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 30

London is shaping up for a greener future after the first day of its latest ‘Green Scheme’.

The idea is that many other European cities are bicycle friendly, and thousands of people use bikes all the time when in town - and having stood outside of Amsterdam Train Station on a week day, I have seen the sheer numbers involved!

So, London have taken the initiative and offered a ‘bicycle hire’ scheme to get people on to 2 wheels without the expense of buying a bike outright and worrying about storing your own bike in small flats on chained to fences overnight!

The Scheme:
At the moment you have to sign up to the scheme in advance for this - so you can’t just put a £1 in the meter like a shopping trolley and ride off!  You pay for access to all the bikes for a 24 hour period, and then pay your time-based hire charges on top.

Once signed with the scheme, the organisers (Transport for London and operator Serco) send you out a key (for £3) which will allow you to unlock any of the bikes on the street - currently there are 500 available cycles, stored at 315 docking stations across the city - including places like 32 docking stations in Westminster, 14 in Camden and many across the Royal Parks.

Currently you control your account online, and are charged for using the bike (up to £1 a day) and then the period of time you use the bike for - basically, when you release a bike using your key, your account gets debited as per the charges you can read online.  The first 30 minutes of a ride are always free but you can be charged up to £50 for a full 24 hour period (and a further £150 if you keep it longer than that!).

So if you buy a years membership at the current price of £45, and plan to ride for less than 30 minutes at a time (which is free), you will be paying around 12p a day to ride to and from work every day. 

For casual riders, they are hoping to allow people to pay for bikes at paypoints in the future - (at £1 to use the bikes during a 24 hour period and then hire charge on top) but they are starting with accounts only at the moment - and so far over 12,000 people have signed up!

The Benefits:
You can arrive in London on the train and then just hop on a bike instead of waiting for buses or going underground with everyone else!  You could cut your journey times massively in the rush hour!  When you arrive at the docking station closest to your workplace, you just park it up and leave it there.  No chaining up - no worries!

Alternatively, you could use the bikes for a day-trip to the city, and casually ride around back streets, through Hyde Park, out to Kew Gardens or London Zoo.  You just dock the bike whenever you have finished and head off home.

You can of course just hop on and off whenever you want and use as many bikes as you want through the day - so park up after arriving at your destination - maybe a museum, then after that you can hop on another bike and stop somewhere for lunch, then hop on another bike to go to a West End Show in the evening!  As long as you dock each bike securely in the docking station - that is your hire period over with, and someone else can hire the bike while you are feasting on some gourmet food or singing along to Dirty Dancing!

The Problems:
Well, as you may have calculated - 500 bikes: 12,000 people.  Let’s hope they all don’t want to ride at the same time!

Needless to say, there will always be teething problems when a new scheme starts up - and the main one will be that the operators don’t know when people will be using the bikes - and for how long, so they need to see what happens over the first few weeks.

So, there is a possibility of there not being a bike at the docking station closest to you when you arrive!  And the possibility of there being no free docking station for you to drop of your bike into after use!

There are maps showing the closest alternative docking stations and up to 15 ‘free’ minutes to cycle to it - but that could mean up to 45 minutes before you are back where you started (15 minutes to cycle there and 30 minutes to walk back to where you wanted to be!).

There will be staff at most of the main docking station over this first week, but other than that you are on your own, so if you card doesn’t work, your bike is faulty or you travel to a second docking station to find it full or empty too - you might need to make a call.

The Result:
I think that this could be a great scheme if they keep it as members only - as if they start letting anyone hire the bikes without signing up first - you will get problems.  Just as people make up fake names and addresses to get freebies, I think those same people will damage these bikes (activists have already stuck stickers over some of the bikes) or not return them (like the 4 shopping trolleys in my local park!).

However, the green potential is fantastic - and I would love to see big cities more pedestrian and cycle friendly. I’m fed up of having to walk around miles of metal barricades to cross a road, or standing in the rain waiting for the traffic lights to change, or even risk my life cycling among lorries and coaches in tiny streets. 

People and bikes should get the straight routes and priority lights - ad I hope that this is a step in that direction!

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 11

If you farmland is flooded - how can you still grow crops?

Well there is one solution that will no doubt help millions of people all across the globe in these times of climate change and rising sea levels - a floating farm!

Many communities around the world inhabit wetland areas and have developed raised housing and methods of transport and livelihoods that make the most of existing circumstances - but growing crops on water?

That really is something quite amazing - and sustainable!

The Idea:
Well, areas of India and Bangladesh for example have annual flooding - but it’s lasting longer and longer these days - and coming when it’s not expected, ruining crops and homes, and leaving farmland underwater and families without anyway to feed themselves.

So, why not farm on the water itself?  Well it’s not as difficult as you might think, and as this is only a temporary solution it doesn’t need to be highly advanced and permanent.

Basically you can build up layers of floating vegetation mixed with fertiliser and stabilizers and you have a raised bed for growing anything.  And as long as you tether it to your home or river bank - you can grow your crops! 

Even if the water levels rise again - your crops do too, so they are not destroyed!  And when the water finally falls back to earth - your crops are already on a bed of fertile compost!

When the water level falls, you can transplant your seeds back into the now fertile soil (enriched with sediment from upstream) and grow them to maturity.  Maybe you could even sell the excess at a local market increasing your income.

The Implementation:
A small charity called Practical Action is working with communities in Bangladesh and has already helped hundreds of families do just this.

Their solutions are simple and cheap to construct for the local communities as they are made from local ‘ingredients’ and are not huge in size.  For example they base their ‘raised beds’ on an initial layer of water hyacinths strengthened with a layer of bamboo strips on top, then bound in place by a further layer of water hyacinth on top so the roots create a sturdy platform.

On top of this solid base is a layer of animal dung and earth - both plentiful in the area - in which to grow the actual crops.  And watering them is not a problem!

The Future?
This is already a lifeline to so many people in Asia, but it could help with innovations across the globe.  If the future is to bring more flooding and adverse weather to many countries - it’s great to know that there are people out there already working on the solutions.

Some of these recent inventions in areas that are already experiencing problems can be the basis for future inventions and inventors to plan for similar scenarios.  Planning for crops that can grow on water could lead to new crops, new farming methods and new lifestyles.

It could also be the first step towards living on water and building flood resistant homes, crops and energy stations!

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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!