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What GM gets from investing in hybrid startup Bright Automotive
GM Ventures, the investment arm of General Motors, announced Tuesday that it would invest $5 million in Bright Automotive, an Indiana startup developing a cutting-edge plug-in hybrid delivery van.
While the amount is modest, the GM investment gives the Detroit giant a “strategic relationship” and inside track on new technology that it might be able to use to expand its electrified vehicle fleet a few years from now.
Analyst think these does a couple of things for GM. One is that by investing in Bright’s electric technology that will in turn attract government grants for further research and development. Investing in bright also means GM is set to compete against similar technology and plans for a hybrid van from Ford. The IDEA( Bright’s hybrid) is capable of going 40 miles on all-electric when it automatically switches into hybrid mode where it gets 36 mpg. Delivery vans this size are in demand by many fleet users that deliver goods and services so the savings in oil consumption will make the entire country less dependent on foreign fossil fuel imports.
Snails ‘have a homing instinct’
A 69-year-old amateur scientist has apparently discovered that her garden snails have a homing instinct.
The result has astonished some professionals who believe that snails are far too simple creatures to find their way home.
Ms Brooks is such a gentle person that killing even snails put her off so she had been picking them up and moving them to another location. if that location was less than 10 meters away they would just find their way back to their original spot. I’ve given up on growing marigolds because slugs find their way to them. It is amazing for such a slow creature they can strip a plant overnight. I know about the pan of beer buried at ground level where the slugs drown when trying to take a drink. Not a great way to spend time emptying a pan of smelly old beer with dead slugs in it.
Do not leave kids in cars – Record number of hot car deaths is cause for concern
On average, 35 to 40 children across the country die from heat exposure in vehicles each year. There have already been at least 21 such deaths in 2010 — the most in the first six months of the year since researchers began collecting data on the subject in 1998.
A report on NBC said that the rearward facing car safety seats are a contributing factor. Parents don’t see the child and forget. Until some kind of safety feature can be invented to compensate, people need to get in the habit of checking the child seat every time they leave the car. Heat related hypothermia can kill a child in as little as fifteen minutes and cause severe distress in just a few minutes.
Women’s hormone cream can screw up your kids, pets
On Thursday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning that children who are inadvertently exposed to an estrogen spray to ease hot flashes can develop an upsetting reaction – premature puberty. The FDA has received 8 reports involving children ages 3 to 5 whose reactions have included nipple swelling and breast development in girls and breast enlargement in boys. Pets exposed to the hormone spray have turned up with nipple enlargement and swelling of the vulva in females.
A recent report by the Veterinary Information Network also warns that some pets are inadvertently ingesting topical hormone sprays, creams or gels by licking the area or being petted after the product is applied and then grooming themselves. Side effects have included undersized penises in males and fur loss.
Estrogen and testosterone aren’t the only hormones that cause problems. A psoriasis cream called Dovonex, a derivative of vitamin D — itself a hormone — can cause unusual thirst, appetite loss, and severe vomiting or diarrhea when pets lick it off the skin or chew on the tube…
Users of these creams should wear clothing that covers the spot where applied. If children should come in contact, the affected area should be washed well with soap and water. Pets being pets might be out of luck since they probably touched the cream with their tongues.
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