Published in : ResearchingWritten by Ana Galarraga on 2010-05-21 12:58
A prize for a waste bin? Yes, you understood it correctly, for a waste bin. Since last year the Arizmendi Ikastola [Basque-medium school] in Arrasate [Mondragon] has organised the “Ekokaleak” ideas competition, a contest that has to do with sustainable street furniture. This year it was the turn of rubbish collection and the competition was about designing a sustainable waste bin.
Silvia Baz, who is a student at the Ikastola, was the winner with her "Kanpai" work. The panel of judges chose her work out of the 78 projects submitted from all over the Spanish State. The “Kanpai” waste bin has a simple mechanism for turning it upside down, and “so I have found a way of simplifying the process to empty it," said Silvia to the Mondra-Berri website.
Published in : ResearchingWritten by Ana Galarraga on 2010-05-19 12:20
Great title, isn’t it? In actual fact, there’s very, very, very little, but there is some. It was announced by researchers from the CSIC (Spanish National Research Council) during a conference on chromatography. And it has been denied by the guys who are responsible for Donostia’s water quality: they say it’s impossible, because no one lives along the route to the reservoir that supplies Donostia. In the end, those who did the measurement admitted that there could be a mistake in the method.
However, the method is very useful for detecting substances in very small concentrations in the water; so they have confirmed that the drug most consumed in Iruñea (Pamplona) is cannabis, whereas in Tutera (Tudela) it is amphetamines and Extasy, because they have found traces of them in the river water.
Published in : ResearchingWritten by Ana Galarraga on 2010-05-19 00:00
Don’t you like maths? That’s what we thought, too, till we tried the Pythagoras bar of chocolate. Based on a mathematical formula, it has been produced by the mathematician Enrique Zuazua, the chocolate maker Enric Rovira and the designer Santos Bregaña of the Laia design studio in Donostia-San Sebastian.
The bar consists of right-angled triangles and concentric squares. If you look carefully at the design or drawing, the bar of chocolate does not seem to be divided up into equal parts. In other words, some sections are bigger than others. But that is not the case; even though they look like unequal pieces, they have the same surface area. So there’s no point fighting over the biggest piece.
The bar weighs 180 g, and sells at 13 euros. It is available at specialised food shops, and right now it’s easier to find it in Tokyo than in Bilbao! But we’ve had the chance to try it and… mmm… it’s delicious!
Published in : ResearchingWritten by Eneritz Muguruza on 2010-05-14 13:20
They do research at schools, too, and it isn’t just any old research, either! Two students at La Anunciata School have studied air pollution in Pasaia and got a prize for it too!
The sisters Leire and Olatz Iparragirre-Gil have won 5th prize in the “1st Biotechnology Competition: Biotecnológate”. The competition has been organised all over Spain and the aim is to bring students closer to Biotechnology –to one of the most important fields of science in the 21st century.
“Impurities in the air we breathe: Study of the Bay of Pasaia” was the piece of work that the two girls from Pasaia entered for the competition. It looked at “the problem of atmospheric pollution today, as well as the agents of air pollution, reasons and consequences (human illnesses, damage to buildings, loss of biodiversity, etc.)”, as Leire explains.
Their work was among the final 10 pieces short-listed, and they presented it in Madrid before a panel of judges. “At first we were incredibly nervous because it was obvious that we didn’t have any experience, but later we felt more comfortable when it seemed to us that the judges were curious to hear about our explanations, and we didn’t have any problems,” says Olatz.
Published in : ResearchingWritten by Ana Galarraga on 2010-04-23 10:13
One research scientist from the Basque Country’s Otso Taldea (Wolf Group) and another from the Doñana Biological Station of Seville have seen that European wolves feed mainly on the wild animals they catch. To do this, the researchers analysed the faeces of wolves and dogs, and in only 3% of the samples from the wolves did they find traces of sheep. But in the dog faeces this amounted 36%.
These data disprove what has been widely thought. In actual fact, whenever sheep are attacked, the wolves nearly always get the blame. This has led to conflict between farmers, the administration and the agencies and groups working in favour of protecting the wolves in Araba, for example.
Now researchers have proven that the method used is the right one in order to solve such mistaken preconceptions, and they hope they will be useful in designing suitable prevention and compensation programmes.
A prize for a waste bin? Yes, you understood it correctly, for a waste bin. Since last year the Arizmendi Ikastola [Basque-medium school] in Arrasate [Mondragon] has organised the “Ekokaleak” ideas competition, a contest that has to do with sustainable street furniture. This year it was the turn of rubbish collection and the competition was about designing a sustainable waste bin.
Don’t you like maths? That’s what we thought, too, till we tried the Pythagoras bar of chocolate. Based on a mathematical formula, it has been produced by the mathematician Enrique Zuazua, the chocolate maker Enric Rovira and the designer Santos Bregaña of the Laia design studio in Donostia-San Sebastian.
They do research at schools, too, and it isn’t just any old research, either! Two students at La Anunciata School have studied air pollution in Pasaia and got a prize for it too!
