Current Facts 15

Longest Surf Record
Steve King (no connection with horror novelist) has set the record for the world's longest continuous ride by surfing the Severn Bore for a distance of 7.6 miles. Steve's ride lasted 1hr 17min when the wave, starting from the mouth of the estuary at Avonmouth near Bristol, and continuing all the way to Minsterworth, two miles west of Gloucester, Steve's home town. Tracked by GPS, the British Surfing Association was able to confirm that the record.

Police Pursuits
High-speed police pursuits resulted in 343 deaths in the United States in 2004, a 39% increase compared to 1984. This year, the LAPD will begin testing an air powered launcher that fires a GPS tracking tag onto a suspect's car...the launcher would be aimed with a laser sight during a traffic stop, allowing the tag to be fired the instant the suspect hit the gas. The tracking tag...is embedded in an epoxy that hardens to resist dislodging attempts. Popular Mechanics, May 2006, pg. 24

National Security
Using powers granted by the Patriot Act, the FBI now issues more than 30,000 "national security letters" a year. These enable the government to secretly obtain telephone calls, e-mail records, and detailed financial information on specific individuals without geting permission from a prosecutor, grand jury, or judge.- washington Post.
The Week Magazine, Nov. 18, 2005, Vol 5, Iss 234, p. 20

Teenage Crime Decline
he US is now experiencing its sharpest decline in teenage crime since the 1960's. Arrest rates for aggravated assault, robery and rape have fallen by a third among children ages 10 to 18. Juvenile homicide arrests are down to fewer than 1,000 annually, from a high of 3,800.
The Week Magazine, Mar. 24, 2006, Vol 6, Iss 251, p. 4

Uncovered CIA Identities
Chicago Tribune reporters uncovered the identities of 2,600 CIA employees, including many covert operatives, through a basic search of online data services. To the agency's embarrassment, the newspaper also easily found the locations of two dozen secret CIA facilities in the US.-Chicago Tribune
The Week Magazine, Mar. 24, 2006, Vol 6, Iss 251, p. 18

Soda Decline
For the first time in two decades, US sales of soda have declined, the result of the increased popularity of bottled water as well as sports and energy drinks.
The Week Magazine, Mar. 24, 2006, Vol 6, Iss 251, p. 38

Lost Baggage Increase
In 2005 US airlines lost an average of about 10,000 bags a day, a 23% increase over the previous year and the industry's worst record since 1990.-USA Today
The Week Magazine, Mar. 3, 2006, Vol 5, Iss 248, p. 16

Bad Shopping
People who hear about a bad shopping experience are five times as likely to steer clear of the offending steve as the original complainer.-BusinessesWeek
The Week Magazine, Apr. 21, 2006, Vol 5, Iss 255, p. 36

Tax Code Verbage
The US tax code contains about 7 million words. That's more verbage than in the Bible (773,000 words) or the collected plays of William Shakesphere (884,647). When the tax code was first passed in 1913, it contained 11,000 words.-Newsday
The Week Magazine, Apr. 21, 2006, Vol 5, Iss 255, p. 36

Movie Popcorn
Thirty dollars' worth of raw popcorn can generate $3,000 in sales at a movie theater concession stand.-Los Angeles Times
The Week Magazine, Mar. 23, 2006, Vol 5, Iss 252, p. 36

Great Wine
Scientists say rising temperatures and longer growing seasons caused by global warming are improving the quality of certain wine vintages. Previously unheralded German wines have gotten surprisingly better, California wines are getting more alcoholic, and even wineries in the Northeastern US are enjoying longer growing seasons.-Philadelphia Inquirer
The Week Magazine, Mar. 23, 2006, Vol 5, Iss 252, p. 18

Frog Repellent
Squeeze a frog, repel a mosquito: Australian frogs' skin secretions keep mice from being bitten but unfortunately smell like rotten meat, reports Biology Letters.
Discover Magazine, May 2006, pg. 16.

The Cow Train
The Svensk Biogas company of Linköping, Sweden, has built a locomotive that runs on cows and cow manure. The $1.25 million engine, which replaces an old Fiat diesel-powered locomotive along a local commuter line, is billed as the most environmentally friendly train in the world.
Engineers at Svensk Biogas produce the train's methane fuel much the same way that marshes and swamps generate the gas naturally, by fermentation. Workers collect heaps of manure and organic waste, mix it into a slurry, kill off unwanted strains of bacteria with steam, then introduce new bacteria to digest the sludge. As a by-product of digestion, the bacteria pump out methane, which the company pipes off and purifies.
Until recently, only cow manure and other farm waste fueled this process. This summer, however, Svensk found a way to use the whole heifer. Now the company chops up the cows and converts their guts, fat, and bones into an organic sludge, which then gets processed as before.
It takes about 30 cows to power the train along its 75-mile route from Linköping to Västervik, one of the countryside's most beautiful stretches of rail. Linköping is especially green-minded: The town's fleet of 65 biogas-fueled buses was the first in the world, and many of the taxis, garbage trucks, and personal cars there also run on cow-derived methane.
Discover Magazine, May 2006, pg. 18.

Capacitors
MIT electrical engineer Joel Schindall thinks the time is ripe for capacitors. "They are better than batteries in almost every way, except in the amount of energy they store," he says. Schindall and his research group have licked that limitation.
Unlike batteries, which produce voltage from a chemical reaction, capacitors store electricity between a pair of metal plates. The larger the area of the plates, and the smaller the space between them, the more energy a capacitor can hold. Schindall's group had a radical idea: Cover the plates with millions of microscopic filaments known as carbon nanotubes. The tiny tubes vastly expand the surface area, creating a perfect sponge for electricity. "Now we can expect to store an amount of energy that is comparable to what batteries store," he says.
A capacitor-powered cell phone could be charged in minutes or seconds instead of hours. And since capacitors can be reused indefinitely, environmental waste from discarded batteries would become a thing of the past. Schindall says battery-free bliss may be less than five years away.
Discover Magazine, May 2006, pg. 20.