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Jan 23 2011

When Miss Tennant in Grade 4 asked us to write about what life would be like in the year 2000, we took it for granted that we would have flying cars.

Drats.

Scientists are still struggling with cars that drive themselves safely on the ground.

Once upon a time the Gold Coast Motorail would safely take a family and their car from Lismore to Sydney. This turned out to be too sensible and so the service was disbanded.

Engineers at Google have announced that they are working on an automated car, and have actually driven 140,000 miles on Californian roads.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-were-driving-at.html

This hands free car gives you more time to look at Google ads. This video shows it in action.

Volvo are working on a ‘road train’. Pull your car into a line of cars, all following one lead truck. While in the line, your car will follow the leader automatically.

I think I would find the Gold Coast Motorail more relaxing.

What I Learnt On 23rd January in other years

23rd January 2012

Travelling in Japan – Part One – Money

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Jan 22 2011

Malaria – parasite caught on camera breaking and entering cell

via newscientist.com

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/nstv/2011/01/malaria-caught-breaking-and-en…

Each year there are 250 million cases of Malaria in tropical and subtropical parts of the world. Between 1 and 2 million of these cases are fatal. It is in the Top 10 causes of death in low income countries.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310.pdf

Malaria is caused by the parasite Plasmodium, which is carried by the female Anopheles mosquito. This mosquito feeds at night. (Dengue Fever is spread by the Aedes mosquito which feeds in the daytime.

Each year, there are 30000 cases of malaria in people who are travelling to malaria-endemic areas. 5% of these cases are fatal.
http://www.australianprescriber.com/magazine/25/3/66/9/

The Malaria Atlas Project maps the prevelance of the Anophlese mosquito.
http://www.map.ox.ac.uk/

The parasite is transmitted to the Anopheles mosquito when it feeds from the blood of an infected person, It transfers to the salivary glands of the mosquito, from where it is easily transmitted to a new host when the mosquito has another feed. Within minutes of gaining entry to a new host, the parasite invade cells in the liver, where they multiply for 1 – 4 weeks. When the liver cell eventually bursts, the parasites invade the persons red blood cells. There they continue to multiply, every few days causing their host red blood cell to burst, and enabling the now larger brood to invade other red blood cells. When in the red blood cells they are ready to be taken up by a new feeding mosquito.

The classical symptoms of malaria are getting cold, having shakes (or rigors), and then getting a high fever – with this pattern recurring every two or three days. These symptoms are associated with red blood cell invasion, so start about a week after becoming infected.

Malaria can usually be diagnosed by seeing the parasites in the blood of an infected person under a microscope.

There is (as yet) no vaccine for malaria, and this remains a focus of research. There are effective drugs to prevent malaria, and to treat it once it is diagnosed. Travellers to areas where malaria is endemic should take preventative medication, generally starting two days before entering the area and continuing for four weeks after leaving (the medications are effective after the initial liver stage of the infection)

http://www.australianprescriber.com/magazine/25/3/66/9/

Other preventive measures to reduce the number of mosquitos and to prevent bites (with bed nets and repellants) are effective. Economic adviser Jeffrey Sachs estimates that malaria can be controlled for US$3 billion in aid per year.

Jake Baum at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne used transmission electron microscopy, immuno-fluorescence and 3D super-resolution microscopy to record this video of the Plasmodium parasite invading a red blood cell. It is the first time this criminal has been caught in the act, and may lead to more progress on managing the disease.

Full report on this video in New Scientist
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/nstv/2011/01/malaria-caught-breaking-and-en…

What I Learnt On 22nd January in other years

22nd January 2016

Al Capone – Be careful who you call your friends…

22nd January 2013

Which of today’s ads will make our grandchildren laugh?

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Jan 21 2011

AppSpin: Kinetic – and the Noosa Coastal Walk

Taking the iPhone app Kinetic for a spin in Noosa.

The Coastal Walk in Noosa National Park is surely one of the world’s great casual walks.

Capped by a ‘Cap’ at Aroma’s at each end, it takes about one hour return to Dolphin Point. The track skirts along the coastline around a number of bays and through groves of eucalyptus and pockets of rainforest. When the surf is ‘working’ on the points there is the added attraction of muscular surfie dudes and bikini babes along the path, and you can watch them catching the famous right hand breaks.

It is our family philosophy that there is nothing in nature so beautiful that it can’t be improved by a good app. So we used the Noosa walk to test the iPhone app ‘Kinetic’.

Kinetic uses the acceriometer, compass and GPS system built in to the iPhone to keep track of where you go and what you are doing. It times your activity, tells you how fast you are going, and shows a map of where you are. It records all this information and at the end of your walk it shows you a map of where you have been (Hansel and Gretel, take note). It also records how fast you were going at each stage, and your altitude, so that you can see when you were going up hill.

It is mainly targeted at runners, and includes some training regimes to help you run your next marathon. We had very good success in using it to record our walks, and also to map our routes when we went kayaking.

The maps can be stored on the Kinetic website and shared via email, facebook or twitter.

The recording of the Noosa walk is here

and the map of our kayak through the canals is here.

The app can work in the background, which means you can play music or check the web and Kinetic will continue to record your activity. It does eat up battery power, so make sure you start fully charged. It also helps to preserve battery life by turning off Wifi and Bluetooth on the iPhone. The app does access google maps if it can, so if you are overseas (say, in Sri Lanka), make sure your data access is turned off, or you could run up some significant data charges. Also, remember to press the ‘Lock Screen’ button in the app before you put the phone in our pocket, or you may find it accidentally pushes the ‘stop’ button prematurely.

We found that Kinetic worked very well and added value to our activity regime. It is on special for $4.99. There is also a free ‘lite’ version that does nearly everything the full version does – so you can test it out without risk.

Screenshots of Kinetic below. Back to the track for us.

What I Learnt On 21st January in other years

21st January 2016

Have you seen this flyer?

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Jan 20 2011

Why the Other Line is Likely to Move Faster

Why do I always seem to pick the wrong line at the Coles checkouts?

I’m into queueing theory, so was very happy to come across this video about Agner Erlang, the father of queueing theory, by Prof Bill Hammack. Prof Hammack is from the University of Illinois. He also goes by the title ‘The Engineer Guy’, http://engineerguy.com.

What I Learnt On 20th January in other years

20th January 2016

Neuwagen Nervosa – the irrational fear of damage to your new car

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Jan 19 2011

The Spirit House Restaurant

For many years we have intended to visit the Spirit House Restaurant, at Yandina on the Sunshine Coast.
Today we learnt that it was worth waiting for.

The Spirit House Restaurant was established in 1995 by Helen and Peter Brierty. The buildings are pavilion style, separated by walkways, which all open onto the exquisite tropical garden.

“We wanted to recreate tropical Asia. We created this land from nothing; it was just a very bare paddock when we moved here. We planted every tree, every flower and dug all the ponds,” says the owner, Helen.

As well as the restaurant, there is a popular cooking school on site. Helen and Annette Fear (the original chef) have published a number of cookbooks,. Some recipes from the school are available here.

The menu is innovative, contemporary Thai. The ingredients are delivered daily to the kitchen door by local growers – ginger, lemongrass, tumeric, chillies, kaffir lime are just a few of the Asian ingredients grown in the area.

The ‘signature’ dish is Whole Crispy Fish with Tamarind Chili Sauce. We also had

Chargrilled Beef Ribs with Sweet Chili Dressing & Orange Mint Salad
Lemon Grass Curry of Chicken with Kaffir Lime
Pineapple Fried Rice in Egg Net with Cashews & Vietnamese Mint
BBQ Tamarind Duck with Ginger Lychee Glaze & Crispy Egg Noodles
and a Watermelon and Coconut Salad.

The menu is available here.
http://www.spirithouse.com.au/restaurant/menu

It was a magnificent meal.

I think I’ve previously had two ‘real’ Thai meals – Sailor Thai at the Rocks and Jimmy Liks in Victoria St, Potts Point.
http://www.sailorsthai.com.au/
http://www.jimmyliks.com/

Cathy would also rate Longgrain, in Liittle Bourke St, Melbourne.
http://www.longrain.com.au/

We think the combination of food, atmosphere and setting at the Spirit House topped them all.

PS The Spirit House has an interesting blog at http://www.spirithouse.com.au/funstuff/