#NASA's drone is part chopper, part airplane Answer: NASA'S latest drone prototype, GL-10.
Better known by it's pop culture-inspired moniker, Greased Lightning, it is an innovative new concept for an unmanned vehicle (UAV) from NASA's Langley Research center in Hampton, Virginia.
The battery-powered drone has a 10-foot (3-meter) wingspan, 10 electric motors (eight on the wings,
two on the tail) and weighs 28kg at takeoff. It has a tilt-wing design that allows for vertical takeoff and landing--similar to existing tiltrotor aircraft like the Bell-Boeing V22 Osprey."
"All four engines on the left wing are given the same command, "said Zach Johns, the prototype's main pilot."
"The four engines on the right wing also work in concert. Then the two on the tail receive the same command."
"Successful flight tests have not only demonstrated its hovering capabilities during its vertical takeoff--the way a helicopter does
--but the team has triumphed also in some of the aerodynamically trickier situations.""During the flight tests we successfully transitioned from hover to wing-borne flight like a conventional airplane then back to hover again.
"We did lose some of the early prototypes to'hard landings'as we learned how to configure the flight control system.
It could be used for small package delivery or vertical takeoff and landing, long endurance surveillance for agriculture, mapping and other applications."
as well as demonstrating the drone at various NASA events throughout the year. More from Tomorrow Transforme e
#Biologist creates'self-healing'concrete No matter how carefully it is mixed or reinforced, all concrete eventually cracks,
"The problem with cracks in concrete is leakage, "explains professor Henk Jonkers, of Delft University of Technology, in The netherlands."
"If you have cracks, water comes through--in your basements, in a parking garage. Secondly, if this water gets to the steel reinforcements--in concrete we have all these steel rebars
--if they corrode, the structure collapses.""But Jonkers has come up with an entirely new way of giving concrete a longer life."
"We have invented bioconcrete--that's concrete that heals itself using bacteria, "he says. The bioconcrete is mixed just like regular concrete,
but with an extra ingredient--the"healing agent.""It remains intact during mixing, only dissolving and becoming active
if the concrete cracks and water gets in. Jonkers, a microbiologist, began working on it in 2006,
when a concrete technologist asked him if it would be possible to use bacteria to make self-healing concrete.
It took Jonkers three years to crack the problem --but there were some tricky challenges to overcome."
"You need bacteria that can survive the harsh environment of concrete, "says Jonkers.""It's a rocklike, stonelike material, very dry."
"The next challenge was not only to have the bacteria active in concrete, but also to make them produce repair material for the concrete--and that is limestone,
"Jonkers explains. In order to produce limestone the bacilli need a food source. Sugar was one option, but adding sugar to the mix would create soft, weak, concrete.
In the end, Jonkers chose calcium lactate, setting the bacteria and calcium lactate into capsules made from biodegradable plastic and adding the capsules to the wet concrete mix.
When cracks eventually begin to form in the concrete, water enters and open the capsules.
The bacteria then germinate multiply and feed on the lactate, and in doing so they combine the calcium with carbonate ions to form calcite,
or limestone, which closes up the cracks. Now Jonkers hopes his concrete could be the start of a new age of biological buildings."
"It is combining nature with construction materials, "he says.""Nature is supplying us a lot of functionality for free--in this case,
limestone-producing bacteria. If we can implement it in materials, we can really benefit from it,
so I think it's a really nice example of tying nature and the built environments together in one new concept
#Scientists grow monkey arms in the lab But that's not the end of the road for this arm.
The current options for amputees are a diverse range of prosthetics--incorporating many new forms of technology to help them feel real--or transplants,
In the case of transplants the limiting factor is need the for lifelong immunosuppressive drugs to stop a recipient's immune system from attacking their new limb.
Suppressing immunity in this way opens up the risk of new infections and certain cancers. Ott's ambitious technique therefore has an ambitious goal--to one day provide amputees with fully functional limbs that can be transplanted
The idea is to create limbs made up of cells from the amputee's own body to produce an armor one day leg--tailored to them
"If it works out you could regenerate...on demand,"says Ott. To date, Ott has managed to use this technique to grow organs--including lungs and a beating heart--and in June 2015,
All stages need to happen inside a tightly controlled environment with set temperatures, humidity, ph, oxygen levels, and pressure.
The regrowth of the arm takes place inside a bioreactor providing nutrients and stimulation for the limb to reform.
Doctors in China save man's severed hand by grafting it to his legott's success with a rat's arm was the first bio-limb to ever be created.
But the success of human hand transplants in achieving this connection gives Ott some hope."
"We've learned from the transplant community, "he says.""We need to show we can apply this process to limbs of human scale,
In his current work with Macaque monkeys his team have so far been able to grow the cells of human vascular tissue and its lining.
"says Maximina Yun, a regenerative biology researcher at University college London. But she adds:""there are still a few challenges to overcome."
"Yun's work on limb regeneration has focused on the biology of salamanders, which regrow their own limbs readily when needed."
Through her expertise on the biology of salamanders, Yun hopes to one day apply this knowledge to humans.
Ott agrees and is hopeful he will be working in science long enough to see his work come to fruition."
The Rubik's Cube. iphones. Snuggies. Then there are the things the world needs. The wheel.
"entomologist and science reporter Aaron Pomerantz wrote on his site last month after taking one to the Peruvian Amazon rainforest."
bioengineer Prakash told The Atlantic.""The biggest thing we're trying to do is to make people curious,
Last year, Prakash and his team distributed 10,000 Foldscopes to eager users willing to test them out.
Users are submitting their findings at the Foldscope site, with investigations ranging from first-graders looking at banana seeds to detection of parasitic worms in fecal samples.
Beyond inspiring curiosity, Prakash hopes Foldscopes can help health care workers quickly, cheaply and safely diagnose blood-borne illnesses in the field."
"I wanted to make the best possible disease-detection instrument that we could almost distribute for free.
"he said in a Stanford blog post last year. Unfortunately, Foldscope isn't currently available,
Recently, researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the research arm of the U s. military,
implanted an array of small electrodes into the region of the brain that controls movement in a woman who is paralyzed.
The electrodes communicated electrical activity from the brain's motor cortex via wires, to a prosthetic arm that the woman was able to move through a wide range of motions.
program manager of the DARPA biological technologies office, in a presentation he gave on Thursday at the Wait, What?
They implanted an electrode array in both his motor cortex and sensory cortex, the brain region that recognizes tactile sensations such as texture and pressure.
and sensors in the hand also conveyed information, via another set of wires, back to the array in the sensory cortex.
said Sliman Bensmaia, an associate professor of neuroscience at the University of Chicago. But people will never be able to use these hands with dexterity until they can feel
Bensmaia did preliminary research for Sanchez's team on how to make the electrode array work in the sensory cortex."
touch sensors may also be able to convey temperature and texture, he added. Although the current demonstration is the first of a prosthetic hand directly communicating with the brain,
other researchers have demonstrated that they can send messages from sensors in the prosthetic hand to electrodes implanted in nerves in the arm that then communicate with the brain."(
"However), in situations where people have spinal cord injury, so they are quadriplegic...you probably couldn't give them sensation back through the nerves,
said Dr. Paul S. Cederna, professor of plastic surgery and biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan.
and bionic hands that can be controlled through an iphone. The big benefit of Sanchez's approach is being able to use prostheses for people with spinal cord injuries,
Cederna said. The 28-year-old man in the current demonstration has been paralyzed for more than a decade because of a spinal cord injury.
Although Cederna was involved not in Sanchez's research, he conducts DARPA-funded research on how to improve control of prosthetic devices through peripheral nerves,
The idea of implanting an electrode array into the brain to either control or receive signals from a prosthetic limb is big step forward,
"The biggest challenge, once you put that electrode into the brain, you develop scarring around the electrode,
and that makes it increasingly difficult to pick up the signals it needs to pick up, "Cederna said.
Researchers are working hard to develop electrode arrays that work for longer periods of time,
Currently electrode arrays in the motor cortex only work for a few years, although arrays in the sensory cortex appear to be more stable, he added d
The research was done by astronomers at Keele University and the University of Central Lancashire and will be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The galaxy, with the very clunky name of SAGE0536AGN, was discovered with NASA's Spitzer space telescope. Scientists think it's about 9 billion years old.
they used the Southern African Large telescope to gather data to help determine the size of the black hole.
The data indicated the black hole is 30 times larger than expected for this size of galaxy, according to a press release from the Royal Astronomical Society."
and so do the black holes in their cores. This one though is really too big for its boots--it simply shouldn't be possible for it to be said so large
Dr. Jacco van Loon, an astrophysicist at Keele University and lead author of the new paper.
How did this happen? Researchers say it could be that the black hole just grew much faster than the galaxy surrounding it,
said Georgia Tech doctoral student Lujendra Ojha, who first discovered the streaks while still an undergraduate student at the University of Arizona in 2011.
The chemicals allow the water to remain liquid at lower temperatures but also help keep it from boiling off in the thin atmosphere of Mars,
#Compulsively checking Facebook will now include impulse shopping Facebook will soon start looking more and more like an online shopping mall.
The social network said Monday that it is adding a new mobile"shopping"tab where you can buy clothes, electronics and other items without ever leaving Facebook's confines.
For example, click on a shirt featured in a Target ad and the site will immediately direct to Target's shopping page where you can select the color
Like many of Facebook's most recent efforts, the goal is to cut down on slow loading speeds
and corral more user activity into the social network's streamlined walled garden rather than directing users off into the messy outside web.
Facebook is hoping that the smoother experience will make mobile shopping more attractive to web surfers,
who still do most of their shopping on desktop despite spending an increasing portion of their Internet time on smartphones.
"Facebook wrote in Monday's announcement.""Customers can experience slow load times and too many steps on the way to checkout.
"Facebook first began testing the new shopping features with a limited number of retailers back in July.
According to a company survey, nearly half of its 1. 5 billion users come to the site actively looking for products,
Mobile advertising is Facebook's fastest growing revenue area by far; last quarter it accounted for 76%of the social network's $3. 8 billion total ads revenue.
But because of the screen constraints and the way people typically use their smartphones, it's traditionally been hard to push mobile ads for anything other than branding purposes that is,
to impress upon you a positive association with a particular company. Facebook has been fervently trying to change that with ads that place more emphasis on prodding users into taking action
whether it be buying a product, signing up for a company newsletter or downloading an app.
it's doing this by absorbing features that would've previously required loading a separate page for an advertiser website.
It's not the only social network trying to break into the shopping game. Rivals Twitter and Pinterest have launched also e-commerce platforms of their own
and Facebook-owned Instagram is also pushing its own version of"buy"buttons t
#Report: Walmart could start using drones to start delivering things to your house Amazon and Walmart have been jockeying for position in the battle to be the number one U s. retailer.
Now it looks like they'll take that battle to the skies as Walmart joins the online retailer in a quest to use a legion of drones for product deliveries and pickups.
According to Reuters, which saw a copy of a Walmart's Federal aviation administration application for drone use.
The application would allow Walmart to use drones at its warehouses and around customershomes and the reports suggests the giant retailer is ready to start flying drones as soon as the FAA settles on its new rules for commercial drone use.
Earlier this month, the FAA unveiled a new set of rules for private drone use that include registering many of the drones with the FAA before consumers start flying them.
For commercial drones, which could be used in everything from filming movies to delivering groceries, the FAA has been considering some line-of-sight provisions that could make it virtually impossible for Amazon
and now Walmart to use drones in home deliveries. According to the report Walmart plans to use drones from DJI to monitor inventories outside their warehouses,
deliver packages to customers, many of whom live within five miles of their local Walmart,
and to deliver groceries to pick up locations for customers. DJI is one of the most popular drone makers on the market,
with a line of Phantom drones, including the Phantom 3 Standard, which Mashable recently test drove (or flew)."
"Drones have a lot of potential to further connect our vast network of stores, distribution centers, fulfillment centers and transportation fleet,
"Walmart spokesperson Dan Toporek told Reuters. Of course, no one not Amazon and not Walmart is delivering anything by drone until the FAA finalizes its commercial plans,
something that won't happen until next year, at the earliest. That's way late for your last-minute Christmas shopping plans,
which could reasonably be assisted by drone deliveries. Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments o
#Second Deadly Quake Hits Nepal Near Everest At least 16 people were killed in a new earthquake that struck devastated Nepal on Tuesday, according to a bulletin from the country's disaster agency.
A further 335 were injured also in the 7. 3-magnitude quake, Nepal's national emergency operation centre said on twitter,
less than three weeks after a similar disaster killed more than 8, 000 people. The quake struck at 12:35 pm, some 76 kilometers (47 miles) east of Kathmandu,
the US Geological Survey said. Tuesday's quake was felt as far away as New delhi and officials said it caused buildings to collapse in Chinese-controlled Tibet.
A second tremor of 6. 3 magnitude struck around half an hour later, followed by aftershocks,
according to the USGS."According to the reports that we have received from the ground, four people have been killed due to collapsed buildings,"Paul Dillon,
spokesman for the International organization for Migration, told AFP. All the deaths were in the Chautara district, east of Kathmandu,
I ran out of my house and barely escaped. This one felt just like that one.
residents were terrified that buildings which were damaged already badly could come crashing down. Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International airport, the main entry point for flights bringing in international aid since the April quake, was closed anew Tuesday as a precaution.
food and medical assistance to Nepalis following the quake. Patients Wheeled Out of Hospitalon Tuesday at the main hospital in Kathmandu
patients injured in last month's quake were being wheeled out in wheelchairs. People could be seen frantically calling their families as medical attendants rushed to set up tents in the parking lot.
The capital was filled with the sound of car horns as desperate residents rushed to get back home to check on loved ones.
Pramita Tamrakar, who had reopened only just her family's furniture store, said she had rushed out onto the street after grabbing her eight-year-old son and 12 year-old daughter."
"We thought the tremors had ceased, so we thought we would start work again, "she told AFP."
"I don't understand what is going on. I saw in the news the day before yesterday that the risk was lower,
it wouldn't happen again...and today we had a big one. I am scared very.
"Nepalese police urged people to stay outside and avoid jamming the fragile cellphone network.""Please stay in open field,
help us make free road, do not make phone nw (network) busy. SMS is suggested, "said a message from the national police service's Twitter account.
Nepal's National Emergency Operation center tweeted:""Pray to Almighty: Keep all Nepalese Safe in this difficult period of time."
"The quake was also felt some 1, 000 kilometers away in the Indian capital New delhi where buildings shook and office workers evacuated.
Other cities in northern India were rocked also, including Bihar where television footage showed residents gathering on the streets
and goods having toppled over in shop windows. A Chinese official at the Tibet regional seismological bureau said there had been reports of damage but no casualties."
"Today's aftershock was felt strongly in Zhangmu town of Shigatse city, "the official who gave his name as Chen told AFP."
"According to local government, some houses damaged by the previous earthquake collapsed. Since residents were transferred to safe areas last time
and are still living in tents, no casualties have been reported so far.""While nearly all of those killed by the April 25 quake were in Nepal,
but Kallistem plans to conduct preclinical trials next year. If these trials are successful, the company will remove a sample of immature spermatogonia from a man
and transform the genetic material into mature sperm. Then, an IVF procedure will be used or the sperm may be frozen for later use.
#Skype's Real-time Translator Now Open to All Microsoft-owned Skype has cleared the way for anyone to use a new feature that translates video chats or instant messages in real time.
People no longer need to sign up to use a preview version of Skype Translator, which handles spoken English, Spanish, Italian and Mandarin.
with missives written in one language arriving converted into a preferred language, according to Skype.""We are breaking down language barriers that have made historically it challenging for friends
"Yasmin Kahn of Skype said in a blog post. Skype Translator was made available as a free download at the Windows Store for computers
or tablets running on the latest version of Microsoft's operating software, according to Kahn. Skype Translator preview debuted late last year,
but was invitation-only to allow time and testing for refining the service.""Our goal for Skype Translator is to translate as many languages as possible on relevant platforms,
and to deliver the best speech translation experience to our more than 300 million connected Skype customers,
"Kahn said. Google earlier this year debuted a feature for its Translate app that allows people to pair any two of 38 language options for translation,
and also automatically translates when pointed at text items or signs s
#Artificial Octopus Arm Performs Surgery About 10 years ago, the Pentagon funded a science project to build an entire eight-armed artificial octopus,
capable of squeezing, holding and grabbing objects with soft, flexible arms just like a real one.
Engineers and biologists from several nations teamed up to build different parts, but for various reasons the robo-pus (octo-bot?)
never really got off the ground. Now, however, researchers associated with the original project have come up with something a lot more practical:
but strong, device say it eventually will be able to inch itself into the body during surgery
a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard university and formerly at the Scuola Superiore Santnna Biorobotics Institute. ut they haven been application specific.
In this case we tried to get inspiration from the octopus and put it in the surgeon suite.
Ranzani is lead author on a new study on the project appearing today in the journal Biomimetics
and Bioinspiration. hen it is reaching in the underwater environment, the octopus uses a flexible structure.
or perform the same surgery with a smaller entrance. The device, developed by a consortium of European universities including King's college,
London, is made of two cylindrical chambers of silicon elastomers that extend and bend. Each cylinder contains a sack of granular material embedded in a flexible membrane that is also packed in a vacuum.
Ranzani describes it like a sack of vaccuum-packed coffee beans that are packed strong when together
and bending the arm around water-filled balloons to simulate human organs. Robot Rides Hoverbike, Nuff Said
Hansen Medical in Mountain view, Calif.,has the Magellan catheter a thin device for exploring the human body without damaging tissue.
Ian Walker, a bioroboticist at Clemson University, has been working with NASA to develop a flexible snake
and the new study is a step in the right direction toward a commercial device. hat has made all of this happen is an interest in biology on the part of engineers,
and saying that here is something we can build for surgery. i
#Google Self-driving cars Ready for Public roads Google announced Friday its self-driving prototype cars were ready to leave the test track
and hit public roads in California, in a step forward for its autonomous automobile program. The move comes after Google's internal testing of the bubble-shaped vehicle over the past year
and more extensive experience with technology adapted for existing cars.""Now we're announcing the next step for our project:
this summer, a few of the prototype vehicles we've created will leave the test track and hit the familiar roads of Mountain view, California,
with our safety drivers aboard,"said project chief Chris Urmson in a blog post.""We've been running the vehicles through rigorous testing at our test facilities,
and ensuring our software and sensors work as theye supposed to on this new vehicle."
"The Google car uses the same technology as its fleet of Lexus SUVS which has logged some 1. 6 million kilometers (one million miles)."
"So the new prototypes already have lots of experience to draw on--in fact, it's the equivalent of about 75 years of typical American adult driving experience,
"Urmson said. In Google's home town of Mountain view, speeds will be limited to 40 kilometers (25 miles per hour
"and during this next phase of our project we'll have safety drivers aboard with a removable steering wheel, accelerator pedal,
and brake pedal that allow them to take over driving if needed, "Urmson said.""We're looking forward to learning how the community perceives
and interacts with the vehicles, and to uncovering challenges that are unique to a fully self-driving vehicle."
"Google said earlier this week its adapted vehicles on the road had been involved in 11 minor accidents, but that none were the fault of the technology.
That included being hit from behind by other cars or sideswiped p
#Engineered Bacteria Send A Signal When Water Gets Polluted Until now, there hasn been a simple, inexpensive and quick way to monitor water quality.
But a team of entrepreneurs from Calgary, Canada, has developed a solution. It called FRED, for Field-Ready Electrochemical Detector,
and it involves genetically engineered bacteria capable of sensing a variety of waterborne contaminants and in response, emitting an electric signal that indicates the level of contaminant. ou can leave this box on-site
and then from there you can wirelessly monitor remote locations without needing to go there and physically take a sample yourself,
Emily Hicks, one of six founders of Fredsense Technologies, told Fastcoexist. The bacteria are housed in cartridges in a tester kit that can be used for spot tests in the field with the aid of a scientist
or can be set up to work remotely. In either case, water is injected manually or automatically through tubes into the cartridges,
which contain the genetically engineered sensing bacteria, chemicals and other components required to complete the test.
If there is contamination, for example high levels of arsenic, the bacteria produces a chemical that is electroactive.
A detector reads the response from the bacteria and after the reading is complete, a process that takes just one to two minutes,
sends the electrical signal to a mobile phone or a server. The signal can be accessed using 3g, Wi-fi or a USB connection on a computer.
The scientists, who started working on FRED while undergraduates at the University of Calgary, have won several competitions for their device
and recently achieved their crowdfunding goal on Boostr to advance their prototype. The device could be used to test water near mining sites, water treatment plants or just about anywhere clean,
fresh water is needed r
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