reinamunciveng: Bamboo Fibre is Stronger and Cheaper than...

reinamunciveng:

Bamboo Fibre is Stronger and Cheaper than Steel– says Dirk Hebel

Bamboo could ‘revoulutinalise the building industry’ and replace steel as the dominant reinforcing material, according to a professor working on new applications for the grass. 

Dirk Hebel is a professor at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH). He said bamboo fibre is more sustainable and is a much cheaper alternative to steel on construction sites. It has the potential to prove an alternative to monopoly of reinforced concrete. 

This material called bamboo composite material can be pressed into any shape and then sawn or sanded like wood. Whilst forming it into rod shape, it can functions just as a reinforcing matrix for concrete with no loss of performance. According to him, “we can produce a material that in terms of tensile capacity is better than steel,” and “our material is only a quarter of the weight of steel.” Apparently, bamboo fibre performs better than steel in terms of strength to weight. It could also be used in industrial applications such as in the automotive industry. 

70% of all steel and 90% of all cement is consumed in developing countries and of these, Hebel found bamboo growing in those areas. Bamboo has high tensile strenght and has actually been long used as a construction material in the developing world as its natural state.Bamboo does not require replanting after harvesting unlike timber  Hebel is suggesting to use it as a way of extracting fibres from the plant and mixing it with 10% organic resin to create mouldable material. One breakthrough happened during the testing of the concrete reinforced with bamboo at a lab in Singapore- the machine was not able to break it! 

Architecture firms like Kengo Kuma and Shigeru Ban have already started experimenting with this material and Vienna-based Penda has developed proposals for bamboo hotels and even entire modular cities made from this material. Since cement products accounts for 50% of all construction materials used globally, alternating to this material can make a huge difference. Even Berkeley University is working on the development of an alternative to concrete that is not based on cement but on a biological based material made of mycelium-material fungi is made of. 

“Can you build high-rises with that material?” he said. “In theory you can but that is not the market we’re talking. Eighty per cent of all structures worldwide are one or two stories. That is our market.”

(source)

So many pictures of material tests.

via Tumblr http://bit.ly/1MU85uM

The Beats by Dre Social Experiment Analysis

So, remember my post about how Beats Studio headphones are actually pretty good, even if they aren't the right fit for a true studio setting, as their name might imply? If not, it's linked above for your perusing.

In any case, while doing my normal YouTube watching routine, I happened upon this video, embedded below, which is I think worth your watching. The hosts of the show take to the streets and do blind and non-blind listening tests with random people.

It would seem as though the hosts expected people to like the Beats when they saw what headphones they were wearing, but dislike them in the blind test.



What they actually found? It turns out that in blind tests, people generally preferred the Beats headphones, while in the non-blind test they preferred the other headphones.

Now, in interest of full disclosure, the alternative headphones used, made by Philips, are not the model of perfect sound accepted by the audiophile community, or anything. They simply offer a relatively flat, studio sound, and are designed for mobile use and fashion. Because of this, they are reasonably similar to the Beats headphones, with the main differences being brand and sound signature.

The hosts want to chalk this up to the noise cancelling of the Beats headphones. While noise cancelling is certainly a factor for the average person, I think there are other factors to account for.

For one thing, the people in the test used their own audio sources, so this creates two different cases in which the Beats headphones would offer the "better" sound.

The first case is the obvious one, which is that the subjects chose to listen to pop or rap music. This isn't a far stretch, being that hip-hop/rap and pop make up nearly all of the modern top 40 music, so there's a statistically high chance that the subjects would be listening to that.

The second case is less obvious, but no less important. The subjects were very unlikely to be in possession of well-recorded lossless files, and were not using a high quality audio interface. They were likely playing lossy .mp3 files or streaming music at low bit-rate. More importantly, they were likely listening to modern music, which is increasingly mixed in compressed resolution, so that even lossless files do not sound "good" on high quality audio interfaces. The sound signature of the Beats headphones actually improves the sound of these low quality files by not pointing out the harshness like a flat, studio headphone does.

A final factor I would consider is the changing sound signature taste in America. Beats joined the subwoofer movement which began in cars (yes, that's right, Beats did not start the bass-head revolution) and brought it into pop culture. Because of this, many people expect more bass out of headphones, and bass is the defining criteria of "good" audio products.

These factors explain why people chose the Beats headphones as sounding better when they were blindfolded, but it doesn't explain why they thought the better headphones were the non-Beats alternative.

The reason behind this is likely that as much as pop culture pushes the Beats brand, pop culture also pushes that Beats sound like garbage. While this may have been true for the first generation Beats Studio headphones, the most recent Beats products have radically different sound signatures, and no longer sound "bad." The problem is, pop culture hasn't caught up with that change, because it's not easy to change the minds of the masses after they've formed an opinion. Beats have been equated with bad sound, and that's not going to be changed easily.

So, with this video in mind, are you willing to give Beats another shot? Do you own a pair of the new Studio or Solo 2 Beats headphones and take a lot of flack and have a hard time convincing people that they actually sound okay? Let me know in the comments.

Console Wars

I checked out both the PS4 and the Xbox One this week, and I have to say that the result of my testing this far has been to skip this console generation.

Source: http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2013/341/d/2/
console_wars_cartoon_by_buddycomics-d6x0wmk.png

The Xbox One undeniably is packaged better. The controller also feels generally better, especially the feel of the triggers. The use of disposable batteries is a drag, though. Also, the Xbox One itself is big and bulky, even including a separate power adaptor. Ain't nobody got time for that. The Xbox One is the far more innovative console, in my opinion (at least initially). I think Kinect, and specifically voice control, could have been a game changing (pun intended) feature. Microsoft's idea of having the Xbox One be the entertainment device was also an innovative idea, even if it doesn't fit into my ecosystem. The user interface is cluttered, and not intuitive, though, and Kinect is no longer bundled with every console, nor did it ever work that easily to begin with. Even if Halo and Titanfall are awesome, the Xbox One isn't worth the price to me.

The PS4 is packaged poorly, but beautiful itself. Bundling the power adaptor into the console was a great move. The controller feels acceptable (good, even) and I like the built in rechargeable battery. Battery life is awful, though, and I can't help but think that the light bar should have been nixed in favor of better battery life (it is dimmable in settings, though, so whatever). The triggers on the controller don't feel that great, though, especially when compared to the triggers on the Xbox One (though, in testing, I didn't hate them). I loved the 3.5mm headphone jack on the controller as much as I thought I would. Navigating audio settings wasn't the most intuitive experience, but I managed. In general, the interface wasn't perfect, but it was much more intuitive and simple than that of the Xbox One. I didn't care for the circle, x, square, triangle button naming scheme, and I never have; I like my A, B, X, Y, but that's a small gripe, and I got used to it quickly. Sony lacks the history of online gaming community that Microsoft has, and they don't have that many exclusive titles that I'm interested in yet. But it's the better gaming console.

Graphics were good on both of the consoles. Granted, I was running them both on my 720p television, so they weren't working too hard, but there's that. I did experience minor graphics hiccoughs on the PS4, but I'm pretty sure that was due to the game I was given to test: Call of Duty Ghosts (not a good game). I tested FIFA 14 on the Xbox One, since that was the game I was given, and had no graphics issues.

I also didn't experience overheating issues on either console. I wasn't terribly worried about it on the Xbox One, since the thing is huge and like 80% fans, but I thought the built in power brick and compact design of the PS4 would be a problem. After a 4 hour online gaming session, however, I didn't notice significant heat.

The thing is, playing both of these games, I never felt like I got much more out of it than I would playing the games on mobile. FIFA 14 is a mobile game. And Call of Duty Ghosts might as well have been Shadowgun: Deadzone for all I cared (generic realistic multiplayer first person shooter). The controller and the big screen are the main differentiators, and Android can use both of those easily (iOS can use controllers, but using a big screen can take some tweaking).

Regardless of all of this, I'm skipping this console generation. At least until Microsoft releases an Xbox One slim. Why you ask? Because neither console (and let's be honest, the Wii U doesn't count as a console in this generation) has everything I'm looking for. The PS4 is a better console, but the Xbox One has the better games for me. For you, things may be different. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Beats Studio Heaphones: Not for Studios, but Still Good

Audio snobbery aside, the equalizer on the Spotify app shows exactly why the new Beats Studio headphones are so popular, and actually not half bad.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GphNpU1V-zU#t=223

To the right is an image that attempts to show the sound profile of these headphones. Understand that this is playing an actual song, so the sound signature isn't exactly like this, but it gives a pretty good idea. Note that this test is performed with the headphones on a microphone, so take that for what it's worth.

As you can see, the latest Studio's bump the bass, and raise the highs, leaving the mids to look a bit saggy. Audiophiles generally hate this kind of non-flat, studio, pure sound.

Source: http://cdn.array.se/
files/2014/07/spotify_eq_ios_dump.jpg

Let's take a quick look at the Spotify equalizer on the left, though. On the rock setting, we see this same type of sound altering, with an increase in bass and treble causing a "scooping" in the mids. Obviously, in the EQ settings, the curve is much more fluid, but it is still extremely similar to the curve we see in the headphone test. This "scooped" curve is also similar to what we see in other EQ settings like R&B, Hip-Hop, Electronic, and even Jazz and Classical to an extent.


Yes, you wouldn't want to use these to record and mix the music in a studio because they have nowhere close to flat sound, but that's not what consumer audio should do. Leonard from Kosmic Sound explains this point in the video below describing studio monitors. Watch from 0:50 to 0:58.

To sum up his point, consumer audio is about taking recorded tracks and making them sound better.

That's what Beats does with their new studios. And they also do it in style and comfort. Are they for everyone and every purpose? No. Are they expensive? Yes. But they are really good for most people and most uses.

All New HTC One (M8) Water Test - Water Resistant?

Turns out that the HTC One is pretty water resistant. Samsung might really be pushing their IP67 certification that they achieved with flaps and rubber, but HTC has achieved essentially the same thing with quality engineering. Yet another reason to be impressed with the HTC One. Now if they could just improve their camera...