Michelle Obama :: Joining Forces With Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

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Seattle Startup Is A Food Desert Oasis, Housed In Recycled Shipping Containers

According to the USDA, 23 million Americans live in “food deserts”--areas without ready access to fresh, affordable, and healthy food. And that doesn’t just mean a less interesting diet. One study, focusing on Chicago, found that residents who lived without proper grocery stores, but within range of fast food, were more likely to die, or suffer, from diabetes, cancer, and heart disease.

But one group of enterprising business school graduates thinks the answer could be shipping
containers--a popular choice for social initiatives these days. Stockbox Grocers has a plan to sell a range of fresh food, meat, and dairy in converted shipping containers, stationing mini-outlets on rented parking lots. The group opened its first prototype two weeks ago in the Delridge area of Seattle. It wants to open two permanent sites in early 2012, and at least two more later in the year.

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Urbee :: World's First 3-D Printed Car

 Last year, Stratasys and Kor Ecologic teamed up to develop the first 3-D printed car--a vehicle that has its entire body 3-D printed layer by layer until a finished product emerges. The Urbee was just a partially completed prototype when we first wrote about it last year. But now the completed prototype is ready, and the Urbee team gave Fast Company an exclusive look at the finished product.

The prototype, unveiled a few days ago at the TEDx Winnipeg event, is a two-passenger, single-cylinder, eight-horsepower vehicle. That means it has significantly less power than today's vehicles, which usually have at least 68 horsepower. But those missing horses don't matter: the Urbee requires just an eighth of the energy of conventional cars. The electric-ethanol hybrid is also designed to get up to 200 mpg on the highway and 100 mpg in city conditions--and it lasts up to 30 years.

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