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I feel it in my finger…
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Technology HOW GREEN IS MY COUNTRY?
AIRBORNE laser systems should be used to more accurately assess the risk of flooding, according to a report from the US National Research Council. The US is spending more than $200 million a year to upgrade and digitise flood-plain maps used for emergency planning and insurance. However, existing data on land elevation is not good enough to provide accurate maps of areas at risk, the report says. Measurements should be to within 30 centimetres in flat areas, more than 10 times as accurate as existing figures, which are decades old. Firing laser pulses from lowflying aircraft and measuring the time they take to return will give the required results, says Ramesh Shrestha of the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping at the University of Florida, who co-authored the report.
42 per cent of young people in the US have encountered pornography on the web, of whom two-thirds say they found it by mistake
–Keeping down our eco-velocity–
I feel it in my fingers…
SOURCE: PEDIATRICS, VOL 119, P 247
Lasers best for flood predictions
technologies. The nearer the ratio gets to 1 (that is, when impact equals mitigation), the closer the industry is to being sustainable. “Over a ratio of 1, you are eco-speeding,” says Nansai. By measuring the changes in the ratio over time, it is possible to work out the rate of an industry’s progress towards carbon neutrality. Applying the measure to Japan’s industrial performance figures in 1995 and 2000, Nansei found that the growth of household consumption was greater than the rate of technological advance. The eco-velocity of personal computers, for example, shot up from 2.97 in 1995 to 3.95 in 2000, while the growth of the internet meant the IT sector had an eco-velocity of 25.1 in 2000, they report in the journal Environmental Science and Technology (DOI: 10/1021/es0615876).
China has imprisoned far more dissidents for online activities than any other country CHINA VIETNAM SYRIA
52 4 3
TUNISIA 1 LIBYA 1 IRAN 1
PEOPLE with prosthetic arms could be made to “feel” their fingers, thanks to a novel surgical technique called targeted muscle reinnervation. Todd Kuiken’s team at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago redirected sensory nerves that used to lead to the arm in a 24-yearold patient with a prosthetic arm. They are now connected to the skin
of her chest, and if she is touched here she feels sensations in the fingers of her missing hand. To get sensory feedback from the fingers her prosthetic arm needs to be adapted so that it picks up input and transmits it to the portion of the chest that feels like her hand. Kuiken and his team are working on a prototype that uses a plunger-like mechanism to transfer the sensing of pressure to the chest (The Lancet, vol 369, p 371). They hope to begin testing it in three to six months.
GIZMO
CAUGHT ON THE NET
Number of cyber-dissidents in prison
SOURCE: REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS
Low-carbon technologies are now widely seen as key to mitigating the effects of climate change. To keep an eye on progress in this area, governments need to gauge how fast each industry is developing them and whether consumers are taking them up. Now there’s a technique for doing just that. Keisuke Nansai and colleagues at Japan’s National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba say their method, called “eco-velocity”, will allow governments to track an industry’s progress towards sustainability. The technique estimates the impact of an industry from manufacture to consumption – measured in tonnes of CO2 – and compares that with how well it mitigates that impact through smarter manufacturing and energy-saving
Cellphones often run out of power when you are on the move. So Nokia has filed a patent application on a portable charger for a new type of cellphone (US 2007/0024238). The device contains a pre-charged battery and an induction coil, while the phone also has an induction coil. When an RFID reader in the charger picks up a signal from the phone, it switches on a current in the coil. This induces a current in the phone’s coil, recharging the battery. The idea should work for a range of portable gadgets. Land contaminated by the heavy metals cadmium and zinc could be cleansed by cultivating a flowering brassica on it, a University of Maryland patent application reveals (US 2007/0028334). A subspecies of Thlaspi caerulescens accumulates the metals in its stem, leaves and flowers, which can be burned to recover the metals.
“Florida is the Bermuda triangle of elections” Warren Stewart of non-profit group VoteTrustUSA on Florida’s decision last week to abandon its touch-screen electronic voting machines, which do not leave a paper trail that can be used in a recount. The state will instead use paper ballots counted by optical scanners (The New York Times, 2 February)
www.newscientist.com
070210_N_TechOpener.indd 21
10 February 2007 | NewScientist | 21
6/2/07 10:57:40 am
Technology HOW GREEN IS MY COUNTRY?
AIRBORNE laser systems should be used to more accurately assess the risk of flooding, according to a report from the US National Research Council. The US is spending more than $200 million a year to upgrade and digitise flood-plain maps used for emergency planning and insurance. However, existing data on land elevation is not good enough to provide accurate maps of areas at risk, the report says. Measurements should be to within 30 centimetres in flat areas, more than 10 times as accurate as existing figures, which are decades old. Firing laser pulses from lowflying aircraft and measuring the time they take to return will give the required results, says Ramesh Shrestha of the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping at the University of Florida, who co-authored the report.
42 per cent of young people in the US have encountered pornography on the web, of whom two-thirds say they found it by mistake
–Keeping down our eco-velocity–
I feel it in my fingers…
SOURCE: PEDIATRICS, VOL 119, P 247
Lasers best for flood predictions
technologies. The nearer the ratio gets to 1 (that is, when impact equals mitigation), the closer the industry is to being sustainable. “Over a ratio of 1, you are eco-speeding,” says Nansai. By measuring the changes in the ratio over time, it is possible to work out the rate of an industry’s progress towards carbon neutrality. Applying the measure to Japan’s industrial performance figures in 1995 and 2000, Nansei found that the growth of household consumption was greater than the rate of technological advance. The eco-velocity of personal computers, for example, shot up from 2.97 in 1995 to 3.95 in 2000, while the growth of the internet meant the IT sector had an eco-velocity of 25.1 in 2000, they report in the journal Environmental Science and Technology (DOI: 10/1021/es0615876).
China has imprisoned far more dissidents for online activities than any other country CHINA VIETNAM SYRIA
52 4 3
TUNISIA 1 LIBYA 1 IRAN 1
PEOPLE with prosthetic arms could be made to “feel” their fingers, thanks to a novel surgical technique called targeted muscle reinnervation. Todd Kuiken’s team at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago redirected sensory nerves that used to lead to the arm in a 24-yearold patient with a prosthetic arm. They are now connected to the skin
of her chest, and if she is touched here she feels sensations in the fingers of her missing hand. To get sensory feedback from the fingers her prosthetic arm needs to be adapted so that it picks up input and transmits it to the portion of the chest that feels like her hand. Kuiken and his team are working on a prototype that uses a plunger-like mechanism to transfer the sensing of pressure to the chest (The Lancet, vol 369, p 371). They hope to begin testing it in three to six months.
GIZMO
CAUGHT ON THE NET
Number of cyber-dissidents in prison
SOURCE: REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS
Low-carbon technologies are now widely seen as key to mitigating the effects of climate change. To keep an eye on progress in this area, governments need to gauge how fast each industry is developing them and whether consumers are taking them up. Now there’s a technique for doing just that. Keisuke Nansai and colleagues at Japan’s National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba say their method, called “eco-velocity”, will allow governments to track an industry’s progress towards sustainability. The technique estimates the impact of an industry from manufacture to consumption – measured in tonnes of CO2 – and compares that with how well it mitigates that impact through smarter manufacturing and energy-saving
Cellphones often run out of power when you are on the move. So Nokia has filed a patent application on a portable charger for a new type of cellphone (US 2007/0024238). The device contains a pre-charged battery and an induction coil, while the phone also has an induction coil. When an RFID reader in the charger picks up a signal from the phone, it switches on a current in the coil. This induces a current in the phone’s coil, recharging the battery. The idea should work for a range of portable gadgets. Land contaminated by the heavy metals cadmium and zinc could be cleansed by cultivating a flowering brassica on it, a University of Maryland patent application reveals (US 2007/0028334). A subspecies of Thlaspi caerulescens accumulates the metals in its stem, leaves and flowers, which can be burned to recover the metals.
“Florida is the Bermuda triangle of elections” Warren Stewart of non-profit group VoteTrustUSA on Florida’s decision last week to abandon its touch-screen electronic voting machines, which do not leave a paper trail that can be used in a recount. The state will instead use paper ballots counted by optical scanners (The New York Times, 2 February)
www.newscientist.com
070210_N_TechOpener.indd 21
10 February 2007 | NewScientist | 21
6/2/07 10:57:40 am