Aching legs. Throbbing feet. Creaky knees. Standing for long periods of time can be a chore. And if there aren’t any chairs or clean floors to sit on, it’s also inevitable—unless you have a new invention that resembles a retractable robotic kangaroo tail.
Meet Emanuele Lopopolo, an Italian inventor who unveiled this portable backrest this device (picture of Lepopolo using the backrest here) at this week’s 39th International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva. As he puts it, “the kangaroo can rest its weight on its tail, so we’ve made the same thing for humans.” You just have to buckle yourself into Lopopolo’s backrest, extend the telescopic pole that juts out of the back, and then lean back: By reclining at a 60-degree angle, you can give your feet a break from supporting your full body weight. It’s intended for chair-less humans who want to take a load off without bending down to sit.
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If you’re planning a visit down under anytime soon, be careful what you eat. Australians are all kinds of annoyed about eating animals this week.
First, an Aussie company came out with chips flavored like emu and kangaroo. I have no idea what emu and kangaroo taste like; I do know that majestic versions of these two animals adorn the national coat-of-arms. That could partially explain why an Australian scientist’s proposal that people curb global warming by eating kangaroo (which don’t produce the methane that cows do through burping) hasn’t really taken hold. Devouring your national symbol just rubs some people the wrong way. From Reuters:
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Hungry for a kanga-burger? Replacing beef and mutton with kangaroo meat could significantly cut down on ruminant livestock emissions, according to a new report commissioned by the Australian government. Bovine belching is a massive source of methane emissions. But while a single cow can produce 300 to 500 liters of methane gas per day— enough to inflate 80 party balloons—kangaroos produce almost none. In other words, if cattle were Hummers, kangaroos would be Priuses.
As we’ve reported previously, Australian scientists have tried to fix the problem by transferring digestive bacteria from kangaroos into the guts of livestock. But this new report suggests that switching right to kangaroo meat could be a better move.
A potential model cited by the report would replace 7 million sheep and 36 million cattle with 175 million kangaroos by 2020, allowing Australia to cut about 16 megatons of carbon emissions every year. As the price of emission permits increases, kangaroo harvesting would become a lot cheaper than livestock farming. Kangaroos are hardier than livestock, and could better handle the effects of climate change like decreased water supply. They would be the ideal free range animal and yield meat that is high in protein and low in fat.
Still, there’s the 175 million kangaroo question: Will anyone eat it?
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