The English Cotswolds are known for their natural beauty but soon it will also be world famous for its Eco-Friendly homes in the Cirencester area.  One development,  The Lower Mill Estate, offers “distinctive, sustainable, modernist second homes, in a rural setting”.  The development was a 550 acre mining site which has been transformed into a seven lake reserve fed by three rivers and offers beautiful plant and wildlife.  The above, to-be-built house, known as the Orchid house exemplifies the uniqueness of designs where they have strived to achieve a harmony with the surrounding nature and yet blow your socks off with gorgeous, jaw dropping architecture.  

The Orchid house was designed by London based designer Sarah Featherstone and will boast many green features including  an underground geothermal heating system and a planet switch.  The project was recently sold for a price rumored to be more than $14 Million - that is one incredible second home! Other designers of properties in the Lower Mill Estate include  Richard Reid, Will Alsop .

Image Credits: www.dailymail.co.uk

Boston Dynamics has invented the most amazing autonomous Robot that they call BigDog which walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. This robot reminds me of a cross between RoboCop and a Star Wars’ Imperial Walker. The BigDog robot runs at 4 mph, climbs slopes up to 35 degrees, walks across rubble, and carries a 340 lb load!  They say, and you can hear, that it is powered by a two stroke gas engine and has articulated legs like an animal.  Those legas are controlled by an on-board computer that manages locomotion, servos and sensors.    The BigDog program is funded by DARPA.

Photo Credit: www.2dayblog.com

I have been looking at outsourcing for years for call centers, product customer support and lightweight web development. Now for roughly $5,000 you can rent Indian surrogate mothers. This nominal fee includes agency costs, embryo implantation, and delivery. India has already established itself as an attractive place to conduct this sort of business because the hospitals are good and the costs are low and apparently there are plenty of willing women. In America, by contrast, a complete surrogacy process would cost closer to $50,000.

The leader in this new business wit the Akanksha Clinic at the Kaival hospital in Anand India. The staff at this facility are focused on infertility which boasts a 44% success rate and has a waiting list of more than 1,000 couples. Its created a whole new ecosystem around the service called “reproductive tourism” where hotels, restaurants and excursions are tailored to the donor couples. Lisa Ling who recently produced a piece on Oprah on the service has been taking some heat for her lack of a balanced report on womb outsourcing. I personally have no issue with the the practice for infertile couples but do think its a little scary as I do know a few busy women that probably would have paid the dough rather than going thru pregnancy and delivery. What do you think?

Photo credit: www.scienceclarified.com

Scientists at the University of Nevada have successfully created the worlds first sheep that is part human. The sheep is made up of 15% human cells, and 85% animal cells however it has human organs. If this technique can be perfected it may make mass organ harvesting possible. This could be accomplished by extracting stem cells from a donors blood, and then injecting them directly into a sheep fetus. Then when the sheep is born, it has human organs which could be used for transplants into humans. Anyone remember that Michael Bay movie…The Island? Yeaahhh…