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A prep school's new environmental center turns energy use into a living game. Illustration by Radio After spending their childhood playing online games, students at Choate Rosemary Hall will soon be able to live inside one

Here's a look at the companies that provide the uniforms, safety partitions, dispatch software, and handcuffs that make night patrol in Newark, Delaware, possible. Vehicle safety partitions Corporal Jeffrey Schwagel (foreground) and Master Corporal Gerald Bryda (rear car) have driven plenty of perps to the station during their combined 23 years on the Newark force.

Sony introduced its first 4K digital film projector—4K refers to the number of horizontal pixels of screen resolution: approximately 4,000—at the recent Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association trade show (CEDIA). This is a big leap for Sony, since the current industry standard 1080p, which refers to the vertical resolution, ...

Robot Fly Trap A professor at the University of Maine has made a robot version of a plant that in some ways is a robot all by itself...the Venus Fly Trap. The diminutive fly-grabber is partly made of a nanomaterial called ionic polymeric metal composite, which acts to replicate the tiny sensitive hairs inside a real trap that send a signal to the closing mechanism when stimulated by a fly landing inside--in this case the nanomaterial, when flexed, sends a tiny electrical signal through an amplifier to the two "leaves" of the trap, made out of the same material. When the bigger signal hits the leaves, they flex in reaction...and trap the fly.

Thursday, November 3 Last year , the Detroit-based automaker adopted the tagline "Chevrolet runs deep." Boy, are they right. Over the past century, the all-American automobile manufacturer has zoomed from low-cost Ford alternative to sports-car pioneer to surprisingly brisk seller overseas. Here, how a car company that began as a thumb of the nose at rival General Motors became one of GM's postbankruptcy bright spots

The recent Nature paper from Jef Boeke’s group , “ Synthetic chromosome arms function in yeast and generate phenotypic diversity by design ,” begins with an appropriately futuristic sentence: “The first phase of any genome engineering project is design.” While there have been efforts to redesign viral genomes and chemically synthesize bacterial genomes , whole genomes of living cells are not yet something that can readily be designed from scratch. This new paper (excellently reviewed by Lab Rat a while back) approaches the design of genomes in a fascinating way; instead of trying to decide in advance what a good engineered/engineerable genome looks like or simply copying an existing genome, they designed the sequence of one arm of a yeast chromosome (about 90,000 base pairs) with built-in genetic flexibility, enabling future experiments and future evolution. [More]

In his new book, "Reinventing Fire," Lovins creates a system for powering a 21st century civilization without using 20th century methods. Amory Lovins, the chairman of the Rocky Mountain Institute and the author of influential books like Winning the Oil Endgame and Natural Capitalism, is back with a new book--and this time, he's claiming that the U.S.

Imagine going to work on a Monday, only to find that everything in your work environment changed overnight. The corporate reception area is gone, along with the receptionist, who could barely be bothered to acknowledge the likes of you, anyway

The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York City is revealing an intimate view of 20th-century artists such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Max Ernst, and Jeff Koons at its new exhibit, Picasso to Koons: The Artist as Jeweler, which runs through January 8, 2012. Rather than featuring ...

If you didn't know what Fair Trade was five years ago, you certainly do now. As the label becomes ubiquitous, CEO Paul Rice is taking the standard into new industries and to new heights.

Creations made of Wilson products, like a tennis-ball chandelier and a football pyramid, adorn the whimsical Chicago office, designed by Gensler.

We've tapped experts in architecture and workplace design to explain what's wrong with cubicles, and how to remedy your dull office. Is your closed door killing your creativity?

Sure, they're fun places to work.

The same architect designed both innovative spaces. Will AOL's cool office stand the test of time, or do you "like" Facebook's better?

%excerpt% Here is the original post: Think Green Design is Boring? Think Again