Your Cellphone Could Help Engineers Keep Bridges Safe!

Most of us have a cellphone in our pocket or in the cupholder of our car as we drive around town these days, and what a happenstance that most cellphones today come equipped with GPS sensors and accelerometers. By simply going bringing your cellphone along for the ride on your daily travels, engineers could gather enough information, by combining the data from the thousands of drivers and passengers that migrate across those bridges each day, about the amount of flexion and vibration the bridges are experiencing. This data could help alert engineers ahead of time if a bridge will be in need of repairs anytime soon.

This technology could make bridge monitoring a much more cost-effective process. Dedicated monitors that send data to engineers about a single bridge are expensive, and require maintenance and attention. When you realize that there are more than 600,000 bridges in the United States, those figures can get staggering.

But, by adding crowdsourced data from passengers, the MIT engineers who worked on this study believe the lifespan of bridges could be extended by up to 30%.

Read more about this study, first published in Communications Engineering here.

Matarazzo, T.J., Kondor, D., Milardo, S. et al. Crowdsourcing bridge dynamic monitoring with smartphone vehicle trips. Commun Eng 1, 29 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44172-022-00025-4

Red Foxes Spotted Fishing for the First Time.

Scientists in Spain observed a red fox fishing for his dinner. This sighting, and video evidence, is the first of its kind, confirming a behavior previously only confirmed to occur in one other type of canid - wolves.

The fox was observed over the period of a bit more than an hour, attempting to fish 12 times, while successfully capturing 10 European Carp. The red fox had a success rate of 83% - only slightly less successful than human fishermen's success rates, if their fish stories are to be believed!

The male red fox was not observed eating any of the fish that he captured during his fishing activities, but he was observed carrying the fish far enough away from the shore and/or burying the fish for later consumption.

The scientists also observed a female fox benefitting from the male's fishing activities, toward the end of the observation period. That the male fox did not appear to mind the female taking some of the fish led the scientists to posit that the female was part of the male's family group, and likely had kits to feed nearby.

Read more about these scientists' observational study, published by the Ecological Society of America, here.

J. Tobajas and F. Díaz-Ruiz. Fishing behavior in the red fox: Opportunistic-caching behavior or surplus killing? Ecology. Published online August 18, 2022. doi: 10.1002/ecy.3814.