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Man Made Coral Reef

張貼者： Mei Wechner On 2013年1月24日星期四 0 意見

I remember a few years ago, I did watch a TV documentary about artificial reefs produced by the National Geographic.

I found it very interesting, except they shown the sinking war ship and tank did provide an eco environment for most of the fish, the most impressed me a underwater concrete art gallery in Mexico MUSA ((Museo Subacuático de Arte) by Jason deCaires Taylor.

The art he made is so impressive, but unfortunately, I will never have a chance to visit that amazing museum, because I don’t know how to swim.

But it is good that we have internet, I still can keep up to look at his website, they updated his projects very often and I really love his work :

http://www.underwatersculpture.com/pages/projects/mexico.html

And then, we have concrete memorial reefs, which can bury your love one who don’t afraid of sea. hihihi… Winking smile

But actually, I don’t like this kind of cemetery, don’t you think this don’t serve any purpose? Your family need to diving into the deep sea to see your grave?

And if you think it is good to the environment, but why don’t you just spread your ash into the ocean to feed the fish or into a garden to grow a tree. The only way good is someone did can earn a living out of it. Haha! Rolling on the floor laughing

http://www.neptunesociety.com/memorial-reef

http://www.eternalreefs.com/

http://www.mbara.org/memorial-reef-program.cfm

History:

In ancient, human built reefs for the other race’s attack.

2. According to the Wikipedia, thousands year ago, Persians (now is Iranian) blocked the mouth of the Tigris River to thwart Indian pirates by building an artificial reef, and then, during the First Punic Warthe Romans built a reef across the mouth of the Carthaginian harbour in Sicily to trap the enemy ships within and assist in diving the Carthaginians from the island.

3. Japanese using rubble and rocks to make reefs to grown kelp (海帶/昆布), since 17th century.

And the earliest recorded construction of artificial reef in the United States is from 1830s when logs from huts were used off the coast of South Carolina to improve fishing.

Development:

1. a) According to Wikipedia, when the ocean current reach a vertical structure (like concrete block, sinking ship) which put on the bottom of the sea, the current rise up the a cloud of plankton / ocean micro organisms, that can attract small fish, which also draw in pelagic predators like tuna and sharks.

b) It also mentioned same as the National Geographic documentary that fish love the protection of hole or crevice which provided by the sinking ship.

c)another benefit is algae, tunicates, corals and sponges grown in the reef structure over months or years, that create more food and protection for the fish.

2. Coastal protection: barriers are built near fragile shores, Japan built over 4000 breakwaters in the last 20 years.

3. Surfing reefs: reefs are installed to amplify waves in popular surfing areas.

Material :

1. Back in 1972, a well-meaning non-profit group came up with the idea of creating an artificial reef off the South Florida coast using two million old tires. The sunken rubber was supposed to lure game fish to the area and simultaneously reduce toxic waste on shore. Reefs like these already existed in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Africa, Australia, and the Gulf of Mexico. None of them have been successful. Steel restraints holding the tires of the Osborne Reef together have rusted away. When tropical storms come the tires careen across the ocean floor destroying marine life and damaging natural coral reefs along the way. This ecological catastrophe has gone unnoticed by the critical human eye for decades.

'Reef', by Hannes Bend:
http://hannesbend.com/index.php?/bs/eclipse/

Osborne Reef, more then 2,000,000 used vehicle tires were dumped off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Florida to form an artificial reef is a disaster.

I remember when we clean up our river, we did find some people dumping vehicle old tires for growing oyster, vehicle tire is make of toxic plastic, when it dissolve into the water, it will poison the fish and human. We try so hard to take the tire out of the river, because when it weight 10 times when it stuck in the river bed!!!! That is why I know so well the damage it cost on Osborne Reef. Steaming mad

2. I think the officially sanctioned material should be non release or dissolve toxic to the environment.

3. Another thing that very interesting me on the wiki web, is about Electro mineral accretion, it is not easy to understand for a people like me who have no knowledge about chemistry. but after explanation from Edward. I found it incredible interesting. He told me about the typewriter history, how IBM came up with a solution to electro plate a plastic typing ball with hard chromium in 1961. Sun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter

using electrochemical process chrome onto the surface of plastic, this is similar what it explain about EMA (Electro mineral accretion) : a group of scientists put a low voltage current to the sinking ship, in order to electro the limestone which floating in the sea, then attach the coral to grown. Thumbs up

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_reef

but……..but……….but…….

when I google about artificial reefs in the google picture…. I can find – dumping subway cars, conrete block, old fishing boat, war ship, antenna, plane……………………….. it is really scare me… it seem artificial reefs also can call artificial rubbish sea!!!!!!!!!!! Alien

貓發出的咕嚕咕嚕聲 : Cat Purr

張貼者： Mei Wechner On 2012年8月16日星期四 0 意見

aReferring to 7 June 2012 – Catalyst

摘要:

貓會發出兩種咕嚕咕嚕聲, 而且有著不同的目的:

1. 當貓放鬆, 躺在你大腿上時. – 此時咕嚕咕嚕聲帶愉悅,舒適的.

2. 當貓肚餓,緊急需求食物,想盡辦法要主人起身給他餵食時. - 此時咕嚕咕嚕聲沒有愉悅,並且有點像犀牛的聲音.

而貓這兩種咕嚕咕嚕聲, 經實驗, 主人都會辨別出那種聲音是貓在放鬆, 那種是貓在餓餓.

經過用錄音結果分析, 請看我自畫的圖表如下:

Summary:

A cat has two difference kind of purrs for two difference purposes:

1. relaxing purr: when the cat is lying on your lap - sounds more pleasant.

2. hungry purring: when the cat urgently wants of food , to find a way to tell the master to get up and feed them - sound not so pleasant and more like a rhino

After recording the sound of the cat purrs, according to the analysis of the results , I did draw a chart as follows:

The figure below are two kinds of cat purring audio analysis diagrams .- dBs ( Noise, in decibels, the volume of the purr ) , Frequency ( frequency) .

上圖是兩種貓咕嚕咕嚕聲頻分析圖. - dBs ( 聲浪分貝, 即聲量的大小), Frequency ( 頻率).

1. 貓放鬆時(上圖的黑線), 在錄音聲軌上顯示從大聲到細聲, 愈細聲頻率就愈高(即愈頻密).

2. 貓肚餓時(上圖的紅線), 在錄音聲軌上顯示在大聲時會突然出現一高峰(英文叫 Voice Peak), 這高峯大約可以由三百與六百赫茲之間。而這高赫茲就跟嬰兒的哭泣或遇險呼叫聲的頻率相同. 這就是為什麼會使主人那麼心急如焚般去搶救心愛的愛貓了.

另外, 從貓發出的咕嚕咕嚕聲頻中, 它的超低音頻, 只有大象才會發出這低音頻. 那為什麼一隻這麼細小的動物可以做到?

原來, 貓是可以聲帶獨立抽動. 跟人類不一樣的.

亦即是人類發聲是由空氣經過聲帶(請看下圖, 聲帶vocal folds是氣管中的兩片白色由軟骨組成的帶狀組織.), 和聲帶周圍的肌肉的抽動來震動(vibrate)聲帶, 然而人類這個動作, 是只能同時震動兩邊的聲帶.

而貓, 他竟然可以控制只是一邊抽動, 或是兩邊同時的抽動. 並且當空氣被傳遞過去的聲帶時，貓還可以在不斷purring咕嚕咕嚕. 來減低了purring 的harmonic 和諧.而使得主人感到這種迫切關注的求救的反應.

1. the black color line: is the purring sound of a relaxed cat, a sound track from loud to low, the lower the noise the higher the frequency .

2. the red color line: is the purring sound of a hungry cat, displayed on the recording sound track appeares a peak (called the Voice Peak ) , this peak is about three hundred and six hundred Hz. This high Hertz is the sound of a baby crying, a distress call frequency of the sound , which is why the master is so anxious to rescue the beloved cat.

In addition, the frequency of the purring sound from the cat , it 's ultra-low, apparently only an elephant can make such a low audio sound. Why such a small animal like a cat can do that?

It turnes out that the cat can control the vocal chords independently. Not like humans, they have no independent vocal cord control .

The picture below shows human vocal cords, the vocal folds inside the trachea are shown as two white cartages. The twitching of the muscles around the vocal cords does control the vibration of the chords, but humans can only vibrate both chords simultaneously, whereas cats can contol them independently and thus are able to create such different sounds.

film authentic cat purrs

1. to film their cats purring in two situations. One when they're relaxed, sitting on a lap,

2. the other when they want something - food,

or to get their owner out of bed.

the original researcher, Dr Karen McComb from the UK

Time to bring our DIY film unit back from the field and reveal what this is all about.

That's a relaxed pussy cat.This is the relaxed purr. Alright, it sort of descends down as we get higher in the frequency.

That one's a hungry pussy cat. This second purr has been termed a 'solicitation purr'. And the UK scientist found it was consistently rated more urgent and far less pleasant. The question is, why is it so?See this right here, this peak? That's sitting around four hundred and seventy, four hundred and eighty hertz. That is the hidden signal inside the solicitation purr.

normal voice sounds are made by air passing the vocal folds. But a cat is simply too tiny to make a sound this deep. To get this low, it should be the size of an elephant.

But we now know how cats do it and it's really ingenious. Instead of passing air through the vocal folds, the cat can just twitch its vocal folds independently.

But here's where it gets really clever. What the UK researchers discovered is an additional component - and extra voicing, like a cry or a meow, where the air is passed up past the vocal folds whole the cat is still purring.

They call it the voiced peak. Sitting between three-hundred and six-hundred hertz, this voiced peak is the same frequency as a baby's cry. Effectively, inside the solicitation purr is the buried distress call of a human baby.

So it's that hidden voiced peak in the solicitation purr that makes that purr less harmonic. And that's what drives the owner mad and into action