Envirobank’s reverse vending machine |
Envirobank’s “cash for cans” reverse vending machines hold up to 3000 containers and accept PET (#1),HDPE (#2) and PVC (#3) plastic, brown, clear and green glass and aluminum cans. Deposit your recyclables in these and you’ll get credits for discount shopping.
Pretty nice incentive to recycle your goods huh? It may not give out snacks, but Envirobank claims that their machines cut CO2 emissions, reduce waste disposal and collection costs, and even provide advertising and fund raising opportunities for those who need it.


As you may or may not know Japan is prone to many an earthquake. Japan’s major cities have an extended underground transportation system. So when a quake happens, people could be potentially trapped for long periods of time and suffer from dehydration.
General Electric says it has achieved a breakthrough in digital storage technology that will allow standard-size discs to hold the equivalent of 100 DVDs. I had to read that twice myself. It’s just a laboratory success for now, until it can be made to work in products that can be mass-produced and affordable.
See that picture above? That’s Cady. She died at age 10 in a car accident. A mad scientist by the name of Dr. Panayiotis Zavos infused her DNA into a cow’s egg to study human cloning.
An acoustics engineer named John Stuart Reid from the UK, is creating a machine that does the unthinkable. He claims it will enable people to “read” the “dolphin language.” The device is called the Cymascope, and it converts the sounds dolphins make when communicating into images, which can then be mapped into a sort of dictionary, then later “read” by people trying to understand what that dolphin is going on about.
They are always coming up with more ways to sell us things. Now a new type of billboard is on the way, displaying ads suited to your individual tastes as you by. The odds are pretty good that a fair amount of these ads will be for fast food and gadgets.
Typically a battery functions with lithium ions flowing between a negatively charged anode, usually graphite, and the positively charged cathode, usually cobalt oxide or lithium iron phosphate. But three years ago, an MIT team reported that it had engineered viruses that could build an anode by coating themselves with cobalt oxide and gold and self-assembling to form a nanowire. The “virus batteries” have the energy capacity and power performance similar to rechargeable batteries.
In previous reports from Greenpeace, HP, Lenovo, and Dell haven’t done very badly, but the trio has failed to meet Greenpeaces expectations this time. They made promises they could not keep. All three had promised to eliminate PVC and brominated flame retardants in their products by the end of this year, but now they will apparently not be able to meet that deadline.
A world where gadgets are powered by blood? It could happen sooner then you think. It won’t be long until our gadgets are full fledged living entities soon after that. Maybe. In a not too distant future Piezoelectric nanowires may reside in our blood vessels. They would use the energy created by blood flow to power gadgets. Stuff like pacemakers, iPods, anything designers can dream up really.
The idea of hackers bringing down the entire US power grid is scary. Most people think that this scenario strictly belongs in sci-fi movies and that it couldn’t happen, but according to security analysts, the threat is real. The threat is a real possibility due to the use of smart grids involving two million devices, which are largely wireless, sending data back and forth between power stations and homes.
When you think about the homeless, you likely think about wool blankets, shopping carts and cardboard box shelters. Add the cell phone to that list. According to advocates who work with the district’s homeless, the proportion of homeless people who own and use a cellphone is 30% to 40%.
We may never be able to swim as fast as fish, but guys like Ted Ciamillo are hard at work to make sure we can at least get second place. The Greek engineer has come up with a contraption called Lunocet, which is basically a dolphin-inspired 2.5 pound monofin.








