Water filters today tend to keep you anxiously waiting while they get on with their job, to provide you with clean germ-free water. Give a few years in the future, and you just won’t have to wait so long for a sparkling clean glass of water to quench your thirst. A new nano-material was developed recently that purifies water 80,000 times faster than purifiers today, killing 98% bacteria. Water filters in the future will use cotton dipped in nano-sized silver wires and copper tubes. The filter was developed by researchers at the Stanford University which conducts a charge of electricity used to block bacterial flow. If the bacteria choose to remain stubborn and cling on to the filter, the silver in it kills them off. For now, researchers are figuring out ways to develop these filters using lighter materials and at cheaper costs.

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Well, if you live in Portland and plan to take your dog for a walk, rest assured, the experience is bound to be a whole lot different. Fido’s Indoor Dog Park, located in Southeast Portland, an industrial area, offers a place to take your canine friend for a walk, complete with artificial grass. The place is almost one-third of a football field, around 13,000 square feet. It’s more of a resort for canines, and includes a self-dog-wash area, private meeting rooms for owners, a coffee shop, wireless Internet access, a pool for dogs, and eight dens for canines who wish to stay there for a night. And yes, this one makes an effort to be sustainable too, with products in the retail store sourced locally, nontoxic paints used, ozonated water in pools with 98% less chemicals, grass made of recycled materials and natural cleaners to clean up urine, Biozyme. The poop is collected in biodegradable bags and plans to use the waste for compost are currently under the hammer.

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Electronic devices like cell phones and laptop computers in the future could go a bit lighter and work for hours longer than the one’s we used today, thanks to a super capacitor developed by a team of scientists recently. These are cheap enough and powerful to be used commercially. Also, the capacitor charges in as little as a few seconds and could keep our phones and laptops powered on for days together. Capacitors store energy too, though unlike batteries, that store energy chemically, these store an electrical charge between two conductive plates separated by an electrical insulator. Batteries on the other hand undergo a slow process of converting chemical energy into electricity and last long, though take ages to charge up. Capacitors use no chemical conversion, which is why they charge up a lot quicker and last longer too. Plus, they weigh much less than batteries.

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We’ve come across a few modes of transport that fold up and are powered by electricity before, like the CYOOO bike. Foldable options usually are limited to two-wheelers, though this time, Japan’s Good Design Expo 2010 saw a three-wheeler, foldable and powered by electricity. The contraption, known as the X-Frame Folding Vehicle was designed by the researches at the Nagoya Institute of Technology. This vehicle is adapts to its speed, the terrain and the number of passengers to quickly change its seat shape whenever required. To store, the X-Frame folds up vertically. The uniquely designed rear wheel of the X-Frame stores its battery which can be replaced. So you don’t really need to wait for this one to charge up fully. Just switch a drained out battery for a fully charged on!

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We sure love residence spaces that are as green as possible, ones like the Kona Residence in Hawaii that the guys at Belzberg Architects recently developed. The residency integrates nature and architecture, with a person residing there being given a closer-to-nature experience like never before. The area is divided into pods, each with its own unique view and build-type. And every one of them has a breathtaking view, with the residence situated between cooled lava flows, volcanic mountain ranges and ocean horizons. The residence basically has each of its pods connected to a central axis. The pods include two sleeping pods, a media pod, a master suite and the main living space. All this is powered up by a load of solar panel arrays on the roof. Water supply is from a rainwater collection system that channels the water into drywells. To build the residence, reclaimed teak timber from older barns and train tracks was used for the exterior. The entry pavilion is inspired by basket weaving and reminds one of the presentation traditions of a basket on arrival in Hawaii.

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Subway cars on the Philadelphia subway will do a lot more than just give you those dreadful jerks every time they brake. The energy generated from breaking of these subway cars will now be stored in a high capacity battery, which will be stored and used. The system will be put into place by Viridity Energy which was awarded a grant of a whopping $900,000 by the Pennsylvania Energy Development Authority. The battery will be located near the Market-Frankford Line and the energy stored will be used to power up the trains leaving the station. Surplus will be sold back to the grid for a price. The battery will have a capacity of 1 megawatt and 1.5MW and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA hopes to save up on at least $500,000 a year.

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Tokyo can now proudly flaunt its own solar powered motor-assisted bicycle stand! The newly opened station near Sakura Shinmachi Station on the Tokyu Den-en-toshi Line is the second of its type in the locality. The first one opened up sometime ago near Sakura Josui Station on the Keio Line, and with the stand at Kyodo Station on the Odakyu Line, around 100 motor-assisted bikes can now be rented out, all powered by energy from the sun! For 300 yen a day, users can pick up these bikes. To charge them up, the solar cells at the stands use solar power to charge up some large-capacity Li-ion rechargeable batteries. This energy is then transferred to the bikes Li-ion rechargeable batteries when hooked in.

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Tractors these days are bound to get a greener facelift. Take the New Holland's NH2 tractor, powered up using hydrogen fuel. Tractors as we know them are gasoline huggers, drinking up huge amounts of fuel and creating all the fumes they can manage. This one though is a lot different, and shuns away gasoline to use hydrogen and even solar energy instead. This one produces as much as 130HP and all that drips out of its exhaust pipe is, a bit of water. It has zero-carbon emissions. Also, it chooses to work silently, without all the noise and racket tractors usually create, producing just 55 decibels of sound. With a tank full of 110 liters of hydrogen, the tractor works for a good 1.5 to 2 hours, with a torque of up to 300 Nm. So where does the solar power come in? An electrolyser powered by the sun does the job of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen that is then use to power up the green NH2.

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So your home needs a bit of humidity and you’ve been venting all your weather woes on that silly kitten of yours. Why worry, when you could simply leave your cat to create that required humidity, while you sit back, relax and watch it work! That’s exactly what the Wool Ball Hybrid Humidifier lets you do. All you got to do is, leave the ball shaped concept humidifier in front of your pet, and watch it play while the device creates the required humidity! Designed by Yuan Gu, the Wool Ball Hybrid Humidifier has two operational modes. In one, it connects to the grid to create humidity the normal way. The other mode creates humidity by a roll action. When rolled, it creates a slight sound while the generator juices the battery. The sound entices your pet to play a bit more.

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Southern California will now play home to three new electric vehicles that will do the rounds on the streets soon. We’re talking about three clean, green, electric buses, purchased by Foothill Transit, a public transportation agency serving San Gabriel and Pomona. The buses, EcoRide BE35 models, are all electric and can seat up to 68 passengers each. They charge up in just 10 minutes and will draw juice from two charging stations from Proterra. The buses, also by Proterra, are sure to grab hearts around, with San Antonio already planning for a fleet of its own. 12 more electric buses will be adopted by Foothill Transit later. The buses will be driven around an 8 mile long fixed route at speeds of anywhere near 12mph. this makes their behavior and energy needs pretty predictable, which is why just two charging stations will be set up for now.

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Id&@le Concepts came up with the GUL Two, a solar powered LED kinetic sculpture which now stands on display at the Elemental Gardens stand at Pacific National. The firm’s name sure looks like a swear word to us, but that apart, this sculpture is just as beautiful as it is green. Standing around 260cms tall, the sculpture made of stainless steel integrates leaves that range from 70cms to a whole 120cms and extend to an overall diameter of around 240cms. This steel flower’s petals are fitted with solar panels measuring 10x5cms that soak in the sun to charge up a 4watt battery during the day time. At night, this energy is then used to power up the GUL Two’s LEDs that illuminates and cast a beautiful glow. The GUL Two automatically recognizes the dark and triggers on its pistils, filaments and stamens that glow bright in the night.

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The University of Leicester has finally realized the need for some green in their computer systems and has spent a whopping $3.3 million on upgrades for the same. The University has recently adopted a clean, green environment-friendly and eco-conscious super computer, ALICE (Advanced Leicester Information and Computational Environment), an energy efficient machine. Though green, this one sure isn’t any less a hard worker than its predecessor. Instead it’s ten times more powerful. The system was created by Hewlett Packard and uses a hoard of central processing units to do the work of several PCs. Using a water cooling system to cool its nerves, this one makes sure it doesn’t have the University spend too much on electricity bills while trying to do away with all the heat it generates.

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The United States of America will soon have its road go green, with the advent of electric cars and a whole 1MW load of electric vehicle chargers that will show up by the year 2015. The future sure seems bright for U.S. with public chargers like these showing up in a herd. People obviously would prefer home-based chargers that will juice up their EVs at home at night, though this surely won’t put away the need for public chargers too. More than one million public chargers by the year 2015 will be brought to the United States, all funded by the government that will offer low-fee or free charging for EV users.

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Water polo at the 2012 Olympic Games will be greener than ever, thanks to all the eco-conscious thought put into building the Water Polo Arena. The 5,000-seat venue can be packed up and moved to places whenever required owing to the fact that it is reusable and can be moved around in full or in pieces. The arena was designed by UK-based David Morley Architects and is asymmetrical. The venue will be wrapped in a silver membrane with translucent shard shaped panels and will use a rippling roof made of air-inflated recycled phthalate-free PVC cushions with added insulation and lower condensation levels. This one’s designed to be lightweight so that it can easily be moved around instead of having to build new pools every where.

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Though an e-book is considered to a green alternative to printed newspaper, BenQ intends to make it greener by unveiling a solar powered e-book reader. Unveiled at its 2010 Global Distributors' Meeting, Taiwan, the BenQ K60 e-book reader with a built-in PV power supply will be launched in 2011. Though this product has hit the production stage, the company also lured keen consumers with a solar powered notebook concept. This green notebook is designed with a PV panel built on the external surface of the cover. Hope such a sun-feeding notebook gets a green signal to hit production too!

[DigiTimes]