Archive for July 9th, 2009

Burger King Goes Green

McDonald’s is widely regarded as one of the most environmentally friendly fast food chains in the world with it’s recycling and tree planting schemes, however Burger King is now following in it’s footsteps to create a greener world.

A Burger King franchise in New Jersey said it would test out new speed bumps which would utilize kinetic energy when a vehicle passed over the bumps in the drive-through lane, which could then be used to power equipment in and around the restaurant.

Andrew Paterno, who owns twelve Burger Kings in the New York Metro area said “More than 150,000 cars drive through our Hillside store alone each year, and I think it would be great to capture the wasted kinetic energy of these hundreds of thousands of cars to generate clean electricity.”

This plan was announced on the same day that a McDonald’s in Cary, N.C stated that it would be setting up an electric vehicle charging station.

This is a move in the right direction for both Burger King’s PR and the environment, however now that it is clear that the restuarant has innovative potential, should it use it’s innovation and make it’s food healthier for us all?

Yacht Fail

During a 20 boat race, a risky maneuver in choppy seas left one crew red-faced, perched on the top of a rock.

Skipper Arthur Manning and his crew were taking part in the Royal Channel Islands Yacht Club’s 14th Waller Harris two-handed triangle race.

It happened soon after the crew left Binc, in north-west France on the last day of the race, as they tried to make up ground on their 19 rival boats. Disaster struck as their 36ft yacht sailed too close to the rocky outlet of La Longue and consequently ground to a halt.

We should feel bad for them, but you’ve got to laugh haven’t you. A sight like that isn’t something you see every day!

[Full Story]

Are You Opening Your Bananas Correctly?

I, like many, have at some stage come across a banana that was difficult to open. Usually this ensues a battle between myself and the banana, usually ending in the banana winning. Well from now on, my embarrassment will be spared. The video shows how to open a banana “correctly”, like a monkey. Why not give it a try?!

Wii Remote Controls 15 Ton Grapplers

Now this is pretty cool. A couple of Australian guys decided they wanted to control two 15 ton grapples with a Wii Remote…yes a Wii Remote. They programmed a system using Python which allowed them to replace the machines controllers (joysticks) with the internal sensors from the Wii Remote, so the remote could control the grapplers.

Check out the video. It has quite an odd selection of soundtrack, but who cares?

[via gonintendo]

Computer Learns Sign Language By Watching TV

British scientists have created a computer that is able to learn sign language by watching television shows that are both subtitled signed.

Researchers at the University of Oxford, came up with an algorithm to recognize gestures made by people. The team exposed the computer to around 10 hours of TV footage that was both signed and subtitled, tasking the software to learn 210 nouns and adjectives that appeared during the footage, of which it correctly learned 136 words.

The software uses a person’s arms to estimate the rough location of fast-moving hands and identifies flesh-colored pixels in those areas to understand the precise hand shape, however difficulty often arises when some words have different meanings depending on the context. E.g. cutting a tree has a different sign to cutting a rose.

Although this is a clever piece of technology, it still has a long way to go. Rather than working round the problem, maybe the researchers should concentrate their efforts more on making deaf people hear again. What do you think?