Oil Spill Protection robots

It’s a well known fact that oil spills have quite a negative impact on the marine environment. However it’s impossible to guarantee that no oil tankers will be shipwrecked. But in case of a shipwreck the first thing to be done is to prevent the expansion of an oil spill. In fact it’s not an easy task because the only way to do so is to surround it. Till now there wasn’t a certain way to eliminate the oil spills from the water surface. Yet this gadget represents a great achievement in this domain.

It was called OSP robot. Using advance technologies, these robots autonomously work together to contain an oil spill by surrounding it with an inflatable barrier. So once contained, clean-up crews can clean the water surface.

Given gadget consists of three important modules:

1. Boom control module: by the help of which it’s possible to plan and control the motion of the whole system.
2. Communication module: due to the installed GSP system and radio antenna OSP can communicate with other units.
3. Propulsion module: two motor-driven propeller screws are mounted in the unit and can be easily exchanged in case of malfunction

In addition to this OSP robot has a solar panel that can collect photo voltaic energy, supplying thus power to drive motor. As regards its oil protection boom it should be mentioned that it’s stored in body and is rapidly rolled out in oil spill protection operation.

With the help of its simple and modular structure, OSP unit can be transported to the accident site rapidly and commence its mission immediately. Like a torpedo and mine operation in navy, OSP can be deployed from a helicopter or boat and accomplish its mission through the multi-robot control algorithms, being thus an extremely useful invention.  – gadgetreviews

Stunning bowling trick!

For Kids By Kids: Chocolate Flavored Brussel Sprouts

If three kid inventors have anything to say about it, all vegetables will taste like chocolate… even brussel sprouts! Yep! Three third-graders from Annapolis, MD have invented “The Micro Flavor Machine,” and won a shot at the finals of the 2008 Toshiba/National Science Teachers Association ExploraVision Awards.The challenge to grade-school and high-school students throughout the U.S. and Canada was to design a technology that could exist in year 2028 based on current technologies and scientific principles. Toshiba has held the ExploraVision contest for 16 years. The Flavor Machine team was one of 4,527 teams making it to the semi-finals, where 68 judges will be deciding their fate!

The 8 and 9-year olds on the Micro Flavor Machine team, Ashley Rambo, Samantha Cooke, and Katie White decided to find a way to get kids to want to eat what is healthy for them. Ashley described the invention to The Capitol newspaper of Annapolis, Md.

“Katie made a little prototype machine with two magnetrons. The food still looks the same, but the flavor changes. The magnetrons change the food’s flavor into a gas, another flavored gas replaces it. If we used a liquid, it would turn food into mush.”

How does a 9-year old create two magnetrons? Beyond me. But whether this team wins the ExploraVision Contest or not, I hope they didn’t sign their rights away…. The Micro Flavor Machine is an idea that has legs and wings! And not just for kids.

The Toshiba/National Science Teacher ExploraVision Awards will be announced at the beginning of May. Good luck to the Annapolis “dream team” and all the other kid inventor teams that are participating in the semi-finals of this event. – inventorspot

Mobile phones ‘more dangerous than smoking’

Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, a study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded. He says people should avoid using them wherever possible and that governments and the mobile phone industry must take “immediate steps” to reduce exposure to their radiation. The study, by Dr Vini Khurana, is the most devastating indictment yet published of the health risks.

It draws on growing evidence – exclusively reported in the IoS in October – that using handsets for 10 years or more can double the risk of brain cancer. Cancers take at least a decade to develop, invalidating official safety assurances based on earlier studies which included few, if any, people who had used the phones for that long.

Earlier this year, the French government warned against the use of mobile phones, especially by children. Germany also advises its people to minimise handset use, and the European Environment Agency has called for exposures to be reduced.

Professor Khurana – a top neurosurgeon who has received 14 awards over the past 16 years, has published more than three dozen scientific papers – reviewed more than 100 studies on the effects of mobile phones. He has put the results on a brain surgery website, and a paper based on the research is currently being peer-reviewed for publication in a scientific journal.

He admits that mobiles can save lives in emergencies, but concludes that “there is a significant and increasing body of evidence for a link between mobile phone usage and certain brain tumours”. He believes this will be “definitively proven” in the next decade.

Noting that malignant brain tumours represent “a life-ending diagnosis”, he adds: “We are currently experiencing a reactively unchecked and dangerous situation.” He fears that “unless the industry and governments take immediate and decisive steps”, the incidence of malignant brain tumours and associated death rate will be observed to rise globally within a decade from now, by which time it may be far too late to intervene medically.

“It is anticipated that this danger has far broader public health ramifications than asbestos and smoking,” says Professor Khurana, who told the IoS his assessment is partly based on the fact that three billion people now use the phones worldwide, three times as many as smoke. Smoking kills some five million worldwide each year, and exposure to asbestos is responsible for as many deaths in Britain as road accidents.

Late last week, the Mobile Operators Association dismissed Khurana’s study as “a selective discussion of scientific literature by one individual”. It believes he “does not present a balanced analysis” of the published science, and “reaches opposite conclusions to the WHO and more than 30 other independent expert scientific reviews”. – independent

Darn. I spent all this time not smoking and drinking and eating healthy and now I might get a brain tumor anyway?