Whether you’re on the side of good or evil, you must respect a sick lair. If there’s one thing that brings superheroes, supervillains, and intrepid government employees together, it’s an appreciation for a secure, well-equipped base of operations. More
The AP reports that two gigantic concrete pumps, the largest equipment of this type in the world, will be air-lifted to Japan to help pour water on damaged reactors at Fukushima.
The machines are designed to spray concrete for new skyscrapers, bridges and similarly large-scale construction projects, but they’re being modified to spray water for this use.
“But if a decision is made to encase a reactor in concrete — similar to a method used in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster — the machines would be capable of doing that as well,” explained an executive from the company that made them.
They’ll be carried over on an Antonov 225, the world’s heaviest aircraft.
The company, and the devices: “Putzmeister.”
Read the full story here. (via Paul Saffo)
See the original post:
Giant pumps airlifted on Giant Planes to help with Giant Japan Nuke Crisis. Bonus: They’re “Putzmeisters”
Very soon (as in: in the next few days), I’ll become a father for the first time. And of course, as every existing parent seems to know, babies cost money. One of those unbearable things young parents need to purchase without further ado, is a baby monitoring system.
Me and my wife already bought one, but while we were evaluating existing systems I couldn’t help but notice that even the more advanced ones on the market today seem little more than glorified walkie-talkies.
A couple of weeks ago, knowing that I would soon become a dad, Jyri Engestrom nudged me and said he had stumbled upon a fledgling company, Evoz, that set out to build a baby monitoring system for the always-connected generation, and that I should check it out.
A couple of emails with the startup in question later, yesterday I finally got a live demo from the company’s founder Avishai Shoham. The verdict? It’s freaking amazing.
Imagine if you had an iPhone or iPod touch to spare, and that you’d simply install it in a charger in your young child’s room like you would any baby monitor.
Now imagine that an always-on application installed on the device would let you call in from anywhere in the world to hear how your baby is sleeping (or exactly how hard he or she is crying, or if you’re lucky, laughing or playing). Imagine that you could also opt to receive ‘quiet’ alerts by SMS or email whenever your kid cries for longer than, say, 5 minutes, so you can give the babysitter a quick call to see what’s up after e.g. a meeting or dinner.
Imagine that the app also automatically collects data on the sleeping and crying behavior of your child, and that you could analyze that data to see if he or she matches the behavior of children of the same age. And that you could just as easily get in touch with a network of baby health experts or sleep consultants if you have any questions or concerns.
Evoz lets you do all that, and more. The company isn’t quite ready to launch yet, but intends to roll out its service more broadly in the next few months. Shoham tells me the company will eventually support multiple mobile platforms. Also in the works: a proprietary hardware unit so you don’t necessarily need a spare iOS or Android device to monitor your baby (prototypes are already in the wild, however, and you can see what it looks like in the image above).
Early adopters with young children (aged 18 months or less) that own at least 2 iOS devices (iPod touch, iPhone, iPad) and don’t mind testing out an unpolished product and provide feedback to the team can apply for early access to Evoz Monitors here.
Please note that you’re required to fit the above criteria to get in – only 20 fast responders will be allowed access to the private beta service.
Investors, take note: Evoz is in the midst of raising a first round of funding, Shoham says, which will be led by Dave McClure and 500 Startups.
More here:
Evoz: Baby Monitoring 2.0 Comes Of Age
Here’s your infographic of the day, courtesy of Hipmunk: visual street signs to work as a helpful tool for pedestrians in various cities. The call out about DC is above, and the full guide (for those of you visiting other cities) is in the post.
Fair
The availability of wind power for renewable energy extraction is ultimately limited by how much kinetic energy is generated by natural processes within the Earth system and by fundamental limits of how much of the wind power can be extracted. Here we use these considerations to provide a maximum estimate of wind power availability over land. We use several different methods. First, we outline the processes associated with wind power generation and extraction with a simple power transfer hierarchy based on the assumption that available wind power will not geographically vary with increased extraction for an estimate of 68 TW. Second, we set up a simple momentum balance model to estimate maximum extractability which we then apply to reanalysis climate data, yielding an estimate of 21 TW. Third, we perform general circulation model simulations in which we extract different amounts of momentum from the atmospheric boundary layer to obtain a maximum estimate of how much power can be extracted, yielding 18–34 TW. These three methods consistently yield maximum estimates in the range of 18–68 TW and are notably less than recent estimates that claim abundant wind power availability. Furthermore, we show with the general circulation model simulations that some climatic effects at maximum wind power extraction are similar in magnitude to those associated with a doubling of atmospheric CO2. We conclude that in order to understand fundamental limits to renewable energy resources, as well as the impacts of their utilization, it is imperative to use a “top-down” thermodynamic Earth system perspective, rather than the more common “bottom-up” engineering approach.
17 Terawatts of electrical wind power would be 50-95% of the maximum land based wind possible with significant climate effects. There would be temperature and rain differences.
Of the 47 TW of energy that we use, about 17 TW comes from burning fossil fuels. So to replace this, we would need to build enough sustainable energy installations to generate at least 17 TW. And because no technology can ever be perfectly efficient, some of the free energy harnessed by wind and wave generators will be lost as heat. So by setting up wind and wave farms, we convert part of the sun’s useful energy into unusable heat.
“Large-scale exploitation of wind energy will inevitably leave an imprint in the atmosphere,” says Kleidon. “Because we use so much free energy, and more every year, we’ll deplete the reservoir of energy.” He says this would probably show up first in wind farms themselves, where the gains expected from massive facilities just won’t pan out as the energy of the Earth system is depleted.
Using a model of global circulation, Kleidon found that the amount of energy which we can expect to harness from the wind is reduced by a factor of 100 if you take into account the depletion of free energy by wind farms. It remains theoretically possible to extract up to 70 TW globally, but doing so would have serious consequences.
Photosynthesis also generates free energy, but without producing waste heat. Increasing the fraction of the Earth covered by light-harvesting vegetation – for example, through projects aimed at “greening the deserts” – would mean more free energy would get stored. Photovoltaic solar cells can also increase the amount of free energy gathered from incoming radiation, though there are still major obstacles to doing this sustainably
If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks
While red food dye may still be a problem in young humans, for roundworms a commonly used lab dye remarkably increases their longevity. Basic Yellow 1, aka Thioflavin T is used in laboratories around the world. Apparently, for the commonly experimented on C. elegens, it provides a substantial lifespan boost. Healthy nematodes treated with the dye lived 50% longer, and those bread to have symptoms mimicking Alzheimer’s showed slowed disease progress. More
The Antikythera mechanism, one of the world’s oldest known gadgets, has coughed up another secret. In addition to tracking time and upcoming Olympic games, the mechanism was also great at tracking the motion of the Sun across the sky. More
This is one of those cool “so-thats-how-it-works” projects that is an easy weekend activity to teach yourself (or your kids) the basics of how a battery operates. More
It could get harder to indulge in a double cheeseburger and fries without feeling guilty.
Continue Reading:
FDA proposes calorie counts on menus
