Chopi Chopi: A floating "family house" megayacht with mammoth proportions

Originally designed as a 'family house2 for recreational use, Chopi Chopi boasts immense proportions

Recently on display during the 2014 Monaco Yacht Show, CRN shipyard's Chopi Chopi boasts immense proportions and is more like a floating mansion compared to your traditional superyacht. The 80 meter (262 ft) luxury megayacht was built in collaboration with Italian architects Laura Sessa, Giovanni and Paola Zuccon and is one of the biggest of its kind. Worth over US$110 million, the entire yacht took 660,000 hours to complete and the displacement hull was built from aluminum and steel.

Originally designed as a “family house” for recreational use, Chopi Chopi includes five luxury double cabins, an exclusive owner's suite with private VIP terrace, six spacious open decks, a 100 sq m (1,076 sq ft) beach club located on the lower deck, multiple dining and lounge areas and two lifts. The floating home accommodates up to 12 guests at any one time and employs around 30 crew members and nine staff.

Furthermore, the vessel features a unique circular pilot house, a day spa complete with sauna, Turkish hammam bath and massage room, and a helipad located at the stern.

"We met the client, who we knew was looking for a big yacht, and presented him the project of a yacht of around 250 feet (72 m) with all the features we thought might meet his wishes both in size and style," Gianni Zuccon, head of Zuccon International Project told Boat International. "The primary criterion of the brief was that he wanted it to be a private yacht on which to spend long holidays with his large family. We found out soon that they needed more space – that meant more volume. So, working on the original concept, we incorporated higher volume and added a few meters to the total length to preserve a well-proportioned balance between hull and superstructure."

Chopi Chopi recently took home the 2014 World Yacht Trophy, accompanying its previous awards which include: Best Interior Design Award at the Showboats Design Awards 2014 category; Judges Commendation at The World Superyachts Awards 2014 and the 2013 Boat of the Year.

Making peanuts safe for allergy sufferers

UF researcher Wade Yang is using pulsed light to inactivate proteins within peanuts that trigger an allergic response (Photo: Shutterstock)

We've seen various research efforts aiming to cure nut allergies in people, from tricking the immune system into ignoring certain proteins to building up a tolerance, or using common gut bacteria. But Wade Yang from the University of Florida (UF) is taking a different approach. Rather than altering the body's response to peanut allergens, he is altering the peanuts themselves.

Yang, who is an assistant professor in food science and human nutrition and member of UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, is using pulsed light to inactivate proteins within peanuts that trigger an allergic response. Starting out two years ago using the technique on peanut extract, Yang has now moved onto whole peanuts.

The technique involves delivering pulses of ultraviolet light using a system that consists of two lamps filled with xenon, two cooling blowers, one treatment chamber with a conveyor belt, and a control module. The bursts of light reduce the allergenic potential of the major peanut proteins Ara h1-h3, so that human antibodies don't recognize them as allergens.

So far he has been able to remove 80 percent of peanut allergens from whole peanuts, with the ultimate goal to remove 99.9 percent (Yang says removing 100 percent of peanut allergens would run the risk of destroying a peanut's texture, color, flavor and nutrition). He adds that if the amount of allergenic protein per peanut can be cut from 150 mg to 1.5 mg, they would be safe for 95 percent of people with peanut allergies to eat.

"This process proves that pulsed light can inactivate the peanut allergenic proteins and indicates that pulsed light has a great potential in peanut allergen mitigation," Yang said. "The latest study moves one step closer to the actual production."

Wade Yang, left, has used pulsed light to remove 80 percent of the allergens from a whole peanut (Photo: UF/IFAS file photo)

Although Yang's experiments have so far been restricted to the lab, he hopes to eventually conduct clinical trials on animals and humans. He has also only focused on peanuts, although pulsed light has also been shown to reduce allergen levels in soybean, almond and shrimp protein extracts.

His study appears online in the journal Food and Bioprocess Technology.

F-BOM ski goggles put fog in the hot seat

F-BOMs utilize a transparent heating element, sandwiched between the inner and outer lenses

Few things can take away from a day of downhill skiing quite like foggy goggles. Although many models feature an anti-fog inner coating, entrepreneur Dave McCulloch wasn't pleased with their performance. This prompted him to take a thin-film heating element invented by Jack Cornelius, and incorporate it into his F-BOM ski goggles.

First of all, other heated goggles do already exist. The majority of these, however, utilize either a small built-in fan, or a wire element that runs around the outside of the lens.

By contrast, the F-BOMs' Klair system incorporates Cornelius' transparent film-type element, which is sandwiched between two conventional polycarbonate lenses. Powered by two integrated lithium-ion batteries, that element heats the inner of the two lenses to just above the dew point, so water droplets won't condense on it.

The goggles can be used in one of two modes. In Active mode, the element stays on continuously, constantly keeping fog from forming. Depending on conditions, the batteries reportedly should be able to keep that up for approximately seven hours. In order to extend that battery life, however, Boost mode can be used. In that setting, the element just comes on for about 10 minutes, when the side-mounted power/mode button is pressed.

All the electronics are weatherproofed, and the batteries can be charged via USB. Additionally, the lenses are replaceable, have a scratch-resistant coating, and block 100 percent of UVA, UVB and UVC rays. The weight of a complete set of F-BOMs is 122 grams (4.3 oz).

McCulloch and his Oregon-based Abominable Labs team are currently raising production funds for the goggles, on Kickstarter. A pledge of US$195 will get you a pair, when and if they're ready to go. The planned retail price is $249.

More information is available in the pitch video below.

Elevated public park above a railway planned for Toronto

A new elevated park is planned as part of a development in Toronto

The need to retain public spaces in our cities as they develop and grow requires increasingly ingenuitive thinking. A new development in Toronto shows just that sort of thinking in action. Plans for a new commercial and transport hub include a public park elevated above the rail line.

The new development, at 45-141 Bay Street, is reminiscent of New York's High Line and Sydney's Goods Line, both of which are public spaces that have reappropriated rail infrastructure for use as public spaces. The Bay Street development won't be built on disused rail infrastructure, however, but will be raised above operational tracks.

Created by real estate company Ivanhoé Cambridge for the Toronto area transport authority Metrolinx, the proposals are part of the ongoing development of Union Station. The plans include the addition of a new bus terminal, two office buildings to be constructed standing either side of the rail corridor, and the park area between the buildings.

The park will act as a means of connecting the buildings, as well as providing space for recreation and leisure.

In addition to the new green space provided by the park, the Bay Street buildings will be designed to achieve LEED Platinum certification. The development will also connect to PATH, Toronto's network of underground pedestrian tunnels.

Construction is expected to start in spring 2015.

Rico gives your old smartphone a job in home security

The Rico uses a spare smartphone as its brain and eyes

Almost every day, it seems, breakfast is accompanied by the debut of a next generation smartphone that makes our perfectly capable current models look positively antiquated. Whether you patiently wait for the end of your contract before upgrading or contact your provider straight away, you're existing pocket pal will likely be retired to a powered off eternity in an infrequently opened drawer somewhere. The folks over at Mindhelix want to give that old phone a new lease of life in the Rico home security and monitoring system.

To put the toy-like Rico to work, a spare smartphone running Android 2.2 or iOS 6 and above will need a side app downloading and installing. The smartphone can then be placed within the Rico's colorful housing. Though larger phones and phablets will be too big to be used, anything with a 4.5-inch screen or smaller should be OK. The Rico unit is connected to a wall outlet and cables inside the housing ensure that the smartphone within is always charged.

Mindhelix says that the new hybrid device that results could have a combined feature set that includes a HD camera, microphone, integrated speaker, 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity, and sensors that monitor humidity, temperature, air quality, carbon monoxide and motion.

Loading the companion iOS/Android app onto your current smartphone allows you to remotely connect with the Rico for a live stream of your living room or office and receive event notifications via Rico cloud servers hosted on Amazon Web Services. Users will even receive an alert if the Rico loses power or Wi-Fi.

"The smartphone has an incredibly powerful processor that we can use to do really cool things in the near future like image processing, voice recognition and voice commands," CEO Kallidil Kalidasan told us. "Also, all of the above features can be pushed to the users via a simple app upgrade, when traditional smarthome devices would require a core hardware firmware upgrade. These app updates can be developed much easier and also the existing app developer community can join us in the process, unlike the rigid firmware level upgrade system that traditional smarthome devices have."

The Rico package will also come with smart-sockets, which cater for home appliance control via the app – such as switching on the lights or TV while you're at the restaurant, for example.

Mindhelix currently has a working prototype of the Rico device and a companion app in the bag, but has launched a Kickstarter campaign for the final push to full production. There are three brightly-colored Rico units to choose from, though the developers are also offering a special pledge level for a Kickstarter green model. As of writing, backers can pledge US$100 for an early bird Rico and one smart-socket. If all goes to plan, the first packages will be shipped in November 2015.

Have a look at the pitch video below for an overview of how the system works.