Word: plasticity
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...observe ordinary roach behavior, Halloy and his colleagues created an enclosure with two "shelters" inside - red-tinted plastic disks mounted so that roaches could scurry underneath to avoid bright light, which they do instinctively. When the insects were dumped into the enclosure, they scrambled around randomly for a while, but eventually all huddled under the same shelter. That they huddled is no surprise, since roaches like to gather in crowds. But since cockroaches don't have enough intelligence to allow for leadership skills or even communication, the fact that they collectively decide on one shelter looks, says Halloy, "like...
...owned by former Indian Airlines engineer B.C. Gupta. Take, for example, the safety demonstration. After asking for a volunteer from the 120 or so kids crammed, some two to a seat, in the plane's economy-class cabin, flight attendant Ridhi Sehgal explains how the oxygen masks work. A plastic deck chair appears, and Sehgal helps the volunteer, a worried-looking boy of 7, up onto it so that the other passengers can see him. "This is just for show," Sehgal explains. "You don't have to stand on your chair. The oxygen will drop down to you." The perky...
...years ago, Ho's blood pressure clocked in at 140/90, slightly above normal but not high enough to elicit a pill or much alarm. But when he went to see Dr. Ting Choon Meng, the Singapore general practitioner decided to monitor Ho's blood pressure with a black plastic wristwatch he had designed and named the BPro. The device, worn for 24 hours, revealed a wave pattern showing how fast and hard his heart was beating, as well as worrying patterns in Ho's pressure. Ting put Ho on blood-pressure- lowering medicine...
...starting to take note of everything from soil conditions to water pollutants to electricity usage. Measurement equals management. The idea is to get optimal use of such resources as fertilizers and energy. But one restriction on modern sensors is that they are built with rigid materials like hard plastic and metal, which give them shape and volume, restricting where they...
...company typically uses moldable plastic over several layers of metal, but the details depend on the application. Creating the sensors hasn't been easy. Vice president of engineering Jonathan Luke says that rather than any one eureka moment, there has been "a lot of trial and error"--right out of the Thomas Edison playbook...