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Friday, May 17, 2013
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Grocery delivery service is greener than driving to the store
Apr. 29, 2013 ? At the end of a long day, it can be more convenient to order your groceries online while sitting on the living room couch instead of making a late-night run to the store. New research shows it's also much more environmentally friendly to leave the car parked and opt for groceries delivered to your doorstep.
University of Washington engineers have found that using a grocery delivery service can cut carbon dioxide emissions by at least half when compared with individual household trips to the store. Trucks filled to capacity that deliver to customers clustered in neighborhoods produced the most savings in carbon dioxide emissions.
"A lot of times people think they have to inconvenience themselves to be greener, and that actually isn't the case here," said Anne Goodchild, UW associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. "From an environmental perspective, grocery delivery services overwhelmingly can provide emissions reductions."
Consumers have increasingly more grocery delivery services to choose from. AmazonFresh operates in the Seattle area, while Safeway's service is offered in many U.S. cities. FreshDirect delivers to residences and offices in the New York City area. Last month, Google unveiled a shopping delivery service experiment in the San Francisco Bay Area, and UW alumni recently launched the grocery service Geniusdelivery in Seattle.
As companies continue to weigh the costs and benefits of offering a delivery service, Goodchild and Erica Wygonik, a UW doctoral candidate in civil and environmental engineering, looked at whether using a grocery delivery service was better for the environment, with Seattle as a test case. In their analysis, they found delivery service trucks produced 20 to 75 percent less carbon dioxide than the corresponding personal vehicles driven to and from a grocery store.
They also discovered significant savings for companies -- 80 to 90 percent less carbon dioxide emitted -- if they delivered based on routes that clustered customers together, instead of catering to individual household requests for specific delivery times.
"What's good for the bottom line of the delivery service provider is generally going to be good for the environment, because fuel is such a big contributor to operating costs and greenhouse gas emissions," Wygonik said. "Saving fuel saves money, which also saves on emissions."
The research was funded by the Oregon Department of Transportation and published in the Journal of the Transportation Research Forum.
The UW researchers compiled Seattle and King County data, assuming that every household was a possible delivery-service customer. Then, they randomly drew a portion of those households from that data to identify customers and assign them to their closest grocery store. This allowed them to reach across the entire city, without bias toward factors such as demographics and income level.
They used an Environmental Protection Agency modeling tool to calculate emissions at a much more detailed level than previous studies have done. Using factors such as vehicle type, speed and roadway type, they calculated the carbon dioxide produced for every mile for every vehicle.
Emissions reductions were seen across both the densest parts and more suburban areas of Seattle. This suggests that grocery delivery in rural areas could lower carbon dioxide production quite dramatically.
"We tend to think of grocery delivery services as benefiting urban areas, but they have really significant potential to offset the environmental impacts of personal shopping in rural areas as well," Wygonik said.
Work commuters are offered a number of incentives to reduce traffic on the roads through discounted transit fares, vanpools and carpooling options. Given the emissions reductions possible through grocery delivery services, the research raises the question of whether government or industry leaders should consider incentives for consumers to order their groceries online and save on trips to the store, Goodchild said.
In the future, Goodchild and Wygonik plan to look at the influence of customers combining their grocery shopping with a work commute trip and the impact of the delivery service's home-base location on emissions.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Washington, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/kNz_k9R6AKw/130429095147.htm
Monday, April 29, 2013
Woman Almost Dies After 40 Hour Gaming Session - Kotaku
Traveler's Thrombosis, or deep vein thrombosis is an affliction that is often associated with flying. However in China, it appears that it is more commonly associated with video gaming than it is with air travel, especially now that after a young woman developed the condition after a 4o hour gaming session.
The People's Daily reports that a 20 year-old female gamer was taken to the hospital in Fujian province after complaining about leg pains. The gamer, Xiao Han (a psuedonym), was diagnosed with the possibly life threatening ailment Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) at the hospital. After a gruelling treatment of surgery and medicine, Xiao Han is now fine.
When doctors asked what Xiao Han was doing prior to her leg pain, she explained that she had been playing an online game. Unfortunately the doctors didn't specify which online game, but they told the People's Daily that Xiao Han had spent the over 40 continuous hours sitting down playing.
DVT is a condition when blood clots in a deep vein of the leg. It causes mild to extreme pain and has the possibility of leading to death. Basically, the clots occur in the leg, depending on time and luck the clot breaks off and travels through the blood stream and flows into the lungs (or other organs). When it reaches the lungs it can cause severe issues which can lead to death. Symptoms of DVT are often swelling and redness of the legs.
DVT is commonly associated with air travel other activities of long sitting such as playing video games. According to the US Federal Aviation Administration, DVT is known to "occur in 1 out 1000 people in the general population" from various causes. Last year a young man in Taiwan died in an internet cafe as developing DVT during a long gaming session.
The People's Daily article was kind enough to point out methods to preventing DVT. It recommends that gamers should take breaks, get regular exercise and drink lots of water. Of course it failed to mention that gamers should be careful when they partake in ridiculous gaming marathons.
Top photo: scyther5 / Shutterstock
[???????????40?? ???????] [People's Daily]
Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.
Source: http://kotaku.com/woman-almost-dies-after-40-hour-gaming-session-483972751
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