This tree is called Jabuticaba, also known as the Grape Tree. As you can see, it’s trunk is almost completely covered with tiny fruits. It can be found in South America.

Scientists believe that this way of placement of fruits directly on the trunk of the tree is most useful for tree itself because other animals can reach fruits easily and eventually spread it’s seeds far away from tree and that is what will gain the chance of survival of this plant.

Images source

That’s right, those trees are so regularly irregular so you would be scared when you see such thing. They are all curved in knots and strange loops so the forest got name Dancing Forest. If you want to visit this forest you can find it on the Curonian Spit near Kaliningrad.

Here you can see the photos of ‘living bridges’ that were grown in Cherraphunji, Meghalaya, India. Ficus elastica is the plant that produces secondary roots and those bridges are formed by them naturaly. Some local tribes use them like real bridges during the rainy season when floods are often.

The fifth place is awarded to this design. This floating settlement contains a modern city square and it is more like floating town. This design also won the peoples’ choice award.

This design won award for best exterior design. This structure is shaped to use maximum of wind and solar energy. It is covered by solar panels. It is completely closed.

From the photo that has been provided, you can see that this settlement is still in construction. No, it is not mistake made by designers, they created a basic design of a sea settlement that it is not actually floating but it is fixed into the ground. Designers wanted to create a design that can be expanded without limitations and this is what they created in that manner.

This settlement reminds me on some of those incredible buildings that are used to be built in Dubai. It rather looks like a giant floating luxury hotel. This design won a best picture award. As you can see, this is completely solution for luxury life on the sea. Design also includes beach-like edges and small botanic gardens.

And this one is the winning design. As you can see, this design is more like a normal little urban settlement and when you’re inside you even wouldn’t notice that you are in a floating settlement. This floating settlement is designed to be just like a normal settlement that can be found on the ground. There are a few buildings, a few of little gardens and little square in the middle. Looks like it is perfect for peaceful life with family.

This cabin was built and designed by Pier Hein Eek who built it for his friend Hans Liberg. Hans Liberg, who is musician, wanted to have some peaceful place so he could play in peace and where he could get more inspiration for his work.

But what really makes this little building awesome is the fact that it actually has a wheels on the bottom and it can be moved to any place. Image source Thomas Mayer Archive.

Traditional understanding of way how we live considers that home is stable building that is built on the ground. This way of thinking often brings a lot of troubles for young people who are trying to establish their own home and to start separate life from their parents.

For building ground-based home first what you need is a ground, a piece of land which is often not so inexpensive.

The Joanna’s Tafoni Floating Home probably shows us a future of human’s settlements. As ground-based homes are becoming more and more expensive the floating homes could eventually become very popular.

Images source

Green architecture has now becoming widespread to almost every corner of the world. The Sozawe by NL Architects is just another wonder addition to the eco-friendly building we have today. Located in Groningen City, the Sozawe building has office spaces, large interior public space, and 215 parking spaces.The building’s concrete floor cools the building during summer and warms on the winter season, which made the Sozawe a sustainable one as it reduces energy consumption. The façade ofthe building are also in a place that will not hinder the entry of natural light especially during daytime. The building is also provided with green space making the building’s atmosphere fresh and pleasant.

Source: NL Architects via Designboom

]]> http://newglobalwarmingeffects.com/2009/11/21/eco-architecture-sozawe/feed/ 0 http://newglobalwarmingeffects.com/2009/11/18/bugs-that-seriously-look-like-alien-life-forms/ http://newglobalwarmingeffects.com/2009/11/18/bugs-that-seriously-look-like-alien-life-forms/#comments Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:49:39 +0000 admin http://newglobalwarmingeffects.com/?p=193

A common mistake when searching for alien life forms is to look up into the sky for something big. But alien life is right here, at our feet, in our backyards. Millions of tiny but frightening aliens, many just a few millimeters long.

A polar ice cap is a high latitude province of a planet or natural satellite in the universe that is covered completely with ice. Polar ice caps form because of the high latitude regions receiving less of energy in the form of solar radiation from the sun than equatorial regions. It results in lower surface temperatures.

Thanks for photo to : digital

The Earths’ polar ice caps have distorted considerably over the last twelve thousand years or even more. Cyclic variations of the ice caps occur due to varied solar energy absorption as the planet or moon spins around the sun. Furthermore, in geologic point scales, the ice caps possibly will grow or disappear due to the climate variation. Anything can happen.

Arctic shrinkage is the diminution in size of the Arctic region. This is a variation in the regional climate as a consequence of global warming. Projections of sea ice loss points out the destruction of summer sea ice in the Arctic ocean within the coming few decades. In fact, according to studies, the destruction has already been started.

This fast change of Arctic to global warming looks like the high-sensitivity indicator of the climate change. Scientists also spot to the possibility for release of methane from the Arctic region. It will be through the melting of the permafrost and the methane clathrates.

The sea ice in the Arctic region itself is imperative to balance the global climate. Therefore, melting of these sea ice will make worse situation towards the global warming due to the effects where warming creates more warming by increased solar assimilation.

The sea ice is doomed to melt away within the next three centuries and it will as an aftermath will flood hundreds of millions of people out of their homes. This is the stark warning by scientists that current forecasts hideously overrate how long the ice sheet will continue to exist.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated that a total meltdown is likely to take within 1,000 years or may be the risk is far greater than this. We can’t predict correctly, but strong indication gives this projection.

If the climate change crisis reached the point of ‘no return’ and it were to melt then the global sea levels would rise by 22ft and sip up most of the world’s coastal regions.

Not to forget that arctic sea ice acts like an air conditioner for the universal climate structure. It cools air and water and reflects solar emission back into the space. A warmer Arctic and thinner ice cap alters the equilibrium between the usually frozen Arctic and warmer lower latitudes. The disparity between icy high latitudes and warm equatorial regions is one that sets up the circulation patterns of winds, ocean and essentially the weather patterns. So, all of those things are matter to change as the ice cover changes. Thanks to sciencehax .

The jumping spider Evarcha culicivora, which dwells near Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa, hungers after mosquitoes engorged with blood. Scientists have even found this 5-millimeter-long spider prefers hunting bloodsuckers infested with the deadly malaria parasite, suggesting these predators could help control the lethal disease.

In dining on bloodsuckers, the jumping spiders — so named because they can leap some 40 times their own body length, which for a 6-foot-tall human would mean 240 feet — are in a roundabout way feeding on blood. It now turns out this vampire-by-proxy diet is sexy for the arachnids.

“In the case of E. culicivora, it seems that the way to a spider’s heart is through the other spider’s stomach,” researcher Fiona Cross, a spider biologist at the University in Christchurch, New Zealand, told LiveScience.

Cross and her colleagues fed spiders of both sexes a variety of meals — blood-fed female mosquitoes, sugar-fed female mosquitoes, male mosquitoes that naturally feed on flower nectar and not blood, and lake flies. The female mosquitoes were fed blood from the researchers — “a tub of mosquitoes was applied to the skin around our tummy,” explained researcher Simon Pollard, a spider biologist at Canterbury Museum in Christchurch. (It was the first time the lab-bred mosquitoes had fed on blood, so the researchers didn’t run the risk of contracting malaria.)

Spiders that dined on blood-fed mosquitoes were sexier to members of the opposite sex — other spiders spent four times as much time closer to a vent carrying scent gently blown off them. When spiders on non-blood diets were switched to blood-fed mosquitoes, they became more attractive, and the opposite was true when spiders were changed to blood-free diets. The spiders displayed no interest in the scent of blood-fed members of the same sex.

“It’s what’s inside the prey that makes the spider more attractive,” Cross said. “It might be like if we all gave off an odor after eating chocolates. It would only be the people who ate the chocolates with particular centers who smelled particularly attractive. Weird.”

While these spiders don’t share blood-rich mosquitoes with others, Cross said, a potential mate perhaps “gets benefits that are more indirect, such as having offspring that inherit the ability to catch this unusual prey.”

It may be common for animal courtship routines to in part be rooted in the use of diet-based perfumes. There is evidence from research on salamanders and voles, for example, that suggest that the odor of feces from animals on high-quality diets is attractive to potential mates.

As may be the case in human relationships, “Resources often play an important role in whether an animal is accepted as a mate,” Cross said. They might reflect the quality of a potential mate’s territory, “or the quality of a nuptial gift, usually food, presented during courtship.”

Cross added that an important next step is to find out whether spiders on blood diets really are more successful at mating. It would also be interesting to see whether blood diets help lead to more viable eggs or sperm, whether the spiders experience health benefits, and whether there are specific compounds in the blood that are especially sexy.

“There’s an awful lot more to learn about this spider,” Cross said.

Cross, Pollard and their colleague Robert Jackson detailed their findings online Oct. 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Credit: Robert R. Jackson Via:livescience.com