For the victims of natural calamities as massive as Hurricane Katrina, one major hurdle to be faced (aside from finding clean, drinkable water) is the prospect of finding proper housing. For these sort of victims, the best solution thy can look forward to is portable housing that's both easy to deploy and maintain (for the would-be residents), and cheap and simple to manufacture (for the builders).

With that said, we're letting you guys know of this exhibit underway showcasing portable housing concepts being proposed by several architects. That particular house you're looking at above is dubbed the Future Shack, and was designed by Australian Sean Godsell. This design makes use of an old shipping container, and thanks to its telescoping legs, is capable of being deployed on any terrain within 24 hours.

The Future Shack can also be folded up into itself for easy transport out of the area. That's a sample of the sort of ideas these architects have in mind - you can view Wired's full exhibit via the read link below.

Michael Pritchard invented a new water bottle that filters out the dirtiest water and makes it drinkable. Clean water is usually taken for granted by those of us who live in places where it is readily accessible, so when we find ourselves in a situation where drinkable water isn't similarly available, we might find ourselves choosing dehydration over drinking what we find.

The appropriately named Lifesaver bottle, as seen in the picture, instantly filters out the water without the use of chemicals. The bottle even filters out fecal matter (yes, it cuts the **** out). Basically the water filters out anything longer than 15 nanometers.

Because of such a stringent filter, it even takes out viruses - typically 25 nanometers long - a feat even conventional water filters don't do. The filter automatically shuts off after it expires, preventing dirty water from coming through.

The idea was inspired in Pritchard after the tsunami disaster in South-East Asia last 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana in 2005. Fresh, drinkable water was sparse in both situations and refugees had to wait for days for supplies. "Something had to be done. It took me a little while and some very frustrating prototypes but eventually I did it," said Pritchard.

The new invention, which can distill 4,000 to 6,000 litres without changing the filter, is expected to revolutionize the way water is supplied to disaster stricken areas, military troops, and happy campers everywhere.

And the world's search for new sources of fuel continues. This time around, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) turned its sights to a hurricane.

It sounds unlikely but a new research suggests that the "calm" eye of any hurricane is in fact packed with energy that keeps the weather powerhouse running.

"The spinning flow of air parcels - or vortices - in the eye can carry very warm, moist eye air into the eyewall that acts as a turbocharger for the hurricane heat engine," says Scott Braun, research meteorologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Researchers used computer simulations and observations of 1998's Hurricane Bonnie in southern North Carolina. U.S. Naval Postgraduate School Professor of Meteorology Michael Montgomery, likewise, said that the interaction between the moisture-enriched air parcels, the main eyewall, and the lower eyewall cloud is similar to "increasing the octane level in auto fuel." He added,

This discovery may help explain why strong storms can remain intense for several hours or longer after encountering conditions that usually bring weakening. Ongoing research will add to our understanding of the dynamics associated with storm intensity so that we can pinpoint the variables and processes that must be represented in numerical models to improve intensity forecasts.

The study is promising but its proponents believe that harnessing hurricanes as next source of fuel is still far from being a reality. One significant challenge that remains is forecasting a hurricane's intensity.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has been studying the planet Saturn and its moons for some time now, bringing strange and stranger news to the waiting scientists back on earth.

Only recently they found another weird fact from the sixth rock from the sun: Saturn's polar vortex, the winds that blow outward from its polar region, is hexagon-shaped rather than circular like the polar vortex we have here on earth.

The strange vortex features a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides. Scientists are baffled. They've never seen anything like it on any other planet. And to think that Saturn is a planet whose thick atmosphere is dominated by circularly-shaped waves and connective cells; it's the last place to ever expect such a six-sided geometric figure.

Two decades ago, this same feature on Saturn's north pole was photographed by NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts. The fact that this hexagon appeared again in the Cassini images means that it's a long-lived feature. After 15 years - the length of a long polar night in Saturn - the image is made visible again. It's been said that four earths could fit inside this hexagon, measuring 15,000 miles across.

Another weird thing about Saturn: while it has a hexagon-shaped polar vortex on its north pole, the southern polar vortex looks a lot different. It appears to be a hurricane with a giant eye. Such weird facts about the Solar System's second largest planet only serve to whet our scientists' appetites to learn more about it.

They believe that once they understand the nature of the "bizarre hexagon", the may learn of the true rotation rate of the deep atmosphere and perhaps the interior of the planet.

The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives unanimously passed the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act of 2006 (PETS). The PETS bill requires disaster relief and emergency management agencies to include provisions for the needs of households and individuals with pets. They are also required to provide animal service in their disaster relief plans for federal approval. The President is expected to sign the PETS bill.

The bill was created in response to the aftermath of hurricane Katrina where many pet owners refused to evacuate their homes and leave their pets behind because emergency relief agencies, transportation facilities and shelters were not equipped to accommodate animals.

A recent survey conducted by the American kennel Club (AKC) showed that 67% of pet owners would refuse future evacuation orders unless they were able to take their pets with them.

The AKC, which lobbied for the bill, said the legislation "will go a long way in assuring that the disastrous situation that occurred in 2005 is not repeated."

Tree rings could finally settle what Al Gore could not: the debate on whether global warming is making hurricanes stronger.

Several studies made since early 2005 have linked global warming to the increasing occurrence and strength of hurricanes like Katrina over the last decade. But these conclusions have been debated because they relied on potentially flawed data.

The issue could finally be resolved using the technique developed by researchers from the University of Tennessee: measuring different isotopes of oxygen present in the rings. Big hurricanes produce large amounts of precipitation with lower oxygen isotope composition compared with the isotopes in dew or smaller storms.

By looking at older trees, the researchers have been able to create a record of hurricane activity in the Southeastern US dating back 220 years, more than double the current record. In fact, the study suggests that data up to 500 years can be accessed in future studies.

The research could help create a reliable record of hurricanes, including frequency and intensity, that goes beyond the records kept by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Atlantic (NOAAA) in its hurricane database. NOAA 's records stretch back to the last 100 years. But because storm data from more than 20 years ago are not very accurate, researchers cannot make a credible baseline that accurately compares storm frequency and strength over time.

Dendroclimatology is the science of extracting past climate information from trees. Tree ring information can reconstruct climate conditions at the trees' growing site for certain seasons back to thousands of years. It's possible to reconstruct records much older than the oldest living trees, either by using dead trees that are still in place or trees that were cut and used for building long ago.

El Nino, the Dennis the Menace of weather systems, has started to develop in the tropical Pacific and is likely to continue into early 2007 according to scientists. But scientists at the National Weather Service in Monterrey, Ca. say, "Worry about something else."

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the main U.S. agency in charge of forecasting and tracking the El Nino phenomenon, says weak conditions exist but could strengthen into a moderate event by winter. At its worst, the phenomenon was described as akin to a low-grade fever and should not cause any major upheavals.

In fact, the development of El Ni?ould help explain why the current Atlantic hurricane season has not been as active as expected. Early this week, Hurricane Gordon was downgraded to a Category 1 - one of the early effects of El Nino.

If El Nino continues to hold, scientists say the U.S. should expect wetter-than-average conditions over portions of the Gulf Coast and southeastern states in the first three months of 2007. While the West, the northern Great Plains, and the upper Midwest could experience warmer-than-average conditions.

Elsewhere, El Nino effects have already been observed in Indonesia, Malaysia and most of the Philippines with drier-than-average conditions.

NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) will use a small, flying model airplane to study the mechanics of hurricanes.

Unlike your own radio-controlled airplane, however, this little gem - called the "aerosonde" - costs $50,000. Still, as far as scientific studies go, it's a bargain. The aerosonde will fly through the 200 MPH + winds at an altitude of only six to nine hundred feet or so in order to measure temperature, pressure, humidity and wind velocity inside the storm.

This information will be used to help scientists more accurately predict changes in hurricane strength - something that is difficult to do at present. In 2004, "Hurricane Charley went from Category 1 to Category 4 in six to eight hours," says NOAA's Joe Cione. "We don't understand that at all."

Currently, NASA and NOAA monitor hurricanes from satellites and manned aircraft that fly through the upper layers of the storm, dropping instrument packages called "dropsondes" into the maelstrom. In order to gain a better understanding of hurricanes - which are basically "giant heat engines," powered by evaporation - it is necessary to have instruments as low in the air as possible without actually being on the ground or in the water. "It's far too dangerous to get there with manned aircraft," says  Cione.

Each aerosonde carries a five to six pound package of instruments. Capable of flying for 18 hours, they will (hopefully) transmit data on the transfer of heat energy from the sea to the atmosphere as they spiral into, and then out from the storm.

All that is needed at this point is an actual test. The problem is that a hurricane has yet to come close enough to the Key West (Florida)  Naval Air Station this season, where one of the aeorsondes are being kept. "Mother Nature is laughing at us," says Cione. They hope to launch an aerosonde in October, if funding can be maintained.

El Nino conjures images of disasters from both ends of the catastrophe spectrum since it either brings torrential rains or scorching drought. But apprently, even El Nino-induced clouds have their silver lining.

El Nino typically appears every three to seven years which then results into the higher-than-normal warming of the equatorial parts of the Pacific Ocean. This, in turn, causes droughts in some places and  floods in others. Now, weather forecasters predict that the El Nino may also have a calming effect on the rest of the Atlantic hurricane season which peaks in late September and ends in November.

According to National Geographic, the phenomenon also suppresses the formation of potentially dangerous weather systems in the Atlantic Ocean. The Colorado State University meteorologists say that the El Nino is expected to reappear this Fall. As such, they expect no major hurricanes this October.

El Nino (roughly translated as "The Boy"), first used in 1892, got its name because it was most noticeable around Christmas.

One of the first things a flyboy learns about bad weather in pilot school is "Stay the heck away from hurricanes!" So what fun it must be to be a pilot for NASA's African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analyses (NAMMA) Mission, because the job description entails flying around, over, and into tropical cyclones off the western coast of Africa.

A typical mission into the birthplace of storms has the NASA aircraft taking weather readings such as air pressure and temperature, wind speed, and humidity as they fly in the vicinity of tropical cyclones - the "baby" storms. Flying over the cyclone, they can drop dropsondes, a package of weather sensors attached to a parachute that will take readings as it floats through the storm's turbulent air (a team member calls them "Pringles cans with parachutes"). They will also fly into a hurricane so onboard scientists can observe the storm as it happens around them.

Residents of the East Coast may one day thank the bravery of these pilots and scientists who ride into the eyes of these storms. A majority of US-hitting hurricanes come from these African-born tropical cyclones. These pilots and planes form part of a legion of high-tech equipment that are keeping an eye on this cradle of hurricanes. The data gathered is expected to improve the ability of metereologists to predict the formation and arrival of hurricanes. The NAMMA mission is espected to wrap up by the middle of this month.