Collaborate Disseminate
Join us on Wednesday, August 19 at noon Pacific for the Open and Sustainable Engineering Hack Chat with Joshua Pearce!
Since the first of our hominid ancestors learned to pick up a rock and make it into a tool, we humans have been using our engineering skills to change the …read more
Join us Wednesday at 5:00 PM Pacific time for the IoT and Agriculture Hack Chat with Akiba!
Note the different time than our usual Hack Chat slot! Akiba willi be joining us from Japan.
No matter what your feelings are about the current state of the world, you can’t escape …read more
Recycling beverage cartons isn’t 100% efficient. The process yields some unusable garbage as a byproduct. Why? Because containers like juice boxes are mostly paper, but also contain plastic and aluminum. The recycling process recovers the paper fibers for re-use, but what’s left after that is a mixture of plastic rejects …read more
Continue reading Innovative Bird Feeder Design Recycles Recycling’s Garbage
Phytoplankton blooms tint the oceans green, which means their response to warmer waters will shake up the ocean color scheme. Continue reading Climate Change Will Alter the Color of Half of Earth’s Oceans by 2100
The latest craze in revolutionary materials science is no longer some carbon nanotube, a new mysterious alloy, or biodegradeable plastic. It seems as though a lot of new developments are coming out of the biology world, specifically from mycologists who study fungi. While the jury’s still out on whether or not it’s possible to use fungi to build a decent Star Trek series, researchers have in fact been able to use certain kinds of it to build high-performing insulation.
The insulation is made of the part of the fungus called the mycelium, rather than its more familiar-looking fruiting body. The …read more
Climate models reveal that renewable energy projects in the Sahara could spark a twofold increase in local rainfall, enabling vegetation to take hold. Continue reading Wind and Solar Farms Could Make it Rain Regularly in the Sahara Desert
A new study confirms that Steve is not generated by particle precipitation. So what is powering this skyglow? Continue reading ‘Steve’ Is a Radiant Purple Sky Ribbon That Defies Explanation
When that fateful morning comes that your car no longer roars to life with a quick twist of the key, but rather groans its displeasure at the sad state of your ride’s electrical system, your course is clear: you need a new battery. Whether you do it yourself or – perish the thought – farm out the job to someone else, the end result is the same. You get a spanking new lead-acid battery, and the old one is whisked away to be ground up and turned into a new battery in a nearly perfect closed loop system.
Contrast this …read more
Continue reading Getting the Lead Out of Lithium Battery Recycling
Recycling aims to better the planet, but — taken into the hands of the individual — it can be a boon for one’s home by trading trash for building materials. [fokkejongerden], a student at the [Delft University of Technology] in the Netherlands, proposes one solution for all the plastic that passes through one’s dwelling by turning HDPE into tiles.
Collecting several HDPE containers — widely used and easy enough to process at home — [fokkejongerden] cleaned them thoroughly of their previous contents, and then mulched them with a food processor. An aluminium mold of the tile was then welded together …read more
After a disaster hits, one obvious concern is getting everyone’s power restored. Even if the power plants are operational after something like a hurricane or earthquake, often the power lines that deliver that energy are destroyed. While the power company works to rebuild their infrastructure, [David Ngheim]’s mobile, rapid deployment power station can help get people back on their feet quickly. As a bonus, it uses renewable energy sources for power generation.
The modular power station was already tested at Burning Man, providing power to around 100 people. Using sets of 250 Watt panels, wind turbines, and scalable battery banks, …read more
Continue reading Hackaday Prize Entry: Modular, Rapid Deployment Power Station
