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Here are some ideas of things to do or change in 2014 concerning food.

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There are more than 22,000 homeless children in New York, the highest number since the Great Depression. This is one of their stories.

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Bike Culture in Amsterdam

Bicycle Anecdotes from Amsterdam from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

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First 24 Hours Music Video

Pharrel Williams has the coolest video and the coolest song. 

Here's the first 24 hours of happy music video! Enjoy it! I love the song! 

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Face Analysis and Privacy

I'm writing about face analysis technologies and privacy implications. Here's a TED Talk about the subject:

And some crazy future applications here.

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The Meaningful Lives of Generation Y

Though their managers, according to the study, continue to think that millennials are primarily motivated by money, nearly three-quarters of the young adults surveyed said that “meaningful work was among the three most important factors defining career success.” in Millennial Searchers

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The Overview Effect

Interconnectedness... is what astronauts profoundly realise when gazing at planet Earth from space, it is called 'The Overview Effect'. After seeing Earth from space and understanding how beautifully awesome and fragile it is, astronauts experience a mind shift, a change of attitude towards the environment by understanding that we are all connected and our actions have important effects in our ecosystem. Many astronauts have taken actions themselves, creating organisations that aim to make a positive difference on the way we are handling our planet. We should all be able to understand this concept, I just hope that we don't need all to go space to realise it! 

'We're stardust!' - Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut

OVERVIEW from Planetary Collective on Vimeo.

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Revitalizing Rural Portugal

For nine months, a team of 9 graduates moved to Querença – a small village in the interior south of Portugal – with the aim of developing projects and activities to revitalize the territory and dynamize the village. According to the 2011 Portuguese census Querença has a population of 759 inhabitants and an area of 37,18 km².

The interior area of Portugal is suffering of severe human desertification, young people are fleeing to cities in order to find jobs and the ‘modern’ living. Many villages are becoming ‘ghost villages’ being completely abandonded after its elder inhabitants pass away.

The first phase of Project Querença started in 2011, when 9 recent graduates from University of Algarve joined this initiative. The participants were picked based on their CV and motivation letter, from a list of 75 applications. The multidisciplinary team has backgrounds in different areas ranging from biologic engineering to architecture. For 9 months they lived in Querença to develop a range of projects that complemented each other. Initiatives developed by the group of youngsters include, among others, a monthly market – selling only organic and local products, a completely natural energy bar – made of local fruits and honey and a greenhouse to cultivate strawberries.

The project is also running agricultural land in the area around Querença, the land belongs to owners that are not using it and are happy to see it cultivated. In this land they are cultivating agricultural products, some of which are disappearing from the region. These disappeared vegetables started to be considered as ‘food for poor people’ and were only used to feed animals, today they are being ‘brought to life’ being given a second chance.

This first phase is already finished and was considered a huge success. Soon the project will enter a second development phase and for that the organisation is recruiting a new team. This experience was so successful that many other initiatives using the same methodology are popping up around Portugal. This is a very good idea to give young people paid jobs in a country being devoured by the economic crisis and to bring back to life the rural Portugal preventing and fighting desertification.

Project Querença is a work in progress, the second phase is about to start and you will be able to apply very soon, check here (the page is in Portuguese, but you can use Google Translate to help you with that).

Have an awesome experience in a small village of my little Portugal.

Fall in love!

via Algarve123.com and Projecto Querença

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Banksy – Artistic Residency in NYC

The worldwide famous urban artist is doing an Artistic Residency on the streets of New York City, during the whole month of October.

Each day he will install a new work in the neighbourhoods of the Big Apple.

Last Saturday, Banksy set a stall in the surroundings of Central Park to sell ’100% authentic original signed Banksy canvases. For $60 each’, says in the artist website. Banksy doesn’t support the art market. When a Banksy artwork appears in a British auction it means that it was ‘stolen’ from a wall without the permission of the artist. Banksy has repeatedly expressed opposition to the commercialisation of his work.

Here’s the video:

Another of Bansky interesting ‘manifestations’ during this Residency in NYC, is ‘The Siren of the Lambs‘. For two weeks, a truck carrying stuffed animals with amplified toy animal noises, will be touring around New York City. With this mobile piece, Bansky wants to raise awareness to the cruel conditions animals suffer when being transported from factory farms to slaughterhouses.

Video bellow:

via Treehugger and P3

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BIonic Ear

Van Gogh would be happy to read this blog post!

Scientists at Princeton University have created a pair of ears, using 3D printing of cells and nanoaprticles followed by cell culture to combine a small coil antenna with cartilage, creating what they term a bionic year. This high functioning ears have the potential of hearing frequences far beyond the capabilities of normal human aptitude.

3-D printing seems to be the best way to integrate electronic materials with biological tissues since it layers materials on top of each other, in thin layers, until a computer model is physically created.

“Previously, researchers have suggested some strategies to tailor the electronics so that this merger is less awkward. That typically happens between a 2D sheet of electronics and a surface of the tissue. However, our work suggests a new approach—to build and grow the biology up with the electronics synergistically and in a 3D interwoven format.” say Michael McAlpine, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton and the lead researcher. (in Phys.org)

Creating organs using 3D printers is a recent advance; and combining them with electronics is a bigger one. Smart organs are coming in a close future, where we can probably print our own!

via Phys.org

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Oltu

A new concept of fridge

Are we sure we are storing our food properly? How many times have we thrown rotting vegetables away? Nowadays we are obsessed with storing everything in the fridge, but what few people know is that this is not always the best way to keep food fresh. Fruit and vegetables require a set of conditions which, according to their proportion, help to keep these products fresher for longer. (in Fabio Molinas website)

Fabio Molinas is an Italian designer currently working in Spain. Fabio developed a new concept of fridge, clever, smaller, using less energy and using the wasted heat to help to cool vegetables which are stored on top  in a clay container. Cooling by evaporation is an ancient method of refrigeration and has been used for thousands of years. Watch the video bellow to know more:

via TreeHugger

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Fish Tank Bags

Cassandra Verity Green is a recently graduate Fashion designer from Central Saint Martins based in London. Earlier this year she presented her collection ‘Neptunes Daughter’ at the graduation show.

Her collection is inspired by her grandmother and greatly influenced by the 1949 movie ‘Neptunes Daughter’. The 50′s fashion styling is markedly visible in some elements of the collection like the rubber swimming caps. Moreover the elements that are creating some controversy are backpacks and handbags that are portable fish tanks. Cassandra showcased her own goldfish pet in the runway. According to the design platform Not Just a Label Cassandra is currently working on her ready to wear collection which will be presented in October.

CVG / Neptune's Daughter from Rose Pilkington on Vimeo.

via PSFK

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via This isn't Happiness

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Arts and Crafts: Design in a Nutshell

“People had gone nuts for technology. Manufacturers could make loads of stuff for loads of people without thinking too much about the final product.”

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'Design is so much more than cute chairs.' Paola Antonelli

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Evans said: "People think the role of the futurist is simply to predict the future. It’s not. The role of the futurist is to know where the world is going so you know what action to take today to create that future that you wish to have."

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Google: Ballons to deliver internet

Google announced last week a new experiment in which balloons are used to deliver Internet access to remote places where the web is not reachable. The company launched 30 trial balloons in New Zealand, allowing internet access to 50 volunteers on the ground. In the future pilot testing will happen in areas in the same latitude as New Zealand.

The project, called Loon, is one of the "moonshot" programs - projects that live in the gray area between audacious projects and pure science fiction - being developed in secret at the Google[x] lab for a year and half.

Project Loon’s goal is to build a ring of solar-powered, high-pressure balloons that fly in the stratosphere, twice as high as airplanes. The Project Loon ballons measure 12 to 15 meters and are carried by the winds at about 20km above the surface of the Earth and are capable to deliver 3G speed Internet access using specialized radio frequency technology.

Google explains the mechanics behind a balloon-powered Internet network on its blog:

'…the idea we pursued was based on freeing the balloons and letting them sail freely on the winds. All we had to do was figure out how to control their path through the sky. We’ve now found a way to do that, using just wind and solar power: we can move the balloons up or down to catch the winds we want them to travel in. That solution then led us to a new problem: how to manage a fleet of balloons sailing around the world so that each balloon is in the area you want it right when you need it. We’re solving this with some complex algorithms and lots of computing power. '

via FastCoexist