Latest Inventions

posted by admin on May 31

They are at it again! 

Tesla are now in production with a family electric car to fill the gap in the market.  After the unbelievable success of their ground-breaking Roadster (article name and link) they thought that they had better slow down and think of a different demographic.

There is still a waiting list for the Tesla Roadster after it’s launch a while back, so why a whole new design now?

The Model S
A-top-of-the-range shiny new sporty-looking hatchback that can travel 300 miles on a single charge! And can seat 7 people!

The prototype was shown to all and hopes to be ready for 2011 - with plans to churn out 20,000 the following year.

It’s not going to be a cheap family car, but the costs of running will be so much cheaper than gas - estimates reckon that the 4 hour full charge on the cars 8000 fuel cells will cost a tiny $5 at today’s electricity prices!

That really is cost effective! 

Bearing in mind that the shortage of oil will no doubt push up already high gas prices - and the pressure of crops for bio-fuel could be making it unpopular.

It has been calculated that owners could save around $15,000 on fuel costs over the life of the car - and obviously help to save the environment at the same time (if using wind-produced electricity rather than coal!).

What Else Is Out There? 
Competition is on the horizon from several rival firms - none of whom are in production either!

First up is the Lightning with many claims including 0-60 mph in just 5 seconds and with a charge time of just 10 minutes for 200 miles of driving - get yours reserved with just a £15,000 deposit!

Also the Volvo 3CC is set to revolutionise electric vehicles.  With a claimed 0-60mph in 10 seconds and a top speed of 85mph, it will do the trick - but it looks a bit futuristic with flap up doors and a clear roof!

The Future:
However, should new cars be like old cars?  Should there be a new way of looking at cars as transport?

Electric car are still just cars - usually with just 1 person in them driving in traffic in the sweltering heat!

Maybe we need to design them to be most fuel efficient with only 2 people inside as this is how most of them are used!

posted by admin on May 26

Can Vanilla Ice Cream Help Our Honey Bees?  Well it can if it’s Häagen Dazs Vanilla Ice Cream!

You must have been living in a cave if you haven’t heard about the current crisis facing the worlds bee population at the moment!  Well, to be more precise - the human population!

Why humans?  It’s the bees that are in trouble!

Well, yes, but without the bees flying around between flowers - there will be no more pears, nuts or apples - along with many other major seeds and vegetables.  It is quoted that a third of all the food we eat has needed the honey bee!  I kid you not.  Bees are a necessary link in the pollination of many of the foods we eat - and without pollination - there is no fruit, nut, seed or vegetable for us to eat or use for cooking and this includes Vanilla itself!

Seriously - if you grew an apple tree in a bee-proof environment it would not grow a single apple in it’s life time!  In Japan - farmers killed off their honey bees with pesticides and now have to pollinate all their own fruit trees by hand using feathers on sticks!  Seriously. 

And can you imagine how many people it would take to hand-pollinate the 60 million almond trees in California alone if the honey bees carry on disappearing?  Let alone all the other crops we need them to pollinate.

Would it surprise you to know that there is a huge trade in honey bees across the world, where hives are transported all over the place to help pollinate giant mono-cultures of fruits and other crops that are too big for naturally occurring bees to pollinate.  Without this paid influx of honey bees - the crop numbers would fall until its wasn’t worth farming that crop anymore.

So, what’s my point?
Well, after reading a book about this growing crisis - I found out that Häagen Dazs are one of the serious parties that are getting involved in research.  They are funding the cause.

When you look at the fact that 50% of Häagen Dazs flavors are produced by bee pollination - they have a reason to get involved.  Imagine the flavours you’d be getting otherwise: potato and sweetcorn ice cream doesn’t sound so good, does it!

They have set up a website about their involvement as well as containing research information about the plight of bees and what is being done - and more importantly - how you can get involved.

So go visit Help The Honey Bees and get involved - or go and buy their ice cream and contribute with a full tummy!

This is the first great initiative I have seen about this agricultural and natural disaster - has anyone seen any others?

 

posted by admin on May 23

Would You Spend $155,000 to keep your dog forever?

Well, news has it that an American couple did just that!  5 years ago, they decided that they loved on of their pets so much, that they were willing to pay to have it’s DNA cryogenically frozen so that when the technology had improved enough - that they could get their little bundle of joy to walk again!

And the technology was improved last year - and so now they have a little puppy which is exactly the same genetically as their first one!  It was the first single-birth commercially cloned puppy in the world.

But why stop there?

There are plans afoot to clone animals that have been dead for some time - and in the case of the woolly mammoth - 40,000 years of it!

Cases in Japan recently have allowed scientists to clone mice that have been ‘dead for 16 years’ - so why not other extinct animals?

San Diego zoo have been busy with cloning - but with live animals.  They are not just cloning something normal like a sheep from a sheep - a la Dolly from the UK, they are cloning an endangered animal and crossing the species barrier by allowing the eggs to develop inside a bog standard domestic cow!

They basically made it possible for 2 south-east Asian oxes (Banteng) to be born through a cow mum.  Therefore paving the way for an elephant to give birth to a baby mammoth!

The Mammoth Task:
In December 2008, 70% of the mammoth genome was published from frozen specimens which had ‘fallen out’ of the permafrost in remote parts of Russia.  Obviously there is still 30% missing - but expert say that this won’t take long to overcome.

Basically, experts are claiming that the cloning of a mammoth will happen - it is just a matter of when!  The technology exists to re-create long dead animals - someone just needs to foot the bill.

They have several ways to clone the mammoth (or Tasmanian Tiger, or Dodo, etc..) and all depend on the getting the frozen cells to replicate and grow inside another animals womb.

They don’t actually need any sperm or mammoth eggs to perform this cloning (although that is a viable option) as they can electrically or chemically stimulate any cell into dividing sexually - so one dead mammoth can offer them goodness knows how many attempts at this!  All they need is the DNA - and this is found in every (non-sexual) cell of every living animal.  It’s just not always 100% there in long dead ones!

And Then?
Obviously, they need an animal from a similar taxonomic group and of a similar size, but everything else is a bit of guess work!

They also have no real idea of what they will need to don once the animal is born - as they have no ‘real’ mammoth breast milk to use - in-fact no idea at all about what it should contain - other than basing it on it’s only realistically useful relative - the elephant.

Another potential ethical issue at this point would be that there is only one - or a very small group, and possibly they are all the exact same animal genetically.  Needless to say, this won’t create a viable ‘herd’ or ‘flock’ of clones.  They would be just ’something to look at’.

We are also going to be bringing them back into a world that they no longer live in!  Yes, it is possible that humans were the main reason for their decline and extinction in the first place - but how do we know that they will survive in a new and changing world when we get them back?

Some people don’t even want beavers to be re-introduced into their neighbourhoods - so who is going to want a few giant hairy elephants roaming about their woods?

And are we not in a recession, with environmental issues all around us and medicine in desperate needs of funds?  Children starving, wildlife made extinct and forests being destroyed?

Would spending a fortune on raising the mammoth be a wise choice right now?

posted by admin on May 19

Should You Be Spending Your Money, Rather Then Paying Your Bank To Look After It! 

In this terrible housing market we are having at the moment in the UK, it’s no wonder there is a rise in buy-to-let ownerships.

Basically, no-one can afford to ask for much for their property if they are having to sell, so people with ready cash - i.e. all those people whose bank accounts are now getting zilch interest in their savings are out there spending it instead.

I know several people who are taking their savings out of their banks and investing it in bigger projects for the long-term.  A friend of mine has just has her dad put up around 25% of her property price so that she could buy-out her ex-partner as she couldn’t sell the thing in the current market.

Others are buying up properties in their local area, knowing that the house prices will eventually go back up - but anyway - they will be getting around £600-£1000 a month ‘interest’ (rental payments) a month rather than zero interest at all!

What Should You Do?
If you are interested in investing your money in property to let out then the 2 most important considerations are a new kitchen and bathroom.  These 2 rooms are the rooms that will get you the best rent - and you want to get them done asap - and get potential clients in to view.

My friend has been doing this and found a great little company - the Kitchen Shack - to help out with the main room of the house - the kitchen.  They do all styles and sizes including modern cabinets, bespoke fittings, butler sinks and right through to hard wearing ‘landlord’ styles that can take a hard life - but still look great! And all of a guaranteed high quality that will last the pressures of rented accommodation!

She ordered everything online as easy as pie and it was all delivered promptly and by courier - so nothing was lost or broken!  She also saved herself an extra day of so of work by having them deliver the kitchen units already made up instead of the usual flat-pack arrangement.  That way - she didn’t waste a day off work gluing everything together and trying to match up the parts.

She’s not an expert - so didn’t want to add more stress to the job by dealing with all that hassle or paying around £140 a day for someone else to either!  She just wanted the units in the kitchen, all joined together - and ready to go!

She couldn’t find fault with the kitchen suppliers - which is more than could be said for the people she tried to get the bathroom furniture from!!

Rather her than me……

posted by admin on May 16

Hello again, and thanks for visiting the Latest Inventions Carnival .

This months carnival isn’t such a big one - as not really getting impressive enough entries to show off new skills or technology - but we have a few goodies that are.

Lets start with those sites that offer some great tips on how to make the best of new technology and software on the web. So starting with Erick Simpson’s advice on Uncovering Big Opportunities in Your Existing Client List

Then a few tips from Ivan on how to find the Best Free Antivirus Software ever! And finally Verna Morris has plenty of advice on how you can find the Top 50 Free Open Courseware Classes to Develop Better Web Sites! Some great courses all in one place!

Similarly related, is the quick bullet points on iphone applications best suited for the medical workforce - of the hypochondriac! So here is Kelly Sonora’s well researched list of the Top 25 iPhone Apps for Nurses!

On a more ‘Sciencey’ front, Mike gets into the more technical area of Ultrasound Brain Stimulation and gets a great discussion going with the comments it attracts!

And finally, 96well presents and interesting debate on how man is being overthrown by the very things that he invents - Might a machine win a Nobel prize?

Enjoy!