Flushed With Success


For all of who have read Kenneth Grahame’s ‘wind in the Willows” (or seen the movie), we fondly remember Mr. Toad’s discovery of the automobile after one had driven his new caravan off the road. Recall, he just sat in the road quietly murmuring “Poop, poop.”

He was more far seeing than I thought when I first read the story. Now the Japanese company TOTO has unveiled it new ultra green motor tricycle that any Mr. Toad would be proud to own. Ultra green? Which fuel? Human waste, so riders can go “poop, poop all the way down the High street.

It is equipped with a bio-digesting toilet as the seat so one can poop–and–go with the minimum of delay. No longer will you need to take your mother sage advice “to go before you go.”

The inaugural journey is a 600 mile marathon starting at Kyoto and pooping their way through Kobe to end up at Tokyo, pooped out I would guess. The machine is call the Toilet Bike Neo and just in case one might feel a little isolated riding one’s new Neo, it will talk to one and play music. I’m unsure when it will talk or play music, but it would make sense if it is sensitive to your performance at the time. After all, there is a time for a friendly chat and there is a time for loud background music.

  1. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/10/poop-powered-toilet-bike-toto-japan.php
  2. http://tototalk.jp/top.html

Putting The Kids To Work


Our picture of a well-organized society is every member doing what needs to be done, smoothly without dispute. We usually point to a social insect society, such as ants, bees or termites as examples of how well things can work. Leaving aside the concept that the society is the unit rather than the individual insect, studying these societies is interesting in that the division of labor and the communication between individuals is apparently seamless.

Normally the division of labor goes with developmental age so, for example, young bees tend brood and build comb. The ambrosia beetle seems to be bucking this trend and is using a version of child labor to build its citadels.

The ambrosia beetle is one of the farming kind. It plants and tends fungi as a form of nutrient. It does this in recently dead or dying trees where it tunnels out long galleries and plants the fungi along these galleries, and everything goes along swimmingly.

Recent studies on this quiet living and previously neglected species by Biedermann and Taborsky of U of Bern, have shown that it is the juveniles who have to do the hard work of mining. The larvae tunnel away all day and the adult beetles plant the fungi. Of course an ambrosia larva’s work is never done. Not only do they have to take part in mining, but they also have to muck out the galleries and look after their younger siblings.

From time to time the colony splits up and founds new ones, but that decision seems to be governed more by the help needed in the nursery rather than on space constraints – a real family affair.

  1. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/09/26/1107758108.abstract

Fortune Favoring The Brave


A very large percentage of animal species have females making the final choice on important decisions such as mating partner. The popular theory is that the females use displays, social standing, size, etc. as a guide to who has the best genes and that governs their choice of mate. This all sounds very logical in a well-ordered world, but there isn’t much evidence to back it up.

The lack of evidence worried Chargé et al and they sought to dip a little deeper in the well (1). They chose the endangered Houbara bustard to play with. They use the lekking displays as a guide to male suitability – the more persistent, the better the genes would be judged. But they decided that the girlie bustards would be too bird brained to make reliable choices.

The experiments meant that the researchers acted as judges in the ‘come dancing’ displays. All fertilizations were then done in vitro and the eggs hatched by reliable, caring lab staff. The aim here was to remove the vagaries of fickle parenting.

However, to put greater pressure on the guys, they were given intramuscular injections of E coli polysaccharides to make it more difficult to put on a good display. The young hatchlings were fitted out with smart radio collars and they were followed to their demise. Note: not all died.

The results showed that the offspring of the toughest guys (those that shrugged off the sore muscles) that put on the best show, did better and had a greater chance of survival. So the ‘good genes’ go not to the fanciest dancers but to the toughest who could power through the pain barrier. Life changes very little.

  1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0025305

Boning Up For Success


Exercise is good for you. Isn’t it? Yes, of course it is. We are bombarded with encouragement to take more exercise every day. This is to reduce our weight, improve our cardiovascular system, which in turn does great things for our brains. So its win, win and win. Well, not always.

Exercise is good for our bones too as it builds up the bone strength and density. Weight training is the most effective, but while we may want to look good on the beach, many of us won’t want to build up too much muscle so we can no longer get clothes that fit. Nevertheless, a rounded exercise program sounds good with a combination of cardio and strength work.

Disturbing then, to read the latest research from Olmedillas and his team from U of Zaragosa that was published in last Friday’s issue of the Public Library of Science (1). They studied two groups of mid-teen cyclists, half of whom had been training hard for at least 2 years and some up to 7 years. These were selected from a variety of different cycling teams and they all competed regularly.  The other half was the control group who indulged in the normal recreational sporting activities of teen-age boys.

The surprising result was that the bone densities and strength of the competitive adolescent cyclists was significantly lower than that of the control group. By significant, I mean 10% to 25% lower. Clearly lighter bones, like lighter bikes, means faster cycling, but there is also significant strength training for the legs hip and back in cycling up steep hills. So it is surprising that doesn’t result in stronger bones. They seem to have adapted to the competitive needs of their environment.

It would be interesting to compare young intensively trained athletes from other sports such as swimming, gymnastics, skating, and skiing to see if the same result is found. This might leave our coaches in a quandary about training regimens.

  1. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0024841

Paris Fashions


Several European countries have cycle loan/hire systems in the major cities. The idea that you can pick up a bicycle, ride across town and leave it at a drop off for someone else to use is very attractive. Paris had a false start with theirs until the introduced their hire system known as Velib which has been very successful. Paying, with checks and balances seems to work well, better than a simple free system.

Now Paris is looking to extend the concept to electric mini-cars (1). The plan is called Autolib and will be trialed for a short period. The concept is short hires of up to 30 minutes, so the idea is for shopping or business trips rather than a vacational road trip. They are starting with 66 cars and there will be 33 charging stations for a four-hour charge when they run down.

Of course, as its in Paris, the styling is trés chic with cool Italian styling from studio of Pininfarina so there will be no reason why the beautiful people amongst us can’t be seen using them.

I hope the system works and it spreads over here. I wonder how the insurance works out though. Maybe it can be included in a general plan, but somehow I think that’ll be a policy too far.

  1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15134136