Requirements: Must be less than one inch tall and willing to work inside the vacuum chamber of a scanning electron microscope; Experience handling and assembling single carbon nanotubes a big plus; 24×7 availability.
This is non-’Microbot Construction Workers Union of North America’ shop.
Apply today and play a big part in our nanofuture!!
****
The components required for nanoscale devices are so small and difficult to handle that a team of European scientists has created special microbot construction teams to put them together.
The mobile microbots developed by the EU-funded NanoHand project can automatically pick up and install carbon nanotubes thousands of times thinner than a human hair and assemble them inside the vacuum chamber of a scanning electron microscope –a world first for automated microgripper-based nanoconstruction.
The .8 inch long microbots are equipped with delicate handling tools, including a ‘microgripper’ that can make precise movements. Working on electrothermal principles, the microbot can open and close its jaws, like a pair of tweezers. The jaws open to about 2 micrometres and can pick up objects less than 100 nanometres in size.
At that scale, the intermolecular forces between objects are stronger than gravity. Once a nanotube has been picked up it will stick to the jaws of the gripper and cannot easily be dropped into position. The team have had to develop novel ‘pick-and-place’ techniques to get around this problem.
One approach is to glue the tube in its final position using electron beam-induced positioning. Another is to use geometrical principles to ensure that the intermolecular forces pulling the tube towards its intended location are greater than those holding it in the jaws of the gripper.
Project partners –including microchip manufacturers STMicroelectronics– are exploring how the technology could be used for rapid prototyping of new designs for microchips. One idea is to use carbon nanotubes as ‘interconnects’, the fine wires that make the electrical connections to a chip. Because of their high electrical conductivity, carbon nanotubes dissipate less heat than copper and allow circuits to be packed more densely.
Two of the project’s partners, Tescan and Klocke Nanotechnik, are collaborating to sell a scanning electron microscope equipped with a nanopositioning system based on NanoHand technology.
Other industrial applications are possible in the areas of composite materials, displays and new kinds of transistors.
Spanish scientists have developed a treatment for parasitic Microsporidia infection that could help prevent the continual decline in honey bee population afflicting Europe and the USA.
The scientists isolated the Nosema ceranaeparasite from professional apiaries suffering from honey bee colony depopulation syndrome, and then went on to treat the infection with complete success.
Nosema ceranae was first identified as a bee parasite in China in 1995 by Professor Ingemar Fries of the Swedish Agricultural University, Uppsala.
In a study published in Environmental Microbiology Reports, the scientists describe how they analysed two apiaries and found evidence of colony collapse disorder.
The scientists found no evidence of any other cause of disease (such as the Varroa destructor, IAPV or pesticides), other than infection with Microsporidia.
The researchers then treated the infected surviving under-populated colonies with the antibiotic drug, flumagillin and demonstrated complete recovery of all infected colonies.
There have been other hypothesis for colony collapse in Europe and the USA, but never has this bug been identified as the primary cause in professional apiaries.
“Now that we know one strain of parasite that could be responsible, we can look for signs of infection and treat any infected colonies before the infection spreads,” said principle researcher, Dr Higes.
Ian Welch poses with a 771lb giant stingray, he caught on the Maeklong River in Thailand while helping to tag the endangered creatures. Photo: BNPS.CO.UK
A University of Nevada scientist has sought to clarify the ‘giant stingray’ story that’s been doing the rounds recently –and has revealed that the fish was caught again two weeks after the initial catch, but still has not been weighed.
“While the photo is genuine and there’s no denying that this is a huge stingray, the stingray in the photo was never weighed,” says University of Nevada, Reno conservation biologist Zeb Hogan.
Hogan is lead researcher for the “Megafishes Project,” a joint venture with the National Geographic Society which aims to find, study, and protect the world’s largest freshwater fish.
News of the catch spread quickly. However, contrary to initial media reports, it is unknown if this fish, which was tagged and released in central Thailand on January 28, 2009 as part of the National Geographic expedition, is truly the world’s largest freshwater fish, he said. The fish, caught by volunteer angler Ian Welch from a small boat using a rod and reel, will be featured in an upcoming documentary airing on the National Geographic Channel.
“Surprisingly, we caught the stingray again four weeks later on Feb. 28,” Hogan said. “It’s still hasn’t been weighed so it still isn’t known if it’s a record breaker. We estimated the weight based on previous catches and simple ‘back-of-the-envelope’ calculations.”
Hogan, along with his team of researchers and anglers on site at the time of capture, approximate the fish’s weight to be between 550-770 pounds. An even slightly larger fish than the one tagged would almost certainly be a world record freshwater fish, he said.
“In terms of disk width, this is the second largest stingray I’ve seen, the largest was in Cambodia in 2003,” Hogan said. “This recent fish was very thick, so it may have weighed more.”
The big winged fish was caught the second time about four kilometers from the original site by local anglers who work with his team. Researchers immediately released it. The find could mean that the ray population is smaller, or less migratory, than originally believed.
The tagging, tracking and sometime recapturing are how biologists estimate abundance of fish populations, Hogan said. Biologists continue to track the big fish’s movements using an array of underwater listening devices designed to detect tagged fish.
Hogan and his team have tagged 18 of this species of stingrays (Himantura chaophraya) as part of the recently established research project on the stingray in central Thailand for the University of Nevada, Reno, the Thai Department of Fisheries, the sport-fishing company Fishsiam and the National Geographic Society sponsored Megafishes Project. This species is listed as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
If he can get more funding for the project, Hogan hopes to eventually tag 40-50 stingrays for the research study, the first ever ecological study of the giant freshwater stingray which was discovered only 20 years ago. Freshwater giant stingrays are among the largest of the approximately 200 species of rays. They can be found in a handful of rivers in Southeast Asia and northern Australia.
“We aim to determine its conservation status, its abundance, its maximum size, whether or not it’s a true freshwater species, whether or not regional populations interact and its migratory patterns and critical habitat,” he said.
“It’s clear that this species of giant freshwater stingray has the potential to be the largest freshwater fish in the world,” Hogan said. The current record holder for world’s largest freshwater fish is a 646-pound Mekong giant catfish caught by fishermen in northern Thailand in 2005.
The Megafishes Project is a 5-year initiative to find, study, and protect the world’s largest freshwater fish. A megafish is defined as any freshwater fish species that grows over 6 feet long or weighs more than 200 pounds. Approximately two dozen fish meet this criteria, including catfish, carp, trout, sturgeon, sawfish, paddlefish, gar and the giant freshwater stingray.
Photo: MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab
A group of researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab has developed a swarm robotics system that can tend to plants in a controlled environment –a development that they hope will one day lead to roboticized agricultural production.
The idea for the project came from work done by Nikolaus Correll, a postdoctoral assistant working in Professor Daniela Rus’ Distributed Robotics Lab. Correll, who came to CSAIL in 2007, saw the possible applications of swarm robotics to an agricultural environment. In the long view, the researchers hope to develop a fully autonomous greenhouse, complete with robots, pots and plants connected via computation, sensing and communication. Each robot is outfitted with a robotic arm and a watering pump, while the plants themselves are equipped with local soil sensing, networking, and computation. This affords them the ability to communicate: plants can request water or nutrients and keep track of their conditions, including fruit produced; robots are able to minister to their charges, locate and pick a specific tomato, and even pollinate the plants.
Check out the full story and catch some video of the bots in action on the MIT website.
The work of 19th century Polish scientist Heinrich Wilhelm Dove has inspired an iPhones app that comes with some startling claims. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
iPhone users can change their mental state thanks to a new iPhone application released today, according to its creators, Dubeytunes Studios.
Billed as a ‘mind spa,’ BrainBaths is a 3D sound application that relies on controversial binaural beats, which, advocates claim, can alter listener’s mood, concentration levels, and sleeping patterns.
Binaural beats are apparent sounds that arise in the brain independent of physical stimuli –an effect discovered in 1839 by Heinrich Wilhelm Dove.
When two tones at slightly different frequencies are presented separately, one to each of a subject’s ears, using stereo headphones, a beating tone is perceived.
The frequency of the tones must be below about 1,000 to 1,500 hertz for the beating to be heard. The difference between the two frequencies must be small (below about 30 Hz) for the effect to occur, otherwise, the two tones will be heard separately and no beat will be heard.
Binaural beats are of interest to neurophysiologists investigating the sense of hearing.
Controversially, advocates claim that binaural beats influence the brain in more subtle ways through the entrainment of brainwaves and can be used to produce relaxation and other health benefits, including improved focus and pain relief.
A 2007 study of the effectiveness of binaural beats published in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine found no evidence of brainwave entrainment through binaural beats.
But that’s not preventing Dubneytunes from claiming that their iPhone binaural application has a uniquely powerful effect on the area of the brain that perceives dimension through sound, while gently shifting the brainwave activity.
“This creates an exquisite experience of being transported out of normal space-time into a virtual reality of mind-body attunement. The results include deeper relaxation, peaceful sleep, enhanced concentration for study and tests and motivating inspiration for athletes or performers,” according to Dubneytunes.
Despite being debunked in the 2007 study, controversy still surrounds binaural beats both in terms of their effectiveness and possible negative outcomes of their use, as a recent Korea Times article shows:
Prof. Bae Myung-jin of Soongsil University raised concerns of possible addiction to the tracks.
“The tracks repeatedly play similar rhythms or beats. Basically, humans are vulnerable to such frequencies, meaning it’s possible for users to get addicted,” he said. “Once addicted, they cannot feel comfortable without listening to the sounds.”
But perhaps more seriously, in the same article, Nam Jun-wook, president of the Korea Neurofeedback Research Institute, a brainwave-specialized lab, expressed the view that “consistent exposure to the tracks may problematically deter teenagers’ brains from developing correctly.”
And, the article concludes, the Korean authorities are currently investigating whether legal controls are needed:
The Korea Communications Commission plans to inspect the files to decide whether setting a rule to control them is necessary.
There’s only one place to be this afternoon: on the roof of the Wachovia Spectrum, as the Harlem Globetrotters play against the Washington Generals before the media in an event to commemorate the Spectrum’s founding in 1967.
I’m gnashing my teeth in several directions, as I have an invite to the 19m, 67s-long commemorative game, but am overseas and can’t make it.
The ‘Trotters will be playing another game tomorrow, which will be open to the public, but will take place inside the center.
The Wachovia will be demolished at the end of 2009 to make way for Philly Live, a retail, restaurant and entertainment complex.
IRMA is to begin compiling lists of web sites that it claims are damaging its business, with the notorious Pirate Bay likely to be at the top of the list.
Eircom is expected to weakly comply with this list, ushering a new era for net censorship, according to a vnunet report:
Eircom will then not contest any court order, meaning that the requests are automatically granted. “We have said we would not oppose an action to the courts,” said a spokesman for Eircom.
In a second part of the agreement, a third-party policing download activity on behalf of the record companies will supply Eircom with the IP addresses of people who they detect illegally uploading or downloading copyright works from peer-to-peer file-sharing web sites.
Is Eircom’s decision the first drip in what’s set to become a torrent [ahem] of net censorship and control?
What right does the private sector have to start censoring our access to the Internet?
And what sort of checks and balances will be put in place?
All in all a p(r)oxy day for Irish Internet users.
Seed beetles mating. The male's barbs cause sever injuries to the female, but this doesn't stop females mating with multiple males. Pic: livescience.com
New research into the mating behavior of seed beetles (also known as bean weevils) has found that the injuries caused to females by the males’ spectacular, barbed sex organs (see pic below) is an unfortunate accident of nature, rather than an evolutionary necessity.
But since it is not a good idea for the male of a species merely to injure a female, the researchers have assumed that these structures serve another purpose and that the injury is an unfortunate side effect.
The male seed beetle has sex organs rather similar to a medieval spiked club, says researcher Göran Arnqvist, which has led scientists to theorize that the injuries caused to females are accidental rather than intended.
Barbs on the genitals of the male seed beetle cause sever damage to females during the mating process. Photo: scienceblogs.com
“Females’ injuries as such do not benefit the male she mated with. It has been suggested rather that the injuries are a side effect of other benefits the males reap from the barbs. Now, for the first time, we are able to show that this is the case,” says Göran Arnqvist.
Despite these costs, however females mate with multiple males.
“We also show that males with long barbs cause more severe injuries to females, but also that these males have a greater rate of fertilization success,” says Arnqvist.
The barbs are extremely important to males in their competition to be able to fertilize an egg. When females mate with two males, it is more often the male with the longer barbs that fertilizes her eggs.
In both males and females in the animal world it is common – much more common that one might like to think – for one sex to evince characteristics and properties that are injurious to individuals of the other sex, according to Arnqvist.
“One especially tricky case involves species where the males have mating organs that are supplied with hooks, barbs, and flukes that cause internal injuries in females during mating. This is extremely common among insects, but it also occurs in many other animal groups,” says Arnqvist.
A team of Spanish, American and Mexican researchers investigating cannibalism amongst female rattlesnakes (Crotalus polystictus) have found that these animals ingest on average 11% of their postpartum mass (in particular eggs and dead offspring) in order to recover energy for subsequent reproduction.
The researchers measured “cannibalistic behaviour” among 190 females, which had 239 clutches of eggs, and determined that this phenomenon is justified by “enabling the mother to recover and regain strength”.
“A cannibal rattlesnake female can recover lost energy for reproduction without having to hunt for food, a dangerous activity that requires time and expends a great deal of energy,” write Estrella Mociño and Kirk Setser, lead authors of the study and researchers at the University of Granada, along with Juan Manuel Pleguezuelos.
The study, published in the latest issue of the journal Animal Behaviour, shows that cannibalism in this species is an evolutionary result of its feeding behaviour, since its prey is dead for some time before being eaten by the snake.
“Viperids in general are prepared to eat carrion, and for this reason it is not so strange that they consume the non-viable sections of their clutches after going through the great energy expenditure caused by reproduction,” says Mociño.
The research team say this behaviour can be explained by four biological factors – the day of the birth (females that give birth at the end of July are more likely to be cannibals, since they have less time to feed and prepare themselves to reproduce again), the proportion of dead babies per clutch, the level of maternal investment (the larger the brood, the greater the chance that it will contain non-viable elements, which she will eat), and stress caused by being in captivity (the researchers maintained the females in captivity for an average of 21 days).
Of all the females, 68% consumed part or all of their dead offspring, and 83% of these ate them all, and waited little time to do so (around 16 hours), although some ate them “immediately after giving birth”, adds Mociño. The rest (40%) of the females “did not display cannibalistic behaviour”.
According to the scientists, cannibalism is “not an aberrant behaviour, and is not an attack on the progeny”, since it is not the same as parricide or infanticide as it does not involve live elements. It simply recovers some of what the snake invested in the reproduction process, and prepares it to reproduce once again.
The scientists found that was little risk of the snakes eating healthy offspring, which look very similar to dead ones for the first two hours after emerging from their membranes. During the study, only one female ate live babies.
“In comparison with mammals or birds, snakes are not as maternal, but the study shows that they also display behaviour that has evolved, and that helps the female and her offspring to reproduce and grow successfully,” say Mociño and Setser.
To date, the scientists have marked more than 2,000 individuals of this species, which range in length on average from 50cm to 90 cm, and which display different survival strategies from many other rattlesnakes in the north of Mexico and the United States.
This reptile has a very rapid reproduction rate, suggesting that it is experiencing a high death rate caused by external factors. As well as contributing to scientific knowledge about animal cannibalism from an evolutionary perspective, the scientists hope that publicising these results will “lead to human beings being less aggressive towards these snakes”.
Rattlesnakes aren’t the only animals to engage in cannibalism. The behavior has been identified in an estimated 1,500 different species, including Black Widow spiders, chimps and even chickens.
Dublin-based biotechnology company, Opsona Therapeutics, has raised €18million in venture capital to fund the expansion of its clinical and operational activities, it was announced today.
Opsona, which focuses on novel therapeutic approaches to treat autoimmune and inflammatory diseases is based at the Trinity Centre for Health Sciences at the Institute of Molecular Medicine in St. James’s Hospital.
Co-founder of Opsona, Luke O’Neill, Professor of Molecular Immunology at Trinity College Dublin, stressed the tremendous assistance provided by Science Foundation Ireland, particularly at a time when Opsona was barely at a conceptual stage.
“The success of Opsona is largely attributable to the critical financial support received from Science Foundation Ireland since 2002. Opsona’s establishment in 2004 came about as a direct result of the discoveries arising from our SFI-funded research up to that point. Without sustained support from Science Foundation Ireland six or seven years ago, it is highly unlikely that we would ever have envisaged the creation of Opsona into what it has become today. SFI is, in essence, the genesis of Opsona,” says O’Neill.
Input from SFI into key research activities had, in turn, helped to facilitate large-scale collaborations with Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and others, says O’Neill.
“We have worked extremely hard to secure the €18million venture capital from investors such as Novartis Venture Fund, Fountain Healthcare Partners, Inventages Venture Capital and Seroba Kernel Life Sciences. Opsona Therapeutics greatly appreciates the contribution made by SFI at a crucial juncture, and also Enterprise Ireland, for helping to generate awareness, interest and confidence around what we are striving to achieve,” says O’Neill.
“The Irish people. We’ve voted you the person we’d most like to speak to on the telephone.”
“I’m flattered, but shouldn’t you be talking to the Pope?”
“Not at all. We’ve no time for that eejit anymore.”
“Oh-”
“Now, can you tell us what yer missus will be wearing next week? I want to get the wife something nice for summer.”
BT’s nationwide survey of Irish telephone users’ habits, released today, reveals that the person Irish people would most like to speak to is that son of Eireann, U.S. President Barack O’Bama.
The survey also found that 80 percent of us still use our landline on a daily basis, (with 41 percent claiming to use it up to five times per day). News about friends and family makes up 51 percent of our daily conversations throughout the country while 14 percent of us gossip everyday on the phone.
On average, seven percent of the Irish population claim to talk about “nothing much,” with that figure rising to 16 and 11 percent respectively in the enigmatic counties of Waterford and Cork. While 87 percent of the population are clear about how much they spend on their phone bills every month, 13 percent claim not to have any idea how much they spend.
And, in news that will surely cause sociologists and gender studies professors to fall off the floor, it was also found that Irish women use the phone more than Irish men, with 68 percent of telephone calls being made by females living in the house.
The full press release and results after the turn.
Say hello to T-Leporis --a star some 100 times larger than the sun, located 500 light years away in the constellation of Lepus. Photo: European Southern Observatory (ESO).
This image from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) Interferometer shows the star T Leporis, 500 light years away.
It’s also one of the first images made using near-infrared interferometry and one of the sharpest colour images ever made, with a resolution of approximately 4 milli-arcseconds.
The image was created by combining hundreds of interferometric measurements from the ESO’s array of telescopes located at the Parnal Observatory in Chile. Interferometry is a technique that combines the light from several telescopes, resulting in a vision as sharp as that of a giant telescope with a diameter equal to the largest separation between the telescopes used.
In effect, interferometry creates huge virtual telescopes by carefully combining the light from actual telescopes.
To create this image, astronomers had to observe the star for several consecutive nights, using all the four movable 1.8-metre VLT Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs). The ATs were combined in different groups of three, and were also moved to different positions, creating more new interferometric configurations, so that astronomers could emulate a virtual telescope approximately 100 metres across .
Although it is only 15 by 15 pixel across, the reconstructed image shows an extreme close-up of a star 100 times larger than the Sun, with a diameter corresponding roughly to the distance between the Earth and the Sun. The star is, in turn, surrounded by a sphere of molecular gas, which is about three times as large again.
T Leporis, in the constellation of Lepus (the Hare), belongs to the family of Mira stars, well known to amateur astronomers. These are giant variable stars that have almost extinguished their nuclear fuel and are losing mass. They are nearing the end of their lives as stars, and will soon die, becoming white dwarfs.
Our sun will become a Mira star in a few billion years, engulfing the Earth in the dust and gas expelled in its final throes.
“T Leporis looks so small from the Earth that only an interferometric facility, such as the VLTI at Paranal, can take an image of it. VLTI can resolve stars 15 times smaller than those resolved by the Hubble Space Telescope,” says ESO astronomer Jean-Baptiste Le Bouquin.
As this pic of the reception area at the Texas State History Musuem in Austin, Texas shows, many American offices turn the air-conditioning down too low in summer. (Kidding: it's the foyer of a Swedish ice hotel. The point still stands though.) Photo: Stephan Herz (www.sherz.net)
your A/C up during the summer months could benefit your health.
Mark Mendell and Anna Mirer of Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division, analyzed data collected from 95 air-conditioned office buildings across the U.S. (The data had been gathered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in a study called BASE (Building Assessment Survey and Evaluation) and assessed health issues related to the upper and lower respiratory tract, eyes, skin, headache, fatigue, and difficulty concentrating.)
The researchers found that in winter, the buildings were kept mostly within the recommended temperature comfort range, but in summer building temperatures were, on average, below the comfort range for summer.
Surprisingly, buildings were, on average, kept even cooler in the summer than in the winter, by almost 1°F (0.5°C), even though people are more comfortable with warmer temperatures in summer.
[Hey! Live in Austin, Texas for a summer and you'll understand the urge to turn your A/C to 'Iceland.']
These low temperatures in summer suggest that many people were too cold in their offices (to say nothing of the amount of energy wasted in overcooling the air conditioning systems).
In summer, a variety of building-related symptoms such as headache, fatigue, and difficulty concentrating were increased by over 50 percent in the buildings kept below 73.4°F (23°C).
These buildings, kept too cold for comfort in summer, included almost half the buildings measured in summer. These symptoms thus might be expected to decrease if buildings were air-conditioned less and kept warmer in the summer.
In winter, buildings with higher indoor temperatures (above 73.4°F, even though that is near the middle of the recommended temperature range) were associated with approximately 30 to 80 percent increases in building-related nose, eye, and skin symptoms and also headache. This included more than half the buildings measured in winter. These symptoms thus might decrease if buildings were kept cooler in the winter.
Simply put, avoiding overcooled buildings in the summer, and keeping buildings at the cooler end of the recommended temperature range in the winter, may result in a substantial decrease in building-related symptoms. This should still maintain thermal comfort in the buildings in winter, and should actually improve comfort in the summer.
“As we look for ways to save energy, these results suggest a potential win-win situation,” says Mendell. “Our findings suggest that energy efficiency and keeping buildings healthy and comfortable for the occupants are not necessarily in conflict. Less summer cooling in air-conditioned buildings and less winter heating in heated buildings might reduce energy use in buildings substantially, yet have health benefits for the occupants that we did not expect, and still keep occupants as comfortable as before or even more comfortable.”
Debris falling through the sky over Austin, Texas on Sunday. Photo: Sky News
The debris that fell through the sky over Austin, Texas, is getting a huge amount of media attention worldwide, with the general consensus over the weekend being that it had something to do with last week’s collision between two satellites.
But the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is now changing its story, saying that the incident was more likely caused by a meteorite.
The Federal Aviation Administration said Monday that the fireball was a natural phenomenon – not flying space junk – and a North Texas astronomer said more specifically that it was probably a pickup truck-sized meteor with the consistency of concrete.
The object was visible Sunday morning from Austin to Dallas and into East Texas. In Central Texas, the Williamson County sheriff’s office received so many emergency calls that it sent a helicopter aloft to look for debris from a plane crash.
The FAA backed off its weekend statement that the fireball possibly was caused by falling debris from colliding satellites plummeting into earth’s atmosphere.
On Sunday, the FAA said the fireball, accompanied by a sonic boom, was probably a piece of space debris, which officials thought may have come from a collision that destroyed two satellites last week.
The U.S. Strategic Command said there was no connection to the sightings over Texas and Tuesday’s collision of satellites from the U.S. and Russia.
“There is no correlation between the debris from that collision and those reports of re-entry,” said Maj. Regina Winchester, with STRATCOM.
Video of the incident from CNN:
We won’t have a definitive answer until someone finds a piece of the debris and it can be sent for examination. Until then, it’s comforting to know that even when I’m temporarily out of town Austin manages to keep things weird.
Footage from the 6th Annual Keep Austin Weird festival:
Viruses don't weigh much, but a new device developed by scientists at Trinity College Dublin can weigh them quickly and accurately. Photo: Sciam.com
News out today that researchers at Trinity College Dublin’s Department of Physics have developed a new system for detecting viruses, using tiny (.5 millimetres long and 1 micrometre thick) cantilevers –by creating what are essentially weighing scales for viruses. The research promises to deliver new mobile diagnostic technologies.
Lead researcher Martin Hegner claims that this system is more accurate and faster than existing systems, which are time-consuming and labour-intensive.
Cantilevers bend in response to different forces. By measuring changes in the frequencies at which these tiny planks vibrate, Hegner’s team created super-sensitive virus-weighing scales.
Hegner’s findings will be published in the international peer-reviewed journal Nature Nanotechnology in March.
For the first time, Hegner and his team have discovered how to perform these measurements in real-life physiological conditions using nanotechnology devices.
Commenting on the significance of the discovery, Professor Hegner said: “These findings could lead to more specific blood tests and also will enable portable diagnostic devices in a hospital environment for a range of testing not just viruses, but also genomic markers and marker proteins.”
Not strictly a bot, but this IronMan “robot costume” is pretty high-tech, as Halloween costumes go.
And at $3,200 and with specs like these, it’s clearly one for afficiandos:
This robot costume is standard with the painted body parts, gloves, underbody suit and a voice box that amplifies the performers voice 6 times the normal human voice. This robot costumes are built like aircraft from 100% durable lightweight composites including fiberglass and vacuum-formed plastics. The secret is that using composites Robot Costumes USA produces robot costumes that only weigh 35lbs which is no more than a hiking backpack. Our robots also have a three stage Dupont automotive paint job with two layers of clear-coat. Our robot costumes can take all kinds of abuse and is able to get wet if it rains. Just wash and wax it like a car.
And check this out –a site dedicated to robot costumes.
CERN’s management confirmed the restart schedule for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on Monday, following recommendations from last week’s Chamonix workshop.
CERN now expects the first beams in the LHC at the end of September, with the first collisions taking place in late October. The LHC will then run through to autumn 2010 with the first new physics analyses and results being announced shortly thereafter.
“The schedule we have now is without a doubt the best for the LHC and for the physicists waiting for data,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. “It is cautious, ensuring that all the necessary work is done on the LHC before we start-up, yet it allows physics research to begin this year.”
Vigorous exercise may help prevent vision loss, according to a pair of studies from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The studies tracked approximately 31,000 runners for more than seven years, and found that running reduced the risk of both cataracts and age-related macular degeneration.
Home to wonder-inducing exhibitions and mind-boggling public debates, the Science Gallery has attracted over 120,000 visitors in its first year –exceeding its original target of 50,000.
My personal favorite was the ArtBots Exhibition (video highlights below), a great example of science outreach in a fun environment. (I even brought my bristlebot for the day.)
I also had the pleasure of helping cover last year’s Science Week lecture series, hosted by the Science Gallery, for the Discover Science and Engineering blog. (See links to those entries at the foot of this post.)
They’ve been celebrating over at the Science Gallery blog.
You can expect to hear a lot more from the venue over the coming years, as Dublin prepares to become European City of Science in 2012.
So what’s showing there now? Well, from what I hear LIGHTWAVE –an exhibition “exploring our relationship with light– which runs until 20 February (Tuesday to Sunday from 4pm to 9pm: free of charge) is the best exhibition yet. I haven’t been yet, but hope to see it this weekend –can’t wait!
A memorial to ocean rowers lost at sea, erected in Kilkee, Co. Clare, Ireland.
As I was eating dinner while sitting in front of the main hatch, enjoying the fresh air and the view of the moonlit ocean, a wave hit my starboard side at just the right angle to send a splash of water into the cabin. As I was toweling things off I must have knocked loose the connection from the VHF antenna to the AIS unit, because shortly thereafter it was blinking wrong color lights, which indicates a problem.
As endurance sports go, ocean rowing has to be the most energy-sapping, patience-testing, potentially fatal of all.
But that didn’t stop the USA’s Paul Ridley from setting out from the Canary Islands on Jan 1st to row 2,950 miles across the Atlantic Ocean. At time of writing, Ridley has been at sea for 32 days. (Track his location live here.)
Thanks to the wonders of modern science and technology, Ridley is able to maintain a daily blog. Ironically, his latest entry is about technical problems with his Automatic Identification System: Read the rest of this entry »
Ireland’s largest ISP Eircom has reached an agreement with music publishers to introduce a “three strike” system that could lead to persistent file-swappers having their Internet access removed.
Arstechnica’s Nate Anderson has a great article on the topic:
One of Ireland’s largest ISPs, Eircom, has capitulated to the major music labels and agreed to implement a full “graduated response” program—complete with disconnections. Users get two warnings regarding file-sharing, and a third violation brings down the banhammer. The music industry has already said that it intends to pursue the same agreement with Ireland’s other ISPs.
The dispute began some time ago when the Irish branches of EMI, Warner, Universal, and Sony filed suit against Eircom. They charged that the ISP was essentially aiding and abetting piracy by doing things like advertising its services on The Pirate Bay, and the labels believed they could get a judge to force the ISP to install network monitoring equipment.
Philosophising in Second Life. Pic: tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk
Disclaimer: the author of this blog is a recovering Heideggerian (as demonstrated by this interview I had with philosopher John D. Caputo some years ago.) Add to that the fact that I am currently engaged in preparing a book about Friedrich Nietzsche for the Philosophy Insights series, and you will understand that I have probably already disqualified myself from asking any intelligent questions about science and technology whatsoever.
Nevertheless, I press on.
Professor Luciano Floridi, a philosopher at the University of Hertfordshire, is taking to Second Life as part of a two-year project to investigate the philosophical significance of the identities we create in online virtual environments. Also on Floridi’s radar: the ethical conundrums posed by the (almost entirely mythical) anonymity of the Internet, which gives us the freedom to recreate ourselves in new ways, outside the norms of social convention.
The research, entitled ‘The Construction of Personal Identities Online’, will explore a long list of philosophical questions, explains Floridi via email… Read the rest of this entry »
I received a less pleasant blast from the distant past (2007) today –less pleasant than the Proteus story, that is– as I came across notes for an old story about pedophilia-related advocacy editing on Wikipedia.
That story –commissioned by The Guardian (UK)– did not see the light of day as I got waylaid with the small matter of moving continents and never managed to organise the reams of notes, interview transcripts, and email exchanges into a coherent article.
*kicks self*
But not too hard: Pedophilia is an extraordinarily difficult topic to write about intelligently, and yet is almost small beans compared to the tangled controversies that surround Wikipedia edits!
Further, the strong personalities involved, including Perverted Justice founder Xavier von Erck, Wikipedia co-founders Jimbo Wales and Larry Sanger, self-proclaimed pedophile activists, and others, provided such conflicting perspectives on the topic that it was almost impossible to separate truth from spin.
Finally, 1,200 words could not do justice to a story that spans pedophilia, Wikipedia, Perverted Justice, Corrupted Justice, Citizendium, social epistemology, and numerous other topics. [Editors: commision a three-part series and I will give you rocket fuel... and some copy.]
In any case, in October 2007, whilst working on the piece (which was inspired by discovering that anti-pedophile activist von Erck had been banned from Wikipedia), I contacted Dylan Thomas, webmaster of a notorious pedophile website to ask about his views regarding advocacy editing on Wikipedia.
I knew the guy would be secretive about his identity.
What I didn’t know at that time was that Dylan Thomas was, in fact, FBI top ten most wanted fugitive Jon Schillaci.
Fifteen years into the IRA ceasefire, a team of English scientists has developed an IRA-proof concrete. Photo courtesy: University of Liverpool
Some 15 years after the IRA declared an indefinite ceasfire, a team of British scientists has developed an IRA-proof concrete.
The scientists and engineers from the University of Liverpool created a fibre-reinforced concrete “designed to reduce the impact of bomb blasts in public areas.”
Their research “culminated in a series of high explosion blast tests at RAF Spadeadam, in Cumbria, each representing a typical IRA car bomb.”
Video of a test explosion is will be available shortly here:
In testing, the IRA-proof concrete was found to absorb a thousand times more energy than plain concrete and could, the team claim, “therefore be used for bomb-proof litter bins and protection barriers.”
The IRA has been on a ceasefire since 1994, so why did the tests use a 15 year-old car bomb technology (or equivalent)? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to test the concrete against more modern car bombs?
“The use of IRA bombs as an example was merely for a comparison to give some idea of the blast impact,” a University of Liverpool spokesperson replied via email.
“In regards to your questions on the type and quantity of explosive materials used- unfortunately as you’ll appreciate this information is quite sensitive so we are unable to give you anything further on that I am afraid.”
So, what we appear to have here is a type of concrete that can effectively withstand explosions caused by a 15 year-old explosives technology (the nature of which we cannot discuss) in the event that these mysterious antique explosives are deployed by a non-active guerilla army.
Wanna buy some?
Although not yet used in the UK the Ultra High Performance Fibre Reinforced Concrete (UHPFRC) has been utilised in Australia in the design of slender footbridges and in the roofs of government buildings to strengthen them against mortar attack.
The UHPFRC resisted the high explosion blast without any disintegration from the back of the panels causing shrapnel. UHPFRC is concrete with needle-thin steel fibres added to the concrete mix. Typically, steel reinforcing bars are used to to increase concrete’s strength.
The team claims that their concrete has an enhanced tension and compression strength of 500% greater than conventional concrete.
It’s great to see Proteus, the tiny medical robot, back in the news via this BBC News story.
I first wrote about the device for Wired News back in January 2007 –(read that story here).
We even had Wired News readers suggest names for the device and James Friend, the lead scientist on the project –and one of the most media-friendly scientists I have ever interviewed– chose Proteus, after the experimental submarine that features in Fantastic Voyage.
But enough of that.
In the past few days, Proteus has been everywhere in the news. What’s all the fuss about?
Well, Proteus is a medical-robot about twice the size of human hair, that can swim through the arteries and perform surgical procedures.
For example, the microrobot might deliver a payload of expandable glue to the site of a damaged cranial artery — a procedure typically fraught with risk because posterior human brain arteries lay behind a complicated set of bends at the base of the skull beyond the reach of all but the most flexible catheters. There’s a high risk of puncturing one of these arteries, which almost always results in the death of the patient.
Friend’s design exploits piezoelectric materials — crystals that create an electric charge when mechanically stressed– to create the bot’s tiny motor. The completed bot, Friend hopes, will, despite its small size, be able to carry a camera.
“We’re making good progress,” Friend told me via email. “Brett Watson is still having some problems with fabrication of the motor, but is getting better at it so hopefully all will come out well.”
Back in 2007, Friend predicted that we could have a working Proteus by the end of 2009.
A woman using a gadget. Prepare to see more of this sort of thing over the coming years.
Girls are more likely to have new technologies at home than boys and it is mothers rather than fathers who assist them, according to a new report due to be launched on Thursday. (You can download a copy here.)
The Learning in the Family report found that 94 per cent of the girls said that they used a computer or laptop compared with only 88 per cent of boys.
And 50 per cent of children chose their mothers to help them to use new technologies, versus 22 per cent, which chose their fathers.
The report is based on two online surveys with a sample of 4,606 children aged six to fourteen, going into more depth with a further 2,535 children and interviews with twelve families.
The aim was to assess how parents engage with children learning new technology and how parents could better support their children’s learning.
“What is clear from these results is that mothers are taking the lead,” said Professor Pine. “Overall, mothers are more likely to engage with their children using new technologies especially when it comes to formal learning or research. The mothers were also the most experienced and capable computer and Internet users.”
Another key finding was that 40% of children surveyed wanted to see an improvement in parental involvement and many of the parents interviewed said that they would like to learn more through online courses, through the television or through their local school or college.
Bond's method enables scientists to ‘visualise fingerprints’ on metal (including bullet casings) even after the print itself has been removed. Image: Time Magazine
On February 10, 1998, Louis “Pete” LaFontaine was found shot to death in his home on Stafford Avenue in Bristol, Connecticut. LaFontaine was a resident of Bristol for many years and operated a successful appliance repair shop on Park Street.
Louis "Pete" LaFontaine
LaFontaine was well known throughout the City of Bristol, and his murder shocked the community, according to police. The Bristol Police have conducted an extensive investigation into the murder of Mr. LaFontaine, but despite interviewing countless individuals, analyzing forensic evidence, and executing a number of search warrants, the murder remains unsolved.
Bond is collaborating with Bristol Police Department, Connecticut, to probe the LaFontaine murder. And, on January 20th, he will meet Detective Garrie Dorman from Connecticut Police to see whether the new technique can shed new light on the crime.
Bond’s team developed a method that enables scientists to ‘visualise fingerprints’ on metal (including bullet casings) even after the print itself has been removed. The team examined the way fingerprints can corrode metal surfaces and found that they could enhance fingerprints deposited on small calibre cartridge cases.
The method works on the principle that sweat corrodes metal. So, Bond applied an electrical charge and a fine carbon powder to a gun’s corroded part, revealing a fingerprint pattern –even if the gun was fired several years ago.
Bond’s technique was named one of the top 50 inventions of 2008 by Time Magazine. The method has been patented worldwide and Northamptonshire Police is hoping to sell the process to interested buyers who could run the operation on a commercial basis or manufacture units to sell on to law enforcement agencies worldwide.
See also: Last year’s piece on new research that uses nanoscale tags made from natural pollen to help trace gun users.
Here’s a sneak look at some of the best images from the forthcoming exhibition A Climate for Life: Meeting the Global Challenge, which opens at the California Academy of Sciences on January 17th.
Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory have been testing a system designed to load and unload trucks autonomously or by remote control, to be used in dangerous places such as war zones. Photo Credit: Jason Dorfman.
As the team explains, being a forklift operator in a war zone isn’t easy:
Currently, when supplies arrive at military outposts in war zones such as Iraq, people driving forklifts unload the pallets and put them into storage, and later load them onto trucks to take the material to where it’s needed. These forklift operators must often scramble for cover, slowing the work and putting them at risk.
When completed, the new robotic device will provide a safer way to handle pallet-loaded supplies of everything from truck tires to water containers and construction materials, says Matt Walter, a CSAIL
postdoctoral researcher with a lead role in the project. The device is designed to operate outdoors on uneven terrain such as gravel or packed earth.
Currently, when supplies arrive at military outposts in war zones such as Iraq, people driving forklifts unload the pallets and put them into storage, and later load them onto trucks to take the material to where it’s needed. These forklift operators must often scramble for cover, slowing the work and putting them at risk.
When completed, the new robotic device will provide a safer way to handle pallet-loaded supplies of everything from truck tires to water containers and construction materials, says Matt Walter, a CSAIL
postdoctoral researcher with a lead role in the project. The device is designed to operate outdoors on uneven terrain such as gravel or packed earth.
The CSAIL researchers made extensive use of computer code developed for other projects, including the autonomous vehicle MIT entered in the 2007 DARPA Grand Challenge auto race, in which unmanned cars navigated urban roads without human intervention.
Check out a video simulation of how the forklift bot might be used here. (I really like the voice recognition features and the ability to simply identify the pallets you want to move just by circling them on a small touchscreen.)
If you haven’t already, check out my previous post on warehouse bots here.
Ever wanted your very own Robocop? Now’s yer chance.
A trifling $12,850 will get you a used Cyberguard SR3 (.PDF) –an autonomous surveillance bot developed in the mid-90s.
Cyberguard
The first CyberguardSR3 platform is based on their three-wheel synchro-drive K2A Navmaster autonomous mobility base, which had been commercially available for material handling and research applications. Cyberguard models were equipped with environmental sensors and a CCD camera that relayed real-time video over an analog RF link back to a central security console, where a guard could remotely take control of camera pan-and-tilt functions if so desired. Continuous time-lapse video recording was accomplished locally onboard the robotic vehicle for archive purposes
Scientists hope to use satellite images like these to predict output from existing vineyards
Spanish researchers have developed computer software that can identify grapevine cultivation from satellite images, enabling scientists to calculate the potential wine production of an area under cultivation.
Find out more via my brief report on the Decanter website.
Can religion really improve our resistance to pain? A research study announced today by a team from Oxford University suggests so:
New research by a group of scientists, philosophers and psychologists from the University of Oxford, to be published in the next edition of the journal Pain1, reveals, for the first time, that religion-associated pain resistance is linked to the activation of the brain right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), an area associated with both cognitive down-regulation of pain and reassessment of the emotional meaning of an experience – for example by giving a neutral or even positive meaning to a noxious experience, and so making it much easier to cope with. Read the rest of this entry »
Salt crystals. Pic: Michigan College of Engineering.
Excuse me, could you pass the seaweed please?
High salt levels in processed food could be a thing of the past, thanks to new research which has found that a certain type of seaweed can be used as a natural, health boosting alternative that doesn’t affect the taste or adversely affect the shelf life of the food.
Amidst all the doom and gloom about environmental destruction and species extinction it was great to read that a blue whale has been photographed for the first time in Irish waters.
According to Yahoo! News:
The sighting of the elusive creature, which is so big its heart is the size of a small car and a child could swim in its arteries, is believed to have global significance for a species thought nearly extinct in the 1960s.
But amateur whale-watcher Ivan O’Kelly did not realise what he had snapped off the Co Kerry coast until he sent the pictures to the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG). Read the rest of this entry »
The complete loss of insect pollinators, “particularly honey bees and wild bees” would not lead to the catastrophic disappearing of world agrioculture, according to research published today in the journal Ecological Ethics.
Whjile the French and German researchers found that the worldwide economic value of the pollination services provided by insect pollinators, bees mainly, was €153 billion in 2005 –9.5% of the total value of the world agricultural food production, there’s no need to panic.
And while “pollinator disappearance” as they call it, would translate into a consumer surplus loss estimated between €190 to €310 billion, with fruit, vegetable and edible oil crops being affected most, we could continue producing food quite well were all the little bees to perish.
An Irish researcher has developed the country’s first bristlebot –a technology previously only available to the US military.
The identity of the researcher however, is shrouded in mystery. The only evidence of the bot’s existence being a grainy video and a short email to this blog:
High-res NMR scan of a bee’s brain. Photo: Journal of Insect Science.
A bee’s brain may be about the size of a sesame seed, but neuroscientists are increasingly turning to these microcosmic consciousnesses in their attempt to understand how the human brain operates.
Now, a brand new bee research facility for neuroscientists in Queensland, Australia has been opened with the intention of increasing our understanding of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s according to a report in The Age.
The $2.5 million All Weather Bee Flight Facility (AWBFF) is specially designed to help scientists to study how bee’s brains function and develop. Housed at a dedicated neuroscience research center (the Queensland Brain Institute), it is claimed that the AWBFF is the world’s largest indoor, climate-controlled insect flight-testing facility.
But why are neuroscientists so interested in bee’s brains? More on that (and other bee-brained projects) after the bump. Read the rest of this entry »
Thought you could escape Election ‘08 by hiding away in a log cabin with your Xbox 360? Sorry, but you’ll have to do better than that according to this report from Gizmodo.
REDMOND, Wash. — Aug. 21, 2008 — A leading gaming and entertainment platform just became a leading platform for change. Microsoft Corp. and Rock the Vote today announced a groundbreaking partnership that will allow Xbox 360 owners to register to vote, participate in presidential polls and voice their opinions to the presidential candidates. It will all happen through Xbox LIVE starting Monday, Aug. 25, the first day of the Democratic National Convention.
“Xbox is a natural partner to help us reach out to youth voters,” said Heather Smith, executive director, Rock the Vote. “To realize our goal of registering 2 million young Americans by this fall, we need to go where young Americans are, and there’s no doubt in our minds that many are on Xbox 360 and Xbox LIVE.” Read the rest of this entry »
Biomacromolecule image from The Royal Society of Chemistry. (Proteopedia uses special Java-enabled software to create its 3D, interactive models, so to view one, you will need to visit the Proteopedia.org site.)
Say hello to Proteopedia –a new online encyclopedia aimed at the scientific community that offers interactive, 3D models of different aspects of biomacromolecules. Biomacromolecules refer to proteins, lipids, nucleotides, and carbohydrates. We can think of them as large complex molecules and –because of their size and complexity– the arrival of an interactive 3D resource is sure to be of interest to scientists and students worldwide. Check out an introductory video here. Read the rest of this entry »
Had enough campaign coverage already? Suffering from Presidential Election fatigue? Boy is this not the post for you.
For the rest of us however, here’s a way to bring even more Election ‘08 material into your life from Vringo–free daily-updated video ringtones for your cell phone based on Obama and McCain themes.
Now every time your phone rings it will do a little campaiging for you by broadcasting the latest from your favorite candidate’s camp.
Let it ring and judge the reactions of those around you to find out which way they’ll be voting in November.
Got an old toothbrush lying neglected somewhere in your home? Don’t throw it until you’ve considered building a bristle bot: a tiny robot that uses clever combination of mechanics and electronics to create a simple, easy-to-build robot.
After the bump, links to bristle bot resources, and a video demonstration of a scaled up version that could –with a little tweaking– be used to sweep your kitchen floor. Move over Roomba? Let’s see.
This University of Reading Bio-bot might help researchers better understand Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, and how the brain recuperates from strokes. (Image courtesy of University of Reading)
1. Science Daily is reporting that a multidisciplinary team at the University of Reading has developed a robot that can be controlled by a biological brain made from cultured rat’s neurons. The researchers hope to examine how memories manifest themselves in the brain, and how brains store specific pieces of information.
2. Meanwhile, Slate is running a piece about general reforms needed in the field of forensic science, with bad science, cognitive bias, and pressure from prosecutors, top of the list.
Umbrella vending machine. Pic: PhotoMann.Com
3. Wired News’ Gadget Lab blog has a fun piece on The World’s Weirdest Vending Machines, which include everything from eggs to umbrellas. Check out PhotoMann’s website: he has a whole section dedicated to Japanese vending machines.
The propeller-driven machine is powered by biofuels (which caused the current world food crisis, according to a World Bank report leaked to The Guardian), carries an ice penetrating radar to detect potentially perilous crevasses, and uses a spiked “foot” as a braking mechanism.
It looks cartoonishly good, but I wonder how much the insurance costs will be?
Carl Senior and colleague Baldeesh Gakhal of the UK's Aston University claim that celebrity means more to consumers than beauty when it comes to celebrity endorsements. Should we be worried? Photo: Aston University.
Detective Stabler of Law & Order, SVU. You're more likely to buy toothpaste from this guy. Photo: ten networks, Australia.
Nope.
It’s Carl Senior and colleague Baldeesh Gakhal of the UK’s Aston University. The pair have just published a paper which suggests something that Hello! readers have known for three decades: that celebrity means more to consumers than beauty. In other words, if Detective Stabler and Carl Senior were endorsing rival scientific papers, we are more likely to choose the paper being endorsed by Detective Stabler because of his celebrity status.
How the researchers came to that conclusion (and some insidious language) after the bump.
"Excuse me, would you care to overthrow the international capitalist system with me later tonight?" ANA gets up close and personal with police at the 2007 G8 summit in Rostock, Germany.
Last week’s entry about iRobot Corporation’s Negotiator robot, reminded me of a very different robot project that was launched to considerable publicity back in 2006, including the following headline from Wired News’ Gadget Lab: Robotic Conscientious Objectors Coming In 2008.
So, what happened to ANA or the ‘autonomous non-violent agent’ robot that was being put together by Spain’s Factory Of Pretty Things?
The UN has been called in to help protect the world's bee populations.
The world’s bee crisis was acknowledged at the highest level last week, with the announcement that the United Nations’ Environment Programme (UNEP) has launched a $26.45m programme to protect the bees, bats, and birds that pollinate our crops.
The UNEP/GEF project ‘Conservation & Management of Pollinators for Sustainable Agriculture through an Ecosystem Approach’ will contribute to the conservation, sustainable use and management of pollinators by:
developing and implementing tools, methodologies, strategies and best management practices for pollinator conservation and sustainable use;
building local, national, regional and global capacities to enable the design, planning and implementation of interventions to mitigate pollinator population declines, and establish sustainable pollinator management practices; and
promoting the coordination and integration of activities related to the conservation and sustainable use of pollinators at the international level to enhance global synergies.
The Negotiator, iRobot's latest addition to its industrial robot line. Credit: iRobot Corporation.
So that’s why I kept hearing the ‘Priceline Negotiator’ jingle (7 secs) in my dreams this week.
iRobot Corporation has introduced the iRobot Negotiator, a new robot designed for public safety duty, as The Boston Globe and Engagdget reported Wednesday,
The prohibitive cost of this sort of technology for state and local government agencies raised its head again, as c|net’s Candace Lombardi reports:
It seems that iRobot has finally realized that the PackBot, while fine for military units with large budgets, was just too expensive for local government agencies to adopt.
“We believe that the low entry price point for iRobot Negotiator will help make it accessible to local, state and federal agencies that would not have been able to afford a robot otherwise,” Joe Dyer, president of iRobot’s Government and Industrial Robots division, said in a statement.
The Negotiator will be available in the fourth quarter of 2008 for about $20,000, according to iRobot
The Negotiator is basically a pared down version of the company’s versatile PackBot, which is used by the US military in Iraq. Like the PackBot, the Negotiator can climb stairs, be operated by games controller, and be outfitted with tools for reconnaissance and chemical detection.
If you’re prepared to start bidding at a cool $1,499, you just might get your hands on a 6 foot tall model of the world’s most famous robot ship’s cook –Bender from Futurama, made by Las Vegas Design.
But if you were hoping to bite Bender’s “shiny metal a**,” you’ll be bitterly disappointed because the model is made of expanded ploysterene (a substance created when you mix polystyrene with 5-10% gaseous blowing agent, most commonly carbon dioxide).
The Bender bio on Got Futurama reveals that Bender is a “Unit 22 Bending Unit” and was his mother’s Read the rest of this entry »
Tagged and bound: nanotags applied to cartridge cases and detectable, after firing, on the user’s gloves. Image: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK.
Nanoscale tags made from natural pollen can be used to trace forensic links between guns and the people who use them, according to new research from the UK.
The tiny tags – just 30 microns in diameter and invisible to the naked eye – can be coated onto gun cartridges. The tags then attach themselves to the hands or gloves of anyone handling the cartridge. They are also very difficult to wash off completely, the researchers claim.
Even after the gun has been fired, some of the nanotags will remain –making it possible, in theory at least, to establish a forensic link between a cartridge fired during a crime and whoever handled it.
Researchers don't know exactly how long the tags will remain attached to the shooter's hands or gloves.
It’s a technology that promises a lot for law enforcement, but will they be able to afford it?
Life on dial-up just isn’t the same. No whizzing from website to website, pulling video and pics. Splash screens become a complete drag. Downloading a PDF takes a lifetime. And you pay for it all by the minute.
So, no blog posts for a few days while I wait for broadband to be installed. That should happen Friday.
I’ll be busy in the meantime though, so stay tuned.
BTW, how does a blog that has had less-than-zero promotion put into it –(for now)– attract readers? How is it even found online?
That remains a mystery –(for now)– but many thanks to those who emailed.
The combination photo shows the total solar eclipse occured in Jinta County of Jiuquan City, northwest China’s Gansu Province, on Aug. 1, 2008. The total solar eclipse, the first that can be viewed in China in the new century, occured on Friday. (Xinhua/Han Chuanhao)
China View has just posted some photos of the total solar eclipse earlier today. Totality lasted for about two minutes.
In Ireland results were a little less spectacular as the eclipse was only partial over the island. As this RTE News story reports, there was a noticeable drop in temperature as the eclipse progressed:
Image: RTE.ie
US readers anticipating a total solar eclipse will have to wait until Aug 21st, 2017, or, to put it another way, not long after the end of Obama’s second term in office.
1. Take a famous painting like Patch of Grass by Van Gogh.
Figure 1. (a) Vincent van Gogh, Patch of Grass, Paris, Apr−June 1887, oil on canvas, 30 cm × 40 cm. The red frame indicates the field of view in images b and c (rotated 90° counter-clockwise). (b) X-ray radiation transmission radiograph (XRR), paint sample location indicated in the blue frame (Figure 4). (c) Infrared reflectograph (IRR).
X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrography works on the principle that a strong X-Ray pulse affects each atom in the target in different ways allowing scientists to track specific chemicals on different layers. Graph: Amptek.Com
3. Use that information to track every type of atom (and pigment type) in the canvas (e.g. mercury or lead, common ingredients in paint in Van Gogh’s time). And…
4. Presto! You can reveal older works that have been painted over. (In this case, the portrait of a woman that looks like a rough sketch for the artist’s (more) famous Potato Eaters painting.)
University of Antwerp/Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron Researchers used X-rays from a particle accelerator to reconstruct the portrait of a woman Vincent van Gogh had painted over before composing his landscape "Patch of Grass," completed in 1887. Conventional X-rays used in previous analyses had produced only rough outlines of the portrait. The image, unveiled in a scientific journal published this week, bears a striking resemblance to a series of somber portraits the artist produced in the Dutch town of Nuenen, where he composed “The Potato Eaters,” completed in 1885 and regarded as his first major work.
An international research team, including members from Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) and the University of Antwerp (Belgium), has successfully applied this technique for the first time, and it’s not surprising that they chose Van Gogh:
There may be no UK honey on store shelves this holiday season if scientists don't find a solution to the varroa parasite, warns expert. Photo: Daily Express
There may be no native honey on UK store shelves this holiday season if scientists don’t find a solution to the effects of the varroa mite (see yesterday’s post).
That’s the stark warning from Stuart Bailey, director of the Honey Association, as reported in The Daily Express today.
The pollinating services of bees are estimated to be worth £165million a year to the UK economy. Stuart Bailey, director of the Honey Association, said: “There will be no English honey on the shelves of supermarkets at Christmas though there will be some from abroad. Consumers will not get English honey unless they buy it from local bee keepers but they too will sell out quite quickly.
Meanwhile, in Scotland, the crisis surrounding bee populations has inspired the creation of a special bee-friendly garden in the University of Stirling, the BBC reports. The Bumblebee Conservation Trust is also involved in the project:
Vintage tv lovers might be tempted by a Lost In Spacereproduction (pictured above) available on eBAY for a wallet-chilling $21,500. Auction ends August 4th.
Welcome to Bee Watch, a series of updates on Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) –the name given to the sudden and dramatic decline in bee populations since the mid-noughties.
Why does CCD matter?
If the bees go, we go. Bees pollinate about a third of the food we eat, but more than that: they also sting bad people and scare the pants off small children. CCD is preventing large numbers of bees from performing these tasks efficiently.
CCD (US Dept of Agriculture Fact Sheet) has been blamed on everything from mobile phones to pesticides, but no one has definitively uncovered its root causes yet.
Bee Watch will bring you the latest research news on CCD and related bee-news.
Researchers in the University of Warwick, England, are investigating ways of killing the varroa mite –the small parasite believed to be a factor in CCD– using a natural fungus and some novel dispersion methods, including fungal foot baths for bees, the idea being that when bees enter the hive, their legs will pick up (and distribute) the fungus that kills the little parasite.
SETI is offering you the chance to adopt a scientist. Don't worry, they've all had their shots.
The life of a scientist is sometimes a lonely one: with long hours in the lab, endless paperwork to pore over, and nothing but a set of test tubes for company.
SETI is hoping to change all that with its Adopt A Scientist Program, which allows you to take a scientist home, feed and clothe them, and pretend to understand when they walk about in their slippers talking about quantum theory and alien invasions.
Source: National Maritime Museum, http://www.nmm.ac.uk/
Received this helpful reminder –and some essential safety tips– from the UK’s Royal Astronomical Society today, about the forthcoming solar eclipse of August 1st:
On 1st August 2008 there will be a total eclipse of the Sun, visible from Canada, northern Greenland, Svalbard, the Barents Sea, Russia, Mongolia and China.
[On the island of Ireland, observers will see a partial solar eclipse, with between 1/10th and 1/3rd of the Sun obscured by the Moon. The eclipse will begin before 9 AM.]
•Although eclipses of the Sun are spectacular events, they should NOT be viewed with the unaided eye except during the brief period of totality, which this time will not be visible anywhere in the UK. Looking at the partially eclipsed Sun without appropriate protection can cause serious and permanent damage to the eyes.
•The partial eclipse can be safely studied using purpose-designed solar filters available from reputable astronomical suppliers. Without these, the only safe ways to observe the Sun are to use a pinhole or telescope to PROJECT the Sun’s image onto card or to look at the natural dappled images under trees.
[The excellent Exploratorium.Edu website has instructions on how to construct a pinhole projector for eclipse viewing here.]
I received an update from the team behind the Geostationary Banana Over Texas project this morning and, sadly, their plans to launch a huge banana-shaped blimp 30-50 km into the Texas sky have been indefinitely suspended:
Improvements in food preparation techniques mean that today’s astronauts can –within reason– enjoy the same foods in space that they enjoy on earth.
There’s no need for those of us remaining on planet earth to feel left out though. The Space Store sells meals designed for astronauts on the International Space Station, from Cinnamon Apple Wedges to Florentine Lasagna.
IEEE Spectrum Online uploaded a fascinating YouTube video July 21st, which shows warehouse robots at work. Developed by MA-based Kiva Systems, these little bots engage in a delicate ballet as they carry goods around the warehouse floor.
The robots read barcode stickers embedded in the floor to move around and are powered by a single DC motor.
The concept of a self-organizing warehouse is also upon us: Kiva System’s robots can automatically move popular goods to the best collection point, while leaving less popular items at the back of the warehouse.
Scientists at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Lab have discovered what they describe as “an unexpected gap-like feature in the energy spectrum of electrons tunneling into graphene’s single layer of atoms.”
Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you knew each other!
Our sense of the interconnectedness of earth’s natural systems can always do with some reinforcing –and a research study released today from the University of Liverpool does just that:
Scientists from the University of Liverpool’s Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences have found evidence which suggests that life in the North Atlantic Ocean (particularly the phytoplankton populations) are being sustained by nutrients that Saharan dust storms leave behind.
Working aboard research vessels in the Atlantic, scientists mapped the distribution of nutrients including phosphorous and nitrogen. They also investigated how organisms such as phytoplankton are sustained in areas with low nutrient levels.
“We found that cyanobacteria – a type of ancient phytoplankton – are significant to the understanding of how ocean deserts can support plant growth,” says Professor George Wolff, from the University’s Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences. Read the rest of this entry »
Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) has appointed Dr. Stephen Simpson –an expert in the areas of biomedicine, immunology, human genetics, molecular cell biology, cancer and HIV– to the position of Director of Life Sciences.
Simpson will play a key role in contributing to building Ireland as a centre of excellence for Life Sciences research, promoting academic-industrial partnerships, and the encouragement of an excellence driven science culture, says SFI.
The IFR Statistical Department publishes an annual study called “World Robotics,” that carries an array of global statistics about both industrial and service robots.
The latest version –World Robotics 2008– was published last month and the figures make for interesting reading. Given that we’ve been looking at domestic robots in recent posts, I thought the following figures related to “service robots for personal and private use” were worth sharing: Read the rest of this entry »
This story was in The Irish Times last week, but for those that missed it, Michelle Bennett, head of the Department of Applied Science at the Limerick Institute of Technology, is working with NASA on a project that might lead to sphagnum mosses from Irish bogs being used to grow food on future Mars missions.
Early last week scientists released research which found that the more human-like features a robot possesses, the more we engage cortical regions associated with mental state attribution/mentalizing in their presence.
In other words, if bots look like humans, smell like humans, and taste like humans, then we think they’re human. (Don’t eat them though, they’re bad for your teeth.)
So, it was interesting to read the following remark from Christopher Parlitz, one of the scientists behind the Care-O-Bot 3 prototype, which was unveiled a few days ago: Read the rest of this entry »
Throw down your hairshirts and get with the stress vest –a wearable electronic system being developed by biomedical scientists at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.
The vest is fitted with numerous, tiny electromyography (EMG) electrodes that can calculate your stress levels by monitoring the level of electrical excitation in your muscles.
The electrical signal produced by your muscles changes with your stress level. So, if you’ve been overdoing it at work (or prayer), for example, the sensors will register heightened electrical excitation and pass the signal to an electronic analysis kit via a network of tiny conducting metallic fibers.
The vest can then inform you to take a break –or make another espresso.
Posted by emmetcole 
