Adventure Ausrama Blog

New technology automates sexing of chicks. Fattening up male chicks is a waste of resources. Furthermore, having to manually check the sex of chicks that are sold to producers is a costly burden. There must be an easier way. In Europe a way of determining the sex of chicks while still in the egg will revolutionize the industry. Female chickens fatten up much quicker than males. Moreover, males do not lay eggs. It may be possible to on-sale the "rejected" eggs for production of egg powder. The new system is 95 per cent effective after the ninth day of gestation. The way male chicks are disposed of at present is not pretty: they are crushed alive by an industrial crusher. At first, Wouter Bruins of the Netherlands had the aim of ending this mass euthanizing. Now it is seen as a potential extremely profitable enterprise. Sexing can be done at the rate of 4,500 an hour. ◆ Technology by Ty Buchanan   ◆ Tys Countr y Amusing Animal Photos Odd Weird Thin...

Life insurance is a con. We all know that. They take your money. Then when you make a claim they force you into court to make you back down or run you up a huge legal bill. I cashed my life insurance in when they stopped paying the share investment bonus that doubled what you paid in. Now if you close the policy you get back "less" than you paid in premiums. No one is perfect out there, so when they say they will make people have genetic tests before they can take out a policy you should be afraid. The big three insurers say they have not had one complaint from consumers so far. Unfortunately, the ones who had genetic tests have not made any claims yet. There will thousands of complaints when the insurance companies fail to pay out. Thankfully, you cannot be forced to have a genetic test currently. However, you must hand one over if you have already had one - by law. Just why the government made giving up private information compulsory under force of law is a myster...

Ninety three percent of Australians support the adoption of marijuana for medical use. This is despite the fact that no trial has shown any pain relieving properties in the drug whatsoever.  So we are going to relax the driving laws to allow people under the influence to drive - not bloody likely! Can you imagine a guest at a party making a fool of himself while taking marijuana with others powerless to do anything about it? Sure, the drug makes you relaxed and dopey, but that is no excuse to force it on passersby. It is not the genuine patients with cancer, Parkinson's disease, or glaucoma that may benefit from its improved well being properties, what we have to be careful of is doctor shoppers who go around pestering GPs to write scripts, like the current situation for opiates. The government is planning to legalized marijuana for medical use. let us hope that tough safeguards are in place to block access to those in the general public who are only after a quic...

Blueberries aren't that popular in Australia. They are certainly not loved, as in the USA. However, Australian farmers are growing more of them as Australians look for something different. There is also a thriving international market. The Clarence Valley in Grafton, NSW is the main growing region for the product. At present Australian growers supply only a tiny amount of berries to the world. Yet, Australia uses the latest genetic technology to grow good blueberries. Hard quarantine laws stop Australia getting into the China market.  Maybe this is  quid pro quo  for Australia's brick wall against New Zealand growers of fruit and vegetables in general. Four years ago Japan blocked imports into that country. It was only an increase in local demand that saved the industry. Australian blueberry farmers are raising output despite there being no real overseas target market in sight. The recent summit at Coffs harbour did not change the existing state of af...

There is nothing worse than parking in a shopping center car park, doing your shopping, then coming out to find another driver has reversed out and scraped your rear "bumper" A compulsory radar reversing system should be introduced for all vehicles. VicRoads is doing something about this. Their maintenance fleet has been fitted with radar-based reverse braking technology. The main target is not vehicle damage: it is injuries to employees who are hit when trucks are reversing. No less than 18 workers were struck from 2003 to 2012. The system detects anything directly in the reversing path of a vehicle. All new motor vehicles are now fitted with such technology in Europe, the US and Japan. Where is Australia with regard to this? It can prevent injuries, save lives and last but not least stop unwanted damage.  Insurance companies could even offer lower premiums as a result. VicRoads will share its trial data with others involved in the transport industry. I...

Pollution is a big problem, particularly from industry which pumps unwanted metals into the soil just about everywhere in the world. Getting rid of this had been an issue looking for a solution for decades. The answer could be at hand from a very weird source. Fish sperm has a property making it ideal for the purpose. It literally hoovers up the metal particles. The sperm contains high amounts of DNA. This contains phosphate which strongly attracts metals. The metal/phosphate compound can be taken out with neodymium magnets consisting of trivalent iron, dysprosium and neodymium. In Italy herring sperm was first identified as being useful in cleaning up the environment. With salmon being bred commercially, it is seen as a better source of fish sperm. The substance has been thrown away as waste until now. ✴ Science by Ty Buchanan ✴ http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia.blogspot.com/ http://adventure--australia.blogspot.com/atom.xml . . . . ....

Scientists are jumping up and down welcoming the Commonwealth Science Council (CSC) saying it will breed market culture in science. The odd thing is this isn't the market in operation. It is managed interference in free scientific operations. Why should scientific research be managed at all? Another thing is, it will be chaired by the Prime Minister Tony Abbott. What does the PM know about science? The truth is he knows no more than the average person. He is not trained in science. The body will give advice. And you know what they say about advice - it is best ignored. The CSC will not improve the chasm between universities and industry. Academia has a good bond with industry in the US. Just why we cannot do the same in Australia is a mystery. A new referee in the ring like the CSC will not improve the boxing match. Industry and academia remain at odds. The blame really lies on the university side. They still live in their ivory towers being paid huge sums...

The Personal Computer is dead. We have seen this many times in the media. This, of course, is not true. b usinesses rely on PCs. Tablets and mobile phones just don't cut the mustard when it comes to high output data and Internet usage. Try typing a report on a tablet whether it has an attachable keyboard or not and you will be doing it all day. Those tiny keys are just not realistic for most people. AMD is ratcheting up investment in the Australian commercial computer market. It sees boom times ahead with its new quadruple chip. The company sees Australia as a test market for "differentiation and better value." Australia is now known as a "channel" for AMD. Many companies are selling AMD products including HP, Dell and Lenovo. AMD is becoming the server of choice in the market. India is a huge market for AMD particularly in education. Its main target is government contracts. The sheer range of offerings by AMD outranks all its rivals. Inde...

There is always conflict between industry and the natural ecosystem. With the arrival of extraction and even mass agriculture comes pollution detrimental to the flora and fauna. This is no different in Aboriginal regions as in urbanized cities. Dean Mathews is a Yawuru Aboriginal and Project Officer for the Nyamba Buru Yawuru Aboriginal Corporation. He monitors the impact on groundwater by agriculture and mining. He has made a video. It is significant that the location he tested did not have any visible industry there, so it would be expected that the water was still pure. Test the water adjacent to mining activity and the results would be quite different. Much has been made of Aboriginal cooperation with industry - too much for my liking. One has the feeling that local Aboriginal have been duped. The mining industry employs people whose sole motivation is to change public opinion to accept the "job-creating" mining companies. The problem is of course that f...

Australia is going down the same road as the British by privatizing public resources. There is a major problem with this economic theory. That is, that once resource are sold and the money is used to pay off debt it cannot be sold again. When railways, electricity and water are privatized they are no longer under public control. Ordinary people are at the mercy of private enterprise who have been shown to continually increase charges beyond what citizens can bear. This is the cold reality of what the future will be like. Politicians of the right have put faith in private enterprise for a century or more. The trickle down benefits of wealth are shown to be completely wrong. The riches of nations is still being consolidated into fewer hands. The poorer are poorer still. Despite consumer goods being widespread, very few can afford a Ferrari. Millionaires have been superseded by billionaires. And the these consumers of all things monetary still want more. When services ...