Hybrid cars , on the subject of. We’ve seen them around. We know they’re some kind of (some might say) unholy mix between standard internal combustion engines and electric motors. If one lives in cities like Wellington (NZ), you will have noticed a couple of the local taxi companies drive them. Hybrids: the Prius (top) and Insight (bottom) And that their dashboards look all space-age and sport interesting-looking graphics with arrows moving back and forward between graphics for fuel pump, engine and battery.
Still, though – what do they actually _do_? And are they as efficient as they sound? Note: I’m writing this post as I’ve just spent the last two days driving a Honda Insight from Wellington to Auckland and back again. On to the workings, though! First, one needs to understand a little about car engines**. The flywheel Flywheels are used in a range of different applications, including vehicle engines. Flywheels have lots of inertia, meaning that they change their rotational speeds only with quite a bit of persuasion. How does a hybrid car work?" We are all familiar with gasoline-powered cars, and most people have heard about or seen electric cars.
A hybrid car is a combination of the two. A hybrid vehicle contains parts of both gasoline and electric vehicles in an attempt to get the best of both worlds. The best way to understand the advantages of a hybrid vehicle is to think about a car traveling down a highway at the posted speed on level ground. In this case, the engine is doing three things: It is overcoming rolling resistance in the drive train.It is overcoming air resistance.It is powering accessories like the alternator, the power steering pump and the air conditioner.
The engine might need to produce no more than 10 or 20 horsepower (HP) to carry this load. In a traditional hybrid vehicle, you have a complete electric car. Hybrid Car Image Gallery The only problem with a traditional hybrid car is the weight. The Honda Insight in particular tries to strike a compromise. These links will help you learn more: Is there room for emotion in science? | Forensic Scientist. Last night, I looked at Auckland city from a new perspective: the top floor of Auckland Museum. Fantastic views of the 360-degree variety. Aside from that, I was there for the Auckland SCANZ panel discussion. All the speakers were excellent but, being a geologist by training (and secretly still am, in my head), I was particularly interested in the comments of Hamish Campbell of GNS about the reaction of GNS to the Christchurch earthquakes.
My overall impression of his comments was that after the September earthquake and exacerbated by the February quake, GNS had underestimated two things: the public’s need for information in times of crisis; and GNS’s position as being that immediate point of contact at such times. After initial problems in communications with the media, the GNS website now has a wealth of information for public access. Is it possible to argue a scientific point by bringing in emotion?
GNS, I think, has taken the best direction for them. GeoCities site to be excavated as the ‘Digital Pompeii’ | Digging the Dirt. If you are you are anything like me and you cannot bear to throw anything away from your inbox…this might be the excuse you are looking for. The now defunct GeoCities platform has been revisualised as a city map with neighbourhoods and property sites. 35 million people used GeoCities from 1999 to Oct 27 2009, and on that date the Archive Team backed up 650 gigabyte of information.
And now at a team is creating an installation they are describing as “digital archaeology of the world wide web as it exploded into the 21st century”. In full view, the map is a datavisualisation showing the relative sizes of the different neighbourhoods. While zooming in, more and more detail becomes visible, eventually showing invididual html pages and the images they contain. While browsing, nearby MIDI files are played. The Deleted City project is calling this the digital Pompeii and will allow viewers to eventually wander through history following an interactive excavation.
Just So Hiatus? Some of you may have noticed (although at this point I’m most likely just stroking my own ego!) That Just So Science and Weekend Nanotech have been conspicuously silent over the past two weeks. This has actually been for good reason however as my free time has been taken up by a rather epic little endeavour. Some of you may be aware that next week is World Space Week – which Kiwispace has been promoting it left right and center, but to cap it all off we decided to produce a series of podcasts talking to the most interesting people who work in the space industry from around the globe.
Like all plans, we grossly underestimated the amount of work that was involved, but we also underestimated how excited and supportive people are! Since then we have been promoted to making the ‘Global World Space Week’ podcast and we will be releasing episodes daily from Tuesday 4th October through to Monday 10th October. What happens when humans dare to dream BIG... Episode 1 teaser – Dennis Stone. World Space Week New Zealand -- October 4-10 | A festival of space events and activities. On behalf of the project team behind World Space Week in New Zealand for 2011, I'd like to extend my thanks to all those involved with the project -- event organisers, participating schools, attendees and other supporters.
We hope you enjoyed World Space Week and will join us again next year, which promises to build on this year's efforts. We'd appreciate your feedback on what you enjoyed or would like to see next year -- use our Contact Form to let us know. And if you'd like to stay informed about other space events and activities throughout the year, educational programmes and opportunities for schools -- please also consider joining KiwiSpace Foundation as either member or free subscriber. Mark Mackay. Executive Director, KiwiSpace Foundation.
Other interesting things. Mix & mash - the great NZ remix & mashup competition | 2011 Winners. Full bladders, wasabi alarm earn Ig Nobels. Last updated 13:42 30/09/2011 Driving while desperately needing to urinate isn't a crime, but maybe it should be. Peter Snyder and his colleagues found that having a bladder at its bursting point reduced attention span and the ability to make decisions to the same degree expected with low levels of alcohol intoxication or 24 hours of sleep deprivation.
The research earned them the 2011 Ig Nobel prize for medicine. "When people reach a point when they are in so much pain they just can't stand it anymore, it was like being drunk," said Snyder, a professor of neurology at Brown University in Providence, R.I. "The ability to hold information was really impaired," he said. The 21st annual awards, sponsored by the Annals of Improbable Research, were handed out by real Nobel laureates, and featured the usual doses of silliness, including a mini-opera about the chemistry in a coffee shop and the ritual launching of paper airplanes.
But he warns he has the tank on standby. The 2011 Ig Nobel winners: Sunday Spinelessness – For aussie beetles, beer bottles are an evolutionary trap | The Atavism. It’s Nobel season. Over the next month or so, we’ll hear who has received a telegram summoning them to Stockholm and to fame and fortune (the cash part of the prize is worth about 1.5 million dollars). Of course, the Nobels are a big deal. Prizes are given to recognise people who have fundamentally changed the way we think about the world or the way science works. So it’s nice that in the week before we start thinking about those huge sicentific acheievements we have the Ig Nobel prizes to remind us that most science is small, and sometimes it’s even prettty funny.
The Ig Nobels were set up to honour science that “first makes people laugh, then makes them think”. The beetles in question are Julodimorpha saundersi, a member of the jewel beetles (Buprestidae) and native to desert habitats in Australia: Mating season has probably just finished for these beetles. Gwynne, D. & Rentz, D. 1983 Beetles on the bottle: male buprestids mistake stubbies for females (Coleoptera).
Research. NASA to trial laser-powered space broadband. High performance access to file storage Impatient boffins will be able to download high resolution images and video from space probes in mere minutes if a newly approved NASA trial proves successful. The space agency has rubber-stamped a trial of one of its projects - a laser-based communications system - which is theoretically capable of shifting up to 100Mb/s from spacecraft poking around the furthest corners of the solar system.
NASA's current space communications and data transfers are done on radio frequency (RF) systems. The RF systems' data transmission rates mean that it takes 90 minutes for a single high-resolution image to be beamed back to Earth from Mars. The new laser-based system would allow 100Mbps data rates instead of 6Mbps, allowing a image to be transmitted in five minutes. "Just as the home internet user hit the wall with dial-up, NASA is approaching the limit of what its existing communications network can handle," said Dave Israel, who will lead the project.
Did fifth giant planet get the boot? Baby Beetle Uses Mouth to Lure Amphibians to Their Doom | Wired Science. Voracious larvae of two recently discovered beetles can latch onto frogs, toads, and other amphibians many times their size, then devour them. How the bugs entice their prey and survive their attacks, however, wasn’t known until now. Researchers have witnessed the worm-like larvae of predatory Epomis ground beetles in action.
The fingertip-sized larvae perform a dazzling dance to lure large prey to their doom. “The amphibians don’t stand a chance. They can’t ignore the moving larvae because, if they do, something is wrong with their instincts,” said entomologist Gil Wizen of the University of Toronto, leader of a study about the deadly bugs published Sept. 21 in PLoS ONE. “Normally amphibians eat small larvae, so the larvae seem to be taking their revenge here,” he said. A scanning electron microscope's view of Epomis ground beetle larvae. Years later, they discovered that adults of E. dejeani and a second species, E. circumscriptus, could also dine on much larger amphibians. See Also: Reconstructing visual experiences from brain activity evoked by natural movies. - GallantLabUCB.
3D Nanometer Images of Biological Fibers by Directed Motion of Gold Nanoparticles - Nano Letters. Laboratory for Fluorescence Dynamics, University of California, Irvine, California, United States Nano Lett., 2011, 11 (11), pp 4656–4660 DOI: 10.1021/nl2022042 Publication Date (Web): September 15, 2011 Copyright © 2011 American Chemical Society Section: Abstract Using near-infrared femtosecond pulses, we move single gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) along biological fibers, such as collagen and actin filaments. Citing Articles View all 5 citing articles Citation data is made available by participants in CrossRef's Cited-by Linking service. This article has been cited by 1 ACS Journal articles (1 most recent appear below). Detection of Low Quantum Yield Fluorophores and Improved Imaging Times Using Metallic NanoparticlesLaura C. Engineers can build a low-carbon world if we let them - opinion - 26 September 2011.
Read full article Continue reading page |1|2 The engineering solutions to combat climate change already exist. Politicians must be brave enough to use them before it's too late One word sums up the attitude of engineers towards climate change: frustration. Engineers know there is so much more that we could do. Wind, wave and solar power, zero-emissions transport, low-carbon buildings and energy-efficiency technologies have all been shown feasible.
Climate call The barriers preventing the creation of a low-carbon society are not technological but political and financial. The statement calls on governments to move from warm words to solid actions. . – an assessment of the climate change challenge in the UK – that the move to a low-carbon society will cost no more than 1 per cent of GDP by 2050. Resistance to wind turbines and the power lines they feed, nuclear power and electric cars, as well as the economic costs, all make public opinion a powerful brake on change. China in front Recommended by.