ecobites.com

Making your life greener - one bite at a time.

Sounds a tad out there, but a new manufacturing process that creates hairy solar cells could mean more efficient solar cells.

So how does it work? In reality, the hairs are visible only on the microscopic level and they are actually nanowires, tiny silicon or metallic structures used in completing very small circuits.

The UC San Diego hairy solar cell research is not unsimilar to a German project announced last week by a consortium of German universities working in concert with Harvard’s Science department.

Scientists at UC San Diego were able to grow nanowires directly

A Belgian architect, anticipating a 50cm rise in sea levels by the end of the century, has designed a floating refugee city.  And it looks like a lillypad.

Vincent Callabaut’s amphibious city–bearing the name of its inspiration, lilypad– is a car-free, clean energy utopia that can support 50,000 people with no external supplies.  With wind and solar power providing renewable energy, and rooftop gardens allowing for food production, it’s the most efficient, advanced, self-contained community ever imagined.

Urban transport is evolving and designers are having a rethink on our future needs.

Designer Chang Ting Jen has recognized this problem and has come up with his unique method of making inner city transport easy, mobile and will cut green house gases at the same time. His entry in the International Bicycle Design Competition is tagged Backpack Bicycle, and it is easy to see just why.

You already know about bicycles and tricycles, so how about the curiously named Bricycle? We're thinking its designer, only known to us as Brian (he wasn't available for comment in time for this post), is naming his creation after himself: a Bri-Cycle.

Whatever the case may be, he's designed a clever electric trike out of plywood, epoxy and fiberglass cloth with fully working steering, brakes and suspension.

Its purpose? To allow those of us who travel in a car alone to go to work, a movie, the store and so on — to do so in a way that is easy on the environment and saves our gas money, to boot.