http://www.transloopa.com

http://www.transloopa.co.uk

British inventor Josh Silver, a former professor of physics at Oxford University, has come up with a game-changer of a product design with his water-lensed glasses.

Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device's tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.

The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription.

You can mass-produce millions of these, rather than manufacturing myriad individual lenses each tuned to a user's specific vision deficiencies. And while the one-size-fits-all mentality may not fly in developed nations, Silver's goal is to help the hundreds of millions of people in developing countries who suffer from poor eyesight.

Silver calls his flash of insight a "tremendous glimpse of the obvious"--namely that opticians weren't necessary to provide glasses. This is a crucial factor in the developing world where trained specialists are desperately in demand: in Britain there is one optometrist for every 4,500 people, in sub-Saharan Africa the ratio is 1:1,000,000.

The implications of bringing glasses within the reach of poor communities are enormous, says the scientist. Literacy rates improve hugely, fishermen are able to mend their nets, women to weave clothing. During an early field trial, funded by the British government, in Ghana, Silver met a man called Henry Adjei-Mensah, whose sight had deteriorated with age, as all human sight does, and who had been forced to retire as a tailor because he could no longer see to thread the needle of his sewing machine. "So he retires. He was about 35. He could have worked for at least another 20 years. We put these specs on him, and he smiled, and threaded his needle, and sped up with this sewing machine. He can work now. He can see."

So far 30,000 of Silver's specs have been distributed, but more are on the way; his eventual target is 100 million pairs.

via the guardian

http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/brilliant_waterbased_eyeglasses_for_the_masses_no_optician_required_12220.asp

Crank Up Battery

Re-chargeable batteries are no good when they run out of power and you have no electric point handy to tank them up again. Here’s where the concept of the Wind Up Battery steps in; re-charge these cells via the conventional battery charger OR use the hand-crank to wind up and source-up some juice. Kinda like your hand-crank radios. A simply superb concept!

Designer: Qian Jiang

http://www.yankodesign.com/2009/10/05/crank-up-battery/

1. Mind House (Barcelona, Spain)

(Bamboo leaf for angelocesare via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

2. The Crooked House (Sopot, Poland)

(Bamboo leaf for brocha via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

3. Stone House (Guimarães, Portugal)

(Bamboo leaf for Jsome1 via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

4. Lotus Temple (Delhi, India)

(Bamboo leaf for MACSURAK via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

5. Cathedral of Brasilia (Brazil)

(Bamboo leaf for = xAv = via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

6. La Pedrera (Barcelona, Spain)

(Bamboo leaf for joe_aesmorga via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

7. Atomium (Brussels, Belgium)

(Bamboo leaf for /*dave*/ via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

8. Museum of Contemporary Art (Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

(Bamboo leaves for 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

9. Kansas City Library (Missouri, USA)

(Bamboo leaf forjonathan_moreau via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

10. Low impact woodland house (Wales, UK)

(Bamboo leaf for Simon via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

11. Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao, Spain)

(Bamboo leaf for disgustipado via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

12. Rotating Tower, Dubai, UAE

(Bamboo leaf for Dynamic Architecture ™ all rights reserved to Dr. David Fisher)

Have you ever seen a building in motion that actually changes its shape? Sounds unbelievable but not to Dr. David Fisher. This building will never appear exactly the same twice.

It is amazing but you will have the choice of waking up to sunrise in your bedroom and enjoying sunsets over the ocean at dinner.

In addition to being such an incredible engineering miracle it will produce energy for itself and even for other buildings because it will have wind turbines fitted between each rotating floor (picture 2). So an 80-story building will have up to 79 wind turbines, making it a true green power plant.

13. Habitat 67 (Montreal, Canada)

(Bamboo leaf for ken ratcliff via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

14. Casa da musica (Porto, Portugal)

(Bamboo leaf for Osvaldo Gago – fotografar.net)

15. Olympic Stadium (Montreal, Canada)

(Bamboo leaf for Wikipedia via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

16. Nautilus House (Mexico City, Mexico)

(via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

17. The National Library (Minsk, Belarus)

(Bamboo leaf for ledsmagazine.com via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

(Bamboo leaf for .magullo. via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

18. National Theatre (Beijing, China)

(Bamboo leaf for Azure Lan via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

19. Conch Shell House, Isla Mujeres, Mexico

(Bamboo leaf for Mark Stadnik via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

20. House Attack (Viena, Austria)

(Bamboo leaf for Dom Dada via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

21. Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Egypt)

(Bamboo leaf for Bibliotheca Alexandrina)

22. Cubic Houses (Kubus woningen) (Rotterdam, Netherlands)

(Bamboo leaves for sarmax via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

23. Ideal Palace (France)

(Bamboo leaf for Mélisande* via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

24. The Church of Hallgrimur, Reykjavik, Iceland

(Bamboo leaf for Stuck in Customs via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

25. Eden project (United Kingdom)

(Bamboo leaf for wikipedia via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

26. The Museum of Play (Rochester , USA)

(Bamboo leaf for Mike.Hanlon via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

27. Atlantis (Dubai, UAE)

(Bamboo leaf for Tom Olliver via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

28. Montreal Biosphere (Canada)

(Bamboo leaf for: wikipedia via via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

29. Wonderworks (Pigeon Forge, TN, USA)

(Bamboo leaf for Rusl?k via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

30. The Basket Building (Ohio, USA)

(Bamboo leaf for addicted Eyes via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

31. Kunsthaus (Graz, Austria)

(Bamboo leaf for watz via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

32. Forest Spiral (Darmstadt, Germany)

(Bamboo leaf for Kikos Dad via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

33. Wooden Gagster House (Archangelsk, Russia)

(Bamboo leaf for deputy-dog.com via www.boredpanda.com</span>)

http://www.boredpanda.com/top-33-worlds-strangest-buildings/

By NICOLE MARTINELLI

If you've ever wondered what's inside Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, you've got six years to take a look.

Milan, where the original Renaissance man worked for years, has brought the largest collection of his drawings and writings, the 1,000-plus-page Codex Atlanticus, to the masses. The Codex is normally housed in the city's Biblioteca Ambrosiana, where it is off-limits even to most scholars. But until 2015, visitors can view a rotating exhibition of selected pages from the real da Vinci code, grouped into themes including mechanical flight, anatomy and war machines.

Among the pages, dating from 1478 to 1519, visitors will find engineering designs, recipes, doodles from apprentices, as well as sketches for da Vinci's many ahead-of-his-time contraptions. Da Vinci, who reportedly made sketches of his observations on loose sheets or on tiny pads he kept in his belt, left behind the largest literary legacy of any painter.

"It can be a little embarrassing, when people only expect to see finished drawings or amazingly detailed sketches," said da Vinci expert Pietro C. Marani, curator of the first three-month exhibit, "Fortresses, Bastions and Cannons."

"What you're really looking at is a cross-section of art, science, technology, mechanical studies - all woven into the daily life of an amazing figure, but it's not always what you might expect," he said.

Each exhibition will be split between two locations. In an effort to bring more tourists to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, half of the pages will be on display there, while the other half will be on show at the sacristy of Santa Maria delle Grazie, whose refectory houses da Vinci's "Last Supper" fresco. (A pleasant 20-minute walk through Milan's old city center divides the exhibits.)

"Fortresses, Bastions and Canons" runs until December. The exhibition provides a close-up view of how da Vinci worked -- from notes written in his characteristic right-to-left mirror script to a sort of 15th-century resumé, designed to drum up commissions from the duke of Milan.

While the subject matter of this exhibit may incite more mild interest than awe, the modernity of his 500-plus-year-old ideas is nonetheless striking: A tall contraption that moves weights would not look out of place as a resistance machine in a gym.

View Full Image

Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana -Milano

The Biblioteca Ambrosiana, where the pages of the Codex Atlanticus are exhibited.

Up next is "The Library, His Times and the Friends of Leonardo," which will provide a different kind of look into the painter's world. Da Vinci disparagingly called himself omo sanza lettere (a man without a formal education), practicing vocabulary-building in his notebooks and keeping a list of books to read for self-improvement. His co-workers and apprentices often used the notebook sheets to scribble drawings -- some of them famously lewd.

Da Vinci's musings were collected by sculptor Pompeo Leoni 400 years ago. They were bound into what eventually became known as the Codex Atlanticus, or Atlantic Codex, because the large-format paper, 65 centimeters by 44 centimeters, was also used by cartographers for atlases.

Donated to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in 1637, the Codex was divided into a 12-volume set in the 1960s and 1970s. The fragile condition of the pages meant that until now, only select scholars interested in examining the ink-and-paper work were allowed to peruse one page at a time.

The wider exhibition of the Codex became possible after the pages were unbound so they could be better preserved. A group of Benedictine nuns worked for months this spring and summer painstakingly melting the wax bindings.

The Codex's precious pages are now guarded in cases designed by architect Alberto Sempi to monitor heat and humidity. Each page is enveloped by two layers of acrylic attached to a metal base, then enclosed in a larger, antiglare glass case with UVB filters, making the pages appear suspended.

To keep da Vinci's designs from harmful sunrays, only cold, bluish lights illuminate the pages. Since the real-life da Vinci code's main adversary is light, conservators opted to use 20-lumen LEDs, about the same brightness as a flashlight, although 50 lumens are allowed by state law, the library's Don Alberto Rocca said.

For the visitor, these conservation constraints create the effect of unearthing a secret treasure. Fans of Dan Brown's 2003 potboiler "The Da Vinci Code" will appreciate the atmosphere, whether they are peering at the pages in a darkened sacristy adorned by frescoes or in a wood-paneled library, with the ambience further enhanced by the classical music piped in.

Visitor Nicholas Snyder was impressed by the more basic scribblings. "What surprised me most were the basic math calculations," said Mr. Snyder, 18 years old. "I would've never thought that Leonardo had to work out stuff like 100 minus 14 equals 86 on paper."

—Nicole Martinelli is a writer based in Milan.