#Russia Orders Helicopters For Its New Amphibious assault Ships Russia recently ordered a batch of new attack helicopters,
including 32 that could go onto a new amphibious assault ship. There's just one hitch: France is building that ship,
and following Russia's invasion of Crimea and support for Donetsk separatists in Eastern Ukraine, there's a lot of international pressure for France to cancel the order.
The Mistral class ship is designed to carry up to 700 troops, over 60 land vehicles, and around 30 light helicopters within landing distance of a coast, where they will (in peaceful situations) arrive
and rescue storm-rattled populations, or (in wars) go forth and take the beaches. The contract with French shipbuilders specified two Mistral class ships built in France,
and then two more built in Russia. They'll be the first amphibious assault ships for Russia.
It's likely each of the four ships would only fly eight attack helicopters so the full order for 32 indicates that Russia expects full delivery of the ships.
The first completed vessel is the Vladivostok, and France is set to deliver it late this year.
It's unclear what military use the Mistral would add to the war in Ukraine, even with the planned Ka-52k helicopters.
Dubbed the"Alligator, "this chopper is primarily an antitank weapon, and is limited to less than 300 miles of range.
If Russia were to escalate its involvement in Ukraine's war from supporting separatists to formal participation,
Ka-52ks could strike targets in Odessa and beyond. Or perhaps Russia would use them instead on the other side of the Black sea
should tensions like the 2008 Russia-Georgia war flare up again. Presently, the Mistral-class ships wouldn't let Russia do all that much more in the wars it's most likely to fight,
as Russia shares land borders with the neighbors they're most prone to invade. Regardless of actual military utility, the international community is excited less about the sale, especially after Russia's seizure of Crimea and Moscow's ongoing support for the separatists that shot down a Malaysian airliner.
"I salute Germany for cancelling important defence training facility contract with Russia. An example also for others, one might add."
#Japan's Military Will Patrol Earth's Orbitals Japan's military plans to take defense to the heavens in 2019.
The"fourth battlefield"paceontains a lot of stuff that's worth protecting, and Japan is hardly the first military to consider it.
Space is big business. A 2013 report from the Satellite Industry Association says that satellites made $189. 5 billion in revenue in 2012.
Besides the sheer value of the business these satellites perform valuable functions for humans on earth.
and today both cars and smartphones rely on GPS satellites to know exactly where they are.
The architecture of space has had always a military underpinning. American nuclear submarines, hiding out at sea,
used geo-locating satellites to calculate target trajectories, so that they could reliably hit the same points on earth from anywhere.
Even as American troopers started fighting in Afghanistan, the Department of defense was floating ideas about"Space Control"to make sure that nothing in space threatened the important American satellites already there.
"This allows Japan the possibility of defensive military action in space, where before the country was limited by previous law and their constitution's intensely pacifistic Article 9. While On earth,
Japan has grown slowly its military, it's unlikely that a new space force means we'll see Japanese war satellites anytime soon.
Japan, like the United states, is one of 89 countries that signed the Outer space Treaty, which formally prohibits putting
and testing weapons in space s
#Solar Sponge Efficiently Makes Steam Generating steam is enormously useful. Much of the world's energy actually comes from steam-coal power plants heat up water to produce water vapor,
which turns turbines to generate electricity. A new technology creates steam by harnessing solar energy, using a relatively cheap sponge-like material,
and it does it with greater efficiency that ever previously achieved, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications.
The researchers don't claim the device could be used to create electricity, at least not yet. But it could relatively easily be scaled up to make fresh water out of salt water via distillation
for example, or to sterilize medical or food processing equipment in areas of the world where electricity is hard to come by,
said MIT researcher Hadi Ghasemi in a statement. The spongey device is made of graphite on top,
with a carbon foam on the bottom. The graphite is highly porous and fractured, a crown of flakes, created by putting the material in a microwave oven
and allowing bubbles to come to the surface and burst, in a way"just like popcorn, "the researchers said.
Graphite absorbs the sun's rays and heats up. This creates a pressure differential that sucks water from the bottom into the top
where it vaporizes. This sponge converts 85 percent of the solar energy in sunlight it absorbs into heat,
--whereas the graphite and carbon used in this sponge are relatively easy to get your hands on,
if your car could sense when you were falling asleep behind the wheel, and wake you up before you caused an accident?
That's the notion around a sensor device being developed by Harken, a public-private European consortium.
the system's sensors are smart textiles: combination of fibers and yarns with electrical propertiesworked into the fabrics of the seat cover
and shoulder safety belt. They monitor the driver's heart and breathing rates from contact points along the driver's back, butt, legs, thorax and abdomen,
The project has gotten attention around the Internet this week thanks to a new press release announcing that the Harken system has tested een by users in closed track tests,
other information the project has put online suggests that it has succeeded at consistently filtering out oiselike car vibrations from the sensor data,
it's a notable accomplishment for a system that does not involve putting any sensors in direct contact with the user's skin.
IEEE Spectrum notes that some luxury carmakers are already using sensors such as cameras to catch driver fatigue in time to stop accidents,
so perhaps Harken is leaving it to the auto manufacturers to figure that out a
#MERS Virus May be Able To Spread Through The Air Research strongly suggests that camels carry Middle east Respiratory Syndrome (MERS),
a viral illness that has sickened nearly 700 and killed at least 209 people as of early June, according to the latest update from the World health organization.
For this reason, the government of Saudi arabia recently warned people to stay away from close contact with camels,
which prompted some to defiantly post photos of themselves kissing camels on various social media sites.
and the owner, who came down with MERS a week after administering a topical medicine to his camels'runny noses.
"said study lead author Esam Azhar, a virologist at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. The finding implies that virus could possibly be spread in enclosed spaces such as hospitals
and therefore"further studies are needed urgently, "the scientists wrote. The scientists took air samples and looked for the DNA found in MERS viruses on three consecutive days.
#U k. Supermarket To Run on Electricity Made From Its Own Rotting Food One U k. grocery store plans to power itself using biogas harvested from its own unsold, rotting produce.
The store plans to use electricity solely from the digesters, taking no electricity from the U k.'s national power grid,
which is fed by a combination of coal, natural gas, nuclear power plants and other sources. Sainsbury's will even sell any excess electricity it makes back to the grid.
The Cannock Sainsbury's will be the first U k. store to stop using U k. grid electricity
the BBC reports. While we've never heard of a big U s. store doing exactly that,
U s. grocery-store chain Kroger is supposed to have an anaerobic digester that provides more than 20 percent of the electricity needs of its Compton distribution center.
'Here's how the Sainsbury's system will work. Food waste from many Sainsbury's stores will get trucked to a central depot.
One store doesn't make enough waste to power itself, so running the Cannock Sainsbury's actually requires waste from several.)
From the depot, a waste management company called Biffa will truck the waste to its Cannock plant.
What happens at Biffa's Cannock anaerobic digester is "what happens inside a cow's stomach after dinner,
The food goes into oxygen-free tanks with particular bacteria species inside that thrive without oxygen.
then uses the resulting biomethane just like natural gas mined from the ground to produce electricity.
A 1. 5-kilometer-long cable carries the electricity back to the Cannock Sainsbury's store.
Anaerobic digestion does have some drawbacks. It produces some solid and liquid wastes called the digestate.
Some of the digestate can be used as fertilizer, but then you have to make sure you have customers for fertilizers nearby (i e.,
, farmers. Anaerobic digestion is considered also a less favored way of dealing with excess food. From an environmental standpoint, it's better to chop food up into deli salad,
give it away to charities, or send it to animal feed. But if there's some food you can't avoid throwing away,
anaerobic digestion is a great to take care of it. P. S. P. S. Popular Science Postscript:
How can a process that produces carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, help reduce global warming? The explanation is a bit academic,
but we love you for asking. The carbon dioxide released from recently dead plantshether you burn those plants,
or stick'em in a digestersn't always considered as contributing to global warming. That's because in the natural cycle of things, the next generation of plants should take up the carbon dioxide released by the previous generation of dead plants,
so long as there's a new plant grown for every dead plant digested or burned. That's the case for crops,
which are plentifully regrown. On the other hand fossil fuel-produced carbon dioxide is considered different because that CO2 would have stayed in the ground,
had a human not dug it up and burned it e
#Squid Protein Could Help Brains'Talk'to Computers In the most advanced prosthetics--such as this crazy mind-controlled robotic arm--electronic hardware interfaces directly with nerves and muscles in the human body.
But getting living tissue to play nice with a circuit board is anything but easy, for a number of reasons.
One fundamental obstacle you may not have considered: electronics send signals via negatively charged electrons, whereas many of the communications carried out in living tissues take place through the movement of positively charged particles, such as calcium and potassium ions.
Now, though, scientists have discovered a new feature of a protein called reflectin, found in a group of animals called pencil squid.
It turns out reflectin conducts protons and may be able to bridge the communication divide between cells and biomedical implants.
Genetic engineering and Biotechnology News explains: The team began studying reflectin to discern how it enables the squid to change color
and reflect light. They produced the squid protein in common bacteria and used it to make thin films on a silicon substrate.
Via metal electrodes that contacted the film, the researchers observed the relationship between current and voltage under various conditions.
"or versatile nature, could be used to build implants and prosthetics that can more easily communicate with the human body.
The fact that it is biological and flexible means that it may be better than existing materials for integrating into the human body,
and with a lower chance of being rejected, the researchers (from the University of California, Irvine) said.
such as possibly being able to biodegrade after it is done serving a useful purpose, which could help patients avoid additional surgeries.
The squid protein reflectin is also being investigated to make better camouflage, thanks to its interesting optical qualities s
The Alang ship recycling hub in Gujarat India will upgrade 70 shipbreaking yards over the next four years thanks to a US$ 180 million loan IHS Maritime has reported.
the proposal envisages that the loan will be repaid over 40 years at an interest rate of 1. 4%.Planned upgrades will cover:
'and expansion of the current treatment storage disposal facility such that it will be possible for 25 tonnes of waste to be incinerated daily.
According to Sharma, part of the funding will benefit the ongoing construction of a pilot housing project to accommodate 1000 labourers at first and up to 5000 workers over the next three years.
Thus far, four of Alang's recycling yards have completed the first phase of an international standard certification process.
Once approved, the yards will officially meet the standards of the International Hong kong Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships.'
'Japanese companies own 2000 out of the total 3000 major ships in the world'points out Keiji Tomoda, chairman of the Ship Recycling Subcommittee of the Japanese Ship Owners'Association.'
'Most of the Japanese-owned ships go to China for recycling after their life. But we want to sell end-of-life ships to India
because India offers better prices than China
#Better micro-actuators to transport materials in liquids Researchers have developed improved forms of tiny magnetic actuators thanks to new materials and a microscopic 3d printing technology.
Scientists have been conducting research on micrometre-sized actuators that one day may make it possible to transport drugs or chemical sensor molecules to specific locations throughout the human body.
They are driven by an external rotating magnetic field; they align themselves along the magnetic field lines and rotate about their longitudinal axis. Due to their helical shape they are able to swim forward through liquids.
When applying conventional fabrication techniques the magnetic properties of these micro-objects depend on the shape of the devices themselves.
and directional stability as doctoral student Christian Peters from the group led by Christofer Hierold Professor of Micro
and Nanosystems explains:##Previously these elements wobbled as they moved forward and they were less efficient
#The scientists used a light-sensitive biocompatible epoxy resin in which they incorporated magnetic nanoparticles. In the first part of the curing stage they exposed a thin layer of this material to a magnetic field.
This field magnetised the nanoparticles leading to a particle re-arrangement in form of parallel lines.
The orientation of these lines determines the magnetic properties of the material. The researchers then manufactured the tiny elongated structures out of the modified epoxy film via two-photon polymerisation.
a laser beam is moved in a computer-controlled three-dimensional manner within the epoxy resin layer thus curing the resin locally.
#This makes the actuators more interesting for certain applications#says Salvador Panã research associate in the group led by Bradley Nelson Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems.
or chemical sensor molecules to specific locations in the body the actuators must be coated with the corresponding molecules.
The researchers demonstrated that it is possible in principle to coat the structures with interesting biomedical materials by connecting antibodies to the surface of the spiral motors.#
#The work is the result of many years of joint research between the two professors in the Department of Mechanical
Superparamagnetic Twist-Type Actuators with Shape-Independent Magnetic Properties and Surface Functionalization for Advanced Biomedical Applications.
#Ground Drone Project: Urban mobile robot chassis The Ground Drone Project wants to make a low cost ground robot chassis for hobbyists
and inventors that is capable of traversing challenging obstacles. The project#s original articulated traction control design offers a unique approach to obstacle traversal.
In addition these platform kits cannot leave a controlled environment a huge problem for makers who aim for full home applications.
In order for a robot to be useful in our world it must traverse unpredictable obstacles including stairs.
Articulate traction control connects three segments together with suspension joints that allow the chassis to articulate diagonally-downward
The three-section waterproofed boxes are empty providing 450+sq. inches of free space for electronics along with open deck space for mounting payloads.
https://www. kickstarter. com/projects/1145776805/ground-drone-project-a-versatile-mobile-robotic-pl? ref=categoryyou can back the Kickstarter project here:
kickstarter. com/projects/1145776805/ground-drone-project-a-versatile-mobile-robotic-p o
#Google commits $1. 36 billion for NASA facility, to house their robotics, space and flight technologies Google subsidiary Planetary Ventures has committed to a 60-year $1. 16 billion lease of the 1000 acre Moffett Field Naval Air station.
The agreement includes an additional $200 million to refurbish the hangars and improve the site with a museum and educational facilities.
Hangar One the biggest and most colorful of the buildings on the site will be restored. Also Hangars Two and Three.
The facility is slated for research assembly and testing in the areas of robotics space exploration aviation and other technologies NASA said in a press release.
NASA also said: Once renovations are complete Hangar One will again be home to high-tech innovation as Planetary Ventures begins using the historic facility for research development assembly and testing in the areas of space exploration aviation rover
This news comes on the heals of Google investment in Magic Leap last month as well the announcement of Andy Rubin departure r
and Automation Index ROBO-STOX licenses their proprietary index to ETF Securities to provide European investors with highly diversified access to a new age of growth in robotics and automation.
and automation investment theme in Europe ROBO-STOX developed an index thats specifically catered for investment opportunities that are compliant with the European UCITS requirements.
and Automation UCITS Index for use in an exchange traded fund (ETF) that is listed on the London Stock exchange.
The index covers a range of key segments currently with a 47%allocation to industrials 33%information technology 11%healthcare 5%energy and 4%in consumer discretionary.
Making Robotics and Automation Investablefor investors the growth prospects of the robotics and automation sector are compelling.
and investors and other interested parties can now better acquaint themselves with the corporate landscape of the robotics and automation industry.
To capture the full economic value of the robotics and automation industry the ROBO-STOX Industry Classification has identified companies all along the production value chain.
This ranges for example from companies that physically manufacture robots and automation machinery to companies specialising in the types of software and technology that enable automation.
and satisfy minimum criteria relating to market capitalization and average daily value traded. Within the Index a two-tiered equal weighting approach captures robotic pure plays (so called bellwethers currently 40%of the Index) and stocks with robotic segments (non-bellwethers currently 60%of the Index.
#A computer vision system for mining artistic influence When we look at an image we not only recognize object categories
For example an expert (or even an average person) can look at a fine art painting and infer information about its style (e g.
For example an expert (or even an average person) can look at a fine art painting and infer information about its style (e g.
if an artist was inspired ever truly by a work unless he or she has said so.
For example Figure. 1 illustrates a commonly cited comparison for studying influence in the work of Francis bacon Study After Velazquez Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953) where similarity is clear in composition pose and subject matter.
In the past decade there have been impressive advances in developing computer vision algorithms for different object recognition-related problems including:
Although there has been some research on automated classification of paintings there is almost no research done on computer-based measuring
With the increasing volumes of digitized art databases on the Internet comes the daunting task of organizing
There are millions of paintings present on the Internet; to manage properly the databases of these paintings it becomes essential to classify paintings into different categories and sub-categories.
This classification structure can be used as an index and thus can improve the speed of retrieval process.
if we can infer new information about an unknown painting using already existing databases of paintings.
Symbols are visual words that often express something about the meaning of a work as well.
For example the works of Renaissance artists such as Giovanni Bellini and Jan Van-eyck use religious symbols such as a cross wings and animals to tell stories in the Bible.
The contribution of our work 1234 is in exploring the problem of computer-automated suggestion of influences between artists a problem that has not previously been addressed in a general setting.
The data set contains 1710 high-resolution images of paintings by 66 artist spanning the time period of 1412-1996
We also collected a ground-truth data set for the task of artistic influences which mainly contains positive influences claimed by art historians.
and was used not in the learning process. We hypothesized that a high-level semantic representation of painting would be more useful for the task of influence detection.
and discriminative vs. generative learning methodologies (See Figure 3). More recently we also studied the use of metric learning to combine various features for the task of style classification 4. The conclusion of this study confirms our hypothesis
Frederic Bazille#Studio 9 Rue de la Condamine#(1870) and Norman Rockwell#Shuffleton Barber Shop#(1950.
After browsing through many publications and websites we concluded to the best of our knowledge that this comparison has not been made previously by an art historian.
Therefore we investigated several artist distance measures to judge similarity in their work and suggest influences.
Elgammal#An Early Framework for Determining Artistic Influence#The 2nd International Workshop on Multimedia for Cultural heritage MM4CH Naples Italy 2013 3 Babak Saleh Kanako Abe
Ravneet Arora Ahmed Elgammal#Toward Automated Discovery of Artistic Influence#Multimedia Tools and Applications Journal#Springer#2014 4 Babak Saleh Kanako Abe and Ahmed
A Metric Learning Approach#The Fifth International Conference on Computational Creativity ICCC 2014 p
#New educational robot helps kids learn coding through music Meet Wigl! Wigl is an interactive educational robot with a musical ear.
and promotes cross-disciplinary learning. I see a worldwide shortage of quality engineers. People seem to believe that strong Math skills are the most important prerequisite for being an engineer.
Wigl uses a microphone microcontroller and two motors to hear understand and move to the music.
Original versions of Wigl used DTMF (Dual Tone Multi Frequency) chips which are used commonly in touch-tone phone systems.
After realizing that using DTMF chips would be too expensive to cover a full scale a redesign was necessary.
2) Programming Modeinstead of Wigl moving once it hears a note it stays still and stores it in its memory.
Every note played is memorized like lines of code in a computer program. Then to run your Wigl program you play a special NTERNOTE
notes as pseudocode! While most robotic toys on the market require a smartphone or a computer for remote control Wigl interacts directly with the child and their instruments.
Most children s entertainment is moving towards software mainly on tablets and I believe that limits their creativity and understanding of what s possible.
We want kids to think outside the tablet and so we remove the screen in order to encourage direct interaction with Wigl.
After extensive testing at a number of schools and children s museums over the past year and a half by hundreds of children and their parents Wigl is now ready for pre-orders!
Since winning the Crowd Pleaser award at Robohub s Robot Launch 2014 Odd I/O has teamed up with Indiegogo to bring Wigl to the public
#New soft ntagonisticactuator enables robots to fold Traditionally many key robot components (including sensors and actuators) are rigid
and this makes it difficult for researchers and industry to make them truly compliant with their surroundings.
and this is a problem when developing robots for use in cluttered environments such as search and rescue or surveying.
Recent solutions have used shape memory alloys (SMAS) pneumatic actuators and electroactive polymers each with their own advantages but also with disadvantages.
or single dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAS) on top of each other in an antagonistic configuration in order to create an actuator that allows bidirectional actuation and passive folding.
Each DEA consists of a thin elastomer membrane between two compliant electrodes the opposing charges on each electrode generate an electrostatic force (Maxwell stress) which squeezes the membrane causing thinning and expansion
in the direction of free boundary conditions and therefore results in actuation stretch. The actuator itself consists of two rigid arms connected via elastic hinges and two sets of DEAS in an antagonistic configuration.
When an electric current is applied to one of the DEAS it creates a biased stress between the two DEAS thus bending the actuator.
and a ground landing (landing is a particularly dangerous time for hardware). The elevon must sustain an angle during flight meaning that the aerodynamic force acts on its surface another a common reason for failure in flying robots.
A good correlation found between the control signal and movement of the robot illustrates the high performance of the actuator.
Further by using a silicon type elastomer a fast response speed and good positioning control can be achieved.
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