Category Archives: Education

Cheetahs Released into the Wild

Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) Re-introduces Five Cheetahs into the Wild

It’s very important to closely monitor the behaviours of the individual cats to ensure their health and adaptation to their new environment. CCF has been conducting research on re-introductions and this is the third project. There is not a lot of suitable habitat due to the extent of land under livestock production and habituated cheetahs need large uninhabited areas. NamibRand is ideally suited for this long-term re-introduction project.”

This is the first time a structured re-introduction is being attempted. Previous attempts to re-introduce cheetah into this area have not been successful due to various reasons including unsuitable animals and the lack of an intensive, long-term monitoring program. The cheetahs chosen for this release are likely to settle into the area as they are habituated and will allow access to tracking. In addition, these cheetahs, having lived in a large camp and have been successful in hunting game previously and it is expected that they will successfully adapt tot their new environment.

One aim of the NamibRand Nature Reserve is to restore the balance of the natural ecosystem. Up until thirty years ago there were cheetah in this area of the country. However, livestock farming practices have eliminated cheetah in this region. Since the establishment of the NamibRand Reserve, game populations have increased substantially, providing adequate prey for these cheetah. Nils Odendaal, CEO of NamibRand Nature Reserve said “we are thrilled to finally be able to release cheetah on the Reserve, as it has been an ambition of ours for several years to restore cheetah to the area, creating a holistic ecosystem.”

via: Near Extinct Cheetahs Released in the Wild

Photo by John Hunter (of different Cheetahs in Kenya).

Kids Need Adventurous Play

A survey commissioned by Play England for Playday found a change in the places where children and young people today experience adventurous and challenging play. As children, 70% of adults enjoyed most of their adventures in natural outdoor environments. This compares with only 29% of children today as both the space and the freedom to roam has dramatically declined in recent years. Today, children’s experiences of adventure are confined to designated areas such as playgrounds (56%), their homes (48%) or theme parks (44%).

‘Playing is an essential part of growing up,’ said Adrian Voce, Director of Play England. ‘Starting from their earliest play experiences, children both need and want to push their boundaries in order to explore their limits and develop their abilities. Children would never learn to walk, climb stairs or ride a bicycle unless they were strongly motivated to respond to challenges – but we must accept that these things inevitably involve an element risk.

‘Adventurous play that both challenges and excites children helps instill critical life skills. Constantly wrapping children in cotton wool can leave them ill equipped to deal with stressful or challenging situations they might encounter later in life.’

Full press release

Toyota Winglet – Personal Transportation

Winglet Personal Mobility Device from Toyota

Toyota has a long term vision. The population of Japan is aging rapidly. Toyota has invested in personal transportation and personal robotic assistance for quite some time. I must admit this new Winglet doesn’t seem like an incredible breakthrough to me (their earlier iUnit seems much better to me – though I am sure much more expensive too). The interest to me is in their continued focus on this market which I think is a smart move. The aging population worldwide (and others) will benefit greatly from improved personal mechanical assistance.

The Winglet is one of Toyota’s people-assisting Toyota Partner Robots. Designed to contribute to society by helping people enjoy a safe and fully mobile life, the Winglet is a compact next-generation everyday transport tool that offers advanced ease of use and expands the user’s range of mobility.

The Winglet consists of a body that houses an electric motor, two wheels and internal sensors that constantly monitor the user’s position and make adjustments in power to ensure stability. Meanwhile, a unique parallel link mechanism allows the rider to go forward, backward and turn simply by shifting body weight, making the vehicle safe and useful even in tight spaces or crowded environments.

Toyota plans various technical and consumer trials to gain feedback during the Winglet’s lead-up to practical use. Practical tests of its utility as a mobility tool are planned to begin in Autumn 2008 at Central Japan International Airport (Centrair) near Nagoya, and Laguna Gamagori, a seaside marine resort complex in Aichi Prefecture. Testing of its usefulness in crowded and other conditions, and how non-users react to the device, is to be carried out in 2009 at the Tressa Yokohama shopping complex in Yokohama City.

Toyota is pursuing sustainability in research and development, manufacturing and social contribution as part of its concept to realize “sustainability in three areas” and to help contribute to the health and comfort of future society. Toyota Partner Robot development is being carried out with this in mind and applies Toyota’s approach to monozukuri (“making things”), which includes its mobility, production and other technologies.

Toyota aims to realize the practical use of Toyota Partner Robots in the early 2010s.

On a personal note, I bought some more Toyota stock last week. The stock has declined a bit recently. Toyota is one of the companies in my 12 stocks for 10 years portfolio.

Plugging America’s Broadband Gap

Martin is concerned about a U.S. broadband gap. Only 60% of American households have speedy Net access. That puts the country in 15th place among developed nations, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development. It’s a mighty fall from 2001, when the U.S. ranked fourth.

This is one of a number of facts that those in the USA seem ignorant of: we have a far worse internet and cell phone infrastructure than many countries. Those that think the USA is the leading technology country should be alarmed by such poor performance in a critical area such as internet infrastructure.

There are three basic options for catching up. The government can take the lead, making its own investments in broadband. Second, the government can mandate that existing providers make the service available more widely. Most realistically perhaps, the government can create incentives for private companies to roll out more broadband. That’s what Martin is trying to do. He wants to auction off wireless spectrum and require the winning bidder to provide free broadband throughout the country. The company could make money by selling advertising and advanced services.

The free service wouldn’t be the fastest on the market. The winning bidder would have to offer a minimum speed of 768 kilobits per second to 95% of the country within 10 years. Although that’s technically broadband, it’s about half the speed of today’s average U.S. broadband link.

Still, Martin’s proposal has drawn support because it has the potential to crack what has become a broadband duopoly. In most markets, only one telecom company and one cable provider offer the service. A third alternative with decent speed and big savings off the current $50 monthly average price could spark more competition. The leading contender to win the auction is M2Z Networks, a startup founded by former FCC staffer John Muleta.

The FCC approach is no panacea. It’ll provide competition at the low end of the market and will do nothing to bring the U.S. the blazing speeds common in Korea and Japan.

Martian Water

NASA Spacecraft Confirms Martian Water, Mission Extended

“We have water,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. “We’ve seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted.”

With enticing results so far and the spacecraft in good shape, NASA also announced operational funding for the mission will extend through Sept. 30. The original prime mission of three months ends in late August. The mission extension adds five weeks to the 90 days of the prime mission.

“Phoenix is healthy and the projections for solar power look good, so we want to take full advantage of having this resource in one of the most interesting locations on Mars,” said Michael Meyer, chief scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The soil sample came from a trench approximately 2 inches deep. When the robotic arm first reached that depth, it hit a hard layer of frozen soil. Two attempts to deliver samples of icy soil on days when fresh material was exposed were foiled when the samples became stuck inside the scoop. Most of the material in Wednesday’s sample had been exposed to the air for two days, letting some of the water in the sample vaporize away and making the soil easier to handle.

“Mars is giving us some surprises,” said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona. “We’re excited because surprises are where discoveries come from. One surprise is how the soil is behaving. The ice-rich layers stick to the scoop when poised in the sun above the deck, different from what we expected from all the Mars simulation testing we’ve done. That has presented challenges for delivering samples, but we’re finding ways to work with it and we’re gathering lots of information to help us understand this soil.”

Continue reading →

Students at Powhatan Engineering Camp

Students attend Powhatan’s first-ever engineering camp

The 28 students participating in the first-ever Powhatan County Schools engineering camp spent eight days doing hands-on activities like building model amusement park rides and suspension bridges, and taking field trips to see engineering in action. They visited the Richmond Times Dispatch’s production facility, where they observed robots shuttling stacks of paper back and forth, and the Watkins Center, where they observed engineers at work on a construction site.

The group even enjoyed a presentation from a NASA engineer, who spoke of his experience working on the Mars rover.

These engineering camps help kids enjoy their naturally inquisitive minds – which unfortunately they don’t get to do often enough.

Mobile Phone-based Vehicle Anti-theft System

18 year old self-taught electronics ‘genius’ invents mobile phone-based vehicle anti-theft system

Morris Mbetsa, an 18 year old self-taught inventor with no formal electronics training from the coastal tourist town of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean in Kenya, has invented the “Block & Track”, a mobile phone-based anti-theft device and vehicle tracking system.

The system, that Mbetsa created by combining technology from projects that he has completed in the past, uses a combination of voice, DTMF and SMS text messages over cell-based phone service to carry codes and messages that allow control of some of a vehicles’ electrical systems including the ignition to manage vehicle activation and disabling remotely in real time.
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Mbetsa is now looking for funding to commercially develop his proof of concept and bring it to the market

Another cool example of engineering in action.

An Appetite For Science

An Appetite For Science by Corinne A. Marasco

episodes titled “Churn Baby Churn” and “I Pie” explain, respectively, how sugar crystallization affects the texture of ice cream and what happens to a pie crust in the oven as it bakes. These are the sort of processes that chemists and materials scientists address everyday.
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Yogurt contains beneficial bacteria, such as Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus, that love lactose, the sugar found in milk. Adding a starter culture of plain, store-bought yogurt to milk at 110 Â°F, Brown shows that the bacteria will convert the lactose into lactic acid. The heating pad helps to maintain a steady temperature to allow the bacteria to incubate. If the temperature of the milk is too low, the bacteria won’t grow to make yogurt. If the temperature is too high, the bacteria will die.
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He’s confident he could teach a high school or college science course with nothing but a kitchen. For labs he could demonstrate how heat denatures protein by cooking an egg, how yeast cells execute gas-liberating reactions by baking a loaf of bread, or how fermentation occurs by making pickles. As a bonus, the class would get to eat the experiments, enabling observation of cause and effect.

Malaysian Shrew Survives on Beer

photo of Malaysian tree shrew

Malaysian Shrew Survives on Beer

The shrew lives in the forest of Malaysia and feeds on the flowers of the bertam palm. Produced year-round and constantly fermenting, its nectar is about 3.8 percent alcohol — roughly equivalent to a Sam Adams light.

“Fine,” you say, “except that’s a light beer!” But cut the shrew some slack — it doesn’t eat anything else. Let’s see you subsist on nothing but beer, light or not, and stay sober.

That’s the shrews’ most amazing quality: they don’t get drunk. On any given night, said researchers in a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, one-third of the shrews have a blood-alcohol level that would leave us under the bar — but there’s no evidence of intoxication.

Science Policy Research Virtual Intern

externs.com is another curiouscat.com web site that lists internship opportunities. I am surprised that virtual internships and externships have not grown much more popular in the last 5 years. Scientists and Engineers for America do have such a virtual internship:

Members of the first Scientists and Engineers for America (SEA) virtual intern class can be located anywhere in the world and will work remotely on specific SEA projects. Intern will research the positions elected officials and candidates for office take on science policy issues.

The internship is for between 10 to 20 hours per week and can be done anywhere, as long as you have a computer, internet connection, and telephone. The dates of the internship are flexible accepted on a rolling basis.

Also see the externs.com science internships and engineering internships. If you have an internship you would like included, please add it (there is not cost for the site, listing or using).