. This is followed by two more skyscrapers again from U.A.E. - Emirates Tower One and Emirates Tower Two with respectively, 32% and 31% of unoccupied height. Apparently, U.A.E leads the pack, but China and the US are close on heels.
The trend is not necessarily a new one - the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building of New York City are two of the earliest examples of this growing phenomenon. The practice started in the 1930s, but remained dormant for half a century, before making a brief appearance during the mid-1970s, then really hit the roof after 2000. According to the findings of CTBUH, out of the 74 completed supertalls with vanity heights, as many as 65 were constructed after 1990. Buildings constructed after 1999 have an average vanity height of 16%.
You can read the full report from CTBUH here.



 

Nikola Tesla...Again

On 9 Sep '13 I posted an eye opening article on Nikola Tesla. Here is more about the great man.
Source: www.knowledgeoftoday.org


Nikola Tesla The Secret Movie - Unlimited Free Energy Forever

 

Encyclopedia Britannica lists Nikola Tesla as one of the top ten most fascinating people in history. Nikola Tesla was an electrical engineer who changed the world with the invention of the AC (alternating current) induction motor, making the universal transmission and distribution of electricity possible. So why is he virtually unknown to the general public?

Today we pay for electricity as Tesla's free energy devices were destroyed by J.P. Morgan for not being able to earn profit from it. This rare film stars Orson Welles and features a dramatic recreation of a meeting between Nikola Tesla, Industrialist J.P. Morgan and Thomas Edison, that would decide the fate and future of today's Electric Power Industry in America and the world. But what happened to Tesla?
“Electric power is everywhere present in unlimited quantities and can drive the world's machinery without the need of coal, oil, gas, or any other of the common fuels.” -Nikola Tesla

“My brain is only a receiver. In the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength, inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know it exists.” -Nikola Tesla

The Missing Secrets Of Nikola Tesla

“Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe. Throughout space there is energy.” -Nikola Tesla

'Nikola Tesla Unlimited Free Energy Forever' is a comprehensive documentary featuring physicists and inventors who are challenging orthodox science to bring this non-polluting technology forward despite ridicule and suppression. See actual working prototypes that defy classical physics including phenomenal experiments in anti-gravity and the transmutation of metals.


“When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance.” -Nikola Tesla

Les Paul

Relax with the legendary Les Paul, turn the lights down and pump up the amp.
Tomorrow is another day.

Beer Brewing

Must have for Christmas!

PicoBrew Zymatic aims at almost completely automatic beer brewing

By David Szondy
 

PicoBrew aims to automate home beer brewing, with the Zygomatic
    

 

What does making bread and brewing espresso have in common? Not long ago, both were involved, messy jobs best left to the experts that can now be done at home by anyone who can pour ingredients and press a button. PicoBrew LLC of Seattle wants to do the same with beer, with the PicoBrew Zymatic – a countertop brewery that is claimed by the developers to be as automatic as a breadmaker.

 

The focus of a Kickstarter campaign that runs through October 30, the Zymatic is billed as a way of making home brewing completely automatic. Currently, making your own beer at home is a very involved, imprecise process where the results can be as reliable as a crapshoot and clean-up is a long, tedious process. PicoBrew’s goal is to reduce brewing to a series of precisely controlled, computer-monitored steps where the user’s role is no harder than selecting recipes and adding ingredients.

It’s the brainchild of Bill and Jim Mitchell, the former a one-time Microsoft developer and the latter a builder of food processing machines, who decided in 2010 to build a compact, easy-to-clean automatic brewing machine. Later joined by electrical and mechanical engineer Avi Geiger, they went through a series of prototypes. These started with an off-the-shelf Arduino-based controller, standard pumps, relays, valves and a custom heating loop before progressing to bespoke electronics and mechanics, as they refined the device’s ability to control aspects of the brewing process (such as mash efficiency and hops utilization) and improved its reliability. Along the way they conducted testing and tasting with local amateur and professional brewers.

Some examples of PicoBrewed beer

In its current configuration, the Zymatic is a steel box about the size of a camping oven with a simple pull-out plastic drawer in front that holds the ingredients and can be cleaned in a dishwasher. The main compartment of the drawer holds the grain and a smaller compartment called the step filter holds smaller ingredient containers called “cages” for hops and the like. Hoses coming from the side of the Zymatic connect it to a 5-gallon (19-liter) cornelius keg.

To use the Zymatic, you select a recipe from the rotary encoder on the front of the machine, load one using the web-based PicoBrew Recipe Crafter, or select from online recipes. The machine maintains a tight control of temperature and other variables and provides a readout of results.
With the recipe loaded, you then attach the cornelius keg filled with water using the hoses, add the hops and other ingredients according to the recipe into the step filters, close the drawer, and start the machine. According to PicoBrew, in about 3.5 hours the Zymatic will pump the resulting unfermented beer wort back into the keg. Then it's a matter of plunging the keg into a bucket of ice water to cool it, adding yeast, and then either transferring the beer to a clean keg to ferment, put it directly in a kegerator and adding carbonation, or bottling it as preferred.

According to PicoBrew, the Zymatic is still in the final stages of development. A pledge of US$1,299 will get you one, when and if they reach commercial production. By contrast, the already-available WilliamsWarn brewing machine sells for approximately $5,000.
PicoBrew says that if it keeps to schedule, the first units should ship in January.
The video below introduces the Zymatic.
Sources: PicoBrew, Kickstarter via Seattle Times

Self Healing Polymer

New polymer spontaneously self-heals at room temperature

By Dario Borghino
 

 

 

 

 

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The self-healing polymer devised at CIDETEC can mend itself without a catalyst (Photo: Royal Society of Chemistry)

 

A team of scientists at the CIDETEC Centre for Electrochemical Technologies have successfully created the first self-healing polymer that can heal by itself at room temperature, without the need for external catalysts. The material could be used as an industrial adhesive or to replace similar compounds in cars, houses and electrical components to make them more fault-tolerant.
Polymers stick together thanks to so-called "cross-links" – chemical bonds that glue different polymer chains to one another. Under normal circumstances, these bonds need a source of energy such as light, pressure or a change in pH in order to form (or heal once they have been severed).

The polymer created by Ibon Odriozola and colleagues sports a key difference. Their material, a soft poly(urea-urethane) network, leverages the metathesis reaction in aromatic disulphides. This chemical reaction is naturally able to create covalent bonds at room temperature, allowing the polymer to autonomously heal without an external source of energy.
When cut with a razor blade and left to rest at room temperature, the material showed the impressive ability to quickly mend itself with 97 percent efficiency after only two hours.

The polymer showed a close resemblance with commercial compounds used as sealants and adhesives, suggesting that it could be used to replace them and considerably extend their lifetime.
Currently, the compound has a soft consistency. Odriozola and colleagues are now focusing on creating a harder version that could be used, among other things, to create plastic parts that would be highly resistant to cutting and repetitive straining.

A paper describing the polymer appears in a recent issue of the journal Materials Horizons.
The video below demonstrates the self-healing properties of the material.
Source: Royal Society of Chemistry

Most Relaxing Tune

According To Scientists, This Is The Most Relaxing Tune Ever Recorded

This eight minute song is a beautiful combination of arranged harmonies, rhythms and bass lines and thus helps to slow the heart rate, reduce blood pressure and lower levels of the stress. The song features guitar, piano and electronic samples of natural soundscapes.

A study was conducted on 40 women, who were connected to sensors and had been given challenging puzzles to complete against the clock in order to induce a level of stress. Different songs were then played, to test their heart rate, blood pressure, breathing and brain activity.

The results showed that the song Weightless was 11 per cent more relaxing than any other song and even caused drowsiness among women in the lab.

It induced a 65 per cent reduction in overall anxiety and brought them to a level 35 per cent lower than their usual resting rates.

According to Lyz Cooper, founder of the British Academy of Sound Therapy, the song has been created using various scientific theories and make use of musical principles that are known to have individually calming effects. Hence these elements have been combined together by Marconi Union to make the perfect relaxing song ever.

The song comprises of a sustaining rhythm that starts at 60 beats per minute and gradually slows to around 50. Thus, while listening to the song, your heartbeat automatically comes to match that beat.
She even adds that it is necessary for the song to be eight minutes long because it takes about five minutes for entertainment to occur. The gaps between the notes have been chosen to create a feeling of euphoria and comfort.

In addition, there are no repetitive melodies in the song which allows one's brain to completely switch off since one is no longer trying to predict what is next. The random chimes in the song help induce a deeper sense of relaxation and the final element in the song is the low, whooshing sounds and hums, those like the Buddhist chants.

Moreover, sound therapies have been used for thousands of years to help people relax and improve health and well-being. Among indigenous cultures, music has been the heart of healing and worship. The song, weightless is ideal for unwinding and putting an end to a stressful day.

According to Dr David Lewis-Hodgson, from Mindlab International, which conducted the research, this song induced the greatest relaxation, higher than any other music tested till date. In accordance to the Brain imaging studies, music works at a very deep level within the brain, stimulating not only those regions responsible for processing sound but also ones associated with emotions. The song Weightless can make one drowsy and hence should not be heard while driving.

Richard Talbot, from Marconi Union, was fascinated to work with a therapist to learn how and why certain sounds affect people's mood. Though he always knew the power of music, they had previously written songs using only their gut feeling.

The study conducted by bubble bath and shower gel firm, Radox Spa found the song was even more relaxing than a massage, walk or cup of tea. According to Cassie Shuttlewood, from Radox Spa, it is understandable not to spend hundreds of pounds on massages, spa weekends and yoga retreats to reduce stress levels.

The top ten relaxing songs are known to be
1. Marconi Union - Weightless
2. Airstream - Electra
3. DJ Shah - Mellomaniac (Chill Out Mix)
4. Enya - Watermark
5. Coldplay - Strawberry Swing
6. Barcelona - Please Don't Go
7. All Saints - Pure Shores
8. Adelev Someone Like You
9. Mozart - Canzonetta Sull'aria
10. Cafe Del Mar - We Can Fly

 

Source: whydontyoutrythis.com

 

Futuristic Toilet

A futuristic waterless, odor free and solar powered toilet.  


Source: Popular Science

Blueprint: Engineers Invent A Healthier Toilet

This is no ordinary john.

By Jason Gerhard as told to Flora Lichtman

 

A Healthier Toilet

Trevor Johnston

"One-and-a-half million children die each year from diseases related to poor sanitation. We're building a disinfecting toilet that doesn't need running water or massive treatment plants and is cheap and odor-free.
It's a squat toilet, which is what many people around the world prefer. The waste falls onto a sloped conveyor belt. Solids stick, and liquids run off into a bed of sand, which filters everything 10 micrometers or larger, including most parasites and their eggs. Then the liquid falls into a shallow trough, where an ultraviolet lamp—running on five watts from a solar panel on the roof—destroys any other pathogens in minutes.
The sand filter's top layer will get clogged, so a corkscrew mechanism skims it off to join the solids, which another belt squeezes to remove moisture so they can be burned efficiently. The user would light the waste in a smolder unit every night, which would leave just a tiny bit of ash and sterile sand.
To test our components, we've decided to use a nonhazardous feces surrogate—same calorific content, same moisture content, looks like it, feels like it, but made out of ingredients like miso paste and peanut butter. When the full prototype is built by December, we'll switch to the real stuff."
—Jason Gerhard, an engineer at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, is working on the disinfecting-toilet project with Yu-Ling Cheng, Mark Kortschot, and José Torero. As told to Flora Lichtman.

Futuristic Building Materials

16 FUTURISTIC BUILDING MATERIALS

House of Hemp and Blood: 16 Futuristic Building Materials
By Steph, Web Urbanist,

Future buildings could be made of artificial human bone, hemp, bacterial by-products or concrete that absorbs greenhouse gas emissions and lasts thousands of years. Innovations in building materials have led to synthetic creations that are stronger, lighter and more sustainable than those we already use, potentially leading to architecture unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.

1. Animal Blood Bricks

Abundant and yet almost always wasted, animal blood is an unlikely - and grisly - possible base material for building bricks. Architectural graduate Jack Munro sterilized the blood, added sand and baked them together to yield a strong, traditional-looking brick that’s also waterproof.

2. Translucent Concrete

Litracon is a combination of optical fibres and fine concrete, produced as prefabricated building blocks for a translucent glass-like look with surprising strength. It’s hand-made, so each block has its own individual pattern of light.

3. Bacteria Building Blocks

Will bacteria build the walls of our houses in the future? Scientists have directed the creation of bio-plastics, cellulose and other materials by feeding certain materials to specific varieties of bacteria. The resulting metabolic process produces solid, surprisingly durable by-products that could be used for all kinds of processes. Bacteria might even create bricks that could be used for building on Mars.

4. Concrete That Lasts 16,000 Years

Not only would the new concrete being developed at MIT drastically reduce the carbon emissions currently associated with the manufacturing of this material, it would also result in an astonishing reduction in the amount needed in the first place. That’s because it’s strong enough to last for an incredible 16,000 years. This concrete will not only be stronger, but also lighter and thinner, so large-scale, lightweight structures require far less material.

5. Hempcrete: Hemp Biocomposite

A new bio-composite, thermal wall material made of hemp, lime and water is not only eco-friendly but actually carbon-negative thanks to the amount of CO2 stored during the process of growing and harvesting hemp. It’s 100% recyclable, waterproof and fireproof and could be used for everything from walls and insulation to flooring. Once demolished, the material can be used as fertilizer.

6. SensiTile

Sensitiles are made up of a light-conducting matrix embedded in a substrate, so that they redirect and scatter incoming light in a similar way as fibre optics. Shadow-producing movements around these tiles produce an interesting rippling effect, and the tiles absorb and ‘bleed’ colours.

7. Bendable Concrete

A new type of concrete can not only bend under 5% tensile strain, it does so by self-healing. The material forms micro-cracks when bent, which then seal themselves after being exposed to water and carbon dioxide.

8. Water-Saving Bricks

What looks like an ordinary red brick on one side contains a waterway that can route water down the side of a building and into a basin for bathrooms, fountains, cleaning, fire fighting or irrigation. The ‘Save Water’ brick is made of pulverized fallen leaves and reclaimed plastic.

9. Aerogel

So light you can’t even feel it in your hand, aerogel has the lowest bulk density of any known porous solid, and it’s a powerful insulating material. Made up of a gel that has had its liquid component replaced by air, it’s thin, breathable, fireproof, strong and won’t absorb water. Manufacturers are now producing it in sheets as insulation, but it’s still pretty expensive.

10. Electrified Wood

A composite material made of pre-formed wooden elements and metal layers actually enables lamps and other electronics to be plugged directly into the wood without any cables. Developed by trans|alpin, the electrified wood material could revolutionize furniture.

11. Liquid Granite

Safer at high temperatures than concrete, but just as versatile, ‘liquid granite’ is made of 30-70% recycled material and uses less than a third of the cement used in precast concrete. It could be used in building projects that require the top level of protection against fire.

12. Novacem Carbon-Eating Cement

2.9 billion tons of cement is produced every year, and it’s responsible for up to 5% of the world’s annual production of CO2. Novacem, a cement substitute made of magnesium silicate, actually absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere. It could potentially achieve one of the single largest reductions in CO2 emissions in construction, cutting out 800kg of carbon emissions per ton of poured concrete and absorbing another 50kg.

13. Flexicomb

Made from drinking straws, a disposable product, ‘flexicomb‘ is a flexible material that form a translucent honeycomb matrix that could potentially be used to make lighting fixtures and other items.

14. Kinetic Glass

A new material called ‘living glass’ could monitor CO2 levels in the air, automatically opening and closing its ‘gills’ in response to the breathing of humans in the room. It’s made of silicone embedded with wires that contract due to electrical stimulus, allowing the gills to regulate air quality when carbon dioxide levels are high.

15. Zeoform: Recyclable, Low-Carbon

Using nothing more than cellulose and water, this hardwood-like material is an eco-friendly alternative to plastics and resins. Zeoform is made using a natural glue-free process whereby cellulose fibres stick together in water, and can be sprayed, moulded or shaped into a wide range of objects.

16. Artificial Bone

Human bone is the inspiration behind a new high-tech composite that can be made in just a few hours using a 3D printer. Just as collagen and hydroxyapatite help a natural bone withstand fracturing by dissipating energy and distributing damage over a larger area, so do a soft black polymer and a stiff blue polymer acting like a brick-and-mortar wall. The 3D printed bone material is 22 times more fracture-resistant than any of its parts, and one day, it could be used as the basis of entire buildings.

[Source: Web Urbanist. Edited.]

Glass Gem Corn

 

Let's make a quick guess.
A) Real Corn
B) GMO Corn
C) Made of plastic
D) Made of glass

 

  

 

Glass Gem Corn

By Kaushik

These multicolored kernels of corn that look like glass beads belong to a specially bred variety, aptly named Glass Gem Corn, and they can be actually grown from seeds. Glass Gem corn was developed by Carl Barnes, a part-Cherokee farmer living in Oklahoma, who noticed that every so often, a cob showed signs of unusual coloring shining through. Barnes collected and saved those seeds, and thanks to his uncanny knack for corn breeding and many years of painstaking effort, Glass Gem corn was born.

When Barnes approached old age, he bestowed his precious seed collection to his friend Greg Schoen and also shared with Schoen the process of breeding the Glass Gem corn. In 2010 Greg decided to move. While moving, he made the determination that he needed to find someone to store and protect his seed collection so that it didn’t get lost or ruined in the moving process. He decided to store the seeds with Seeds Trust, a small seed company in Arizona, ensuring Barnes' spectacular collection of Glass Gem corn seeds wouldn't face the risk of getting lost when he relocated. Curious about the seeds with the peculiar name of Glass Gems, Bill McDorman, owner of Seeds Trust at the time, decided to plant a few of the seeds in his own garden. He was amazed at what the seeds produced.
"I was blown away. No one had ever seen corn like this before,” McDorman told Native Seeds/SEARCH, a nonprofit organization he founded to protect and preserve the agricultural heritage of Native Americans.
The organization now sells Glass Gem seeds through its website for $7.95 (£4.90) per packet, although they are so highly sought-after that they are frequently sold out. The corn can be used to make flour or popcorn, although it is not recommended to eat it straight off the cob.











Source: Amusing Planet