Safe Drinking Water

Here is an invention that seems way past due.  A portable water filtration system that can filter out bacteria and virus.  Hand these out to folks who don't have access to clean water where they live or during a disaster and suddenly they aren't as dependent on rescue agencies delivering drinkable water.

It's called the Lifesaver Bottle and was invented by  Michael Pritchard.  Watch the TED video below and be amazed.

[Image Captured from the Lifesaver Web Site: http://www.lifesaversystems.com/techinfo.html]

Cockroach Heart Design

This artificial heart is based on a cockroach heart. Seems that a cockroach has a twelve chambered heart compared to our four chambered heart. This built in redundancy helps to protect them from keeling over with angina as they are about to invade my pantry.

I was trying to figure out how this worked from the picture and it made no sense to me. The picture looks like a tennis ball with an aquarium pump inside of it. So, I went looking on the web for a diagram of a cockroach heart. I was unable to find a clear picture or diagram of the little critters ticker. I did eventually find this diagram of a insect heart that I think is similar to what you might find inside a cockroach. Still not clear to me how they can survive the failure of one chamber when they are in sequence like this?

Shoot me a note if anybody knows of a better diagram, picture or explanation.















































[via dvice]

[Image of artifical heart captured from dvice: http://dvice.com/archives/2009/06/indian-artifici.php] [Two images of insect heart captured from mathphysicschemistrybiology.com/circ.html]

Dirty Keyboards and Sick Children

During one particularly bad flu and cold season several years back, my building had 3-5 kids missing from most of our classes due to a nasty virus that was going around. I was standing in the computer lab listening to the kids coughing and sneezing. I watched one young man sneeze. He shielded his face from the kids on either side of him and directed the stream of germs right onto the keyboard. He wiped his hands on his pants and continued typing. Besides getting grossed out, I started thinking about how germs are spread.

We started talking to the kids the next day in the technology department about washing their hands and explained that like their hands, the keyboard was one way to transfer the cold and flu virus. I bought some wipes and we started cleaning the keyboards daily. If I had a student who was actively coughing, I made sure that keyboard got cleaned before the next child sat down. I was lucky to have a sink in one of the labs and was always making the kids wash their hands. A lot.

I don't know if it helped limit the overall spread of disease in our school, but after that, I got sick less. I was reminded of this event by this post on ars technica: Study: keyboards make excellent homes for nasty bacteria. I love this quote from the article:

"...several keyboards were highly contaminated, and at least one was removed on the scientist's advice as it harbored four times the amount of harmful bacteria compared to a toilet seat"

I never used the toilet analogy with my students and staff before but I will from now on. I can hardly wait to put together my new graphic.

[Note: This story seems to have gained some momentum since I read it last week. Here are some related posts from ABC news.

• Your Keyboard: Dirtier Than a Toilet
• Stomach Flu Spread By Contaminated Computer Keyboards

[Image:Uploaded on March 9, 2006 by Lawrence Whittemore: Creative Commons]