Eideard

Constable Kynan Lang inspects the garage which the ‘stolen’ car rolled into at Stirling

A car reported as stolen from an Australian car park has been reunited with its owner, after apparently parking itself in a closed garage.

Adelaide police say they think the car rolled down an incline in the car park, across a street and into a garage forcing itself under the roller doors. The door closed behind it and the car remained undetected for 17 days until the home-owners returned from holiday.

Fearing a burglary, they called police, who deduced the curious turn of events.

“Although the roller door was closed, it had been damaged slightly and pushed out of its tracks,” a police spokesman is quoted in Australian media as saying.

Police believe that the car had not been left in the parking gear and so rolled though the car park and eventually “forced itself under the roller door, parking perfectly inside the garage where it remained safely under cover for 17 days”.

Har!

A study published Friday in a British medical journal may have finally uncovered the secret behind Australia’s laid-back lifestyle, and it turns out to be more than just sun and surf: The denizens Down Under, it turns out, consume more marijuana than any other people on the planet.

The study, an analysis of global trends in illegal drugs and their effect on public health published in The Lancet, a prestigious journal, found that Australia and neighboring New Zealand topped the lists globally for consumption of both marijuana and amphetamines, a category of drugs whose use the study found to be growing rapidly around the world.

The study’s co-authors…reported that as much as 15 percent of the populations of Australia and New Zealand between the ages of 15 and 64 had used some form of marijuana in 2009…

The Americas, by comparison, clocked in at 7 percent, although North America batted above the neighborhood average with nearly 11 percent of its population partaking. Asia demonstrated the lowest global marijuana use patterns at no more than 2.5 percent, the study said, although difficulties in obtaining accurate data in less developed countries were cited as one possible reason for the low figures.

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A prickly new arrival made its first public appearance at Perth Zoo yesterday. The Echidna Puggle, the latest breeding success at the zoo, was given a quick weigh and inspection by keepers, before being placed back in its nursery burrow where it will spend the next two to three months. The youngster weighed in at 526 grams and will continue to grow over the next three to four years before reaching the normal adult weight of around 4 kg.

The Puggle, named Kai (Nyoongar for surprise), weighed less than one gram when it hatched in September and spent the first two months of its life in its mother’s pouch. “Once the puggle’s spines started to emerge the mother deposited it in the nursery burrow,” Perth Zoo’s Australian Fauna Supervisor Arthur Ferguson said…

…“Once Kai leaves the nursery burrow, we will take a couple of small hairs for DNA sexing,” Mr Ferguson said “The previous five echidnas born at Perth Zoo were all females, so we are hoping that Kai is a male.” Echidnas are very difficult to breed in captivity. Perth Zoo began studying their secretive breeding habits and reproductive biology a few years ago…

The work undertaken with Short-beaked Echidnas may also help in conserving its endangered cousins, the Long-beaked Echidnas, which are facing extinction in the wild. Perth Zoo’s research provides a solid foundation for a captive breeding program to be established for Long-beaked Echidnas if required.

Delightful. And cuter than some humans.

Thanks, Ursarodinia

 
A group of 17 surfers wired their wetsuits with coloured neon tubes that glow in the dark and took to the waves for some night surfing at Sydney’s Bondi beach. The group braved the storms that were gathering in the area in order to welcome the arrival of summer in Australia, which officially begins on 1 December.

Rock on!

A complete shell fish hook from the Pleistocene

Tuna has been on the menu for a lot longer than we thought. Even 42,000 years ago, the deep-sea dweller wasn’t safe from fishing tackle according to new finds in southeast Asia.

We know that open water was no barrier to travel in the Pleistocene – humans must have crossed hundreds of kilometres of ocean to reach Australia by 50,000 years ago. But while humans had already been pulling shellfish out of the shallows for 100,000 years by that point, the first good evidence of fishing with hooks or spears comes much later – around 12,000 years ago.

The new finds blow that record out of the water. Sue O’Connor at the Australian National University in Canberra and colleagues dug through deposits at the Jerimalai shelter in East Timor. They discovered 38,000 fish bones from 23 different taxa, including tuna and parrotfish that are found only in deep water. Radiocarbon dating revealed the earliest bones were 42,000 years old.

Amidst the fishy debris was a broken fish hook fashioned from shell, which the team dated to between 16,000 and 23,000 years. “This is the earliest known example of a fish hook,” says O’Connor. Another hook, made around 11,000 years ago, was also found…

“There is nothing like this anywhere else in the world,” says Ian McNiven of Monash University in Melbourne, who was not a member of O’Connor’s team. “Maybe this is the crucible for fishing.”

East Timor hosts few large land animals, so early occupants would have needed highly developed fishing skills to survive. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” says O’Connor. “Apart from bats and rats, there’s nothing to eat here…”

Broader patterns of human migration suggest that more evidence of fishing would be found through examining those submerged sites. After leaving Africa around 70,000 years ago, it took modern humans only 20,000 years to skirt around Asia and reach Australia. The journey over land into Europe, although much shorter, took 30,000 years. “Humans appeared to move quite quickly along the coasts,” says McNiven. “Developed fishing skills could have kept them moving.”

Fishing has always seemed the most reliable of protein sources to me. Which is why I would expect humankind to have stuck to shorelines as we advanced into new territory. Expanding inland would have been guided by herd animals – and their migrations. Sustained over seasons in temperate climates by techniques of smoking and drying learned originally from preserving fish.

Neil Parry fought in court for 17 months for justice

An Australian man has been paid thousands of dollars in compensation after being wrongly accused of smuggling ecstasy in shampoo bottles.

Neil Parry of Darwin spent three days in jail after being arrested at the city’s airport last year. But his bottles were found to contain shampoo and conditioner, not 1.6kg of liquid ecstasy as alleged.

Mr Parry said the AUS$100,000 payout from customs “was not worth it”.

He told ABC radio he had spent 17 months in a legal battle with the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service, and that most of the compensation would go towards his legal costs.

In a statement, the customs service said “mistakes were made during the presumptive testing of Mr Parry’s goods” and additional drug-testing procedures had been introduced.

Mr Parry’s boat and the homes of two friends were searched during the customs investigation.

I know we all tire of asking these questions. Why does it take 17 months for governments to admit they’ve screwed up? It’s bad enough they’ve messed with the life of an innocent citizen – but, they care so much about protecting their pimply-ass bureaucratic turf that someone like Mr. Parry has to hire a lawyer and sue to get any compensation for being locked-up and his home, his friends, being tossed by the coppers. They are the criminals.

They let me go; but, required I had to exit the UK within 30 days. They had to apply some sort of sanction to cover their stupidity.

Four robots have set out on an epic 66,000km journey across the Pacific Ocean. Created by US firm Liquid Robotics, the four are aiming to set the record for the longest distance at sea travelled by an unmanned craft.

Throughout their journey the robots will gather lots of data about the composition and quality of sea water. The journey is expected to take about 300 days, and is designed to inspire researchers to study ocean health.

The robots were launched from the St Francis Yacht Club on the edge of San Francisco harbour on 17 November.

Initially the four will travel as a flotilla to Hawaii and then will split into two pairs. One will go on to Australia and the other will head to Japan to support a dive on the Mariana Trench – the deepest part of the ocean.

The robots manage to move thanks to interaction between the two halves of the autonomous vehicle. The upper half of the wave-riding robot is shaped like a stunted surfboard and it is attached by a cable to a lower part that sports a series of fins and a keel.

Interaction between the two parts brought about by the motion of the waves enables the robot to propel itself.

Electrical power for sensors is provided by solar panels on the upper surface of the robot…

The wave-riding robots are veterans of ocean-going science and helped monitor the spread of oil during the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Before now the longest single journey they have undertaken was over a distance of 2,500 miles.

Bravo. Does anyone know if we will be able to trace them along their travels?

Here’s a link from Ursarodina to sign up for periodic updates: http://tinyurl.com/86op5n5

You just never know what you’ve got in the shed. This horary quadrant was found in a bag of old pipe fittings in a shed on a farm in Queensland, Australia, forty years ago. Last year the owner of the quadrant was surfing the internet and came across this article where he recognised not just the same tool, but the same stag-coronet insignia that was on his quadrant (he thought it was an astrolabe) signified it was made for King Richard II (of England).

He subsequently contacted the British Museum, which identified the item sitting on his desk for the last forty years as a 1396 horary quadrant. It will be auctioned next month and is expected to fetch between £150,000 and £200,000.

Perhaps even more remarkably, the simple quadrant which is used for telling the time, and had been in use for at least 1500 years prior to the making of this piece in 1396, has turned out to be the second oldest British scientific instrument ever discovered, the oldest being the Chaucer astrolabe, dated 1326, which is housed in the British Museum.

Dated 1396, the quadrant is one of four similar quadrants found to date (the others have been dated 1398, 1399 and circa 1400 respectively), two of which can be found in the British Museum, and the other in the Dorset County Museum, Dorchester.

The horary quadrant was the most commonly used way of telling the time prior to the invention of the clock. One edge of the quadrant was pointed directly at the sun, and a plumbline attached to the centre of the quadrant signified the hour of the day.

I imagine some settler or other brought the critter along to Oz because [a] it had been hanging around in the family long enough for folks to know it was very, very old — or [b] figured on using it to tell time — even though it would only be close to accurate in London.

For the second year in a row, Tokai University can lay claim to the winner’s laurels in the 2011 Veolia World Solar Challenge, a sun-powered race challenge in Australia that winds over 1,800 miles between Darwin and Adelaide using only 5 kWh of on-board energy and the rest beamed in directly from the sun. As the race’s website says, “These are arguably the most efficient electric vehicles.”

According to the provisional results…seven teams managed to go the entire 2,998 kilometer but Tokai came out on top because their average speed – 91.54 kilometers an hour – was faster than any other finisher. The Tokai’s final time was 32 hours and 45 minutes. The fact that only seven teams finished out of a starting list of 37 shows that this is not an easy race, and this year was particularly difficult thanks to brush fires (set by arsonists) along the route.

Bravo!

We have kin who have worked their butts off for similar competitions in North America – and especially appreciate the effort not only by the designers and teams; but, everyone who works to produce the competition.

Brisbane’s Renewable Energy Solutions Australia (RESA) recently unveiled the first working installation of what is claimed to be the world’s quietest wind turbine. The Eco Whisper Turbine is capable of producing 20kW of electricity despite being about half the height and having half the blade diameter of more familiar three-bladed solutions, and is able to automatically adjust the position of the blades to maximize wind capture.

Much of the noise produced by small wind turbines occurs when air spills off the tip of the blades but thanks to a unique cowl/ring design, the Eco Whisper Turbine is said to benefit from near-silent operation. RESA says that its design can produce more than 30 percent more energy than other turbine solutions over a wide range of wind conditions – that translates to up to 45,000 kWh per year in optimum conditions.

The company expects its grid or off-grid green energy solution to meet the medium to high power needs in urban and rural applications like airports, business parks, commercial sites and universities. The company’s Michael Le Messurier reports that interest from the industry has been overwhelming since the first installation was recently unveiled at Austeng Engineering in Geelong, Victoria.

Standing 21.1 meters (69.225 feet) tall from tip to toe, a 6.5 meter (21.325 foot) diameter blade sits at the top of a hinged steel pole that can be lowered for maintenance or during extreme weather conditions – although the structure is designed to withstand wind speeds of up to 220 km/h (136.7 mph). The central hub and the 30 blades that fan out from it are made from aluminum, and the solution incorporates dynamic slew drive technology that negates the need for a tail.

Other noteworthy benefits of this turbine development include a low start up speed and high visibility that should help the local bird population avoid injury.

I’ll have to get my blog editing-mate down in Oz to check this out for me. Sooner or later, we will supplement energy needs here at Lot 4 and take advantage of nature’s resources to add wind and sun electricity generation.