All American Marine, Inc. (AAM) and the vessel owner SWITCH Maritime (SWITCH) are pleased to announce Sea Change, a 70-foot, 75-passenger zero-emissions, hydrogen fuel cell-powered, electric-drive ferry that will operate in the California Bay Area. This will be the first commercial hydrogen fuel cell passenger ferry in the world, representing a monumental step in the US maritime industry’s transition to a sustainable future. The ferry was developed and constructed to demonstrate a pathway to commercialization for zero-emission hydrogen fuel cell marine technologies. While still working on permitting hydrogen fuel systems for maritime vessels with the US Coast Guard, the completed ferry will exhibit the viability of this zero-carbon ship propulsion technology for the commercial and regulatory communities.
A professor has engineered “cooling paper” to sustainably control indoor temperatures.The paper reflects heat away from rooftops and even sucks the heat out of homes and buildings.Air conditioners emit roughly 117 million tons of carbon dioxide each year in the U.S. Yi Zheng, associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at Northeastern University, created “cooling paper” so that a building or home could essentially keep cool on its own, with no electricity required.
Scientists in the United States claim to have created the world’s first living robots using stem cells from frog embryos. The tiny hybrids, designed on a supercomputer at the University of Vermont (UVM) and then assembled by biologists at Tufts University, are “entirely new life-forms” known as xenobots. “These are novel living machines,” said Joshua Bongard, a computer scientist and robotics expert at the UVM who co-led the research. “They’re neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal. It’s a new class of artefact: a living, programmable organism.”
DI-GUY Simulation Project: Boston Dynamics builds advanced robots with remarkable behavior: mobility, agility, dexterity and speed. We use sensor-based controls and computation to unlock the capabilities of complex mechanisms. Our world-class development teams take projects from initial concept to proof-of-principle prototyping to build-test-build engineering, to field testing and low-rate production. Organizations worldwide, from DARPA, the US Army, Navy and Marine Corps to Sony Corporation turn to Boston Dynamics for advice and for help creating the most advanced robots on Earth.
An abandoned subway terminal in New York City is being pitched for redevelopment into a sunlit, subterranean park -- replete with 60,000 square feet of flowers, ponds and trees. Located in Manhattan's trendy Lower East Side, the vast underground space -- which is about the size of a football field -- has remained untouched since the terminal was discontinued back in 1948. Now, a group of entrepreneurs are proposing an elaborate green makeover, in which sunlight would be "harvested" above ground and channeled into the vaults below via a network of fiber-optic cables -- creating an environment apparently filled with natural light and, in theory, ripe for growing all the foliage of a typical city park.
