Treatment: Anxiety Attack

CBS News reports that a school of battery-powered robotic fish will monitor pollution in the Spanish harbor of Gijon. The robotic fish contain special sensors to help them avoid rocks, ships and other objects so they won't need to be remotely monitored or remote controlled.

The robotic fish will patrol the harbor of Gijon, in northern Spain under a $3.6 million grant from the European Union. Hu said Gijon was chosen because port authorities there had expressed an interest in the technology.

The plan might seem "like something straight out of science fiction," said Rory Doyle, a researcher working on the project, but he explained that there was a very simple reason for choosing fishlike machines to monitor the harbor's environmental health.

"The design of fish which nature has produced is a very energy-efficient one," Doyle said. "The fish's efficiency is created by hundreds of millions of years' of evolution. Submarines come nowhere near it."

Information gathered from the robo-fish would be transmitted to the port's control center using a wireless Internet signal when the devices surfaced. The data gathered would be used to create a three-dimensional pollution map of the harbor's area.

Here's a video (no sound) that shows the robotic fish in action. (via Daily Mail, Ecofriend.org)



Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds

A NASA-funded study suggests that conditions for the tornado that whipped through downtown Atlanta a year ago were created by heat and energy generated from the urban landscape. The Wall Street Journal reports that NASA's study suggests that tornadoes are likely to become more common. NASA also has a specific report about the Atlanta tornado here.



Posted in Weather

Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds

Mother monkeys in Thailand are apparently teaching their infants how to clean their teeth by flossing with human hair. The monkeys must have read about the health benefits of flossing. Take a look:



Permalink | Recent Headlines | News Feeds