The city of Paris announces an approved proposal for a new aerial gondola line that would transport 11,000 passengers from the city’s suburbs to Paris’s main metro line.

Every city has its woes with public transportation. With its debut in the United States going back as far as 1895, the underground subway system has defined rapid transit for decades. As increasing rates of densification and urbanization morph the face of our cities, our public transportation must accommodate the larger crowds and higher demands.

Designer: Atelier Schall, Doppelmayr France, Île-de-France Mobilités, Spie Batignolles, and Egis Rail.

Moving from the underground to the high heavens, the city of Paris finds promise in an airborne mode of transit. Aimed for completion by 2025, the new transit system is called the Cable A Gondola, an electric-powered gondola line that will connect the suburb of Villeneuve-Saint-Georges with the Créteil Pointe du Lac station on Paris’ Metro line 8.

As cities find new ways to provide sufficient public transportation to larger crowds, the issue of sustainability arises. As gondolas prove to be inexpensive and eco-conscious players in the public transportation game, more and more cities are integrating them into their urban fabric. Following their proposal for a new 4.5km gondola line, the French city will pay $149 million to connect 11,000 passengers to Paris’s metro system and Créteil on a daily basis.

Connecting the hilly residential avenues of Créteil to Paris’s cityscape, gondolas are able to connect hard-to-reach areas that previous modes of transit could not. Since many are electric, gondolas are also quiet by design and do not produce much pollution during operation.

Gondolas also indicate an inexpensive alternative to other urban infrastructures like bridges, railways, and tunnels. Considering the gondola’s many advantages, the new Paris proposal would function primarily as a transportation filler. Parisian suburbs will have a direct line to the city’s metro system in a way that was previously unprecedented.

In a city like Paris, the approval of the gondola proposal signals a new dawn for public transportation. As Brent Toderian, chief city planner of Vancouver from 2006 to 2012, describes, “In recent years, the conversation has moved from gondolas being a kind of novelty to a conversation where they’re being considered as a logical and viable transit technology.”

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I’d probably like the way your grandmother’s house smells. In NYC I used to repair vintage Singer sewing machines for customers, usually by housecall, and the clientele was almost exclusively older women in their 60s to 90s. Their apartments all smelled the same to me, and I came to associate that sort of musty, lived-in scent with customers happy to see me (I was the only game in town).

Other people like the smell of old books, which smell pretty different from new books. Why doesn’t a Barnes & Noble smell the same as a branch of the New York Public Library? I found the answer on the “Aroma Chemistry” section of Compound Interest, a British website that explains chemical compound phenomena with infographics:

I know the graphic’s tough to read with our formatting limitations, so I’ll blow up the relevant part:

The website goes into greater detail:

“Generally, it is the chemical breakdown of compounds within paper that leads to the production of ‘old book smell’. Paper contains, amongst other chemicals, cellulose, and smaller amounts of lignin – much less in more modern books than in books from more than one hundred years ago. Both of these originate from the trees the paper is made from; finer papers will contain much less lignin than, for example, newsprint. In trees, lignin helps bind cellulose fibres together, keeping the wood stiff; it’s also responsible for old paper’s yellowing with age, as oxidation reactions cause it to break down into acids, which then help break down cellulose.

“‘Old book smell’ is derived from this chemical degradation. Modern, high quality papers will undergo chemical processing to remove lignin, but breakdown of cellulose in the paper can still occur (albeit at a much slower rate) due to the presence of acids in the surroundings. These reactions, referred to generally as ‘acid hydrolysis’, produce a wide range of volatile organic compounds, many of which are likely to contribute to the smell of old books. A selected number of compounds have had their contributions pinpointed: benzaldehyde adds an almond-like scent; vanillin adds a vanilla-like scent; ethyl benzene and toluene impart sweet odours; and 2-ethyl hexanol has a ‘slightly floral’ contribution. Other aldehydes and alcohols produced by these reactions have low odour thresholds and also contribute.”

Incredibly, there is a cologne specifically formulated to smell like old books. It’s not called that, though; the manufacturer gave it the more marketing-friendly moniker of “Paperback.”

En regardant les œuvres picturales de Jelena et Aleksandar Paunkovic, on peut légitimement se demander s’il s’agit de photographies ou de peintures. Le couple serbe réalise des tableaux qui représentent des morceaux de nature réalistes aux nuances de couleurs qui le sont tout autant. Derrière l’aspect esthétiquement plaisant de leur travail, se trouve une question écologique. “Nous avons trouvé un moyen d’amener la nature dans une maison ou une galerie et de l’accrocher au mur pour nous rappeler que nous devons réfléchir davantage à la façon dont notre mode de vie moderne affecte l’environnement”, comme on peut le lire sur leur site.

Pour en apprendre plus sur leur démarche et pour découvrir plus d’œuvres, rendez-vous sur leur site internet.

As aviation nerds know, the largest airplane in the world is—or rather, was—the Antonov AN-225 Mriya. With a wingspan of 88.4m (290 ft.), it stood 18.2m (59.7 ft.) tall and 85.3m (280 ft.) long and could haul around 350 tons.

Image: Vasiliy Koba, CC BY-SA 4.0

Originally created by the Antonov Design Bureau in the 1980s to airlift Soviet spacecraft, it was mothballed after the collapse of the Soviet Union and stripped for parts. In 2001, it was restored and put into service by Antonov Airlines as the world’s go-to cargo plane for carrying absurdly heavy or large loads.

Image: mark steven, CC BY-SA 3.0

Wind turbine blades, a quartet of battle tanks each weighing 60-something tons, the entire fuselage of a Boeing 737, all of these things could fit within the Mriya’s cavernous cargo area. In 2009 it set the world record for carrying “The heaviest single piece ever flown,” according to Air Cargo News: “A generator for a gas power station [in] Armenia, [it] weighed in close to 190 metric tons.”

Image: Air Cargo News

Aviation enthusiasts would converge on airports where the Mriya was landing just to document it:

Videos like these are now proliferating on social media, following the news that the Mriya has been destroyed. It was parked at Antonov Airport in Hostomel, Ukraine, outside of Kyiv. The Ukrainian edition of Radio Liberty reports that invading Russian forces rocketed the aircraft from attack helicopters.

Image: Ukrainian Military Drone 56-15 – Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Press Release, CC BY-SA 4.0

Mriya, in Ukrainian, means “Dream.”

The power and potential of 5G haven’t really been achieved, but we can expect that in the coming years, more companies and tech giants will work together to make it happen. There are now dozens of 5G smartphones available in the market. 5G tablets are slowly joining the bandwagon. We’re hoping more 5G notebooks will also be ready in the near future.

Alongside these 5G devices, the 5G technology must also be checked, if not improved. This is happening; That is why we are also seeing other 5G gadgets, including this 5G Hub by OPPO. At this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (MWC 2022), OPPO has launched a number of new products. The OPPO 5G CPE T2 is built for the Internet experience. This 5G CPE device is not the first from the Chinese OEM. It’s a follow-up to the Omni and the OPPO 5G CPE T1.

Designer: OPPO

What makes this more interesting apart from the improved speed and other system enhancements is the fact that the company used recycled materials for the body. It also boasts an all-new design because, from a rectangular box, the new OPPO 5G hub is now a cylinder. The T2 also takes advantage of OPPO’s recent innovations, including the O-Reserve 2.0 smart antenna technology.

OPPO teamed up with Qualcomm to work on optimizations. The new 5G hub is poised to offer more stable and fast 5G connectivity. It’s mainly for home and office use, so you can now enjoy a 5G network as it is definitely more convenient and speedy compared to other Wi-Fi networks. It works well by converting the 5G signals into Wi-Fi or LAN connections. This way, multiple devices can connect.

The 5G hub shares the 5G connection to more phones, tablets, and laptops at home or in other establishments. There may be areas that don’t have broadband but with 5G internet available. You can opt for the 5G network and just share connectivity with everyone.

This thing runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X62 5G Modem-RF system. OPPO did some optimizations to it, so data transfer speeds are faster. Compared to the platform’s baseline speed, the T2 is 20% faster. With additional research and collaboration with Qualcomm, OPPO can offer ultimate connectivity. The Snapdragon modem used enables the hub to work with numerous devices operating in different networks and markets.

The new antenna used by OPPO here is the O-Reserve 2.0 smart antenna technology. It’s able to keep high antenna gain in all directions, thanks to the eight antennas receiving signals. Only four antennas are actually used at once, depending on the signal strength and quality. The result is a super-fast downlink speed.

To compare, OPPO tested the speed when the O-reserve 2.0 is turned on/off. When enabled, download speed is faster by ten percent. OPPO also has the Wi-Fi Channel Selection Technology working and monitoring network channels in real-time. The goal is to always select the channels offering the fastest connection; that is why the hub is always at work.

OPPO’s latest 5G hub offers an innovative design and a sustainable build. It is easy-to-use and is very reliable if you’re really demanding a fast Internet connection. Its form makes it an artistic conversation starter, whether indoor or outdoor. It seems smart hubs and devices like the OPPO T2 are going for the minimalist look, and this one is a perfect example.

The cylindrical body in pure white color is a testament to the brand’s minimal design philosophy. The device comes with a textured surface which makes it stain-resistant and dust-proof. The hub’s simple form makes it an elegant gadget that can fit any interior. It definitely won’t be an eyesore with its simple but beautiful design.

The OPPO T2’s shape isn’t just for aesthetics. It serves a purpose as there is a central ring suction ventilator inside that helps dissipate the heat. When it comes to such a device, heat dissipation is important because long hours of non-stop usage can make it really warm. Gadgets heat up, but there are now effective cooling systems that can be implemented. If device components are working properly and are not heating up, the antenna and system performance will work as intended.

OPPO is starting to become friendlier with the environment. The materials used on the T2 are Post-Consumer Recycled Plastic, at least, on the body. This means OPPO is doing its part by supporting sustainability initiatives and helping to reduce carbon emissions. It’s about time these big OEMs help Mother Nature by working more on sustainability. Sustainable design is possible now without the quality being compromised, so we’re all in for this campaign.

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