#Big data tackles tiny molecular machinesopen feed cut. Such is the humdrum life of a motor molecule the subject of new research at Rice university that eats
The study has implications also for people who design artificial limbs or robots. Clearly locomotion is not as simple as we thought it was said Foster.
if we want to reproduce these movements in prosthetics or robotics. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of California-Riverside.
#Lignin breakthroughs serve as GPS for plant researchresearchers at North carolina State university have developed the equivalent of GPS directions for future plant scientists to understand how plants adapt to the environment
The GPS-like findings could reduce years of research time required to make future advances Chiang says.
and memory functions and to an increased risk of mild cognitive impairment in a 21-year follow-up.
(which makes up as much as 60%of the upper mantle) by using an electron microscope and specific image processing.
Turn your old milk jugs into 3-D printer filamentmaking your own stuff with a 3d printer is vastly cheaper than
A study led by Joshua Pearce of Michigan Technological University has shown that making your own plastic 3d printer filament from milk jugs uses less energy--often a lot less than recycling milk jugs conventionally.
which turns waste plastic into 3d printer filament. Compared to an ideal urban recycling program which collects and processes plastic locally turning milk jugs into filament at home uses about 3 percent less energy.
Mishra's North Alabama sensor research done in conjunction with USDA's Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory covered a 10-square-kilometer area that included dry land-farmed crops relying on rainfall only irrigated crops varying crop types pasture and fallow land.
They indicate that this species has a structural memory is able to differentiate between inner and outer conditions as well as anticipate future risks scientists write in the journal American Naturalist.
Vanessa Hull a doctoral student in MSU's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability (CSIS) has been living off and on for seven years in the Wolong Nature Reserve most recently tracking pandas she's equipped with GPS collars.
and her colleagues put the same type of GPS collars they were using to track pandas on one horse in each of the four herds they studied.
Custom-designed radar measures Antarctic ice with millimeter accuracya series of radars just deployed on Antarctica will give researchers their first ever day-by-day measurements of the health of one of the ice shelves
The radars developed with funding by the Engineering and Physical sciences Research Council (EPSRC) have been placed on the ice shelf surrounding Pine Island by University college London (UCL) and British Antarctic Survey (BAS) scientists to record changes of the Antarctic ice
but preliminary trials show the new radar system can detect changes of as little as a millimetre--about the amount the Pine Island Glacier melts in just 30 minutes.
Although we've previously taken snapshots of the ice with radar this is the first time year-round monitoring has been said possible Dr Keith Nicholls of The british Antarctic Survey.
The purpose-built radars were developed in the labs of Paul Brennan Professor of Microwave Electronics at University college London.
Indeed each radar unit runs off a single 6v battery that can last a whole year
When running the radar draws 5 watts of power the same as a low-energy light bulb;
the plan had been to emplace eight of the small radar stations but new crevassing of the ice prevented the team landing by plane at many planned locations.
Daily bulletins remotely posted by the installed radars reveal they are working well. The data though will remain a mystery until the researchers return to download them in person next year.
As farms become increasingly complex with cattle interacting with robotic milkers automated feeding systems and other technologies slow adaptation can be frustrating for cows and farmers alike.
and subsequently transported as an electrically charged ELVOC-molecule into the sensor (mass spectrometer) where the detection takes place.
Multiple commercial uses of wireless sensor networks outlined in reportmanaging the quality and quantity of freshwater resources is one of the most serious environmental challenges of the 21st century.
while recognizing the limitations of freshwater resources many commercial horticulture operations are showing increased interest in the use of wireless sensor networks (WSN)--technology designed to both monitor and control irrigation events.
Previous studies have demonstrated the utility of sensor-controlled irrigation explained Matthew Chappell lead author of the report.
soil moisture sensors to both monitor and control irrigation events. Since on-farm testing of these wireless sensor networks (WSNS) to monitor
and control irrigation scheduling began in 2010 WSNS have been deployed in a diverse assortment of commercial horticulture operations the authors said.
Other growers use components of WSNS specifically the web-based graphical user interface (GUI) to monitor grower-controlled irrigation schedules.
Sensor-based irrigation systems show potential to increase greenhouse profitabilitywireless sensor-based irrigation systems can offer significant benefits to greenhouse operators.
Advances in sensor technology and increased understanding of plant physiology have made it possible for greenhouse growers to use water content sensors to accurately determine irrigation timing and application rates in soilless substrates.
The wireless sensor systems provide more accurate measurements of substrate moisture than qualitative methods and can save irrigation water labor energy and fertilizer.
The authors of a report published in Horttechnology said that the use of sensor-based irrigation technology can also accelerate container and greenhouse plant production time.
Sensor-based irrigation systems substitute capital for water and associated inputs such as energy labor and fertilizer the authors explained.
The scientists found that controlling irrigation using data from moisture sensors led to substantial reductions in both production time and crop losses.
Calculations showed that annualized profit under the wireless sensor system was over 1. 5 times more than under the nursery's standard practice
even if efficiency gains are not as high as those in the study controlling irrigation using wireless sensor systems is likely to increase profitability substantially.
They added that wireless sensor systems can have environmental benefits as well as the economic benefits shown in the study.
#Drone shows new view of energy coal ash spillaerial images captured by a drone aircraft provide a new look at the extent of contaminants leaked into a North carolina river from a Duke energy coal ash dump as concerns about water pollution grow
A drone aircraft operated by researchers at Wake Forest University's Center for Energy Environment
Wake Forest biology professor Miles Silman and a team of researchers who are affiliated not with Duke energy used images taken from the drone to create a 3d model of the ash pond spill site.
In the future Messinger said drones could be used to monitor similar incidents. We are currently working on methodology to put this approach into play elsewhere he said.
Silman Messinger and Marcus Wright a chemistry lab manger and key developer of Wake Forest's environmental drone program are also applying their drone technology to explore climate change in the Peruvian Amazon.
The researchers then examined genetic fingerprints called microsatellites from the plants to measure the genetic diversity in each new crop.
#Fruit-loving lemurs score higher on spatial memory testsfood-finding tests in five lemur species show that fruit-eaters may have better spatial memory than lemurs with a more varied diet.
and Kerri Rodriguez and Brian Hare of Duke compared spatial memory skills across five species of lemurs living in captivity at the Duke Lemur Center--fruit-eating red-ruffed
The results suggest that ruffed lemurs primarily rely on a memory of the place rather than a memory of what turns they took.
And ring-tailed lemurs and mongoose lemurs--who finished in second and third place in many of the memory tests--can grab a snack pretty much anywhere anytime Rosati explained.
The researchers point out that the most social species in this study--the ring-tailed lemurs--fell in the middle of the pack in terms of spatial memory skills.
We engineered these sensors to monitor the activity and regulation of suspected nitrogen transporters in living plant roots
and Visualization Cyberinfrastructure (DAVINCI supercomputer supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and administered by Rice's Ken Kennedy Institute for Information technology and the NSF-supported Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) supercomputer.
Yakobson is Rice's Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Mechanical engineering and Materials Science a professor of chemistry and a member of the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology.
obstacles to using silicon for a new generation of lithium-ion batteries say its inventors at Stanford university and the Department of energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
and more powerful batteries for products like cell phones tablets and electric cars said Yi Cui an associate professor at Stanford
The anode or negative electrode is where energy is stored when a battery charges. Silicon anodes could store 10 times more charge than the graphite anodes in today's rechargeable lithium-ion batteries
but they also have major drawbacks: The brittle silicon swells and falls apart during battery charging
and it reacts with the battery's electrolyte to form gunk that coats the anode
and degrades its performance. Over the past eight years Cui's team has tackled the breakage problem by using silicon nanowires
when made in the thickness required for commercial battery performance. While these experiments show the technique works Cui said the team will have to solve two more problems to make it viable on a commercial scale:
Zimmerer's approach may eventually be used for visualizations that help enable the local crowdsourcing of this agrobiodiversity.
This type of information from the knowledge systems of farmers--often women--coupled with top down image analysis visualization
but exciting emerging research shows that chocolate may be good for both cardiovascular health and even memory.
The graphics and minimal text make it a promising format to engage younger populations said lead author May May Leung Phd RD City university of New york School of Public health
%The researchers used an innovative intervention promoting positive dietary behaviors to capture the attention of youth living in a multimedia environment;
#Shadowing in Sensor Images: NASA study points to infrared-herring in apparent Amazon green-upfor the past eight years scientists have been working to make sense of why some satellite data seemed to show the Amazon rain forest greening-up during the region's dry season each year from June to October.
but instead by a combination of shadowing within the canopy and the way that satellite sensors observe the Amazon during the dry season.
or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer sensors that fly aboard NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites make daily observations over the huge expanse of Amazon forests.
if sensors detect a relatively small amount of red light--absorbed in abundance by plants for photosynthesis
Only one of the hypothesized mechanisms for the green-up changes in sun-sensor geometry was consistent with the satellite observations.
Around the equinox the MODIS sensor takes the'perfect picture'with no shadows Morton said.
because the sun is directly behind the sensor at the equinox. This seasonal change in MODIS greenness has nothing to do with how forests are changing.
and satellite sensor paints a picture of the Amazon that as a whole doesn't change much through the dry season.
He is also a faculty member at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute. Plant and microbial biology professor emeritus Bob B. Buchanan co-led the research
Dwi Susanti the lead author recently received her doctoral degree in genetics bioinformatics and computational biology from the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute and is currently a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Biochemistry at Virginia Tech.
Usha Loganathan a graduate student in the Department of Biological sciences in the College of Science at Virginia Tech also participated in the study.
and had detailed assessment of people's diets that was collected in real-time as people consumed the foods rather than relying on past memory.
The modeling calculations were performed on Yale university's omega supercomputer a 704-node cluster capable of processing more than 52 trillion calculations per second.
#Painting robot lends surgeons a hand in the operating roomwould you let an artist perform lifesaving surgery on you?
if the artist is a painting robot. Timothy Lee built a robotic painting arm that can replicate the lines
and shapes a surgeon makes with a scalpel using a paintbrush and canvas. His invention a creative blend of art and science could one day lend doctors a hand in practicing complex robot-assisted surgeries without having to step foot in an operating room.
Rethinking roboticslee a sophomore who plans to major in chemistry spent his high school years building everything from a robot that can balance on a beam to a robotic arm that can throw a ball.
During his first year at Wake Forest he heard about a percussion-playing robot designed by Georgia Tech researchers
and started thinking about new ways to apply his hobby. I never really thought you could do music with robots he said.
That got me thinking'What else can you do with robots that most people wouldn't think about
or imagine happening?''I thought I could do something with painting and that prompted the idea of robotic surgery.
Lee said painting and surgery have more in common than initially meets the eye. A painter has to be nimble and precise with his brushstrokes much like a surgeon must be nimble and precise with a scalpel.
After weeks of programming I eventually got to the point where the robot could paint shapes and lines in a particular color.
Lee said from there it was relatively easy to train the robot to paint something like a sunset
or a house without any input from a human operator Lee next began to teach the robot to paint lines
Our goal was to get the robot to replicate the lines and shapes a surgeon makes with a scalpel all on its own he said.
Practicing in a surgeon's studiocurrently surgical robots are controlled by a human operator and do not perform procedures autonomously.
While Lee's robot may never be put to work in an operating room it and other robots like it could one day help researchers to design fully autonomous robotic surgeons.
In addition to teaching the robot to paint autonomously Lee also explored the idea of using his robot as a training tool for surgeons who need practice operating a Da vinci surgical arm.
At the Wake Forest Medical center doctors use replica bodies to help train surgeons to use the Da vinci system Lee said.
These replicas are compared pretty expensive to my robotic arm which cost around $1500. This April Lee will represent Wake Forest at the ACC Meeting of the Minds an event where outstanding undergraduate researchers from each ACC university gather at one member university to present their research either verbally or as a poster.
This year the event will take place at the University of Pittsburgh where Lee will demonstrate his robot's painting abilities.
Working with Dr. Hamilton on my robot has been a great opportunity and there are definitely still a lot of things we can still learn from it Lee said.
These sticky amyloid proteins--which may form in regions of the brain involved in memory learning
and count fruit a concept called machine vision. The system includes a digital camera a portable computer GPS RECEIVER
and software designed by Lee and his graduate students. Ultimately growers would like a machine that drives itself through groves
and one of his graduate students are working on developing the self-running machine vision system that growers want.
and the bioinformatics analysis. The outstanding work lays an important foundation for molecular breeding of water buffalo and sheds new light on the understanding of its origin and domestication process.
which sensory systems contribute to this ability. The Monell researchers reasoned that fat detection via smell would have the advantage of identifying food sources from a distance.
#Laser scientists create portable sensor for nitrous oxide, methanerice University scientists have created a highly sensitive portable sensor to test the air for the most damaging greenhouse gases.
The device created by Rice engineer and laser pioneer Frank Tittel and his group uses a thumbnail-sized quantum cascade laser (QCL) as well as tuning forks that cost no more than a dime to detect very small amounts of nitrous oxide and methane.
The lab analyzed emissions from a Houston landfill and the QEPAS sensor's findings compared favorably to the lab's much larger instrument Tittel said.
or drones are much more susceptible than female European honey bees known as workers to a fungal intestinal parasite called Nosema ceranae.
Male honey bees known as drones on the other hand are haploid and contain only one chromosome set. The haploid susceptibility hypothesis predicts that haploid males are more prone to disease compared to their diploid female counterparts
lazy but importantthe observation that male drone honey bees die much sooner and have a poorer body condition compared to female worker honey bees
'Although drones do not perform important colony maintenance functions like cleaning and feeding like the workers they are responsible for mating with queens
Without strong fit drones the chance of successful matings with queens could be compromised severely.''Recent studies mainly coming out of the United states suggest that queen failure is a major cause of colony death.
Early death of queens could be the result of queens not obtaining sufficient quantity and quality of sperm from drones during mating.
because agriculture accounts for 24-to-28 percent of the countryâ##s gross domestic productâ#said Abdurakhmonov who also serves as director of the Center of Genomics and Bioinformatics at the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan
which may enable insects to spot the webs with their antennae'e-sensors'.'The study published in Naturwissenschaften shows how a quirk of physics causes webs to move towards all airborne objects regardless of
According to the researchers common garden spider webs around the world could be used for environmental monitoring as they actively filter airborne pollutants with an efficiency comparable to expensive industrial sensors.'
'Their antennae act as'e-sensors 'when the tips are connected to the body by insulating materials meaning the charge at the tip will be different from the rest of the insect.
Bees already use e-sensors to sense flowers and other bees so it now remains to be seen
and gregarious forms also have different memory and learning abilities to suit the needs of the two life stages.
and colleagues exploited the locust's ability to associate an odour with a reward--which in the wild allows it to make quick food choices--to study the memory
nevertheless to use different learning mechanisms as revealed by the different times it takes them to gain the aversive memory (4 hours for solitarious locusts and 24 hours for the gregarious).
but this time while solitarious locusts learned to avoid vanilla--so gained the negative memory--neither transiens nor gregarious locusts could do it.
Since crowding blocks new negative memories could the old negative memory be replaced simply by a positive one?
even if crowding cannot eliminate a previous memory by temporarily blocking new aversive memories it permits an update of it
and memory abilities to suit different life stages in a remarkable show of insects'survival skills.
For their study the UCLA life scientists performed a bioinformatics analysis of four symbiotic Burkholderia species all of
In addition to the bioinformatics analysis in the current study the team analyzed resistance to a panel of common antibiotics and tested the potential of different Burkholderia species to cause infection in laboratory conditions.
and in human cells grown in culture verified the bioinformatics analysis showing that the bacteria were not harmful.
Data were collected from GSM-GPS telemetry devices attached to three species of vultures in Mara-Serengeti ecosystem of East Africa.
If you've got a solar PV system with battery backup, you'll need skills to maintain
The proliferation of an Internet of things. Sensor technology, that is coming from the physical infrastructure (like that used on the IBM campus),
is making way for a huge amount of objects that are connected to the Internet that can help people with tasks.
This Internet of things exists to give people information by increasing the connection between people and their cities,
and by using people themselves as the sensor technology. With feedback from citizens, cities can be smarter.
use this sensor technology too. People are probably better at defining what they need than any technology,
It hasn't hit the radar. Smartplanet: We've asked water experts about why it matters.
This is one reason why most other wearable devices are made of plastic. Vu and company worked around this hurdle by allowing the wearer to place the Shine on their Apple iphone.
sustainability meet on the robotic marijuana farm Invention may lead to greener power plants When it comes to packaging,
I have advocated previously (see The revolution will be bottom-up and Crowdsourcing the energy revolution). At some point, the city will be able to back new bond offerings with its installed solar capacity.
We were thinking about fingerprint readers, but they were not reliable enough when you change devices--from one fingerprint reader to another,
we couldn't tell you were the same person. The palm scan--the vein-reading technology--we see that at about a 10
The staff told me that they clock in with a fingerprint reader. Is that your system? You can sign into our applications with a fingerprint reader,
but clocking inâ that's not ours. We've enabled biometrics, but the one we haven't done is the iris reader.
And the thing about a palm reader versus a fingerprint reader is that someone can cut your hand off,
and committed to memory. Talking with some of the people in these towns and cities,
thanks in part to more affordable sensors that can be attached to appliances, toys and other gadgets.
Health and fitness applications, especially where sensors can monitor a person's health, have been adopted widely.
Self service health technology will become more and more common as the cost of sensors decrease and ubiquity of smartphone software increases,
True Knowledge launched the artificial intelligence app in January, 2012, and all though Siri and Evi do not use the same search engine,
they both use the same Nuance's voice recognition technology. The Evi app appear confusingly similar to Siri,
Are we ready for a robotic barista? Humans have proven to be highly adaptable when it comes to replacing personal service with that of a computer.
when a robot supplants our barista? One company is betting that humankind will actually dig it.
Austin-based Briggo has spent the last 18 months testing a robotic barista at the University of Texas at Austin's Flawn Academic Center.
About the only thing the Briggo robot doesn't do is ask you how your day's going.
and entered Melanie as the pick-up name so the robot would announce that the drink he was about to order was for me.
The order goes up into the cloud and lands with the robot, who then sends a reply,
educating them about the process and physically picking up the cup from the robot to hand to the customer.
Pierce is now responsible for feeding the robot high-quality ingredients, like coffee beans roasted within the week
Inside the robot, every cup of coffee is ground fresh. Brewed coffee takes 15 to 30 seconds per drink,
I heard the sound of water--like any good robot, it cleaned itself after every order.
The right place for robotic coffee Terry Mahlum, regional director for Delaware North Companies Travel Hospitality Services,
It's the right place for robotic coffee. The kiosk is slated for a central location across from Gate 13 in the American airlines terminal.
Nahmias is no stranger to food robots. He grew up in Mexico city, and his private school had a French fry machine.
But he likes the fact that Briggo's robot stores drink preferences so customers can easily repeat an order--which is advanced more than machines like the Rubi,
A new conversation, new coffee culture I stepped outside of the robot vortex and Nater pulled out his ipad,
showing me renderings of the new Briggo robot, which was designed by an internationally recognized industrial design firm.
People really wanted to see the robot, so there is a window to watch the inner-workings of the machine.
By early this year, Briggo had raised about $9 million for the next generation robot and expansion, almost exclusively from angel investors in Austin.
As for Nater, he's fired up about the robot and the drinks, but he's also eager for Briggo's next step in social media.
And just like the neighborhood barista, the robot remembers what they like. Everything else I consume in life I want variation,
Argentine greenhouse robot brings automation to the massesbuenos AIRES--The new Trakã Â r agricultural robot does not have the brains, firepower or complexity of one of the Transformers,
the robot will have a price tag of about a third of comparable commercial models. Thus, the Trakã Â r could make farm automation possible not only for small farmers in Argentina
Greenhouse robots are generally small wheeled vehicles that carry a tank of pesticide, a sprayer to distribute the liquid,
Developed in the suburbs of Buenos aires by INTA's rural engineering division, the yellow and white robot resembles a child's Tonka truck (the chassis) with a lighthouse (the sprayer) strapped to the top.
not including battery), the robot is built entirely from off-the-shelf parts. The robot's operator watches the Trakã Â r's progress through a cheap security camera mounted on its hood, for example.
It â¢s not an invention at all. The parts are available from local industry. They are standard components, Masiã ¡
said. A wireless transmitter on the robot sends camera video and sensor data such as the unit's speed,
the dose being applied, and the amount of remaining chemical to a computer outside the greenhouse, where an operator directs the Trakã Â r virtually.
the Trakã Â r employs sensors that allow it to follow a 1 mm copper cable,
The unique part of this robot is guiding system. Instead of using lasers or cameras and algorithms or satellite GPS, this is guided by a cable that emits a electromagnetic signal.
You just have to lay out the route one time and the robot follows it. It's very low cost
because cable is very inexpensive and you can add sections or change the route whenever you like.
A GPS SYSTEM with differential correction would cost an Argentine farmer about $10, 000, Masiã ¡
said, not including the robot's chassis, motor, pump and electronics. Purchased abroad, it â¢s very likely that would cost you some $20, 000 all told.
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