Emerging Technologies....They Might Have Cured Cancer….Also Leaf Blower Silencers!

[Corcaigh]

1 hour ago, Jabbyrwock said:

 

Well...crap.

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02585-7

Look on the bright side. Might be good for jewelry?

[China]

 

[China]

You can buy a flame-throwing robot dog

 

If you’ve always wanted a robot pet or just want to own a flame-thrower, now you can have your robot dog and set things on fire too thanks to Throwflame.

 

The Ohio-based company is selling the Thermonator, a robotic dog with a back-mounted flame thrower, which the company says can “send streams of fire up to 30 feet with the push of a button.”

 

Video shared on Throwflame’s Facebook page shows the Thermonator walking through a wooded area spewing flames and even jumping around.

 

Those worried about the legality of owning a flame-throwing robot dog can rest assured flamethrowers are legal in 49 states in the U.S. Only Maryland bans the device outright, though California does require you have a permit to use them, the Miami Herald reported in August 2022.

 

If you want your own fire-throwing dog, the dangerous robotic pet is available on Throwflame’s website for $9,420.

 

 

[MrSilverMaC]

A possible new use for old concrete to capture carbon.
 

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a60537619/a-new-use-for-old-concrete-could-revolutionize-carbon-capture/

[China]

3 hours ago, MrSilverMaC said:

A possible new use for old concrete to capture carbon.
 

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a60537619/a-new-use-for-old-concrete-could-revolutionize-carbon-capture/

 

Interesting.  I wonder how much energy and burned fuel it takes to crush concrete into 1 mm size pieces.

[TheGreatBuzz]

7 minutes ago, China said:

 

Interesting.  I wonder how much energy and burned fuel it takes to crush concrete into 1 mm size pieces.

 

Plenty of prisoners around that can make big rocks into little rocks. 

[China]

First Patient Begins Newly Approved Sickle Cell Gene Therapy

 

On Wednesday, Kendric Cromer, a 12-year-old boy from a suburb of Washington, became the first person in the world with sickle cell disease to begin a commercially approved gene therapy that may cure the condition.

 

For the estimated 20,000 people with sickle cell in the United States who qualify for the treatment, the start of Kendric’s monthslong medical journey may offer hope. But it also signals the difficulties patients face as they seek a pair of new sickle cell treatments.

 

For a lucky few, like Kendric, the treatment could make possible lives they have longed for. A solemn and shy adolescent, he had learned that ordinary activities — riding a bike, going outside on a cold day, playing soccer — could bring on episodes of searing pain.

 

“Sickle cell always steals my dreams and interrupts all the things I want to do,” he said. Now he feels as if he has a chance for a normal life.

 

Near the end of last year, the Food and Drug Administration gave two companies authorization to sell gene therapy to people with sickle cell disease — a genetic disorder of red blood cells that causes debilitating pain and other medical problems. An estimated 100,000 people in the United States have sickle cell, most of them Black. People are born with the disease when they inherit the mutated gene for the condition from each parent.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Silencer for leaf blowers picked up by Black & Decker

 

There are few power tools that raise a neighbor’s hackles quite like the leaf blower. Sure, others can be loud, but there’s just something about their particular ear-splitting drone that cuts in like a dentist’s drill. Perhaps it's people's frustrating tendency to use them early in the morning, when folk are trying to sleep in. Perhaps it's the knowledge that using a broom or rake would not only be quieter, but also wouldn’t just move all the leaves onto your lawn. Either way, it's the kind of problem engineering students love to tackle.

 

The team’s design ended up taking the form of an attachment that fits over the end and dampens the specific frequencies blasted out by leaf blowers, without reducing the force of the air. They compare it to a silencer for a gun, or a muffler for a car. The researchers started by analyzing the sounds leaf blowers made, and how they make them.

 

“The sound that comes out of this leaf blower is very complicated and it contains a lot of different frequencies,” said Andrew Palacio, a member of the research team. “A lot of different notes on a piano would be a good analogy.”

 

It turns out, among the cacophony that these tools emit are some high frequency noises that are particularly annoying to the human brain. The team designed their attachment to specifically dampen these frequencies, reducing them by around 12 decibels (dB) at 50 ft (15 m), or 94% quieter. The overall noise has come down by about 37% – that means there’ll still be some noise of course, but this device should take the edge off it.

 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Corcaigh]

This will save lives as I won’t need to kill neighbors with OLD )Obsessive Leaf-blowing Disorder).

 

it’s one thing if people actually use them for leaf blowing one weekend in the Fall each year, but ****ers use them every week for blowing grass clippings off driveways and sidewalks when a push broom would be way more efficient AND quieter.

[Darrell Green Fan]

Seeing this thread finally motivated me to purchase a cordless leaf blower. We have a lot of maple trees which drop those annoying helicopter seeds all over the deck and back patio.  And of course a ton of leaves in the fall.  

[PleaseBlitz]

Worthy of a thread title update. 

[Corcaigh]

1 hour ago, PleaseBlitz said:

Worthy of a thread title update. 

It’s a bigger deal than curing cancer.

[PokerPacker]

34 minutes ago, Corcaigh said:

It’s a bigger deal than curing cancer.

Curing cancer helps the rich people.  Leaf Blower Silencers is for the people.

[Corcaigh]

Without silencers, I imagine a future society where all the suburbs are abandoned ‘ghost towns’ and humans now only live in the countryside or in cities. The answer is that the tyranny of leaf blowers made suburbs with yards uninhabitable.

 

 

Edited Sunday at 11:52 AM by Corcaigh