A flock of windmillsA flock of windmills
Posted on June 26, 2012 by Patchen Barss
This airfoil, designed by Rupp Carriveau and his colleagues, could form the basis for small-scale, high-efficiency wind farms.
By Patchen Barss
Who knew that windmills were territorial?
Well, not all windmills: just those whose blades turn around a horizontal axis – the ones that look like airplane propellers. As wind turns these massive turbines, it creates powerful rotating wakes that may disrupt wind patterns for 2 kilometres or more. For downwind turbines, they don’t make the best neighbours.
“The horizontal machines have the nasty wakes and have to be kept away from each other,” says University of Windsor researcher Rupp Carriveau. Placed too close together, horizontal-axis windmills interfere with one another, reducing their overall efficiency. And yet, horizontal-axis windmills dominate large-scale windfarms around the world.
Everybody is born
Posted on June 19, 2012 by Patchen Barss
Sculptor Francis LeBouthillier creates detailed, medically accurate fetal models to assist surgeons with in-utero procedures.
By Patchen Barss
“Everybody is born,” says Rory Windrim, a specialist in high-risk obstetrics at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.
Not everybody has an easy time of it though. While the vast majority of pregnancies go smoothly, the small percentage that do not become a powerful focal point for both expecting parents and doctors like Windrim.
Consider a rare fetal condition known as “congenital diaphragmatic hernia” or CDH.
The diaphragm is a layer of muscle that separates the chest cavity from the abdominal cavity. A fetus with CDH lacks some or all of this barrier. Without the diaphragm, the intestine, spleen, stomach and liver can press up on the lungs, preventing them from developing properly.
Research on the firing lineResearch on the firing line
Posted on June 12, 2012 by Patchen Barss
By Patchen Barss
Youth violence works like this: The perpetrators are cowards and losers. Victims are either gangsters who deserve no sympathy, or innocent bystanders in whose name society metes out punishment.
Simple.
Except that even if these statements are true, they’re not the whole truth. Far from it.
A tragedy like the recent shooting at Toronto’s Eaton Centre, prompts anger, fear, contempt, and defiance. These emotions are understandable when two people are dead and another five are injured, including a 13-year-old. Hundreds of people terrified and traumatized. A pregnant woman trampled.
Blue light special
Posted on June 5, 2012 by Patchen Barss
By Patchen Barss
Why are blue things blue?
Blue dyes, blue eyes, blue skies and even blueberry pies have one thing in common: they all generate electromagetic radiation with wavelengths between 450 and 495 nanometers – the range commonly known as “blue.”
They don’t all do it the same way, though. Blueberries have a pigment called anthocyanin that can be blue or purple. Indigo dye contains a nitrogen-based substance that must react with oxygen to turn blue. Blue eyes have no pigment at all, but instead get their colour from refracted light. The blue of the sky results from a complex quantum phenomenon known as Rayleigh scattering.