Additional Automotive X-Prize details revealed
Filed under: Transportation
For a competition that still hasn't officially launched, the Automotive X-Prize has certainly been doing a pretty good job of making itself known, and we've now got yet more details on it courtesy of the folks at CNET. First up, it seems that the X-Prize Foundation will finally get official with the competition "sometime next year," although likely not before the New York Auto Show in the spring. Before that, however, the Foundation will be showing off some or all of the 43 contenders currently signed up at the Detroit Auto Show in January including, among others, Aptera's 300 mile-per-gallon car pictured above. What's more, given that the competition only seeks to find a car that gets 100 miles to the gallon, it would seem that Aptera would have a considerable advantage -- assuming it can actually back up its claims, that is. Hit up the read link below for a peek at some of the other competitors.
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You know those handy mailers that you've been sending back to Netflix for ages as you eagerly await the next few flicks in your queue? Apparently, those buggers have cost the US Postal Service a staggering $41.9 million in additional labor costs over the past two years due to their "nonmachinable nature," and if things aren't changed, it could cost 'em another $61.5 million over the next couple years. In a letter from the Inspector General's office, Netflix is being, um, asked to rework its mailers or face a $0.17 surcharge per envelope, and if such a fee was tacked on, it would reportedly decrease the outfit's monthly operating income per paying subscriber by a whopping 67-percent. Not surprisingly, it sounds as if Netflix will bite the bullet and redesign the problematic mailer if the USPS is serious about the charges, so feel free to keep an eye out for a design change in the not-too-distant future.
At first glance an apple shaped remote may seem sort of ridiculous (and maybe it is) but there are certainly some interesting features to this concept device by Jason Roebuck. First off, the apple theme is more aesthetically pleasing than a standard remote —especially when arranged on its "bowl" recharging station. In fact, they actually add something to the decor.
If it weren't for my obnobvious headline, you'd all be wondering what the hell this is. Just 15 of these Champagne tower chillers, with room for a dozen magnums in individual, lit drawers, have been designed for Veuve Cliquot by Porsche Design. Want to see what it looks like open?
Almost six-and-a-half feet in height, expect to see these stainless steel monstrosities in the kitchens of F1 drivers in time for their Christmas parties. [
Zetix is a fabric so strong it will resist multiple car bomb blasts without breaking. It absorbs and disperses the energy from explosions thanks to an inner structure so adamantiumtastic it can be used in body armor, window covering, military tents and hurricane defenses—it might even be able to fend off my ex-wife. When not shielding from explosions, it can be used as medical sutures that won't damage body tissue. All of this is thanks to a property that apparently defies the laws of physics:
However, if you coil a line around the bungee cord, something that defies logic will happen: the whole structure will get wider as it stretches. As you can see in the image, the line around the bungee cord becomes taut, making the bungee itself flex outward. This principle is called helical-auxetics. When you put two of these threads together, you have what Reed Richards would call an auxetic structure.
When you take this to the micro level, you can create a fabric formed from thousands of these helically wound threads. The resulting global structure is so strong that it can dissipate the energies of multiple blasts without breaking, unlike other materials of this class. In fact, the expanding properties of Zetix give it almost miraculous properties.
According to Dr. Patrick Hook—the creator of the fabric and managing director of Auxetix Ltd.—this fabric is "a design that can save lives" and, more importantly, it can do so repeatedly. "Most blast defenses are only capable of coping with a single explosion event and, once deployed and used, all significant protection is lost," he told Gizmodo. You can see the difference in the first photo, comparing an helical-auxetic fabric with your usual high-strenght blast protective fabric.
Another advantage of Zetix is its low cost: other blast-protective textiles are made entirely of very expensive high-performance materials; Zetix uses them too, but in much smaller proportions. Zetix combines the good stuff with "cheaper bulk components" in a 1-to-100 ratio while maintaining it's blast-resistant properties. The cost difference only gets crazier when you remember that this can be used multiple times.
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