Hasta La Gadget!

When you live in a big city, green space is hard to come by. New York City has Central Park, and now it also has the Lincoln Center.

The building is now home to what’s being called the Hypar Pavillion; essentially, a rooftop covered in grass. The roof is located directly above a restaurant, and takes spans 7,200 square feet. It features a twisted design that recreates the sensation of sitting in a hilly field, and it also makes the rooftop park accessible from the ground. The restaurant is completely surrounded by buildings and concrete, creating a perfect contrast for those looking to relax in the grass.

Via Gizmodo

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It’s a title I can’t imagine too many people are fighting over, at present–the “world’s smallest solar powered movie theater.” If there is anyone else out that looking for the record, however, they’ve got some pretty stiff competition in the Sol Cinema, a movie theater in a trailer that is looking to reverse the industry’s trend toward increased power consumption.

The theater is run by the U.K.-based arts group, The Undercurrents. “We say any cinema could and should be 100 percent powered by renewable energy,” then group’s co-founder Paul O’Connor told AOL. “The U.K. isn’t famous for sunny days, yet [we] still manage to run our entire cinema, including video projectors, sound systems, laptops, hard drives and lights from the energy of the sun via solar panels. This means we have no utility bill each year and can perform anywhere at anytime.”

The theater sports an LED projector powered by solar panels. It screens documentaries, art films, animation, and dramas–it won’t show anything overly violent or mainstream, however, so if you want to check out the new Transformers flick when that comes out, you’ll have to find another solar-powered movie trailer.

The theater seats eight. It has screen 400 films since opening and is planning a 2011 tour of Europe and possibly the U.S.

The oriental hornet is more active during the day, and tends to become even more active as the temperature rises. And now scientists have discovered the reason: the hornets are solar powered.

It turns out that the distinctive yellow stripe on the hornet’s abdomen is actually full of tiny protrusions that gather sunlight and harness it for energy. The insect also features a special pigment, called xanthopterin, that helps with the process. “Xanthopterin works as a light harvesting molecule transforming light into electrical energy,” Dr Marian Plotkin told the BBC.

Wasps and hornets tend to be more active during the morning, and this new research explains why the oriental hornet is different: it stays out during the day because there’s more sun.

We all know how unsightly it can be when you have six different gadgets all plugged into one power strip. The cords are all tangled up, and it can really throw off the feel of a nice, neat room. Thanks to the good people at ThinkGeek, you can hide all the clutter with a nice planter full of luscious fake grass. The Grassy Lawn Charging Station gently cushions your electronics while they charge in the bed of greens.

A compartment underneath the grass hides all of the power adapters and cables. You just have to run a standard extension cable into the bottom of the base, plug in all your power adapters, and then snake the charging cables up through the grass. The planters is 11-by-7-by-4.35-inches in size. It costs $24.99 at ThinkGeek.

This is the perfect gift for that plant-lover in your life who likes to keep things clutter-free. No one needs to know the grass is fake, right?

Imagine if you could create energy by simply moving. Sounds far fetched, but researchers at the University of Bolton in the UK are working on a new type of clothing that could do just that.

The scientists have created a new material–they’re calling it a flexible piezoelectric fiber–that can be woven into fabric to create energy producing clothing. The material is able to produce energy simply from movement. And the team is also working on adding the sun into the mix, so that your shirt could potentially be solar powered as well.

“The most immediate applications will be in the area of low-power microelectronic-driven devices like mobiles, laptops, MP3s, iPads–anything that requires re-chargeable batteries or small batteries to run,” explained Professor Elias Siores. “Obviously you wouldn’t leave your laptop out in the wind and the rain but movement created by being carried in its case or being placed near a widow could be enough to generate the energy to recharge it.

“The next challenge will then be to improve on the power conversion through on-going research and development so it can feed more power-hungry systems.”

Via Treehugger