The past week saw several groundbreaking developments in climate news because the Chinese government said that it’ll control rainfall to generate 10 percent more precipitation by 2015. Stanford researchers developed a new sort of concrete that removes CO2 from the ambience, and Facebook teamed up with Greenpeace to power future data centers with renewable energy. Japan also announced the cold shutdown of the damaged reactors on the Fukushima nuclear plant and the US solar industry got an enormous boost because it grew more within the third quarter of 2011 than in all of 2009. Wind power in Scotland had a rocky week as a turbine burst into flames during hurricane force winds.
In other news, it was an intense week on the earth of architecture as renowned firm MVRDV apologized for its “Cloud” skyscrapers , which many folks found to resemble the shape of the exploding Twin Towers throughout the 9/11 attacks. We also brought you two high-profile architecture interviews – one with Gensler’s Chris Chan at the tallest skyscraper in Asia and one with 0 HOK’s Bill Odell 0 at the world’s largest LEED platinum project. Meanwhile, BIG unveiled a 1 luxury resort topped with a functional ski slope 1 and we saw a 2 winter wonderland of LED topiaries 2 pop up in Atlanta’s botanical garden.
Because the holiday shopping season reached its peak we also highlighted a number of our favourite green gadgets – don’t miss these 3 10 great green gizmos 3 and these 4 7 eco-chic gifts 4 for techies. We also shared an exclusive tutorial on the way to 5 make your personal pair of texting gloves 5 , and we looked at 6 Pong’s iPhone and iPad cases 6 , which reduce exposure to mobile phone radiation. Finally, we saw scientists in Japan create the world’s first 7 renewable bio-based polyester 7 and we brought you 8 N-product’s iPod watchbands 8 , that are created from discarded backpacks and inner tubes.
Everything Everywhere promises ‘small-scale LTE launch’ in UK by the top of 2012
ASUS MWC teaser video hints at possible hi-res tablet display?
