Print Me a New Pair of Pants

This is like the next step up from knitting machines a really big step! The new clothing store – select fashion design patterns online, place order, pick up at store.

Three-dimensional printing may have little in common with sustainability—at first blush, anyway—but the rapid-prototyping process has a litany of surprisingly green benefits. The emerging technology, which uses ultraviolet beams to fuse layers of powdered, recyclable thermoplastic into shape, leaves behind virtually no waste. Its localized production and one-size-fits-all approach also racks up markedly fewer travel miles, requires less labor, and compresses fabrication time to a matter of hours, rather than weeks or months.

3D Printing Process: ‘The FOC Punch Bag’ from Freedom Of Creation on Vimeo.

Source: Are 3D-Printed Fabrics the Future of Sustainable Textiles?

CalTech Get $122 Million to Develop Method to Produce Fuels from Sunlight

Some well placed cash and lets hope they get a breakthrough soon.

Washington, D.C. – As part of a broad effort to achieve breakthrough innovations in energy production, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman today announced an award of up to $122 million over five years to a multidisciplinary team of top scientists to establish an Energy Innovation Hub aimed at developing revolutionary methods to generate fuels directly from sunlight.

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Good Vibrations Generating Energy?

Most of us are always in motion in out daily lives, what you could use that motion to generate electricity?

A Japanese electronics firm has shown off a vibration-harvesting generator that could replace standard batteries.

The Vibration Energy Cell batteries deliver power after a vigorous shake

Brother Industries, better known for its line of printers, claims the devices could be used in place of AA or AAA batteries for some applications.
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Unbreakable AMOLED Display

Just imagine the applications!

Maya Aztec Rubber?

So you think rubber is a recent invention?  Think again…

Ancient civilizations in much of Mexico and Central America were making different grades of rubber 3,000 years before Charles Goodyear “stabilized” the stuff in the mid-19th century, new research suggests.

The Aztec, Olmec, and Maya of Mesoamerica are known to have made rubber using natural latex—a milky, sap-like fluid found in some plants. Mesoamerica extends roughly from central Mexico to Honduras and Nicaragua

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Electrified Eyeglasses

What’s better than a pair of bifocal eyeglasses? How about self adjusting electrified bifocal eyeglasses?

Watch out Ben, the future is upon us!

The spectacles, which are due to be launched in the US this year and the UK next year, use lenses that change their strength when a small electrical current passes through them.
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