#A Typing Test To Diagnose Parkinson's Whether it on a keyboard, a smartphone, or even a credit card reader, you spend a lot of your day typing.
Well, researchers at MIT noticed the value of this daily habit, and are putting it to a secondary use;
they've developed software that can gauge the speed at which a typist is tapping the keyboard to help diagnose Parkinson disease.
(which slows all motor skills) and diseases that affect the central nervous system, including Parkinson. For the first version of this study, the researchers were looking at typing patterns that indicated
The researchers called it a"window into the brain"(metaphorically, of course. Right now, the algorithm they've developed is refined not enough to distinguish Parkinson's patients from people who are sleep deprived,
though the results might be clearer after a number of trials. The researchers plan to conduct a study with a larger group of subjects,
They are currently developing a smartphone app that can test participants even more easily y
#Aluminum-Ion Batteries Are Flexible, Fast-Charging, And Won't Catch on Fire Almost all of the electronic devices that we carry around with us all day now rely on one key,
but increasingly antiquated, technology: the lithium-ion battery. A mainstay of rechargeable power for the last couple decades, this battery technology has gotten only minor refinements.
But a substantial improvement in stored power may be in the offing, thanks to researchers at Stanford university,
who have developed a new battery technology based on aluminum. This isn't the first time that aluminum-based batteries have been investigated.
The material has a number of advantages over lithium: it's flexible, allowing it to be folded
or bent without losing power; can be charged in a minute instead of hours; and is incredibly durable--according to Stanford chemistry professor Hongjie Dai,
you can even drill a hole through the battery and it will continue to work.
That's good for volatility too: compromise a lithium-ion battery and you'll likely see some sparks or flame,
but the materials in this new battery are all non-reactive. And, aluminum is cheaper than lithium, too.
All good things, so why haven't we seen more aluminum batteries? The catch to date has been finding another material to work with aluminum in creating energy.
The Stanford team ended up using our old friend graphene to play the cathode to aluminum's anode.
But though that's helped unlock better performance, including more charge cycles--7, 500 versus the 1,
000 you'd likely get out of a Li-ion battery--aluminum-ion's woes aren't all behind it.
The voltage provided by an aluminum-ion battery is only about half of that what you'd get from a lithium-ion cell.
And, as Ars Technica points out the overall power density--the amount of juice you can store in a battery vis-a-vis its size--more closely resembles the large lead-acid battery you'd find in your car.
So aluminum-ion batteries still aren't quite ready for primetime, but you can bet that electronics manufacturers, makers of electric cars,
and power companies all have their eyes on the development of this technology. Meanwhile, researchers are working to enhance the performance of lithium-ion batteries using materials like carbon nanotubes,
but the returns are diminishing. And other new technologies, like sulfur-based and metal-air batteries have their own downsides as well.
Should scientists be able to increase the power and energy density of aluminum-ion batteries its speed of charging, lack of volatility,
and cheap production costs could make it the one to beat t
#Glowing Tumor Paint Shows Surgeons Where To Cut Brain surgery is complicated notoriously. Before surgeons go in to remove a tumor,
they study the size and location of the tumor. But once theye in, they have to rely on their fingers
and eyes to distinguish tumor cells from healthy brain cells. Now researchers have developed a"paint"that can be injected into a patient's veins to make tumor cells glow.
After a number of successful studies in mice and dogs, the paint is now being tested in humans in California.
The paint is made from two chemicals. The first is chlorotoxin a protein derived from scorpion venom,
which targets the chloride receptors on the surface of tumor cells. The protein carries a second,
nontoxic chemical that makes the cells fluoresce when they are exposed to near-infrared light. Tests at this early stage are designed to make sure that the paint works as it's supposed to,
and initial results have been promising. Researchers injected the tumor paint into the patients'veins and it was successfully able to cross the blood-brain barrier,
which protects the brain from harmful chemicals that might be in the blood. The first few test subjects had tumors that were deep in the brain
so the surgeons had to remove a piece of the tissue before shining a light on it.
T he question was, 'Does it glow?''And when we saw that it glows, it was just one of those moments...
'Wow, this works? Chirag Patil, one of the researchers behind the test at Cedars Sinai Medical center in Los angeles, told NPR.
The paint may also be used for other types of tumors in the future. Ideally, doctors wouldn be using surgery at all to eliminate tumors--it still a rudetechnique,
as one researcher said. But while surgery is still a standard treatment, tumor paint could help surgeons be much more precise m
#A 3d printed, Battery-Powered Rocket engine Nothing demonstrates engineering prowess and technical knowhow quite like rocket science.
Theres also nothing quite as expensive either. To launch even a lightweight rocket into space, the cost is easily upwards of $100 million
--and that mostly has to do with the complexity of the engines hardware. If you look at a launch vehicle
and where the bulk of the cost derives from, you quickly arrive at the rocket engine, Peter Beck,
CEO of New zealand-based private spaceflight company Rocket Lab, tells Popular Science. Its really difficult to build a low-cost rocket engine
and one you can produce in large numbers. To combat the exorbitant costs of space travel,
Rocket Lab is reshaping both the way rocket engines are manufactured and the way they function. Today at the Space Symposium in Colorado, the company unveiled its brand-new engine, named Rutherford--the first-ever battery-powered rocket engine.
The design, made almost entirely of 3d printed parts, will be used on Rocket Labs Electron orbital launch vehicle,
which will get its first test spin later this year. Rocket engines today more or less follow the same formula.
Liquid fuel and a liquid oxidizer combine within a combustion chamber and ignite. Ultimately its this combustion that thrusts the rocket forward.
However, feeding the propellants into the chamber is complicated a process, requiring separate turbopumps to transport the liquids at super-high speeds into a high-pressure area.
requiring extra hardware and additional fuel. But with Rutherford, the engines turbopumps get a much more condensed energy source.
Instead of running on liquid propellant, the pumps are powered by electric motors with lithium polymer batteries. This eliminates the need for extra spaghetti tubes and valves,
which add weight to the engine and are frequently the source of engine failure. The electric pumps then easily combine the oxygen
Its really only the advancement in battery technology that has enabled us to go to electric turbopumps, Beck says.
and now the electric motor is about 95 percent efficient, versus the 60 percent efficiency of the gas motor.
Rutherford is the first to incorporate battery power in its engine. If that wasn't unique enough,
The Rutherford engine will be the main propulsion source for Rocket Labs Electron vehicle which the company hopes to use as a low-cost method for launching satellites and other small payloads of up to 220 pounds into space.
They estimate that their rocket, which is 65 feet long and 3 feet wide, will only cost about $4. 9 million for each liftoff.
#Augmented reality Glasses Are Coming To The Battlefield Using a pair of augmented reality glasses, a Marine signals intelligence (SIGINT) specialist monitors web traffic while he lies on the ground,
his assault rifle trained on a nearby building. Amid the cacophony of cyber-noise in the city--the thousands of simultaneous, harmless Skype sessions, movie streams,
and Internet searches--the Marine has zeroed in on a possible insurgent, who is currently flipping through financial data on a spreadsheet.
Perhaps the suspect will make a mistake, and open up a mapping application that will show where he's planning to meet an arms dealer to buy plastique.
The Marine glances at the vital statistics on the heads-up display. The heart rate of his point man has spiked suddenly up to 110.
Using a mouse mounted on the handguard of his M-16, the SIGINT specialist silently clicks open the video feed from the point man's head-mounted camera.
A convoy of enemy pickups is headed directly towards the platoon. The Marine pushes out an alert to the rest of the platoon and then switches from dual-display mode to left-only as he raises his weapon to his eye.
This is what the Office of Naval Research (ONR) is working on with its ongoing AR Glasses project;
when the project comes to fruition, instead of having his face in a phone or glued to a laptop,
the Marine will be able to keep his gaze on the battlefield, increasing what the military calls"situational awareness."
"And they can also facilitate commands and information between ordinary soldiers. The glasses have already been demonstrated at cyber-intelligence exercises in November, January, and March.
Modified versions of X-6 prototypes made by the San francisco-based Osterhout Design Group (ODG),
the ONR glasses allow SIGINT soldiers to monitor a variety of enemy waveforms, indicating Internet traffic, 2g/SMS, VHF/push-to-talk radio systems,
and satellite communications. The tool emerged out of brainstorming between Marine modeling and simulation expert Major Christian Fitzpatrick and a signals intelligence instructor and staff sergeant named Nicholas Lannan.
found he couldn't monitor his Android device and hold a weapon at the same time.""He was patrolling with an infantry unit,
"He had the Android device, plus different antenna systems coming out of his backpack. So we talked about it,
and if he had a heads-up display, he could hold a weapons system, keep his head about him,
and still get some streaming data.""Having eyes glued to a screen can cause a SIGINT Marine not to see real-world objects that might be relevant.
For example, an amplitude decrease in the signal getting tracked as the Marine moves around a building may be due to interference by the metal fire escape above his head,
not because he's moving away from the target. Still, Fitzpatrick says the 1. 5-GHZ dual-core glasses are still several years from readiness for the field, mainly due to the physical rigors of battle.
The glasses aren totally waterproof, can be hard to read when the Marine moves between bright sunlight and the shade of a building,
. or a plainclothes guy surveying an environment, they would be OK. But in a military environment, where they might get stepped on or dropped,
and theye prototypes that cost roughly $20, 000 apiece? says Fitzpatrick. hen we talk to MARSOC (Marine corps Special Operations Command),
theye very interested in the spectrum data from the glasses. But they said f someone shooting at me, the first thing
Pete Jameson, chief operating officer at ODG, points out that the company R-6 glasses, commercially available for just under $5, 000, have an ambient light sensor and swappable photochromic shields for handling glare."
An MIT computer program called Lincoln Adaptable Real-time Information Assurance Testbed (LARIAT simulated the electronic activity of thousands of innocent civilians as well as a criminal network working to buy a large weapons system to use on the ships.
In the heat of battle, insurgents may switch between a variety of modes of communications. hat
Do they use their phones to send a textdo they use Twitter? says Fitzpatrick. ee trying to build scenarios so
The battery (which lasts 4-6 hours) sits above the top of the lenses, giving the 4. 5-ounce glasses a bulky look.
He thinks people will be more receptive to wearables incorporated into a core job function.""There's a big future in the corporate and industrial world.
and municipalities with less money and clout are having to turn to even more inventive methods to get clean water without breaking the bank.
part of a competition to see who could create an affordable desalination solution for developing countries.
The winners of the $125, 000 first prize were a group from MIT and Jain Irrigation systems.
The group came up with a method that uses solar panels to charge a bank of batteries.
The batteries then power a system that removes salt from the water through electrodialysis. On the most basic level, that means that dissolved salt particles,
which have a slight electric charge, are drawn out of the water when a small electrical current is applied.
(which makes water unusable for crops and for drinking), the team also applied UV LIGHT to disinfect some of the water as it passed through the system.
Using the sun instead of fossil fuels to power a desalination plant isn't a totally new idea.
Larger solar desalination plants are being investigated seriously in areas where water is becoming a scarce resource,
the technology is still expensive (though prices are dropping) and requires a lot of intricate technology. In rural areas or developing countries, durability is key,
The MIT/Jain team and their competitors tested their projects at the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility in New Mexico,
The next step is to test it in an even harsher environment, exposing it to everyday use with rural farmers in an area where USAID is active.
If all goes well, the system could provide enough water to irrigate a small farm m
#Navy Makes Armor Clear As Clay It a transparent armor so good it might turn the phrase lass cannonon its head.
The Naval Research Laboratory developed a manufacturing process to reliably make a strong, transparent ceramic that also allows infrared cameras to look through it,
which most commercial glass can't do. Now that the process is complete, the NRL is sharing the technology with industry
so they can scale it up to make giant sheets of transparent, lightweight, bulletproof clay. Called Spinel, the material is made in a lab from synthetic powder.
Under the right conditions it can be shaped into strong, transparent sheets. The NRL has worked with the material for decades.
An added bonus to this method is that it allows the spinel to be pressed into shapes--for example, a dome for a new camera turret or a sloping panel that's flush with a wing.
While the military already has ways of protecting its cameras and windows spinel does it in a much lighter way.
From an NRL press release about the material: A"bulletproof"window today, for example, has layers of plastic and glass perhaps five inches thick."
"If you replaced that with spinel, you'd reduce the weight by a factor of two
or more,"says NRL scientist Jas Sanghera. Because of the newfound clarity of the material, it could also work in lasers,
protecting the components inside a directed energy weapon from the ravages of sea or sand while still letting the laser shine through.
#Massive Earthquake Shakes Nepal; Avalanches On Everest An earthquake struck Nepal early Saturday causing numerous casualties,
large amounts of damage to structures and avalanches on Mount everest where a closely watched climbing season was started just getting.
The magnitude 7. 8 earthquake occurred only 50 miles away from Nepal's capital, Katmandu.
It was recorded on seismic monitors as far away as Norway. Even two days after the quake, strong aftershocks are rattling the region,
wiping out camps, injuring dozens and killing at least 18 people according to the AP. Avalanches triggered by aftershocks continue to hamper efforts to reach climbers trapped further up the mountain.
Last year, an avalanche in April killed 16 Sherpa guides, a tragedy that brought the climbing season to an abrupt end.
Historic buildings in Katmandu were particularly hard hit, with many reduced to rubble after the quake hit.
But the movement of the earth's tectonic plates isn't like the smooth movement of gears in a machine.
building up huge amounts of energy along a fault as the plates try to keep moving.
or fracture in the earth's crust. There are many different types of faults. A thrust fault, like the one that caused the earthquake Saturday,
is a fault where one part of the earth is pushed up and over another section of the earth.
Living in an area between a rock (the Indian subcontinent) and a hard place (Eurasia) residents of the region have gotten used to earthquakes.
A 2005 earthquake in neighboring Kashmir killed 75,000 people, and left millions homeless. Those kinds of large earthquakes aren't as common in Nepal.
The USGS reports that in the past 100 years only four earthquakes larger than a magnitude 6. 0 on the Richter scale have occurred in the immediate area.
The most recent was in 1988, a 6. 9 temblor that killed 1500. The largest in that time frame was a magnitude 8 in 1934 that killed around 10,000,
But just because a large earthquake hadn't occurred in Nepal recently didn't mean that people weren't worried about it.
Safety experts worried for years about poor building codes near the presence of a fault which could cause untold misery if'the big one'hit,
Early calculations suggest that this magnitude 7. 8 earthquake is probably not big enough to rupture all the way to the surface,
and we should probably expect another big earthquake to the west and south of this one in the coming decades, Laurent Bollinger,
A team of student engineers at Rice university has developed a clever pair of VR gloves that make it feel like you're actually interacting with virtual objects.
when the user reaches out to grab something in the virtual game world, the device selectively inflates those bladders,
putting pressure on the user's fingertips and evoking the sensation of actually touching a physical object.
#Humanitarian Mapping Program To Help Nepal Earthquake Recovery Efforts Pallets of supplies, including shelter kits
and lanterns are loaded onto a Royal air force plane headed for Nepal. The death toll of the earthquake that shook Nepal over the weekend just topped 5, 000.
Aid is slowly getting to people who badly need it, but frustration at the slow pace of relief efforts continues to mount.
Hundreds of thousands of people need food, water, shelter, or some combination of the three, not to mention the numerous people who desperately need medical care.
Faced with scenes of such devastation many people want to help, but what's the best way to do that?
Giving money to reputable aid organizations is much better, but if you want to do something more tangible in addition to a financial donation,
all you need is a computer and time. An organization called the Humanitarian Openstreetmap Team (HOT) is looking for volunteers from all over the world to look through satellite imagery of Nepal and label and map roads, buildings,
and other vital structures that can help relief workers on the ground get aid to where it is needed badly."
"You start to realize what important they're asking you to map wells because there's only water in every couple of villages,
because people need malaria meds. You feel like you've spent time in these places after spending hours digitizing aerial imagery.
#Autonomous Robots To Help Remove Car bomb Threats Hopefully, you don't have to fret about risks like car bombs in your everyday life,
The European union-funded Autonomous vehicle Emergency Recovery Tool (AVERT) project is intended a system to remove suspicious vehicles where there is concern over potential threats like IEDS,
but the vehicle can't be accessed safely by other bomb disposal tools. AVERT consists of a single deployment unit and four autonomous robot bogies
or trucks--frames attached to wheels like on skateboards or roller skates. After being towed into position by a bomb-disposal robot,
AVERT's deployment unit can scan locations of a targeted vehicle using laser-based LIDAR,
It can even detect the angle of the wheels on the vehicle in question to help figure out the best way to remove it.
The bogies then maneuver themselves in concert beneath the wheels of the target vehicle, and use their onboard intelligence to slowly move the vehicle to a safe location.
The biggest advantage of AVERT is that it's largely autonomous. While it can be overridden by a remote operator if necessary
including vehicle towing and perhaps even automatic parking in environments where space is limited. The good news is that
when the robot valet parks your car, you don't even have to tip p
#Scientists Are Figuring Out How To Change Blood types At some point in your life, youe probably been asked to donate blood.
If your blood is type O, you may have been asked to donate even more, because your blood type is the most useful
--but a transfusion of the wrong blood type can be fatal. For example, the immune system of a type O individual will launch a massive attack on the"invading cells"of a type A individual
Now researchers from the University of British columbia have figured out a way to change the type of blood donated by volunteers,
called an antigen. The result: The blood is more like type O, the universal donor. This isn the first time that researchers have produced blood with fewer antigens in the lab,
but this attempt has worked better than any other. The researchers used a technique called directed evolution;
and inserted particular mutations in the bacteria DNA to make the enzyme even more powerful. After cultivating the bacteria over five generations,
Though this enzyme works pretty well to remove most antigens, it not perfect. That means that the treated blood isn a perfect type O,
U s. Will not Fund Embryo Editing Thanks to new genetic engineering techniques, we can edit DNA with more precision than ever before.
They attempted to delete a gene for a blood disorder called beta thalassemia from the DNA of 86 nonviable embryos.
In response, Francis Collins, the director of the National institutes of health (and leader of the U s. effort to sequence the human genome),
and a current lack of compelling medical applications justifying the use of/genetic engineering in embryos.""The NIH's stance is not particularly surprising,
which causes Tay-sachs disease--a disease in which children develop normally for six months and then become progressively deaf, blind, unable to swallow, and paralytic,
before dying at four-will benefit future generations. We lose nothing by editing this gene out of the human lineage.
Of course, gene editing techniques are nowhere near ready to eradicate human diseases. The modifications are difficult to target
and the editing process can cause damage to the entire genome. The NIH's stance means those safety problems won't be solved on the U s s dime
#Squid-Inspired Tape Could Help Camouflage Soldiers No matter the color or texture of their surroundings,
squid are masters of camouflage, blending in to the scenery to avoid detection. Now, researchers from the University of California Irvine have isolated the source of the creature's disappearing act:
a protein appropriately named reflection. Additionally, when the researchers layered this protein on a piece of tape,
The researchers presented their work this week at the meeting of the American Chemical Society in Denver.
notes that it might be even better for soldiers operating at night who are still visible by cameras that pick up the near-infrared.
#Small Beerotor Drone Learns To fly By Sight Alone Secretly, a lot of drones are cell phone parts disguised as flying machines.
Advances in cellular technology, like miniaturized powerful batteries, cheaper smaller cameras, and sensors like accelerometers have all found their way from our pockets to the skies.
Now, a new drone eye wants to shed cell parts like a vestigial tail, and instead make drones fly on sight alone.
Accelerometers are neat tools, and in drones they detect the force of gravity, letting the craft know which way is down.
But theye hardly the only way for flying vehicles to stay level. The Beerotor drone made by roboticists Fabien Expert and Franck Ruffier at Aix Marseille University in Marseille,
France, manages to fly without one. Instead, the three-ounce rotorcraft uses electronic, almost panoramic eyes that look out at the ground below,
and then adjusts the Beerotor speed and altitude accordingly, so it can fly through an experimental tunnel over a simulated rolling landscape without crashing,
and then land safely at the end. Published in Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, the study is an attempt to understand
and then mimic how insects are able to fly safely. Because insect bodies are so small
theye a great model for micro-robots, where all space is at a premium. Tiny rescue robots in the future may not have room for an accelerometer, even a small one,
but theyl almost certainly require a camera. That means machines that can fly from sight alone can use equipment theyl already have on board.
This is a definite win, not just for the robotics engineers, but for any person trapped in a collapsed building that would rather be rescued by a nonliving machine instead of a cyborg beetle r
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