Posts Tagged ‘engineering’
Imagine a giant island, twice the size of Texas, sitting practically in the middle of the Pacific Ocean but unable to be seen with the naked eye or by satellites. While it sounds like a futuristic C-list sci-fi movie, it’s actually completely true. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, comprised of trash such as plastic, metal, and cloth materials, was first theorized and studied in the 1980s (PDF) and has been since verified as reality in the North Pacific Gyre. Because trash in the ocean begins to degrade within one year, expelling dangerous chemicals such as bisphenol A, it’s especially important to begin cleaning up the hazardous waste as soon as possible.
A recent, well-publicized expedition called the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX) sought to study the breadth of the trash vortex and also consider the feasibility of a commercial clean-up. Supported by Project Kaisei, they found that despite most of the plastic parts being in bite-size bits, they also found more trash than they expected: perhaps more than 100 million tons of debris. That calls for not just a large-scale clean-up, but could also mean big money for the commercial salvage and recycle companies.
The first problem in picking up this trash is procedure. The Scripps team designed a net specifically meant to trawl the subsurface of the ocean for approximately 40,000 tons of trash without killing the marine life which has made the trash its home. While this plan has seemingly worked well for gauging the amount of trash, I don’t think it’s a particularly feasible approach for short- and long-term salvage. Instead, I would suggest an innovative retrofitting of ships mimicking a combine harvester.
The boat’s design would begin with the most important part: the front. With an almost open-ended design, much like that of the back-end of a whaling boat, the salvage boat would extend a hydraulic shovel-like extension underneath the surface of the water to collect the subsurface debris. Much like the combine harvester, this extension would lead to a rotating cylinder which moves the trash upwards and into the hull, where collection would take place. The water, meanwhile, would filter through the back of the extension, leaving much of the wildlife untouched.
Collection, as previously described, would take place in the hull of the boat. The trash would enter via the cylinder and travel through several conveyors and would shoot out the side of the boat through an unloader (much as a combine harvester unloads corn or wheat into a dump truck) into smaller boats, which would take the trash back to a central processing ship or offshore platform (much like floating oil platforms). The trash, after processing, would then be packaged and shipped back to shore for recycling.
Using this approach I believe a commercial enterprise would easily monopolize the salvaging of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, helping not only to clean up the environment but also make a rather large amount of money. With a current patch of over 100 million tons of trash and over 1,000 tons of trash being dumped into the ocean yearly, this type of enterprise has both short- and long-term value both environmentally and economically.
The latest report on speeding-related traffic accidents isn’t a good one for those with a lead foot: there was a “3.2 percent increase in deaths because of higher speed limits on all types of roads in the United States” between 1995 and 2005. That doesn’t sound like a whole lot until you look at the actual figure of fatalities in crashes due to excessive speeding, which is the cause of nearly 1/3 of all fatal accidents, in those years: 12,545. The important issues, really, are what goes into determining and enforcing speed limits, the underlying psychology of why people drive the way they do, and using those two factors determine a way to decrease accidents and fatalities.
There are various factors that are used to determine speed limits, but the general ones include:
- 85th percentile speed (PDF): this is defined as being the speed that 85% of motorists go on the road, separating them from the top 15%. This is a reactive system: it’s simply based on the theory that there is better compliance of speed limits if the majority of people are bound to go that particular speed. This procedure is usually found in determining speed limits on highways in the United States;
- Design speed (PDF): This determines the speed limit as per the safety of the road using factors such as curves, hills, bottlenecks, or other parts of the road. These generally aren’t changed unless the road itself changes, so this procedure is generally used for first-time highways (where the 85th percentile speed cannot yet be determined) and side/back roads;
- Crash records;
- Political or administrative judgment.
So given the 85th percentile rule and assuming that it has determined an appropriate and effective speed limit for those roads, what psychology underlies the other 15% who are chronic speeders? I have a 3-part ordered theory called the “Three Cs Theory” that I believe determines one’s mode of driving on any given road:
- Circumstance
- Conditioning
- Comfort
The first is circumstance. In circumstances such as an emergency, weather conditions, being late for an appointment, or being agitated or influenced by other drivers, one’s driving can certainly be impacted to be different than that of the general state in which they drive. That, above all, influences one’s driving.
Take away the circumstance, though, a person will then resort to driving how they are conditioned. For example, should a driver know that speed traps are often seen near a particular overpass, he or she will likely slow down or drive more safely than otherwise. The driver has been conditioned to know to slow down or else he or she may get a ticket.
Now that the two overt factors influencing a diver’s state have been explained, the third “c” represents every driver’s underlying, unadulterated psychology while driving: comfort. A driver who is comfortable driving 50 mph on a particular road will, when uninfluenced, probably go 50 mph. Likewise, a driver who is comfortable going 80 mph in the rain on a highway will probably, when uninfluenced, go 80 mph. That is where I believe the drivers in the 15% can be found.
This theory fits in reasonably well with the 85th percentile speed method as long as there aren’t any extraneous influences which affect the driving. The question, then, becomes if our current methodology is appropriate. Some factors that may help in determining the efficacy of a speed limit is the amount and severity of crashes, adherence to the speed limit by drivers, and the level of speeding tolerance by law enforcement.
While the 85th percentile speed method then appears appropriate since that is where most people are comfortable, what can be done to counter the increase in accidents and fatalities? I believe it’s reasonable, given the aforementioned factors, to place our focus and efforts in improving road planning and engineering in an attempt at finding an equilibrium of sorts between the 85th percentile speed and design speed. If we can engineer our roads to meet the design speed specifications that complement the 85th percentile speed comfort, and increase conditioning by law enforcement-derived deterrence in areas where infractions and accidents continue, I believe we will find a sharp decrease in accidents and fatalities on those roads.
Many times the secrets to medicine and science are right in front of us. Or, perhaps more appropriately, beneath us. In the case of the development of antibiotics, we needn’t look any further than the simple ant for inspiration. Ants have a small-but-distinguishing feature that makes them unique and very valuable to antibiotic research: the metapleural gland. This gland, which has been around for at least 98 million years and is found on many if not most ant species, creates antibiotics on the ant’s exoskeleton that fight bacteria and fungi.
Noted in 1860, the gland wasn’t thought to be of any particular significance. It wasn’t until 1898 that a more anatomical approach was taken to the gland, which was about 20 or so years after the discovery or at least the notation of the aspects of antibiotics. While there was some research in the early-to-mid 1900′s, it wasn’t until 1984 that great research on the metapleural gland (PDF) was available. And, finally, in 1989 Australian researchers discovered that the antibiotics could be used to treat fungal infections in humans, and was followed in 1992 with further research.
Much of the research on ants since then and especially recently has focused much more on the symbiotic relationship between attine ants and a particular bacterium. In this relationship, the ants house and secrete a baterium that produces antibiotics (PDF), which in turn kills invading fungi. Those same ants, which actually cultivate and feed off of another kind of fungus, houses baterium (PDF) that produces antibiotics that selectively fight the bad, invading fungus, and protect their gardens, thereby allowing the ants to thrive.
The initial reaction to such research is generally, “Let’s harvest these ants and take the antibiotics and use them for humans!” There’s one main problem with this, however: ants with metapleural glands are notoriously difficult to “domesticate” (insofar as you can domesticate an insect!). Interestingly, ant species which don’t have the gland are more apt to be domesticated. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t things to be learned or applied using this research.
The foremost reason to study this gland is to learn the mechanisms by which it can produce antibiotics and harbor baterium which produces the antibiotics. Doing so may allow us to create better environments for bacteria we find beneficial for our own health and the health of our crops and animals.
Further, it’s important to understand the mechanism for the production of the antibiotics and how the antibiotics can change given evolutionary processes found in the invading fungi. This helps us understand microbiological evolution, epidemiology, and gives us a better lead off of which to base immunological research.
We can use this research in other, non-pharmaceutical concepts, as well, including the development of anti-biological and chemical warfare armor. Perhaps the gland will reveal a way to best defend against such weapons, and offer a way to change the defense of the armor given the particular weapon. I can also imagine this research being applied to the advancement of printers, particularly those that may be used in the future to create human tissues.
While we often look for answers using many advanced concepts, sometimes the facet that leads to the best solution is one that has already been through the trials of nature. That’s what makes entomology so fascinating when coupled with medicine: oftentimes the answers to our problems have already been solved by creatures of which for so long we thought very little.
One of the most spectacular achievements of humanity has been our ingenuity for getting to space. It’s a beautiful but dangerous game, allowing us to see the universe like never before but costing some lives along the way. But instead of using solid rocket boosters, which require propellants which are toxic to both humans and the environment and can be unpredictable, perhaps there’s a better way to get to outer space: magnets.
I have two theories on ways to use magnets to get to outer space: a modified theory of the space elevator and using a rather large railgun.
The space elevator is an idea which has been around since 1895. Simply, it would be an enormous elevator which extends through Earth’s atmosphere and into space. But there are several problems with this idea, including construction materials and costs, and the amount of time it would take to get there.
Most current plans involve a complex system of pulleys which would lift the elevator much like our building elevators work. But the stress this would put on the cable would perhaps be too immense for any materials we currently have on Earth, despite new reports of using nanotechnology or even metal-infused spider silk.
My plan would be to use magnets’ poles, north and south, to our advantage. Using a polarized lightweight pod perhaps constructed out of nanomaterials to contain people or equipment/materials, the pod would use an enormously powerful electromagnet to repel into space.
The second plan would be to use a modified railgun to be essentially shot into space. Using this short diagram (via J. Walter at MIT), you can see how a railgun works:
In this diagram, the projectile is the small pod, perhaps developed to be polarized for added stability and velocity. The pod would then be essentially shot from Earth and up the two electromagnetically charged copper rails which have opposite currents. The pod then rides up the shaft using the two electromagnet fields.
I don’t know if these two ideas are feasible, but it hasn’t stopped others who are much more knowledgeable on the subject to continue trying. The main problem I see is the enormous amount of energy that would have to be used to power the electromagnets. It could even be more power than we expend using our traditional rockets. But I do believe these two ideas, in the long term, are probably safer even if it’s at the cost of some energy, materials, or velocity.