bees breeze.

With all the interest in swarming and termites, what happened to the bees ingenuity from the populous spectrum? In Syria, one of the traditional Middle Eastern construction keeps cool with out electric hungry HVAC systems. These "beehive" homes are located along the Aleppo and Euphrates Rivers. How they work in keeping the inhabitants cool is through their thick mud brick walls that trap in the cool and keep out the sun. Due to the mass they are similar to Trombe Walls for passive solar heating and cooling. They also let little light in but do have some openings for ventilation. The high dome structures move the hot air away from residents sleeping on the bottom.
The walls and exterior skin is used as a translator of energy. (passive) Imagine if the the dirt and bricks were embedded with photovoltaic chips as well or chloroplast-like cells that could not only keep the building cool and warm but transfer the energy to light and power for the inhabitants. This existing "dead" system could have a new life of its own.

Chloroplasts, the organelle that turns light into energy through photosynthesis, have been the long time inspiration for the solar panels as we know them. To this point they are still large and not nearly as integrated as their original inspiration. But let's get a bit smaller. Material scientists at the Nano/Bio Interface Center of the University of Pennsylvania have taken it there. They have demonstrated the transduction of optical radiation to electrical current in a molecular circuit. The system, consisting of an array of nano-sized molecules of gold, respond to electromagnetic waves by creating surface plasmons that induce and project electrical current across molecules, similar to that of photovoltaic solar cells.

Dawn Bonnell, a professor of materials science and the director of the Nano/Bio Interface Center at Penn, and colleagues fabricated an array of light sensitive, gold nanoparticles, linking them on a glass substrate. By minimizing the space between the nanoparticles to an optimal distance, researchers used optical radiation to excite conductive electrons, the plasmons, to ride the surface of the gold nanoparticles and focus light to the junction where the molecules are connected. This plasmon effect increases the efficiency of electrical current production in the molecule by a factor of 400 to 2000 percent, which can then be transported through the network to the outside world. Pretty amazing. These new cells could be infused into even clothing. Just think about it.

Bugging out.

Out of batter power you say? Well, let me just fetch some of these viruses for you and you'll be off in a jiffy. How long do we have to wait till this is part of our vernacular jargon?

At MIT, a team led by Angela Belcher has genetically engineered viruses to excrete certain proteins that react with chemicals introduced to the environment to create complicated structures much like life forms. The viruses are genetically programmed to first grow the iron phosphate battery electrode material, then pick up an individual or bundle of carbon nanotubes that then wire the electrode for fast energy transfer. The battery created is only big enough to power a calculator but the same technique could be used to make batteries for cars, or maybe even ones home or at least plug in appliances.

The recipe for this energy is simple:: all you need is the virus (easily multiplied exponentially in a lab) and the raw materials. Now, it's not available at your local Ikea just yet. The batteries being produced are not at the standard of traditionally designed nanotech batteries due to their shorter cycle before they start to loose charge. I say give the team at MIT a few months and it should be up and running.

Unfortunately, the batteries being produced are not up to the standards of traditionally designed nanotech batteries. They can only go through about 100 cycles (vs. more than 1000 for today's batteries) before starting to lose their charge. Of course, the team is confident that they can direct the viruses more effectively and increase that number significantly.

Genomatica, as other various green companies, is a company that has devised organisms that can produce chemicals like methyl ethyl ketone which can be used as a way to replace energy-intensive processes like cooking chemicals at high temperatures to produce other compounds or noxious, fossil fuel based substances. Genomatica also makes bugs that produce plastic.

Now I am still waiting for them to teach cancer to be a building material. Maybe a field trip is in order.

Source1:ecogeek. Source2:greentechmedia. Source3:inhabitat.

let's talk about fuel baby, let's talk about nano and me...

mmm Do you smell something? Oh wait, it's just the fuel. I know this isn't directly related to bioarchitecture but one might need a biocar to park in a biogarage, and well you get my drift.

So, in an article I was reading on Ecogeek, they were saying how researchers at University of Dayton have been able to use an array of carbon nanotubes to perform the same catalytic activity that Platinum produces in a standard fuel cell. Platinum is good at splitting up the oxygen (O2) molecule into two oxygen ions (O+) at the cell’s cathode. Platinum is a pricey metal if you were not aware and for a typical passenger car, the platinum catalyst can cost about $4,000. That's quite pricey.

The carbon nanotubes are doped with nitrogen. The full name of these wonders are nitrogen-containing carbon nanotubes, or VA-NCNTs. The Nitrogen prevents the carbon from reacting with oxygen to form CO, a process called “poisoning”. The CO builds up on the surface, and reduces the effectiveness of the catalyst over time. But these VA-NCNTs keep carbon unreactive, and thereby prolong the catalyst’s lifetime.
Go carbon!

I want to know though what will the wastes then be? And how can we reuse them?

list of things...

I have been tardy in getting this out.. but here is the list of 100 projects that contribute to the progress of the inhaborg. Bear with me as this is going to be an unruly list.

The following are key points of projects.:

1. project with goal of recycling waste(noise)
2. reuse cancer
3. reuse aids, dwelling that live of the disease
4. reuse urine as the main power source for heating
5. homeless/nomadic virus pod that attaches and attacks the propelled surface similarly to a leech.
6. pin point on suction technologies and their application.
7. observation of suction and connective tissue in plants and animals
8. additive and interjection of technologies potential in reconfiguring the suction and connective tissues in plants and animals
9. additive and interjection of nano technologies potential in "wall" cartilage for maneuverable environments
10. unit design and coded cells
11. look at collective building systems such as coral and or pollen collection services
12. symbiotic relationships and interweaving of organisms that unite to form the dwelling
13. plant animal hybrid cells?
14. Building out of banyan trees interlaced with internet
15. nesting systems
16. weaving systems
17. reactions to implied force, aka heating and cooling, chemical reactions
18. Endocrine secretions to cause a genetically-programmed death in octopus/dwelling
19. walls with chemosenors, transducing chemical signal to potential action
20. collage and layering of "cells" and eating them away
21. bacteria spray that eats at masonry brick and leaves a residue that allows for new mold/moss growth
22. vomeronasal organ exploited to a surface, reacting and acting on its stimuli
23.looking at how ivy grows on buildings and thinking how to implement that in to a system for an inhabitable growth
24. observations of mitosis
25. cell communication through paxillin
26. start growing plant life homes in obscure urban places
27. start gowning plant life homes in automobiles that live off of exhaust
28. structure from hair
29. structure form shed skin
30. structure from belly lint
31. structure from ear wax
32. structure from cum
33. structure reacts to spit
34. structure that reacts to water
35. material that dissolves in water
36. self organizing space via simple unites and a electrical charge between the connectors
37. morter less brick at the nano level!b
38. Stimergy (information gathered from work in process) and out putting that info for reactions
39. Bernard Convection as a form of information transfer
40. the use of flocking in birds or bee swarming ad a active yet temporary space/field definer
41. metastasis of growing agents from one body(part) to another, more fluid tranfer of the parasite that builds as it eats, builds from its wastes
42. structure that is powered by urine
43. structure that is powered by cum
44. structure in a cemetery that is powered by tears
45. structure that is powered by dead bodies
46. cell energy recycled and moved and die
47. bacteria giving off oil and spitting it out as a polymer base growth
48. investigations in food structures, aka inestinal structureing
49. meringue rigidization
50. calcification of particles
51. increased elasticity under heating (cheese/meat)
52.FUNGUS AMOUNGUS!
53. potato power
.....

BUZZ WORD! TODAY!!!

SELF-ORGANIZING SPACE

Self Organization - a process in which pattern at the global level of a system emerges solely from numerous interaction among the lower-level component of the system. Moreover the rules specify interactions amount the systems' components are execution only local information with out reference to the global pattern.
(Self-Organization in Biological Systems)

What are the mechanisms and how they differ in biological systems verses physical systems.

Well it might happen in outer space. Let's look at the scales of self organization...
























To more Elaborate on the first diagram here are is the relativity of the scales involved:

























On a side note: everytime I tend to get an Idea about all this. I turn around and find that Mr. Roche was already there. Another hot shot to mention is Mitchell Joachim.

Seeds of Production

To reach the Inhabitable Organism, or InhabOrg, we must map out the scale and the players in making the "monster" a reality. As this blog develops, new documents and maps of where and who these people are will become available. The range of scale goes from DNA and computational biology to nanotech material research on the micro end to the full range of architecture and urban context.