2UE Flying Wing

Boy would I like one of these. It is So James Bond.
You might remember your jet packs from the 1960s. You strap them on your back and go flying through the air, propelled by gas.
They are nothing compared to this.
A German engineering firm has developed a jet-powered flying wing and unveiled it an airshow.
It's basically a strap-on aircraft and at this stage its use is going to be restricted to elite paratroopers.
Over the past couple of decades aeronautical engineers have made enormous breakthroughs in the technology we use when we jump from great heights.
You might have seen the wing suits that a Sydney couple used two weeks ago when they set a world base jumping record in India.
These are nylon suits with fabric under the arms like a bird's wing.
When they pulled taught they create an aerofoil shape a little like a plane's wing. Normally when a jumper leaps from a very tall height they can reach a velocity of about 190km/h.
The wing suits give lift to jumpers and let them slow their downward speed to as little as 45km/h and increase their forward speed to about 145km/h.
Another variation on this which has become increasingly popular in recent years is the flying wing.
Instead of a suit, jumpers strap on a two-metre carbon fibre wing and are dropped from an aircraft.
The wing weighs about 20 kg and because it has the same aerofoil shape as a plane's wing, again it provides lift and slows how fast the wearer is falling vertically.
In 2003 we saw an Austrian daredevil cross the English channel with one of this wings strapped to his back.
What this German firm has done is take things a step further.
They've got a carbon fibre flying wing and installed twin turbo jet engines in it.
While a regular flying wing can take parachutists up to 50 km from where they have been dropped these jets allow you to zoom nearly 200 km away at speeds over 150km/h.
ESG says its device is perfect for groups like the SAS. You drop them say 100km from a national border and they can silently jet across into a foreign country wearing these wings.I spoke to academics at the Australian Defence Force academy and they said the SAS will very likely be checking these things out.


That's right, this is one for all those Star Wars fans out there and another case of science catching up with science fiction.
If you've seen the original films you probably remember a scene where the hero Luke Skywalker is receiving some tuition from Obi wan Kenobi about using his light saber.
To practice, Luke is using a little hovering sphere about the size of a soccer ball which jets away if he tries to strike it. If his concentration lapses it zaps with with a laser beam.
Now NASA and scientists at the massacheusetts institute of technology have made something very similar and demonstrated it in the International Space Station.
The floating sphere built by the techies looks just like the one in the movie. But rather than teaching light saber skills its designed to work as a repair drone, a satellite or part of a telescope.
About six years ago NASA thought it would re-think the way it operated satellites. Scientists thought it might make more sense to launch clusters of mini-satellites rather than one big bulky unit. It would be cheaper to get them into the air and if they operated in concert it wouldn't matter if one got zapped by a piece of floating space junk.
They commissioned some of the brightest engineering students to create some prototypes. What they came up with was soccer ball-sized spheres which float in zero gravity and can jet about using gas powered thrusters. The flying spheres use sensors and stabilisers to orient themselves in a room.
Last month astronauts on the space station tested one of these and found they could get around pretty well.
The next step is to adapt them. One use might be as repair drones which could float around in space and fix the exterior of space craft. The main use is likely to be as weather or communications satellites.

2UE Fish

You may think of the desert south of Alice Springs as a pretty quiet place.
Bit of red soil, a bit of grass and a few kangaroos hopping around.
But new research has shown it was once one of the most dynamic places on the face of the Earth, complete with erupting volcanoes, lava and newly-formed moutain ranges.
An Adelaide University academic says just south of Alice Springs is the spot where two early continents came together to form Australia and she's found evidence of the collision.
Up until the late 1980s most scientists believed that Australia as a continent had always been more or less in the shape it is today.
But about 20 years ago theories began being put forward that the country had been formed from a series of smaller early continents. It is thought that two continents that became northern Australia and Central Australia slammed into each other about 1.6 billion years
Kate Selway went bush and used a technique called ''magneto tellurics'' to find the spot of the collision. There is a certain amount of natural current running through the rocks deep beneath the Earth. Rocks that come from different early continents carry the current in different ways. By identifying the differences Kate was able to tell where one early continent ends and another begins, deep beneath the desert.
Her theory is that northern Australia, central Australia, southern Australia and northern Australia all came together at about the same time geologically. Eastern Australia came later. The volcanoes and mountain ranges that resulted from most of the these collisions have long since eroded away.
All this was before the formation of the super continent gondwanaland, many people will be familiar with. That came much later.
The band Gondwanaland of course came much later still!



That's right Mike.
It's a long-held belief that fish are dumb and have no memories.
The old saying goes that you don't have to worry about goldfish getting bored because they only have a three-second memory.
It turns out nothing could be further from the truth.
Culum Brown a researcher with Macquarie University has been studying fish for the past 10 years and says they not only have excellent, long-term memories, they're pretty good at reading symbols!
Culum put fish through a series of trials to see how smart they were.
In one test his team created a mock trawl net where fish in the lab were scooped up as they were swimming.
Culum put a small hole in the net and the fish could escape the net by swimming through it.
After being scooped up three or four or five times the fish learned the location of the hole and from then on always escaped.
That's pretty smart, but the amazing part is when the test was repeated a year later all the fish remembered where the hole was and could get out of the net straight away.
So much for the three second memory theory.
In another test the fish were put in a maze, with different lanes marked by symbols such as a red square, a blue circle, a yellow triangle.
Following one particular symbol meant the fish were rewarded with food.
Culum and his team found the fish used - guppies - soon learned what the symbols meant and would go straight for the food.
That means they were doing something pretty similar to what we do when we look a road sign or check which door to go through at the public loo.
Interestingly other recent research has shown fish are better at some tasks - like escaping traps - than dolphins.

Blog Speech

Speech 9
Speak with persuasion
Mr Toastmaster, fellow members and guests.
To blog or not to blog?
That is the question.
Whether 'it's nobler to sit down at your computer and write an internet diary
Or better to keep your thoughts to yourself and avoid hassles with cranks predators and your boss
Forgive my tinkering with Shakespeare, but I believe that little speech sums up nicely the dilemma facing many Australians as we move into the 21st century.
Blogs - web logs - are becoming increasingly popular as more and more households connect to the internet.
Bloggers - people who write blogs - pour out their thoughts on subjects ranging from their family pets to the middle east, from surfing to origami.
But to some critics this is a dangerous business.
They say keeping a blog exposes you to the possibility of being stalked by a sexual predator; that you will be pestered by weirdos who will abuse you about your posts; that you will regret revealing intimate thoughts on-line; that you will be sacked if you keep a blog that mentions work.
Some of those of statements have a grain of truth in them, but blogging can be a overwhelmingly positive experience. Being a blogger can bring a richness to your life and become an outlet for self expression.
I'd like to tell you why all of us should consider keeping a blog.
If you're not familiar with where blogs came from let me give you a quick potted history.
Blogs are part of the internet, the worldwide network of computers that most of us now rely on to send and receive emails, trade goods on eBay and keep abreast with the latest news.
The net had its roots in the late 1960s when an Amercian government agency called ARPA developed a small linked network of computers.
Other organisations slowly followed suit and by the early 1980s universities began linking their together. The internet as we know it, linking continents open to commerical use, evolved from the early 1990s.
Most sources agree that the first blogs - then called on-line diaries - evolved about 1994. One of the first bloggers was Justine Hall, a university student who in the mid-1990s began writing regularly about video games.
The first sites were poorly read and early blog writers were often considered a little eccentric - geeky if you like.
But slowly the fad began to gather steam.
In 1997 the term web log was coined by a controversial diary writer called John Barger. This was quickly abrieviated to blog.
As internet use grew, blogs started attracting immense amounts of traffic. Popular writers began getting millions of visitors and the image of the blogger became cooler.
Over the past five years there has been an explosion in blog writing. Web hosts such as myspace and blogspot have made it simple to start a blog. You just hop on the internet, visit their sites, follow a few prompts and within five minutes you're blogging. You have your own site where you can paste pictures and text. Net users can then visit your blog and leave comments.
To give you an example on how much blogging has exploded one American blog site Xanga had 100 web diaries in 1997 compared to 50,000,000 in 2005.
Myspace has just launched in Australia and this is expected to prompted hundreds of thousands more Australians to begin experimenting with blogs.
I have a personal blog I've been playing with for about three or four months. Through my work I am also due to start a blog dealing with issues related to science.
Opponents of blogs will tell you they are dangerous things.
Because blogs are in a public forum and available for anyone to read, it's true parents should teach their kids to be weary of approaches by visitors to their sites.
Kids should not meet anyone they've talked to over the web without parental supervision.
Similiarly, bloggers can find themselves visited for the odd ratbag who uses abusive language. Like driving on the road, there are idiots on the net and they're best ignored.
Another tip is to be cautious of the way you describe your work. On a few occasions bloggers have been sacked for identifying the company they work for and talking about it in an unflattering way.
And of course, don't discuss personal things on the net if you're not happy with them being out there in the public domain.
But despite a small downside I would urge everyone to consider writing a blog.
Why?
It's free and and it's fun.
Just like a diary you can be as expressive as you want. You can blow off steam on something that irritates you or sing the praises of a pleasant experience.
You can review the local restaurant or a film you liked. You can support your football team or favourite band.
You can post pictures of your favourite surfing spots as I do on my blog or your child's art work or your visions for a space station.
You can talk about going to the ship or tell readers how you'd make the world a better place.
You may only have two or three or a dozen people who read your blog. And there's nothing wrong with that. It can be a way of keeping friends posted on what you're doing.
But if it grows you may have readers across the country and the world. You could meet friends and learn about other cultures.
If your blog becomes popular you may have the opportunity to influence public opinion. It's the ultimate form of self-expresion.
So to be blog or not to blog?
I say be a part of a positive and dynamic social trend and blog away!

2UE High heels and space habitats

That's right Mike,
Some of your readers will be familiar with the air bag technology that professional athletes have in their shoes to cushion their feet from impacts.
Now researchers have found women wearing high heels are exposing their feet to very similar stresses because of the angle the foot hits the ground.
The result of the research is a high heel with professional airbags inside - sort of high fashion meets the basketball court.
They're a bit of a mystery to us men, but high heels create an illusion that a woman's legs are longer than they really are.
The feet of wearers are slanted down while the toes are forced to bend up.
This causes wearers to adopt what is regarded as a bit of a sexy stance, with the hips thrust forward.
But the stance also puts enormous stresses on the bodies of wearers.
Cole Haan, the makers of the new Tivona Air Sling heel, found women walking in 10 cm heels came down on their heel with the same force as they would if they were running.
They found wearers were regularly tottering forward because the thin, elevated heels required them to unevenly distribute their weight.
Over time the whole shape of women's feet was change.
The company worked with the athletic footwear manufacturer Nike to develop a solution to the problem.
Nike's Zoom air bag, which are normally used in basketball shoes, were adapted and inserted in the heel and under the front sole the new shoes.
The air bag consists two layers of fabric connected by thousands of fibres.
The fabric layers are surrounded with pressurised gas and encased in, and attached to, a flexible plastic capsule.
At rest the fibres between the fabrics keep the capsule from bulging.
When compressed by a foot fall the capsule compresses and then springs back into shape to provide cushioning.
The end result is apparently a comfortable high heel and women are raving about them in the States where they were developed.



That's right Mike.
The world's space agencies are looking at setting up temporary and permanent bases on the Moon and Mars and when they astronauts get there, they're going to need somewhere to live
Sending up steel structures is costly and inefficient and so a light and strong alternative is being sought.
Now a Sydney academic has come up with what he says is the answer and if you've ever seen an inflatable jumping castle at a fete, well that's kind of the idea.
Dr Alexey Kondyurin from the University of Sydney proposes we make space stations and Moon and Mars bases from flexible fabric, which can
be easily packed on a rocket.
Once in space or on a planet such as Mars, the structures would be unfurled, inflated and exposed to sunlight. A new resin he has developed would then cause the structures to harden in minutes, making them rigid, tough and suitable for use by humans in space.
The European space agency is looking at something along these lines and with NASA hoping to land on the moon the technology could come in very useful.
The process of making these space habitats would begin on Earth.
A modern textile such as carbon fibre would be shaped into the form of a space station or planet habitat module.
The polymer liquid resin would be applied to the structure, but would not yet harden.
The prepared habitat would be then placed in a capsule and launched into space.
At the required destination the habitat would be removed and inflated using compressed gas.
In the presence of ultra violet light or heat the resin would harden, creating a durable and strong shell. This could then be fitted out by
astronauts.
Kondyurin said a cylindrical habitat which could be packed to be 10-metres long and have a four-metre diametre, could be unfurled in space
to be 100-metres long and have a 10-metre diametre.
So solar system, here we come...

2UE KEO and Speed Signs

2UE
KEO time capsule and

That's right Mike.
I'm sure at least a few of your listeners will remember making time capsules from their days at school.
Traditionally that involved taking a few pictures, coins and newspapers, putting them in a weather proof containers and burying it or encasing it in concrete.
But a European initiative is about to take the concept into a whole new dimension.
A French organisation is working with the European Space Agency to create a capsule that would be launched on a rocket and placed in orbit around the Earth.
The capsule, dubbed KEO, would then circle the globe for 50,000 years before descending into the atmosphere in a blaze of sound and lioght for inspection by our great, great great grandchildren.
The project was originally scheduled for 2001, but delays have meant it's now likely to take place next year.
The novel thing about the project is that it has room for a message from every inhabitant on the planet.
Although the capsule is only 80 cm in diametre, the digital age has meant information can be compressed into a very small format.
People are being encouraged to visit the website for the project www.keo.org and leave a message to be placed on board. You can do that up until December 31 this year.
Also on board will be samples of sea water, human blood and soil.
I spoke to Richard Waterhouse an historian from the University of Sydney about the project and he said he hoped Australians would includes messages about anzac day, something that is unique to our culture.
I like this project because it reminds me of the voyager space craft launched in the 1970s which carried on board gold gramophone records.
They were intended as messages about our planet for any extra terrestial life the space probes might enounter.

That's right Mike.
Speeding fines could be a thing of the past within two years thanks to new research being carried out by a Sydney company called Seeing Machines.
They're developing a car computer which will be able to read speed signs by the side of the road and tell you if you're being a lead foot.
If you pre-program it to do so the computer might even be able to automatically apply your brakes to keep you under the speed limit.
The device which could be ready in two years consists of a camera and a micro-processor, a small computer.
You fit it on your windscreen just near the rear view mirror.
As you drive along the camera takes in the surrounding streetscape looking for road signs.
Just like new computers in the United States can identify the faces of terrorists in large crowds, this device will be able to discern speeding signs from the jumble of lights and colours and shapes that you see when you're driving.
When it sees a speed sign it can read the figure and do a number of things with the infomation.
If you want it to it will project a display on your dash, telling you what the speed is in the area you're travelling through.
If you want to be tougher with yourself you will be able to program it to sound an alarm when your speed exceeds the legal limit.
Another option which may eventually be available could be the device applying the brakes to forcibly slow your speed.
The people at Seeing Machines believe the concept could save people thousands in fines and also reduce the risk of speed related injuries and deaths.
By the way motorists in NSW paid out $57 million in fines for speed cameras alone last year.
Also in development overseas are devices to warn you if your car drifts out of its lane and which slam on the brakes if they sense you're about to have a collision......