TWO NOVEL SUGGESTIONS FOR YOU TO PLAY A PART IN FIGHTING COVID-19
Have the WHO and other experts accidently created a fatal myth about pets?
My gorgeous looking dog, Bubbles, has got me worried.
I planned to keep us both healthy during the coming months by taking isolated walks in the park using a long extension lead.
Bubbles is a hug magnet with strangers spontaneously stroking, cuddling and kissing her. In normal times this would give the stranger, the dog and myself great pleasure.
But just like any other surface, her fur could retain Coronavirus.
Hopefully, the large surface area of all the hairs on her fur will reduce the retention time compared with the 72 hours for a hard surface. But even a few minutes retention could be fatal.
So, during a government approved ‘healthy’ walk my canine pal and I could have become super-spreaders, even though I have kept at least two metres from the nearest human.
And, by the time I get home, my cat has probably popped out to spend ten minutes on a warm neighbours lap.
During the coming months when our human contacts will be severely limited, the desire to make physical contact with a friendly animal may become stronger than ever.
But, we may be making ourselves ill in the process: Pets could be the super-spreaders that are hidden in plain sight.
The accidental myth The WHO advise us that pets are very unlikely to transmit COVID-19. However, this refers to biological transmission, with the animal becoming infected, then passing the disease on to a human.
The risk of surface contamination still remains, but many pet lovers may not want to hear this.
So until the present crisis is over, please help us to spread the message, “Don’t touch other people’s pets”.
And of course, keep your own under close control.
Feel free to copy Bubbles photo to promote this message.
Thank you.
Bill Courtney
How to win bragging rights in the fight against the Corona virus
We propose a nudge technique for changing social behaviour in favour of hand washing.
This is a collaborative project and we invite you to join. So, if you are active on social media and want to help in the worldwide fight against the Corona virus, please visit this webpage.
The climate emergency - A corona casualty?
People will have had enough of making sacrifices by the time the corona crisis is over.
Making yet more sacrifices for the sake of the planet will not be popular.
Implementing these measures for ‘going green’ will also reduce electricity bills by 2025.
Latent Power Turbines
Modern heat pump based central heating systems appear to defy logic by running on heat extracted from cold winter air.
LP Turbines build on this counterintuitive idea to do something equally surprising: they can extract heat from cold winter air and convert it into electricity.
Their heat pump design allows them to work anywhere on the planet, from Siberia to the Sahara, without requiring daylight or winds to drive them.
Here are the main links.
- We explain the science of how they work on this linked page.
- The many ways in which LP Turbines could revitalise the world economy in the post-COVID era are outlined on this page.
- We explain how LP Turbines can exploit abandoned mines and factories to create new jobs for blue collar workers.
- We explain how LP Turbines could eliminate extreme poverty in the developing world.
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An alternative to the Grenfell Tower design
In the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, society has a moral obligation to completely reassess how people are housed in our crowded cities.
Take a look at this webpage for an innovative design to get the debate moving.
We have added some nudge psychology to promote the mental and physical health of the residents.
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HS2
"Britain’s new high-speed rail line will be the most expensive railway in the world with costs per mile expected to reach £403m, according to Government calculations".
Sunday Times 16 July 2017
After years of austerity, voters don't want to be insulted by a political vanity project. We suggest a low cost alternative to help more travellers.
Politicians have failed to grasp the underlying engineering problem:
We are still using Victorian era train braking technology. This means braking distances for trains are about sixteen times the braking distance for a car. This limits the number of trains we can run on our existing tracks.
But this problem can be overcome by using anew invention.
This would allow us to ease our network capacity problems in five years, without building any new lines.
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Improving the safety of driverless cars
At the dawn of the age of self driving s cars, drivers face up to ten new driving hazards created by the very technology that is supposed to make driving safer.
We will outline the ten hazards and then explain how a new British invention could reduce them to acceptable levels.
House Prices
"Bricks and mortar" make a sound investment at a time of uncertainty. But young people are finding it difficult to enter the market.
We suggest a financial invention to prevent house price bubbles
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Flood reduction farming
Problem: Modern large field farming has reduced the water holding capacity of the land and accelerated soil erosion is silting up our rivers and land drains.
Solution: Return to the smaller, more sheltered farm fields of the early Victorian era, but use teams of robot tractors instead of labour intensive horse drawn ploughs, in order to keep food production costs down.
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The boat people
Compassion vs. Fear
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Generating green power for Elon Musk's Hyperloop
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Fighting the spread of Zika and Malaria
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SMART CAR BUMPERS TO SAVE PEDESTRIAN LIVES
Smart car bumpers are soft if they hit pedestrian legs, but stiffen up to protect car bodywork in other types of collisions
Click here for the story about how they work but how research fraud at Manchester University is holding up progress.
Click here for the story of how the University wriggled out of holding an enquiry into the fraud when instructed to do so by the government backed funding body (EPSRC).
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CAR SUSPENSION UNITS
Was a British invention plagiarised by the Chinese?
Or were they innocents led astray by a disgruntled Manchester University researcher?
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Are you young and want to be the next Steve Jobs?
Watch out, the establishment is biased against you!
A cautionary tale for aspiring British inventors
(i) Click here and learn before you spend time and money on your great idea.
(ii) If you have a GCE A level knowledge of physics, this page will either amuse or appall you.
Bill Courtney is the principle inventor for all of the inventions described on the site. 1792 Technology is a joint invention with Richard Kle.
Enquiries from students looking for research topics are welcome.
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Most British science is a source of national pride, but there is also corruption
How the UK Research Integrity Office is corrupting British science
If you thought that politicians and the social media could be creited with destroying trust in public life, then think again.
A tiny number of dodgy Manchester University academics and the UK Research Integrity Office got there first!
Deatils have been published in a peer reviewed journal paper:
Courtney, W, ‘A private researcher’s struggles against research fraud’, Journal of Biological Physics and Chemistry 16 (2016) 142–156.
We quote from the paper
"The UKRIO seems to have manoeuvred itself into a position similar to George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. It may be the most powerful body in the UK for influencing standards of research integrity, but its status is such that it can ignore questions about integrity within its own ranks."
Ibid. Section 19.
We offer two articles on this problem that is harming British science.
(i) 'Why the UKRIO needs reform' A background article that covers the same ground as the journal paper, but in a more concise form.