and even tuberculosis#have developed numerous mechanisms to keep themselves alive at all cost#mostly against antibiotics.
That s just what a group of MIT researchers have done in a new study published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
CRISPR has a certain protein in it called Cas9 that acts like a scissor Lu associate professor of biological engineering electrical engineering
and computer science tells Popular Science. It recognizes specific sequences of DNA and cuts it. So what we can do is take that genome-editing tool
and target anything we want. By changing the RNA address we can direct the scissor.#
and even brain cancer but the MIT researchers are the first to use them to combat antibiotic resistance.#
They also guided the CRISPR to attack bacterial genes that make the microorganism capable of causing disease in the first place.
Once these genome-editing techniques were mastered the researchers then had to figure out ways to deliver the modified CRISPRS to the bacteria.
Meanwhile the phage-delivery method could be utilized more as a therapeutic tool. And depending on how the CRISPR system is designed it can work in one of two ways:
But if CRISPR is designed to remove the bacteria s genes that make them deadly in the first place the system can effectively destroy the infection.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at least 2 million people become infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria each year in the United states resulting in at least 23000 deaths.
#Snake Robots And A Quadcopter Fuse Together In this Chimera Drone Rescue robots are better when they travel in packs.
Quadcopter drones can quickly fly over and around obstacles but once on the ground they can t too much besides take off again.
A new chimera-like creation from the Modular Robotics Lab at the University of Pennsylvania combines two snakebots and one quadcopter into a sort of drone superorganism bringing rescue robots together
The drone#is designed explicitly as an alternative to stronger heavier robots that use force to power over rubble.
A lighter approach leaves the rubble in place and means rescue bots can find people where they are
Roboticist Stella Latscha led the team of researchers that presented the drone last week at the 2014 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.
but in the future hybrid robot teams like this one could venture into ruined buildings to save trapped humans.
#An All-Liquid Battery For Storing Solar And Wind energy You could call it a rainy-day fund.
A team of MIT researchers has built an all-liquid battery prototype that's designed to store excess energy from solar and wind power plants.
or the wind isn't blowing future versions of this battery could release energy captured during more productive times into nations'power grids.
Cheaper more efficient energy storage would be a big boost for alternative energy technologies. It would help solar panels
and wind turbines provide grids with steady electricity instead of surges during sunny or windy times so it's always there in case of high demand.
It also might make sun-and wind-produced electricity cheaper; by storing extra energy that isn't being used less electricity is wasted in the long run.
There are already solid batteries sold now to store energy from solar panels. They're mostly used in single homes however.
As solar facilities get larger solid batteries get more expensive and less efficient compared to how much energy the whole facility makes.
The MIT team thinks an all-liquid battery filled with searingly hot molten metals might be a good alternative.
Liquid batteries may be easier (and thus cheaper) to manufacture in larger sizes and they're expected to last longer than solid ones.
The team previously made a prototype all-liquid battery filled with magnesium and an element called antimony.
With this latest version the team has made a battery with lithium and antimony mixed with lead.
It has compared some advantages to its predecessor. Mixing the antimony with lead makes the materials cheaper.
Plus the battery can be kept at lower temperatures. It works at 450 degrees Celsius versus 700 degrees Celsius.
The team even conducted a durability test charging and discharging the liquid battery for 1800 hours.
From that data it predicts that the battery would lose 15 percent of its capacity after 10 years of daily use.
Engineers have known long about how important storage is to solar and wind energy given their unreliable natures.
For example evenings can be a high-demand time for electricity but they're not particularly sunny.
Additionally there can be an overproduction of solar energy during daylight hours meaning valuable electricity goes to waste frequently.
Research groups are working on a number of storage schemes to fix these issues from flywheels to liquid nitrogen and oxygen.
The MIT team published its work yesterday in the journal Nature e
#U s army Wants A Parachuting Tank After years of service in wars--from Iraq to Afghanistan to Iraq again--the Humvee is on its way out.
Officially named the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled vehicle (HMMVV) its acronym and stature is so iconic that it launched a series of commercial vehicles.
Now the Army wants to fill its light and fast shoes and to do so they looked at three different vehicles last week during exercises in Fort Benning Georgia. Together the vehicles would enable the Army to do forcible entry missions
which is Pentagonese for land and operate in a hostile place. The first vehicle is in essence a light tank.
Creatively titled Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) it s an armored vehicle that can be dropped from cargo planes.
The United states hasn't had a light parachutable tank since they retired the M551 Sheridan in 1996 and even then its performance was underwhelming;
armor light enough to drop isn t very protective. Earlier attempts at flying tanks proved less effective.
The next vehicles is the ultra-lightweight combat vehicle (ULCV. The ULCV is in essence a turbo jeep.
It will carry a full nine person infantry squad along with their equipment up to 3200 pounds total.
The vehicle itself will weigh no more than 4500 pounds making the fully loaded and crewed vehicle under 8000 pounds.
It has to fit inside a CH-47 Chinook cargo helicopter so that the crew can drive right in
or out and the vehicle should drive for at least 250 miles at full weight while also being able to survive a rollover.
The Army also wants it to drive cross-country primary road secondary road and urban rubble during both day and night missions.
While the current solicitation for the ULCV doesn't specify it a previous solicitation wanted the vehicle to to incorporate a medium caliber weapon into squad operations.
In essence the ULCV should get a squad into the fight right off the helicopter over unpaved ground
and with a big gun onboard to help them out. Lastly the Army is also looking at a light reconnaissance vehicle (LRV) also carried by Chinook helicopters both inside and underneath.
The LRV will carry six soldiers and their gear and it will go on rougher terrain than the other two Humvee replacements.
Under the solicitation category lethality the Army says it wants an LRV with the capability of defeating
and engaging hardened enemy bunkers light armored vehicles and dismounted personnel in machine gun and sniper positions.
In addition to seeking out threats like that the LRV as requested will go farther than current Humvees protect against some blasts work in all weather and with degraded visibility and defeat outdated tanks.
Together these vehicles will let the Army arrive from the sky and start fighting on day one all
while waiting for heavier vehicles and reinforcements to arrive. If they all work as expected the vehicles would add greatly to
what the Army can do early on in a war with the light tanks protecting the landing zone the combat vehicle carrying soldiers to the fight
and the light reconnaissance vehicle seeking out hidden dangers. Of course the Marines may already be there.
Their MV-22 Ospreys can already deploy troops from the sky and soon they ll deploy vehicles too o
#Solar Car Powers Your House When It's Parked A team of twenty students at the Eindhoven University of Technology in The netherlands entered the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge 2013 a six-day solar race
across Australia's Outback in the new Michelin Cruiser Class. Practicality was paramount for these entries
though energy use payload capacity and speed counted as well. The question to answer according to Jordy de Renet one of Stella s drivers was Do you want it in your daily life?
Would you want to take it to get groceries? Well would you? De Renet grinned and opened the sloping rear compartment where the car's guts--motors controller etc.
--were housed in little more than a couple of glorified wooden cigar boxes leaving vast amounts of empty space between the rear wheels.
Plenty of room for groceries and no need to sneak around in the dark of night to go shopping though the car does have headlights and strips of red LED taillights.
There are a few bugs to work out before Stella is ready to take the kids to school.
The gullwing doors only open about chest-high for an adult so getting in and out requires an ability to fold oneself into the low seats.
It s a maneuver reminiscent of climbing in and out of Nascar stock cars through the window:
butt first and watch your head. Stella is made from mostly aluminum and carbon fiber and she doesn't have any insulation so
when the motors first crank up it s a noisy ride. At about 14 km h the system settles into cruise mode which is as quiet as the whir of any electric vehicle.
Slowing down engages a regenerative braking system which is also quiet but coming to a full stop unleashes the grinding symphony of traditional disc brakes.
The unusual shape was a compromise between aerodynamics and comfort for at least two people as required by the cruiser class specifications.
It also allowed for more surface area for solar cells which cover 6 square meters. The 60-kw battery sheathed in a bright yellow casing runs down the center of the vehicle
and provides up to about 400 km of range or 800 km when the solar panel is providing maximum juice.
On Stella s best day during the competition Solar Team Eindhoven was able to drive 500 km at an average of 100 km/hr.
Stella is CO2-neutral and the first energy-positive car in the world. The solar array charges while the car is in motion as well as
when it is parked. We get more energy out of the car than is needed to drive it said de Renet.
That power as much as twice what the car uses can be returned to the grid. The system uses a Wi-fi protocol for vehicles 802. 11p to see where the driver cannot.
While some of the newest cars available at dealerships today use radar and cameras to detect other cars
and objects they can't transmit around corners. Wi-fi as you probably know from using it in your house for phones laptops
and gaming systems in different rooms can. Stella s sensors picked up on the signal being transmitted by a nearby speed sign
and alerted the driver on a screen fixed to the clean knob-less dashboard that the limit was 25 mph.
A tall van blocked the view of a traffic light but the V2i system onboard Stella alerted the driver to the red light before anyone in the car could see it.
As of July Stella has a permanent license plate and permission to drive on public roads s
#How Tweets Can Save Lives Natural disasters and political unrest trigger torrents of tweets and posts chaotic snippets of what could be valuable information.
Patrick Meier director of social innovation at the Qatar Computing Research Institute applies artificial intelligence to this crowdsourced data organizing digital photos and messages into dynamic maps that can guide real-world
relief efforts. Popular Science: You work in crisis mapping what is that exactly? Patrick Meier:
In disasters there are a lot of eyewitness accounts on social media. But the overflow of information can be as paralyzing to response teams as the absence of it.
During Hurricane sandy there were more than 20 million tweets and several hundred thousand pictures. We re developing solutions to quickly identify needles in the haystack and chart them visually.
PS: What do the needles look like? PM: For example before Typhoon haiyan made landfall in the Philippines we got a request from the United nations to look for all tweets that said I need help
or The bridge has collapsed just. PS: In what way are used they? PM: On the Micromappers app volunteers classify and geolocate these calls for help.
Once people tag between 50 to 100 examples an algorithm then classifies similar tweets with 90 percent accuracy.
The result is a map with metadata that says In this area 20 people have expressed a need for food
or There are 17 reports of flooding. That s the scale at which humanitarian organizations operate.
PS: How does this improve and hasten disaster response? PM: Disasters are not static; they evolve.
With these new technologies we can get information in close to real time that helps support decision-making.
PS: What s the next step? PM: We want to apply machine learning to aerial imagery. Once we know what huts without roofs look like from a bird s-eye view we can run algorithms on photos to accelerate damage assessments.
PS: How about other applications? PM: We re creating a clone of the platform that enables election monitors to identify tweets related to intimidation bribery corruption or violence.
We ve also partnered with a wildlife reserve in Namibia to identify animal species in aerial images
so managers know which populations need protection. This article originally appeared in the October 2014 issue of Popular Science e
#Want A Ride To The ISS? Spacex And Boeing Will Take You Ladies and gentlemen we have a winner-well two actually.
Today NASA announced that two private companies will be tasked with taxiing NASA ASTRONAUTS to and from the International space station beginning in 2017.
And the spoils go to Boeing and Spacex. The companies will sign contracts with NASA to further develop their spacecraft to deliver astronauts to and from the ISS.
Boeing will receive $4. 2 billion to build its CST-100 spacecraft a vehicle it has been working on for the past four years
while Spacex will receive $2. 6 billion to create an upgraded rendition of its Dragon spacecraft aptly named Dragon Version 2. The original Dragon is currently being used to ferry cargo from Earth to the ISS.
The CST-100 and Dragon V2 outwardly look similar to NASA s Orion capsule but they can both hold up to seven crewmembers each.
To get to the ISS Boeing's CST-100 will be launched on the United Launch Alliance's Atlas v rocket
and Spacex will launch the Dragon V2 on its own Falcon 9 v1. 1 rocket. This was not an easy choice NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said at the Sept. 16 announcement
Spacex and Boeing beat out a number of other private companies for the NASA gig including another big contender the Sierra nevada Corp. All three companies had been involved in an earlier phase of the program in
Despite not being chosen for the program Sierra nevada plans to further develop its Shuttle-esque vehicle the Dream Chaser perhaps as a resupply vehicle or for commercial space flight t
#The Rise Of Open source Hardware So in the summer of 2012 Petrone (then an engineer at a Portland startup) launched a site where flexible matrix boards
and laser motion sensors could be sold alongside build-it-yourself weather monitoring kits and robot birds.
Almost immediately Tindie began attracting favorable attention from the indie hardware community #and then expanded from there.
Today around 600 inventors sell more than 3000 different hardware products which have shipped out to more than 80 countries around the world.
but others are large entities like the Australian government Google and NASA. These days Petrone says NASA s purchasing department just calls my cell phone.#
#The site has gained also a strong following from hard-core DIY types. Just as Etsy became the go-to marketplace for craft creators Tindie has become the primary hub for hardware aficionados.
We are definitely part of and supportive of the maker movement Petrone says. We fill the hardware side.#
#While Petrone achieved his goal of creating a marketplace for hardware projects Tindie also inadvertently made a second contribution to the hardware world:
it now stands as the largest collection of open-source hardware on the planet. Nothing on the site is patented
and the vast majority of sellers have their source code and documentation links available right there on the page Petrone says.
Open source has become very much a part of the brand and what people within the hardware world associate with us.#
#Part of the reason software has led the open source charge is that it has the advantage of being lightweight Petrone explains.
It s a case of atoms versus bits.##Historically big companies have dominated hardware production for two simple reasons:
manufacturing is both expensive and difficult. Hardware requires physical objects which entail manufacturing costs and usually shipping.
But a precipitous drop in prices#which some attribute to the rise of cell phones which made components cheap#is helping to lower the barrier to open source entry for hardware as are crowdsourcing platforms such as Kickstarter.#
#For companies and makers the revenue model for open source hardware is still being worked out since a person could potentially exploit an open source platform and sell it for profit.
But as Arduino#a microcontroller for DIYERS and the most successful open source hardware project to date#shows people tend to buy the $30 original version rather than the $10 copycats.
Most people want to support those who are actually contributing and putting the sweat and time into the project Petrone says.
You don t get the same warm fuzzy feeling when buying a closed product as you do
when you support someone who is creating an open one.##As for Tindie sellers monetary support has so far not been a problem.
There is so much demand for the open source products sold on the site that the waiting list alone contains nearly half a million dollars worth of orders.
For Petrone This has been something incredibly interesting to see because ultimately it s a totally new market that doesn t exist anywhere else.#
#Tindie however is likely only an early example of what is to come.##I think open hardware will start coming into its own in the next ten years Petrone says.
Apple s not going to open source their products anytime soon but Tesla could.##This article was published originally in the October 2014 issue of Popular Science#with#the title The Etsy Of Hardware.
It has been expanded in this web version.#
#Google vs The DMV: How To Test A Self-driving car In May 2012 Google's self-driving car underwent a classic American teenage ritual.
It took a driving test at a DMV. The car passed but apparently not without a little lobbying from its parent.
As state officials have monitored the robot car's mileage on public roads Google has lobbied for the car to get different tests
and to report different accident figures than the DMV wants a new series of reports finds.
The reports come from U s. Freedom of Information Act requests that technology journalist Mark Harris submitted to DMVS and other agencies.
Turning to the government let Harris sidestep Google's secretive PR machine as he told the Knight Science Journalism Tracker which recently collected his stories.
Harris'work offers a detailed sense of the car's abilities. It's also a look at Google's lobbying the extent
of which is maybe unsurprising for a private company but still interesting. He published his latest#and most fun#article in IEEE Spectrum.
You can see excerpts there of the car's 2012 Nevada driving test with notes and checkmarks just like you might have gotten as a nervous 16-year-old.
That's where you can see what situations the Google car is good at and in
what situations it will ask for help from its human driver. For the Guardian Harris wrote about how Google has asked regulators to allow the results of computerized driving simulations#to stand in for tests on driving tracks
or closed-off roads. For Quartz Harris reported on Google's lobbying not to have to report#how often its cars turn over the controls to their human drivers
as long as the handover occurs as expected. The car is designed to routinely cede control when it encounters situations it can't handle.
That's the kind of handover Google doesn't want to have to report. The company also doesn't want to report
when its cars get into accidents while a human not its algorithms is driving. The California DMV disagreed.
Knight Science Journalism Tracker m
#Using'Doom'To Design A room The two words are"change order"Scott Jenkins the president of DIRTT tells Popular Science.
Order changes often happen when construction crews run into unexpected problems or when contractors underestimate the labor
and resources they'll need to get a job done. DIRTT is hoping to forestall these problems with the help of their Doom engine-based software named ICE.
We re going to have cost certainty with ICE Jenkins says. The Doom engine is a computer program that can render 2-D blueprints into a 3-D space.
Because the engine is open-source DIRTT was able to adapt it for their own needs--for example ICE melts with other design softwares including Autocad.
An engineer or an architect can use ICE to mock up a room and create a live data set for every aspect of a space including the electrical engineering millwork and piping.
When those blueprints are taken into the shop everything is constructed at the same time and put together so that there are no inconsistencies.
and waste and decreases the time it takes to construct an interior. Because of ICE we don't have separate teams of manufacturers trying to coordinate with ordered engineering says Jenkins.
Once assembled in the shop the walls are shipped flat by truck to the construction site.
When the panels arrive at their destination they're popped into pre-cut aluminum frames which will hold the wall panels upright in the finished building.
But it s not only the speed at which the walls are built that's helpful. Jenkins explains that some buildings such as hospitals may need to reconfigure their interior panels quickly to make way for another patient with different needs.
Not only that but they need to be sensitive to rapid technology changes as well. Hospitals are making decisions for
what goes into an intensive care unit 10 years in advance says Jenkins. Which is why DIRTT also offers modular walls that are flexible
and can be interchanged like toy blocks. Our clients should be able to repurpose our walls to reflect those changes.
Despite the company's advancements in construction technology however it hasn t been able to design for the residential market just yet.
But DIRTT's videogame background is coming into play once again they are now exploring how the Oculus Rift
and other virtual reality viewing systems may integrate with the ICE software--to further simplify the design process
and add more flexibility for homes in the future. Says Jenkins:""Imagine if you slapped on those Oculus glasses you could view what changes to make as if you were in the room
and a long barrow--a huge wooden building believed to have been used as a mortuary for bodies after defleshing.
They beamed radar and lasers into the ground and wheeled scanners over a vast area to study subtle changes in the Earth's magnetic field.#
#Not everything discovered at the site is millennia old. The surveyors were able to pinpoint practice trenches dug during the First world war to prepare troops for battle as well as traces of a military airbase--one of the U k.'s first--built at the site a few years later y
#Adaptive, Programmable Headlights Cut through Rain, Illuminate Without Blinding Other Drivers This is perhaps the only optical illusion you would want to see
A team of university engineers has created a vehicle headlight that adjusts itself so that drivers can keep their high beams on even
when other cars are coming toward them. To the driver the light still looks extra-bright.
It can sense upcoming street signs and shine more light onto them. And it can make raindrops
or snowflakes seem to disappear from its beam to clear the vision of the driver a trick that this team of engineers from Carnegie mellon University has been working on for a few years now.
The individual beams are created the same way pixels on a projector are. There's a semiconductor chip that has an array of a million tiny mirrors on it.
The mirrors flip to modulate each pixel's brightness. This way the system can turn off some beams sometimes without the driver noticing too much.
To make raindrops disappear the system tracks falling rain predicts where the drops are going
To make headlights appear dimmer to oncoming drivers the system tracks other cars and turns off only the beams that are aimed at those drivers.
I was in marching band in high school. The headlight's onboard computer reacts to what it senses
whether it's cars raindrops street signs or anything else within 1 to 2. 5 milliseconds according to Carnegie mellon University.
That's an improvement from last year when the university had only a raindrop-disappearing light that worked with a 13-millisecond delay.
Some car companies have created already and sold high beams that appear dimmer to other carss. Although they seem to be illegal in the U s.)Those adaptive high-beams work in much the same way aiming many beams of light at the world
and dimming only those that point at other drivers. However CMU emphasizes that its programmable light is able to project any number of custom arrangements not just the dim-for-others program.
CMU's versatility comes at a price. It's too large (and probably too expensive and delicate) to go into cars now.
The university plans to install it into a truck for testing next year. It will take a few more years yet to miniaturize the light enough for ordinary cars s
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