Amazing cycle super highways making bikes the transport of the future

While new innovations in automobile technology may grab the headlines, it's easy to forget that the bicycle, which predates the motor car by decades and assumed its basic design by the 1880s, is one form of transport that just refuses to go away.

At one stage, it was even thought to be the transport of the future. An elevated cycleway connecting Los Angeles and Pasadena was mooted as early as 1896 by Pasadena's far-sighted mayor Horace Dobbins, but only one mile of the white-elephant structure was ever built.

By the time its truncated route was completed, the motor car and the street car had begun to eclipse the bicycle.

By 1900, even its chief investor had lost faith in its future.

"I have concluded that we are a little ahead of time on this cycleway. Wheelmen have not evidenced enough interest in it..." Dobbins opined in 1900 in the Los Angeles Times.

Old technology with a bright future

We might not be returning to the horse and cart anytime soon, but cities are beginning to realize that bicycles are an old technology with a very bright future.

Clean, inexpensive and in many cases faster than road transport, cities that were once turned over to the motor vehicle are making more space for bicycles. And some of the solutions -- in terms of infrastructure and bicycle technology -- are as surprising as they are innovative.

London is one city that has perennially struggled with its transport infrastructure. Densely populated and with a streetscape that owes more to its medieval layout than to the grid patterns of major U.S. metropolises, London is looking at the bicycle as a future transport solution rather than a recreational pastime.

The secrets to staying creative in your workplace

According to neuroscientists John Kounios and Mark Beeman, there's a reason for that. Their book, The Eureka Factor, explores the influences at work behind that much sought-after "Aha!" moment. Research suggests that in trying to conjure up inspiration, most of us end up suppressing it. The book explains how to clear out mental junk, in order to make way for pivotal revelations.

Prof Kounios explained: "Insights involve unusual connections. Cognitive psychologists call these "remote associations." They are processed mostly in the brain's right hemisphere. Insights occur when a subconscious remote association suddenly pops into awareness. This is accompanied by a burst of activity in the brain's right temporal lobe."

"We wrote The Eureka Factor to help people understand how creative insight works in the brain so they can use various strategies harmoniously without having them cross-circuit each other. For example, there is evidence that imagining the future helps to put someone in an insightful state. However, if a person imagines a specific future that makes them anxious, then insightfulness could decrease because anxiety is a creativity killer. That said, a positive mood and a broad, expansive spread of attention are a couple of key features of the insightful state," he added.

Following are some of the tips they suggest for unleashing your creative potential -- both at home and at work.

Electric cars won't spread even with rapid chargers -Toyota engineer

Japan: Battery-powered electric vehicles don't have a practical future as a long-range alternative to conventional cars even if technological breakthroughs allow them to be charged quickly, a top engineer at Toyota Motor Corp said on Thursday.
Electric vehicle (EV) supporters have touted developing high-speed charging technology as the way forward for cars like Nissan Motor Co's Leaf. But Yoshikazu Tanaka, chief engineer of Toyota's hydrogen fuel-cell car Mirai, said that would guzzle so much energy at once as to defeat the purpose of the EV as an ecologically sound form of transportation.
"If you were to charge a car in 12 minutes for a range of 500 km (310 miles), for example, you're probably using up electricity required to power 1,000 houses," Tanaka told a small group of reporters at the first test-drive event for the production version of the Mirai, the world's only mass-market fuel-cell car.
"That totally goes against the need to stabilise electricity use on the grid."
Even as rivals such as Nissan and Volkswagen AG promote battery EVs, cars like the Leaf require lengthy charging, reducing their attractiveness for customers planning to drive longer distances frequently. The Leaf requires about eight hours for a full charge using a 200-volt outlet, giving a listed driving range of around 84 miles in the United States.
"Toyota isn't denying the benefits of EVs," Tanaka said. "But we think the best way to use them is to charge them at night (to avoid peak power consumption hours), and use them for short distances during the day."

Beehive raises record-breaking $10 million

Turns out, lots of people want honey on tap. Nearly 30,000 people have contributed to the Indiegogo campaign for the Flow Hive, making it the most successful crowdfunding operation in the site's history.

Flow Hive has raised just over $10 million, with six days still left to go. The founders were originally trying for $70,000, which it reached in 477 seconds. More than 6,100 people paid $600 for the full hive, which is expected to start shipping in December.

Cedar Anderson and his dad Stuart worked on the concept for the last decade. The family has been keeping bees for generations, and Cedar started his first hive when he was just six years old.
Related: In Cleveland, sheep could be key to city's renewal
The Andersons, who live in Australia, say their method is good for the bees because it doesn't disturb them, and it's great for beginners -- there's no need to wear protective gear, smoke the bees to sleep or take apart the hive to harvest the honey. It's all done by flipping a switch, which activates a mechanism inside the hive, and fresh honey pours out of the tap.
"Of course, they still need to know what they're doing, but Flow Hive takes almost all of the work out of harvesting, which people wanting to get into beekeeping have rightly seen as a major obstacle in getting started," Cedar Anderson said.
But this separates the beekeeper from the bees, which is concerning to Andrew Cote, founder of the New York City Beekeepers Association. Beekeeping has also been in his family for generations, and he uses a traditional method that he says dates back 150 years.
"One does need to do hive inspections, check for disease, check for virility of the queen, and make sure that things are going well in the hive," he said.