The largest model of a passenger car in history

Stylish Coffins

Lighting with Infinite Combinations

The beauty of the Guss modular lighting system by designer Santiago Sevillano is that it has what seems like an infinite number of possible configurations.

Though the curvilinear components are identical, they can be separated, recombined, and mixed and matched to create dramatic pendants, wall lamps, table lamps, or floor lamps that are not only unique but 80% less energy consuming than standard incandescent lights.

Designer: Santiago Sevillano

YouTube - Elephant assists in Joplin Tornado Clean Up

YouTube - Elephant assists in Joplin Tornado Clean Up

5 Weird Roads

Planning a road trip this summer? A lot of us are; and it sure is nice to be able to hop in your car and drive pretty much anywhere you please on a safe, smooth, well-lit road. Okay, maybe not; but, potholes notwithstanding, consider yourselves lucky that none of the following roads are part of your daily commute.

Canton Avenue – Located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, this is one road you do not want to mess with in the winter. Why? Because technically, it’s the steepest street in the world! Canton Ave. has a 37% grade, which means that for every 100 feet you travel, you gain 37 feet of elevation. I doubt if it’s a snow route…

Yungas Road – What’s 10 feet wide, has no guardrails, goes through waterfalls and threatens you with 2000 foot drop-offs? It’s the Yungas Road in Bolivia! This 43 mile stretch of nastiness is labeled the most dangerous road in the world, and thus attracts lots of tourists who for some reason actually want to drive it.

The Magic Roundabout - The above photo shows what drivers traversing one intersection in Swindon, England have to deal with. The Swindon roundabout is actually six roundabouts. Drivers enter the large clockwise roundabout and are funneled into one of the five mini roundabouts contained inside. It’s baffling to tourists, but apparently works quite well and has an excellent safety record.

Photo: Marco Mayer

Stelvio Pass – Do you get carsick? If so, don’t drive this road. The Stelvio Pass in the Italian Alps has got to be the curviest road on the planet. To negotiate the pass, drivers are subjected to 60 hairpin turns, 48 on the north side alone. It’s a very popular destination for sports car drivers and motorcyclists.

Photo: Rick Archer

The Guoliang Tunnel – Probably not the best choice for the claustrophobic, this tunnel in the Henan Province of China is only 16 feet tall and 13 feet wide. Although it’s only ¾ of a mile long, it took villagers five years to carve with simple hand tools. Plus, they were nice enough to include “windows” so you can see how far the drop is!

Dye of the Tiger !

Dogs put up with a lot. All they really want to do is chase some birds, sniff some stuff and maybe take a nap, but we insist on dressing them up in silly outfits and putting ribbons in their fur. Ever resilient, dogs take it all in stride; but this is just going too far…

As reported by The Daily Mail and China Daily, it seems that dyeing your dog to look like another animal is getting increasingly popular. Sure, it might be kind of cute to make your chow look like a panda, or dye your golden retriever to look like a tiger, but this is just further proof that people may have too much time on their hands.

Amazing Picture

Amazing Picture

Soft, Light and Wind Friendly Car !

VENTILE takes everything we know about cars and throws it out of the window.
The powertrain starts off innocently enough being a gas/electric hybrid but there’s a third system – a giant fan.
Air comes rushing in through the front, spins the fan situated beneath the battery and drives the car. How is this possible?
The VENTILE barely weights 350 kg thanks to its translucent, soft shell and small rubberless wheels.

Designer: Thierry Dumaine

Ocean life on the brink of mass extinctions: study

OSLO (Reuters) – Life in the oceans is at imminent risk of the worst spate of extinctions in millions of years due to threats such as climate change and over-fishing.

Time was running short to counter hazards such as a collapse of coral reefs or a spread of low-oxygen "dead zones," according to the study led by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO).

"We now face losing marine species and entire marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs, within a single generation," according to the study by 27 experts to be presented to the United Nations.

"Unless action is taken now, the consequences of our activities are at a high risk of causing, through the combined effects of climate change, over-exploitation, pollution and habitat loss, the next globally significant extinction event in the ocean," it said.

Scientists list five mass extinctions over 600 million years -- most recently when the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago, apparently after an asteroid struck. Among others, the Permian period abruptly ended 250 million years ago.

"The findings are shocking," Alex Rogers, scientific director of IPSO, wrote of the conclusions from a 2011 workshop of ocean experts staged by IPSO and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) at Oxford University.

Fish are the main source of protein for a fifth of the world's population and the seas cycle oxygen and help absorb carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from human activities.

OXYGEN

Jelle Bijma, of the Alfred Wegener Institute, said the seas faced a "deadly trio" of threats of higher temperatures, acidification and lack of oxygen, known as anoxia, that had featured in several past mass extinctions.

A build-up of carbon dioxide, blamed by the U.N. panel of climate scientists on human use of fossil fuels, is heating the planet. Absorbed into the oceans, it causes acidification, while run-off of fertilizers and pollution stokes anoxia.

"From a geological point of view, mass extinctions happen overnight, but on human timescales we may not realize that we are in the middle of such an event," Bijma wrote.

The study said that over-fishing is the easiest for governments to reverse -- countering global warming means a shift from fossil fuels, for instance, toward cleaner energies such as wind and solar power.

"Unlike climate change, it can be directly, immediately and effectively tackled by policy change," said William Cheung of the University of East Anglia.

"Over-fishing is now estimated to account for over 60 percent of the known local and global extinction of marine fishes," he wrote.

Among examples of over-fishing are the Chinese bahaba that can grow 2 meters long. Prices per kilo (2.2 lbs) for its swim bladder -- meant to have medicinal properties -- have risen from a few dollars in the 1930s to $20,000-$70,000.

(Editing by Jan Harvey)

Safer Plugs Come With A Switch

Switch Plug is a redesign of the plug to accommodate a switch and an LED strip.
Why? So that we can switch on/off the device right from the plug-head, get a good grip whilst removing the plug and avoid sparks while unhooking it from the socket.
The LED is an added bonus reminder, just to ensure that we practice green etiquette.

Simple and effective: Designer, Gonglue Jian