A student from Quebec, Canada, has stumbled on the find of a lifetime at the shockingly young age of 15: a long-missing Mayan city, tracked down using star maps. William Gadoury was following a theory that star-obsessed Mayans built towns in layouts that aligned with their constellations, arranging cities below along the same lines as stars above. Looking at star maps, he found a set of three cities where one, he theorized, was missing (two parts of a three-star constellation). He began exploring satellite images of the area in the Yucatan jungle, coming eventually across what appear to be large man-made shapes visible under the forest cover.

Canadian Space Agency scientist Daniel De Lisle, who has worked with satellite images for over 20 years, said the city was likely lost because the jungle is dense in that location. De Lisle said, “There are linear features that would suggest there is something underneath that big canopy. There are enough items to suggest it could be a man-made structure.” Geography professor Dr. Armand La Rocque agreed, with the assessment, suggesting the unnatural square shape may be the base of a pyramid, and pointing out adjacent lines that seem to show a street network.

Gadoury, as its discoverer, is calling the city K’aak Chi, which translates to Mouth of Fire. A scientific journey will publish his findings. Sooner or later, it is expected that archaeologists will travel to the location he identified to see what the shapes are up close, and perhaps discover a few more answers about the mysterious ancient civilization and how they positioned their cities.

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A startup is turning New York City waste receptacles into sources of free street-level, solar-powered internet in addition to their current capabilities, which include signalling for a pickup when the garbage is filling up or starting to smell.

The city already has over 100 smart bins from Bigbelly waste management that are each able to relay information about their status wirelessly, so adding this functionality is a natural next step, particularly in dense areas where signals have limited range (as they can’t pass through tall buildings).

The connected system has all kinds of potential growth paths, including public alerts and data collection for the city government. If a waste space seems like a strange place to find such things, consider the necessary ubiquity of such systems – it is really only natural to turn something on every street corner more functional.

Another initiative to turn pay phones into Wi-Fi hubs is also underway. Meanwhile, Bigbelly is glad to be pushing in new directions: “We are a smart solar-powered, connected technology platform that is literally sitting in the streets of New York. We are exactly where the people are.”

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A fresh iteration on a previous prototype, this latest version of the Halfbike, like its predecessor, offers a more compact way to cycle through the city and uses your movements to turn quickly in bike or pedestrian traffic. Handlebars are still a means of support and indirectly a way to pivot, but it is the user’s body weight that makes the motion happen.

So why Half when you could just Bike (or walk)? “The standing rider position is very close to walking. It allows the rider to control the Halfbike using his or her whole body instead of just the hands like on a bicycle. Furthermore, the spine stays straight and the chest is not constrained between your hands like it is on a bike, which makes using the full capacity of your lungs easier.” It is also great for car trunks that might not have full-bike space.”

The handlebars fold down to make the entire unit more compact, allowing you to carry it or roll it along easily on its back wheels like luggage. The learning curve is supposedly not too steep and the mode of turning relatively intuitive, but it may still take some time to get a feel for the ride. Each vehicle is hand-built by the company, though presumably this will change if they get sufficient market traction.

More on the design inspiration and half-biking experience: “We took the core driving mechanism of a classical bicycle (a wheel connected to a crankset) but redesigned pretty much everything else. The result – a vehicle that trains your balance and reflexes in a new way. Not only on a physical level but it also affects the way you perceive movement and enhances your senses. The standing rider position is essential for the Halfbike. It brings you closer to natural walking and it’s the only way to control the vehicle with your whole body and not just your hands. Halfbike is a sort of an extension to the body that allows a smooth and intuitive ride.”

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A lovely design from concept to execution, these silent-running wind power generators are designed to look like abstract trees, combining elements of sculptural art and sustainable energy creation.

With the rustling of leaves in mind, New Wind has been developing this design to work with low-cost materials and modular parts that can be packed into boxes then shipped to and assembled on sites around the world.

For now, prototypes have gone up in Paris to gauge public reaction but so far opinions are positive: these don’t exhibit the same tacky fakery found in semi-camouflaged cell towers, managing to look nice while remaining clearly artificial. Additionally, the distribution of power generation (described below) makes the entire system run quietly so as not to add to urban noise.

Aesthetics aside, the technology is quite ingenious: tiny blades turn inside each ‘leaf’, in turn feeding power back into the branches, trunk and ultimately nearby lights, wifi stations and/or other things needing electric power (much in the same way a leaf in nature generates energy and feeds it back into the rest of a plant.

The post A Leaf on the Wind: Urban Turbines Look Like Artful Trees first appeared on Gajitz.