Category Archives: Good Fact

Whale Songs to Warn Mariners of Their Presence

A system of buoys that will warn boats of the presence of whales has been put in place along a part of the east coast of the USA. The network of buoys listen for sounds that whales make and then the network will relay messages to boaters in the area to stay clear of the undersea creatures.

They have developed a cutting-edge underwater listening system to protect the creatures from their number one killer: ships. The Massachusetts Bay network can track right whales by their signature call – and in as little as 20 minutes warn mariners to slow if they’re too close.

The devices are also giving scientists unprecedented insight into how the creatures change behavior to respond to the cacophony of man-made noises in the bay.

“We need to listen to these whales” to save them, said Christopher W. Clark, director of Cornell University’s Bioacoustics Research Program, which developed the technology with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Clarks said an increasing number of pipelines, cruise ships, tankers, and construction projects are drowning out the whales’ soft calls, making it difficult for them to connect. Clark has evidence that the whales simply don’t “whoop” when the bay gets too noisy.

“In the world of right whales, we know it’s a noisy place to live,” Clark said in an e-mail. “Underwater [is] not much different than living on the tarmac at Logan.”

Hybrid F1 Racing

I’ve always thought of F1 racing as being good research and development for car companies. That line of thinking inevitably lead me to wonder why the cars still use gas when all signs point to hybrid automobiles in the future. I’ve been wondering this for years, and my brother has taken the brunt of my unrelenting curiosity around this.

Finally, F1 will be using hybrid technology in their cars.

The hybrid system that will be phased in is know as KERS, which stands for Kinetic Energy Recovery System. KERS doesn’t store as much energy as a traditional hybrid system, but it only weighs 55 pounds and the limited energy storage capacity is well suited for Formula-style racing.

The biggest difference between KERS and a regular battery-electric hybrid is that KERS stores recovered waste energy in a rotating flywheel. Instead of converting waste energy into electricity and than back into useful energy again with an electric motor, KERS simply transfers the kinetic energy to a ~5kg flywheel in the F1 car’s transmission. The energy stored in the flywheel can then be used by the driver by pushing a “boost” button.

LED Cycling Jacket is a Winner

I have lights on my bike and I’m a safe rider; however, there is always room for improvenment. An inventor has created a jacket for cyclists that uses LED lights. The lights communicate to other cyclists and most importantly car drivers what the cyclist is doing. The jacket recently won an international design award. The BBC has the scoop.

The jacket uses an accelerometer to sense movement, changing the colour of LEDs on the back from green when accelerating, then to red when braking.

A tilt switch in the jacket also makes LEDs in the arm flash amber when the wearer lifts their arm to indicate a turn.

Swedes Like it Green

Vaexjoe, a town in Sweden, is looking to be the greenest city in the EU. They’re doing quite well already. It’s great to see that cities are protecting the environment as best they can with such enthusiasm.

While the European Union (EU) aims to raise its share of renewable energy consumption to 20 percent by 2020, Vaexjoe, a town of 80,000 people nestled between lakes and forests in Sweden’s south, can boast of already exceeding 50 percent — and 90 percent when it comes to heating.

Carbon dioxide emissions per inhabitant dropped by 30 percent between 1993 and 2006.

“It’s a lot but we’re not satisfied, we want to reduce them further,” says Henrik Johansson, an environmental expert at city hall.

In fact, Vaexjoe, which in 1996 set the ambitious goal of ultimately reducing its consumption of fossil fuels to zero, wants to halve its CO2 emissions by 2010 and reduce them by 70 percent by 2050.

Biological Determinism for Happiness

This is good news for some people and irrelevant news for others. There is new research coming out that hints that biology plays a significant role in how happy we are.

esearchers from the University of Edinburgh and the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane have found our personalities and happiness are largely hereditary and that genetically determined personality traits affect our happiness.

The research, published in the latest issue of the journal Psychological Science, rated the personalities of 973 pairs of twins. The twins were rated using the Five Factor Model of personality, which measures neuroticism, extroversion, conscientiousness, openness and agreeableness.

The study shows identical twins have a very similar personality and well-being. But fraternal twins are only around half as similar.

This suggests that genes are responsible for certain personality traits. Those who are conscientious, extroverted and not overly neurotic are more likely to be happy. People with these personality traits also tend to have a happiness buffer to help them through hard times.