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December 20 2010
You Go, Girl—Female Students Who Bike or Walk Do Better on Tests
One more reason to dust off that bike: in a study of Spanish high schoolers, girls who biked to class scored better on school tests than those who commuted in a car or bus.
About 65 percent of the teens participating in the study (1,700) said they rode a bike or walked to school. When the researchers looked at the girls’ performance on tests of cognitive ability, they saw that active commuters averaged 53 points, about 4 points higher than girls who came by motor vehicle. And the longer their commute, the better the correlation, explains Reuters:
Girls whose active commute lasted longer than 15 minutes did better on the tests than girls who walked or biked for less than 15 minutes on their way to school—a sign the relationship between active commutes and test performance is real, [lead researcher Francois] Trudeau said. Indeed, the effect persisted even after the researchers accounted for age, body weight, social and economic status, and activities outside school.
Researchers think this might be because these active commuters are getting more exercise, though it is also possible that those who have active commutes are more alert by the time they start school, which could affect how well they learn when they do make it to school, the researchers told Reuters:
Trudeau added that walking or biking to school often takes longer than a car or bus ride, which may provide time to reflect and mentally prepare for the day, giving them an edge. “It may be a good period to start thinking about the school day.”
The authors also couldn’t rule out the possibility that active commutes and higher test scores were not directly connected, but instead were linked by some other attribute—some personality trait that would both incline girls to bike and make them do better on tests.
For some reason the correlation didn’t hold up in boys. The researchers aren’t sure why this is, but they have some ideas. It is possible that the extra bit of exercise isn’t as important for boys, if boys are generally more active anyway. And the difference could be due to some brain difference between girls and boys, the authors suggest.
Related content:
Discoblog: Food Fraud: High Schoolers Use DNA Tests to Expose Fake Caviar
Discoblog: It’s In the Bag! Teenager Wins Science Fair, Solves Massive Environmental Problem
80beats: More Evidence That Girls Kick Ass at Math, Just Like Boys
80beats: Wall Street’s Winners May Be Determined While They’re Still in the Womb
80beats: “Yuppie Flu” Isn’t Just in the Head: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Linked to Virus
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Does national IQ depend on parasite infections? Er…
Cosmic Variance: Mathematics Reading List for High School Students
Image: Flickr/herval
September 28 2010
Bicycle Bubble/Monorail Transportation System—Crazy or Genius (or Both)?
A human-powered monorail system called Shweeb won $1 million from Google’s 10^100 innovations contest.
The company that manufactured the Shweeb is one of five to be awarded a total of $10 million from the competition. They will use the money to develop the Shweeb for use as a city commuter transport option.
The Shweeb efficiently uses human power from a rider sitting in the recumbent seat, pedaling the bubble-shaped pod through the air. This vision for public transportation is a little out there, but the Shweeb has some promise, says Gearlog:
Like all truly forward thinking ideas, Shweeb seems completely nuts at first glance. As a tech blogger I’d love nothing more than to mock Google and it’s choice of Shweeb with its poor-man’s take on the Jetsons opening sequence. But the more you read about it, the more Shweeb’s innovative take urban transport makes a whole lot of sense.
The pod gives you your own personal space (literally a personal bubble) while traveling and allows you to choose where you need to stop – without adhering to a timetable, like a subway or bus. The company will soon announce where the first public Shweeb will be built, and it could soon start cropping up in adventure destinations or cities near you, says PopSci:
Shweeb may not be practical for everyone or every city, but for some cities it might make both environmental and fiduciary sense. Compact cities like San Francisco or Boston could have Shweeb lines instead of open-air bus tours, or massive parks like Manhattan’s Central Park could avoid clogging up bike lanes with tourists by sticking them up in the air on a monorail.
The pods at the test track, which also doubles as a $30 adventure ride at Agroventures Park in Rotorua, New Zealand, can travel faster than Lance Armstrong in a bike race, but in use as urban transportation the Shweeb would be limited to around 16mph. The company’s website even claims that the Shweeb is easier than walking:
On firm, flat ground, a 70kg man requires about 100 watts to walk at 5km/h. The power required to move a Shweeb along a rail at 20km/h is only 33 watts. We rest our case!
And even if you get stuck behind a slow-poke, the pods can hook up to each other, and using the combined power of two go faster than either one alone. The website even claims that the pedaling is so leisurely that you can catch up on your email, phone calls, or texting and not even break a sweat.
If you’ve gotten this far in the post, you probably have a bunch of other questions or objections about how there’s no way this thing could work. Shweeb has anticipated many of these (or at least fielded them before) and put some useful info on their FAQ page.
Related content:
Discoblog: Bizarre New Treadmill-Bike Lets Gym Rats See the Outside World
Discover Magazine: Reviews: The Incredibly Strong See-Through Bicycle
Cosmic Variance: Get L.A. Moving
Cosmic Variance: An Easier Way to Get Around
Image: Shweeb
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