Shore-to-Ship by Scott LaFee - Eureka! on Creators.com

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Shore-to-Ship

As cargo ships grow ever larger, they become a problem for ports not deep or large enough to accommodate their size. Korean engineers have come up with a solution: a mobile harbor.

Indeed of dredging and deepening a port, Kwak Byung Man and colleagues at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science propose building a harbor that can be moved out to an awaiting ship. More than $22 million has already been spent designing a floating platform more than 200 feet long. It would latch onto a cargo ship anchored offshore, and then use special cranes that automatically adjust to wave movement to off-load the vessels.

That's a conceptual model in the photo, but the first real mobile harbor is expected to be completed in 2012 and will be priced between $40 million and $50 million. Kwak said the moveable beasts would reduce congestion in harbors, lower terrorism risks and provide shipping access to currently inaccessible ports — reducing the costs of rail and truck transport.

'TRUE FACTS'

The "largest moon on Earth" is located in Germany's Ruhr Valley, where visitors to the Gasometer Oberhausen can admire a suspended model of the moon more than 75 feet in diameter. The sculpture, created by photographer Wolfgang Volz, is based on high-resolution satellite images of the moon and mimics the moon's phases in a five-minute show.

The cavernous Gasometer Oberhausen is a story in itself: the 300-foot-tall tank was originally built to store gas produced by the region's iron and coke processing plants.

QUIRKS OF NATURE

Cockroaches are fast (they can move almost 5 feet per second) and nimble (they can climb walls), but apparently they aren't too graceful doing both together.

A UC Berkeley scientist filmed cockroaches in super slo-mo, trying to determine how they use their eyes and antennae to switch from running along a flat surface to running up a vertical one.

As it turns out, the scurrying cockroach more often than not simply runs headlong into the wall, and then shoves its body upward with its hind legs to get a grip and get going upward.

The insect's hard outer skeleton behaves like a football helmet and pads, protecting the cockroach's body and brain from injury.

BRAIN SWEAT

One of the following letter combinations does not belong. Which one is it?

Eu, Sm, Pr, Ho, Hg, Yb, Ce

OUR IG NOBEL HISTORY

The 1997 Ig Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to Carl Charnetski and Francis Brennan of Wilkes University and James Harrison of Muzak Ltd. for their discovery that listening to generic elevator music stimulates immunoglobulin A production, and thus may help prevent the common cold.

The possibly deleterious effect upon brain cells exposed to such music was not examined.

BRAIN SWEAT ANSWER

There was a reason your high school chemistry teacher wanted you to memorize the periodic table of elements. He knew you'd be asked this question one day. The answer is Hg, which is the symbol for mercury (element 80), a metalloid. All of the other element symbols are lanthanoids.

PRIME NUMBERS

7 — Estimated value, in billions of dollars, of the sport fishing industry on the Great Lakes, which environmentalists say is threatened by the possible spread of Asian carp, an invasive species

Source: Environmental Protection Agency

VERBATIM

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

— Albert Einstein

WHAT IS IT? ANSWER

Cockroaches aren't the only clumsy insects — see Quirks of Nature. While flying along, a yellow-winged grasshopper (Gastrimargus musicus) ran smack into a strand of twisted barbed wire, temporarily getting its head caught. It managed to wiggle loose a few seconds later, unharmed but probably not that much wiser either.

To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.