The Ramblings of Octavo

New Scientist is one of my all time favourite websites - they’ve always got something new and interesting to read for the scientifically minded. One of my favourtie features of is their weekly new inventions article, which is always about 3 recent patent applications. Some amazing stuff comes out of these articles, but the most recent I have to share with you, as all 3 are really stunning.

First off is a new shower - designed especially for aircraft.

The shower unit is a watertight cylinder with very fine nozzles all around. As the traveller steps inside, an optical sensor measures their height and shape and pumps water mixed with shampoo at high pressure through only those nozzles needed to cover the body.

The resulting very fine mist is electrically ionised as it leaves the nozzles and is therefore attracted to the earthed body – so no misty water is wasted. The nozzles then emit a mist of pure water, for rinsing, followed by warm air for drying. It all sounds rather pleasant, I must say.

Next is clever way of covering a much wider surveillance area than usual with only two camera’s by mimicing the way the human eye works. Clever, yet simple - I love ideas like this:

To enhance the area viewed by the cameras, Cheng has mimicked a natural trick. The human eye’s fovea (where vision is most acute) sees with maximum detail only in a 4° zone but extends useably detailed vision to about 80° by continually flitting its view and focusing on any motion detected. This means areas of interest – where something has changed – are covered without needing detailed vision over a large area.

The new surveillance system replicates this with two cameras – a wide-angle, low-definition camera which seeks signs of movement across wide area, and a high-definition narrow-angle camera which darts toward the motion and takes a detailed view.

And finally an invention that may significantly reduce the incidence of heart attacks, by measuring the temperature of the build up in arterial walls. If the plaque is significantly colder or warmer than the surrounding tissue, it is likely to break away and cause problems.

Tests in Texas have now shown that unstable plaque is several degrees Celcius warmer than the rest, because it is sitting on top of inflamed tissue. On the flip side, if a patch of plaque is noticeably cooler than its surroundings this signals dead tissue which may also rupture.

To take the temperature of the plaques, a balloon-like catheter made from transparent plastics is threaded into the blood vessel and inflated to press against plaque on the internal artery wall. This lets an optical fibre inside the balloon “see” the infrared radiation coming from the vessel wall, and send it to a highly sensitive thermometer. Any hot or cold spots warn of imminent danger. A similar catheter can then be used to safely remove the plaque with a laser.

Yes, it’s book review time again. First up is Mental Floss’s forbidden knowledge. An excellent coffee table book or if you just fancy a bit of historical trivia. The book is divided up into 7 chapters (one for each of the 7 deadly sins) and within each chapter, events and anecdotes are further divided into groups. For example, under Sloth there is a group with anecdotes about several kings who let their mistresses rule the country. For the most part the book is pretty interesting and funny, although there is a heavy american bias (as if the authors never knew that the book would be released to a wider audience) which always annoys me. In conclusion, it’s a reasonably good coffee table book - I’d give it 7 out of 10.

Next up is the De Villiers Code - you’ll notice it’s not on the sidebar, because it’s a local (South African) book, so naturally Amazon doesn’t carry it. The bastards. Anyway - this is probably the funniest book I’ve ever read and it’s a pity it’s not getting more exposure. Tom Eaton has done a masterful job with this spoof and leaves Dan Brown in shreds. I bought this book on impulse after reading the first page in the bookstore - it had me giggling uncontrollably with mirth. Even the blurb is funny:

A brutal murder. A masochistic killer. An ancient secret. A beautiful policewoman. Lots of short sentences. When C.C. Langa – Nobel Prize winner, physicist, symbologist, love-god - is called to investigate a mysterious killing in the National Gallery in Cape Town, he finds himself the primary target in a dark plot that will change the course of history forever. Or at least change the course of history until the next time the course of history is changed. Perhaps in the sequel…….. Are there secrets worth killing for? Can Langa discover the shattering truth? How many roads must a man walk down before he can say he’s a man? Why do blurbs always ask rhetorical questions?

If you see this book - BUY IT. I guarentee that you will laugh out loud, even if you never do when reading books. Even if you haven’t read the Da Vinci Code (as I haven’t) it’s still hilarious. And if you have (as Ibis have) it’ll have you in stitches permanently. 10 out of 10!

I don’t really suffer from the cold too much, so it took a few days before I realised that when Ibis kept hinting that we go shopping for blankets, it’s because she was getting cold at night. I guess winter does that. So, last nigt off we trooped to Woolworths in Canal Walk to see what we could see.

We looked at the various duvets they had and noted the escalating prices. A summer duvet was a cheap R200 while a winter duvet crept up to around R400. Then I noticed a feather & down duvet. I used to own a single feather duvet when I was in the UK and it was the most amazing duvet ever. The duvet was pricey, but I couldn’t help thinking about how warm it would be. In fact I was pretty sure that getting the feather duvet would remove the need for any additional blankets. So my mind up, we went for the down & feather duvet (11 tog for those in the know). Next I sprang for a couple of new feather pillows too (mine are a bit ratty at this point) as well as some new duvet & pillow covers from Boardmans.

Our purchases complete, we headed home and remade the bed with our new luxury bedding MAN… WHAT a difference. Even my rambo self has to admit the amazing ability of this duvet to keep us warm. Ibis slept really well, because she was warm all night and so did I. I also noticed the way that even if you leave bed and come back 10 minutes later, it’s still warm inside.

So all you cheapskate bastards out there - go and spend the extra dosh and buy a decent down or feather duvet (or down/feather combo like ours). You’ll finally realise what you’ve been missing!

Yet another career path, made obsolete by robots.

Ok, so maybe I’m being a bit hyperbolic there, but it certainly is a glimpse of what the future holds isn’t it? I’m pretty sure that robotic surgeon’s aren’t going to completely replace human surgeon’s…. well not for quite a while yet anyway, but they will narrow the field. They’ll take on all the well understood and simpler surgeries, leaving surgeons plenty of time to perfect their golf game, or the latest in brain transplant technology.

The future is a gleeming spire of stainless steel my friends…

After a discovery like this, please explain to me why we aren’t furiously designing and planning how we’re going to build sub-light sleeper ships??

Yes, yes it sounds completely mad, I know, but why? I mean, by now it should be fairly clear to everyone that within say 20 years or so, we should have a space based telescope capable of detecting earth-sized planets around other stars. With some pretty basic measurements we could also pretty reliably determine if it was suitable for habitation. So the very real possibility exists that within 20 years, we will know of a planet that looks pretty damn suitable for colonisation. At that point humanity will probably wake up and start thinking about sleeper ships (because I doubt we’ll have figured out FTL by then). So why not start now? What if 15 years after we’d found that planet, we already had a ship built ready to head out towards it? I can guarentee you that despite the enourmous risks assosiated with such a venture, you would have more volunteers for the mission than you could possibily handle. And what if the ship got there and found the planet unsuitable? Well, by that time, humans on earth would have refined their techniques and their telescopes and hopefully picked out another nearby planet that seemed suitable for the sleeper ship to travel on to.

I can dream can’t I?