New glass shoe sole for ‘super’ grip on ice
Toronto: A new shoe sole, made up of glass fibres embedded in rubber, can provide a better grip on slippery surfaces such as ice, researchers including one of India-origin say. Researchers are testing the material in an innovative, self-contained lab space that can be hoisted in the air and tilted to create sloped floors covered in ice and snow.
“I think anyone who has slipped or fallen on ice can testify that it is a painful or nerve-raking experience,” said Reza Rizvi, a postdoctoral fellow at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. “We need to give older adults better footwear so they feel confident maintaining their outdoor activity levels in the winter,” said Tilak Dutta from the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, a lead member of the research team. Ice can be such a dangerous surface, Rizvi said, because when the temperature gets close to zero degrees Celsius, a thin, lubricating layer of liquid water easily forms on top of the ice.
Cleated footwear provides effective winter traction because the cleats dig into the still solid ice beneath the slippery layer of water, Rizvi said, but cleats can be dangerous if the wearer does not take them off as they go inside. Cleats are very slippery on hard, wet marble or tile surfaces, for example, so a better solution for winter footwear is needed, researchers said.
Rizvi and his colleagues, including Hani Naguib from the University of Toronto, have developed a new method to manufacture a type of rubber that “digs in” on the micro-scale. The material is made up of thermoplastic polyurethane, a rubbery plastic, embedded with tens of thousands of tiny glass fibres that protrude out of the rubber like microscopic studs and give the material the feel of fine sandpaper.
The material looks like regular rubber and will stretch and deform in similar ways, said Rizvi. The material also performs just as well as regular rubber on dry surfaces such as quarry tile, he added. “The observed friction coefficients of the composites that we’ve developed would translate into fewer incidents of pedestrian slips,” Rizvi said. (PTI)
Colorado girl tried to poison mom twice for taking iPhone: Police
DENVER: Police on Friday arrested a 12-year-old Colorado girl accused of trying to kill her mother twice by poisoning her with bleach for taking away her iPhone, authorities said.Boulder County Sheriff’s Commander Heidi Prentup said in a statement that the mother drank the caustic fluid on one of the two attempts, which both happened within a week this month.On March 2, the girl poured bleach into a breakfast smoothie that she had prepared for her mother, Prentup said.”Mom noticed an odor of bleach in the drink and thought her daughter had cleaned the glass prior to making the beverage and did not rinse all the bleach out,” the police statement said.The woman, who was not named by the authorities, was treated at a local hospital and released.Four days later, the girl allegedly poured bleach into a water carafe her mother kept in her bedroom. When the woman smelt bleach, she became suspicious and confronted her daughter.”This is when she learned her daughter had developed the plan to kill her for taking away her iPhone,” police said.Prentup said the mother reported the girl to police, and that investigators then gathered enough evidence to take her into custody. The girl was taken to a juvenile detention facility on Friday where is being held pending the filing of charges. (AFP)
100-year-old woman released from Kenyan prison
Nairobi: A 100-year-old woman was released from prison in the central Kenyan town of Embu, where she was serving a three-month sentence for illegal appropriation of land, after a campaign on social media platforms called for her release, media reported on Friday.Hundreds of users from social networks showed their solidarity with the campaign by sharing the hashtag, #SaveJailed100yrGranny, calling for her release.The old woman was jailed on March 10 for failing to implement a court order requiring her to give away two hectares (just under five acres) of land to an individual who filed a claim that she had illegally taken the plot.After spending nine days in jail, a Nairobi county senator, Mike Sonko, paid a bail of 100,000 shillings (just over $1,000) to secure the release of the elderly woman, who was able to leave the prison on Thursday, said the Daily Nation newspaper.The Sonko Rescue Team, a group of volunteers who work under the senator for community service in Nairobi, will perform a complete medical checkup on the woman to ensure that she is stable.Imprisoning a woman of her age was described as “immoral” and “embarrassing” by many Kenyans on various Twitter accounts.
Meanwhile, an Embu county senator, Lenny Kivuti, announced that he would donate another 100,000 shillings (about $1,000) to the elderly woman. (IANS)
Bangladesh to add 400,000 new Bangla words to GoogleDhaka:
The Bangladesh government will add 400,000 new Bangla/Bengali words to Google Translate on its Independence Day on March 26 in a bid to enrich the language on the internet, media reported on Friday.“To put Bangla on top of everything, we’re going to create history on the Independence Day,” said State Minister for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Zunaid Ahmed Palak, according to a bdnews24.com report.“We’ll take Bangla on top by adding 400,000 words to Google Translate on March 26 with participation from everyone from home and abroad,” he said.The initiative, christened “Banglar Jonnyo Char Lakh” (400,000 for Bangla), is being jointly organised by Bangladesh’s ICT division, Bangladesh Computer Council and Google Developer Group Bangla.Palak said that the inclusion of so many words on the internet in a single day would be a new record.The state minister said that 65,000 Bangla words were added to Google Translate on February 21, the second highest after Spanish on that day.Bangladesh Open Source Network’s general secretary Munir Hossain said that anyone could add new words or sentences to it by going to the Google Translate website. Google Translate is a free online language translation service that supports 90 languages, according to Google Inc. Palak said that about 4,000 people would directly work at more than 50 points across Bangladesh on March 26 to add Bangla words to Google Translate.Volunteers from Australia, Portugal, the US, Britain and other countries will also join the effort.Those interested to join the efforts will have to get themselves registered. Anyone who could add 1,000 new Bangla words would get an electronic certificate from Google, Palak said, adding that the search engine giant would publish the number of Bangla words added to it on March 26. Moreover, Google will also take the person, who will add the maximum number of Bangla words between February 21 and April 14, on a three-day study tour to its Singapore office. “(The) collection of Bangla words on the internet is not that rich even though it is the seventh most spoken language in the world,” Palak said. “We can easily enrich Bangla on the internet by adding new words to Google Translate,” he added. (IANS)
500,000-year-old man’s Swiss Army knife found
London: Researchers have found prehistoric flint tools that resemble “Swiss Army knife” and were used to butcher animal carcasses. Among elephant remains some 500,000 years old at a Lower Palaeolithic site in Revadim, Israel, professor Ran Barkai of the Tel Aviv University and colleagues recently analysed ‘hand axes’ and ‘scrapers’, replete with animal residue. The research, published recently in PLOS ONE, represents the first scientifically verified direct evidence for the precise use of Palaeolithic stone tools – to process animal carcasses and hides. “Fracturing rocks in order to butcher and cut animal meat represents a key biological and cultural milestone,” Barkai said. “At the Revadim quarry, we found butchered animal remains, including an elephant rib bone which had been neatly cut by a stone tool, alongside flint hand axes and scrapers still retaining animal fat,” Barkai said. “It became clear from further analyses that butchering and carcass processing indeed took place at this site,” he added. (IANS)