Let’s take rooftop farming to a whole new level—a microscopic level. Unveiled at Expo Milan this week, the Urban Algae Canopy is a living, breathing alternative to our inert roofs and facades. Could algae be the next hip trend in urban agriculture?
Be excited, Earthlings, because science has a surprise for you. Engineers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have devised a way to turn algae into crude oil in less than an hour. That oil can then be refined into gasoline that can run engines.
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Build a better Sea Monkey and the world will — well, fund your Kickstarter campaign, hopefully. Dino Pet’s certainly got a couple of things going for it: tiny glowing animals and dinosaurs. The pet’s creators clearly took the whole “dino” part of dinoflagellates to its logical extreme, fashioning a sauropod-esque transparent casing for the bioluminescent marine algae. Caring for the tiny glowing creatures is fairly easy: expose them to sun during the day and give ’em a shake at night and agitate them into glowing for you. The Dino’s creators also provide food, to help keep ’em going. A $40 pledge will get you one (the $30 level is, sadly, all sold out now) when they start shipping in February. More information can be had in the source link below, including whether or not you should drink them once they arrive.
Via: This is Colossal, PSFK
Source: Kickstarter
Bioluminescence is awesome. Essentially the production of light by a living organism, e.g. fireflies, certain types of jellyfish, etc—but it doesn’t just occur in animals. There’s even some plant life that has the potential to give off that lovely, ethereal glow. And as Mark Rober shows us in the video above, you can even harness that power to become your very own natural, eerie, and totally beautiful light source.
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I think most of us would agree that algae is disgusting stuff, being green, slimy and mushy, making you slip and fall at times when you are not careful. Does it have a role to play in our lives? Certainly, which was why Sir Alexander Fleming did not throw away that petri dish of his that contained some algae growing, resulting in him discovering penicillin. This time around, mankind has another benefit from algae, which has been used to create bio-diesel that will power the recently opened BIQ House, making it the first building to be powered by algae.
The BIQ House is an installation that was created by design firms Splitterwerk, Arup and SSC, where it has also been entered into Hamburg’s International building exhibition. Described as a highly adaptive, self-sufficient building, it is capable of functioning as a prototype for future algae construction projects. When you supply the BIQ House with adequate levels of water, CO2, and sunlight, this is where it all ties in together nicely. The algae will be used as a “bio skin” of sorts upon the facade of a building, where growth is at its peak during the warmer months, resulting in a cooling effect for its occupants while transferring heat from the sun to hot water systems. Once the algae has maximized its room for growth, it will be harvested and sent to the BIQ House’s technical room, where it is then fed into a biomass fuel converter to help provide for the other energy requirements of the building. You certainly cannot get any more green than that!
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Earthquakes Linked To Wastewater Disposal From Fracking, Solar Power Plants Are Fast Replacing Peaker Plants In Australia, 
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Watch out graphene; something’s coming to eat your supermaterial lunch. Nanocellulose is poised to be the kevlar-strength, super-light, greenhouse gas-eating nanomaterial of the future. And the best part? It’s made by nothing but algae. More »
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