Good Fact

Cable to Research the Depths

- Adam Clare

While I’m in Vancouver, British Columbia, I want to find more good news coming from the west side of North America (I live in Toronto). To get the ball rolling, here’s a news report on how they are wiring the oceans to learn more about the depths of the seas. Some scientists are going to drop a huge cable to monitor ocean life via the internet.

“They are so important to our understanding of our planet and the understanding of the consequences of changes in our planet for our everyday lives.”

Taylor Neptune stands for North-East Pacific Time-series Undersea Networked Experiments. Eventually the B.C. cable loop, which can support up to 700 sensors, will be joined by, and to, another loop in U.S waters, for a total of 3,000 kilometres of cabling covering most of the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, the smallest of the major plates that make up the surface of the planet.

Games as Outbreak Simulations

- Adam Clare

Two years ago a disease ravaged the country sides of the World of Warcraft, an online virtual world in which players have to interact with one another to solve problems. The virtual disease effectively ‘killed’ the players and now researchers are thinking that they can examine these virtual outbreaks and compare them to real-world scenarios because in both cases the outbreak is treated as real by the humans involved.

Researcher Professor Nina Fefferman, from Tufts University School of Medicine, said: “Human behaviour has a big impact on disease spread. And virtual worlds offer an excellent platform for studying human behaviour.

“The players seemed to really feel they were at risk and took the threat of infection seriously, even though it was only a game.”

She acknowledged that a virtual setting might encourage riskier behaviour, but said this could be estimated and allowed for when drawing conclusions.

Green Companies Will Prosper

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

There’s an alright post over at CopyBrighter from a little ways back that looks at the growing demand for green companies and how we need to cater to that demand and look towards the future. Essentially green companies will prosper because it’ll be the only option in due time, so why not be green now and profit from it?

It’s not that green companies should run as a hedge fund to profit from crisis… but rather, they should not underestimate the potential demand for what they are developing now. We must be prepared to leverage the imminent explosion of mass desire and honorably fulfill it.

Plane Explodes, Everyone OK

- Adam Clare

whoa
A plane exploded in Japan and it sounds like it was from an action movie or a comic book because nobody died. The speed of the evacuation was phenomenal!

All 157 passengers – including two small children- fled the Boeing 737-800 unhurt on inflated emergency slides just minutes before the plane burst into a fireball, Transport Ministry official Akihiko Tamura told reporters.

I’m flying to Vancouver tomorrow, hopefully my plane won’t explode. It’s good to know that planes can be evacuated fast. Also, I think this is the only time an explosion as been used as an image on Things Are Good.

New Yorkers Last Longer

- Adam Clare

New York is a healthy place to live – that may come as a surprise to people who remember New York being a cesspool of yesteryear. New York amgazine has an article on why New Yorkers last longer and how as whole New York breeds a healthy lifestyle.

Things Are Good readers should know that cities as a whole are becoming more attractive to live in for health reasons. The more urban the better. Cities are more walkable than suburban and rural areas and they provide more opportunities for innovation and progress.

From the New York magazine article:

The health difference was shockingly large: A white man who lived in a more urban, mixed-use area was fully ten pounds lighter than a demographically identical guy who lived in a sprawling suburb.
…
Interestingly, urban theorists believe it is not just the tightly packed nature of the city but also its social and economic density that has life-giving properties. When you’re jammed, sardinelike, up against your neighbors, it’s not hard to find a community of people who support you—friends or ethnic peers—and this strongly correlates with better health and a longer life. Then there are economies of scale: A big city has bigger hospitals that can afford better equipment—the future of medicine arrives here first. We also tend to enjoy healthier food options, since demanding foodies (vegetarians and the like) are aggregated in one place, making it a mecca for farm-fresh produce and top-quality fish, chicken, and beef. There’s also a richer cultural scene than in a small town, which helps keep people out and about and thus mentally stimulated.

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