Across the world, architects and environmental engineers are building cities inspired by Mother Nature. Here are four communities leading the way to a greener, cleaner world.

1. Masdar City, United Arab Emirates The Greenest Town in the Middle East




The United Arab Emirates isn't exactly known for its environmental consciousness. Many of its citizens live in large, air-conditioned homes in the middle of the desert, which is part of the reason the country produces more greenhouse gas emissions per capita than any other nation in the world. But Masdar City, a new suburb being built on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, hopes to change all that. As the world's first carbon-neutral town, this 2.5-square-mile development not only expects to house nearly 40,000 people by 2020, it also plans to run entirely on renewable energy.

How does a city reach carbon neutrality? For starters, automobiles will be banned! Instead, folks in Masdar City will get around by using a public transit system of pods -battery powered vehicles about the size of minivans. Sleek and white with see-through black windows, these six-seaters will zoom around a central loop taking passengers to their destinations. When the transit system is completed, 3,000 pods will shuttle between 85 stations within the development.

In addition to this new spin on public transportation, Masdar City plans to get its energy from large, solar-paneled umbrellas shaped like flowers. During the day, the umbrellas will open up, storing energy and providing shade for pedestrians. At night, they'll close to generate electricity. The suburb will also be surrounded by a perimeter wall that's designed to block out the hot desert winds, thereby keeping the community cool. The massive barrier may look like something out of the Middle Ages, but like the rest of Masdar City, it's actually part of the future.

2. Lyon's Gate, United States The Coolest Place to Live in Arizona




In the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert, Arizona -where summer highs regularly spike past 100°F- one community is keeping cool the eco-friendly way. Lyon's Gate is a collection of 210 homes built to withstand the heat while also conserving energy. And according to the U.S. Department of Energy, the community's houses are unbelievably successful. In fact, they require 80 percent less energy for heating and cooling than typical American homes.

A lot of that is due to the way houses in Lyon's Gate are insulated. Most buildings in the Unites States rely on cheap, fiberglass insulation, which can leak out air. But the homes in Lyon's Gate are protected by a spray foam that expands up to 120 times its original volume to fill in cracks and crevices.  Although spray foam is more expensive than fiberglass, it traps air much more effectively. The houses in Lyon's Gate also beat the heat with vinyl windows, which block out solar rays four times more effectively than normal glass. And soon, you won't need to move to Arizona to experience the benefits. Meritage Homes, the company that built Lyon's Gate, already has plans to open similar green communities in several states across the country.

3. Dongtan, China Where No Grain of Rice Goes to Waste




Forty miles from downtown Shanghai, between the Yangtze River and the East China Sea, is Chongming Island -a massive expanse of mudflats and wetlands that occupies an area about the size of Los Angeles. These days, birds are the island's only visitors. But soon, the eastern part of the island could be transformed into a dense, eco-friendly city called Dongtan, which aims to have 80,000 residents, 27,000 homes, and complete carbon neutrality.

The most exciting thing about Dongtan is how it plans to power itself: All of the city's energy will be locally produced. To fuel the power plant, for instance, the city will use rice husks. Typically, after rice is processed in a mill, the husks -the protective covering on grains of rice- are discarded. But Chinese engineers have figured out a new way to transform them into energy. Even more surprising is the fact that Dongtan will make use of almost all its refuse, including sewage. Ninety percent of the city's waste will be reused or repurposed to create fuel, compost, and fertilizer for its organic farms. And because almost all the garbage will be recycled, Dongtan won't even need a landfill.

4. Jätkäsaari, Finland The Least Trashy Neighborhood in Europe




The Jätkäsaari district of Helsinki, Finland, is windy and barren -at least for the moment. Ship builders and cargo warehouses have abandoned the district for newer locations. All that remains are piles of old ship supplies and a grassy knoll that local kids use to play soccer. But all of that is about to change. In 2009, the city greenlighted plans to transform part of the area into a sustainable community. Over the next 15 years, it's expected to provide commercial and residential buildings for 16,000 people.

To ensure that it has a minimal impact on the environment, Jätkäsaari plans to utilize a variety of green technologies, including "automated vacuum collection" in every building. This incredibly efficient system will suck away waste through chutes that connect to tubes running under the city, eliminating the need for garbage trucks. There will even be separate chutes for different kinds of waste -one for cardboard, one for paper, one for compost, etc. Once underground, the paper will be transported to paper mills; the compost will be sent to farms; and combustible items will be shipped to a furnace, where they'll be burned as fuel. Watch out, garbage men of the world; your days may be numbered.

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The article by Rachel Stern is reprinted from the January-February 2011 issue of mental_floss magazine. Subscribe today to get it delivered to you!

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If corporate sponsorship can save beleaguered sports teams, arenas, and schools, why not houses? Adzookie is offering to sponsor your mortgage in return for turning your house into a colorful billboard! You get an extra bonus if your home already needs a new coat of paint.

Adzookie launched the offer on its website Tuesday -- and by late afternoon, the company had already received more than 1,000 applications, according to Adzookie CEO Romeo Mendoza. One even came from a church.

"It really blew my mind," Mendoza said. "I knew the economy was tough, but it's sad to see how many homeowners are really struggling."

Adzookie intends to paint its logo and social media icons onto participating homes. Houses must remain painted for at least three months, and the agreement may be extended up to one year.

Link to story. Link to website. -via Consumerist

It is once again time for our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog. Do you know what this thing is? Can you give us a wild guess?

Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?

There's a second picture of this object posted at the What Is It? Blog. Take deep breath, do your best, and good luck!

Update: Stephen was the first to peg this item as a show business prop but also a real weight from a old-fashioned strongman show. It belonged to Warren Lincoln Travis, who indeed lifted this with his hips by a chain running through the hole in the middle, as Stephen said in his entry. It weighed between 1650 and 3750 pounds, depending on how much sand he filled it with. There's even more information about it at the What Is It? blog.

The funniest answer was from samuel, who gave us a Super Mario answer:

Conjoined Bomb-omb twins. They're waiting anxiously out outside of Dr. Goomba's office to see if a surgery is possible. It's been over a year now since the castle guards pulled them out of that koopley's famous freak show on a case of child abuse. They look so happy in this picture, even though they're nervous.

Good luck Bomb-ombs, I hope the answer will come soon!

Both win t-shirt from the NeatoShop!

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has a contraption that will automatically pour six, count 'em, six liquid ingredients into a cocktail glass for the geekiest mixed drink ever! Drink Making Unit 2.0 is a few steps up from the three-liquid unit they'd previously produced. Microcontrollers, LEDs, tubing, and the kind of equipment all evil mad scientists have around come together to make a machine that Rube Goldberg would be proud of. It looks good, too! Link

(College Humor link)

How many internet memes are incorporated in this music video? All of them! But they happen so fast you won't catch them all the first time around. -via Laughing Squid

Police in Lincoln, Nebraska arrested William Logan Jr. on a misdemeanor theft charge. Logan was caught on a surveillance camera using a vacuum to suck change out of coin laundry appliances.

Photos show a man entering the laundry room with a backpack, which contained a vacuum. The man pries open the coin tray, plugs in the vacuum and sucks out the change.

On Tuesday morning, detectives said they made contact with William Logan Jr., 40, and his father at the residence they share. Logan’s father immediately recognized his son in the surveillance images, according to Lincoln police.

Authorities said Logan was able to get about $20 in quarters from the machines at an apartment on Holdrege Street. According to police, Logan no longer has the vacuum.

Logan was previously convicted of stealing a Christmas tree from the Salvation Army. Link -via J-Walk Blog

(Funny or Die link)

Billy Crystal and Helen Mirren team up for a sequel to the megahit romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally. Contains some NSFW language. -via The Daily What

Teacher David Crichton was holding a physical education class outdoors in Galashiels, Scotland, last week when worms began raining from the sky.

The boys heard a "soft thudding" on the artificial pitch - then looked up to see dozens of worms plummeting from the sky.

David, 26, said he and other teachers at Galashiels Academy were baffled by the incident.

And they later found more worms spread across a school tennis court almost 100 yards from the pitch. He said: "We started hearing this wee thudding noise. There were about 20 worms on the ground.

School staff eventually found about 120 worms. It is believed that a freak weather event lifted the worms along with water from a nearby river. The story was first reported on April first, but there is of yet no indication that it was an April Fool. Link -via Fortean Times

(Image credit: Kingdom News Agency)

(Video link)

Cultural differences can manifest themselves in ways people never consider until they cross from one culture to another. In this clip, refugees from Sudan encounter America for the first time, and find it quite different from their homeland. This is from the 2006 National Geographic movie God Grew Tired of Us.  -via reddit

Jean-François Rauzier makes huge high-resolution pictures with amazing attention to detail. Hyperphotos are his way of combining "infinitely big and infinitely small things in one same image."

He found his way by juxtaposing, duplicating, twisting images with Photoshop, making it possible for him to reproduce human vision more accurately. This way, he generated a genuine numerical puzzle, in which the pieces, cut out, “drawn again”, come up along on top of the imagination of the artist.
From this technique is issued numerous fascinating and unusual details on which the spectator can dwell on.

For example, the picture here has a lot of people in it. At the site, you can zoom in and see them clear as daylight. http://www.rauzier-hyperphoto.com/voyages-extraordinaires/ -via J-Walk Blog

The picture blog Scaffoldage uses the tagline "Skeletal Archiporn." It's another project from Shaun Usher of Letterheady and Letters of Note. Some of the scaffolds shown are almost works of art; others can frighten or even make you feel woozy. There is no text, but each image is linked to its source. The scaffold shown here was used during construction of the Water Cube built for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. http://www.scaffoldage.com/ -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Flickr user dominique bergeron)

The Caribbean island of Montserrat once had its government and most of the island's services centered in the small town of Plymouth. The community was evacuated in 1995 due to volcanic activity. In 1997, an eruption buried Plymouth under several feet of ash, rock, and lava. It has been an exclusion zone ever since, and no residents have returned. See a collection of 40 pictures of what's left. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Nick Brooks)

An aquarium enthusiast who goes by the name Steveoutlaw on forums was poisoned while trying to rid his aquarium of an invasive colony of anemones. To kill it, he boiled the rocks from his fish tank, and accidently inhaled some fumes. He ended up in the hospital, a victim of palytoxin, the second deadliest poison found in the natural world.

Palytoxin is shrouded in legend. Hawaiian islanders tell of a cursed village in Maui, whose members defied a shark god that had been eating their fellow villagers. They dismembered and burned the god, before scattering his ashes in a tide pool near the town of Hana. Shortly after, a mysterious type of seaweed started growing in the pool. It became known as “limu-make-o-Hana” (deadly seaweed of Hana). If smeared on a spear’s point, it could instantly kill its victims.

The shark god may have been an elaborate fiction, but in 1961, Philip Helfrich and John Shupe actually found the legendary pool. Within it, they discovered a new species of zoanthid called Palythoa toxica. The limu-make-o-Hana was real, but it wasn’t seaweed – it was a type of colonial anemone. In 1971, Richard Moore and Paul Scheuer isolated the chemical responsible for the zoanthid’s lethal powers  – palytoxin. Now, Jonathan Deeds from the US Food and Drug Administration has found that the poison is readily available in aquarium stores.

The problem is that the anemones that contain palytoxin are almost impossible to distinguish from species that don't. Read more about it at Not Exactly Rocket Science. Link -via reddit

(YouTube link)

Have you ever wondered what astronauts do in their free time? Cady Coleman {wiki} is a scientist, flautist, and an astronaut, currently aboard the International Space Station. In this video, she gives us the short version of what it's like to play music in space. -via Geeks Are Sexy

(YouTube link)

This odd but appealing animated documentary was produced by Diego Maccione and Adam Gill for Al Jazeera. A rat narrates the history of New York hot dogs. Link -via Buzzfeed