Big plans for smart clothes-line

A young scientist from Cólaiste Lorcain, Athy has come up with the last word in clothes-lines. Solar powered and electronically controlled, it automatically brings in the laundry when it rains, if it gets too sunny, when night falls and even when the neighbour's chimney catches fire.

Brian Kinsella (17), is a sixth- year student with big plans. He is hoping to win an Esat scholarship to pursue engineering at third level, but in the meantime has a patent application in for his electronic clothes-line.

Brian has thought of everything with his out-of-the-ordinary invention.

"The whole unit is solar powered. It is all self-contained. I have developed this as much as possible. I have a patent application for it and I am going to build it." A veteran exhibitor, this is Brian's second time at the RDS-based event.

Last year his project won seven different awards and he hopes to have similar success with his souped-up clothes-line system.

"It is sensitive to rain," he explains with sensors that close a switch when dotted with raindrops. "It has to be at a 30 degree angle on the basis of how water runs," he explains.

If the weather turns bad, the system automatically reels in the laundry, pulling it into a purpose- built shed fitted with vents and openings to encourage airflow, allowing drying to continue. The line follows a spiral when brought into the shed, in the process cranking up a spring clockwork that pulls the line back out when things dry off, thus saving on the solar-powered batteries that drive the system.

It has a combined light and heat sensor that reels in the clothes after dark but also if the sun gets too strong.

This prevents any colour fading if the sun does actually begin to shine. It is also wired into a smoke detector that hauls in the clothes if smoky pollution threatens to leave a smell.

Brian left nothing to chance and hopes to find a manufacturer for his system.

Three students from Royal School, Cavan, decided to look at weighty issues such as cloning and genetically-engineered foods for their project at the exhibition.

Lissa Mills, Gail Cartwright and Adel Anderson, all 16-year-old transition year students, joined forces to survey 650 people across the Republic to assess their views on the genetic technologies.

They phoned people at random, collecting views from 25 people in each county, a telephone cost picked up, one assumes, happily by their parents.

Responses were divided based on sex and on one of three age categories.

"Seventy-four per cent of people said they wouldn't clone themselves," explained Lissa, although for some reason a significant majority of respondents in both Leitrim and in Longford bucked this trend, declaring a willingness to be cloned. Women from these counties, in particular, were willing to be cloned.

A majority of people, 52 per cent, also shunned the cloning of replacement body parts, said Gail. Yet only a third of respondents felt that GM foods were unsafe.

"We also found out that 64 per cent of people didn't admire biologists," explained Adel, a view based on an assumption that the use of genetic technologies was both "unsafe and unnecessary".

The three also decided to conduct a straw poll during the exhibition, asking their peers to express their views on cloning.