Is it Worth It?

I was browsing on BBC News Earlier today and came across an article about cloning Mammoths. Back in august a Mammoth bone was found and this contained usable bone marrow. Scientist from Russia and Japan intend to take an experiment to clone this animal. (“Jurassic Park Style”)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16068581

They predict within the next 5 years they will have a cloned mammoth. Extracting a nucleus from an animal’s bone marrow and insert it into an African elephant egg will do this. This technique was used in 2009 to clone an extinct Pyrenean ibex, this cloning did bring this animal back to life for a few minuets but died a few minuets later.

Thinking about the amount of money that will go into to develop this mammoth clone will be crazy. Yeah it would be great to bring back an extinct species but is it worth the hassle, most scientist will be apart of this to try to prove to world it is possible, but I feel it is pointless. There’s a 50/50 outcome in this situation, it working and bringing back an extinct animal or it dying and wasting millions of money. In my opinion they should not go through with this.

Would the ‘Spring Power Forever’ be affordable?

I was looing on Yankodesign.com for new products when I came across a very smart and ‘cool’ idea for a product. The Spring Power Forever is design to take away normal AA, AAA and D-size batteries. This would help the environment, as fewer batteries would be made.

The battery works by being charged instead of running out of power, this isn’t juts a replacement for old alkaline batteries, its also a new form and design for a charging battery.

The Spring Power Forever is one of the simplest designs, by designing a coil shape that can be stretched or squashed to fit different battery type spaces; this makes the design very effective. (The Picture below shows how to use the batteries.)

This battery uses the most advanced technology to create this state of the art rechargeable battery. Therefor this design will be expensive, yes it is great for the environment but I done thing it would be worth the money, as you would need more than one to use it effectively. 

Forth Rail Bridge Worth £130 Million on a Paint Job?

If you didn’t know this already, I am Scottish but currently attending Staffordshire University Down in Stoke-on Trent. So I thought for this blog I would discuss some news from where I am from, Fife.

I was browsing through the Scotland BBC News pages and came across an article about the Forth Rail Bridge.  

Since I could remember, every time I went on the train to Edinburgh there was always some sort of work getting done on the Forth Rail Bridge but never actually understood what. But after seeing this article about the painting that has been getting done, it makes all sense now.

For the past 10 years the bridge has been getting a paint job, previously the bridge would get painted and once it was finished it would need repainted as it takes over a year to paint fro one side to the other.

There was a new paint which, “A 400-strong team applied a triple layer of new glass flake epoxy paint. It creates a chemical bond to provide a virtually impenetrable layer to protect the bridge's steel work from the weather.”

This paint job cost £130,000,000 and is only going to last 25 years. This means in 25 years time it will cost yet about £130 Million (or maybe more depending on what other technologies are out by then) is it worth it? 

Yes I believe it, yeah okay it cost hell of a lot of money and will only last 25 years but every time I see that bridge when im home, there’s always white scaffolding around it. In my opinion the scaffolding was ruining the aesthetics of an amazing looking bridge. Now that the work has stopped people will get to see he the bridge in its glory, so I think it was definitely worth it.