Latest Inventions

posted by admin on Aug 16

Hello Again - and what a great time to be at the fore-front of the latest inventions and technology!

Almost every day, there is an announcement about something great to advance our thinking or challenge our current ways of thinking - the future looks so different - if only we would make the change!

Looking back over time Adam Park takes us through his top 10 Tech Milestones That Changed The World for a glance at the past - and hopefully they can take us places in the future!

Add to this some of the following technological information here from Susan, as she details her best 25 Startups Revolutionizing Biotechnology. Even small things can make a huge difference!

Staying with the prefix ‘bio’ - take a look at the amazing advances and technology involved with Mike’s great article on: Massive Future MRI Machine Promises to Unravel the Secrets of Human Biochemistry! Great stuff!

Moving on to inventions today - read on if you want to know about something new: Coming Soon to a Classroom Near You: 10 Things To Know About Robot Teachersby the converted Erin Lenderts! Now I’m not sure if these will ever really take over in mainstream schools - but the idea for smaller groups or adult learners could really be a good thing!

And, if you ignore all the adverts at the top - scroll down to a very thorough article by Rick Cole as he reviews the difference between to very similar in-car technologies: Garmin vs TomTom. Worth a peak if you are considering a sat nav in the future.

And finally - How to use Twitter in a way I hadn’t really thought off: Sharons719 offers us 50 “Healthy” Ways to Use Twitter. Very interesting!

And on that note - get back outside and enjoy the nice weather before winter sets in!

posted by admin on Jul 16

In no particular order, this months articles all seem to have a numbers theme!

There are 100 amazing these, 50 free those and 5 more of something else!

All listed like the articles they will lead you to - you have the choice as to what you want to hop on the links for to have a more in-depth look into. They all tell you roughly what area they cover - so you can go from there.

And I hope you can use some of these well researched links…….

1) Rose King offers a massive energy listing with her huge article on: 100 Amazing Lectures to Follow the Future of Energy.

2) Suzane Smith helps us to modify our design work or school work with: 70 Awesome Open Source Tools for Graphic Designers.

3) Alvaro Cramton geeks it up with: Top 50 Computer Science Blogs.

4) Leonard Gilhooley sees through all this with these great images to see the unseen with: 5 Sites With Free & Interesting X-Ray Photos.

5) Diane Laine chirps and tweets out about her social networking research with: 5 Twitter Users Every Info Junkie Should Follow.

6) Alex Carson offers us teachers a huge resource pool with his massive listings of: 100 Great Tech Talks for Educators.

7) Engelbert Hudson brings us back to routine with our monthly injection of apps - but this time for study with: 25 Excellent iPad Apps for Scripture Study.

So, there must be something for everyone in that bunch!

If not, then join us next month for the next Latest Inventions Blog Carnival.  We are always on the lookout for great articles - and the odd apps listing.  Whether it’s science, space, medicine or some gadget just for fun - if it’s new or a great research article - then send it in right here to share with all my readers.

posted by admin on Jul 6

I mean, is biodegradable plastic such a good invention after all?

It always seems like an invention suddenly comes along and you think ‘wow, that is absolutely fantastic!’ - until you think it through for a bit longer.

Well this is exactly like that.

The invention is still a great idea - but the implications of it could actually have worse effects than before it was invented!

Why?  Well let’s follow through the life cycle of a plastic bottle and see what happens - but first - what is biodegradable plastic all about?

The Invention:
Regular plastics are made of polymers that can take literally for ever to break down.  They will do though - at varying rates - depending on the type of plastic they are it can be months or years before they start to break apart.

Now, we all know that plastics will never actually really ‘biodegrade’ in the sense of breaking down into total natural products that can be used again by organisms - but the word is used for the relatively fast breakdown of an entire container or sheet of plastic.

Now, this plastic is made to contain certain other particles that will help to induce and encourage the ‘natural’ breakdown of the item.  Just like burying a plastic carrier bag in damp mud will help it to weaken and fall apart.

So, anyway - they have come up with 2 types - Hydro-Biodegradable Plastics (HBP) and Oxo-Biodegradable Plastics (OBP) - and they work either by the chemical actions of hydrolysis or oxidation respectively to reduce the overall bulk of the product.

This then renders it into small enough pieces that natural bio-degradation can start to act on the remaining parts, reducing the product to it’s chemical components much faster than normal.
 
The Problem:
Normal plastics have been designed to be virtually indestructible, therefore you can use a plastic bottle over and over and over again. Even if you can recycle it - it is still as strong as it was before.

This was the original problem, meaning that plastic products never broke down:

Old Plastic Bottle: Brought new with product inside - product used up - container cleaned - container reused to carry another product - and another - and another -and another - then the container is recycled to start all over.

However, now this means that all new plastic will only have a short shelf life - too short for some - in fact, it is already making regular plastic fall apart as well!

New Plastic Bottle:  Brought new with product inside - product used up - container cleaned - container thrown in compost heap to degrade - the end!

So, how is it affecting new bottles?  Well - biodegradable plastics shouldn’t ever be recycled as it will compromise the quality and durability of new mixed plastics - basically it is starting to make recycled products less reliable!

If you buy a product in a biodegradable container, you must dispose of it after use - this means more plastic is being produced and thrown away than ever before!

At least with the regular plastic, you could reuse your toiletries bottles when travelling, use old pots and tubs for planting and store water and food over and over again.

Not with this new invention!  You will just have to keep replacing your containers and as a result, dispose of more plastic than ever!  And in fact, there are governments who are really getting angry about these new plastics and is trying to get them eliminated!

The Answer?
Well, we still need the regular plastic and we still want the biodegradable plastics!

Can they both co-exist or has 1 got to go?

I suppose it all depends on the person using it as to how beneficial each type is - to them and the planet.  Can you trust people not to recycle the new type - and can you trust people to recycle the old type?

Is it better to have lots of old plastic going around and around  - or only new plastic, but a higher production rate?

Well, maybe financially - it was a better invention after all!

posted by admin on Jul 2

Imagine lighting your rural home all night without the cost - and danger - of kerosene fuel and fumes!

Millions of homes in rural Africa are now all proud owners of the new eco lamp called The Kiran.  It is a simple solar powered lamp that is free to power and could save the lives of over 1.5 million people a year based on current statistics!

Now, that is a good enough advocate for this new lamp as it is - but it is also very eco friendly as well - and infact that is what it has recently won the Ashden Award 2010 for Sustainable Energy.  

The Lamp:
Basically, it is just a simple hand held lamp that harnesses the sunlight during the day, and releases it when needed during the evening.

However, it has been specially designed to be not only durable and cheap to produce and sell - but made to offer the same if not better lighting than the existing alternative: kerosene.

Over 75% of households in Africa have no access to electricity - and for those that do, the supply is not always 24 hour!  Therefore they have no alternative than to light with other means, and this is usually kerosene gas.  A gas that is known to gives of unpleasant and dangerous fumes when used internally or in badly ventilated areas.

Infact it is estimated that over 1.5 million people a year in Africa alone die from bad ventilation in combination with kerosene fumes.  Not to mention the cost of buying and storing the fuel in the first place - and the risks of house fires and personal injury.

Needless to say, D Lights small solar lamp eliminates all of that worry for the consumers!

It has 2 light settings depending on your use requirements and also has various positions for the handle so you can carry it, suspend it or fix it to a wall.  It’s fat base allows it to stand freely on a table of the floor as well. 

The Result:
This just goes to show you that the simplest things are still some of the best inventions!

Just the right design at the right time in the right place - and the invention is a winner.  I mean you have been able to get a chain of little solar lights for your garden for years now; but they didn’t win any awards!

They didn’t need to be so practical and so durable - and were infact made to be priced as profitably as possible rather than as affordable as possible!  Ironically it is the cost effective version here that is winning awards and selling millions of products.

So maybe you budding inventors need to think of something else simple and everyday that could be tweaked to make another great invention!

Get designing!

posted by admin on Jun 21

Dyson are at it again with something totally new to the world - and something stylish too!

Not only have they come up with the bag-less vacuum - and the vacuum that goes around corners; they are now breaking out from the floor and up onto our desks and tables!

Well, why only blow wind about inside a cute little vacuum cleaner when you could be cooling off busy office workers instead?  So, they gave it a go!

The result is the very stylish looking desk fan that blows cool air around - but without the blades.  It is basically a fancy looking basketball hoop on it’s end!

The Bladeless Wonder!
The theory of these new fans is the fact that they don’t have blades spinning around at top speed all the time - making rather a loud annoying noise.  And the blades are usually covered in dust and stuck in an equally dusty ‘cage’ around them making them virtually impossible to clean - however they are made safer by this.

What Dyson want to do is get rid of the dirty noisy fan blades and make the physics of air do all the moving you need!

Just as moving water sucks more water towards it - so does air - and this is one of the factors which makes the fan work - and also gives it it’s complete name: the Air Multiplier. 

Basically, a small motor in the base sucks in air from the surrounding space and then shoots it out of a thin slither at the rear of the ‘fan’ and shoots it over the curved surface (just like on a planes wing).  This action of faster moving air drags in more air behind it to replace that which has been blown over it in the first place!

Still with me?  Good.  Now we have already got the air from the fan itself shooting out towards you as well as the sucked in air around the edges - but there is more multiplying to come!  The rim of the fan gets wider, so therefore spreads out the air - and you guessed it: that sucks in more air through the centre of the hoop!

And yet more - as the air all rushes through it also draws in air from outside of the fan hoop and shoots it out towards you as well - basically multiplying up all the original little bit of air loads of times!

Your basic Air Multiplier!

Other Benefits?
Well apart from the cleaning part and the unbroken stream of air (that hasn’t been chopped up by the fans) - they also claim it is more environmentally friendly than air conditioning.

Although this isn’t a direct comparison, they aren’t lying as the amount of wattage to run these fans is so much less than a whole air conditioning system.

However, you would need an awful lot more of them to keep the whole office cool - and I’m not sure if the production, transport and production energy costs have been taken into account here.  I would imagine that you would need a fan for almost every desk, so about 200 for a large office - now imagine how much less energy would be used for a comprehensive air con system instead of 200 single electrical fans on site!

However - they do look pretty cool and come in all shapes and sizes too (at around £199 though!).