Before this blogger made his way back home late last week — after the holiday trip to visit family in California came to an abrupt halt at the Chicago connection (Never again, American, never again.) — a gypsy-cab driver pointed out an interesting element of a "green" initiative taking place in the Windy City: rubber sidewalks.

The Chicago DOT has kicked off a pilot program to test 550 feet of recycled rubber sidewalk over the next year, right across the street from the Chicago Center for Green Technology on the city's West Side, according to The Chicago Tribune. The rubber sidewalk, which cuts through a traffic island on the southwest corner of the intersection, is part of a 12-month pilot program to determine whether the environmentally friendly material can hold up to foot traffic and Chicago's weather.

One of the cool things about this (if it works) is that, whereas a normal concrete sidewalk can pop up when roots grow beneath it, the rubber sidewalk's panels can be lifted and the trunks trimmed if tree roots become a problem.

Well, that and, if you're in a rush, you can just bounce ahead of the slow folks.

Officials say the recycled, bouncy rubber slabs cost two to three times more than traditional concrete.

Your Cookies are Affecting the Environment!
"Even something as fun as baking for the holiday season has an environmental effect," said Rick Keil, an associate professor of chemical oceanography at the University of Washington. "When we bake and change the way we eat, it has an impact on what the environment sees. To me it shows the connectedness."

The associate professor was talking about vanilla and cinnamon.

Keil and UW researcher Jacquelyn Neibauer's weekly tests of treated sewage sent into Puget Sound from the West Point treatment plant in Magnolia showed cinnamon, vanilla and artificial vanilla levels rose between Nov. 14 and Dec. 9, with the biggest spike immediately following Thanksgiving.

The Associated Press reports:

Using benchmarks from a published scientific study, they were able to estimate that people in Seattle and a few outlying areas served by the sewage plant scarfed down the daily equivalent of about 160,000 butter- or chocolate-chip-type cookies and about 80,000 cookies containing cinnamon during the Thanksgiving weekend.

Keil's findings present a light side of what scientists say is potentially a serious situation. Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey and other agencies have documented that antibiotics, contraceptives, perfumes, painkillers, antidepressants and other substances pass through the sewage system into waterways.

However, there's no evidence that cinnamon or vanilla harms sea creatures.

Good for Kissing, Not Curing Cancer
According to a report and editorial in last week's British Medical Journal, mistletoe won't cure cancer.

Apparently, as many as two-thirds of cancer patients inject mistletoe extract because they believe it slows tumor growth or improves their well-being, Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth, England, reported in 2003. Bloomberg News reports:

Mistletoe extract is widely used in Germany, where philosopher and educator Rudolph Steiner popularized it as an anti-cancer agent in the 1920s and health insurers still cover the treatment, Ernst said in a telephone interview. The U.K.'s five National Health Service-funded homeopathic hospitals also use a form of the product, Iscador, by Weleda International of Schwabisch, Germany, in their complementary cancer care programs.

Europeans spend about 45 million euros ($59 million) a year on the product, Ernst estimated in an editorial that accompanied the case report of co-author and histopathologist Alison Finall.

Define 'Lazy'
Actual headline: Woman fakes kidnapping to avoid work.

A 21-year-old German woman who did not feel like going to work at a fast food restaurant text-messaged her parents saying she had been kidnapped.

via Reuters

'Invisible Transistors' Developed
Northwestern University researchers are developing transparent, high-performance transistors that can be assembled inexpensively on glass and plastic, creating high-quality displays on car windshields, goggles or billboards, reports Science Daily.

Developing new types of displays powered by electronics without visible wires has been going on for years. However, no one could develop materials for transistors that could both be "invisible" and maintain a high level of performance, the university said in a news release.

To create the transistors, the research team combined films of the inorganic semiconductor indium oxide with a layer of self-assembling organic molecules that provides insulation. The films can be fabricated at room temperature, allowing the transistors to be produced at a low cost.

"Our development provides new strategies for creating transparent electronics," said Tobin J. Marks, professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern, who led the research. "You can imagine a variety of applications for new electronics that haven't been possible previously — imagine displays of text or images that would seem to be floating in space."

Experts Discover Way to Interest Students in Science
Serve beer during lectures. The University of Idaho and Washington State University are teaming up with a pub to teach science to the public, reports The Associated Press.

Science on Tap — "a place where anyone can come to explore the latest ideas in science and technology in a relaxed atmosphere," the Web site says — is a once-a-month discussion at the Coeur d'Alene Brewing Company, where university professors will lead discussions on hot-topic scientific and technological issues.

We love when science and technology meet with the centuries-old social lubricant.

Anyhow, the first discussion, set for Jan. 9, will have a professor giving a presentation about how UI produced the world's first cloned mule in 2003 ("Idaho Gem"). In February, the discussion will be on beast cancer research. And in the March program, participants can hear about stealth-technologies research the U.S. Navy's Acoustic Research Detachment is conducting.

Finally, and while we're on the topic of military technology…

Silent Killer
The brainchild of weapons designer/inventor Charles St. George, DREAD is an innovative, though some might say ridiculous, new weapon system that has "no recoil, no sound, no heat, no gunpowder, no visible firing signature (muzzle flash), and no stoppages or jams of any kind."

Instead of using self-contained cartridges containing powdered propellant (gunpowder), the DREAD's ammunition will be .308 and .50 caliber round metal balls (steel, tungsten, tungsten carbide, ceramic-coated tungsten, etc…) that will be literally spun out of the weapon at speeds as high as 8000 fps (give or take a few hundred feet-per-second) at rather extreme rpm's, striking their targets with overwhelming and devastating firepower, reports Defense Review.

via TechEBlog

Have a very happy and safe New Year's, dear IMT readers, and we'll see you on Tuesday.


Cheers.