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Past Shows
September 22, 2007
 Download an MP3 of the entire program (22MB).
Going Green, One Home at a Time
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The miniHome |
Most people agree that a major problem facing our planet today is the rising level of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. So environmentalism has now become mainstream, with recycling, fuel efficiency, and reduced use of plastic all part of our daily lives. But one area that still needs dramatic improvement is the construction and design of the buildings we live and work in. It's estimated that forty percent of our greenhouse gas emissions in North America come from our homes and offices. So researchers and builders are looking for ways to 'green up' our homes.
In existing buildings, this isn't easy. Dr. Danny Harvey, a geography professor at the University of Toronto, lives in a typical Toronto home. And he's doing all he can to lower his home's impact. He's installed triple-glazed windows, a high-efficiency furnace, and a light coloured roof in order to improve his home's efficiency. He's sealed all the small cracks he can find, and installed extra insulation to prevent heat leaking. All together, he's reduced his impact by about 25 %.
But the really large changes are going to come with new home construction. While many homes outside urban areas are getting larger and larger, Andy Thomson, a Toronto architect with Sustainable Design, is moving in the opposite direction. He's designing homes that are less than 300 square feet in size. Based on trailer homes, he's using the latest in materials and design to create family dwellings that produce their own electricity, and are so efficient, they can be completely heated and cooled using barbeque tanks of propane.
But not everyone's going to be willing to move into such a small domicile. Instead, it may take development of new materials to improve home construction. One of these is a wood product developed by Michael Sykes, the creator of the Enertia home. He's discovered that the resin in pine wood crystallizes at room temperature, and is exploiting this in the creation of homes that don't require a furnace to heat. Instead, the wooden walls absorb heat from the sun during the day, and release it at night.
A big change that needs to happen if we're going to create green communities, is to change the actual design of our living environments. Both the homes themselves, and the makeup of the communities we live in. Amanda Mitchell, from the University of British Columbia, is part of a team that works with developers to come up with environmentally friendly community designs.
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Water From Weevils
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Cowpea Weevils, Photo provided by Fleur Champion de Crespigny |
Cowpea weevils live in warm and dry climates where water is a precious resource. This is why it struck Dr. Martin Edvardsson as peculiar when he noticed that the males deliver large amounts of seminal fluid, which is mostly water, to the female during mating. Edvardssson is a postdoctoral researcher in Biology at the University of Exeter's Cornwall Campus and he discovered that the males are doing this as a way to keep the females more monogamous. The weevil's ejaculate represents 10% of its body weight
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Face Evolution
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Measuring the faces of men and women - Courtesy Dr. E. Weston |
Male and female faces might appear different but underneath it all, much of that difference is simply due to the fact that male skulls are bigger. Dr. Eleanor Weston, a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, England, closely examined a large number of male and female skulls and found that even with this size difference, men and women show a clear distinction in one aspect: the length of the upper face divided by its breadth. Men tend to have shorter, broader faces. This distinction gives us insight into what it is that females find attractive in a man's face and offers a measure of how masculine a man's face is
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Rocket Arm
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Rocket Arm - courtesy Dr. Michael Goldfarb |
Most prosthetic arms are underpowered and of limited use. Dr. Michael Goldfarb, a professor of Mechanical Engineering at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, has been working on developing a more powerful and dextrous arm, using an unlikely power source - rocket fuel. Expanding gas from the oxidizing rocket fuel drives pneumatic pistons, which serve as the muscles for the arm. Using precision valves, the muscles can be controlled with considerable finesse. The great benefit of this system is that it's small and light, compared to a battery-powered arm with electric motors. Dr. Goldfarb is now waiting for other researchers to develop the neural interface for this arm, so that it can be controlled with just a thought.
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Theme music copyright Raphaël Gluckstein. Creative Commons License by-nc-nd-2.0
Musical stings courtesy of Beatsuite.com Music Library.
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