Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Remember the last time you reached into the fridge for the milk, anticipating a full–and therefore heavy–carton, but someone drank the last of the moo and carelessly left the container behind, so you misjudged the amount of effort needed to lift the damn thing and nearly flung the empty across the room? There’s an established expectation of weight and mass associated with certain forms–like opaque milk jugs–and materials can have that same effect. Take concrete, for example: Seeing the mainstay of modernism and Brutalist staple is like a visual shorthand for substantial, solid construction. But what if the concrete were disguised in plain sight, taking on the essence of something else entirely?

German designers Miriam Aust and Sebastian Amelung’s Like Paper collection re-imagines concrete’s potential, casting it in forms that appear casually crumpled and crinkled, but are in fact the result of a year-and-a-half-long development process to achieve that surprising lightness of being.

Amelung had previously performed a series of similar experiments for his Rund Um Beton series–“Around Concrete” in German–to create incredibly smooth, incredibly thin, supremely fragile prototypes that were completely hollow inside. He and Aust adapted a rotation-molding method of production to suit the new pendants. “The idea was to use this synthetic stone to build something controversial that looks filigreed, and flexible like paper,” Aust tells Co.Design. “The more we understood the concrete, the more possibilities we found to shape the final design. It was like a discussion between us and the material.”

The resulting shades each weigh a bit over a pound, and ultimately their thickness hints at the material trickery. And the project actually recalls Folded, the ceramic tiles that London-based studio Raw Edges made a few years back for Mutina, a company that has consistently transformed the way we see surfaces (just take a look at how soft Patricia Urquiola’s stunning Déchirer looks, when in reality it’s hard tile). It is also reminiscent of Victor Vetterlein’s Trash Me lamp, which turns the concept upside down–the concrete-lookin’ light is actually made of egg crates. It seems we’ll never cease to be intrigued by things that defy and confound the norm.

Five months ago, WXY Architecture + Urban Design’s plan to transform a four-mile-stretch of the East River into public parkland was a commendable story about the city’s changing public park systems. Today, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, their East River Blueway is a critical project, a model for how New York will plan for a future wracked by mega-storms and rising tides.

WXY began work on the Blueway design back in 2011, the same year Mayor Bloomberg unveiled a sweeping plan to transform 500 miles of deindustrialized New York coastline into parkland. Backed by local community groups and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, the Blueway calls for the creation of a winding green thread of beaches, wetlands, and pedestrian bridges and paths that hug Manhattan’s eastern edge, a notoriously pedestrian-unfriendly stretch of land that’s overshadowed by the Brooklyn Bridge, Williamsburg Bridge, and FDR Drive at different moments. “The Blueway really puts the emphasis on the approach from the water,” WXY Principal Claire Weisz told me over the phone. “The design examines the environmental and social value of the East River to communities along the waterfront.” The project’s tagline? “River to the people.”

The challenge with transforming this tricky sliver of land into usable public space is twofold. Even on a clear day, the East River is finicky and fast–not an ideal body of water for public use. And when it floods, it rises rapidly and without much warning, putting nearby housing developments in danger. The solution to both issues deals with what Weisz describes as “soft edges,” a term that refers to design elements that can slow the river’s currents and withstand powerful storm surges. On the Blueway, soft edges come in the form of salt-resistant marshlands, sandy beaches, and bulkheads that reduce wave action. A series of tidal pools will keep kids away from the rapid currents while keeping surges at bay during storms.

The Blueway will cost millions of dollars and take several years to get under way, but as Weisz noted, Hurricane Sandy has served as a wake-up call both for New Yorkers and their city government–on February 7, Stringer pledged $3.5 million to the project. “Sandy made it possible to explain the things we feel need to happen, like soft edges and reducing wave action, that deal with protecting neighborhoods but also help to mitigate storm damage,” Weisz added. “The social side of infrastructure is becoming more and more urgent as our infrastructure gets more dilapidated and our climate gets more erratic.”

Subway stations are great places for art, commissioned or otherwise. The anxieties of a bustling platform, the boredom of waiting for a delayed train, or even the drudgery of another day’s commute–all can be soothed, or at least temporarily smoothed over, by a well-placed placard with something nice to look at. Renowned artist Mark Wallinger recently finished a new collection of soon-to-be-subterranean pieces to celebrate the London Underground’s 150th anniversary, though their subject matter is somewhat at odds with the whole idea behind these modern marvels of efficiency in the first place. By the end of this summer, at every one of London’s 270 Tube stations, passengers will be able to take a few seconds to contemplate a tiny maze.

The project is part of the ongoing Art on the Underground program, and it’s the largest-ever commission of its kind. For the full set, Wallinger created 270 different labyrinths, one for every stop. The first 10 of the series are being installed this week; the rest will follow in coming months. Once they’re up, each two-foot-by-two-foot piece will be a permanent part of the station in which it’s posted.

“The journeys we take on the Underground are unique to each of us,” Wallinger said in a statement accompanying the project’s debut. “I hope Labyrinth can perhaps reflect that individual yet universal experience.” And in a sense, the maze is the perfect thing to capture that dynamic. Each will be instantly recognizable as such–like the ones you’ll find in any kids’ activity book, they’re nothing more than ordered clusters of black and white lines–though every passerby will have the opportunity to navigate the lines on their own, be it superficially, from a distance, or up-close, scrupulously following their path with a finger.

From the initial pieces, it seems like some will be easier to complete than others. The puzzle for Embankment station is a straightforward spiral to the center. The thin-lined Oxford Circus labyrinth offers a significantly greater challenge, with some potential wrong turns and dead ends thrown into the mix. But for all the pieces, the magic only exists so long as the works stay pristine. Hopefully, the city’s transportation officials have a plan for dealing with the inevitable product of the first drunken ass who happens to encounter one of these with a Sharpie.

Josh Tolan is the CEO of Spark Hire, a video-powered hiring network that connects job seekers and employers through video resumes and online interviews. Connect with him and Spark Hire on Facebook and Twitter.

You’ve researched the company and practiced your interview answers. What else is there to worry about? Unfortunately, many candidates flub their interview attire and make themselves undesirable hires in the process. Here are some of the worst fashion horror stories and what you can learn before you suit up for your next job interview:

You’re Not an Employee Yet

Companies come in all different shapes and sizes — and all different levels of formality. One of the biggest mistakes job seekers make is to show up for the interview dressed like an employee instead of a candidate.

“Since we’re a casual work environment with no dress code, we occasionally get the candidate that matches our attire and it comes off as overly presumptuous, overconfident or just plain sloppy,” said August Nielsen, HR Manager of Veterans United Home Loans.

Instead, you should dress for a job at least one rung on the career ladder above the one for which you’re applying. This will be highly impressive to your interviewer and show just how seriously you’re taking this opportunity. Plus, it will convey the message to your potential employer that you’re interested in moving up and bettering yourself.

“I also interviewed a guy that wore old tennis shoes with a suit. What was that all about?” Nielsen wondered. “They weren’t even new tennis shoes.”

Remember, the interview is not the right moment to try out a quirky new style. You’re not Mark Zuckerberg, and hoodies or old tennis shoes won’t make an impressive interview statement.

You Forgot Your Pants

A recent survey showed six out of ten companies use video interviews in the hiring process. So, chances are, you’ll have one — and you can’t afford to think the video interview is somehow less formal than a face-to-face meeting — it’s not.

Just because the interviewer is looking directly at your top half doesn’t mean you can ignore what you wear below the waist.

“We had a candidate who was very impressive from the waist up,” said Sandi Webster, Principal for Consultants 2 Go. “However, he had to run to his printer for a sheet we had sent and he was wearing pajama bottoms.”

It’s important to dress exactly as you would for any in-person meeting. While video interviewing provides the luxury of interviewing from home, you should still present yourself as if you’re going to the office. Not only does it help you avoid the pajama debacle, but also it helps give you a psychological edge. If you’re dressed for the part, you’ll be more likely to act the part, as well.

You’re Repping Other Companies

Because your clothes tell a story about your candidacy, if you don’t pay attention to the small details, employers will think you’ll miss the big picture on the job as well.

“If you’re interviewing at LL Bean, don’t wear J. Crew. If you’re interviewing at CNA Insurance, please don’t carry a portfolio emblazoned with the Prudential logo,” said Lida Citroen, branding specialist and founder of LIDA360. “These small missteps make the interviewer question your attention to detail and commitment to going the extra mile for the job.”

Instead, keep things neutral. It’s good practice to stay away from loud prints or company logos altogether, which might be a distraction anyway. So, swap your branded briefcase for a plain case to avoid any issues.

You Didn’t Check the Thermometer

Job interviews make many candidates extremely nervous. If you live in a hot climate or your interview is during a hot summer day, this can be a recipe for a sweaty disaster.

Resume writer and career counselor Gaye Weintraub remembers a job candidate who showed up for the job interview with professional attire that was too tight, and he had giant sweat stains under his arms.

“While he dressed appropriately for his interview, it was difficult to get past the sweat stains and his unbelievably red face. I felt sorry for him, which is not the type of reaction any job seeker wants from an interviewer,” Weintraub said.

It’s important not to forget you are only human, and the combination of nerves and raising temperatures can be lethal. Instead, Weintraub advises candidates to bring an extra shirt along if the temperatures rise and the candidate is prone to sweating. This way, job seekers can change in a nearby bathroom before the interview and appear fresh and ready for the actual meeting.

“I tell my clients that it takes an interviewer only a few seconds to form an opinion of them. It is imperative that when they walk into the room, they are well-groomed, well-dressed, smell nice and have a smile,” Weintraub said.

You Treated the Interview Like a Tailgate

You want to dress for your interview, not for your next social engagement. Catherine Bell, former fashion designer and President of PRIME Impressions tells the story of how a man showed up for a mass interview for Sears wearing shorts and a sleeveless tank top. To top it all off, he was also holding an open can of beer in his hand.

“He obviously had another agenda outside of landing a job that day,” Bell said.

Carving out time in your hectic life for an interview can be tough, especially if you already have a job keeping you busy. It’s important, however, to focus all your attention on the interview at hand, instead of what else you have going on for the rest of the day. Turn off your mobile devices so nothing will beep, vibrate or chirp during your interview. And if you’re planning on tailgating after your interview, leave the drinks in the cooler.

If you can avoid some of these fashion pitfalls, you’ll be able to impress hiring managers with your appearance, so what you wear doesn’t detract from what you say.

What are some of the worst job-interview fashion mistakes you’ve seen? Share in the comments.

Cheap chemical pesticides are expert at wiping out millions of insects with a few hundreds dollars worth of chemicals. Yet as the health and environmental costs of pesticides mounts, and resistance against pesticides is on the rise after decades of chemical warfare in the fields, the equation is looking a little different.

Hence renewed interest in biopesticides. Harnessing the armory nature has given to bacteria, fungi, and even other plants allows researchers to redirect the sophisticated strategies species have evolved over millions of years to protect crops in the field.

An estimated 80% of the treated insects died within one to three weeks.

Fungi, in particular, have proven to be agricultural mercenaries. Applied at the right time, with the right treatment, fungal spores can cut down armies of insects–such as the application of “Green Muscle” over 10,000 hectares in Tanzania in 2009. Trillions of specialized fugal cells called “conidia” from the fungus Metarhizium anisopliae, were sprayed in solution of mineral oil to weaken the locusts devouring crops in East and Southern Africa. An estimated 80% of the treated insects died within one to three weeks. Other animals were unharmed. And the biopesticide (developed through a public-private partnership among governments and aid donors) continued working: the fungus infected new locusts until the population crashed (compared to the repeated applications required by chemical pesticides).

Still, the problem is one of costs. Biopesticides may be cheaper overall, but the cost the farmer sees is the price on the bottle. There, chemicals have an edge: the Green Muscle application cost $17 per hectare compared to $12 for conventional chemicals. Much of the cost was in the production of the fungal spores themselves.

Now researchers have discovered a technique to radically change that equation. A new approach developed by U.S. Department of Agriculture scientists brews the biopesticide with “liquid culture fermentation,” versus conventional methods using expensive nitrogen source (typically derived from agricultural commodities like milk casein at $6 pound). The fermentation can use less expensive sources such as soybean flour or cottonseed meal at 30 to 50 cents a pound to produce the fungus.

The next step is commercialization. In the case of the Green Muscle, “most of the project’s impact is still to be felt,” reports the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. More than 10 years after developing a useful product, the project will likely take another decade or more to become widely adopted. “This is because the eventual level of sales of Green Muscle depends on the correction of the market failure whereby the human and environmental health costs of spraying chemical pesticides are not charged to the purchaser,” says the report. Or perhaps just a cheaper product.

Food for thought: If you gave a million monkeys a million typewriters and a bunch of cigarettes and coffee, or however that thing goes, they’d not only produce the works of Shakespeare but all sorts of bizarro versions of Shakespeare’s plays, too. Eventually, they’d come up with what Shakespeare’s plays would have been like if Shakespeare had, in fact, been Sir Francis Bacon, and they’d come up with a wacky take on Hamlet in which the hero’s father came back not as a ghost but a vampire. At some point along the way, they’d write a set of Star Wars prequels that weren’t so awful.

Why? Because infinity begets inevitability, or so the reasoning behind the theorem goes. The monkeys aren’t working toward Othello; they just happen upon it at some point during their eternal, unyielding keyboard-bashing. And in much the same way, though in a slightly more orderly fashion, a recent project by the Nebraska-based artist Jeff Thompson will eventually live up to its name and produce Every Possible Photograph. Not just every photograph ever taken, mind you, but every photograph conceivable (including many you’d never think to conceive in the first place).

Thompson arrived at the idea after spending some time thinking about the slippery, subjective matter of what makes for “good” art and how he might remove himself from the process of creating it. Essentially, he says, he wanted to cede control of “the decisions that we think of traditionally as the provence of the artist,” considerations like color, composition, and form. Short a monkey, he wrote some code to take the reins.

Thompson’s program spits out between 200 and 300 new images every second, each a slight, pixel-level permutation of the last. The output may not look like much–above, it’s visualized as a wall-size projection of tiny, flickering thumbnails–but eventually it will produce every photographic masterpiece ever captured.

Well, not exactly. In deference to some vanishingly small semblance of practicality, Thompson limited his endeavor to a grayscale palette on a 15-by-10 pixel canvas. “Even this version will take approximately 46,138,562,195, 008,110,600,774,753,760, 087,749,172,181,189,607,929, 628,058,548,517, 099,604,563,033,706,075 years to complete,” he explains. “By way of comparison, the universe is 13,770,000,000 years old.” So by the time the thing gets around to making tiny, pixelated sunsets, our own life-giving fireball will have exploded and incinerated our whole solar system along with it.

Still, for whatever its deficiencies as a useful image-making machine, the program is remarkably efficient at generating thought-provoking questions about the nature of art and imagery. For Thompson, who teaches courses on digital art at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the project shines light on all sorts of thorny issues.

“It’s a time machine!” he says of his creation. “It shows things that happened, things that will, things that will not, and every possible permutation and variation. What’s most interesting to me is what does this mean ontologically? If the camera didn’t ‘see’ those events, are they real? They look like real people, but aren’t. What about images created this way that are illegal (child pornography, for example). They are not ‘real’ but depict something very real.”

Granted, he’s not likely to stumble upon anything illegal–or anything brilliant–at any point during our lifetimes. “Those kind of images will exist within such a vast ocean of noise that they are tiny statistical blips,” he says. But you never know. Load this thing onto a supercomputer and maybe we can at least get a decent snapshot of someone’s lunch.

I am not much of a fan of Will.i.am ‘s music. He’s the guy behind the Black Eyed Peas and several other bits of dance magic. I appreciate that he hits his target perfectly. I’m just not his audience. But I now respect the man immensely.

Thanks to this article in Fortune, I’ve come to realize just how bright a lad he is. He’s not only doing great work in marketing his own products and services, but he’s helping corporate America figure out some of their challenges as well. What’s most interesting to me, however, is that what he’s doing is coming to the picnic with ideas.

Most times, when someone famous is brought in to help a company, they are usually used as a kind of proxy. So, when Michael Jackson did the big deal with Pepsi, he just kept on Michael Jacksoning, and there was some Pepsi logo stuff behind him. By comparison, Will.i.am brought the idea of Ekocycle to Coca Cola, and he fleshed out the entire vision. It’s his project that Coke totally understands and supports, because of how Will.i.am laid it all out.

That’s the lesson to us. You can offer to help or you can bring an idea of great value to your prospective client or customer. One will get you a little bit of business. The other will lead to partnerships of great value.

Cheers to you, Will. And thanks for getting that Britney song stuck in my head. Argh.

I’m sure I’m not the only person who finds jigsaw puzzles totally maddening. It seems pretty clear that they’re a holdover from an era when the mean attention span could be measured in minutes, not seconds. Oko, however, is a bit better suited for people accustomed to living life at the speed of their Twitter timeline. The novel puzzle app for the iPad slices NASA satellite shots up into mesmerizing spinning scenes, and all you have to do solve them is wait for everything to line up, and then tap.

The app was conceived by Swiss designer Nadezda Suvorova and created in collaboration with developers Pierre Rossel and Jeremie Forge. Compared to the thousand-piece cardboard endeavors you might undertake on a long weekend, Oko’s puzzles are pretty low-impact–at least for the first five levels or so. Then pieces start spinning faster, and pieces start spinning within pieces, and then–yes, there it is!–you start to feel a bit of that old-school puzzle frustration come creeping back.

You start cursing the craggy peaks of the Burning Mountain in Namibia for looking so damn similar from space and wondering why the dumb old Shiveluch volcano in Kamchatka couldn’t develop a more distinct footprint after several hundred million years of tectonic activity. Yep, there it is, full-blown irrational puzzle rage. Just be glad it doesn’t make you solve to a timer.

The app, available for free, has 20 puzzles in all, and if nothing else, it’s a nice way to kill an hour during a road trip and remind yourself of the splendor of our humble planet. Also: a good reminder to think twice before you bust open that 750-piecer of the Golden Gate Bridge this holiday season.

Billboards don’t add much to the urban environment besides visual pollution and a sense of clutter. Maybe that’s just because we’re not utilizing them correctly. If billboards could feature aerial bamboo gardens and Wi-Fi connected climate monitoring systems instead of advertisements, they’d be a lot more palatable.

That’s what Los Angeles sculptor Stephen Glassman wants to do with the Urban Air “global art-in-public” project. Glassman has long worked with bamboo. In the early 1990s, he put up large bamboo installations in L.A. neighborhoods affected by the Northridge earthquake, Malibu fires, and Rodney King riots. He soon realized that the metal billboards surrounding L.A. seemed to be impervious to disaster.

His vision: installing planters, bamboo, and sensors that keep track of air quality and temperature into Los Angeles billboard spaces. The result, he believes, would transform “the steel and wood of outdoor advertising into the infrastructure of urban sustainability in cities around the globe–actively, publicly, and collectively generating a green global future,” according to the Urban Air Kickstarter page.

The Urban Air project isn’t a pipe dream. Glassman has partnered with billboard company Summit Media and engineering firm Arup to help bring the idea to fruition. Summit is even donating billboards along major thoroughfares in the city to the artist.

Here’s how the system works: Participating billboards lose their commercial facades, which are replaced by planters containing bamboo trees. Water misters are mounted on the structure to create what Arup calls “a cloud forest in the sky.” Wireless sensors keep track of environmental conditions–even how the Urban Air installation is affecting the surrounding microclimate–and the results can be made available to the public. As a bonus, the billboards could even combat the urban heat island effect (where city surfaces absorb solar radiation and store heat) thanks to the bamboo, which provides natural cooling.

Urban Air has raised just over $8,500 at the time of writing; the project is aiming to raise $100,000 over the next month. If it’s funded, at least one prototype billboard in L.A. will get a bamboo makeover.

Photo: Daimler

You may talk to your car, and some in cases it may even talk back. And you’ve probably thrown a few choice words at other drivers in a impromptu bout of rage. But cars are silently communicating with each other and with transportation infrastructure in two field trials that kicked off this month near Frankfurt, Germany, and in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler is spearheading what it’s calling the “first ‘social network’ for automobiles.” But instead of sharing lolcat pics and mundane musings, the 120 vehicles in the project will be communicating with one another as well as with infrastructure to avoid accidents and traffic jams, along with a range of other applications. Daimler claims it’s the largest ever field trial of vehicle-to-X communication (V2X) – a combination of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication – to show how the technology can be used to decrease accidents and increase driving efficiency. But in sheer number of vehicles it pales in comparison to a similar V2V field trial that the National Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) is conducting in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The European trial is part of the sim^TD (Safe Intelligent Mobility – test field Germany) research project spearheaded by Daimler Research and Advance Development and sponsored by the German government. Other participants include automakers Opel, Audi, BMW/Mini, Ford and Volkswagen, along with automotive suppliers Bosch and Continental, Deutsche Telekom and several research institutes. The trial consists of 120 vehicles that will be hitting the roads of the Frankfurt Rhine-Main region until the end of the year. According to Car and Driver, the fleet includes specially equipped Audi A4s, BMW X1s, Ford S-Maxes, Mercedes-Benz C-Classes, Opel Insignias and Volkswagen Passats.

Vehicles will be connected to each other and to infrastructure via a form of Wi-Fi that has a range of just over 300 yards, according to Mike Shulman who is directing Ford’s participation in both trials and is the automaker’s technical leader of Active Safety Research and Innovation. The vehicles in the European trial will constantly keep each other posted on road hazards and traffic, much the same way an annoying acquaintance keeps you updated on his status by posting to Facebook every few seconds.

One beneficial scenario provided by Daimler: If there’s a traffic jam on the autobahn and it’s concealed behind the crest of a hill, vehicles barreling down the road at 100 mph-plus would be alerted to avoid rear-ending the last car. The company also points to possible environmental and convenience benefits of V2X systems, such as coordinating traffic lights according to traffic density to make driving more fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly, and even being able to seek out and suggest routes to the nearest available parking spots.

By comparison, the NHTSA Ann Arbor trial will last an entire year and include 3,000 vehicles driven by ordinary people, but equipped with Wi-Fi communications and other technology such as radar and cameras. The reason the U.S. trial requires a lot more vehicles and a lot more time is to gauge how a large pool of vehicles interact with each other over a longer period to gather enough data to determine the effectiveness of V2V communication to reduce accidents, says Ford’s Shulman.

One group will drive the cars for the first six months and then a second group will drive the vehicles for the last six months of the trial. “They’ll drive them to work, go shopping and wherever they want to go,” Shulman told Wired. “The drivers were carefully selected so that they work in the same area, drop their kids off at school in the same area and have the same shift time. The idea is that, over this year-long period, we could see how well these cars really perform. Are they getting the timely warnings? Are they getting a lot of false warnings? What’s really happening that we haven’t seen on a track but under real-world conditions?”

In addition to the number of cars and duration, the big difference between the two trials is that the U.S. version is solely focused on reducing accidents. “NHTSA has done a study that says that more than 80 percent of the crashes could be impacted by V2V technology,” Shulman says. He adds that the federal agency is conducting the trial to determine whether V2V technology can be deployed to effectively prevent injuries and fatalities – and whether to mandate it on new cars. “They’re going to look at whether to apply this to new vehicles and other modes of transportation like trucks, buses and motorcycle, and even pedestrians and in aftermarket devices,” he adds.

“The Europeans are not looking at regulation; they’re looking at this as a voluntary deployment, at least for now,” Shulman says. “They’re looking at it more as a mobility application, using vehicles as a probe to show travel history and congestion over routes and determine the best routes to take based on real-time congestion. It can warn of traffic and construction up ahead, but it’s not for that last second before a crash. It’s more for information to the driver or information from the vehicle back to the traffic management center.”

Shulman says that the European trials should be thought of as, “not the first step, but a long-term step, and there’s other benefits that driver could enjoy as we get this technology deployed. We’re trying to learn from both and bringing harmonization where we can, and move toward the concept on the connected vehicle. How we’re approaching it is it will go on different paths to different places.”