VerticalFarm
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The future of indoor agriculture is vertical farms run by robots
Back in the good old days, farming was easy. Throw some seeds in the ground, keep it watered, pray to your preferred deity to spare your crops from pestilence and wait for harvest season. But with the global population closing in on 7 billion mouths to feed, humanity is going to have to figure out how to grow more food using less land and fewer resources, and soon. So while some researchers and equipment manufacturers are devising intelligent agricultural implements that will toil in tomorrow's fields on our behalf, others are aiming to bring futuristic farms to urban city centers.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: Chicago's high-flying cable cars
When it comes to transportation, no vehicle is more futuristic than the hoverboard -- and it's getting a lot closer to reality. This week a French inventor broke a Guinness World Record by flying 7,388 feet on a hovering device. Meanwhile, Chicago is considering building a line of high-flying crystalline cable cars throughout the city. Chrysler and Google teamed up to create a self-driving minivan, while Lyft announced plans to launch self-driving electric taxis within a year. We also interviewed Lucas Toledo, who created the Gi FlyBike, a futuristic electric bicycle that folds in half in a single second.
Vertical farms, smart ceilings and national pride at the world fair
Expo Milano is a makeshift city studded with spectacular pavilions. In an attempt to outshine each other at the world fair, which opens today, 143 countries brought in their A-list teams of architects, innovators and culinary experts to design their temporary buildings. The UK built a beehive structure that's straight out of a sci-fi movie. China has an elaborate floating roof. Italy used air-purifying cement for its palazzo. And while the US pavilion isn't an architectural extravaganza, it's a didactic display with a giant automated vertical farm that's the first of its kind and size.
Alt-week 27.10.12: ancient texts, super-Earths and special-ops mice
Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days. If, like us, you struggle to read the front of the Corn Flakes box of a morning, you likely gave up any hope of cracking ancient codes long ago. If you didn't, however, then your time might be now -- as one of the oldest scripts know to man is still up for grabs. Prefer just to observe? No problem, as we've got super-Earth-searching satellites, military mice and vertical farms, all for your viewing reading pleasure. If you hadn't guessed already, this is alt-week
