3 WHEEL DRIVE: Paved footpaths, wide doorways and ready access to spare parts - in some parts of the world wheelchair users take these for granted. In other countries though, such as India and Uganda, cost and rough ground are huge barriers. The Leveraged Freedom Chair from MIT can be cheaply manufactured and repaired by bike shops. A third wheel at the front lends stability, while tall levers allow the user to 'change gears' and choose between speed and torque. A swept up version for rich countries will help pay for chairs in developing countries. It may not do front flips, but see how it handles off-road. Details at MIT and video on YouTube.
AIR DRIVE: City driving: you speed up, you brake, you speed up, you brake. How about taking the kinetic energy from braking to compress air and then using that compressed air to power the car? Lund University in Sweden is experimenting with air hybrid engines. They claim fuel consumption of city buses could be reduced by as much as 60%. That could work specially well in Wellington. More at DiscoveryNews.
BUMPY DRIVE: Many smartphones contain both an accelerometer and a GPS receiver. If the smartphone's resting on a car's dashboard the accelerometer can detect that the car's gone over a bump, such as a pothole. The city of Boston suffers from some 19,000 potholes each year, at a cost of about $2 million. Now they're working on a smartphone app called Street Bump that can detect and automatically report potholes. Faster detection could mean faster repairs. Remember to quit the app before horse-riding or other 'bumpy' activities. More at Boston.
EFFICIENCY DRIVE: The Cray XT5 Jaguar is a 1.75 petaflop supercomputer (peaking at 2.3 petaflops), only recently beaten out as world's fastest. When it was used to model air flows around semi trucks some areas for significant fuel and cost savings showed up. By adding special wind deflectors trucks in the US could reduce their fuel bills by about $5 billion and reduce CO2 by 16.4 million tons per year. Better for prices, better for the planet. More at MSNBC.
DRIVE YOU CRAZY: In 2010 most computers in the European Union had security software installed, but even so almost one third still caught a computer virus. Bulgarians were worst affected with 58% of people reporting their PC had caught a virus. The good news is that only 3% of European users reported losing money to phishing attacks or fraudulent payments. Update, update, update. Details at the BBC.
- Miraz Jordan knowit.co.nz
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