Dubai 2014 firework display breaks world record: Guinness

DUBAI: Dubai shattered the world record for the largest ever pyrotechnic display on New Year’s Eve with a show involving more than half a million fireworks, Guinness World Records said Wednesday.

“Ten months in planning, over 500,000 fireworks were used during the  display which lasted around six minutes, with Guinness World Records  adjudicators on hand to confirm that a new record had been set,” the Guinness  website said.

The display spanned 94 kilometres (58.4 miles) of the Dubai coast, which  boasts an archipelago of man-made islands and Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest  tower, Guinness said.

Enough fireworks were launched in the first minute of the display to break  the previous record, set by Kuwait in 2011 with an hour-long show of 77,282  fireworks.

The main displays took place at Burj Khalifa and the luxurious Atlantis  hotel located in Palm Jumeirah, one of three palm-shaped islands.

US firm Fireworks by Grucci designed the display, Guinness said, using 100  computers and 200 technicians to synchronise the pyrotechnics at a reported  cost of around $6 million (4.3 million euros).

Dubai boasts the world’s tallest tower, its largest man-made island and one  of the world’s busiest airports. 

It set its latest record in May last year with Dubai, Princess Tower,  recorded by Guinness as the world’s tallest residential building.

Dubai has been vying to become a permanent fixture on the world map of New  Year celebrations, staging spectacular shows since the opening of the 828-metre  (2,716-foot) Burj Khalifa tower in 2010. AFP

Fireworks explode from the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest tower, in Dubai on January 1, 2014 to celebrate the new year. Dubai kicked off New Year with a dazzling bid for a new world record to cap those the Gulf city state already holds for its mammoth property developments. The glittering fireworks display that lasted around six minutes spanned over 100 kilometres (60 miles) of the Dubai coast, which boasts an archipelago of man-made islands and Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest tower. 

Huge Basket Headquarters

A basket company called Longaberger in Newark, US, looks like this!The Longaberger corporate headquarters on State Route 16 is a local landmark and a well-known example of novelty architecture, since it takes the shape of their biggest seller, the "Medium Market Basket". The seven story, 180,000 square foot building opened in 1997. The basket handles weigh almost 150 tons and can be heated during cold weather to prevent ice damage.

Most beautiful Piano House -China

The Piano House located in Huainan City, An Hui Province, China. It contains a transparent violin and a piano building. Inside the violin, there is staircase toward the piano house upstairs.
This building built for music lovers acts as a performance and practicing place to music students from the local college in Huainan City, east China. It also displays various city plans and development prospects in an effort to draw interest into the recently developed area.

The Piano House is in Huainan, Anhui province, China. It serves as the local urban planning exhibition hall for the developing region, and is a tourist attraction in its own right.

This architectural innovation makes a pretty cool house, but one with little privacy given the unique appeal. People just have to see this cool house and amazing architecture. There is an escalator inside the glass cello entrance that takes one up to the main part of the house – the piano itself. However, this is not a private house, so its public appeal is very much a purposeful attempt to draw attention. The building displays various city plans and development prospects in an effort to draw interest into the recently developed area.

List of tallest buildings and structures in the world

The world's tallest man-made structure is the 829.8 m (2,722 ft) tall Burj Khalifa in Dubai,United Arab Emirates. The building gained the official title of "Tallest Building in the World" at its opening on January 4, 2010.

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, an organization that certifies buildings as the "World’s Tallest", recognizes a building only if at least fifty percent of its height is made up of floor plates containing habitable floor area. Structures that do not meet this criterion, such as the CN Tower, are defined as "towers".

There are dozens of radio and television broadcasting towers which measure over 600 metres (about 2,000 ft) in height, and only the tallest are recorded in publicly available information sources.

Category	Structure	Country	City	Height (metres)	Height (feet)	Year Built	Coordinates
Skyscraper	Burj Khalifa	United Arab Emirates	Dubai	829.8	2,722	2010	25°11′50.0″N55°16′26.6″E
Self supporting tower	Tokyo Sky Tree	Japan	Tokyo	634	2,080	2011	35°42′36.5″N139°48′39″E
Guyed Mast	KVLY-TV mast	United States	Blanchard	628.8	2,063	1963	47°20′31.85″N97°17′21.13″W
Clock building	Abraj Al Bait Towers	Saudi Arabia	Mecca	601	1,972	2011	21°25′08″N39°49′35″E
Mast radiator	Lualualei VLF transmitter	United States	Lualualei	458	1,503	1962	21°25′11.87″N158°08′53.67″W ; 21°25′13.38″N158°09′14.35″W
Twin towers	Petronas Twin Towers	Malaysia	Kuala Lumpur	452	1,482	1998	3°09′27.45″N101°42′40.7″E; 3°09′29.45″N101°42′43.4″E
Chimney	Ekibastuz GRES-2 Power Station	Kazakhstan	Ekibastusz	419.7	1,377	1987	52°1′26.3″N75°28′34.5″E
Radar	Dimona Radar Facility	Israel	Dimona	400	1,312	2008	30°58′6.93″N35°05′49.64″E ; 30°58′32.46″N35°05′55.25″E
Lattice tower	Kiev TV Tower	Ukraine	Kiev	385	1,263	1973	50°28′16.49″N30°27′11.97″E
Electricity pylon	Zhoushan Island Overhead Powerline Tie	China	Damao	370	1,214	2009	29°56′2.78″N122°2′10.12″E ; 29°54′41.39″N122°1′26.38″E
Partially guyed tower	Gerbrandy Tower	Netherlands	IJsselstein	366.8	1,203	1961	52°00′36.24″N05°03′12.87″E
Guyed tubular steel mast	TV Tower Vinnytsia	Ukraine	Vinnytsia	354	1,161	1961	49°14′30.04″N28°25′25.25″E
Bridge pillar	Millau Viaduct	France	Millau	342	1,122	2004	44°05′09.97″N03°01′17.94″E
Meteorological tower	Obninsk Meteorological tower	Russia	Obninsk	315	1034	1958	55°06′42″N36°35′34″E
Blaw-Knox Tower	Lakihegy Tower	Hungary	Szigetszentmiklós-Lakihegy	314	1,031	1933, 1968	47°22′23″N19°00′16″E
Dam	Nurek Dam	Tajikistan	Nurek	300	984	1980	38°22′17.09″N69°20′53.57″E
Concrete dam	Grande Dixence Dam	Switzerland	Val d'Hérens	285	935	1965	46°4′49.89″N7°24′13.13″E
Minaret	Hassan II Mosque	Morocco	Casablanca	210	689	1993	33°36′28.71″N7°37′58.16″W
Wind turbine	Two on lattice towers	Poland	Nowy Tomyśl	210	689	2012
Cooling tower	Niederaussem Power Station	Germany	Niederaussem	200	656	2003	50°59′45.91″N6°40′16.79″E
Monument	Gateway Arch	United States	St. Louis	192	630	1965	38°37′28.62″N90°11′5.87″W
Water tower	Main tower of Kuwait Towers	Kuwait	Kuwait City	187	614	1979	29°23′22.75″N48°00′11.57″E
Wooden structure	ATLAS-I at Kirtland Air Force Base	United States	Albuquerque	180	600	1980	35.029898°N 106.557574°W

YEE flying car concept

YEE is an ingenious vehicle that is capable of transforming into a flying machine instantly. Simply by upturning the front wheels sideways and rear wheels to the outside back, this interesting concept vehicle would take you away from a hectic traffic jam. The concept car has been envisioned to be powered by solar panels spread over its roof.

 

 Three Chinese students from South China University of Technology(SCUT), Jiazhe Pan, Lai and Zhu Wenxi Zexin devised the concept YEE, a flying car, simply. They have created a concept car that can evolve on land and in the air.

For land mode, the wings are folded down and through the small wheels at their ends. Note the flying car has only two “real “ rear wheels.

Although the concept YEE has won the “Gold Award for Best Creative Future ” in Beijing, it is obviously impossible to achieve as presented in the current state of our technologies.

Eiffel Tower construction..

 The Eiffel Tower is an iron lattice tower located in Paris, named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Erected in 1889 as the entrance arch to the 1889 World's Fair, it has become both a global cultural icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world. The tower is the tallest structure in Paris and the most-visited paid monument in the world; 7.1 million people ascended it in 2011. The third level observatory's upper platform is at 279.11 m the highest accessible to public in the European Union and the highest in Europe as long as the platform of the Ostankino Tower, at 360 m, remains closed as a result of the fire of August 2000. The tower received its 250 millionth visitor in 2010.

The tower stands 320 metres (1,050 ft) tall, about the same height as an 81-storey building. During its construction, the Eiffel Tower surpassed the Washington Monument to assume the title of the tallest man-made structure in the world, a title it held for 41 years, until the Chrysler Building in New York City was built in 1930. However, because of the addition, in 1957, of the antenna atop the Eiffel Tower, it is now taller than the Chrysler Building. 

The tower has three levels for visitors. Tickets can be purchased to ascend, by stairs or lift(elevator), to the first and second levels. The walk from ground level to the first level is over 300 steps, as is the walk from the first to the second level. The third and highest level is accessible only by lift - stairs exist but they are not usually open for public use. Both the first and second levels feature restaurants.

Construction

No more than three hundred workers were employed on site, and because Eiffel took safety precautions, including the use of movable stagings, guard-rails and screens, only one man died during construction.At first the legs were constructed as cantilevers but about halfway to the first level construction was paused in order to construct a substantial timber scaffold. This caused a renewal of the concerns about the structural soundness of the project, and sensational headlines such as "Eiffel Suicide!" and "Gustave Eiffel has gone mad: he has been confined in an Asylum" appeared in the popular press. At this stage a small "creeper" crane was installed in each leg, designed to move up the tower as construction progressed and making use of the guides for the lifts which were to be fitted in each leg. The critical stage of joining the four legs at the first level was complete by March 1888. Although the metalwork had been prepared with the utmost precision, provision had been made to carry out small adjustments in order to precisely align the legs: hydraulic jacks were fitted to the shoes at the base of each leg, each capable of exerting a force of 800 tonnes, and in addition the legs had been intentionally constructed at a slightly steeper angle than necessary, being supported by sandboxes on the scaffold.Work on the foundations started in January 1887. Those for the east and south legs were straightforward, each leg resting on four 2 m (6.6 ft) concrete slabs, one for each of the principal girders of each leg but the other two, being closer to the river Seine were more complicated: each slab needed two piles installed by using compressed-air caissons 15 m (49 ft) long and 6 m (20 ft) in diameter driven to a depth of 22 m (72 ft) to support the concrete slabs, which were 6 m (20 ft) thick. Each of these slabs supported a block built of limestone each with an inclined top to bear a supporting shoe for the ironwork. Each shoe was anchored into the stonework by a pair of bolts 10 cm (4 in) in diameter and 7.5 m (25 ft) long. The foundations were complete by 30 June and the erection of the ironwork began. The very visible work on-site was complemented by the enormous amount of exacting preparatory work that was entailed: the drawing office produced 1,700 general drawings and 3,629 detailed drawings of the 18,038 different parts needed. The task of drawing the components was complicated by the complex angles involved in the design and the degree of precision required: the position of rivet holes was specified to within 0.1 mm (0.04 in) and angles worked out to one second of arc. The finished components, some already riveted together into sub-assemblies, arrived on horse-drawn carts from the factory in the nearby Parisian suburb of Levallois-Perret and were first bolted together, the bolts being replaced by rivets as construction progressed. No drilling or shaping was done on site: if any part did not fit it was sent back to the factory for alteration. In all there were 18,038 pieces joined by two and a half million rivets.

DESIGN OF THE TOWER

Material

The puddled iron (wrought iron) structure of the Eiffel Tower weighs 7,300 tonnes, while the entire structure, including non-metal components, is approximately 10,000 tonnes. As a demonstration of the economy of design, if the 7,300 tonnes of the metal structure were melted down it would fill the 125-meter-square base to a depth of only 6 cm (2.36 in), assuming the density of the metal to be 7.8 tonnes per cubic meter  Depending on the ambient temperature, the top of the tower may shift away from the sun by up to 18 cm (7.1 in) because of thermal expansion of the metal on the side facing the sun.

Straddling Bus

 A company in the southern Chinese town of Shenzhen has done Tried designing a vehicle that takes up no road space. And make it partly solar powered.  To address the country’s problems with traffic and air quality, Shenzhen Huashi Future Parking Equipment has developed a decidedly odd-looking, extra-wide and extra-tall vehicle that can carry up to 1,200 passengers.

Though it is called the “straddling bus,” Huashi’s invention resembles a train in many respects — but it requires neither elevated tracks nor extensive tunneling. Its passenger compartment spans the width of two traffic lanes and sits high above the road surface, on a pair of fence like stilts that leave the road clear for ordinary cars to pass underneath. It runs along a fixed route.

Huashi Future Parking’s outsize invention — six meters, or about 20 feet, wide — is to be powered by a combination of municipal electricity and solar power derived from panels mounted on the roofs of the vehicles and at bus stops.

A pilot project for the vehicle is in the works in Beijing, and several other Chinese cities have shown interest.

The company says the vehicle — which will travel at an average speed of 40 kilometers an hour, or about 25 m.p.h. — could reduce traffic jams by 25 to 30 percent on main routes.

The straddling bus could replace up to 40 conventional buses, potentially saving the 860 tons of fuel that 40 buses would consume annually, and preventing 2,640 tons of carbon emissions, said Youzhou Song, the vehicle’s designer.

The cost of construction — 50 million renminbi, or $7.4 million, for one bus and about 25 miles of route facilities — is roughly one-tenth what it costs to build a subway of the same length, he said.

World's first bionic man worth $1 mn

 The world's first bionic man Rex, created using nearly $1 million-worth of state-of-the-art limbs and organs - synthetic blood from Sheffield University, prosthetic legs and ankle from MIT, retinas from Oxford University, artificial kidneys, pancreas and spleensfrom University College London and artificial lungs from Swansea was unveiled at London's Science Museum on Thursday.

'Rex', a two metre tall artificial human, is displayed at the Science Museum in central London on February 5, 2013. The British robotics designers claim it is the world's first completebionic man, featuring artificial organs as well as fully functioning limbs. It will be on public display until March 11.

Rex is a mixture of Robocop and Frankenstein, Rex - who has the face of a man is 6.5-feet tall with striking brown eyes.

He was jointly built with the help of over 18 companies and universities and for the first time gives tangible hope that replacing body parts with man-made alternatives can finally be possible.

The 640,000 GBP (1 million US dollars) humanoid has a distinctly human shape and boasts prosthetic limbs, a functional artificial blood circulatory system complete with artificial blood, as well as an artificial pancreas, kidney, spleen and trachea. Rex has a distinctly human shape and boasts prosthetic limbs.

In the two centuries since Mary Shelley's Dr Frankenstein brought a 'monster' to life, the subject has fascinated science fiction in books, comics, film and TV. Now research on advanced prosthetic arms and legs, as well as artificial eyes, hearts, lungs - and even hybrids between computer chips and living brains - means that scientists are finally able to replace body parts and even improve on human abilities.

The project involves Bertolt Meyer, a social psychologist from Switzerland who has a bionic hand himself. He met scientists working at the cutting edge of research to find out just how far this new technology can go.

Bertolt has had prosthetic hands since he was a child. His new £30,000 bionic hand, which can grasp and twist, is the most advanced on the market. But technology is moving so fast that Bertolt's bionic hand could soon be obsolete.

A far more advanced arm is being developed, the product of more than $100 million-worth of research into bionic limbs, funded by the US military. Bertolt visited Michael McLoughlin at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory to try out the latest prototype - the Modular Prosthetic Limb (MPL).