Typhoon Sinlaku makes landfall

Fabulous video from James Reynolds

Britain – As seen from the trackers

Air Congestion

The BBC has created a series ‘watching’ the activity of the UK as seen from the Sea, Land and Air. Using GPS, for example, it has created images of taxis going round London, or all the air traffic that comes into UK airspace within a 24hour period. What is fascinating about this is what it really shows us, from the point of view the congestion we have created, and also how easy it is to track anything. Big Brother is no longer just watching.

• BBC News

Flash Flood

This flash flood was caught on (time lapse) camera in Kobe, Japan.

Via Japan Probe

Solar Powered rocket fuel

Yes, you can imagine it now, the next NASA rocket covered in solar panels and the crew peddling like mad to add an extra boost during take off. Sounds mad? Yes, it is. However, scientists have discovered a way of creating ‘rocket fuel’ from solar powered energy; the ‘rocket fuel’ is essentially a splitting of Oxygen and Hydrogen elements from water thus allowing the ‘storing’ of solar power. This obviously means that you would use the hydrogen and/or oxygen in a machine powered by these elements, but the main breakthrough is simply the fact that these boffins have found a way of doing this on the cheap. The practical benefits sould be that you plaster your house with solar panel, run your water through the converter and store the hydrogen in tanks to be used later by hydrogen fuel cells.

Being able to use solar panels to build up a store of chemical energy that is easily transported would revolutionise the way solar energy can be used. It not only means that it could power a building at night, it also means it could be carried around to power electric vehicles running on hydrogen fuel cells.

Who knows, with all these advances in solar power we might get rid of our addiction to fossil fuels.

• The Independent

Home Hydrogen Fueling Station

A company in the UK has developed a hydrogen home refueling station that is capable of refueling cars from…erm…home. The unit they have developed is capable of producing enough fuel that will last the average car 40 km or 25 miles. Might not sound like much, but considering this is the first unit developed that is small (and presumably safe) enough to be used at home it is a step in the right direction.

Now this is an innovation I would really like to see work; granted the 40km is not a lot, but increasing this capacity would give you enough to maybe make the commute or short journeys and also reduce the dependency on oil and oil companies. However, I wonder how long it will be before the large oil companies will ‘disappear’ the company that developed it.

• BBC News

High oil prices are a good thing

Fabulous comment and observations from Chris Pummer…

the power source for today’s cars is little different than that which drove the first Model T 100 years ago. That we’re still harnessed to this antiquated technology is testament to Big Oil’s influence in Washington and success in squelching advances in fuel efficiency and alternative energy.

Given our achievement in getting a giant mainframe’s computing power into a handheld device in just a few decades, we should be able to do likewise with these dirty, little rolling power plants that served us well but are overdue for the scrap heap of history.

Wall Street Journal

Mecca Time

I am intrigued by a story in the BBC today that is suggesting that GMT should be dropped and Mecca Time used to replace it as the de-facto, central time that all clocks are co-ordinated from. The argument seems to be two fold: Firstly, GMT is a British Imperial imposition; secondly Scientists are arguing that Mecca is the center of the Earth thus should be the central time zone.

I am not going to explore the arguments on this (However, I totally disagree that the British “imposed” it because they were a big colonial power, they just had a concept of co-ordinated time that could be used regardless of where you were in the world thus helping with marine navigation, successfully argued to being adopted universally; plus GMT, especially in Scientific terms, has been replaced by UTC and is an astronomical concept of measuring time), but what I find interesting is that this is an example of Science backing a Theological argument. Normally you would find the two areas diametrically opposed to each other. I am sure that there are plenty of other examples. Very intriguing.

What would be even more interesting is if this was adopted by all Islamic states. Effectively you would have two time systems UTC and Mecca Time (but then why not others). How would this affect the world? I can’t see there being much of a problem; you could get into the argument of time being an abstract concept, but it could work. People have bad enough problem telling what time it is in other countries, using several methods of telling the time, as long as they are universally understood, can be done especially given technological help; Since the constants are known there would be no problems. Again, an interesting idea. Next I would like to see calendar months re-organised to by more equal in length, or at least February getting a few more days to round it up; who cares about leap years.

• BBC News
• GMT

Internet Addiction

Looks like another bunch of scientists have more time on their hands than is healthy…

Excessive gaming, viewing online pornography, emailing and text messaging have been identified as causes of a compulsive-impulsive disorder by Dr Jerald Block, author of an editorial for the respected American Journal of Psychiatry. Block argues that the disorder is now so common that it merits inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the profession’s primary resource to categorise and diagnose mental illnesses.

So we could actually break everything in life down to being an illness, like excessive driving, shopping (which is already an “illness”), anything to do with eating that some doctor thinks is not “normal”,  watching grass grow. I am sure that one could find that anything and everything we do in life could be described as an illness if it goes beyond a determined marker, beyond what is described as normal. What that normal level is (in some cases described as acceptable) is determined by the person, or people, making the study.

No mention, or thought, is given to the actual reasons why people are addicted to the internet, or anything else for that matter – maybe there is nothing suitable on TV. I would hazard a suggestion that this study, and subsequent headline, is a contributory reason; it is yet another item to add to the list of everyday fears and concerns (“Oh no, I am addicted, I have a mental illness!”). Is there any wonder why people escape reality when reality, whatever that is, persists in telling us we are mentally ill, or the world will end or heat up, or bombs are falling out of the sky, and so on and so forth. I would further suggest the good doctor comes up with a study to provide a suitable explanation on why we are actually addicted to anything and then provide a list of practical measures to help us find alternatives; all this assumes we care.

• The Guardian

When windmills go bad

If Nuclear power plants go wrong then we’d really know/not know (depending on proximity) about it. So wind turbines are safe even when they go wrong, and assuming you are in the right place, you get good video too…

Story: jp.dk

Beer harms science

The report (or hypothesis) goes something like this…

One of the most frequent social activities in the world is drinking alcohol – around two billion are thought to partake – and Dr Tomas Grim, who is a behavioural ecologist at Palacky University, Czech Republic, decided to investigate, reporting the discovery that it harms science in the prestigious ecological journal Oikos.

It continues…

In Europe, most alcohol is consumed as beer, according to the World Health Organisation. “Based on well known negative effects of alcohol consumption on cognitive performance, I predicted negative correlations between beer consumption and several measures of scientific performance,” Dr Grim says.

The results being…

Using a survey of the publications since 1980 of avian ecologists from the Czech Republic, which has the highest per capita beer consumption rate in the world (157 litres each year, or 176 pints), he discovered “that increasing per capita beer consumption is associated with lower numbers of papers, total citations, and citations per paper (a surrogate measure of paper quality).”

(Source: The Telegraph)

In my opinion, this study falls into the “WTF” category, or even the “Total watse of research money” bucket. Whilst I accept that this report has probably been distilled and edited for the benefits of the newspaper’s readers, the hypothesis that nations drinking more beer produce less scientific work, or at least work of questionable quality, does not take into consideration such factors as social changes (Czech Republic got rid of communism at the start of the 90s), it does not question the number of scientists withing the country (how many have left to find better paid jobs elsewhere in Europe), or even the number of research papers being done on avian related subjects (the study of birds is surely not a top priority in this part of the world).

I can only conclude that this study hits those areas the study itself is looking at (i.e. quality) and this should be held up as another example of questionable science. It is almost self-analysing – “why is this study so bad”.