Archive for September, 2011
Boston Dynamics Builds Robotic Beast Named AlphaDog to Carry Heavy Payloads for Miles and Miles
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2011 Ig Nobel Prize Winners Announced
The winners of the 2011 Ig Nobel Prizes have been announced. The humorous awards honor unusual scientific research. They are awarded annually by the science humor magazine, Annals of Improbable Research. A video of this year's ceremony can be found here. Among this year's winners are research that discovered a species of beetle is sexually attracted to a specific type of Australian beer bottle. Another winner was for the invention of a wasabi alarm. People who failed to predict the end of the world were honored with a Mathematics Prize. Awards were also given for research involving sighing, procrastination, urinating and hammer throwing.
Here is a list of the winners:
- Physiology Prize: Anna Wilkinson, Natalie Sebanz, Isabella Mandl and Ludwig Huber for their study "No Evidence of Contagious Yawning in the Red-Footed Tortoise."
- Chemistry Prize: Makoto Imai, Naoki Urushihata, Hideki Tanemura, Yukinobu Tajima, Hideaki Goto, Koichiro Mizoguchi and Junichi Murakami of Japan, for inventing the wasabi alarm.
- Medicine Prize: Mirjam Tuk, Debra Trampe, Luk Warlop, Matthew Lewis, Peter Snyder, Robert Feldman, Robert Pietrzak, David Darby and Paul Maruff for demonstrating that people make better decisions about some kinds of things - but worse decisions about other kinds of things, when they have a strong urge to urinate. See here and here.
- Psychology Prize: Karl Halvor Teigen of the University of Oslo, Norway, for trying to understand why, in everyday life, people sigh. The research paper is called, "Is a Sigh 'Just a Sigh'? Sighs as Emotional Signals and Responses to a Difficult Task."
- Literature Prize: John Perry of Stanford University, USA, for his Theory of Structured Procrastination, which says: To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that's even more important. He published an article called, How to Procrastinate and Still Get Things Done.
- Biology Prize: Darryl Gwynne and David Rentz for discovering that a certain kind of beetle mates with a certain kind of Australian beer bottle. The researchers found the beetle (pictured above) found the beer bottles irresistible. Ignoring the females, the males mounted or tried to climb up the bottles, refusing to leave. The lovestruck beetles fried to death in the sun, were eaten by hungry ants or had to be physically removed by the researchers. You can read about the research here.
- Physics Prize: Philippe Perrin, Cyril Perrot, Dominique Deviterne, Bruno Ragaru and Herman Kingma for determining why discus throwers become dizzy, and why hammer throwers don't. Their research paper was called, "Dizziness in Discus Throwers is Related to Motion Sickness Generated While Spinning."
- Mathematics Prize: Dorothy Martin of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1954), Pat Robertson of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1982), Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1990), Lee Jang Rim of KOREA (who predicted the world would end in 1992), Credonia Mwerinde of UGANDA (who predicted the world would end in 1999), and Harold Camping of the USA (who predicted the world would end on September 6, 1994 and later predicted that the world will end on October 21, 2011), for teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations.
- Peace Prize: Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armored tank. See video below.
- Public Safety Prize: John Senders of the University of Toronto, Canada, for conducting a series of safety experiments in which a person drives an automobile on a major highway while a visor repeatedly flaps down over his face, blinding him. You can see a video about this experiment here.
Photo: Darryl Gwynne
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Healthy Water
Healthy Water
We’ve all read the stories about how municipal water systems in the United States are contaminated with toxins such as lead, mercury, copper and even bacteria. In some parts of the country, stories of raw sewage leaks into fresh water supplies have made the news. And, people have reacted by drinking expensive bottled water as a supposedly healthier alternative to ordinary, inexpensive tap water.
City Water Supplies Are Safe
Of course, the truth about the safety of the nation’s municipal water supplies has finally come forth - drinking water from household taps virtually anywhere in the country is safe, pure and incredibly inexpensive. And, we’re learning that bottled water isn’t as healthy for us as we first thought.
Get Off The Bottle
First there’s the plastic container, or bottle itself. That convenient, plastic water bottle we’ve gotten used to carrying around is made from plastic material that contains cancer-producing toxins called phthalates. These toxins actually leach into the water in the plastic bottle and accumulate in our bloodstreams. Studies show that the concentrations of phthalates in our systems are increasing with each generation, mainly as a result of drinking water bottled in toxic plastic containers.
Plastic is Hardly Boidegradable
These plastic bottles aren’t biodegradable. Plastic throw-aways now represent at least 25% of the contents of our landfills. And plastics won’t break down for around 10,000 years - some plastics can take even longer to degrade. So our healthy-water myth has turned into a big health hazard. What can people do?
A Nice and Effective Alternative
Fortunately, there are many easy and inexpensive alternatives to our drinking water challenges.You can easily install a simple charcoal-type filter system on your kitchen faucet. These inexpensive filters can remove up to 99.9% of heavy metals and other toxins that may (or mostly may not) be present in your city’s drinking water. And you can now buy a portable water filtration system that’s as convenient as your old plastic sports bottle, but the bottle is not made of toxic materials.
Cheap Filter Removes Most Contaminants
The filters that can be attached to your kitchen faucet are cheap (generally under $50) can be found at most hardware stores, reduce chlorine and heavy metals, and generally make your tap water taste better. For example, the Brita system costs about $20 - 40 for a starter set, and $20 for each replacement filter. It will filter about 100 gallons of drinking water and lasts for about 4 months.
Portable Filtration is the “Wave” of The Future
For about the same price, you can now get a 16 ounce portable water filtration system from Back to the Tap, which actually filters as you drink. It uses a number 4 LDPE plastic bottle, which is the kind of plastic that doesn’t normally leach phthalates. The filters are replaceable, and you can refill anywhere with plain tap water. It can be refilled about 300 times, and that’s 300 disposable plastic bottles you’re not throwing into already full landfills.
Going green does take some conscious thought and careful planning, but it’s getting easier every day to go green. In this case, you will be rewarded with better health and less plastic in landfills - and more money in your wallet. Remember - bottled water costs MUCH more than gasoline, per gallon. So, save your health and the environment and tons of cash - by drinking water from your own household tap!
There’s no reason to poison your family and spend thousands of dollars just to have a clean home. Clean your house with simple and pure natural cleaners - and save enough money for a really nice vacation! Want to find out how to go green, save money and save Planet Earth? Click HERE to find out how being green can save you green!
Originally posted 2009-05-27 01:15:03. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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