plants
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Researchers grow crops on super thin film, do away with that pesky soil stuff
Here's the problem with plants: they require dirt which is, well, dirty. Japanese researchers at Mebiol have figured out a way to grow small crops of Earthly flora on clean sheets of hydrogel (commonly found in diapers), called Imec, that measures just tens of microns thick. Roots grow along the membrane, absorbing water through it, but the material is able to block out bacteria and viruses that could harm the plants. Of course, there are downsides. Water is absorbed at a much lower rate through the gel than with traditional soil, so plant size is limited and only the strongest and healthiest varieties can truly thrive on the flexible sheets. By using carefully selected plants and high quality fertilizer though, researchers were able to grow tomatoes, spinach and even melons, and hope to strengthen the film enough to support trees. Not bad for a substance normally used to absorb baby pee. Check out the video after the break.
Google doodle marks birthday of the pea meister, Gregor Mendel
Once in a while we see a Google doodle we just have to cover. This one marks the 189th birthday of Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, whose vital discoveries about inheritance patterns in pea plants weren't fully acknowledged until after his death in 1884. Feeling overlooked in his final years, he famously promised himself that meine Zeit wird schon kommen ("my time will yet come"). And today, Gregor, it has.
Coca-Cola's green billboard consumes carbon dioxide like so much sugary soda
Sure, we've seen plenty of cool billboard features over the years, from facial recognition to interactive Pong games, but few have managed the dual feat of promoting a popular soft drink and making the world a slightly greener place. All of that fuzzy area you see surrounding the silhouette of the Coke bottle in the above 60 by 60 foot billboard is made up of a number of Fukien tea plants, each of which can soak up around 13 pounds of carbon dioxide per year, for a combined total of 46,800 pounds. The plants are housed in pots made from recycled Coke bottles and are watered via a drip irrigation system. The billboard is the product of a partnership between Coca-Cola Philippines and the World Wildlife Fund. No word on when it might be greening up more skylines around the world. Press release below.
New ArcheAge fly-through video released, planting system profiled
Yesterday we learned a bit more about the labor system in XL Games' ArcheAge as well as some juicy tidbits on ship and housing construction. Today, AAportal.net has some more non-combat discussion to whet our sandbox appetites, and this time the subject is plants. While plants are an unlikely MMORPG topic (unless you're talking about a gathering quest), they play a unique role in ArcheAge thanks to the game's gardening and harvesting systems. Whether your interest lies in cultivating grapes or in seeding a grove of apple trees and (eventually) selling the harvest to expand your farm, it's all doable. Trees are also a source of timber, which is required for the aforementioned ship-building as well as house and furniture construction. In other ArcheAge news, a brief fly-through video has surfaced on YouTube. While the clip clocks in at a paltry 43 seconds, it offers a number of external looks at player housing as well as the game's gorgeous scenery. Check it out after the cut, then head to AAportal for more.
Wakfu shows off ecosystem mechanics in newest trailer
The trailers continue to surface for Wakfu as potential players in the U.S. anxiously await word on an official beta date. For those players in other regions already participating in the beta, that wait is a bit less pressing. But whether you've been enjoying the game for some time in its testing phase or you're just looking forward to finally getting your hands on it, the latest trailer should provide you with plenty of eye-candy and features to look forward to. This time around, the highlight is on the game's ecological systems. One of the major selling points has always been players having a substantive impact on the game, with the landscape changing and reacting based upon player actions. This ecosystem trailer gives a look at the ways in which players can either help or harm the surrounding environment, providing new life in barren areas or destroying ambient plant life. The latest Wakfu video can be found just past the cut, a worthy diversion for anyone interested in this anticipated strategy MMO.
A peek at Sector 4 of Fallen Earth
Sector 4 isn't available for players of Fallen Earth just yet, but it's impossible not to know that it's out there, the fourth piece of a building world. As it turns out, however, Sector 4 is more than just the next zone -- it's a look into what the game's world was like before everything went to hell. In a new diary from Chris "Devo" Deavellar, the aesthetics of the new zone are discussed, and he mentions that Sector 4 is the first branch away from the fairly realistic environments seen in the game up to this point. Deavellar mentions that just throwing a bunch of plant life around would have felt unsuitable for the game, but considering the newest sector highlights the insane experiments of the Globaltech company, the place needed an alien feel. Using several real-world plants such as kudzu for inspiration, the result is a world that still feels true to life in many ways... but also is filled with alien plants weeping amber fluid. Fallen Earth players should take a look at the full diary to get the smallest hint of what this newest zone will look like, a reminder of what would have been the future... before the end of the world. [Thanks to Scott for the tip!]
Lost Pages of Taborea: Finding time to play Runes of Magic
Ever since my semester started up, I've had to learn new ways to budget my time. My schedule cuts right through the middle of every day, which is both good and bad. I don't have to get up at an obscene hour for class, and I'm not in school through the night. It still makes it hard to play Runes of Magic and other MMOs, though, as it chops my free-time up into short, interspersed chunks. I initially found some ways to satiate my gaming addiction by -- gasp -- playing Perpetuum. Games like Perpetuum -- and I suspect EVE Online -- have some nice pacing that allows me to go semi-AFK while I work on homework, articles or whatever. I can find safe places with large ore deposits, lay down a large container, and mine for 30 minutes at a time or longer. I'm still visiting the world of Taborea on weekends, and I make quick pit-stops during the week to check up on my fellow guild members, but I realized during my last visit that there are some nice ways for the returning college student to get in some game time and get his or her school-work done. If you find your having trouble balancing work, school and life with RoM, you might find some satisfaction in the long term pet, guild, crafting, and skill-building goals.
Toshiba and Apple working together on a display manufacturing plant
Toshiba and Apple are reportedly working together on a brand new manufacturing plant in Japan's Ishikawa Prefecture, specifically to build "low-temperature polysilicon LCD panels," to be used in Apple's iPhones. Toshiba will spend about $1.9 billion on the project, which is scheduled to start building in a month or so, and be done in time to start production by the end of next year. Toshiba already makes some 8.55 million units in its current manufacturing plant, but that production is supposed to double with this new facility. We've posted before about the incredible scale of Apple's production process, and even with all of these plants churning out parts and units, Apple is only barely able to keep up with demand. In some places it's still not even able to keep up. The other benefit is that the more of its production process Apple moves under its own purview, the more of an advantage it can have against competitors, some of which use the same manufacturers and distributors that Apple uses right now. The more plants Apple invests in, the more unique production locations it will be able to take advantage of later on. [via 9to5Mac]
Proposal would put a solar garden on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway
If you've ever spent any time on New York City's finest roadway, the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, garden is not one of the first words that comes to mind. That could change on one particular strip in Brooklyn if a concept -- which you see above -- gets approved and built. The concept is part of a project calling for solutions to a trench that runs from Carroll Gardens to the Columbia Street Waterfront in Brooklyn. Starr Whitehouse Landscape architects floated three possible solutions for improving the stretch, which would cost between about $10 and $18 million, very cheap in comparison to other projects of this type. The Green Canopy proposal calls for a massive plant covered canopy with solar panels to stretch over top of the entire area making it self-sustaining and reducing noise in the area. Hit up the source to check out the other proposed projects.
Foxconn hiring and relocating 400,000 workers
The recent issues at Foxconn haven't actually slowed the company down, apparently -- it has announced that it will be hiring 400,000 more workers at new plants in China, thanks to a 50 percent increase in revenue lately. The total number of people working at Foxconn will be estimated at 1.3 million. Just for comparison's sake, GM employed about 244,500 last year. Foxconn is moving almost that many workers out of its Shenzhen plant -- 170,000 of those workers will be sent to plants closer to their homes. It's crazy to think what the company must be like -- not only are they handling ungodly amounts of people making ungodly amounts of electronic devices, but they're doing it mostly for American companies like Apple, Dell, HP, and so on. This is the giant machine that's pushing out all of those iPhones and Macs that Apple is breaking sales records with. Hopefully the new plants and relocations will help all of the issues that employees there have had in the past.
Foxconn looking to hire an exorcist, Wintek dealing with lawsuit
This one's just plain weird. After being plagued with a series of suicides recently, Apple supplier Foxconn has brought in an exorcist to try and end the "negative incidents" at the plant. What a mess. Foxconn has been called out for bad labor conditions before, and call us skeptical, but the problem probably isn't demons that need to be exorcised by a monk. Still, the company is aiming to bring in the religious ceremonies to "bring peace to employees," so hopefully it'll help. Foxconn isn't the only Chinese Apple supplier troubled by "negative incidents" recently -- Wintek was accused by dozens of workers that a chemical used to clean iPhone screens during manufacturing made them sick. 62 workers at the plant have been hospitalized, and 44 of them claim it was due to n-hexane poisoning and are suing the company (a rarity, we're told, in China). Wintek also had to deal with a violent strike situation earlier this year over the same n-hexane issue. So two messy situations with Apple-contracted suppliers overseas. Apple probably doesn't have the choice any more (or the responsibility, they might say) to control what these companies do, although it is troubling that people are getting hurt or even dying just to produce cheap electronics. Hopefully both of these issues will find a just resolution.
Plants vs. Zombies started as Insaniquarium sequel, PopCap is human
If you, like us, were laboring under the impression that the entity known as "PopCap Games" was some sort of supernatural anti-free time daemon that simply willed release after release of perfectly polished and addictive gameplay into an increasingly submissive world, then you'll probably find this little writeup over at Ars Technica intriguing. Apparently PopCap is just a video game developer, made up of real people who draw ideas out on notepads and tweak them as they see fit. Who knew? For example, its latest runaway hit, Plants vs. Zombies, started out as a sequel to Insaniquarium, but as the gameplay was tuned more towards a tower defense-like setup and the idea arose of regenerating sunlight as a resource for the fight against the undead, the title morphed into the time-killer we know it as today. Of course, there's no doubt that a game that featured locust aliens and "jolly-moustache-potato-men" would have been just as fun, but it's good to know that the minds behind PopCap are, in fact, human. We'd like to use that knowledge to find a weakness and attempt to reclaim our long-missing boredom, but we're too busy playing its games.
Ultrathin, algae-based batteries could charge things you never thought possible
Somehow or another, we've figured out how to send mere mortals to the moon, create (and mass produce) a laptop thin enough to floss with and add multitouch capabilities to a mouse. But for whatever reason, we're still stuck using AA batteries that last approximately one-fifth as long as you need them to. Outside of a few breakthroughs here and there, the battery industry at large has found a holding pattern that digs at consumers and likely fattens the wallets of those in charge. Thanks to new research surrounding the use of Cladophora (green algae) in a flexible, ultrathin alternative, it looks as if we may finally be onto something good. Researchers purport that these super skinny cells could be placed in areas where batteries are currently unable to go -- think of perpetually charged wall sensors, energized clothing or even light-up wrapping paper. Better still, prototypes have shown the ability to hold a significant charge, but unfortunately for us all, no specific production date has been pegged. A boy can dream though, yeah?
Building MMO landscape scenes
Landscapes have been a staple component of almost every MMO in recent memory. With the exception of some sci-fi titles, most MMOs take place on the land of some imagined island or continent. Some use stylised fantasy landscapes that run smoothly on even low-end computers while others have managed almost photo-realistic visuals at the cost of performance. But have you ever thought about what's going on behind the scenes in your favourite MMO? Most of us don't think about how the computer is actually drawing the terrain we run around on. We don't give much thought to the different ways each MMO renders the water in lakes, rivers and oceans. And just how does your computer render so many trees and plants without grinding to a halt? As part of my masters degree in computer science, I got to grips with a number of these techniques and found it a fascinating thing to learn about. Now when I play a new game or see MMO screenshots, I can't help but think about what the computer is doing in the background and how particular visual effects could have been achieved. In this technical article, I talk about some of the components of an MMO landscape scene and a few of the techniques used in creating the graphics behind them.
Building MMO landscape scenes, part 2
From oceans and rivers to ponds and puddles, water is one of those things that really improves an MMO's visual quality. Practically every fantasy MMO makes use of water in one way or another and they all do it a little differently. This gives the appearance that the water is moving and I've seen the technique in World of Warcraft, EverQuest 2 and a few other MMOs.
Le Petit Prince roving greenhouse robot is overwhelmingly cute, useful
Something about Le Petit Prince, the mobile, plant-loving greenhouse robot makes us indescribably sad. Is it his one, massive adorable eye? Or merely the fact that he's named after one of the most depressing books ever written? Either way, we can't really argue with his usefulness -- the concept can carry about plants and care for them, all the while ravaging the terrain for further specimens. He's also designed to learn about the optimal growing conditions of the plants he collects, which really makes us want one to care for a certain, finicky houseplant we won't call out by name (but we're looking at you, Venus Flytrap). Check out the darling video after the break.
Glass leaves sweat to generate electricity, get nervous in public situations
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Michigan and MIT have created glass "leaves" with networks of veiny channels filled with water. The smallest channels extend all the way to the edges of the leaf, where open ends allow water to evaporate, which draws water along the central stem of the leaf -- at a rate of about 1.5 centimeters per second. The glass leaves have been wired for electricity by adding metal plates to the walls of the central stems and connecting them to a circuit. Researchers then charge the plates and the water inside the stems creates two conducting layers separated by an insulating layer, which acts as a capacitor. The waterflow is then periodically interrupted with air bubbles, and every time a bubble passes through the plates a small electrical current is generated -- about 2 - 5 microvolts per bubble. The team thinks that on a large scale, artificial trees could be use to generate large amounts of energy entirely through evaporation.
'Secret of the Goblin Mine' update to hit Runes of Magic next week
Frogster has dropped some information about the next update for Runes of Magic. The best part about the news? You won't even have to wait a whole week until the patch is released. The update is titled Secret of the Goblin Mine and is focused around a new solo adventure mini-game called -- you guessed it -- the Goblin Mine. Inside there are three tasks to complete with a time limit of 30 minutes. Players will be dressed up as goblins for the duration of the mini-game. The area will only be accessible once a day (and dying will forfeit the chance to beat it) but the victorious should be well-rewarded:Those who succeed, receive rare armor recipes and handcrafted objects from the treasure chests at the end of the dungeon. There are also two new titles to reward particularly diligent Goblin hunters, one of which being 'Goblin Hero.'The update will also bring an epic weapon quest series and the plant cultivating system we first heard of a few months ago. There's a preview video for the Goblin Mine available on the RoM official site, to whet your appetite before the patch goes live on the 28th of July.
Plants mean power in Runes of Magic
Free-to-play MMO Runes of Magic is prompting players to get green-fingered with their brand new plant system. While currently being tested, it is due to be implemented in an upcoming patch. Basically, players will be able to plant seeds in colourful pots (no boring visit to the garden centre required). Seeds can be purchased from the Item Shop or found left behind after slaughtering your foes, we assume some enemies must be stashing seeds in their pockets which fall out when they expire.The plants must be watered regularly -- they will shrivel up and die if you forget -- and can take up to a week to grow. You can fertilise them with magical runes which will help determine what the plant will yield. This can be anything from more seeds and runes to the rarest of crafting items.It's certainly an interesting mechanic and the range of plants and pots seems quite impressive, as does the detail involved. We're sure Runes of Magic fans will be pleased with this new system. Plus, we think the plants work really well as their secondary purpose: ornamental objects.
Timelapse Garden Video Camera keeps tabs on plant growth / death
For those of you looking to prove just how green your thumb really is, have a gander at the Timelapse Garden Video Camera. Offered up at the always intriguing Hammacher Schlemmer, this weatherproof garden tool engages in the tedious task of taking snapshots of your flora in customizable intervals and then weaving them together into a single 1,280 x 1,024 AVI video. The lens can focus as close as 20-inches away, and with the bundled 2GB USB flash drive, upwards of 18,000 photos can be stored at a time. Amazingly, we're told that it can operate for up to four months using four AA cells, and it even turns itself off at night and back on in the morning in order to not waste capture space and battery life. It's shipping now to hedgers, groundkeepers and everyday plantsmen for $159.95.[Via OhGizmo]
