Rachel Armstrong: Architecture that repairs itself?

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http://www.ted.com Venice, Italy is sinking. To save it, Rachel Armstrong says we need to outgrow architecture made of inert materials and, well, make architecture that grows itself. She proposes a not-quite-alive material that does its own repairs and sequesters carbon, too.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the “Sixth Sense” wearable tech, and “Lost” producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate. Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

Google Earth Hero: Project Kaisei

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The North Pacific Gyre, where garbage in the Pacific Ocean swirls in an eddy of indeterminable size, was the destination for the Kaisei Project . Tracking their path in Google Earth and Maps along the way, they experimented with turning plastic particles from the “Plastic Vortex” into diesel fuel.

Google Earth Hero: Appalachian Voices

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Appalachian Voices, a grassroots environmental group in North Carolina, has educated millions of people, inluding policy-makers and legislators, about the destructive mining process called ‘mountaintop removal’ by flying people over the 470 mine sites in Appalachia in Google Earth.