Latent Marseille

http://web.media.mit.edu/~neri/site/index.html

Photography highlights from the extensive online NASA Images archive, a rich collection of historic space exploration stills, film and video. April 12th marks the 50th anniversary of manned spaceflight

http://nasaimages.org/luna/servlet/detail/NVA2~79~79~81047~136181:Special-Delivery-for-Discovery?qvq=lc:NVA2~63~63,NVA2~30~30,NVA2~62~62,NVA2~61~61,NVA2~60~60,nasaNAS~22~22,NVA2~19~19,nasaNAS~20~20,NVA2~18~18,NVA2~49~49,NVA2~16~16,NVA2~8~8,NVA2~48~48,NVA2~15~15,NVA2~47~47,NVA2~9~9,NVA2~14~14,NVA2~79~79,NVA2~46~46,NVA2~13~13,NVA2~45~45,NVA2~44~44,NVA2~76~76,NVA2~43~43,NVA2~75~75,NVA2~42~42,nasaNAS~2~2,NVA2~74~74,NVA2~41~41,nasaNAS~4~4,NSVS~3~3,nasaNAS~5~5,NVA2~29~29,nasaNAS~6~6,NVA2~28~28,nasaNAS~7~7,NVA2~27~27,NVA2~59~59,NVA2~26~26,NVA2~58~58,nasaNAS~8~8,NVA2~25~25,NVA2~57~57,NVA2~24~24,nasaNAS~9~9,NVA2~56~56,NVA2~23~23,NVA2~55~55,NVA2~22~22,NVA2~54~54,NVA2~21~21,NVA2~53~53,nasaNAS~16~16,NVA2~20~20,NVA2~52~52,NVA2~51~51,nasaNAS~13~13,NVA2~50~50,NVA2~82~82,nasaNAS~12~12,NVA2~81~81,NVA2~80~80,nasaNAS~10~10,NVA2~33~33,NVA2~31~31,NVA2~32~32,NVA2~34~34,NVA2~1~1,NVA2~35~35,NVA2~36~36,NVA2~37~37,NVA2~38~38,NVA2~39~39&mi=502&trs=100000

“the success of the masterpieces seems to lie not so much in their freedom from faults- indeed we tolerate the grossest of errors in them all- but in the immense persuasiveness of a mind which has completely mastered its perspective.” - Virginia Woolf, The Death of the Moth

http://swamplot.com/the-recycled-glass-driveway-at-the-cordell-shipping-container-house/2009-01-14/

http://conferences.ted.com/TEDGlobal2011/program/edinburgh.php

A TEDGlobal 2011 pass costs US$ 6000.

The ancient city is boiled egg…

The industry city is poached egg…

The modern city is scrambled eggs…

Sculptor Mel Chin explores ways that art can provoke greater social awareness and responsibility. His interest in the environment has led him to collaborate with scientists and government agencies to create work that transcends traditional sculpture. In 1990 he began a lengthy residency at the Walker Art Center to create an installation titled Revival Field: Projection & Procedure. He worked with scientists to design gardens of hyperaccumulators–plants that can draw heavy metals from contaminated soil. The site of an old landfill near downtown St. Paul, Minnesota, was selected. The contaminated earth was enclosed with a chain-link fence and divided by paths that form an X. The project’s boundaries were marked by a square. Chin conceived of these overlays as a target, a metaphorical reference to the work’s pinpoint cleanup. The divisions were also functional, separating different varieties of plants from each other for study. ( Source : http://collections.walkerart.org )

(Via: http://www.vulgare.net/)

This is a relatively old article, but think: Growing more produce at home may ease concerns over food supplies in times of disaster?

“We want to activate Japan’s agricultural sector by dispatching enthusiastic young people,” said Sayaka Itami, leader of Pasona’s new business development division.“ By creating this new style of farm, which is bright and clean, in the middle of Tokyo, we want to draw young people’s interest into farming,” she said.

She said that urban farming helped her company by creating a new source of jobs.

City farming also offers a solution for another problem in Tokyo and other major cities — the so-called urban heatisland effect.

Cities’ temperatures rise in the summer due to the urban environment of heat- absorbing concrete buildings and pavement. In a vicious cycle, the heat boosts the use of air conditioning, raising carbon emissions blamed for global warming.

Encouraged by environment- conscio

us Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, a number of building owners in the capital have introduced roof-top gardening as a way to prevent overheating.

In the “Green Potato” project launched by two subsidiaries of Japanese telecommunications giant NTT Corp., city farmers not only help cool down Tokyo but also harvest sweet potatoes in autumn.

“Sweet potatoes grow strongly in the tough roof- top environment of harsh sun and strong wind,” said Masahiro Nagata, a staff member of NTT Facilities Inc.’s environment business department.

The plants are particularly good for roof- tops because their wide leaves can cover the whole surface and are efficient at transpiration — evaporating water — which has a cooling effect.

The temperature of a roof area not covered by potato leaves was as much as 27 degrees Celsius hotter than an area covered by the leaves, according to a survey taken on top of the NTT Facilities building.

The vegetables are consumed locally, helping ease another growing worry in Japan — the safety of its food.

Japan, which has limited natural resources, imports around 60 per cent of the food it consumes — a higher rate than any other rich country.

http://www.cityfarmer.info/2008/11/10/tokyo-rooftop-and-underground-urban-farming-lures-young-japanese-office-workers/

 In 1993, Reginald E. Newell (M.I.T.), et al., found 10 huge filamentary structures that are the preferable pathways of water vapor movement in the troposphere (the lower 10-20 km of the atmosphere) with flow rates of about 165 million kilograms of water per second. These “atmospheric rivers” are bands from 200 to 480 miles wide and up to 4,800 miles long, between 1-2 kilometers above the earth. They transport about 70% of the fresh water from the equator to the midlatitudes, are of great importance in determining the location and amount of winter rainfall on coastlines. (Ref 1)

    According to Newell, “A typical flow in [the] South American tropospheric river is very close to that in the Amazon (about 165 x 106 kg sec^-1). There are typically five rivers leading into the middle latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere and four or five leading into the Northern Hemisphere. The rivers persist for 10 days or more while being translated generally eastward at speeds of 6 m/sec^-1.”

 Approximately 3,100 cubic miles of water is in the atmosphere at any said time, 98% in the form of vapor, 2% in clouds. About 280 cubic miles of water evaporate or transpire into the atmosphere each day. A cubic mile of water contains over one trillion gallons. The continental USA receives about 4 cubic miles of rainfall daily. More than 2,000,000 cubic miles of fresh water is stored in underground aquifers; about 60,000 cubic miles of fresh water are stored in lakes, inland seas, and rivers. About 7,000,000 cubic miles of water are contained in glaciers and polar icecaps, and in Greenland. The world’s reserves of fresh water are estimated at approximately 35 million cubic kilometers, including glaciers, ground water, wells, rivers, lakes, and precipitation as rain and snow. Yet it is inadequate for the ever-increasing, largely unrestrained demands of human civilization, so that alternative sources are desperately needed. While desalination of seawater is an obvious option, as yet the total quantity produced in this way amounts to about 10 km³, which is only a very small percentage of the 3000 cubic km³ consumed annually.

http://www.rexresearch.com/airwells/airwells.htm#intro

machines what do it

HAARP (High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) is a damnable weapon of mass destruction (invented by Bernard Eastlund: USP # 4,686,605 ~ # 5,38,664 ) that contravenes the United Nations “Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques” (approved in December 1976). The treaty prohibits “the use of techniques that would have widespread, long-lasting or severe effects through deliberate manipulation of natural processes and cause such phenomena as earthquakes, tidal waves, and changes in climate and weather patterns”. The US government openly advertises its intentions in the publication “Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025” by Col. T. House, et al. (August 1996) . The report acknowledges that, “The difficulty, cost and risk of developing a weather control system for military applications [is] extremely high”. It justifies the effort, however, with the rationale (according to Dr Arnold Barnes, who consulted in the study) that the “opportunities to capitalize on investment militarily [are] medium/high” and the “political implications/health hazards medium/low

from 

http://trendland.net/2010/12/29/rolling-master-plan-city-by-jagnefalt-milton/#

Jagne Faltmilton proposed an interesting project for a competition to design a master plan for the Norwegian city of Andalsnes. They didn’t win first place but their proposal was innovative enough to finish third. The mobile buildings structures of the city on railways is  such a great idea, a great occasion to reorganize its life according to the seasons.

The jury awarded the Swedish office for a proposal where existing and new rail roads would provide the base for a host of new buildings that could be rolled back and forth depending on seasons and situations. Amongst other, they propose a rolling hotel, a rolling public bath and a rolling concert hall.

“We are really happy that the jury took our proposal serious, its not only a good proposal which we are very proud of, it´s also fully doable,” says Carl Jägnefält one of the two founders of Jägnefält Milton.

Knapen, who had previously worked on systems for removing damp from buildings was in turn inspired by Chaptal’s work and he set about building an ambitiously large puits aerien (aerial well) on a 180 metres (590 ft) high hill at Trans-en-Provence in France.Beginning in 1930, Knapen’s dew tower took 18 months to build; it still stands today, albeit in dilapidated condition. At the time of its construction, the condenser excited some public interest.

The tower is 14 metres (46 ft) high and has massive masonry walls about 3 metres (9.8 ft) thick with a number of apertures to let in air. Inside there is a massive column made of concrete. At night, the whole structure is allowed to cool, and during the day warm moist air enters the structure via the high apertures, cools, descends, and leaves the building by the lower apertures. Knapen’s intention was that water should condense on the cool inner column. In keeping with Chaptal’s finding that the condensing surface must be rough and the surface tension must be sufficiently low that the condensed water can drip, the central column’s outer surface was studded with projecting plates of slate. The slates were placed nearly vertically to encourage dripping down to a collecting basin at the bottom of the structure.Unfortunately, the aerial well never achieved anything like its hoped-for performance and produced no more than a few litres of water each day but looks reet cool.

In response to the violent food riots in Haiti, Yemen, Egypt, and the riots that have taken place over the past year in Mexico, West Bengal, Camaroon, Burkina Faso and Senegal, French Agriculture minister Michel Barnier is urging the EU to take action immediately against biofuels sourced from edible crops. Four of France’s ministers also insist that similar food riots are on the brink in some 30 other countries.

http://green.myninjaplease.com/?cat=26

In 2005, Norway initiated a massive 15-year agenda to generate more tourism. The government turned to architects and designers to concept and build tourist routes and architectural rest stops to enhance the experience of the stunning Norwegian landscape. The projects span from the southern town of Jaeren to the northern tip of Varenger. Visitors and Norwegian natives alike are afforded the luxury of safe roads and reveling in clean and relaxing architecturally inspired viewpoints. The ongoing project has been aptly named, The National Tourist Routes In Norway, and features an array of architects including Margrete Friis, Peter Zumthor, PUSHAK arkitekter, Code Arkitektur, Manthey Kula, Snøhetta AS, and Jensen and Skodvin to name a few. The architects have worked together to connect the dots throughout the country and form a network of breathtaking valleys, farms, rivers, and mountain cliffs – creating a lattice of scenic masterpieces that would make just about anyone (Nordic or otherwise) want to shimmy into warm genser, bring a matpakke, and take in the sights.

http://knstrct.com/2011/03/travel-norway-the-architectural-way/

from:http://pruned.blogspot.com/2008/05/machinic-landscape-of-tulips.html