#Hydrogen-Powered Hycopter Drone can fly for 4 Hours on a Single Charge This month,
the Singapore-based company Horizon Unmanned Systems (HUS) presented the world first hydrogen-powered, multi-rotor UAV (Unmanned aerial vehicle) that uses its own structural elements to store fuel. e realized that the structures of these drones were hollow inside,
said company CEO Taras Wankewycz. ee now able to use that space to instead of filling it with air,
fill it with a useful gas, which is hydrogen. Unlike any of the other currently-available drones that can stay in the air for no more than 20 to 30 minutes at a time
the ycoptercan fly for up to 4 hours (or 2. 5 hours if carrying a 1 kg payload) per single charge,
bringing drone survey and long-distance delivery missions closer to reality. In a clever design feature, the Hycopter stores 120 g of hydrogen gas at 350 bar (5, 075 psi) in its existing structural tubing no separate canister is required.
According to HUS, this amount of hydrogen fuel should provide as much energy as 3 kg worth of lithium batteries.
they will be manufactured from polymer-lined 5 mm-thick carbon fibre in the finished model. The lightweight lithium-polymer hybrid fuel cell that converts the hydrogen gas into electricity to power the rotors was developed by a sister company,
called Horizon Energy systems. y removing the design silos that typically separate the energy storage component from UAV frame development,
we opened up a whole new category in the drone market, in-between battery and combustion engine systems, said Wankewycz.
The HUS was launched this year to merge the energy systems coming from HES with UAV platforms built from the ground up.
One of the key advertised benefits of this novel quadcopter is its low operational costs:
at just $5/kwh for industrial hydrogen, one flight could cost only around $7. 50,
providing yet another reason to be enthusiastic about the future of drone delivery systems. Writing in the Wall street journal,
Christopher Mims said: rones are a special case of the limitations of current energy storage technology because,
even more than in cars and other gadgets, there is a direct penalty for adding more batterieshe drone becomes heavier.
Researchers hope that as the new HUS Hycopter hits the market later this year (no word on the pricing yet), hydrogen fuel cell technology,
currently plagued by cost and production sustainability issues, will draw more attention and possibly even get a boost in funding.
Wankewycz claims the flying prototype is almost ready to go and should make its first flight in mere month to come.
The company is already taking pre-orders from interested parties e
#Toward reenpaper-thin, flexible electronics The rapid evolution of gadgets has brought us an impressive array of martproducts from phones to tablets,
and now watches and glasses. But they still haven broken free from their rigid form.
roll up electronics. Credit: American Chemical Societynow scientists are reporting in the journal ACS Applied materials & Interfaces a new step toward bendable electronics.
They have developed the first light-emitting, transparent and flexible paper out of environmentally friendly materials via a simple, suction-filtration method.
Technology experts have predicted long the coming age of flexible electronics, and researchers have been working on multiple fronts to reach that goal.
But many of the advances rely on petroleum-based plastics and toxic materials. Yu-Zhong Wang, Fei Song and colleagues wanted to seek a reenerway forward.
clear nanocellulose paper made out of wood flour and infused it with biocompatible quantum dots tiny, semiconducting crystals made out of zinc and selenium.
The paper glowed at room temperature and could be rolled and unrolled without cracking. Source: AC c
#Human stem cell model reveals molecular cues critical to neurovascular unit formation Real-time tracking of cellular behavior during human development provides new insights Crucial bodily functions we depend on
Using human embryonic stem cells, researchers at University of California San diego School of medicine and Moores Cancer Center and Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute created a model that allows them to track cellular behavior during the earliest stages of human development in real-time.
The model reveals, for the first time, how autonomic neurons and blood vessels come together to form the neurovascular unit.
said co-senior author of the study David Cheresh, Phd, Distinguished Professor of Pathology, vice-chair for research and development and associate director for translational research at UC San diego. nd if wee ever going to use stem cells to develop new organ systems,
this new insight on the autonomic nervous system also has implications for rare inherited conditions such as neurofibromatosis,
tuberous sclerosis and Hirschsprung disease. hese observations may help to explain certain human disease syndromes in which abnormalities of the nervous system appear to be associated, for previously unclear reasons,
with vascular abnormalities, said co-senior author Evan Snyder, MD, Phd, professor and director of the Center for Stem Cells and Regenerative medicine at Sanford-Burnham. urthermore, we demonstrate here that modeling human development
and disease in the lab must take into account multiple cell types in order to reflect the actual human condition.
We can no longer rely on merely examining pure populations of one cell type or another. o
#Premature aging: Scientists identify and correct defects in diseased cells Scientists from the Institut pasteur and CNRS,
in collaboration with scientists from the Institut Gustave Roussy and CEA, have succeeded in restoring normal activity in cells isolated from patients with the premature aging disease Cockayne syndrome.
This enzyme is overexpressed in Cockayne syndrome patient cells, and leads to mitochondrial defects, which in turn play a crucial role in the appearance of symptoms leading to aging in affected children.
These findings, published in the journal PNAS Plus describe one of the hitherto unknown mechanisms responsible for premature aging.
They could also shed light on the normal aging process. Rare genetic diseases cause accelerated premature aging. To date, there is no treatment for these pathologies.
Understanding the causes of premature aging diseases may also help elucidating the process of normal aging.
One such disease, Cockayne syndrome (CS), has an incidence of about 2. 5 per million births and,
in its most severe form, is associated with a life span of less than seven years. Children with Cockayne syndrome show marked signs of premature aging
such as loss of weight, hair, hearing and sight, as well as facial deformation and neurodegeneration. Cockayne syndrome is caused by mutations in
either of two genes involved in the repair of DNA damage induced by ultraviolet (UV) rays.
CS patients are hypersensitive to sunlight and burn easily. For decades it was believed that the premature aging process associated with this disease was caused essentially by DNA repair deficiency.
By comparing cells from CS patients and from patients with another, related syndrome causing only UV hypersensitivity,
the team led by Miria Ricchetti (Institut pasteur) with Laurent Chatre (CNRS, at the Institut pasteur), in collaboration with Alain Sarasin (CNRS, at the Institut Gustave Roussy) and Denis Biard (CEA), discovered that the defects in CS cells are actually due to excessive production of a protease (HTRA3),
and induced by oxidative cell stress. In CS cells, HTRA3 degrades a key component of the machinery responsible for DNA replication in mitochondria (the cellular owerhouses, thereby affecting mitochondrial activity.
Until now, neurodegeneration and aging have largely been attributed to the damage inflicted on cells by mitochondrial free radicals.
The new study shows that free radicals also activate the expression of a protein known as HTRA3
This onslaught on the mitochondrial core is a key factor in the degeneration of cells in patients suffering from premature aging.
By means of two new therapeutic strategies, using an HTRA3 inhibitor or a broad-spectrum antioxidant to capture free radicals,
This progress both paves the way for new therapeutic approaches, which could soon be tested in patients,
and treating premature aging using the protease HTRA3. These defective mechanisms may also occur but at a slower rate, in healthy cells, leading to physiological aging.
The development of therapeutic strategies targeting premature aging diseases could therefore open new research possibilities in terms of preventive therapies for the pathologies associated with normal aging a
#Blood to feeling: Mcmaster scientists turn blood into neural cells Adult sensory neurons made from human patients blood samplescientists at Mcmaster University have discovered how to make adult sensory neurons from human patients simply by having them roll up their sleeve and providing
a blood sample. Specifically, stem cell scientists at Mcmaster can now directly convert adult human blood cells to both central nervous system (brain
and spinal cord) neurons as well as neurons in the peripheral nervous system (rest of the body) that are responsible for pain, temperature and itch perception.
was led by Mick Bhatia, director of the Mcmaster Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Human Stem Cell biology
and is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical sciences of the Michael G. Degroote School of medicine.
Also playing a key role was Karun Singh, a co-author in the study and holder of the David Braley Chair in Human Stem Cell Research.
In extreme conditions, pain or numbness is perceived by the brain using signals sent by these peripheral nerves. he problem is that unlike blood, a skin sample or even a tissue biopsy,
and make the main cell types of neurological systems the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system in a dish that is specialized for each patient,
as routinely performed in a doctor office, and with it we can produce one million sensory neurons,
adding that it allows researchers to start asking questions about understanding disease and improving treatments such as:
Can the neuropathy that diabetic patients experience be mimicked in a dish? It also paves the way for the discovery of new pain drugs that don just numb the perception of pain.
or experiencing neuropathy, the prized pain drug for me would target the peripheral nervous system neurons, but do nothing to the central nervous system,
or neuropathy to run tests on neurons created from blood samples of patients taken in past clinical trials where responses
in that one might be able to look at a patient with Type 2 Diabetes and predict whether they will experience neuropathy by running tests in the lab using their own neural cells derived from their blood sample. his bench to bedside research is very exciting
and will have a major impact on the management of neurological diseases, particularly neuropathic pain, said Akbar Panju, medical director of the Michael G. Degroote Institute for Pain Research and Care,
a clinician and professor of medicine. his research will help us understand the response of cells to different drugs and different stimulation responses,
and allow us to provide individualized or personalized medical therapy for patients suffering with neuropathic pain. ource:
Mcmaster Universit i
#Controlling a robotic arm with a patient intentions Giving himself a drink for the first time in 10 years,
me great pleasure to be part of the solution for improving paralyzed patientslives. part of the brain that controls intuitive movement planning could be key to improving motor control in paralyzed patients with prostheticsneural prosthetic devices
or paralysis to control the movement of a robotic limb one that can be connected either to
In a clinical trial, the Caltech team and colleagues from Keck Medicine of USC have implanted successfully just such a device in a patient with quadriplegia
The results of the trial, led by principal investigator Richard Andersen, the James G. Boswell Professor of Neuroscience,
and the details of the movement such as lift the arm, extend the arm, grasp the cup,
High spinal cord injuries can cause quadriplegia in some patients because movement signals cannot get from the brain to the arms and legs.
As a solution, earlier neuroprosthetic implants used tiny electrodes to detect and record movement signals at their last stop before reaching the spinal cord:
The recorded signal is carried then via wire bundles from the patient brain to a computer,
the Caltech team collaborated with surgeons at Keck Medicine of USC and the rehabilitation team at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center.
The surgeons implanted a pair of small electrode arrays in two parts of the PPC of a quadriplegic patient.
Each array contains 96 active electrodes that, in turn, each record the activity of a single neuron in the PPC.
The arrays were connected by a cable to a system of computers that processed the signals,
and controlled output devices that included a computer cursor and a robotic arm developed by collaborators at Johns hopkins university.
After recovering from the surgery, the patient was trained to control the computer cursor and the robotic arm with his mind.
Once training was complete, the researchers saw just what they were hoping for: intuitive movement of the robotic arm. or me, the most exciting moment of the trial was when the participant first moved the robotic limb with his thoughts.
He had been paralyzed for over 10 years, and this was the first time since his injury that he could move a limb
and reach out to someone. It was a thrilling moment for all of us, Andersen says. t was a big surprise that the patient was able to control the limb on day one the very first day he tried,
thus providing the researchers with more information about how the PPC works. For example, e learned that
should move my hand over toward to the object in a certain waytrying to control the limb that didn work,
Andersen says. hat we have here is a unique window into the workings of a complex high-level brain area as we work collaboratively with our subject to perfect his skill in controlling external devices.?
such as those of the Andersen Lab at Caltech, to human patients, ultimately turning transformative discoveries into effective therapies, says center director Charles Y. Liu, professor of neurological surgery, neurology,
and biomedical engineering at USC, who led the surgical implant procedure and the USC/Rancho Los Amigos team in the collaboration. n taking care of patients with neurological injuries and diseasesnd knowing the significant
Direct brain control of robots and computers has the potential to dramatically change the lives of many people,
Dr. Mindy Aisen, the chief medical officer at Rancho Los Amigos who led the study rehabilitation team,
We have created a unique environment that can seamlessly bring together rehabilitation, medicine, and science as exemplified in this study,
it like going to the dentist and having your mouth numbed. It very hard to speak without somatosensory feedback.
#Semiliquid Battery Almost As good as its Lithium Ion Counterparts and Supercapacitators Developed by researchers at the University of Texas, Austin,
the new membrane-free semiliquid battery, consisting of a liquid ferrocene electrolyte, a liquid cathode and a solid lithium anode, exhibited encouraging early results,
encompassing many of the features desired in a state-of-the-art energy storage device. A new semiliquid battery combines all that is best about its lithium ion counterparts
and supercapacitators (pictured above) to bring us closer to the next generation of energy storage devices. Findings of the study were published in a recent issue of the science journal Nano Letters. he greatest significance of our work is that we have designed a semiliquid battery based on a new chemistry,
said lead author and Assistant professor Guihua Yu. he battery shows excellent rate capability that can be charged fully
or discharged almost within one minute while maintaining good energy efficiency and reasonable energy density, representing a promising prototype liquid redox battery with both high energy density and power density for energy storage.
Combining the best elements of lithium ion batteries the most common power sources in consumer electronics with supercapacitators (a relatively new type of battery valued for its capacity to discharge energy in large bursts) has been one of the focal point of much recent
work on energy storage devices. A successful technology of this type would not only make things significantly more powerful,
but also much smaller and lighter, too, allowing them to be charged in mere minutes, rather than several hours,
as is customary today. The new battery high power density (1400 W/L) and good energy density (40 Wh/L) put it in the uniquely favorable position of combining a power density that is as high as that of current supercapacitors with an energy density on par with those of state-of-the-art
redox flow batteries and lead-acid batteries, though slightly lower than that of lithium-ion batteries. This combination is a real winner considering that the battery is designed mostly for use in hybrid electric vehicles and energy storage for renewable energy sources.
Yu and his team attribute the battery stellar performance in large part to its liquid electrode design. he ions can move through the liquid battery very rapidly compared to in a solid battery,
and the redox reactions in which the electrons are transferred between electrodes also occur at very high rates in this particular battery.
For comparison, the values used to measure these rates (the diffusion coefficient and the reaction constant) are orders of magnitude greater in the new battery than in most conventional flow batteries,
explained Lisa Zyga, reporting on the discovery for Phys. org. Before the new battery hits the shelves, researchers still have a lot of work ahead of them considering the lithium anode
which has to be made much safer than it currently is. As long as the electrolyte compatibility is resolved,
the team is also considering the use of other metals, such as zinc and magnesium that could serve as the anode in a battery of this type. e also expect that other organometallic compounds with multi-valence-state metal centers (redox centers) may also function as the anode,
which eventually would make the battery fully liquid. t
#Scientists teach robot to learn new skills via trial and error Scientists at University of California, Berkeley have taught robots to learn.
New technique, called eep learning is a system of algorithms that enable robots to learn motor tasks through trial and error.
It is very similar concept to how humans learn behaviours and get to know how things work around them in early childhood.
It is called already a major milestone in the field of artificial intelligence. Scientists posing with robot they nicknamed BRETT.
It is a major milestone in the field of artificial intelligence as this is robot that can learn by itself
bringing idea about robots helping around the house closer. Photo courtesy of UC Berkeley Robot Learning Lab) The concept of robot learning new things by itself has been puzzling scientists for quite some time.
But now they can demonstrate their achievements. They showed what robot can do by making it complete various tasks putting a clothes hanger on a rack,
assembling a toy plane, screwing a cap on a water bottle, and more. Everything was done without preprogrammed details about surroundings of the robot.
Professor Pieter Abbeel of UC Berkeley Department of Electrical engineering and Computer sciences said it is a new way to empower robot
and make it learn without changes to software.?The key is that when a robot is faced with something new,
we won have to reprogram it. The exact same software, which encodes how the robot can learn,
was used to allow the robot to learn all the different tasks we gave it he said.
This is very important step in robotics. Robots are tested usually and demonstrated in controlled environments. Objects are where robot expects them to be
and there are not many obstacles to overcome. However, if robots are going to assist us in our homes,
they have to be prepared to operate in environment that is constantly changing. You cannot reprogram your robot then you placed a chair in a different place
it has to learn to walk around it by itself. This learning ability did require tremendous amount of programming anyway.
Usually, robots have to be programmed to handle the vast range of possible scenarios. Now scientists are trying eep learningmethod,
which is inspired loosely by the neural circuitry of the human brain when it perceives and interacts with the world.
Humans are born not preprogrammed with possible scenarios, so a robot needs to be able to learn too.
Deep learning programs create eural netsin which layers of artificial neurons process overlapping raw sensory data,
whether it is sound waves or image pixels. It helps robot to categorize new object and patterns
learn how to behave around them. Deep learning is used already by programs, such as Siri on iphones, Google speech-to-text program or Google street view,
but learning to accomplish motor tasks has proved to be far more challenging. BRETT demonstrates its abilities to learn without preprogrammed knowledge about its surroundingslike in many cases,
practise here makes perfect. Scientists were testing their software with a Willow Garage Personal Robot 2 (PR2),
which they nicknamed BRETT (Berkeley Robot for the Elimination of Tedious Tasks). The algorithm controlling BRETT learning included a reward function that provided a score based upon how well the robot was doing with the task.
Robot was presented with different tasks, such as placing blocks into matching openings or stacking Lego blocks almost like a child playing with educational toys.
the learning process takes about three hours. With more data robots will soon be able to learn much more complex things.
It is a tremendous leap forward in robotics and artificial intelligence, bringing idea of house robots a little step closer.
Even though learning processes are still not perfect, this shows that future might be imagined just as we it with robot butlers.
Source: UC Berkele b
#ain sensinggene discovery could help in development of new methods of pain relief A gene essential to the production of pain-sensing neurons in humans has been identified by an international team of researchers co-led by the University
of Cambridge. The discovery, reported in the journal Nature Genetics, could have implications for the development of new methods of pain relief.
Pain perception is conserved an evolutionarily warning mechanism that alerts us to dangers in the environment and to potential tissue damage.
However, rare individuals around one in a million people in the UK are born unable to feel pain.
These people accumulate numerous self-inflicted injuries often leading to reduced lifespan. Using detailed genome mapping,
two teams of researchers collaborated to analyse the genetic make-up of 11 families across Europe
The team looked at nerve biopsies taken from the patients to see what had gone wrong and found that particular pain-sensing neurons were absent.
From these clinical features of the disease, the team predicted that there would be a block to the production of pain-sensing neurons during the development of the embryo they confirmed this using a combination of studies in mouse and frog models,
and acts like a switch to turn genes on and off (an effect known as epigenetics). The researchers showed that all the genetic variants of PRDM12 in the CIP patients blocked the gene function.
says Professor Geoff Woods from the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research at the University of Cambridge,
particularly given recent successes with drugs targeting chromatin regulators in human disease, adds Dr Ya-Chun Chen from the University of Cambridge,
the study first author. his could potentially benefit those who are at danger from lack of pain perception and help in the development of new treatments for pain relief. n
#Engineering Phase changes in Nanoparticle Arrays Scientists at the U s. Department of energy Brookhaven National Laboratory have taken just a big step toward the goal of engineering dynamic nanomaterials
In a paper appearing innature Materials, they describe a way to selectively rearrange the nanoparticles in three-dimensional arrays to produce different configurations,
Introducing eprogrammingdna strands into an already assembled nanoparticle array triggers a transition from a other phase,
Such phase-changes could potentially be used to switch a material properties on demand. ne of the goals in nanoparticle self-assembly has been to create structures by design,
who led the work at Brookhavencenter for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), a DOE Office of Science User Facility. ntil now,
such as dynamic energy harvesting or responsive optical materials. DNA-directed rearrangementthis latest advance in nanoscale engineering builds on the team previous work developing ways to get nanoparticles to self-assemble into complex composite arrays,
including linking them together with tethers constructed of complementary strands of synthetic DNA. In this case
they started with an assembly of nanoparticles already linked in a regular array by the complementary binding of the A t, G,
or a combination of these forces between particles. e know that properties of materials built from nanoparticles are strongly dependent on their arrangements,
the reprogramming DNA strands adhere to open binding sites on the already assembled nanoparticles. These strands exert additional forces on the linked-up nanoparticles. y introducing different types of reprogramming DNA strands,
we modify the DNA shells surrounding the nanoparticles, explained CFN postdoctoral fellow Yugang Zhang, the lead author on the paper. ltering these shells can selectively shift the particle-particle interactions,
either by increasing both attraction and repulsion, or by separately increasing only attraction or only repulsion.
the team demonstrated that they could switch their original nanoparticle array, the otherphase, into multiple different daughter phases with precision control.
another DOE Office of Science User Facility that operated at Brookhaven Lab from 1982 until last September (now replaced by NSLS-II,
said Gang. ur experimental work and accompanying theoretical analysis confirm that reprogramming DNA-mediated interactions among nanoparticles is a viable way to achieve this goal. ource:
BN o
#Boutique bread just a gene away for Aussie farmers Australian farmers can look forward to growing a boutique,
high-yield wheat that is adapted to local conditions and among the best in the world for making bread.
Scientists at UQ Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI) have identified a hereditary component in wheat that is essential for anyone hoping to consistently make premium-quality bread.
QAAFI Director and plant geneticist Professor Robert Henry said a Trailblazer award from The University of Queensland commercialisation arm
Queensland grain growers have for many years produced wheat varieties classified as rime hard wheatbecause these were suited to the production of good-quality bread. he precise reason for the difference in the quality of the rime hard wheathas long been a mystery,
Professor Henry said. Wheat is one of the most important cereal crops in the world,
with global production of about 650 million tonnes and consumption in a variety of breads across different countries and cultures. rowing global demand for wheat requires ongoing genetic improvement to adapt to changing environmental conditions,
Professor Henry said. owever new wheat varieties must retain the essential quality characteristics of wheat. heat varieties are assessed normally for bread-making quality by conducting a baking test. his is only possible late in the breeding process
because of the need for relatively large quantities of seed to mill and bake. ow that his team has identified the wheat gene responsible for quality bread,
Professor Henry and his colleagues are eager to produce new premium wheat varieties. he good news is that premium wheats attract better prices so this discovery potentially means more dollars for Australian farmers.
AAFI scientists expect to exploit the bread-quality gene by developing improved wheat varieties using speed-breeding technologies that allow multiple generations of different varieties to be grown quickly
as well as disease/drought resistance that also include the bread-quality gene, he said. sing the speed-breeding technology developed by QAAFI Dr Lee Hickey,
University of Queenslan
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