posted by admin on Nov 29

It’s not a Latest Invention, but I just had to pass on something I found a company doing that I wanted to introduce!

They are called the Corporate Angel Network (CAN) and they work hard and for free to match up empty seats on smaller corporate jet flights with cancer patients who are unable to fly to the specialist appointments on normal planes, either due to insurance clauses or due to the risk of infection in large crowds.

Since 1981, CAN - a not-for-profit organisation based in the States – has been working with corporations with their own fleets of small aircraft to fill their empty seats for free (yes – totally free to the patient and the person who travels with them) to help them travel between home and various hospitals and specialists as and when.

CAN currently transport around 250 patients a month according to their own stats, and uses the services of over 500 airlines.

It’s a great concept and for a great cause and it’s even sort of eco friendly (filling seats on an already scheduled flight).  So if you can help other patients, recommend them to a friend in need or make even a small donation – this charity needs voices to spread the word!

Thanks.

posted by admin on Nov 26

I just saw an advert for a new online ‘game’ that showed me a lot about how a city is powered – and the impact of ‘green’ alternatives.

It’s called Energyville and has been put together by The Economist Group, to show people the environmental costs of the many forms of energy available – and the essential we can’t do without at the moment.

Of course it is only a simplified storyline – but it is filled with facts and figures that really make you think about what we can expect for the future.  I mean I got to the point where it told me that we cannot currently run our transport networks without oil – we need it or we cannot exist.  So much for filling my city with ‘green’ energy!

Enter Energyville Yourself:
Take yourself to their website where you get a basic introduction to the site, then you name your city and either choose the actual game to start – or you can try the tester version to get to grips with the place.

I entered the tester city – which I decided to name ‘Hopesville’ – and it was very well laid out.  I was confronted with a very compact version of a major city with homes, an airport, factories, offices and transport systems: but nothing was working – it all had no power.  And the soundtrack was of just birdsong.

It all looked so peaceful – but then without all the noise and hub-bub of a city there wouldn’t be any food, furniture or products in the world!  So I needed to get things moving.

All the areas have information buttons where you can read about the energy needs of all the important sectors of a working city like commercial buildings, vehicles and homes as well as containing some amazing and extensive facts unique to that sector – like under transport it said that ‘ wide based tires improve fuel economy by up to 5% – saving up to 400 gallons of fuel per year; that’s US$1,680 at todays rates – and around 4 metric tonnes of CO2!

Running The City:
Next you have to decide what energy sources you want to use for your city and drag the factories, dams or wind turbines onto your cityscape.  But do so with care!

Each item your drag onto the scene has an impact on your key energy indicators: Economic Cost, Environmental Cost and City Security – as well as clocking up your overall energy score!  And, as you start to power the city it comes alive; cars start moving around, lights in offices come on and planes take-off!

The idea is obviously to keep your energy score as low as possible, but creating enough of the right energy to power your city.  The information can help you and the main info box tells you what you are doing wrong!  So needless to say it was screaming at me to use oil to power by infrastructure when I was trying to run the whole place on hydro and wind power!

And, the energy scores for some of the green alternatives are not so low after all!  It certainly made me think differently about it all – I mean a biomass factory had more energy cost than a coal factory!

Fully Powered:
When you have reached full power for your city for 2015, it takes you through a mid way storyline detailing some future events that could affect your city – for example if biomass factories make world hunger even worse than it is today, then your factory becomes more expensive to run!  And all the rest….

The game then takes you back to your city in 2015 to see how it looks.  And I didn’t like mine!  It was noisy and busy and using far too much energy – total contrast to when you first start the game!

But – as it’s busier – it needs yet more energy – so you need to add more factories or change your sources to get the balance again.  It isn’t a nice place to be in my opinion!

The End?:
When you finally finish your city (and it can only take a few minutes to complete if you don’t read it all), it takes you to the ‘final score’ section, which shows your total energy cost and environmental impacts etc.

It also gives you a final score out of the thousands of people who have played it!  I’m afraid I was nearly in 200,000th place with my hydro and wind (with a little oil) based city!  And we are told that that is the way forward!

So, maybe try out your own ideas in this format – I might see if nuclear is the way forward!

posted by admin on Nov 21

Just a quick note to congratulate the scientists at CERN for finally getting this machine into action after a 14 month stall!

Cheers all round as the machine creaked back into action like nothing had ever been wrong in the first place.  Take a look at the BBC’s updates or at the CERN website for all the latest info…. 

Similar Articles On This Site: Latest Inventions In Physics: The Large Hadron Collider

posted by admin on Nov 16

Right, here we go with a fun-packed Latest Inventions Autumn Blog Carnival;

John Laugherton starts us off with a short article in the Top 50 Web Design Resource Blogs for those of your in the industry, and Katy Unitek takes us to another industry – the renewable energy industry with her post: Moving Away from Oil-Powered Energy – Boots on the Roof

Next we have an interview with an inventor: so Surbhi Bhatia offers us An Interview with Dr. Iqbal Ahmed, Creator of World’s Smallest Steam Engine.

Squeezed in next is the obligatory iTunes link, this month from Linda Jones: 100 Awesome iTunes Feeds for Every Kind of Teacher

Next we have a few posts that may or may not be of interest to everyone, but they offer up some ideas that others might no have thought of, so please give them a look:  First we have some speculative but interesting science from Mike with his Brain-Computer Interface and the Wireless Neurosociety article.

Then, Carolyn Friedman gives those starting out a college a very impressive list of 75 + Useful Web Tools for Your First Year of College, followed by some ebook dilemmas from Marco Gustafsson who offers us both: Know More about EBooks and E-Book Readers and E-Ink: their Past, Present and Future.

And tagged on at the end is a very thorough article detailing the pros and cons of the new Hero Sprint technology by Adam Pittaway: HTC Hero (Sprint).

See you in December!

posted by admin on Nov 10

Llamas, Alpacas, Camels and other camelids are offering the world of medicine something real special! 

They possess an anti-body totally different to any other mammal, alongside the ‘normal’ ones that we already have – and it could change the fight against disease!

So, What Is It?
Well, during some random research in the 1980′s, a group of students were given a project to investigate camel antibodies.  All mammals have a standard type of antibody type – the heavy and light chain antibody for those interested – but camels and other members of the same evolutionary branch also have a different type – an antibody with only heavy chains.

The scientist in charge of the discovery named them ‘nanobodies’ and they have many interesting features that are beneficial to science – and us!

Antibodies Do What, Exactly?
Now, antibodies are key to the mammalian immune system, and it is their job to target specific ‘nasty’ bugs and cells in the body and immobilise or destroy them – to stop them harming the body.

Medicine at the moment has to ‘grow’ normal antibodies in a time consuming and expense way, and they can only target certain illnesses – however, the new smaller nanobodies could be manufactured much more easily and cheaply AND they can fight many more illnesses including intestinal disorders, cancer and possibly even Alzheimer’s disease!

Other potential uses include binding to certain proteins in developing organisms to see which cells are responsible for certain processes and therefore highlighting the role of certain cells in the nervous system and the like!

Another possible angle for these tiny nanobodies is to be grown inside of plants and vegetables.  Now, this could be to help that plant to defend itself against pests or disease – but it could also be a way to offer whatever eats it a defence against something else.

Imagine cattle being able to eat themselves healthy without the need for other medication – or humans on a diet of certain fruit to make sure they get enough antibodies for a specific illness!

Whatever will they think of next……

See Related Article On Alpaca’s: Latest Fox Deterrent