Science Category Archive

Asleep at the Wheel?

2 Replies Jonny Hankins

Anyone who has ever driven a long distance will know the feeling of “zoning out”. You lose focus on the road, staring blankly in front of you, your reaction time lengthens, and sometimes people even fall asleep.

In the UK it is estimated that about 20% of accidents are caused by people nodding off at the wheel, but a breakthrough at the University of Leicester might help to put an end to this problem.

Researchers have been working on a system that combines high speed eye tracking and EEG technology, with one application being to alert drivers who show signs of drowsiness.

These forms of technology have traditionally been difficult to marry together, EEG use has been around for decades and any epileptic person will have had experience of it. The EEG system involves wearing a kind of cap with electrodes attached that measure neurone activity in the brain. Once a cumbersome affair this can now be carried out using a lightweight headset, a far cry from the rubber cap manually fitted with sensors and cables that I grew up with.

A contemporary EEG Underway

A contemporary EEG

The eye monitoring technology involves infra red cameras measuring how LED light reflects from the user’s eyes, monitoring where the user is looking, how often they blink and other signs of distraction and sleepiness.

The researchers at Leicester have made the breakthrough of devising a way to use these different measurements together, something that has not been possible in the past.

Applications go much further than saving lives however. The developers point to uses for people who cannot use their arms, as they could control machinery using their eyes and thoughts. Even more importantly for some, the technology could be used to control video games, so that a player would no longer have to use a console of any sort but could communicate through measuring where their eyes were looking and the patterns in their brains.

More information is available here.

Carbon Emissions and Aviation

4 Replies Jonny Hankins

On Sunday I will be lifting off into the wild blue yonder once more for a quick scoot across the Atlantic from Boston to Dublin and on to Milan. This is a rather regular occurrence nowadays. Flying is part of my life and for the kids, who have been on more aircraft than trains.

The environmental impact of all of this folly though is tied up in a rather controversial debate. On the one hand we have those who say that airline carbon and pollution emissions is minimal, others disagree. It seems that between 2 and 5% of possible global warming type emissions come from aviation. Not a lot we might think, when we bear in mind that 10% comes from car use, and about 17% from agricultural food production, but we all eat, we do not all fly.

This year the European Union was to start taxing airlines on their carbon emissions, in line with the way they tax other industry on theirs. This might seem fair to some, not to others, particularly large airlines and countries. Here in the USA a law was passed to state that US airlines could not participate in the scheme, and so could not pay the tax. China, India and others followed, and so the scheme has been postponed.

A Modern Jet Engine

A Modern Jet Engine

So back to my flight on Sunday. Between us, I and my family will produce about 12 metric tons of carbon dioxide in our time in the air. The average European produces about 10 a year, Americans more like 19 0r 20 and the average African about 0.3 tons per year.

Oh to put things in perspective the global average is 1.3 metric tons per year per person, and the 1.1 billion people who live on the continent of Africa produces about 7% of the emissions that the 0.6 billion population of North America produce.

So taken in terms of people and not percentages, flying is extremely polluting. But people are not going to stop flying. The aviation industry is ever expanding, even vegetables fly nowadays.

One way that aircraft engineers are trying to cut down on emissions is to design lighter and more fuel efficient engines. Weight is a big problem in flying, and it is our old friend 3D printing who might come to the rescue.

A company called CFM International, a joint venture between GE Aviation and the French company Snecma, has created the LEAP engine — an acronym for “leading edge aviation propulsion” that the company hopes reflects just how innovative the new aircraft component is. LEAP has many futuristic features, including a 3-D-printed nozzle, the part of the plane responsible for burning fuel.

3D printing allows engineers to produce objects in materials that either would be too expensive or impossible to make using conventional techniques, and they can use lightweight materials or ceramics as is the case with the new CFM engine to substitute heavy metal parts. Check out this article in CNN for details.

Over the last couple of weeks an aeroplane has made a trans America flight using solar power, and this is just part of its round the world trip. A whole new concept in low carbon emission flight, although currently a bit slow.

Another possibility is to use organic jet fuel. Although this may seem strange, as long ago as 2009 Air New Zealand conducted a test flight using an organic jet fuel mix that seemed to demonstrate a 60% cut in carbon emissions.

Here is a link to an article in the New York Times about aviation and carbon developments and some more data about carbon emissions in Africa if I have tickled your interest. And as always, I am all ears.

Aquaculture – mankind’s future?

10 Replies DomesticApe

A photograph of a fishery at sunsetAs the world’s fisheries come under ever increasing demand and pressure, many companies and countries around the world are turning to aquaculture, the farming of fish, crustaceans, aquatic plants, and shellfish. But is this method of producing food the “green” answer it is often claimed to be?

Aquaculture is not a new concept by any means, there is evidence that suggests the farming of aquatic life was taking place as early as 6000bc on what could be called a commercial scale.

The modern age has mechanised, computerised, and scaled up this concept of food production into one of truly immense proportions. South America alone produces over a startling one million metric tons of farmed salmon per year, with methods some have described as unsustainable.

Globally, aquaculture has been a very erratic business in the last 40 years, with major outbreaks of disease wiping out hundreds of thousands of tons of fish at a time, and poor practices responsible for localised environmental changes, and pollution on a large scale.

A huge steel or plastic floating structure, anchored in place and powered by massive diesel generators has become the standard sea farm with what is described as a “footprint” devoid of life beneath it, that may extend some distance depending on local currents and conditions.

Fish being caught in Te Pangu BayIs this what Jacques Yves Cousteau envisioned when he made the following famous quote?

“We must plant the sea and herd its animals using the sea as farmers instead of hunters. That is what civilization is all about – farming replacing hunting.”

But then, if one considers the reality of the world we live in, where violent conflict is an everyday occurrence, populations continue to grow and people go hungry …… then I think aquaculture is a step in the right direction.

Aquaculture in New ZealandIt could be argued that most aquacultural products demand a premium and in many countries are beyond the means of the average consumer. And this would be quite correct in many cases, but may in some part be off-set by the direct benefits to the local economy through job creation and a direct boost to the local economy.

The single greatest benefit aquaculture is receiving at the moment is technology. Automated systems deliver pellets to fish in a highly measured manner and consumption is monitored in points of a percentage. Geneticists are carrying out selective breeding programs so only the most efficient of stock are sent to sea and environmental monitoring is carried out using an array of high tech sensors and systems.

Water quality tests and histologies are carried out on site and the training requirements of staff are increasing exponentially in order to keep up. Thousands of scientists are busy scuttling about, working day and night on improving “feed conversion ratios” or the amount of feed in kilograms it takes to grow a kilogram of product.

Swimming fishSomething that possibly started out as an art form has become a science.

New Zealand fisheryWith increased use of technology, coupled with a strong social conscience, aquaculture just may be the answer to many of the world’s problems, which it could be argued are largely driven by increasing population and dwindling resources.

As long as mankind uses this tool as a farmer and not the hunter we have descended from, then I see aquaculture playing a very strong role in mankind’s future.