At the convergence of the localvore and vertical farming movements, Target’s new in-store micro-farms are positioned to offer the freshest possible produce to consumers. On offer: leafy greens and herbs initially but eventually also potatoes, beets, zucchini, tomatoes peppers and more.

In collaboration with the MIT Media Lab and IDEO, the company’s Food + Future CoLab will be testing their indoor production technology in stores around the country starting next spring. Target aims to leverage its scale to optimize their approach over time while also using their strategy to attract conscientious consumers.

Among other advantages, local and in-store aquaponic setups require less water and no pesticides as compared to outdoor alternatives. Also, since stores are already temperature-controlled for food storage and customer consideration, heating and cooling are effectively taken care of without additional energy expenditures.

Neither vertical farming nor close-to-source produce are new. Huge vertical farms have enjoyed success from Japan to New Jersey and rooftop farms often provide food for local communities or restaurants and hotels below. Still, like a similar project in Germany, this takes the idea to the next level, offering fresh organic crops alongside conventional ones right in a retail grocery shopping outlet. As populations continue to urbanize, demand for city-grown food (without the transportation costs and with appeal to local-oriented eaters) will only continue to grow.

Nothing moves faster than light, right? True as that may be in theory, a team at MIT has developed a method for visualizing its propagation to amazing effect in practice.

Slowed down and turned into film format, an illuminated tomato goes from ordinary to uncanny as a snaking arc of white light approaches in a billionth-of-a-second burst, then deforms to move across it, with an unrivaled FPS rate.

And the impact goes beyond making neat little films: “Beyond the potential in artistic and educational visualization, applications include industrial imaging to analyze faults and material properties, scientific imaging for understanding ultrafast processes and medical imaging to reconstruct sub-surface elements.”

So how does it work? Per their abstract: “The effective exposure time of each frame is two trillionths of a second and the resultant visualization depicts the movement of light at roughly half a trillion frames per second. Direct recording of reflected or scattered light at such a frame rate with sufficient brightness is nearly impossible. We use an indirect ‘stroboscopic’ method that records millions of repeated measurements by careful scanning in time and viewpoints. Then we rearrange the data to create a ‘movie’ of a nanosecond long event.”

Imagine Google Maps, but overlayed with layers of digital information, from cell phone usage to GPS activity – anonymously aggregated and available to the public. Starting today, Wiki City Rome is displaying just such data on one of the busiest urban centers in the world.

An MIT SENSEable City Laboratory project, Wiki City Rome seeks to create a “Real Time Rome” from various data sources. The net result: a composite and continually updating data image of the city displayed on top of a map of Rome. Shown above: a concept sketch (left) and cell phone activity around a Madonna concert (right).

Having just gone live, Wiki City Rome maps are currently being displayed around Rome on huge billboards during the city’s Notte Bianca festival. It both reflects and reacts to the movements of the Roman population. The data being displayed is perhaps not terribly impressive, yet anyway, but the idea is quite compelling.