A team of biophysicists at Rockefeller University recently published a paper in Physical Review Letters about a new way to design distribution networks based on the veins that carry water and nutrients in most tree leaves. This is a great example of biomimicry! Evolution by natural selection maybe be blind, but it has had billions of years of trial-and-error to figure out efficient and robust ways to do things. The interconnecting vein loops in leaves are a good example of that, and we can learn from them.
“Operations researchers have long believed that the best distribution networks for many scenarios look like trees, with a succession of branches stemming from a central stalk and then branches from those branches and so on, to the desired destinations. But this kind of network is vulnerable: If it is severed at any place, the network is cut in two and cargo will fail to reach any point “downstream” of the break.”
A good example of that can be seen on the two pictures in this post. The big dots are damage in the network. In the pic on top, you can see that the flow isn’t stopped, and can go everywhere in the network. In the second pic, the flow is stopped everywhere downstream of the damage point.
LINKS:
Treehugger
Science Daily
Rockefeller University
Physical Review Letters
Biomimicry Institute (Blog)
FIRST 3 SENTENCES:
“When Olympic champions are crowned at this year’s winter games in Vancouver, these elite athletes will be taking home more than just gold, silver or bronze medals—they will be playing a role in Canada’s efforts to reduce electronic waste. That’s because each medal was made with a tiny bit of the more than 140,000 tons of e-waste that otherwise would have been sent to Canadian landfills.
The more than 1,000 medals to be awarded at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, which kick off today, amount to 2.05 kilograms of gold, 1,950 kilograms of silver (Olympic gold medals are about 92.5 per cent silver, plated with six grams of gold) and 903 kilograms of copper.”
LINKS:
Scientific American
Planet Green
Huffington Post
Current
Is Muhammad Yunis selling free-market neoliberalism under the guise of ending poverty?
Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi economist, godfather of microcredit and founder of the now-famous Grameen Bank, enchants many different types of people with his imaginings of a better future. A popular public speaker, Yunus is a relatively short man with a silver mane, a round beaming face, and a perpetually optimistic demeanor. At his talks, he regularly draws standing ovations from socially conscious progressives, business-oriented free-marketeers and numerous personalities in between.
What Yunus has to offer, his supporters would say, is a method for ending poverty. These supporters include the Norwegian committee that awarded Yunus and his Grameen Bank the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. This makes things all the more frustrating for Yunus’s detractors. Those to the left would argue that the economist is selling “free market” neoliberalism in the guise of liberal do-gooderism. Right-wing libertarians, in contrast, contend that he is peddling communitarian snake oil in a business-friendly container.
LINKS:
Wikipedia: Muhammad Yunis
Wikipedia: Microcredit
Grameen Bank
Democracy Uprising: Mark Engler
Amazon: How to Rule the World
HSINCHU, Taiwan — A magazine here is catching flak for touting scantily clad betel nut vendors as a tourist attraction.
The minor flap has renewed debate over a unique but controversial part of Taiwan’s pop culture.
Betel nut, a mild stimulant, is enjoyed across Asia. But only in Taiwan is the nut sold by fetching young women in outrageous outfits, perched in neon-lit, see-through roadside stands.
MORE…
The article includes a link to an interesting YouTube video on the subject:
LINKS:
Global Post
YouTube
HONG KONG, China — In November, kidnappers seized 11-year-old Chen Hao in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. The captors demanded 1 million yuan, or $146,000, for the boy’s return. His distraught parents agreed to pay part of the ransom up front. But their actions were not enough and the next day Hao’s dismembered body was discovered.
A month earlier, 11-year-old Yi Yichen was kidnapped and murdered, his body dumped in the sea.
Such grisly crimes have anxious residents of Shenzhen pressuring police to crack down. The Chinese boom town, just north of Hong Kong, has seen child kidnapping cases surge in recent months.
LINKS:
Global Post: Colum Murphy