A friend and colleague who skis in remote areas was telling me about recent advances in avalanche transceivers. These are handheld devices that can transmit a person's location if they have been buried by an avalanche.
They all transmit on the same wavelength. Each transmitter cycles through a succession of slow to fast beeps, so that a receiver can distinguish different transmitters all broadcasting on the same frequency by the pattern of beeps.
The long telescopic probe that is used to find victims under the snow now has an emitter on the end that can silence a transponder once a victim had been located by probe, so that other victim's signals can be more easily located.
Fascinating technology.
Avalanche transceivers - see the section on types of beacons to see how they are able to indicate the direction of multiple transmitters.
Have you seen what these personal flying cameras can do? Quadcopter drones can orbit around you, follow you as you go, or navigate around obstacles autonomously.
WasteWise has collected the following environmental factoids to help you understand the impacts of waste prevention and recycling.
Aluminum
Aluminum can be recycled using less than 5 percent of the energy used to make the original product.
Recycling one aluminum beverage can save enough energy to run a 14 watt CFL bulb (60 watt incandescent equivalent) for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours.
Plastic
Producing new plastic from recycled material uses only two-thirds of the energy required to manufacture it from raw materials.
Plastics require 100 to 400 years to break down at the landfill.
Five 2-liter recycled PET bottles produce enough fiberfill to make a ski jacket.
Glass
Producing glass from virgin materials requires 30 percent more energy than producing it from crushed, used glass.
The energy saved from recycling one glass bottle will operate a 100-watt light bulb for four hours.
It takes approximately 1 million years for a glass bottle to break down at the landfill.
Steel
Tin cans contain 99 percent steel.
Recycling steel and tin cans saves between 60 and 74 percent of the energy used to produce them from raw materials.
According to the Steel Recycling Institute, steel recycling in the United States saves the energy equivalent to electrical power for about one-fifth of American households for one year.
One ton of recycled steel saves the energy equivalent of 3.6 barrels of oil and 1.49 tons of iron ore over the production of new steel.
Paper
Producing recycled paper requires about 60 percent of the energy used to make paper from virgin wood pulp.
Manufacturing one ton of office and computer paper with recycled paper stock can save between 3,000 and 4,000 kilowatt hours over the same ton of paper made with virgin wood products.
Preventing 1 ton of paper waste saves between 15 and 17 mature trees.
It's not often I feel a movie is worth recommending, but this one you might miss because it gets very average reviews, and would appear to be a generic action flick but it's not.
American Ultra (http://m.imdb.com/title/tt3316948/) is a takeoff on the Bourne series, with a man who has no idea that he has been programmed with skills by the CIA.
It is well-acted, has an unusual and cool vibe, it has heart, and a story that draws you in. Being an action movie, it is full of foul language of course, so not a good movie for the kids.
Model 3, under $35000, 215 mile range, autopilot in base model, front and rear trunks, and by time of unveiling had 115,000 orders placed already.
If you can't stand all the talk, you can skip to the big unveiling at 18 minutes into video.