Gearfuse

When one thinks of a submarine, solar energy is the furthest thing from their mind. After all, submarines dive down deep below the ocean’s surface where the sun does not shine. The Swiss energy company, BKW is a little more optimistic than myself. It’s unveiled the GOLDFISH project, which will feature the world’s first solar powered submarine.

How will they do it? How could they possibly get the sun to energize solar panels underneath the sea? The answer is quite simple: bring the solar panels to the surface. Duh! A floating solar array that takes on the appearance of a water lily will be capable of producing 30 kilowatts of electricity. Currently, BKW is still looking for investors for this project so that it may begin building it. The project is estimated to cost about $8.85 million. If you’ve got more money than you know what to do with, here’s an investment that could help save the planet and make you look good while doing it.

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I thought I was really into Star Trek.  I have every episode from the original series and TNG as well as many articles of clothing and a beer bottle opener shaped like the Enterprise.  However, Bob Prior’s passion and fanboy-ism for Star Trek far surpasses my own.  He’s created Star Trek replicas from Rice Krispies boxes. From Kirk to Picard, Spock to LaForge, Bob has created over 50 models which include the Starship Enterprise, its command bridge and captains James T. Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard. The funniest part of the whole thing is that his wife hates the show but has been putting up with his obsession all these years.

Says Bob:

“I’ve made models from the start – right through Deep Space Nine, Voyager and the films up to First Contact.”

Deep Space Nine? Ew! Now I know for sure he’s suffering from dementia.

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Don’t you just hate it when you wake up before the alarm clock rings, feeling refreshed, see the clock and decide that you should sleep a few minutes more, and by the time the alarm rings again, you are so deeply asleep that it feels so terrible being woken up that you wish you didn’t sleep that extra 5 minutes? That’s because traditional alarm clocks do not synchronize with your brain’s sleep cycle.

By sleep cycle, we’re talking about the different phases of sleep with characteristic brain wave patterns. Throughout the night, we fluctuate between different levels of sleeping, deep sleeping, shallow sleeping and the famous Rapid Eye Movement phase (REM). What this alarm watch does is that it detects your shallow sleep within a preset time frame, say if you want to wake up at 7am, you set the time frame to be 6:40 to 7:20, then the alarm watch would wake you up when it detects that you’re in the shallow sleeping phase, but not the deep sleeping phase. As much as this sounds cool in theory, how does it work in reality? Well, the NikkeiBP dude managed to wake up refreshed enough to take a picture, not bad eh. The watch is priced at $170 in Japan. — Sam Chan

SleepTracker Review [NikkeiBP]