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July 11, 2012
Lumia

An Easier Airport, A Safer Flight



Do you spend spend a lot of time in airports? Do you hate pulling or pushing your bags through hordes of individuals en route to San Francisco or Paris or Cinnabon? Do you not mind looking absolutely ridiculous to avoid the push/pull conundrum?

Maybe you would like the luggage scooter?

I will say this about Micro Luggage: it will replace the blue tooth in the left ear as the easiest way to identify the individual you don’t want sitting next to you on your next flight.

…and when I have little to say about an invention, you can rest assured I don’t truly understand what the invention is. Here are the first few paragraphs from News Track India:

Two Indian origin scientists are included in a Rice University team who have developed a new type of paint that can reveal strain in materials by its fluorescence.

The paint made with carbon nanotubes holds promise for detecting strain in aircraft, bridges and buildings.

The Rice scientists called their mixture “strain paint” and are hopeful it can help detect deformations in structures like airplane wings.

They described a composite coating they invented that could be read by a handheld infrared spectrometer.

This method could tell where a material is showing signs of deformation well before the effects become visible to the naked eye, and without touching the structure. The researchers said this provides a big advantage over conventional strain gauges, which must be physically connected to their read-out devices. In addition, the nanotube-based system could measure strain at any location and along any direction.

Whenever I worry about a flight going down as I’m soaring through the sky I need to remind myself of the millions upon millions of brilliant men and women around the world who’ve made air travel the safest mode on earth.