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Sean Nash

Race car drivers tend to blink at the same places in each lap - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...ula-one-race-car-drivers-blink

ArduinoScienceJournal app driving blinking vision research potential research idea biology engineering HSR HSR-2023 science statistical analysis car auto safety civilengineering blink HSR-2025 behavioralscience

shared by Sean Nash on 06 Jun 24 - No Cached
  • The world goes dark for about one-fifth of a second every time you blink, a fraction of an instant that’s hardly noticeable to most people. But for a Formula One race car driver traveling up to 354 kilometers per hour, that one-fifth means almost 20 meters of lost vision
  • People are often thought to blink at random intervals, but researchers found that wasn’t the case for three Formula drivers.
  • the drivers tended to blink at the same parts of the course during each lap, cognitive neuroscientist Ryota Nishizono and colleagues report in the May 19 iScience
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 06 Jun 24
       
      Interesting. So, do we do the same thing while driving around town? Could you design a method to record eye blinks as people drive known routes around town? We could simultaneously use the Arduino Science Journal app on the iPhone to also correlate physical data in a moving car like acceleration/deceleration, motion in X, Y, Z directions, etc. I wonder if we could find a correlation in everyday driving that could help from a safety perspective?
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • He was surprised to find almost no literature on blinking behavior in active humans even though under extreme conditions like motor racing or cycling
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 06 Jun 24
       
      Ok.... this screams "potential research idea."
  • “We think of blinking as this nothing behavior,” he says, “but it’s not just wiping the eyes. Blinking is a part of our visual system.”
  • Where the drivers blinked was surprisingly predictable, the team found. The drivers had a shared pattern of blinking that had a strong connection with acceleration, such that drivers tended not to blink while changing speed or direction — like while on a curve in the track — but did blink while on relatively safer straightaways.
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 06 Jun 24
       
      What sort of implications does this have for driving in key, known, busy interchanges in KC? Could we potentially provide data to show certain stretches of highway need more signage, etc? That could have civil engineering implications.
  • Nishizono and colleagues mounted eye trackers on the helmets of three drivers and had them drive three Formula circuits
  • Nishizono next wants to explore what processes in the brain allow or inhibit blinking in a given moment, he says, and is also interested in how blinking behavior varies among the general population.
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 06 Jun 24
       
      While the "brain" part might move beyond our feasibility, the potential of finding real correlations to driving patterns or routes is a completely different spin-off and one that could have really practical suggestive applications for city planners, etc.
emmarrogers

Biodegradation of polyethylene by the marine fungus Parengyodontium album - ScienceDirect - 1 views

www.sciencedirect.com/...S0048969724029668

HSR HSR-2025 behavior biology environmental potential research idea botany

shared by emmarrogers on 04 Jun 24 - No Cached
Sean Nash liked it
  • UV light
    • emmarrogers
      emmarrogers on 04 Jun 24
       
      If we were to use X or Gamma rays, would that speed up the process?
  • Graphical abstract
    • emmarrogers
      emmarrogers on 04 Jun 24
       
      Why does it need the 9 day incubation period? Could we lower that
    • emmarrogers
      emmarrogers on 04 Jun 24
       
      So, could we just do this with a plastic bottle?
  • degradation
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Other important plastic types afloat in the sea are polypropylene (PP) and to a lesser degree polystyrene (PS) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET).
    • emmarrogers
      emmarrogers on 04 Jun 24
       
      Does/ Could this fungi degrade these as well
  • Zalerion maritimum (Paço et al., 2017), Alternaria alternata FB1 (Gao et al., 2022) and Rhodotorula mucilaginosa (Vaksmaa et al., 2023a), while Cladosporium halotolerans 6UPA1 was shown to degrade PUR (Zhang et al., 2022).
  • Sean Nash on 05 Jun 24
     
    Strange.... when I go to this article, I can see your highlights, but I cannot see your comments. Usually, when I can see those, I can comment back right there as opposed to saving it myself. Grrrr...
  • Sean Nash on 05 Jun 24
     
    Super interesting topic (I saw this one last week). The work with isotopes they did here is well beyond feasibility for us, but that doesn't mean there isn't something here that could be done. You'd have to work through the set up of marine environments (tanks) and acquisition of these fungal strains. I'm betting the one they recently recovered from biofilm on plastic trash in the ocean would be super difficult to get our hands on, but they do mention several others that have previously been found to degrade plastics. perhaps those are more easily obtained. (?) Degredation fo plastic by microbes is EXACTLY what the cheater-guy did in lasy year's winning ISEF project, but like this article says, most of this work has been done with bacteria, not eukaryotic organisms like fungi. I also thing the area of biofilms is super interesting. The analysis (beyond weighing the plastic pre/post) is rather instrumental and that might be difficult depending upon our ability to find someone to help us analyze instrumentally. I like the idea, but feasibility is unknown at the moment. You might want to keep reading down this area. It is certainly interesting and important. Keep an eye on feasibility as you go forward.
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