Word of the Day

[Almighty Doer of Stuff]

Cicadas make good tacos, or so I hear. Maybe one could rig up a power tool inside some sort of net or trap, and catch them in large quantities that way.

[ET, the Extra Terrestrial]

Other selected text from the report:

"To develop these data, subjects were exposed to various frequencies, acceleration levels and exposure durations, and the Motion Sickness ncidence (MSI) was developed as the percentage of subjects who vomited."

"However, the 2 MW, 0.7Hz wind turbines clearly have moved well into the nauseogenic frequency range."

"The range of motion nauseogenicity has been measured at 0.1 to 0.7 Hz and with a maximum nauseogenic potential at 0.2 Hz [5][6] (see Figure 1)."

I love this stuff.

[PKMKII]

wainscot
-noun
1. wood, especially oak and usually in the form of paneling, for lining interior walls.
2. the lining itself, especially as covering the lower portion of a wall.
3. a dado, especially of wood, lining an interior wall.
4. British. oak of superior quality and cut, imported from the Baltic countries for fine woodwork.
-verb
5. to line the walls of (a room, hallway, etc.) with or as if with woodwork: a room wainscoted in oak.

[DavidH]

wainscot
-n.

6. A Caledonian in a cart.

[Roy Hunter]

weanscot
-noun
a small child of Scottish origin.

[ET, the Extra Terrestrial]

Nauseogenecity is maximised at 0.2Hz for motion sickness. Oscillate a person at 0.2Hz (one cycle every 5 seconds), and they will get motion sickness. Not got a lot to do with sound or mechanical vibration as far as I can tell. Do I smell the faint whiff of bollocks-masquerading-as-science, perhaps?

(I ask because I have this just up the road from me. I love it. So do the dogs.)

That part of the report is discussing an earlier study by the US Navy on the instances of nauseogenesis caused by various vibration frequencies in flight simulators. They shook pilots at specific rates until they puked, and kept track of how many puked how often at what rates. The new report compares the nauseogenic vibration frequencies with the nauseogenic infrasound frequencies and shows a high correlation in the 2 Hz range.

One of the discussion points is that the trend in wind turbines is toward bigger, more powerful turbines, with slower rotation rates. The graph I originally found the term in shows some 1.0MW turbines barely inside the 0.7 Hz upper limit of nauseogenicity from the Navy study, while newer 1.5MW turbines show infrasound frequencies centered around 0.2 Hz, the very epitome of nauseogenesis. The new projects I'm looking at are proposing 2.85 - 3.0MW turbines. The longer, more flexible blades of these larger turbines are more prone to "snap" in the wind shadow when the blade passes in front of the tower, and this (theoretically) is what causes the atmospherically-transmitted portion of the infrasound. This study is VERY fresh - just completed last week, data collection over the two weeks prior to that, no time for peer review yet, but some follow-up work is likely to be done in the next couple of months. It seems likely that there will be some kind of legislative reaction to it, certainly in Wisconsin (where the study was done) and probably in other states like Maine where grid-scale wind is a growth industry. I'm leaning towards trusting the study, partly because it was conducted by four professional experts in acoustic analysis who don't normally work together - a couple of them normally work in oppposition to each other.

Google Earth seems to show that there are no residences near Whitelee. Do you know how near the closest residences are? The study indicates that no symptoms were observed beyond a maximum of 3.5 miles, but the nearest residence is only 1100 feet from a turbine. Current regulations here in Maine require a minimum safety setback of 1.5X the turbine height, but noise restrictions generally push that to something around 2,000-2,500 feet. The current definition of noise does not include inaudible sounds like infrasound and low-frequency sound.

[Roy Hunter]

Whitelee is a complete misnomer: it is not white unless it snows, the rest of the time it is boggy moorland; and it is not in the lee of anything, it is the epitome of a blasted heath. There are a couple of farmhouses, there is a visitor centre, but no-one is actually mad enough to want to live there. It is, however, a visitor attraction. We walk the dogs up there quite often, people visit the centre and walk around the wind farm, and there do not seem to be any ill effects. The nearest conurbation is Eaglesham, about 2 miles from the nearest turbines but a few hundred feet lower down as well (Rudolph Hess parachuted into Eaglesham in 1941 to try and negotiate a truce with the British. Weird but true).

There are sound 'hotspots' when you are walking around, where you all-of-a-sudden hear a high-intensity 'slow helicopter' noise, and when you look around you are a couple of hundred metres away from a turbine, but you are directly downwind of it. It is a little spooky, but not unpleasant. The ground, however, is quite boggy and soft, so it probably wouldn't transmit vibration or oscillations as low as 0.2Hz (that is roughly the frequency of a child on a swingset - it doesn't strike me that such a low frequency could be transmitted through either air or ground with any great effect, but I'm not an engineer, I'm a drummer).

Anyway, I'd be interested in the peer review, the further research, the eventual outcome. My principal reason for liking wind power is that Donald Trump hates it.

[black bart]

ET wrote:

They shook pilots at specific rates until they puked

I was on a horrific flight from Istanbul to Izmir some years ago and I would dearly have loved to have done that to the pilot!

Discobolus noun

1. Ancient discus thrower; statue of one in act of throwing.

[PKMKII]

aumildar
-noun
1. a manager or agent.
2. a collector of revenue.

[PKMKII]

cornice
-noun
1. Architecture.
a. any prominent, continuous, horizontally projecting feature surmounting a wall or other construction, or dividing it horizontally for compositional purposes.
b. the uppermost member of a classical entablature, consisting of a bed molding, a corona, and a cymatium, with rows of dentils, modillions, etc., often placed between the bed molding and the corona.
2. any of various other ornamental horizontal moldings or bands, as for concealing hooks or rods from which curtains are hung or for supporting picture hooks.
3. a mass of snow, ice, etc., projecting over a mountain ridge.
-verb
4. to furnish or finish with a cornice.

[DavidH]

cornice
-n.

73. A form of ice-cream made from maize, popular in rural areas.

[ET, the Extra Terrestrial]

corneyes
-n., pl.

Found between and slightly forward of pairs of ears of corn.

[PKMKII]

clangor
-noun
1. a loud, resonant sound; clang.
2. clamorous noise.
-verb
3. to make a clangor; clang.

[daftbeaker]

clanger
-noun
1. small mouse-like creatures that live on the Moon with the Soup Dragon

[black bart]

Klingon noun

1. Language of the Klingon Race.

Hab SoSlI' Quch!*

Your mother has a smooth forehead!