Gecko gloves

Using paddles coated with a novel polymer microstructure technology inspired by animals and developed for DARPA by Draper Laboratory of Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., humans are now able to scale vertical walls. Announces program manager Matt Goodman, "The gecko is one of the champion climbers in the animal kingdom, so it was natural for DARPA to look to it for inspiration in overcoming some of the maneuver challenges that U.S. forces face in urban environment. Like many of the capabilities that the Department of Defense pursues, we saw with vertical climbing that nature had long since evolved the means to efficiently achieve it. The challenge to our performer team was to understand the biology and physics in play when geckos climb and then reverse-engineer those dynamics into an artificial system for use by humans.”

Posted with Blogsy

Megalithic mortuary

After mapping the area of the ancient monument to a depth of about 10' (3 m), the Stonehenge Hidden Landscape Project has made some startling revelations. The high-resolution, 3-D underground map of nearly 3,000 acres of the surrounding landscape was created using ground-penetrating radar, high-resolution magnetometers, and other state-of-the-art remote-sensing equipment. Within an area 14 times larger than the iconic stone circle, the archaeologists have discovered dozens of features, including more than 50 pillars and 17 ritual monuments. They found hundreds of burial mounds, evidence of a possible processional route around Stonehenge itself, and a massive long barrow believed to have been used as a mortuary for the bones of the dead (RENDERING ABOVE). The new discoveries raise even more questions about how the Stonehenge complex was built and modified over a period of 11,000 years. Lead scientist Vince Gaffney exclaims, "Technology is opening doors for archaeology we could only dream about 15 years ago....All of this information has been placed within a single digital map, which will guide how Stonehenge and its landscape are studied in the future."

Posted with Blogsy

Audiovisual

There are both technical and artistic ways to turn data into sound. And there are both technical and artistic ways to turn sound into data. Soundscape ecologist Bryan Pijanowski makes color-coded spectrograms to study the sounds of the natural world, noting, "There are what I call rhythms of nature, there are periodicities like the dawn chorus and certain crescendos during the seasons." The image above by Michael Towsey of the Queensland University of Technology shows 24 hours of noise in the Australian bush (MORE EXAMPLES AND VIDEOS HERE). Of the relatively new field, Arizona ecologist Tom Seager comments, "It’s still in its renaissance period, where both technologists and artists can contribute." Meanwhile, Australian multimedia artist Andy Thomas uses a software program to make 3D animations he calls "audio life forms" from bird songs (WATCH A NIGHTINGALE HERE).

Posted with Blogsy

Finger ~ Print

This device, currently in development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is not intended to replace Braille. It will give the visually impaired access to books and newspapers, but also allow them to access menus at restaurants, forms at the doctor's office, and the text on their computer screens. A team at the MIT Media Lab has spent the last 3 years developing the FingerReader, a prototype that fits on the finger and is equipped with a small camera to scan text. A synthesized voice reads the words aloud and vibrations let the user know his or her finger is straying off the line (VIDEO HERE). There are other optical character recognition devices available, but they are bulky and do not read in real time. The FingerReader plugs into a computer, laptop, or phone, but cannot yet read a touch screen. After they solve that and some other challenges, the MIT team hopes to bring the device to market so that it is affordable to the 11.2 million people in the U.S. alone who could use it.

Posted with Blogsy

Mini Monet

Improving on a technique that can be used to store data or create small security tags on physical objects, scientists from Singapore have introduced "the first plasmonic palette utilizing color generation strategies for photorealistic printing with aluminum nanostructures." Translation: They used nanoscale silicon pillars topped with aluminium, which create ripples of electrons that release colored light of particular frequencies when the light strikes them, to reproduce a miniature of Claude Monet's Impression, Sunrise, the painting that gave the name to the impressionist movement. And by miniature, I mean just 300 micrometers (a.k.a. microns) across, a micrometer being one thousandth of a millimetrer (about 0.000039 of an inch), making this the world's smallest recreated masterpiece.

Posted with Blogsy

Monkey mix-and-match

In a newly published paper in Nature Communications entitled, "Character displacement of Cercopithecini primate visual signals," researchers from New York University and the University of Exeter established that closely-related guenon monkey species of Central and West Africa have involved distinguishing facial features to avoid interbreeding, which can lead to infertility. These visual cues had been observed 30 years ago by Oxford zoologist Jonathan Kingdon, but he had been unable to compile enough hard evidence to support the theory. Lead author William L. Allen and his colleagues were able to rely on advanced facial recognition software to do the job after loading some 1,400 photographs of 22 species from zoos in the U.S. and U.K., plus a Nigerian wildlife sanctuary (EXAMPLES ABOVE). The computer then analyzed them for signs of hybridization, and the scientists were able to conclude – as the Discovery blog catchily proclaims - "Monkey Mohawks and Muttonchops Prevent Interbreeding."

Posted with Blogsy

Oology advance

Scientists have known for centuries that cuckoos and other brood parasites plant their eggs in the nests of other birds so that the duped foster parents will raise them, usually at the expense of their own chicks. But now – with the help of software used for facial recognition and image stitching – they have determined one way that bird parents keep an eye on their own eggs. Researchers at Harvard and the University of Cambridge applied the technology to hundreds of eggs of 8 different parasitized bird species. Using the new program they call NaturePatternMatch, they determined that the patterns on the hosts' eggs contain special visual cues that allow their parents to identify them. And the more intensely the species is targeted, the more complex and sophisticated their egg signatures are. The scientist write in a statement, "The astonishing finding here is that hosts can fight back against cuckoo mimicry by evolving highly recognizable patterns on their own eggs, just like a bank might insert watermarks on its currency to deter counterfeiters."

Posted with Blogsy

Van Gogh grow

It's an installation at the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany. It's a work by U.S.-based artist Diemut Strebe entitled "Sugababe" that bridges art and science. It's an ear, specifically a replica of the ear that Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh hacked off. It conforms to the same shape as his through computer imaging technology. It is alive, grown from tissue-engineered cartilage grown at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. It contains genetic material from the van Gogh family. It was not hard to convince Lieuwe van Gogh, the great-great-grandson of Vincent's brother Theo, to donate cells for Strebe's use. It is relayed by her that "He loved the project right away."

 

Posted with Blogsy

Chasing after the chase

At first I was disappointed when I read that scientists had digitally reconstructed a dinosaur chase, but the video (HERE) did not show the animation of a theropod and a sauropod in motion. Then I realized the beauty of what this team of biologists have done. A famous set of dinosaur tracks in Texas called the Paluxy River tracks no longer exist. They were excavated 70 years ago by American paleontologist Roland Bird who removed them from their original location, divided them into blocks, and parceled them out to colleagues around the world. Realizing that much information could be gained from viewing the tracks in one piece again, Peter Falkingham of the Royal Veterinary College, London, and his team referred to Bird's original documentation to recreate the 147' (45 m) long site. They scanned the 17 existing photos (EXAMPLES ABOVE), referred to notes left by Bird, and correlated it all to maps drawn at the time of the original excavation. Falkingham comments, "In recent years technology has advanced to the point where highly accurate 3D models can be produced easily and at very little cost just from digital photos, and this has been revolutionizing many different fields. That we can apply that technology to specimens, or even entire sites, that no longer exist but were recorded photographically is extremely exciting."

Hi Chase!

Posted with Blogsy

Long-distance Lydia

While the more immediate concern is scouring digital images of the Gulf of Thailand for the missing Malaysian airliner, you can also from your computer track the progress of a great white shark across the Atlantic Ocean. "Lydia" is a 14' (4.4 m) shark tagged last March off Jacksonville, Florida, U.S. (IMAGE ABOVE). She already holds the record for traveling farther then any known great white shark: about 20,000 miles (32,187 km). Lydia is now just east of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and is headed toward the U.K.'s Cornish coast, at which point she will have the distinction of being the first great white observed to cross the Atlantic Ocean. "We're really just starting out in the world of white sharks," says Greg Skomal of the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries, who had attached the new generation unit that sends a satellite signal every time her dorsal fin rises above the surface of the water. You can follow her real-time location on the homepage of Ocearch.

Posted with Blogsy

Synthetic spider silk

Molecular biologist, materials scientist, and chemist Randy Lewis of Utah State University has been striving to synthesize spider silk for 25 years. Natural spider silk is 25X stronger than steel by weight and 3X tougher than Kevlar. Its most obvious commercial applications include cables and bulletproof vests, but its thermal conductivity makes it a potential heat management material. Spider silk also has antimicrobial properties suitable for wound patches and it is not rejected by the human body, so it could be used to manufacture artificial tendons and surgical sutures. Challenges to synthesizing the spider's silk are that the relevant gene needs to be copied and inserted into an organism such as bacteria that can express it, the protein is insoluble in water, and 1,500 strands of the fiber are needed to make a single thread, so firms have had to invent new spinning systems. After years of research and development, DuPont and BASF have dropped out of the race, but several smaller companies - including Utah State's spin-off company Araknitekhave - have made progress and are on the brink of producing commercial products. German firm AMSilk has spent $16 million (€11,560,000) on R&D and is now selling spider silk protein in quantities as needed for inclusion in products like shampoo, since it adheres to keratin. Managing Director Axel H. Leimer says, “This is scalable technology. If someone ordered 1 ton, we could make it. We have already made a half a ton.” The firm plans large-scale output of recombinant spider silk for use in fibers and high-performance textiles after next year. It's all good news for the overworked harnessed spider population!

Posted with Blogsy

Scanning stripes

Conservationist K. Ullas Karanth of the Wildlife Conservation Society is using a new method to monitor the dwindling tiger population in one of their last strongholds: the Western Ghats of India. Rather than trying to distinguish the fuzzy pug marks of individual cats in the sand, they have set up camera traps and use sophisticated software to identify them based on their unique pattern of stripes which can be scanned like a barcode. Karanth explains (VIDEO HERE), “Camera trapping allows us to very accurately monitor tiger populations. Find out how many tigers there are, how their numbers are changing, how many survive from year to year, and how many new tigers are entering the population. This is very critical to know whether your efforts to save them are succeeding or failing.” And when poachers undermine their attempts to save the tiger from extinction, the data can be used to convict wildlife traffickers based on the skins seized at tourist markets and international borders.

Posted with Blogsy

Amazing apparatus

Korean student Jeabyun Yeon, who is studying product design at Samsung Art And Design Institute, has come up with a novel concept rivaling the SCUBA gear developed by Jacques Cousteau in the 1960s. The Triton Oxygen Respirator, as he calls it, uses technology developed by a Korean scientist that allows divers to breathe freely underwater. The oxygen is extracted directly from the water through a filter of fine threads with holes smaller than water molecules. A micro compressor, powered by a micro battery, compresses and stores the extracted oxygen in a tank. The mask consists of a plastic mouthpiece and 2 arms (SKETCHES ABOVE, PHOTOS HERE) and the device will revolutionize diving if it makes it out of the studio and into the water. Of the artificial gill, blogger Bill Ottman writes, "Essentially it turns humans into fish."

Posted with Blogsy

Reproduced poop chute

As a doctoral student in engineering at the University of California, Riverside, Ian Marcus build a human colon – not as an art installation like "Cloaca" by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye, but a science project. The intent was to study bacteria (E. Coli, in this case) within more natural conditions rather than the typically isolated environment of the lab. He found that as the pathogen passes from colon to water treatment plant to groundwater, it is able to live longer and travel farther because of the interactions within the microbial communities. His work has been praised for his novel approach to studying the biological contamination of water, but Marcus describes, "People would give a kind-of-interested-but-definitely-don't-talk-about-it-during-dinner look because we're literally dealing with crap. It has got the smell. It has got everything."

Posted with Blogsy

Petri meat

My Mom and I were just talking about the medical and scientific goal to increase the human lifespan by decades. She mentioned how it would affect the already skyrocketing costs of health care, and I pointed out that at some point the earth will no longer be able to support the expanding population. Physician and tissue engineer Mark Post of Maastricht University thinks the answer to environmental concerns is the production of meat in the laboratory as well as on the hoof. He has developed a technique to grow in vitro or cultured beef from a particular type of stem cell removed from cow necks. The result of billions of cells differentiating, merging, and putting on protein is 20,000 thin strips of fat-free cultured muscle tissue. Dr. Post plans to make them into patties, sprinkle them with salt and pepper, grill them, and serve them up in the coming weeks to make his point about the viability of these techniques. But our minds may not be as quick to change as the technology. Social scientist Neil Stephens of Cardiff University in Wales advises, “This is something very new. People need to wrestle with the idea of whether this is meat or not.”

Posted with Blogsy

Conservation observation

Military technology is now being used in the war against poachers of endangered animals. Conservation groups in many parts of the world - Nepal, Kenya, Indonesia – are employing drones to save rhinos, tigers, orangutans, elephants, and other species at risk. The small-scale, remote-controlled "aerial rangers" are affordable and powered by rechargeable batteries. They are light enough to be launched by hand and fly a pre-programmed route of several miles, filming the ground below. Some are equipped with HD cameras and night-vision, and the satellite images can be accessed in real-time. Ol Pejeta Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya has raised private funds to support their sophisticated drone program: "The drones are fitted with a live streaming HD camera, which is gimbal mounted for 360 degree remote controlled viewing. Each drone can cover 50 miles, and fly for over one and a half hours. Rhino and other endangered species are chipped with radio frequency ID tags. Each chip gives an animal a unique identification number which are tied to databases. Sensors on the drones can then recognize individual animals and use on-board GPS to store an image tagged with location coordinates." Teams can be sent out to apprehend those observed in the process of poaching or habitat destruction.

 

Posted with Blogsy