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|  | New Millenium Technology VIII
« Thread Started on Sept 22, 2011, 11:50pm » | |
Self-Steering Automated Tractor Offers More Precision in the Field
![[image]](http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/4472/110919103743large444588.jpg "[image]")
This tractor adapts itself to terrain conditions and adjusts its speed and turning radius automatically. It can complete a pre-programmed route with exceptional precision … and without the intervention of a driver. (Credit: Image courtesy of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)
ScienceDaily (Sep. 19, 2011) — A farmer rising at the crack of dawn to till his fields in a tractor all day? This could soon become a thing of the past. Flanders' Mechatronics Technology Centre (FMTC), together with the Mechatronics, Biostatistics and Sensors (MeBioS) division of K.U.Leuven's Biosystems Department, has engineered a fully automated, self-steering robotic tractor.
The tractor adapts itself to terrain conditions and adjusts its speed and turning radius automatically. It can complete a pre-programmed route with exceptional precision…and without the intervention of a driver. The researchers behind the machine will unveil a first prototype at the 30th Annual International Agriculture and Horticulture Days of Mechanisation, on 24 and 25 September in Oudenaarde.
Erik Hostens, project engineer for FMTC, described the tractor's navigation system: "We started by installing a linear propulsion system to press the gas pedal down and steer. Then we equipped the tractor with a computer and various additional positional sensors, including a GPS system." The most important challenge came after these modifications were complete: engineering a steering system that effectively takes over the role of the operator. "Only experienced tractor operators have the skills needed to work a field with precision. The job of an operator is really quite complex: he observes the tractor's current position, makes a judgement based on terrain conditions and the route to be followed, and, based on all this, decides the speed and orientation of the tractor. All these actions had to be integrated into the automated steering system. The system registers positional changes in real-time with a GPS and adjusts itself accordingly."
Traction control
The constantly changing ground conditions in the field present a particularly sticky challenge when developing an automated tractor. Gregory Pinte, of FMTC, explains: "The tractor must be capable of driving in both hard and wet terrain. Traditional navigation systems are unable to handle multi-terrain conditions. Instead, a different setting must be calibrated for each terrain type. That's why we developed a steering system that intuits terrain conditions and estimates the expected wheel slippage. Based on a model of the tractor, the optimal speed and turning radius is calculated, in real-time, for the current terrain type. This 'smart steering' allows for precision down to the centimetre."
Higher precision and low operator costs
What is the benefit of an automated tractor? "The importance of precision steering for agricultural machines has increased significantly, particularly with the arrival of organic farming," says Professor Wouter Saeys, of the MeBioS division. "The accurate positioning of the machine is essential." Another important trend in agriculture is automation. Vincent Theunynck, of New Holland, explains: "By putting automated agricultural machines in the fields, ever-increasing operator costs can be significantly reduced. On top of that, thanks to the 'smart steering' capability of the robot, changes in terrain type have become superfluous."
The tractor-robot is an example of the successful cooperation within the IWT-SBO project Learning Control of Production Machines (LeCoPro) between participating academic knowledge centres and a Flemish industrial partner. As part of the project, the FMTC partnered with the Flemish universities K.U.Leuven, VUB and UGent to establish a knowledge base geared toward developing smart steering strategies for use in production machines. The techniques developed in the course of this program will allow Flemish industry to bring the 'smart machines' of the future to the market.
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110919103743.htm
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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|  | Re: New Millenium Technology VIII
« Reply #1 on Sept 22, 2011, 11:57pm » | |
Body liquefaction technology a green alternative to cremation
* By Claire Connelly, Technology Reporter
* From: news.com.au
* September 23, 2011 11:24AM
![[image]](http://img593.imageshack.us/img593/5370/432851resomator2893248.jpg "[image]")
This heavy duty pressure chamber reportedly produces a third less greenhouse gas than cremation: Picture: Resomation Ltd Source: Supplied
IT sounds like something from the creepy '70s science fiction film Soylent Green - but this latest form of body disposal is a slimy reality.
A Florida-based technology company has invented an eerie alternative to burial or cremation – body liquefaction.
Called “Resomation”, after the Greek word “resoma” meaning “rebirth”, the technology is exactly as creepy as it sounds.
The process works by placing the corpse into a pressure chamber filled with water and potassium hydroxide which is then pressurised and heated to 180C.
![[image]](http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/6813/431801resomator2975879.jpg "[image]") ![[image]](http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/563/432848resomator2992520.jpg "[image]")
The green-friendly bio-cremation cycle (left). The Resomation machine (right) can liquify a body in less than three hours. Pictures: Resomation Ltd Source: Supplied
In just under three hours, the stainless steel machine can dissolve an entire corpse, turning everything that isn’t bone into a brown, syrupy liquid which is pumped into the municipal water system.
The remaining bones are then removed and ground into dust using a “cremulator” - the same machine that is used to crush bony remnants after cremation - and returned to the family.
The makers of the chamber claim the process produces a third less greenhouse gas than cremation and requires one seventh the energy.
Resomation founder Sandy Sullivan says the technology was developed in response to the public’s increasing environmental concerns.
"It gives them that working third choice, which allows them to express those concerns in a very positive and I think personal way," Mr Sullivan told the BBC.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/sci-te....3#ixzz1YkS9W0ju
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: New Millenium Technology VIII
« Reply #2 on Sept 28, 2011, 7:40am » | |
26 September 2011 Last updated at 09:52 GMT
'Antimagnet' joins list of invisibility approaches
By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News
![[image]](http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/2787/55524923555249143450530.jpg "[image]")
Diagram of "anti-magnet" (Image: New Journal of Physics) The design may lead to shields that protect pacemaker wearers during MRI scans
Researchers have designed a "cloak" that is invisible to magnetic fields both coming in and coming out.
The idea of blocking magnetic fields has been proposed before, but the new design, in the New Journal of Physics, could even hide magnetic materials.
It could thus find application in security or medical contexts, such as those surrounding MRI scans.
The approach uses superconductor layers and the "metamaterials" familiar from recent invisibility cloak research.
Metamaterials are artificially designed materials designed to guide electromagnetic waves - like light or magnetic fields - in a way that natural materials do not.
Much research in recent years has attempted to put metamaterials to work in Harry Potter-style invisibility cloaks that guide light waves around a cloak's wearer - although experiments have only demonstrated such effects on tiny items, or for a limited range of colours.
But because light and magnetism are two facets of the same physical force, many of the same principles apply for demonstrating a magnetic cloak, as the report's lead author Alvaro Sanchez explained.
"Magnetism has been very important in technology for the last 150 years," Prof Sanchez told BBC News. "We know very well how to create magnetic fields, but we don't know how to cancel them in a given space region."
Metal undetector
Prof Sir John Pendry, widely regarded as a founding theorist in the metamaterial field, demonstrated in a 2008 paper in Nature Materials that the ideas behind making objects invisible to light could be put to use hiding magnetic fields as well.
"We realised that these ideas were very interesting but a final device was not there - only the general concept," Prof Sanchez explained.
He and his colleagues at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain thus set about coming up with a design for such an antimagnet.
Their idea is to use an inner cloak of superconducting material, surrounded by layers of metamaterials whose response to the magnetic field varies in a prescribed way through the thickness of the cloak.
Ortwin Hess, professor of metamaterials at Imperial College London, called the work "a refreshing extension" of the theoretical ideas laid out in previous work.
"Its emphasis lies on presenting a way how to make the scheme more practical by increasing its simplicity," he told BBC News, though both he and Prof Sanchez agree that some challenges remain in the production of the actual materials.
"What it offers in addition to the previous scheme is the fact that it also cancels, by adding a simple superconducting layer, possible magnetic fields that may be emitted from a magnet inside the magnetic cloak," he added, which means that such an antimagnet could hide any objects, even magnetic ones.
The team is now working to produce a working model of such an antimagnet, which Prof Sanchez said may eventually find application in allowing pacemaker or implant wearers to undergo MRI scans, or in a number of energy generation scenarios in which magnetic fields play a large part.
What is more, the idea could be put to use in hiding the "magnetic signatures" of submarines to evade detection or underwater mines, or even to trick metal detectors.
"We now know how to make an antimagnet that exactly cloaks a magnetic field - it's something difficult that can be done in some high-tech labs, but to reduce the magnetic signature of something that you want to pass through a metal detector such that it becomes undetectable is much less demanding," Prof Sanchez said.
"We have so much security based simply on metal detectors, based on magnetic signals, I think this is something officials may start thinking about."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15017479
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: New Millenium Technology VIII
« Reply #3 on Sept 29, 2011, 7:45am » | |
Mind-reading car could drive you round the bend
Nissan collaborates with Swiss scientists to develop interface between man and machine, saying it will help road safety
* Sam Jones
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 September 2011 19.31 BST
![[image]](http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/6173/carreadsdrivermindnis00.jpg "[image]")
The Nissan Leaf electric car. Now the manufacturer is helping to develop a car that can interact with its driver's brain. Photograph: Simon Stuart-Miller
One of the world's largest motor manufacturers is working with scientists based in Switzerland to design a car that can read its driver's mind and predict his or her next move.
The collaboration, between Nissan and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), is intended to balance the necessities of road safety with demands for personal transport.
Scientists at the EPFL have already developed brain-machine interface (BMI) systems that allow wheelchair users to manoeuvre their chairs by thought transference. Their next step will be finding a way to incorporate that technology into the way motorists interact with their cars.
If the endeavour proves successful, the vehicles of the future may be able to prepare themselves for a left or right turn – choosing the correct speed and positioning – by gauging that their drivers are thinking about making such a turn.
However, although BMI technology is well established, the levels of human concentration needed to make it work are extremely high, so the research team is working on systems that will use statistical analysis to predict a driver's next move and to "evaluate a driver's cognitive state relevant to the driving environment".
By measuring brain activity, monitoring patterns of eye movement and scanning the environment around the car, the team thinks the car will be able to predict what a driver is planning to do and help him or her complete the manoeuvre safely.
Lucian Gheorghe, who joined Nissan's mobility research centre after graduating in computer science and artificial intelligence from Kobe University, Japan, said he believed the joint project could benefit both scientists and motorists.
"Brain wave analysis has helped me understand driver burden in order to reduce driver stress," he said. "During our collaboration with EPFL, I believe we will not only be able to contribute to the scientific community but we will also find engineering solutions that will bring us close to providing easy access to personal mobility for everyone."
Professor José del R Millán, who is leading the project, said the idea behind the research was a simple one: "to blend driver and vehicle intelligence together in such a way that eliminates conflicts between them, leading to a safer motoring environment".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/sep/28/nissan-car-reads-drivers-mind
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: New Millenium Technology VIII
« Reply #4 on Sept 29, 2011, 8:23am » | |
China space station programme begins with launch of unmanned lab
Tiangong-1 will be launched over Gobi desert and is a stepping stone towards a bigger, fully-fledged orbiting platform
* Jonathan Watts in Beijing
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 September 2011 11.17 BST
![[image]](http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/2928/asoldierstandsbesidec00.jpg "[image]")
A soldier stands beside China's unmanned space module Tiangong-1 at the launch pad in the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre, Gansu Photograph: Petar Kujundzic/REUTERS
China is preparing to take its building boom into space on Thursday night by putting a first research module – the "Heavenly Palace" - into orbit.
The unmanned Tiangong-1 laboratory, which will be launched into the skies above the Gobi desert, is a stepping stone towards a bigger, fully-fledged orbiting platform that China expects to be cheaper than the US and European-backed International Space Station.
The 10.5m-long cylinder will ride around 220 miles (350km) into space on board a Long March 2F rocket from the Jiuquan satellite launch centre and remain in orbit for two years.
It will be used by Chinese scientists and astronauts to practice the rendezvous and docking techniques needed to construct bigger structures in space. The first trial will come later this year, with the launch of another vessel, Shenzhou 8, which will attempt to link up with the lab.
If this is successful and life-support systems within the module remain stable, manned missions will be attempted next year and yuhangyuan (astronauts) will spend two weeks inside the narrow structure. Wu Ping, a spokeswoman for China's manned space programme, said these missions may include the country's first female astronauts.
Following China's first manned space flight in 2003, the launch of the Tiangong-1 is the second stage in a 10-year programme to build a manned 60-tonne platform, scheduled to come into operation in 2020.
This may leave China with the largest mannable presence in space. That title currently belongs to the International Space Station, which is supported by the US, Europe, Russia, Japan and Canada. Although much bigger at 400 tonnes, its future is in doubt due to the high cost of ferrying supplies through space and the economic problems faced by its principle funders.
Hopes to draw China into this international programme have so far made little progress due to political differences with the US. When the current commitments expire in 2020, Russian scientists have proposed that it is left to fall into the ocean.
Beijing claims its programme is cheaper. While Russia and the US initially practiced docking by sending up two vessels for each trial, China said it saves money by leaving one in space for an extended time.
"Tiangong-1's cost is similar to that of a spaceship. We only need four launches and can experiment with rendezvous and docking three times," space programme chief designer Zhou Jianping told The China Daily.
"The US is still ahead. They sent a man to the moon 40 years ago," said Fu Song, a professor at the School of Aerospace in Tsinghua University.
"But there is the advantage for latecomers. The cost is less and wrong turns can be avoided. If the Tiangong is successful, it will be a significant symbol for the Chinese space industry."
Though based primarily on Russian technology, Chinese scientists say they have enhanced navigation and other systems. The country also has ambitions for a moon landing and deep-space exploration. The Tiangong-1 will provide useful preparation for both, according to Ping.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/29/china-space-station-launch
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: New Millenium Technology VIII
« Reply #5 on Oct 1, 2011, 5:32am » | |
Bar-tailed godwit inspires designer William Brown to create Lockheed Stratoliner
* By Lee Taylor
* From: news.com.au
* October 03, 2011 12:00AM
![[image]](http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/8440/831561lockheedstratolin.jpg "[image]")
The Lockheed Stratoliner concept is a hydrogen-powered jet. Picture: William Brown / courtesy of Tuvie.
![[image]](http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/8204/831531lockheedstratolin.jpg "[image]")
The Lockheed Stratoliner features four Cryogenic Hydrogen Turbofan engines. Picture: William Brown / courtesy of Tuvie
AN Australian bird has become the inspiration for a hydrogen-powered jet that can fly anywhere on Earth without stopping.
The Lockheed Stratoliner concept features the wings of the bar-tailed godwit. The godwit holds the record for the longest known non-stop flight by a bird without feeding at 11,680km.
UK designer William Brown believes the oversized wings will generate large amounts of lift and allow the plane to fly at higher altitudes, with less resistance.
Mr Brown’s design also features four cryogenic hydrogen turbofan engines - which will produce no pollution and use less fuel.
![[image]](http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/5889/829276bartailedgodwit88.jpg "[image]")
The plane has been inspired by the Bar-tailed Godwit. Picture: Andreas Trepte / Wikipedia
Cryogenic hydrogen has more than twice the energy of traditional jet fuels and is lighter.
Even though The Lockheed Stratoliner is just a concept, some airline manufacturers have begun testing hydrogen-power. Boeing unveiled its first hydrogen powered plane in July 2010.
![[image]](http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/1605/829279lockheedstratolin.jpg "[image]")
The oversized wings will generate large amounts of lift. Picture: William Brown / courtesy of Tuvie
Mr Brown submitted the concept to design/concept website Tuvie as part of their "Submit A Design" feature.
http://www.news.com.au/travel/news/bar-t....4#ixzz1ZWZY6vk6
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
|
Big Bunny
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| | Re: New Millenium Technology VIII
« Reply #6 on Oct 1, 2011, 5:38am » | |
Ever wondered what a $6000 house looks like?
* by: By Simon Black
* From: news.com.au
* September 30, 2011 4:30PM
![[image]](http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/8753/5459306000house8812157.jpg "[image]")
This house was built in 40 days for a cost of only $6000 house. Backyard Blitz eat your heart out. Picture: Ying chee Chui Source: news.com.au
![[image]](http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/8518/5459276000house8825604.jpg "[image]") ![[image]](http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/3555/5566066000house8836972.jpg "[image]")
The house has a modular layout, with rectangular room units surrounding a central courtyard space. Picture: Ying chee Chui Source: news.com.au
THEY toiled for 40 days and $US6000.
No, it’s not the start of an Old Testament story - it’s the beginning of what some architects and engineers hope will be a low-cost design capable of housing the world.
The end result of those 40 days of labour was the "pinwheel" house - the first prototype in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) $US1000 ($1026) house project aimed at bringing low-cost housing to areas affected by natural disasters and poverty.
While it carries the luxury price tag of $US6000 the pinwheel's designer Ying chee Chui told news.com.au she hoped it would help to drive innovation in low-cost housing design.
“Worldwide, I am hoping that the publication of the pinwheel house can arouse public attention on low cost housing for poverty and disaster reconstruction,” she said.
“Thus, more innovative designs can be executed to improve living and overall environment for the people in need.”
Using that $US6000, Chee created a house incorporating a hollow brick wall, reinforced steel bars and insulated roof panels that is built for both hot and cold weather.
And in the case disaster strikes twice the pinwheel is designed to withstand a magnitude 8.0 earthquake.
What’s it like to live in?
Chee told news.com.au for her nothing was “happier and more worthy” than when the family living in the pinwheel told her the “house is comfortable" and they especially enjoyed the "cross ventilation and natural sunlight from the courtyard”.
Chee said the 7.9m earthquake that killed 70,000 people and left 5 million without homes in China's Sichuan Province in 2008 was the reason she took up the project.
“A year later, millions of victims remained homeless, living in makeshift camps with little money to rebuild their homes,” she said.
“For me, the initiative to take this studio is not to save the world, but to do as much as I can, as an architect, to build a liveable, safe and affordable house for them."
MIT’s release of the project this month comes after a year of natural disasters highlighting a desperate need for affordable shelter capable of being constructed quickly.
The tsunami that struck Japan in March left tens of thousands dead and many more without shelter while closer to home the Queensland floods and Christchurch earthquake were smaller in scale but no less devastating for those involved.
Meanwhile, even without natural disasters an estimated one billion people will be homeless tonight.
The idea to attempt building $1000 homes was first conceived by Tony Ciochetti from MIT’s Center for Real Estate, and inspired by the One Laptop Per Child foundation that brings low-cost computers to children.
“There is a huge proportion of the world’s population that has pressing housing needs,” Ciochetti said.
He said that like One Laptop Per Child’s aim of developing $100 computers the idea of the $1000 house is intended as a challenge to designers: “Can you build affordable, sustainable shelter for such a large population?”
While the design may work well as affordable accommodation for individuals in disaster areas Professor Anna Rubbo from the University of Sydney warned against its use in areas afflicted by poverty.
“As disaster housing this could be quite good,” Prof Rubbo told news.com.au
“But in areas where poverty is the cause of housing shortages you can achieve better results by working with people as partners."
She said attempts to impose measures on those in poverty by a third party were often short-lived or doomed to failure.
“It's better to go in at a lower level instead of the top down approach.
"The urban poor are creative enough.”
You can find out more about the $1000 house project at MIT's website: http://web.mit.edu/press/
http://www.news.com.au/technology/ever-w....#ixzz1 ZWbzKwHl
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
|
Big Bunny
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| | Re: New Millenium Technology VIII
« Reply #7 on Oct 10, 2011, 1:02am » | |
Laser Light Used to Cool Object to Quantum Ground State
![[image]](http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/786/111005131657large638910.jpg "[image]")
A scanning electron microscope image (a) of the nanoscale silicon mechanical resonator used in the laser cooling experiment. The outer "cross" patterning forms the shield while the central beam region, the SEM image of which is shown in (b), forms an optical cavity where laser light is used to cool the mechanical motion of the beam. Numerical simulations of the localized optical field and mechanical breathing motion of the nanobeam are shown in panels (c) and (d), respectively. (Credit: Caltech/Painter, et al.)
ScienceDaily (Oct. 9, 2011) — For the first time, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), in collaboration with a team from the University of Vienna, have managed to cool a miniature mechanical object to its lowest possible energy state using laser light. The achievement paves the way for the development of exquisitely sensitive detectors as well as for quantum experiments that scientists have long dreamed of conducting.
"We've taken a solid mechanical system -- one made up of billions of atoms -- and used optical light to put it into a state in which it behaves according to the laws of quantum mechanics. In the past, this has only been achieved with trapped single atoms or ions," says Oskar Painter, professor of applied physics and executive officer for applied physics and materials science at Caltech and the principal investigator on a paper describing the work that appears in the October 6 issue of the journal Nature.
As described in the paper, Painter and his colleagues have engineered a nanoscale object -- a tiny mechanical silicon beam -- such that laser light of a carefully selected frequency can enter the system and, once reflected, can carry thermal energy away, cooling the system.
By carefully designing each element of the beam as well as a patterned silicon shield that isolates it from the environment, Painter and colleagues were able to use the laser cooling technique to bring the system down to the quantum ground state, where mechanical vibrations are at an absolute minimum. Such a cold mechanical object could help detect very small forces or masses, whose presence would normally be masked by the noisy thermal vibrations of the sensor.
"In many ways, the experiment we've done provides a starting point for the really interesting quantum-mechanical experiments one wants to do," Painter says. For example, scientists would like to show that a mechanical system could be coaxed into a quantum superposition -- a bizarre quantum state in which a physical system can exist in more than one position at once. But they need a system at the quantum ground state to begin such experiments.
To reach the ground state, Painter's group had to cool its mechanical beam to a temperature below 100 millikelvin (-273.15°C). That's because the beam is designed to vibrate at gigahertz frequencies (corresponding to a billion cycles per second) -- a range where a large number of phonons are present at room temperature. Phonons are the most basic units of vibration just as the most basic units or packets of light are called photons. All of the phonons in a system have to be removed to cool it to the ground state.
Conventional means of cryogenically cooling to such temperatures exist but require expensive and, in some cases, impractical equipment. There's also the problem of figuring out how to measure such a cold mechanical system. To solve both problems, the Caltech team used a different cooling strategy.
"What we've done is used the photons -- the light field -- to extract phonons from the system," says Jasper Chan, lead author of the new paper and a graduate student in Painter's group. To do so, the researchers drilled tiny holes at precise locations in their mechanical beam so that when they directed laser light of a particular frequency down the length of the beam, the holes acted as mirrors, trapping the light in a cavity and causing it to interact strongly with the mechanical vibrations of the beam.
Because a shift in the frequency of the light is directly related to the thermal motion of the mechanical object, the light -- when it eventually escapes from the cavity -- also carries with it information about the mechanical system, such as the motion and temperature of the beam. Thus, the researchers have created an efficient optical interface to a mechanical element -- or an optomechanical transducer -- that can convert information from the mechanical system into photons of light.
Importantly, since optical light, unlike microwaves or electrons, can be transmitted over large, kilometer-length distances without attenuation, such an optomechanical transducer could be useful for linking different quantum systems -- a microwave system with an optical system, for example. While Painter's system involves an optical interface to a mechanical element, other teams have been developing systems that link a microwave interface to a mechanical element. What if those two mechanical elements were the same? "Then," says Painter, "I could imagine connecting the microwave world to the optical world via this mechanical conduit one photon at a time."
The Caltech team isn't the first to cool a nanomechanical object to the quantum ground state; a group led by former Caltech postdoctoral scholar Andrew Cleland, now at the University of California, Santa Barbara, accomplished this in 2010 using more conventional refrigeration techniques, and, earlier this year, a group from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, cooled an object to the ground state using microwave radiation. The new work, however, is the first in which a nanomechanical object has been put into the ground state using optical light.
"This is an exciting development because there are so many established techniques for manipulating and measuring the quantum properties of systems using optics," Painter says.
The other cooling techniques used starting temperatures of approximately 20 millikelvin -- more than a factor of 10,000 times cooler than room temperature. Ideally, to simplify designs, scientists would like to initiate these experiments at room temperature. Using laser cooling, Painter and his colleagues were able to perform their experiment at a much higher temperature -- only about 10 times lower than room temperature.
The work was supported by Caltech's Kavli Nanoscience Institute; the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Microsystems Technology Office through a grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research; the European Commission; the European Research Council; and the Austrian Science Fund.
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by California Institute of Technology, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Journal Reference:
1. Jasper Chan, T. P. Mayer Alegre, Amir H. Safavi-Naeini, Jeff T. Hill, Alex Krause, Simon Gröblacher, Markus Aspelmeyer, Oskar Painter. Laser cooling of a nanomechanical oscillator into its quantum ground state. Nature, 2011; 478 (7367): 89 DOI: 10.1038/nature10461
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111005131657.htm
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: New Millenium Technology VIII
« Reply #8 on Oct 10, 2011, 1:13am » | |
Multibeam Sonar Can Map Undersea Gas Seeps
![[image]](http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/688/111006113620large703705.jpg "[image]")
This is a view of the multibeam sonar water column backscatter data used to detect gas seeps. Gas seeps derived from the sonar are shown in the foreground. (Credit: Image produced by the University of New Hampshire Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydrographic Center using IVS Fledermaus software)
ScienceDaily (Oct. 7, 2011) — A technology commonly used to map the bottom of the deep ocean can also detect gas seeps in the water column with remarkably high fidelity, according to scientists from the University of New Hampshire and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This finding, made onboard the NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer in the Gulf of Mexico, will lead to more effective mapping of these gas seeps and, ultimately, enhanced understanding of our ocean environments.
The mapping technology, multibeam sonar, is an echo-sounding technology that surveys a wide, fan-shaped swath of the seafloor, providing much greater coverage than the single-beam sonar systems previously used to map seeps. "We wanted to see whether we could map a large area of gaseous seeps effectively using this technology, and how well the multibeam sonar compared to our very sensitive single-beam sonars," says Tom Weber of UNH's Center for Coastal Mapping, who was lead scientist of this mission. "It turns out it works wonderfully." The multibeam sonar on the Okeanos Explorer produced data to make high-resolution maps of gas in the water column in depths ranging from 3,000 to 7,000 feet.
Working jointly with scientists and technicians from NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (OER) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), Weber and colleagues mapped more than 17,000 square kilometers of the Gulf of Mexico from Aug. 22 through Sept. 10, 2011.
Sonar finds features on the ocean floor much the way a bat tracks its dinner: "It's an acoustic wave hitting the target and reflecting back," says Weber. Multibeam sonar sends those sound waves in many directions at the same time, enabling it to "see" a swath of targets that is much wider than what would be observed with a single-beam sonar. While it's known to be an effective tool for mapping large, stable items like the bottom of the ocean, it wasn't designed to detect targets within the water column.
Gas seeps -- primarily but not exclusively methane -- are numerous in the Gulf of Mexico, emanating from natural fissures in the seafloor. They can be associated with oil, but oil was not the focus for Weber and his collaborators. Finding and mapping gaseous seeps, says Weber, helps scientists better understand the ocean: its methane fluxes, carbon cycle, and deep-water marine environments.
Further, the Gulf of Mexico is home to many active oil-drilling sites, and mapping the gaseous seeps in the water column will inform scientific as well as regulatory decisions. "In the deep ocean, there are life forms like tubeworms and clams associated with gas seeps, and they're treated as protected resources," Weber says.
Further, mapping these seeps will give researchers baseline data on what exists in the water column, helping them determine whether future seeps are natural or unwanted byproducts of drilling.
"Mapping the seafloor and the water column are essential first steps in exploring our largely unknown ocean," says Weber. "This expedition confirms earlier indications that multibeam technology provides a valuable new tool in the inventory to detect plumes of gas in the water column, and especially in deep water."
Also on the mission from UNH were CCOM research scientist Jonathan Beaudoin and graduate students Kevin Jerram (pursuing an M.S. in ocean engineering) and Maddie Schroth-Miller (pursuing an M.S. in applied mathematics). NOAA's expedition coordinator and lead NOAA scientist on the mission was Mashkoor Malik, who graduated from UNH in 2005 with a M.S. in ocean mapping.
NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer is operated, managed and maintained by NOAA's Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, which includes commissioned officers of the NOAA Corps and civilian wage mariners. NOAA's OER owns and is responsible for operating and managing the cutting-edge ocean exploration systems on the vessel. It is the only federal ship dedicated to systematic exploration of the planet's largely unknown ocean.
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by University of New Hampshire, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111006113620.htm
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: New Millenium Technology VIII
« Reply #9 on Oct 28, 2011, 7:40am » | |
27 October 2011 Last updated at 23:00 GMT
Biomimicry: Beaks on trains and flipper-like turbines
By Katia Moskvitch Technology reporter, BBC News
![[image]](http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/4748/56322802z3550221semofca.jpg "[image]")
Caterpillars hatching from the eggs of the large white butterfly. Nature has been designing the world for billions of years
Since the dawn of time, nature has been working hard, engineering everyone and everything to the highest standards on Earth.
Dragonflies that can propel themselves in any direction, sharks with skin with tiny scales that help them swim faster, termites able to build dens that always keep a steady and comfortable temperature inside - those examples are just a drop in the ocean of amazing nature-designed solutions.
Granted, there have been a few individual attempts to copy nature's designs.
For instance, back in the 15th Century, Italian painter Leonardo da Vinci looked at birds' anatomy while sketching his "flying machine".
His device never took off, but the Wright brothers did manage to build the first aeroplane in 1903 - after years of observing pigeons.
Still, several decades had to pass before businesses began realising that nature could really help them too.
Probably one of the most notable nature-inspired technologies of the last century is the well-known hook-and-loop fastener, Velcro. The man who invented it, Swiss George de Mestral, is said to have been inspired by burrs he constantly removed from his dog's fur.
Innovation and copycats
But it wasn't until the late 20th Century, that many firms really started to devote time, money and often an entire team of designers, specifically charged with looking at biological solutions to technological hurdles they came across.
"It is important to look at nature - after all, it has had 3.8 billion years to come up with ideas," says Janine Benyus, a natural history writer who coined the term "biomimicry" in 1998.
![[image]](http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/6110/56322800pvflexibility24.jpg "[image]")
Solar cells that function just like leaves on a tree are a lot more efficient and can work even in low light
Ms Benyus was the first person to really describe this emerging science in her book Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature.
She says that after the book went viral, entrepreneurs from all over the world started calling her, seeking advice on resolving a particular issue in a non-traditional, nature-copying way.
So the world's first Biomimicry Institute was set up in 2005, with a team of consultants trained to help businesses.
"They come in, we learn what it is they're trying to do, and we look for that same function in the natural world - we do huge biological literature searches," says Ms Benyus.
"And then we say: 'Well, that's how nature has done it for 3.8 billion years!'
"And it's always a lot less energy, a lot less material, no toxins - a lot better."
Ms Benyus's clients range from Nasa to a multitude of companies of many different domains.
According to a well-known economist Lynn Reaser, on the global scale by 2025, biomimicry could affect about $1tn (£621 bn) of annual gross domestic product, and account for up to 1.6 million US jobs.
Butterfly's wings
"There are three types of biomimicry - one is copying form and shape, another is copying a process, like photosynthesis in a leaf, and the third is mimicking at an ecosystem's level, like building a nature-inspired city," says Ms Benyus.
Businesses are usually interested in the first two categories, she adds - and a great example of the shape-based type is the Mirasol displays produced by a US mobile phone chip maker, Qualcomm.
Unlike regular screens with backlight or e-ink, these displays, which are still being developed, create colour by mimicking the way a butterfly's wings reflect sunlight.
![[image]](http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/1276/56322798t6120352researc.jpg "[image]")
Researchers mimic humpback whale's flippers to build turbine blades - but one day there could be biomimetic aeroplane wings, helicopter blades, ship rudders and propellers
The displays play video just like any other tablet or smartphone, but have a much longer battery life and softer-for-the-eyes effect of e-ink readers.
"The innovation has been inspired by the same natural principles that enable the reflective shimmer you see from a butterfly's wings or a peacock's feather," says Cheryl Goodman, senior marketing director of Qualcomm.
![[image]](http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/9291/56321792mirasol4598454.jpg "[image]")
Qualcomm's mirasol displays imitate the way a butterfly's wings shimmer
She explains that all the displays need for illumination is ambient light, thus being "both low power and viewable in a variety of lighting environments, including direct sunlight".
The company says that the products are pretty much ready and just need some final touches before appearing on the market - with a number of firms already toying with idea of using them in their products.
Trains with beaks
Ms Benyus says that besides Qualcomm, many other companies call her team of consultants on a daily basis, asking them to sift through the lengthy archive of our planet's extensive history.
She lists just a few examples.
For instance, a Canadian firm Whirlpower mimics humpback whale flippers and uses the principle on wind turbines and fans, reducing the drag and increasing the lift.
A paint company Lodafen applies the lotus effect, mimicking the shape of the bump on a lotus leaf.
Lotus leaves are self-cleaning - they have tiny bumps that help remove the dirt when it rains.
Lodafen uses the principle in architecture designs - and in Europe, there are more than 350,000 buildings that have this kind of paint.
![[image]](http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/2872/56332284kingfisher46446b.jpg "[image]")
The design of the high-speed Shinkansen bullet train in Japan was inspired by the beak of a kingfisher
"And of course the high-speed train, Shinkansen bullet train in Japan - instead of having a rounded front, it has something that looks like a beak of a kingfisher, a bird that goes from air to water, one density of medium to another," she adds.
"So as the train enters a tunnel, it's quieter because there is no pressure wave as with ordinary trains; and it uses 15% less electricity, too."
Leaves and solar cells
She pauses momentarily, and then goes on to describe in detail a process-based type of biomimicry - solar cells that copy the natural process of photosynthesis, or creating energy from sunlight, in leaves.
When Professor Michael Graetzel from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland applied it to solar cells, he won the 2010 Millennium Prize.
He called his creation a dye-sensitized solar cell, or DSSC.
The main difference from a traditional solar cell is that DSSC does not require high-energy consuming silicon, but is instead made of titanium dioxide, white paint - and toothpaste.
![[image]](http://img593.imageshack.us/img593/1851/56321790musselsandwoodh.jpg "[image]")
Plywood made by Columbia Forest Products uses an adhesive called purebond - inspired by adhesives made by blue mussels
The dye in cells absorbs light just like chlorophyll in photosynthesis, releasing an electron that is conducted by the chemical electrolyte in the cell.
And while silicon solar cells require direct sunlight to generate electricity, DSSC uses any light, and works even in very low light conditions indoors or outdoors, and regardless of the panel's orientation.
It can then power a broad range of electronic devices such as remote controls, wireless keyboards, mobile phones, e-readers, and much more.
"Nature possesses infinite patience in developing and perfecting processes, including those to produce energy such photosynthesis, and by mimicking and adapting [them] we can develop technology that is useful, low cost and aligns to our fragile environment," says Marc Thomas, CEO of Dyesol, the company that makes the cells.
Colliding birds
Glass is a well-known hazard for birds, continues Ms Benyus.
![[image]](http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/1188/56322794464combined4644.jpg "[image]")
Ornilux glass - On the left is how a bird would see the glass - which looks absolutely transparent to humans
A US glass maker Ornilux decided to tackle this problem by observing spiders.
Certain species of spiders, in particular the Orb Weaver, have certain ultraviolet-reflective materials in their webs' silk, to warn birds about the web's presence.
Birds may not see a regular web, but they spot UV-reflective materials very clearly, thus avoiding destroying the web and the spider's prey.
"It is the reflective and transparent properties of glass that make it dangerous for birds," says Lisa Welch of Ornilux.
"Birds do not 'see' the glass, but instead respond to reflections of sky and vegetation on the glass, seeing a tree to land on or a flight path to the sky.
"The way to make glass visible to birds is to create visual markers on the glass, alerting them to the presence of a solid object."
Using UV-reflective materials on the glass was a solution - the window stays transparent to people, but not to birds.
A number of buildings around Europe and North America now sport this ingenious glass, possibly saving many birds' lives.
"I'm sure all of the answers to what we are wanting to solve exist in some form or another, in nature," says Ms Welch.
"Inherently, nature provides balanced, symbiotic solutions.
"Human beings have demonstrated a terrible track record of maintaining environmental balance in trying to solve 'problems'.
"So copying nature may just be the way to go."
![[image]](http://img847.imageshack.us/img847/1508/56322796g3520271roachlo.jpg "[image]")
Scientists study insects in order to mimic their locomotion and build insect-like robots
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15480620
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: New Millenium Technology VIII
« Reply #10 on Oct 29, 2011, 4:43am » | |
Printed Protection: Low-Cost Paper-Based Wireless Sensor Could Help Detect Explosive Devices
![[image]](http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/5237/111027132504large124562.jpg "[image]")
Xiaojuan (Judy) Song, left, and Krishna Naishadham display two types of wireless ammonia-sensing prototype devices. (Credit: Gary Meek)
ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a prototype wireless sensor capable of detecting trace amounts of a key ingredient found in many explosives.
The device, which employs carbon nanotubes and is printed on paper or paper-like material using standard inkjet technology, could be deployed in large numbers to alert authorities to the presence of explosives, such as improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
"This prototype represents a significant step toward producing an integrated wireless system for explosives detection," said Krishna Naishadham, a principal research scientist who is leading the work at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). "It incorporates a sensor and a communications device in a small, low-cost package that could operate almost anywhere."
Other types of hazardous gas sensors are based on expensive semiconductor fabrication and gas chromatography, Naishadham said, and they consume more power, require human intervention, and typically do not operate at ambient temperatures. Furthermore, those sensors have not been integrated with communication devices such as antennas.
The wireless component for communicating the sensor information -- a resonant lightweight antenna -- was printed on photographic paper using inkjet techniques devised by Professor Manos Tentzeris of Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Tentzeris is collaborating with Naishadham on development of the sensing device.
The sensing component, based on functionalized carbon nanotubes (CNTs), has been fabricated and tested for detection sensitivity by Xiaojuan (Judy) Song, a GTRI research scientist. The device relies on carbon-nanotube materials optimized by Song.
A presentation on this sensing technology was given in July at the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Symposium (IEEE APS) in Spokane, Wash., by Hoseon Lee, a Ph.D. student in ECE co-advised by Tentzeris and Naishadham. The paper received the Honorable Mention Award in the Best Student Paper competition at the symposium.
This is not the first inkjet-printed ammonia sensor that has been integrated with an antenna on paper, said Tentzeris. His group produced a similar integrated sensor last year in collaboration with the research group of C.P. Wong, who is Regents professor and Smithgall Institute Endowed Chair in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech.
"The fundamental difference is that this newest CNT sensor possesses dramatically improved sensitivity to miniscule ammonia concentrations," Tentzeris said. "That should enable the first practical applications to detect trace amounts of hazardous gases in challenging operational environments using inkjet-printed devices."
Tentzeris explained that the key to printing components, circuits and antennas lies in novel "inks" that contain silver nanoparticles in an emulsion that can be deposited by the printer at low temperatures -- around 100 degrees Celsius. A process called sonication helps to achieve optimal ink viscosity and homogeneity, enabling uniform material deposition and permitting maximum operating effectiveness for paper-based components.
"Ink-jet printing is low-cost and convenient compared to other technologies such as wet etching," Tentzeris said. "Using the proper inks, a printer can be used almost anywhere to produce custom circuits and components, replacing traditional clean-room approaches."
Low-cost materials -- such as heavy photographic paper or plastics like polyethylene terephthalate -- can be made water resistant to ensure greater reliability, he added. Inkjet component printing can also use flexible organic materials, such as liquid crystal polymer (LCP), which are known for their robustness and weather resistance. The resulting components are similar in size to conventional components but can conform and adhere to almost any surface.
Naishadham explained that the same inkjet techniques used to produce RF components, circuits and antennas can also be used to deposit the functionalized carbon nanotubes used for sensing. These nanoscale cylindrical structures -- about one-billionth of a meter in diameter, or 1/50,000th the width of a human hair -- are functionalized by coating them with a conductive polymer that attracts ammonia, a major ingredient found in many IEDs.
Sonication of the functionalized carbon nanotubes produces a uniform water-based ink that can be printed side-by-side with RF components and antennas to produce a compact wireless sensor node.
"The optimized carbon nanotubes are applied as a sensing film, with specific functionalization designed for a particular gas or analyte," Song said. "The GTRI sensor detects trace amounts of ammonia usually found near explosive devices, and it can also be designed to detect similar gases in household, healthcare and industrial environments at very low concentration levels."
The sensor has been designed to detect ammonia in trace amounts -- as low as five parts per million, Naishadham said.
The resulting integrated sensing package can potentially detect the presence of trace explosive materials at a distance, without endangering human lives. This approach, called standoff detection, involves the use of RF technology to identify explosive materials at a relatively safe distance. The GTRI team has designed the device to send an alert to nearby personnel when it detects ammonia.
The wireless sensor nodes require relatively low power, which could come from a number of technologies including thin-film batteries, solar cells or power-scavenging and energy-harvesting techniques. In collaboration with Tentzeris's and Wong's groups, GTRI is investigating ways to make the sensor operate passively, without any power consumption.
"We are focusing on providing standoff detection for those engaged in military or humanitarian missions and other hazardous situations," Naishadham said. "We believe that it will be possible, and cost-effective, to deploy large numbers of these detectors on vehicles or robots throughout a military engagement zone."
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Georgia Institute of Technology Research News. The original article was written by Rick Robinson.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111027132504.htm
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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| | Re: New Millenium Technology VIII
« Reply #11 on Oct 29, 2011, 11:09pm » | |
Robotic Telescope Network With Access Via Internet to Be Built
![[image]](http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/8765/1110110746417655237.jpg "[image]")
Montegancedo Observatory. (Credit: FIUPM)
ScienceDaily (Oct. 11, 2011) — Internauts will be able to connect to 17 telescopes on four continents to share observation time
A world network of robotic telescopes is to be developed as part of a European citizen science project that has just kicked off at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid's Facultad de Informática. The network, to which any citizen will be able to connect and share observation time, will offer free open access via the Internet.
The European project is called Gloria (GLObal Robotic telescopes Intelligent Array for e-Science). Gloria will be a tool for amateur astronomists to research astronomy either using robotic telescopes or analysing astronomical data available in Gloria's or other organization's public databases. Gloria is a three-year project with a budget of 2.5 million euros.
The European project draws on the experience of the Montegancedo Observatory, located at the Facultad de Informática. The Montegancedo Observatory is the first free open access astronomical observatory in the world. The observatory is remote controlled using Ciclope Astro software, mantained by the UPM's Ciclope group. This software will be used by the world robotic telescope network.
Ciclope Astro provides a number of tools for running astronomical experiments, scenario building and remote telescope, camera and dome control. Any internaut can enter the observatory from their home to experience astronomy first hand.
Francisco Sánchez, Director of the Montegancedo Observatory, is the coordinator of this European project with 13 partners from Russia, Chile, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Czech Republic, Poland and Spain. The partners held a three-day meeting last week at the Facultad de Informática to plan project development.
Seventeen telescopes
A network of 17 telescopes will be the seed of the Gloria project that is to offer free Web 2.0 access to internauts from all over the world. The first of these robotic telescopes will be available via the network within a year.
All the robotized telescopes will share the same software, maintained by Gloria project members. Internet access to the telescopes is based on the same Ciclope Astro software as controls the Montegancedo Observatory.
Apart from the 17 telescopes, two user experiments will be run as part of the project. The experiments will be coordinated by the University of Oxford, creators of Galaxy Zoo, an online initiative that invites members to classify around a million galaxies.
Gloria will also organize educational activities, such as broadcasting astronomical events, to attract new users. For this purpose, it will sponsor the next four Sky Live Internet television missions.
The Gloria project sets out to bring amateur astronomers from all over the world together to exploit their collective intelligence and foster participation in astronomical research based on data analysis and astronomical observations.
Citizen science
Telescope use will be managed using the karma technique, which defines a reputation or rating. This method, which has been successfully applied by Web 2.0 sites, automatically distributes the observing times of major users according to the network use criterion.
This will make Gloria a network for citizen science, capable of increasing research quality through open networks and e-infrastructures.
During the project, a foundation will be set up to safeguard any documentation and open software generated. The foundation will also assure that the community of partner internauts can be maintained and continue growing even after the Gloria project ends.
Gloria targets any citizen with an interest in astronomy, such as schoolchildren and students, who can contemplate the universe, learn more about astronomy and directly participate in scientific experiments from their own home.
The robotic telescopes that are to join the network are now self-financing, and their participation in the Gloria project will generate no extra costs.
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Facultad de Informática de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111011074641.htm
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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| | Re: New Millenium Technology VIII
« Reply #12 on Oct 30, 2011, 12:04am » | |
NASA Launches Multi-Talented Earth-Observing Satellite
![[image]](http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/5257/111028082557large089561.jpg "[image]")
The mobile service tower rolls away from the Delta II rocket with the NPP spacecraft aboard. (Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)
ScienceDaily (Oct. 28, 2011) — NASA's newest Earth-observing satellite soared into space early Oct. 28, 2011 aboard a Delta II rocket after liftoff at 5:48 a.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
NASA's National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project, or NPP, successfully separated from the Delta II 58 minutes after launch, and the first signal was acquired by the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. NPP's solar array deployed 67 minutes after launch to provide the satellite with electrical power. NPP is on course to reach its sun-synchronous polar orbit 512 miles (824 km) above Earth.
"NPP is critical to our understanding of Earth's processes and changes," said NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver. "Its impact will be global and builds on 40 years of work to understand our complex planet from space. NPP is part of an extremely strong slate of current and future innovative NASA science missions that will help us win the future as we make new discoveries."
NPP carries five science instruments, including four new state-of-the-art sensors, which will provide critical data to help scientists understand the dynamics of long-term climate patterns and help meteorologists improve short-term weather forecasts. The mission will extend more than 30 key long-term datasets NASA has been tracking, including measurements of the ozone layer, land cover, and ice cover.
NPP serves as a bridge mission between NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) of satellites and the next-generation Joint Polar Satellite System, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) program that will also collect weather and climate data.
Scientists will use NPP data to extend and improve upon EOS data records. These satellites have provided critical insights into the dynamics of the entire Earth system, including clouds, oceans, vegetation, ice, solid Earth and atmosphere. NPP will allow scientists to extend the continuous satellite record needed to detect and quantify global environmental changes.
"The measurements from NPP will benefit science and society for many years to come," said Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division. "NPP will help improve weather forecasts, enable unique scientific insights, and allow more accurate global environmental predictions. I'm confident that the strong partnerships forged in the NPP program between NASA and NOAA, industry, and the research and applications communities will ensure the success of the mission."
The satellite will be operated from the NOAA Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, Md. NASA will operate NPP for the first three months after launch while the satellite and instrument are checked out. NPP operations will then be turned over to NOAA and the JPSS program for the remainder of the mission.
NPP data will be transmitted once every orbit to a ground station in Svalbard, Norway, and to direct broadcast receivers around the world. The data will be sent back to the United States via fiber optic cable to the NOAA Suitland facility. NPP data is then processed into data records that NASA and NOAA will make available through various data archives.
The Delta II launch vehicle that delivered NPP into orbit also deployed auxiliary payloads within 98 minutes after launch. The five small "CubeSat" research payloads are the third in a series of NASA Educational Launch of Nanosatellite missions, known as ELaNa missions.
The NPP mission is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., for the Earth Science Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The Joint Polar Satellite System program provides the NPP ground system. NOAA will provide operational support for the mission. Launch management is the responsibility of the NASA Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
For more information about NPP, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/npp
For more information about the ELaNa III mission, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/tgbuVn
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NASA.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111028082557.htm
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: New Millenium Technology VIII
« Reply #13 on Oct 30, 2011, 10:42pm » | |
'Magnetic Tongue' Ready to Help Produce Tastier Processed Foods
ScienceDaily (Oct. 26, 2011) — The "electronic nose," which detects odors, has a companion among emerging futuristic "e-sensing" devices intended to replace abilities that once were strictly human-and-animal-only. It is a "magnetic tongue" -- a method used to "taste" food and identify ingredients that people describe as sweet, bitter, sour, etc. A report on use of the method to taste canned tomatoes appears in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Antonio Randazzo, Anders Malmendal, Ettore Novellino and colleagues explain that sensing the odor and flavor of food is a very complex process. It depends not only on the combination of ingredients in the food, but also on the taster's emotional state. Trained taste testers eliminate some of the variation, but food processors need more objective ways to measure the sensory descriptor of their products. That's where electronic sensing technologies, like E-noses, come into play.
However, current instruments can only analyze certain food components and require very specific sample preparation. To overcome these shortcomings, Randazzo and Malmendal's team turned to nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) to test its abilities as "a magnetic tongue."
The researchers analyzed 18 canned tomato products from various markets with NMR and found that the instrument could estimate most of the tastes assessed by the human taste testers. But the NMR instrument went even farther. By determining the chemical composition, it showed which compound is related to which sensory descriptor. The researchers say that the "magnetic tongue" has good potential as a rapid, sensitive and relatively inexpensive approach for food processing companies to use.
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Chemical Society.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
1. Anders Malmendal, Claudia Amoresano, Roberta Trotta, Ilaria Lauri, Stefano De Tito, Ettore Novellino, Antonio Randazzo. NMR Spectrometers as “Magnetic Tongues”: Prediction of Sensory Descriptors in Canned Tomatoes. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 2011; 59 (20): 10831 DOI: 10.1021/jf203803q
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111026122416.htm
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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« Reply #14 on Oct 30, 2011, 10:56pm » | |
New Test Can Precisely Pinpoint Food Pathogens
ScienceDaily (Oct. 25, 2011) — With Salmonella-tainted ground turkey sickening more than 100 people and Listeria-contaminated cantaloupes killing 15 this year, the ability to detect outbreaks of food-borne illness and determine their sources has become a top public health priority.
A new approach, reported online Oct. 14 in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology by a collaborative team led by Cornell scientists, will enable government agencies and food companies to pinpoint the exact nature and origin of food-borne bacteria with unprecedented accuracy, says food science professor Martin Wiedmann.
The standard method of tracing food-borne illness involves breaking up the DNA of bacteria samples into smaller pieces and analyzing their banding patterns.
But scientists often find that different strains of bacteria have common DNA fingerprints that are too genetically similar to be able to differentiate between them, making it difficult to establish whether the Salmonella that made one person sick was the same Salmonella that infected another person. This was the case in a Salmonella outbreak linked to salami made with contaminated black and red pepper that included 272 cases in 44 states between July 2009 and April 2010.
To surmount this challenge, Wiedmann adopted a genomic approach.
By sequencing the genome of 47 samples of the bacteria -- 20 that had been collected from human sources during the outbreak, and 27 control samples collected from human, food, animal and environmental sources before the outbreak -- he and his team were able to rapidly discriminate between outbreak-related cases and non-outbreak related cases, isolating four samples believed to be connected to the pepper contamination.
In the process of doing so, he also found other links.
A Salmonella strain that led to a nationwide recall of pistachio nuts in 2009 turned up in samples from four people -- only one of whom had reported eating pistachios.
Other connected cases suggested smaller outbreaks of which officials had been previously unaware.
"The use of genome sequencing methods to investigate outbreaks of food-borne bacterial diseases is relatively new, and holds great promise as it can help to identify the temporal, geographical and evolutionary origin of an outbreak," Wiedmann said. "In particular, full genome sequence data may help to identify small outbreaks that may not be easily detected with lower resolution subtyping approaches."
Wiedmann, research associate Henk den Bakker and other lab members developed the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) test that is specific to the 2009 pepper-associated outbreak with the help of researchers at Life Technologies Corp. They also collaborated with researchers at Washington State University and departments of health in New York City and New York state.
A similar approach has previously been used in hospital settings to trace pathogenic bacteria such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, but this is its first application for food-borne illness.
Wiedmann said he is continuing to perfect the method and use it to test other types of bacteria. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other agencies are also starting to use similar approaches.
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Cornell University. The original article was written by Stacey Shackford, staff writer at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
1. H. C. den Bakker, A. I. Moreno Switt, C. A. Cummings, K. Hoelzer, L. Degoricija, L. D. Rodriguez-Rivera, E. M. Wright, R. Fang, M. Davis, T. Root, D. Schoonmaker-Bopp, K. A. Musser, E. Villamil, H. Waechter, L. Kornstein, M. R. Furtado, M. Wiedmann. A whole genome SNP based approach to trace and identify outbreaks linked to a common Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Montevideo Pulsed Field Gel Electrophoresis type. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 2011; DOI: 10.1128/AEM.06538-11
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111025113540.htm
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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