Archive for: August 2011

The urban landscape is almost as dotted by security cameras as it is by satellite tv dishes.

Today’s invention is a behavioural upgrade to motor-driven security camera systems.

Each such camera would have a reflective grid painted on the ground in front of it. Anything moving across the grid would obscure some part of it and cause the camera(s) to be automatically pointed at that spot.

This would be disconcerting for anyone about to commit a crime. Groups of two or more potential criminals attempting distraction of a single camera would find themselves being stared at for a few moments each (and thus recorded).

Cameras which detected people loitering could perform a slight ‘shaking of the head’ motion of admonition, followed by a sideways flicking movement saying ‘keep moving over there.’

Cameras of this kind would thus provide a greater sense of surveillance and discourage crime, but with minimal modifications to existing systems.

Industrial processes create all sorts of bulk liquids which then need to be transported via rail. Many of these will be mixtures -which cost a great deal to create or maintain.

Today’s invention is a novel way to transport liquids so that they become or stay mixed in transit.

I remember reading about how the Shuttle astronauts had serious trouble with the gloves of their spacesuits whilst in orbit.

In order to get any feel via the rubberised tips of the pressurised gloves, these had to be pulled tightly onto the ends of the fingertips -after a day’s hard graft in space, lots of fingernails had been lost (some astronauts, it seems, even remove their fingernails pre-flight).

A particularly significant problem is delamination in which the nails develop protuberant flakes which snag painfully on the glove interior.

Today’s invention is to help prevent this problem during long EVAs. It consists of a patch of finely abrasive material inside the back face of each of the glove’s fingertips and which maintains smooth ends on the already short nails.

When parachutists need to leave an aircraft en masse, there is a danger that some chutes won’t open, even when activated by a static line.

The usual rail to which static lines are attached is, in today’s invention, extended from the rear of a transport plane. There would be several such rails in parallel.

This allows each jumper to have his chute opened by the static line and the airflow around the fuselage, in the usual way.

If it fails to deploy, which can be automatically sensed as low tension in the line, the jumper can be brought to a halt before leaving the rail and the chute jettisoned.

Whilst he was being pulled back on board, the next parachutists attached to that rail would unclip and reattach themselves to another rail.

Today’s invention is intended to allow someone to maintain a stable grip on their small camera and to still use the shutter release without rocking the device.

A button (red) with a magnetic base can be located anywhere on the steel front plate, so that it falls comfortably beneath the user’s finger.

A small red dot then appears on the display on the camera’s rear face, exactly opposite the release button.

Squeezing the dot and button together removes any potential camera shake.

People are notoriously poor at judging numerical probabilities. This allows the gambling industry to make enormous profits.

Today’s invention is intended to move the odds a little in favour of the punters.

A smartphone app allows a user to move sliders representing horses in a given race.

In the image, the black horse, eg, is 20:1 favourite, whilst the brown horse is 5:1 against (as represented by the ratios of the line segments).

Once this is done, the real, current odds are superimposed, so that a bettor can spot where his view of a given horse’s chance is greater than the bookmaker’s view.

A confident punter could use this as an opportunity to place a bet, whereas an inexperienced one might take the opportunity to abstain.

It turns out that airliner brakes can reach 1400 deg C, when used hard during an aborted takeoff.

A delay of five minutes is then expected once the plane has actually stopped -before any fire engines can deal with the melting undercarriage and the threat of a major fire.

Today’s invention is to adopt the simple approach of running some pipework from the aircraft’s waste water tank(s) to above the wheel wells.

Whilst waiting for fire appliances to appear, the crew can open a valve and sluice the entire area in water, just before the passengers depart down the slides.

There would be a fair bit of steam and not a little smell, but at least there would be a reduced chance of disembarking people into a kerosene fire on the runway.

There are several different approaches to space tourism.

Today’s invention is an alternative.

A needle-shaped, helium-filled airship, made of eg carbon nanotubes, is orientated with its long axis vertical. This would need to be ~400m in height and with a cross-section just big enough for the occupant to stand up in with his parachute and breathing apparatus.

The atmospheric pressure differential from top to bottom would be enough to drive this low-drag needle upwards when released, exceeding the 36km height limit for balloons.

Lessening drag would allow the ship to reach perhaps 50km, before falling earthwards. A parachute would automatically be deployed, allowing the airship to be reused.

Today’s invention is a tool for disrupting the lifecycle of the mosquito responsible for transmitting malaria.

A helicopter has a main rotor the blades of which can be reoriented so that, instead of driving air downwards through them, it pulls air upwards.

The machine is flown to a shallow puddle in which mosquitoes are known to be breeding (and which is probably too stagnant for safe drinking). It settles on the bottom of the puddle and runs its blades in reverse.

This sucks up all the water, mosquito larvae and all, dispersing the lot into a rising column of air within a few minutes -and thus greatly reducing the numbers of insects which reach maturity.

From across the globe, we hear about train derailments almost on a daily basis.

Today’s invention attempts to lessen the severity of such incidents.

Each carriage would have some wheels at each end fitted with sensors which could detect when a wheel had lost contact with the track (a magnetic field sensor mounted in a radial recess on the rim would be sufficient).

When that happened, the coupling to carriages ahead and behind the derailing car would instantly break (perhaps even pushing away as they did so). All brakes would be automatically applied at the same time.

This would result in only one carriage leaving the track -without dragging several others with it.