SCIENCE/TECHNOLOGY
Human and Humanoid Robot Shake Hands in Space 1st
Human and Humanoid Robot Shake Hands in Space 1st
2012 02 16
By Marcia Dunn | PhysOrg.com
The commander of the International Space Station, Daniel Burbank, shook hands Wednesday with Robonaut. It’s the first handshake ever between a human and a humanoid in space.
German Physicist Flies First Manned Electric Multicopter
Last October, near Karlsruhe, Germany, Thomas Senkel completed the first manned flight of an electric multicopter, flying it 10 feet off the ground for 90 seconds. Senkel, a physicist and paraglider pilot who helped found the company E-volo to build the craft, invented it after seeing a YouTube video of a German hobbyist’s remote-controlled hexacopter in action.
Multicopters are more stable and easier to control than helicopters. They’re also potentially safer: The craft can land even after four of its 16 rotors, each of which has its own battery-powered motor, have failed. Multicopters could also be fitted with a parachute (which would be caught in the overhead rotor on a helicopter). E-volo says it will build a two-seat multicopter by the spring and begin selling the craft for recreational purposes next year.
Robo-Mule Hauls Military Gear & Follows Like a Dog
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| The LS3 robot funded by DARPA is a faster, quieter version of Boston Dynamics’ BigDog robot. CREDIT: DARPA |
U.S. troops who carry as much as 100 pounds of gear could soon get a robotic mule capable of shouldering their burdens in the toughest terrain. Such a robot recently showed how it can follow a person and navigate around trees and rocks while climbing a hill in its first outdoor test — but it might someday follow spoken commands like a huge, obedient dog.
The four-legged, headless “LS3″ robot evolved as the quieter, faster and tougher version of Boston Dynamics’ “BigDog” robot funded by the U.S. military’s DARPA research arm. Upcoming trials will test the robot’s ability to carry 400 pounds on a tough 20-mile trek without any refueling for 24 hours.
“If successful, this could provide real value to a squad while addressing the military’s concern for unburdening troops,” said Army Lt. Col. Joe Hitt, program manager for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). “LS3 seeks to have the responsiveness of a trained animal and the carrying capacity of a mule.”
Added “hearing” technology could even allow human squad members to issue spoken commands such as “stop,” “sit” or “come here.”
Sun points a loaded gun at us
NASA / SDO
An “intensitygram” from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager on NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the double-barreled sunspot active region 1416 pointing toward Earth.
As solar activity builds toward an expected peak in 2013, a double-barreled sunspot has been doubling in size over the past couple of days and now has the potential to shoot significant eruptions in our direction.
It’s not certain that active region 1416 will erupt with coronal mass ejections as violent as the blasts that were thrown off by the sun late last month. But it has developed a mixed “beta-gamma” magnetic field that packs enough energy to throw off medium-scale solar flares, SpaceWeather.com reports.
“Any such eruptions this weekend would be Earth-directed as the sunspot turns to face our planet,” SpaceWeather’s Tony Phillips wrote.
Medium-size M-class flares are generally associated with the kinds of solar storms that produce enhanced auroral lights, but not huge inconveniences on Earth. It’s the X-class flares you really have to watch out for: That level of solar storming could affect radio communications as well as satellites and electrical grids if the operators of those systems aren’t careful.
NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have a wide array of space assets monitoring the sun, and for now all’s quiet on the solar front. NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center reported some problems tracking the Advanced Composition Explorer, a satellite that plays a key role in tracking solar storms, but those problems are expected to go away as ACE’s orientation with respect to the sun improves.
NASA / ESA / SOHO / NOAA
The heart-shaped coronal mass ejection can be seen at about the 10 o’clock position on this image from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory.
The prediction center’s Facebook page reports that on Friday, the sun threw off a slow-moving coronal mass ejection, or CME — in the shape of a heart, no less. “A preliminary model run predicts this CME will arrive, appropriately enough, on Valentine’s Day,” NOAA reports. So if you’re out with your Valentine that night, particularly in Scandinavia or Canada, watch the skies. Even if the earth doesn’t move, the aurora might glow.
Meanwhile, the sunspot region that caused all the auroral fireworks last month, known as AR1402, has moved around the far side of the sun. Solar scientists will be interested to see how that region has changed when it comes back into view. We’re still a year out from the anticipated peak in the sun’s 11-year activity cycle, so there’ll be lots of sun-watching ahead. The best ways to keep track on a daily basis is to check in with NOAA’s space weather center and SpaceWeather.com.
Russian scientists, using drill for 20 years, finally reach deep Antarctic lake buried under ice for 20 million years
The Russian achievement is likened to Americans winning the epic race to the moon in 1969
How the Russians did it: This illustration shows how Russian scientists were able to reach a body of water the size of Lake Ontario that had been hidden for 20 million years under Antarctic ice.
After more than two decades of drilling in Antarctica, Russian scientists have reached a gigantic freshwater lake hidden under miles of ice for some 20 million years – a pristine body of water that may hold life from the distant past and clues to the search for life on other planets.
Neuroscience breakthroughs could be harnessed by military and law enforcers, says Royal Society report
By Ian Sample | guardian.co.uk
Neuroscience breakthroughs could be harnessed by military and law enforcers, says Royal Society report
Soldiers could have their minds plugged directly into weapons systems, undergo brain scans during recruitment and take courses of neural stimulation to boost their learning, if the armed forces embrace the latest developments in neuroscience to hone the performance of their troops.
These scenarios are described in a report into the military and law enforcement uses of neuroscience, published on Tuesday, which also highlights a raft of legal and ethical concerns that innovations in the field may bring.
The report by the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science, says that while the rapid advance of neuroscience is expected to benefit society and improve treatments for brain disease and mental illness, it also has substantial security applications that should be carefully analysed.
The report’s authors also anticipate new designer drugs that boost performance, make captives more talkative and make enemy troops fall asleep.
“Neuroscience will have more of an impact in the future,” said Rod Flower, chair of the report’s working group.
“People can see a lot of possibilities, but so far very few have made their way through to actual use.
“All leaps forward start out this way. You have a groundswell of ideas and suddenly you get a step change.”
The authors argue that while hostile uses of neuroscience and related technologies are ever more likely, scientists remain almost oblivious to the dual uses of their research.
The report calls for a fresh effort to educate neuroscientists about such uses of the work early in their careers.
Some techniques used widely in neuroscience are on the brink of being adopted by the military to improve the training of soldiers, pilots and other personnel.
A growing body of research suggests that passing weak electrical signals through the skull, using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), can improve people’s performance in some tasks.
One study cited by the report described how US neuroscientists employed tDCS to improve people’s ability to spot roadside bombs, snipers and other hidden threats in a virtual reality training programme used by US troops bound for the Middle East.
MIT Student Develops $3 Cutting-Edge Healing Device, Field Tested in Haiti
No one really knows why, but for an open wound, simply applying suction dramatically speeds healing times. (The theory is that the negative pressure draws bacteria out, and encourages circulation.) But for almost everyone, that treatment is out of reach–simply because the systems are expensive–rentals cost at least $100 a day and need to be recharged every six hours.
No more. Danielle Zurovcik, a doctoral student at MIT, has created a hand-powered suction-healing system that costs about $3. The device is composed of an airtight wound dressing, connected by a plastic tube to a cylinder with accordion-like folds. Squeezing it creates the suction, which lasts as long as there’s no air leak. What’s more, where regular dressings need to be replaced up to three times a day–a painful ordeal–the new cuff can be left on for several days.
Zurovcik originally intended to field-test the device in Rwanda, but then the Haiti Earthquake struck. At the request of Partners in Health, an NGO, she traveled to Haiti with 50 of the pumps.
Currently, Zurovcik is verifying the healing benefits of the device, and developing a new model that can be readily carried and concealed. The one technical hurdle that remains is ensuring the bandage seals tightly–but after that, the device could benefit a huge portion of the 50-60 million people in the developing world that suffer from acute or chronic wounds.
[Top image: Melanie Gonick/MIT; Bottom image: Patrick Gillooly/MIT]
Read more: The Best and Worst of Government Web Design
Research into more deadly strain of bird flu suspended over fears for potential spread
Research into more deadly strain of bird flu suspended over fears for potential spread
2012 01 23
By Meghan Keneally | DailyMail.co.uk
A group of scientists have suspended their research about a more-deadly strain of the bird flu because of massive objections to the study itself.
The scientists in question altered the strands of the H5N1 bird flu, of which there have been 600 cases and 300 fatalities since its discovery in 1997, to make an even more deadly version in hopes of learning key details about the evolution and development of pandemics.
Nissan unveils world’s first self-healing iPhone case
Nissan has come up with a unique iPhone case that heals itself when scratched. If tests of the Nissan Scratch Shield iPhone case go well and the Japanese car company believes it’ll be a commercial success, expect to see it in stores later this year.
When we think of Nissan, we think of cars. But now the Japanese company wants us to think of iPhone cases too.
On Monday it announced the Nissan Scratch Shield iPhone case, describing it as “self-healing.” This means that if you’re unfortunate enough to accidentally scratch it, it will actually mend itself, with small scratches healing in as little as one hour, and deeper ones taking up to a week.
Why Some People Live to 110
From: HealthDayNews
People who live 110 years or longer have as many disease-associated genes as those in the general population, but they may also be blessed with protective genes that help them live so long, researchers report.
The team of U.S. scientists noted that supercentenarians, as they are called, are extremely rare, with only one per 5 million people in developed nations. There is growing evidence that genetics play a major role in living to such an old age.
In what they describe as a first-of-a-kind study, the researchers analyzed the whole genome sequences of a man and a woman who lived past the age of 114 and found that they had as many disease-associated genes as other people.
For example, the man had 37 genetic mutations associated with increased risk for colon cancer.
“In fact, he had presented with an obstructing colon cancer earlier in his life that had not metastasized and was cured with surgery. He was in phenomenal cognitive and physical shape near the time of his death,” study senior author Dr. Thomas Perls, director of the New England Centenarian Study, said in a Boston University Medical Center news release.
The woman had numerous genetic variations associated with age-related disease, such as heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. She did develop congestive heart failure and mild cognitive impairment, but these conditions didn’t become evident until she was more than 108 years old.
“The presence of these disease-associated variants is consistent with our and other researchers’ findings that centenarians carry as many disease-associated genes as the general population,” Perls said. “The difference may be that the centenarians likely have longevity-associated variants that cancel out the disease genes. That effect may extend to the point that the diseases don’t occur — or, if they do, are much less pathogenic or markedly delayed towards the end of life, in these individuals who are practically living to the limit of the human lifespan.”
The study was published Jan. 3 in the journal Frontiers in Genetics, and researchers will be able to access the information at the U.S. National Institutes of Health data repository.
Article from: news.yahoo.com
Image: Digital Vision / Getty
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