iblog

Rushda: A huge strike by over 360 maintenance workers on the London Underground has caused chaos due to the shutting down services on nine major lines. Now only the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines are still in operation because they are operated by a different firm. The strike, which started at 6pm today and is meant to last 72 hours, started over issues such as pensions.

The effects of the strike have already started taking their toll with large queue lines at bus stops comprised of workers trying to get home. As managing director Tim O’Toole of the London Underground says:

“It’s massive because we’re talking about the withdrawal of service on two-thirds of the network.”

He also believes that there will be no positive effect of the strike:

“The only result will be that the lives of millions of Londoners are disrupted and RMT members will lose hundreds of pounds.”

The reasons for the strike stem from not being given adequate assurances that there will be no adverse effects due to the collapse of Metronet, such as job losses or forced transfers. Mr Toole believes, however, that all the reasonable assurances have already been received in a letter sent to trade union RMTgeneral secretary Bob Crow.

Mayor of London Ken Livingstone says that the strike is one of the most “purposeless” there has ever been. Hopefully the chaos caused by the strike will be minimised, though prospects look do look grim for the next couple of days. It is clear that the strikes are causing serious devastation so hopefully some kind of agreement will be reached before it happens again.

Rushda: A study has found that Amazon is the still the UK’s most used online retailer, after coming top on the latest IMRG-Hitwise Hot Shops List which lists the top 50 online shops. Amazon UK, which was established in the UK around ten years ago after originally starting in the US, has become a reliable portal for everything from books to holidays and is the first stop for millions of UK customers. The study also revealed incredible statistics such as the fact that online sales in the UK totalled £4bn in July alone.

The list also contains firm and perhaps unsurprising favourites such as Argos, which came second place, and Tesco.com,which came third. Play which has rivalled Amazon in its huge selection of CDs and DVDs (with free delivery) has come in 4th place. Also included in the list were travel shops such as Thomson and LastMinute and of course, the Apple Computer online store.

What is most remarkable about all these shops is that their positioning has stayed more or less constant over the years with no notable new website overtaking them. As IMRG’s chief executive James Roper says:

“The stability of retailers’ positions on the list is extraordinary, and tells me two things: these market leaders are satisfying their customers pretty well, and competitors are having little or no effect on their progress.”

It is clear that online users in England have decided on what the best websites are for certain common products and it will be difficult for any other website to establish the same kind of reliability. Amazon has become a household name and is likely to remain one of the best online shops for years to come. For those interested in the full results of the study, the new list of the top 50 e-retailers can be seen here.

Rushda: Ever wanted to scale vertical walls like Spiderman? Well, according to a fascinating new study, humans may be able to achieve this using a special “spider-man” suit in future. Scientists have long been studying the natural abilities in spiders and geckos which adhere to walls and climb them at ease, and now researchers believe that we may indeed be able to reproduce such technology for humans and even allow them to hang upside down in the same way.

American scientists in 2002 showed that creatures like spiders have billions of tiny hairs which allow them to stick to surfaces and even support hundreds of times their own body weight. Now, research from Polytechnic of Turin in Italy has calculated how the same kind of stickiness could be generated for humans. This is obviously difficult to achieve as we are significantly larger than a spider or gecko and so would require an even higher adhesion strength. But, as head of research Professor Pugno explains:

“If we are able to make a surface a little bit stronger, so that the size effect vanishes, we might be able to make a suit with the same adhesion as a gecko.”

He proposes that we can replicate the effects of the hairs by using tiny carbon nanotubes which measure only a few billionths of metres across and are very strong. He also says that there are three requirements for any spider-man suit to work in humans: it must be strongly adhesive, be able to attach and detach from walls easily and also clean itself (so that dirt doesn’t get in the way). Such a rare combination of properties may seem impossible but we have already seen it work in scaling creatures. As Pugno says:

“To have all these mechanisms working together is difficult, because they are in competition with one another. But geckos and spiders provide a natural demonstration that this can be done.”

Now that research has shown us exactly what kind of material needs to be used, perhaps the days are not far away when humans will be able to demonstrate the powers their favourite superhero.

Rushda: Extreme sports enthusiasts and laymen alike will marvel at a new dangerous sport - Ice surfing - which is becoming more and more popular as global warming continues to melt glaciers. This activity consists of waiting till a huge piece of glacier breaks off and hits the water hundreds of feet down below. This sends up a huge wave of icy water, and it is at this point that you can get an exhilaratingly long period of time riding the ice-cold water which, it must be added, is filled with hundreds of small pieces of sharp ice.

It is undeniable that the pictures look really funky, but I can’t understand how besides it looking quite fashionable, ice surfing can be a very pleasant experience at all. Kealii Mamala who usually surfs in the exotic waves of Hawaii has recently broken a record for spending a whole minute surfing on a glacial tsunami in Alaska. He describes his experience:

“It wasn’t very big but it got the hairs on the back of my neck tingling. I felt myself at the barrel’s edge. It was a rush but it was a good feeling, all natural and super-powerful.”

Mamala and his fellow surfer Garrett McNamara had to wait for a month before their chosen glacier caved in and they could perform their surf. They towed towards the glacier on surfboards using jet skis and like Kealli, McNamara is thrilled with the experience. He says:

“It’s the heaviest thing I have ever done in my life. It’s like the Empire State Building about to come down on top of you.”

Well, congratulations to them for achieving something so new and different - though I’d rather them than me!

Rushda: A new online survey poll from Virgin Travel Insurance has revealed the tourist sites which Britons think are most overrated and left them feeling disappointed and uninspired. Topping the list are attractions such as Stonehenge and Angel of the North in Gateshead in the UK, and the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre in Paris.

It is probably not surprising that so many people voted for Stonehenge, given that ultimately it is really just a pile of stones, and as travel writer Felice Hardy described it, it is “an isolated pile of rocks in a usually muddy field”. It is also near a busy motorway and therefore not a very spiritual setting. The Stonehenge director explains that this is just an unfortunate coincidence and a bid has already been made to the government to divert the motorway. However, the numbers voting for the Eiffel Tower seem alarming given that it is one of the most well known sites in Europe. As one respondent on the poll said:

“So long to get to the top and when you get there it’s not even impressive. The queues are ridiculous and the lasers beamed from it at night just make it look super-tacky.”

What is most ironic about the poll results, particularly Stonehenge and the Eiffel Tower, is that they were recently among the top nominations in July’s announcement of the seven new wonders of the world. Interestingly, the poll also revealed the best things to see in Europe and none of these were included in the seven wonders of the world. In the UK the top results include the lesser well known sites such as Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, Shakespeare’s Globe theatre, and (I was pleased to see) The Backs in Cambridge. Overseas, favourites include Sydney Harbour Bridge and The Treasury at Petra in Jordan. Maybe our ideas of wonders of the world do not match what we’d truly like to see!

Rushda: The idea of walking being less environmentally friendly than travelling by car sounds absurd; yet this is indeed the conclusion of Chris Goodall, who is the campaigning author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, and is also a Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford West Abingdon. The reason he says walking contributes more to global warming is that food production is so energy-intensive that we are burning more carbon walking than we would in a car on an average trip to the shops.

Apparently, the best way of benefiting the climate is if people actually ate less and did less exercise, thereby using up less energy. As Goodall explains, using examples from the government’s official fuel emission figures:

“Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles adds about 0.9 kg of CO2 to the atmosphere. If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.”

This has led Goodall to deduce the following striking conclusion:

“The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.”

Like others no doubt, I find myself wondering whether to take this seriously. Of course the calculations are probably correct, but personally I think that if we are making such calculations to the extent where even our food intake is being brought into question, there is something seriously wrong. I’m all for helping the environment but we must remember that in trying to save it we must not forget the lives of those we are saving it for. Nevertheless, those who are interested in reading the controversial book can find it here.

Anna: Stanfords is the UK’s leading specialist retailer of maps and travel books. Founded in 1853 by Edward Stanford there is, however, nothing old-fashioned about the comapny’s approach to environmental policy. Stanfords has recently announced that it will be recycling all materials from its stores in London and Bristol. In addition, company staff are entitled to an extra day of annual leave is they are taking a trip to Europe and opt to travel in a sustainable way. The policy is designed to encourage Stanfords workers to take the train or the bus, rather than relying on air travel.

Stanfords’ flagship store in Covent Garden is a delightful place to while away an afternoon, and claims to offer the world’s largest stock of maps and travel books under one roof. Natural, then, that staff should catch the travel bug and want to indulge their Wanderlust by taking foreign trips. It’s a simple idea to reward workers who make that journey in a sustainable way by providing additional annual leave, but one which is effective.

Justin Francis, co-founder of www.responsibletravel.com, spells out the stark realities of our penchant for jet-setting:

The simple fact is that aviation is the fastest growing cause of global warming. The amount of carbon dioxide emitted by air travel doubled between 1990 and 2004. That is totally incompatible with the need to reduce carbon emissions by 60% by 2050.

Yet with falling air fares, and even recent deals which saw budget operators paying taxes on behalf of customers, it has never been easier or more tempting to jet off to Europe for a short break. Sir Michael Bishop, Chairman of airline BMI, said:

“Today, air travel is a natural part of the daily lives of millions of people,” adding that “in 1986, only 75 million people travelled through Britain’s airports. Last year, more than three times that number did so. It is a simple example of the benefits of choice and competition.

And while cost is no longer a real constraint on short-haul, instead it is time which is at a premium, which further discourages the public from taking greener, but slower forms of transport to reach their destination. This is what makes the Stanfords initiative so clever. Rather than jumping on the carbon-offsetting bandwagon, Stanfords are encouraging employees to think about their impact on the environment. The company is also, crucially, stumping up the cash to pay for the extra annual leave entitlement, thus facilitating and rewarding the eco-credentials of its staff.

Anna: The competition is hotting up for designers whose “gateways” will soon be welcoming visitors at three key entry points to Wales. The second Severn crossing, the A550 in Flintshire and Holyhead harbour are the location in question and the the ideas should start being translated into reality by the end of the year - announcement of the winning designs is expected in September, and a £13m bid for lottery funding, if successful, should provide a big boost.

Over 100 architects, engineers and creative minds submitted ideas to the Landmark Wales project, and you can see the shortlisted ideas on the project website. Glancing through the designs, I saw what appeared to be little red men, gigantic inverted umbrellas, and a glow-in-the-dark celtic knot. Small wonder that opinion is divided about which design should win, and indeed the huge sums of money involved in the venture as a whole.

Anna: Why does booking a train ticket require detective skills? Splitting your journey, booking singles rather than returns and a host of other tricks all mean it can take hours to find the cheapest deal. I was pleased to hear GNER had recently relaunched their site, surely making the ticket searching a little easier. But having just visited the site, it’s obviously part of the Trainline/qjump family, and is as infuriating as ever. Surely there’s a gap in the market for a website allowing members of the public to find cheap tickets? In an ideal world, I would like a site where I could enter my start and end points and the day and be presented with the cheapest options. I wouldn’t mind if it took half an hour to chunter through all the possible journeys, as long as I could get on with something else while it worked its magic. Nor would I mind paying a commission to the website. So come on, you tecchie undergrads - how about working on the concept over the summer vacation?!

Anna: At a recent trade exhibition in Monaco, French company Dotmobil unveiled a Renault Scenic. Nothing very earth-shattering you might think, but this was no ordinary model. In fact the car is potentially capable of finding its bearings in urban traffic without anyone at the wheel! The vehicle “feels” and “sees” the way using an onboard camera, laser telemeters to measure distances, a GPS receiver and a lot of clever computation. The prototype is also capable of detecting a traffic light, a pedestrian walking across the road and can anticipate the trajectories of other road-users.

So, is this the future of car travel? Given how many accidents result from human error due to recklessness, carelessness, tiredness, drink and drugs perhaps we should start putting out faith in computers rather than our own abilities as drivers…