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I think that cities in the future will have developed more sophisticated means of transportation.  Living in houston really shows why cities need better transportation that cars. They're terribly inefficient, and are very dangerous. Currently tesla has been doing this by designing self driving cars. Elon Musk also has a company called "the boring company", and they have been testing small scale prototypes of what they call the "hyper loop". It is train that works in a vacuum tube, and is propelled by magnets. Because the train has no wind resistance or friction from the ground, it enables the user to get from point A->B very efficiently and quickly.
Another way I envision future smart cities, is controlling urban sprawl. In 1992, the UN introduced a Document called Agenda 21, which outlined how future cities should grow and develop in a sustainable manner. They named the city growth plan, smart growth. Smart growth is how future cities can continue to grow at a sustainable rate. Zoning laws can help this seemingly non ending problem. A city That follows this plan, would have a much smaller footprint, which would reduce the overall energy consumption of humans as they make their way around the city. It would also reduce the amount of natural resources needed to build structures, such as roads, bridges and buildings. Reducing the amount distance people need to travel within the city would in turn, reduce the number of cars that need to be on the road, which would reduce the need for parking lots, which would make the city more compact and efficient.

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One of the biggest problems many cities will soon face in the future is the continuous waste of fresh water. As it is now, even though the earth is covered by very large oceans, the fresh water we use in our everyday lives is less than three percent of that water in our globe. Even though it may not seem like a big thing to worry about, the ability for cities to continue to provide fresh water to its residents will soon be a huge problem. One way to combat this predicament in the smart city would be to implement water distribution meters in each residence. The meters would only allow the water to flow into the house according to the number of people that live on that house. This will make people think twice on how they use their limited amount of water and ensure that future generations won’t have to worry about the water they use.

Another change that will have to be made in the smart city will be some future technology to convert salt water into fresh water. This technology is already being made as we speak, but the mass implementation will be critical to our smart city. With all homes connected to a massive machine that in turn is connected to the ocean, the saltwater can be turned into drinkable water. Although this will cause the use of the meters useless we can’t let our guard down and waste such a valuable resource such as water.

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The first thing that pops into my mind when talking about smart city innovative ideas is a way to stop forest fires in future. The devastation caused by the wildfire in California recently made me think that there should be some way to knock off fire rage that kills so many people and causes horrific incidence without any reason. Certainly, firefighters and use of water is not an efficient way to control these types of situation. Fires gain oxygen and increase rapidly in no time which is so dangerous. There has to be some way to cut off the supply of oxygen when there’s a fire at any place as that would simply lower the blaze and fire would eventually die out. I think the use of sound wave at some right frequency could eliminate air around a fire. The sound wave produces a pressure which would probably cease the fire from spreading.
Second smart city idea is really fascinating to me. We’ve all heard about Telepathy and teleportation for sure but human teleportation is something that would be beyond our imaginations. Teleportation is still not very common or used for any wide purpose but in future, the use of human teleportation could be done due to resonance and that would make it easier for people to travel.

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1.  I might be old-fashioned, but I believe that many of our issues can be solved by simple efforts to promote better health.
I live on the north side of Houston where the streets lack sidewalks. I believe this is discouraging for anyone who would like to get around without the use of a motor vehicle. If the city took an initiative to build a bike/running lane throughout Houston, people would get around more often without the use of a vehicle. From personal experience, i've noticed areas such as the Woodlands have many bike/walk roads throughout. It is for that reason that they have a much more dominant running culture. States like Oregon whom also have a sizeable running culture have many biking roads throughout the state.
I understand that we could develop new innovative technology such as productive soil, or a rail system for cars. However, our reality is that to integrate a new system into society, we all have to agree with the innovation, and it must be in real time.
2. My second solution is concise and straightforward. Make clean living affordable. Many our solutions are innovative but insanely expensive.  Battery powered cars such as the Tesla model 3 is perhaps the most aesthetically pleasing while beneficial to the ecosystem. The issue arises when the starting price of the cheapest Tesla is 40 k. If we are to bring a new line of eco-friendly transportation to society, we must make environment-friendly technology' affordable.

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My idea for a smart city would to reduce global warming. One of way doing this is to drive cars that use less emission or none. Gas-electric hybrids have been around for a while and are great for the environment. An example of a hybrid would be the prius. Using electricity to partially power vehicles gives great fuel economy and emissions benefits. The battery is charged by regenerative braking and it doesn’t need to be plugged in. Another way to lower emissions would be to drive electric cars. Electric cars have been slowly growing since they were introduced to the mass market which had increased demand. From the Nissan leaf to the Tesla, these types of cars have been in great buyer interest. The lifespan of the battery can last a long time, if maintained properly it can last up to eight years or 100,000 miles if maintained properly.

Another idea that would be great for a smart city would be to grow and change how you get your fruits and vegetables. For example, it would be good for the environment if more people started growing their own fruits and vegetables or to buy locally. Growing your own fruit and using local produce cuts down on factory processing, packing and transportation costs that can increase carbon footprint. Growing your own produce can also improve your health by helping you eat more fruits and vegetables, it will also have more nutrients and it will taste much better than to get something from the supermarket.

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1.      Technology is moving faster and faster. We have new technology comes out every month. Those new techs help us do things easier. Artificial intelligence (A.I.) has been around since late 1900s, but people said that A.I. we have today is not “real” A.I. because A.I. suppose to be human-like, and self-thinking even self-learning. Most of A.I. systems that we have cannot use without connecting it to the internet. I think it is the key to self-drive car. We could use A.I. base system to make self-drive car, smart city and many more to make our life easier. Many companies develop their own A.I. system such as Siri from Apple, Cortana from Microsoft, Alexa from Amazon for digital assistance. In the future, if we can develop the system until it can self-learning it will be useful in another field. It might be useful to help us develop or research faster cure for many diseases.

2.      Everyone knows that plastic bottle takes too many years to decompose. According to national geographic, only 9 % of plastic bottle is recycled. Where is 91 % of plastic bottle at? It is in the landfill, under the ocean and other natural environment. There is the new idea that I really like and hope we can use it soon. It is edible bottle. It is clear and in a sphere shape like water drop shape. They make it from seaweed. It could decrease amount of waste in land fill. I heard there is some of package that made from natural material and it can 100 % compostable. But I think it would be better if there is a way to decrease amount of waste too, something that people can eat. So, there will not be something left after we eat our food.

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NICHOLAS MOLL
One of the worst things that people hate about living in the city is the troubles of traffic. For many, the cure to this is smart cars. Although that I agree this is the future, I believe that there is a middle time before this would be all vehicles on the road. This is because of modern and past cars that wouldn't be able to be connected into this grid. I believe the best solution is what Elon Musk has introduced. It is almost like a conveyor belt system where a person uses there current vehicle and drives onto a platform square the size of there car. The system latches onto the wheels and then automatically drives the person up to 125 mph, bringing them close to their destination. Its almost like a bus station for your car that is largely underground. I think this would alleviate most traffic and congestion and would also help stall the growing problem of CO2 emissions. The second idea I love about ideas for future cities is the utilization of nature. Many people might not think of plants, farms, and other nature as futuristic but through some research I see that it is extremely important. With growing cities comes growing problems such as dirty air and flooding. Allowing gardens and plants to thrive on the tops of buildings and even on the sides can help with these issues. These plants can increase oxygen levels and absorb much of the rain water that usually causes flooding. Some say these spaces on buildings can even become micro-farms which will help with low food sources due to over population.

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Hugo Soto

Professor Yi

Physics 2426

7 December 2017

Smart City

Humans have made huge advancements in technology in just the past 2 centuries alone. We industrialized which revolutionized the way we live today. We have bigger outputs than any human era before us. Two major things came from the rise of the industrialization age: machines and fossil fuel energy. Fossil fuels have positively affected us in some areas, but has produced negative effects in others. The fossil fuel industry has created new jobs, but it is simultaneously making our home planet inhospitable. I believe future cities will be dominated by clean energy and robots will have taken over human jobs.

There is a lot of alternatives to the fossil fuels that we are using today as a means of energy. In fact, clean energy is one of the fastest growing industries. One of these possible alternatives to fossil fuel energy is wind power. The problems with wind energy today is that wind turbines are not relatively cheap. Another issue is that most of the energy that could be produced by wind is in the Earth’s atmosphere where the winds blow much harder. Companies like Shell are investing into something known as kite power. The principle behind this technology is you attach two kites to a generator by immensely long wire cables. As the kites start to take off the wire unraveling creates rotation in the generator, therefore, producing power. As the kites are in the air, one raises while the other one lowers. The speeds of the kites are controlled by a hydro accumulator that stores potential energy. The cost of producing offshore wind is about $170 today, but that number is expected to fall to $95 by 2030 with this new technology of wind power. Another positive outcome of future cities is that machines will be smarter.

Machines, undeniably, have been taking our jobs for the past few decades. Mostly factory jobs because the machines we have today are good at doing simple tasks and not so good at complex tasks. For example, the total output of hours by Americans in the year 1998 was 194 billion hours and in 2013 that number stayed the same despite an increase of population of 40 million Americans. However, machines are getting smarter and they might actually take our jobs pretty soon. Today, we can teach machines to gather information to teach themselves by giving them a lot of complex algorithms about the things we want them to get better at. The information age could be a good opportunity to revolutionize humanity again and perhaps even drastically reduce poverty.

Human advancement in technology is a positive thing. We are developing clean energy and soon enough we might not even have to work at all. Future cities will probably be far cleaner and efficient than what we could possibly imagine. These advancements in technology will give us opportunity to advance our species and perhaps raise the standards of living.

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With the amount of traffic that occurs today in cities across the globe I feel like ride share apps and smart cars are the thing that would be in a smart city. I know a lot of companies right now are also considering fleet based ride share ideas that will take handfuls of people from place to place. There are hundreds of thousands of people that commute to work in surrounding areas like the woodlands and conroe to Houston and traffic is insane, not to mention all those cars and their impact on the environment as they sit there on the highway. With ride sharing apps that take multiple people to the same area or same place we could cut down on tons of cars being on the road and all the emissions that cars spit out. Besides the decreased amount of pollution and traffic, this would make people more productive or relaxed, not only could you do your work while you are on the way to work, but you could relax and not have to worry about driving, this goes for both smart cars and fleet ride share vehicles. I feel like this an idea that will be used in the future for smart cities.

An idea that I see in a lot of futuristic films or video games is the idea that your work place would be connected to your house/living area or very close by so that you could just walk there or take a little train or elevator to work or to the store. Everything would be super close by or in the same building as your home. This would save a lot of the space we use up now a day for roads and other things, we could build up instead of sideways. This is a concept I feel like would be very beneficial in a smart city and it makes sense.

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1.       Microchips: In a future smart city, I envision the use of more microchips being utilized by employers. As a matter of fact, a company in Wisconsin has begun to voluntarily install small “rice-sized” chips into employees. So, what do these chips do?? Well according to the company this microchip allows the employees to enter the building and purchase food without using anything but their finger. One of the major concerns about this new technology is the privacy. Most of those who opt out of this new development often fear that the company will essentially track their every move. However, many say because the chip uses RFID technology or Radio-Frequency Identification the chip shouldn’t carry more than 2,000 bytes of date. Many of us have seen how sometimes cashiers, ATM’s, credit card readers often can’t scan the bars correctly and it is very inconvenient. As we know it, RFID works better than regular barcodes because it doesn’t necessarily need to be positioned directly above or exact with the scanner, saving you time.

2.       Natural Resource Depletion: In a smart city, I would like to see how we come up with a way to better balance the depletion of natural resources, because as we have seen it is causing environmental problems. In addition to better balancing our resource, switching to renewable sources of energy such as wind, biogas, and solar would decrease our impact considerably. We don’t normally use these resources because the infrastructure and maintenance is expensive, but because of new technological advance the prices have decrease in recent years.
-Karina

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Synthesizing Microbial Biosensors for Useful Purposes in Soil 

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Synthesizing Microbial Biosensors for Useful Purposes in Soil 

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During the summer, I was working in a Synthetic Biology lab at Rice University. The main thing that I was focusing on was building (synthesizing) microbial biosensors that hold genetic memory to express a methyl halide gas. The reason for this is because we'll be able to place these microbes in soil. Microbes are usually synthesized to express visual reporters (Green Fluorescent Protein, GFP), but we can't see fluorescent proteins in soil because soil is opaque.
Why would we want to do all of this? How does this relate to a real life scenario?
This brings me to my Smart City Idea.
When synthetic fertilizer is being made, a bunch of nutrients are being added to it without really knowing how much do plants actually need. On top of that, we as consumers, just throw an uncertain amount of this fertilizer on the plants. The problem with this is that plants are not great at breaking down these nutrients for consumption. Most of the time, they are leached off to water systems. This results into a lot of nitrogen built up in streams and algae love nitrogen. Therefore, an increase of algae build up also occurs. Hence, it not only creates havoc for the plants, but it can also cause this water to get into our homes.
These microbial biosensors that express the methyl halide gas can help us determine how much nutrients to the plants actually, help us determine how they make certain decisions in relation to environmental conditions, how they communicate, and even further down synthesize them to help break down the nutrients for the plants even more.
Overall, my smart city idea involves helping the plants that we consume everyday to gather their nutrients more efficiently, which can also help with the water systems that travel back into our homes.

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1. There are many things we could share to limit the waste of energy and resource such as cars, toys, and so on. The purpose of Smart Car is trying to use data analysis and internet to create more efficient route in order to save energy, resource and human labor. I have been in Houston for many years and I witnessed how horrible the traffic always is no matter how fast we improved our roads. It reminds me a history 137 years ago. People was sick of and worried about horse poo-poo on the road and seemed no matter how hard they tried to clean the road in the city, it was always a mess due to the fast growing population in city. Then we had first car and the poo-poo problem was solved. It is time to solve the traffic problem in a better way. Currently, many internet companies are developing smart cars such as apple, google, LeTV, and so on.
2. Plastic bag and paper recycling. Every time I purchase something online, I receive this big paper box. I always felt guilt to just throw them away. In Smart City, I am hoping we could use something that will turn into fertilizer and won't pollute the world. Right now there are many bio friendly "plastic". It is not widely used due to high price. I am hoping we could find a way to make it work. Because we don't inherit the Earth from our ancestor, we borrow it from our children.