Land
What A Rubbish Idea
San Francisco has set out to do the apparently impossible - develop a trash can that is both user-friendly (if the user is trying to deposit trash) and user-hostile (if the user is trying to reach inside and retrieve trash, as many homeless people do). Even better, they decided that none of the designs on the market were good enough, so they'd design their own.
Weirdly enough, it hasn't worked - this intrepid reporter goes on the ground to try the three different designs, and all seem sub-par. I'm sure they'll try again, but it might be heresy to suggest that if you remove the need for the homeless to root around in bins for food or cans (that they can exchange for money), you might solve the cause rather than the symptom?
Sea
OK, Who's Making Mysterious Sea Holes?
There's lots of weird and wonderful things on the seafloor, but the particularly puzzling mystery this time is these set of near-perfect holes, all dug in a line.
NOAA describes them as "almost looking human-made", but I suspect that there's not some rogue submarine going around digging tiny holes in the sea floor. Instead, it's likely some kind of animal, though they're still not quite sure what.
Space
It's As If Millions Of Voices Suddenly Cried Out In Celebration
In one of the most strangely creepy things I think I've heard of this year, a robot lawnmover company released an update for their mowers that is programmed to have them all chime in and sing Happy Birthday to the Mars Curiosity Rover.
Now, I agree that giving it birthday wishes is a nice gesture, but was there a need to do it simultaneously from hundreds of thousands of lawns across the world? It's the sort of thing horror movies are made of, if you're walking through a quiet suburb before dawn.
Nature
No Hidden Mozzies In The Hidden Mickeys
If you visit Disney World in Orlando, Florida, once you've stopped being amazed at the sheer level of infrastructure that makes the place hum (and the miles of underground tunnels that aid it), you may also notice something else - in humid, tropical Florida, where you'd expect them to be abundant, there are almost no mosquitoes.
How? It's not magic - the parks are tirelessly designed to avoid any standing water, right down to roof shapes and plant choices, areas are treated with insect-repellent oils, and they keep a close watch via freezing CO2 traps and chickens (which, I didn't realise, don't get sick from mosquito-borne diseases, but still have the viruses in their blood).
The level they go to in order to keep water circulating, including lots of hidden piping, is quite impressive, though. And this all helps because mosquitoes can't fly very far - and given how big Disney World's property is, they're not going to make it all the way to the parks from the outside!
Tasty, Tasty Rabies (Vaccine)
How do you stop an outbreak of rabies in wild raccoons? Roving teams of rangers with darts full of vaccines? Trap-and-release? Of course not - you drop millions of fish-coated vaccine packets from a helicopter.
Lest you think this is a bit of a long shot, a similar program actually virtually elimated canine rabies in the US earlier in the century, so it seems to work well. Bats are one of the remaining big reservoirs of rabies, but they're less keen on the fish-flavoured packets - apparently, trials are underway to try gently misting them with vaccine, which sounds quite pleasant honestly.
Where Did The Giant Shrubbery Go?
The subcontinent of India used to be crossed by a gigantic hedge described as "utterly impassable to man or beast", but as over a billion people can attest, it's not there any more. So where did it go?
It was apparently built (planted?) along a customs line, to deter people from smuggling illegal goods into British-occupied territories - salt, to be precise. It didn't work particularly well, though, as people could just... throw salt over the hedge.
It was eventually abandoned after the need for salt policing was done, but what's most incredible is the idea of using this natural barrier (and tending it) rather than the modern solution of "build a giant wall" - though I guess that also doesn't really work that well either.
Industry
Finally, The Reactors Are Here
As we reported back in Issue 26, the US regulatory agencies have been really dragging their heels on approving new nuclear reactor designs, to the point that not a single one had been approved under the new rules.
Well, good news - it's finally happened! NuScale have received approval for their small modular reactor, the first of its kind approved for use in the US. These reactors are designed with passive fail-safe mechanisms where they're almost impossible to make critical, and are small enough they can be made in a central factory and then shipped to wherever they're needed, massively simplifying their installation.
It's Powerlessly Cool
It is absolutely no surprise to anyone who's been paying the slightest bit of attention that the world is getting warmer, and air conditioning is going to go from a convenience to literal life support in some of the world's hottest zones.
But, these areas are often also without power, so what's the right solution? Solar power is usually a good choice given what's causing all the heat, but this is a different kind of solution that uses liquid nitrogen instead of power.
Of course, liquid nitrogen is itself not exactly easy to make in a remote area, but it's already widely produced for many industries and can be shipped in giant bulk using tankers, so it should have some places where it fits in.
Heists
Turns Out Stealing Diamonds Is Way Easier Than Expected
What do you do when you want to steal four million dollars' worth of diamonds? It turns out that you can just walk into the auction house where they were sold and just... pick them up.
It's not quite that simple - the auction house had incorrectly written down that the diamonds belonged to two parties, when it in fact belonged only to one, and it was the incorrect party that turned up to collect them.
Still, very much on them. Fun idea to try in future if you're after a heist, though.
And Finally
Cheap As Microchips (And Some Batteries)
If you go onto Alibaba, the site that has literally everything - from hair clips to industrial mining equipment - then you'll see a very interesting class of vehicle - the cheap, small, electric pickup truck.
These things look adorable, but do they work? A US journalist bought one for $3,500 (plus shipping, at an eye watering $2,200), but it eventually turned up and... it worked! It's not road legal, sure, but they go into some wonderful details of how they use it around a farm.