Science & Technology

They're here! Animal inspired biohybrid robots being created in labs

Victoria Webster
The Conversation
Tue, 09 Aug 2016 17:37 UTC

Think of a traditional robot and you probably imagine something made from metal and plastic. Such "nuts-and-bolts" robots are made of hard materials. As robots take on more roles beyond the lab, such rigid systems can present safety risks to the people they interact with. For example, if an industrial robot swings into a person, there is the risk of bruises or bone damage.

Researchers are increasingly looking for solutions to make robots softer or more compliant - less like rigid machines, more like animals. With traditional actuators - such as motors - this can mean using air muscles or adding springs in parallel with motors. For example, on a Whegs robot, having a spring between a motor and the wheel leg (Wheg) means that if the robot runs into something (like a person), the spring absorbs some of the energy so the person isn't hurt. The bumper on a Roomba vacuuming robot is another example; it's spring-loaded so the Roomba doesn't damage the things it bumps into.

Comment: Next on the list: Robots made with human parts.

Mummified 'monster' unearthed by Siberian miners may be lost species of dinosaur

RT
Thu, 11 Aug 2016 17:34 UTC

An ancient mummified 'monster' unearthed in a diamond pit by Siberian miners could be a previously undiscovered species of dinosaur.

Russia's northern region is known to be a veritable ice box of discovery, hosting the remains of countless prehistoric animals in a natural deep freeze.

But researchers are understood to be baffled at the latest creature pulled from sands near the town of Udachny, located in the Sakha Republic, according to the Siberian Times.

Extremely rare sapphire-blue lobster caught off Cape Cod

RT
Thu, 11 Aug 2016 17:03 UTC

A Cape Cod fisherman got an exciting surprise in his catch earlier this week when he found a 2-pound lobster in his trap, the color of a sapphire. According to experts his catch is an extreme rarity, occurring in about one in two million.

Wayne Nickerson, owner and captain of FV Windsong in Plymouth, was the lucky fisherman who has been fishing for lobster for over 35 years. He told ABC this was only the second one he has caught.

"He let out a loud exclamation of excitement," Jan, his wife, told ABC News. "He was very clear about how excited he was."

Jan posted a photo of the blue lobster on a Facebook page on Monday. Since then the photo has been liked by over 1,800 people and shared by over 2,000 others.

Researchers shed light on toddlers' picky eating

Beth Mole
Ars Technica
Tue, 09 Aug 2016 14:47 UTC

The food preferences of toddlers are a mind-boggling enigma. On the one hand, kids under two years old are the most likely age group to accidentally poison themselves—by deciding it's a great idea to guzzle detergent, for instance. Yet, when parents try to coax them into ingesting nutritious, non-lethal options, tots may cook up a fit.

According to a new study, toddlers may actually have some logic to their apparent dietary madness—at least a little logic, that is. By watching toddlers react to people's food preferences, researchers found that the little ankle-biters seem to make generalizations about good eats and who will like them based on social identities. Toddlers expected people in the same social groups to like the same foods and appeared puzzled if that wasn't the case. But if one person expressed a dislike for a food first, toddlers seemed to expect that everyone would follow suit regardless of social identities.

Mysterious supernovas explode twice, giving birth to powerful magnets

Charles Q. Choi
Live Science
Tue, 09 Aug 2016 16:08 UTC

© NASA
This artist's illustration of a supernova shows a shell of material being expelled from the dying star, as well as a burst of bright light.

A mysterious kind of supernova that appears to explode twice may be giving birth to some of the most powerful magnets in the universe, a new study finds.

Supernovas are explosions that occur when certain types of stars run out of fuel and "die." These outbursts can briefly outshine all of the millions of other stars in their galaxies.

Recently, scientists detected a very rare class of supernova, known as superluminous supernovas. These star explosions are up to 100 times brighter than other supernovas. The superluminous variety account for less than a thousandth of all supernovas, and only about 30 examples have been studied well.

Comment: Related articles:

Mama dolphins sing their name to babies in the womb

Stephanie Pappas
Live Science
Tue, 09 Aug 2016 08:12 UTC

Humans aren't the only species whose members speak to their babies in the womb. Dolphin mamas appear to sing their own name to their unborn calves.

New research suggests that dolphin mothers teach their babies a "signature whistle" right before birth and in the two weeks after. Signature whistles are sounds that are made by individual dolphins, which the animals use to identify one another. Calves eventually develop their own signature whistle, but in the first few weeks of life, mothers seem focused on teaching their offspring their signature sound, the scientists said.

"It's been hypothesized that this is part of an imprinting process," Audra Ames, a doctoral student at the University of Southern Mississippi, said here on Friday (Aug. 5) at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association.

Comment: Related articles:

Another 'self-driving' Tesla car wreck -- this time in China

Jake Spring
Reuters
Wed, 10 Aug 2016 14:26 UTC

Tesla (TSLA.O) said on Wednesday that one of its cars had crashed in Beijing while in 'autopilot' mode, with the driver contending sales staff sold the function as 'self-driving', overplaying its actual capabilities.

Tesla said it had reviewed data to confirm the car was in autopilot mode, a system that takes control of steering and braking in certain conditions.

The company, which is investigating the crash in China's capital last week, also said it was the driver's responsibility to maintain control of the vehicle. In this case, it said, the driver's hands were not detected on the steering wheel.

Comment:

Looking for the mysterious missing magnetic monopole

T'Mir Danger Julius
The Conversation
Mon, 08 Aug 2016 16:38 UTC

You've probably heard of the Higgs boson. This elusive particle was predicted to exist long ago and helped explain why the universe works the way it does, but it took decades for us to detect.

Well, there's another elusive particle that has also been predicted by quantum physics, and it's been missing for an even longer time. In fact, we still haven't spotted one, and not through lack of trying.

It's called the magnetic monopole, and it has a few unique properties that make it rather special.

Comment: See also: Large-Scale Cousin of Elusive 'Magnetic Monopoles' Found

Astronomers discover mysterious trans-Neptunian object with unexplained weird orbit

Shannon Hall
New Scientist
Wed, 10 Aug 2016 16:32 UTC

"I hope everyone has buckled their seatbelts because the outer solar system just got a lot weirder." That's what Michele Bannister, an astronomer at Queens University, Belfast tweeted on Monday.

She was referring to the discovery of a TNO or trans-Neptunian object, something which sits beyond Neptune in the outer solar system. This one is 160,000 times fainter than Neptune, which means the icy world could be less than 200 kilometres in diameter. It's currently above the plane of the solar system and with every passing day, it's moving upwards - a fact that makes it an oddity.

The TNO orbits in a plane that's tilted 110 degrees to the plane of the solar system. What's more, it swings around the sun backwards unlike most of the other objects in the solar system. With this in mind, the team that discovered the TNO nicknamed it "Niku" after the Chinese adjective for rebellious.

US Airforce wants to detonate plasma bombs in the upper atmosphere

David Hambling
New Scientist
Tue, 09 Aug 2016 21:35 UTC

Can you hear me now? The US Air Force is working on plans to improve radio communication over long distances by detonating plasma bombs in the upper atmosphere using a fleet of micro satellites.

Since the early days of radio, we've known that reception is sometimes better at night. Radio stations that cannot be picked up by day may be heard clearly at night, transmitting from hundreds of kilometres away.

This is down to changes in the ionosphere, a layer of charged particles in the atmosphere that starts around 60 kilometres up. The curvature of Earth stops most ground-based radio signals travelling more than 70 kilometres without a boost.

But by bouncing between the ionosphere and the ground they can zigzag for much greater distances. At night the density of the ionosphere's charged particles is higher, making it more reflective.

This is not the first time we've tinkered with the ionosphere to try to improve radio communication and enhance the range of over-the-horizon radar. HAARP, the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program in Alaska, stimulates the ionosphere with radiation from an array of ground-based antennas to produce radio-reflecting plasma.

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Science & Technology

They're here! Animal inspired biohybrid robots being created in labs

Mummified 'monster' unearthed by Siberian miners may be lost species of dinosaur

Extremely rare sapphire-blue lobster caught off Cape Cod

Researchers shed light on toddlers' picky eating

Mysterious supernovas explode twice, giving birth to powerful magnets

Mama dolphins sing their name to babies in the womb

Another 'self-driving' Tesla car wreck -- this time in China

Looking for the mysterious missing magnetic monopole

Astronomers discover mysterious trans-Neptunian object with unexplained weird orbit

US Airforce wants to detonate plasma bombs in the upper atmosphere

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