Hotelicopter (hotel + helicopter)

Flying helicopter hotel

This Soviet-made Mil V-12 has been extended and redesigned into a flying 5-star hotel. This summer the ‘Hotelicopter’ will host 18 guests on a 14 day roundtrip tour that includes New York, Charleston, Freeport, Montego Bay, Santo Domingo, Nassau, Miami and Charlotte. There are California and European tours planned for July, and this whopper of a chopper is available to be rented out for parties (celebrity weddings, perhaps?).

Space station now has full power capability

Unrolling of Space Station solar wings.

Friday, March 20th  saw the commissioning of the International Space Station’s fourth pair of solar arrays. This completes the the solar power array installation.

The solar wings were delivered to the ISS by the Discovery shuttle and installed by its astronauts with the help of the Canadian designed Canadarm2 robotic arm.

The station’s arrays can now produce up to 120 kilowatts of electricity, nearly doubling the power available for scientific experiments - from 15kW to 30kW.

“It’s just really amazing,” commented Mike Fincke, the space station’s commander. He said there was “a shout of triumph” from astronauts aboard the linked station-shuttle complex once the two wings were fully extended.

The installation work took spacewalking astronautsRichard Arnold and Steve Swanson just over six hours to complete.

The entire ISS backbone is now 102 meters long, and the space station is nearly 80% complete.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7956332.stm

Spacewalking astronaut Richard Arnold helps connect the new solar arrays

Stem-Cell Repair Kit for Strokes

A novel matrix of neural stem cells and biodegradable polymer PLGA developed at the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London can quickly repair brain damage from stroke in rats, growing new nerve tissue to fill stroke-induced cavities in just seven days.

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22263/?a=f

Posted by - at 12.3.09

Thanks to Bill Barry at ubervidabasecamp

Digital Divide Data (DDD)

Digital Divide Data (DDD) is a social enterprise bridging the divide that separates young people from opportunity in Cambodia and Laos by providing disadvantaged youth with:

The education and training they need to deliver world-class, competitively priced IT services to global clients and acquire the essential business skills that help them break the cycle of poverty.

DDD is an innovative, internationally acclaimed non-profit organization that operates with a strong business model and has already generated more than $2.5million in revenues.

Their focus on economic sustainability allows us to reinvest our profits in social and economic programs that deliver lasting change for our employees and their communities. Over the past six years, DDD have trained more than 1000 people with marketable skills, and more than 200 of their staff have graduated from entry-level jobs to employment opportunities that earn them six times the average income in Cambodia.

UltraFuture is seeking partners to develop similar programs in developing economies and regions such as northeastern and southwestern China. To learn more, please contact info@ultrafutureworld.com

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