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Why Do Zebras Have Stripes? To Create Optical Illusions

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Why zebras have stripes has long been something of a mystery. We have a pretty good idea they're used as protection, but the exact mechanism isn't totally understood. I mean, why would evolution pick out that? The black on white is like a semaphore for savannah predators, saying Eat at Joe's wherever the zebras go. (Charles Darwin himself mentioned that the "stripes cannot afford any protection in the open plains of South Africa.") Thanks to a computer simulation, researchers now have a better idea. 

With a motion-detecting algorithm, a pair of researchers from the University of Queensland and the University of London simulated the movements of a herd, and determined that the stripes provide zebras with not one, but two, optical illusions that keep other animals from chowing down on them.

The first is what's called the wagon wheel effect. Imagine a spinning helicopter blade. When the spin of the blade reaches a certain speed, you get the illusion that it starts spinning in the opposition direction. The same goes for any spoked wheel (hence the name).

 

 

The second optical illusion zebras use is what's known as the barberpole illusion. Even though barbershop poles move horizontally, when you watch them, it looks like the stripes are moving down vertically. (Which, you know, isn't possible.) 

 

 

The stripes on zebras, the researchers suggest, induce both of these illusions, which can ward off insects and possibly predators. From the study: "We suggest that the observer's visual system is flooded with erroneous motion signals that correspond to two well-known visual illusions: (i) the wagon-wheel effect (perceived motion inversion due to spatiotemporal aliasing); and (ii) the barber-pole illusion (misperceived direction of motion due to the aperture problem), and predict that these two illusory effects act together to confuse biting insects approaching from the air, or possibly mammalian predators during the hunt, particularly when two or more zebras are observed moving together as a herd."

So there you go! Advice: if you're trying to avoid someone, gather in a crowd and wrap yourselves in black-and-white shawls and run as fast as you can. 


    







Get Ready For The Robot Smog

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DJI's Phantom In Flight
Also pictured: NYC's famous Flatiron Building.
Dan Bracaglia

Ah, the good old days when your microwave stayed put where you left it. Introducing autonomous robots into everyday life is not going to be a smooth leap into a more-convenient future—it will be loud, uncomfortable, and very annoying, says Carnegie Mellon robotics professor Illah Nourbakhsh. In a new article for The New Yorker, Nourbakhsh writes:

Today, interactions with machines generally occur on our own terms—toasters, microwaves, and even smartphones do what we tell them—but soon, we could be looking up at a quadrotor drone hovering in the park, wondering whether to walk underneath it or cut into the grass to avoid its down draft. Autonomous robots will displace our sense of control precisely because they are out of our control, but occupy the physical world and demand our attention.

On a large scale, drones pose privacy, safety, and legality challenges, but they do hold promise for commercial and public protection. These gains may well be worth the risk, and on a macro level I think that's why drones will be allowed to fly more freely in U.S. skies. But on the very personal level, drones could be quite strange to interact with: silent sentinels hovering near joggers in a park, moving out of the way of birds but only actively responding to commands from their owners.

Nourbakhsh describes them almost as flying, unblinking cats, that seem to only act on whims:

The incidental interactions we’ll have will be awkward: Can the robot understand my speech? Is it making eye contact? If I curse at it, will it embarrass me, or get out of my way? Is the robot staring at me because it wants to interact, or is it just waiting for me to move? 

Read the whole piece at The New Yorker.

For a look at the rise of insect drones, check out Popular Science's January 2014 cover story.


    






This Dog Thought-To-Speech Translator Is Bogus

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No More Woof

Making the rounds is the project you see here: a dog-to-speech translator. Put this EEG headset on your dog's head, and it'll pick up on its brain waves, then put those scans in plain ol' English. (I'm hungry, I'm tired, Who are you?) It's appeared with straight-faced reports on multiple news sites, usually accompanied by this video:

 

 

The future! Technology! Hip Scandinavians! A thing that translates your dog's thoughts into people-speak! Open up your check-book and post-date one for The Future! But wait. Isn't there something missing in this video? Something important?

Right. It doesn't show a real demonstration.

Even if it did, it would still be complete, utter bunk. But if it's a hoax (and the video almost makes it seem like some kind of parody) the team behind it is still asking people to pay for the pleasure of using it.

"What I saw in their video can't work," says Bruce Luber, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University. Luber specializes in brain stimulation and neurophysiology, trying to do, in some sense, what the people in this video (the Nordic Society for Invention and Discovery) are trying to do: translate what's happening in the brain directly to behavior. But Luber says it's not that simple: "We can't instantaneously tell very much." 

If it worked, the government would be offering money hand-over-fist to fund this.

Some feelings are relatively easy to determine (and this applies to humans as well as animals). Phases of sleep, for example, can maybe be determined with only a few scalp electrodes attached to the head. (Although the animal might have to actually be falling asleep for that to be detected.) Feelings like hunger happen deep in the brain--physically deep, as in well below the surface. "You can't detect hunger, at least as we know it right now, with EEG," Luber says. Yet both blatantly appear in promotional materials for the headset. And this is actually the most reasonable of the team's claims: they go on to suggest they'll offer a more sophisticated device that can let a dog express more complicated emotions. “I’m hungry – but I don’t like this!” for one example. Can't wait to hear my dog's dissertation on Lacanian psychoanalysis!

The No More Woof device isn't even in the same quality zip code as the kinds of advanced electrode arrays (and attached software) researchers like Luber use, which, again, can't even do most of what this cheap device supposedly could. Animal studies require a bit more finesse, too, than a headset like this would provide. "We go through a whole process--with a monkey, move all the hair out of the way just to make some kind of contact through the head. It doesn't work with fur." The device appears to go snugly over your pug's head, over the fur, which is just about impossible to get accurate readings through. "I'll just say I've never been able to accomplish that," says Rebecca Packer, associate professor of neurology and neurosurgery at Colorado State University's College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

No More Woof

The promotional material on the No More Woof site makes it all sound so easy--dogs are simple creatures, so it should be easy to figure out what they want. But Packer higlights a few more issues. EEGs aren't good at looking in-depth into the brain, where mechanisms like hunger would be detected. The spot where you'd pinpoint hunger, for example, is located deep in the hypothalamus, and EEGs are used to pick up measurements that are closer to the brain's surface, like epileptic activity, Packer says. (But even seizures, which you'd think would be simple to detect, are complicated.) To really do this, you'd need a wearable fMRI or PET scan device--which don't exist. And it's even harder to get accurate readings in dogs than it is in people; dogs have thick muscles in the skull that create interference. Even using needle-based electrodes, which can go deeper, it's extremely hard to get an accurate reading. She also points out that electrical interference causes issues in readings, and trying to read your dog's mind while it's running through a home stuffed with gadgets is problematic, to say the least.

Not that it's doubtful the team will still ship out these headsets; there's no way for most folks to determine if they actually work. The headset says the dog's hungry, you put out some food, and the dog eats the food. Science on the march. 

The team behind No More Woof is asking for money--they've started an Indiegogo campaign to fund research and are offering headsets as rewards--but, if it worked, and probably if it even showed legitimate promise, this is the kind of technology companies and the government would be offering money hand-over-fist to fund.

At best, trying to collect money to do research on it is naive. I asked Luber if it would be possible to one day have a device like this. 

"If you get DARPA to put about $100 million toward it and get all of us working on it," he told me.

Which is, of course, the goal. This is the promise of neuroscience: intimately and rapidly understanding ourselves (or dogs). But it's not even close to that point.

On the project's Indiegogo page, right next to the other disclaimers--"We'd like to clearly state that the No More Woof is WORK IN PROGRESS"--there's this: "[T]o be completely honest, the first version will be quite rudimentary. But hey, the first computer was pretty crappy too." Sure. It also worked.


    






Deceased Researcher’s Message In A Bottle Discovered In The Arctic

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satellite image of ice shelves in the Canadian Arctic
Ice Shelves, Including Ward Hunt, in the Canadian Arctic, 2008
NASA images by Jesse Allen

In the northernmost reaches of the Canadian Arctic, 500 miles (800 kilometers) away from the nearest human settlement, researchers discovered a literal message in a bottle, Halifax’s Herald News reports.

It begins just like the worst examples of cover letters on the Internet: “TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.” But the rest of it is pretty awesome. It turns out it’s a note buried by Paul Walker, an American geologist well known to those in his field today. He built two rock “cairns” in this remote spot, as the discovering scientist, Warwick Vincent of Laval University in Quebec, described them. Walker asks scientists of the future to measure the distance between the two cairns, one of which is located on the Ward Hunt ice shelf. Walker wanted to know whether the ice shelf, the Artic’s largest, was growing or retreating.

The note is dated July 10, 1959. Vincent and his colleagues carried out Walker’s request and discovered that the rock piles are now 333 feet (101.5 meters) apart. In Walker’s day, the distance was just 4 feet. The findings jibe with Vincent’s work tracking the melting of the ice here, the Herald News reports.

Sadly, Walker, 25, died the same year he set up this 54-year-long experiment. He had a stroke while out in the Arctic, the Los Angeles Times reports. A bush pilot came to bring him back to civilization and to medical care, but he died in his parents’ home that November.

[Herald News via the Los Angeles Times]


    






One Farmer And His Engineered Non-Browning Apples

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photo of a cut conventional Granny Smith apple next to a cut Arctic Granny Smith apple
Conventional Granny Smith Apple vs. Arctic Granny Smith Apple
Arctic Apples

For a small-time farmer, Neal Carter has received a lot of big-time attention. Carter is the owner of a 21-acre farm in Canada’s Okanagan Valley and the developer of Arctic apples, which are genetically engineered so their interiors stay white for hours after being cut. 

Carter thinks his invention could encourage people to eat more apples by making packaged, pre-sliced fruit more appealing. Anti-GMO activists, as well as the apple industry, oppose the introduction of Arctics, each for different reasons. Seattle Weekly has published a profile of Carter with detailed reporting on the technology’s contentious route to market. It’s a great read if you want to get caught up on the issue. Some highlights:

  • The technology that goes into Arctic apples is different from that used to make many GMO products. Often, scientists make modified crops by inserting genes from other species into the crop plants’ own DNA. Arctic apples use a newer technique that takes advantage of a process called RNA interference or RNAi. The apples get extra doses of native apple genes. That stimulates an immune reaction in the fruits so that they produce much lower amounts of the protein responsible for browning.
  • The reason opposition to Arctic apples has been especially vehement is because, unlike the commonly-modified corn and soybeans, apples are “a representation of America.” Also, they are a “whole food” that you, you know, bite directly into:
    Lisa Archer, director of Friends of the Earth’s food and technology program, says that recent transgenic products like the Arctic apple have ignited a ‘whole new level of concern,’ since most are intended to be eaten as a whole food. Older GMOs such as corn and soy are typically processed for their derivatives and mixed with a lot of other ingredients to create packaged and canned foods.
  • U.S. Department of Agriculture approval for Arctic apples is marching forward:
    In early November, the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service released its assessments of the Arctic after three years of deliberations. . . . Considering the question of unintended targets [of the Arctic apple’s RNAi immune stimulation], the agency concluded that such an effect was unlikely. . . . The assessments countered other concerns, highlighted the apple’s good points, and indicated that it was on the verge of deregulation.

[Seattle Weekly]


    






A Microscopic Look At Drugs And Other Amazing Images From This Week

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Drugs Under The Microscope
Sarah Schoenfeld via Design TAXI


    






Reviewed: DJI Phantom 2 Vision Personal Drone

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The world of consumer-ready drones is in its infancy, with only a few ready-to-fly options in existence. But DJI’s Phantom 2 Vision is evidence that the space is maturing. With its latest offering, DJI offers a complete, integrated aerial photography tool, an easy-to-use quadrotor that’s much more than an RC helicopter with a camera strapped to its belly.

The Phantom 2 Vision follows the release of DJI’s first-generation consumer-ready unmanned aerial system (UAS) last year, a quadrotor known simply as Phantom. Phantom was a whole lot of fun to fly (PopSci reviewed it at the time), but it wasn’t exactly the simple “ready to fly” experience we were hoping for. In its second iteration, DJI has gone a long way to smooth out some of the more cumbersome aspects of the original Phantom and then, by adding mobile connectivity, created something beyond just a flying machine. The newest generation in the Phantom series packs an integrated 14-megapixel camera and a Wi-Fi link that allows the user both to control the camera and to see what the drone is seeing. Yet, as with any good piece of gadgetry, all the machinery that makes this integrated system work is neatly concealed behind the scenes. Within minutes of topping up the battery charge we had the Phantom 2 Vision out of the box, synced up to an iPhone, and whipping through the air capturing vistas of the NYC skyline from 300 feet. Factor in the fact that the aircraft itself is a whole lot of fun to fly, and you've got something that's part recreational aircraft and part gadget--a complete system that feels much more like a complete product.

For those not serious enough about flying a UAS to build one themselves, but serious enough to shell out  more than a grand, that's exciting news. We've played with the Parrot AR series of quadrotors (tons of fun but essentially toys) and we've watched massive defense contractors demo state of the art quadrotor UAS designed for military, police, and search and rescue tasks. Once again, DJI has created something that fits in the space in between--part recreational aircraft and part high-tech tool, the Phantom 2 Vision feels much more like a complete product than its predecessors.

Phantom 2 Vision, Ready to Fly
Clay Dillow

WHAT’S NEW

The specs for the Phantom 2 Vision haven’t changed significantly from the first-generation Phantom (for a more thorough breakdown of the features of the air vehicle itself, check out our previous review of the first-gen Phantom). The quadrotor itself is roughly the same size and weight as its predecessor and maintains very similar flight characteristics, though it’s worth noting that the Phantom 2 Vision has a listed top speed of 15 meters per second, compared with 10 meters per second for the first-gen Phantom. DJI does not recommend you push the Phantom to the edge of its performance envelope, but we took it up to 16 meters per second--roughly 35 miles per hour--with no catastrophic result.

There are lots of little tweaks to the aircraft, both slight and significant. Some, like the enhanced battery and the easier out-of-the-box experience will be discussed in more detail later. The primary difference between the Phantom 2 Vision and its predecessor is the integrated camera and the connectivity that allows the pilot not only to see what the drone sees but to control the camera while also accessing an array of flight data via a dashboard displayed on an iOS or Android device (smartphones clip securely into a universal mount on the remote control itself). Linking these three pieces of technology--the aircraft, the camera, and the pilot’s mobile device--greatly enhances the flight experience. It also opens the door for some seriously mind-blowing aerial photography and video (as you can observe in our video). 

The DJI Phantom 2 Vision Controller
The aircraft is controlled via the familiar dual-thumbstick RC control scheme, while the camera is operated via a separate Wi-Fi connection with an app on the user's mobile device. The white box attached to the front of the controller is a small Wi-Fi signal booster.
Clay Dillow

WHAT’S GOOD

The addition of both camera and connectivity allows for a real shift in what we expect from RC interfaces, piling visuals and data on top of the thumbsticks that have served as the intermediary between pilot and RC flying machine for decades. Those thumbsticks are still there--the two-stick remote control guides the aircraft using pretty much the same standard inputs as an RC helicopter, making the Phantom 2 extremely intuitive for RC enthusiasts to pick up. Meanwhile, the app-based dashboard that runs on the user’s mobile device both controls the onboard camera and serves as kind of flight instrument panel akin to that found in an aircraft cockpit, making the user experience is less like “remote controlling” and more like “piloting.” So you don't have to link up the Phantom 2 with a mobile device to operate the aircraft (the flight controller and the mobile device connect to the aircraft/camera via separate connections), but for the full experience--and for any kind of aerial photography--you'll want to.

Integrated Camera: For aerial photography purposes, the Vision’s integrated, gimbaled camera packs plenty of punch. Capable of shooting video at a range of resolutions and aspect ratios (HD at 1080/p30 or 1080/60i) and still photographs up to 14 megapixels, it’s a rig designed for shooting sweeping panoramas from way up high (we found that around 350 feet up we tended to lose Wi-Fi connection between the iPhone and the camera, but we suspect that being in interference-heavy Manhattan might have had something to do with that). Panning is controlled by rotating the aircraft itself, and the motorized gimbal allows the pilot 60 degrees of tilt via touchscreen controls on the DJI app interface (this is also where the shutter button, video record button, and other camera control functions are located). That app interface also makes for easy image and video management; the Phantom 2 Vision stores its image and video files on a local microSD card, but via the DJI app the user can move all images and videos to the mobile device wirelessly.

While the Phantom 2 Vision doesn’t set any industry standards with its camera specs, it also doesn’t cost $20,000. For aerial photography purposes that don’t extend into professional filmmaking, we found the camera to be quite adequate at both still photography and video (all of the aerial photography and video accompanying this piece was shot via the Vision’s integrated camera).

Aside from aerial imaging applications, the camera also serves as an aid to the pilot, helping to establish orientation and avoid obstacles while also layering a nice first-person experience onto the whole enterprise. Just be advised: Neither PopSci nor the FAA recommend operating the aircraft beyond line of sight. In fact, while PopSci merely discourages it, the FAA prohibits it. Safety first.

Drone's Eye View
Clay Dillow

Device Connectivity: Connectivity with the pilot’s mobile device, in tandem with the camera, is what makes the Phantom 2 Vision really click, creating a smooth interface between user and machine. The intuitive DJI app provides the user with a drone's-eye-view beamed straight from the camera and overlays it with flight data like battery level, speed, altitude, and distance from pilot--the last two being particularly important given that, as mentioned previously, the Wi-Fi connection and the remote control connection can break if aircraft and pilot are too far apart. There’s also an on-screen compass that helps the pilot maintain orientation--that is, to remember which way is forward--something that could be somewhat frustrating when flying the first-gen Phantom.

And because the Phantom 2 Vision, like its predecessor, uses GPS to maintain flight stability (more on that later) there’s a “Find my Phantom” function that shows you the location of your UAS on the map in case you somehow ditch into the tall grass.

Ready to Fly: The first-generation Phantom was billed as “ready to fly,” but we didn’t find it to be exactly that. There was a decent amount of assembly required, and beyond that it wasn’t exactly quick or easy to break down the original Phantom for transport. The Phantom 2 is a neatly-packaged leap forward. The propellors are self-tightening and simply screw onto the rotary motors with no extraneous fasteners or hardware required (they come off just as easily for storage or easy transport). The battery charging procedure--which was actually kind of cumbersome for the first-generation Phantom--is vastly simplified, the way it should be. Battery charge time notwithstanding, the Phantom 2 Vision can be unboxed and ready to fly in a matter of minutes.

A Better Battery: That about sums it up: The Phantom 2 Vision comes with a better battery brick than its predecessor. Full charge time is about an hour for a drained battery. DJI lists the fight time of a fully-chared battery at 25 minutes, a ten-minute improvement over the first-gen Phantom. The good news: we got roughly 10 minutes more than the listed flight time out of both the Phantom and the Phantom 2. Assuming you’re not running with the throttle wide open for the duration, expect to get half an hour of flying time out of a full charge (maybe even a little more).

WHAT WE’D IMPROVE

The Controller: There’s nothing particularly headache-inducing about the Phantom 2 Vision’s controller. It’s just bulky, and by the time you attach the included Wi-Fi signal booster and a mobile device to it you’re basically hauling around a small command console. Something a bit smaller wouldn’t hurt for both ease of transport and for flight. Also, the way the pilot’s smartphone clips into the controller mount leaves it woefully exposed to overhead sunlight, which in turn makes it difficult to see what’s on the screen. A redesigned controller might be able to mitigate both issues somewhat.

The Battery: Just because it’s better than its predecessor doesn’t mean we’re not going to complain about it. This is an outdoor machine, which makes it particularly annoying when it only flies for half an hour before it requires a wall socket. This isn’t DJI’s fault--even military grade quadrotors that cost orders of magnitude more than the Phantom only get something like an hour of continuous flight time. But it’s something that, if improved, would go a long way toward making this a much better product. In the meantime, DJI sells extra battery bricks for $159.

A View from a Drone
Clay Dillow

IN FLIGHT

For a full breakdown of the Phantom’s flight characteristics check out our review of the first-gen Phantom, which goes into its GPS-enabled flight stabilization in detail. For the purposes of this review--especially as it pertains to photography--suffice it to say that autopilot is one of DJI’s core competencies and that this aircraft is well-equipped with technology that takes a lot of the work out of piloting. 

By syncing with GPS satellites each Phantom knows where it is in space. If it becomes disconnected from the pilot for any reason, it knows how to safely pilot itself directly back to where it took off from and land safely (and hits the mark with surprising accuracy). And though factors like wind still affect the aircraft, its on-board technology is very good at mitigating outside effects. As far as stable hover and smooth flight are concerned, the Phantom series drones are the best we’ve reviewed. That’s especially important when you’re trying to capture video that won’t give viewers vertigo. It’s only fair to note that the video accompanying this piece was shot on a gusty December afternoon in NYC, and even in those unfavorable wind conditions the aircraft performed admirably.

COST AND AVAILABILITY

$1,199, available through DJI or a handful of dealers listed on the site

BOTTOM LINE

As the FAA issues guidance on how these kinds of aircraft will be regulated in the future (such guidance is expected in 2015) expect them to proliferate. Where consumer-ready UAS are concerned, DJI has jumped into its own space, offering something that’s beyond a high-end toy but not so high-tech and component-heavy that it costs a year’s salary to own or requires specialized training to operate. 

What we found most significant about this second-generation Phantom is the technology integration--the mobile device connectivity, the app integration, the integrated camera--that make the Phantom 2 Vision something more than just a RC aircraft. The interface and expanded photography/video applications make it feel much more like a complete product--the first of many like it that we’re going to see over the next several years.


    






The Week In Numbers: China Lands On The Moon, NASA's Deep-Space Chamber, And More

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NASA Chamber A
NASA

40 tons: the weight of the door to NASA's Chamber A, a room that recreates the deadly conditions of deep space and, because it can reach 11 Kelvin, is the coldest place on Earth

4: the number of spiral arms that make up the Milky Way, according to a new study (previous observations give our galaxy just two arms)

The Milky Way
ESO/C. Malin

1 trillionth of a second: the time it should take scientists to heat water to 600 degrees Celsius using a clever new heating method

Illustration of a Cloud of Water Molecules Heated to 600 Degrees Celsius
Oriol Vendrell/DESY

$11,720: the money raised via Indiegogo for an absurd device that claims to translate dog thoughts into English

No More Woof

$2 million: the top prize of the DARPA Robotics Challenge, a Pentagon-funded competition to develop robotic first responders

$1 million: the prize the Methuselah Foundation is offering the the first research group to make a bioengineered liver 

2 centimeters: the average amount of space between penguins in a huddle, according to researchers who created a mathematical model of penguin huddles

Emperor Penguin Huddle

1.2 million: the estimated number of Americans who get salmonella infections each year (but don't worry, your eggnog is safe)

$199: the price of the Canary home security system, which includes a wide-angle HD camera, infrared motion sensor, temperature and humidity sensors, and microphone

Canary
Canary

1903: the year the Wright brothers first piloted a heavier-than-air craft. Read the story of their famous first flight in the September 1925 issue of Popular Science.

Orville piloting the flight at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903.
Popular Science archives

1976: the year of the last soft landing on the moon, until China's Chang'e 3 spacecraft touched down last week (video)

14,838: the number of pieces of large debris orbiting Earth (see where they are)

10 kilowatts: the power of a recently tested, truck-mounted Army laser that can zap incoming drones and mortar shells

HEL MD Set Up Outside
This truck has a freakin' laser on it.
U.S. Army photo

    







Whooping Cough Has Evolved In Response To Its Vaccine

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historical photo of a baby getting a shot in his or her buttock
The Old-Fashioned Way
An infant gets immunized in this undated historical photo. American doctors no longer use so-called “gluteal injection sites” for immunizations.
Photo made available through the CDC Public Health Image Library

This is not your parents’ pertussis. Over the last few years, this once-common childhood illness, also known as whooping cough, has evolved in response to its own vaccine, according to a new study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The mutated pertussis is not more dangerous than the original, and vaccines against the illness are still effective. So the findings don’t change researchers’ and doctors’ understanding of whooping cough as a public health problem. Instead, they’re a glimpse into a fascinating natural phenomenon, and one that’s happening as we speak. (Though this isn't the first time this has happened. Populations of pneumococcal illnesses changed after the introduction of its vaccine, prompting changes to the vaccine to deal with newly popular strains.) The whooping cough findings have kicked off research to determine whether this is related to the recent increase in whooping cough cases in the U.S.

Paul Offit, chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, was not involved in the CDC study, but took part in a conference call about the study in which CDC researchers presented their results. He talked with Popular Science over the phone immediately after the call.

“We discussed the data and what the data allow us to say and what they don’t allow us to say,” he says. “The data don’t support the notion that the mutants are more virulent.” Babies who fall ill from un-mutated pertussis have the same symptoms as babies who fall ill from mutated pertussis, he says.

"The data don't support the notion that the mutants are more virulent," Offit says.

There’s also no evidence yet that pertussis vaccines are less effective against the new strains, say all of the researchers Popular Science talked with, both in and outside of the CDC. Everyone recommended Americans continue to get vaccinated right on schedule. “Currently, we know it’s the best form of protection we have,” says Lucia Pawloski, the CDC scientist who led the new research. Kids who don’t get vaccinated against pertussis are still eight times as likely as vaccinated kids to get the disease, she adds.

Nevertheless, it’s plausible whooping cough’s changes do affect the vaccine’s ability to protect. “Yes, theoretically, there could be an issue, but we don’t have any data to say that yet,” Pawloski says. The CDC is interested in answering this question and hopefully will have data to do so in six or eight months, Offit says.

microscope image of Bordetella pertussis bacteria
Micrograph of Pertussis Bacteria, 1979
Photo made available through the CDC Public Health Image Library

So what exactly is different about pertussis nowadays? Since 2010, Pawloski and her colleagues have recorded a sharp rise in the U.S. in strains of the illness that don’t make a protein called pertactin. Before 2010, researchers saw only one U.S. pertussis infection, from 1994, in which the bacteria didn’t make pertactin. By 2012, the majority of pertussis infections researchers studied were caused by non-pertactin-making pertussis. Pawloski and her team examined 1,300 samples taken from whooping cough outbreaks between 1935 and 2012.

Pertussis bacteria make thousands of proteins, but pertactin happens to be one of the few included in many forms of the vaccine used in developed countries, including the U.S. “We’ve created this selective pressure,” Offit says, by widely using vaccines with pertactin in them.

When the proteins and other molecules in a vaccine enter your body through a shot, your immune system finds them, learns to recognize them, and develops defenses against them. Now, if you ever truly encounter that illness, your body will respond quickly to quash it. If the vaccine contains pertactin and the actual illness doesn’t, that means your body is learning to recognize something that’s useless to it when it encounters whooping cough.

All pertussis vaccines used in developed countries have one, two, or three other pertussis molecules besides pertactin, so there’s still stuff in there for your body to train on, even if pertactin is now useless. How much of a blow—if any at all—losing pertactin deals to vaccines that have other active molecules is still unclear. “I think at this point it’s hard to say exactly what it means for the vaccines’ effectiveness,” says Nicola Klein, co-director of the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center in California. Klein was not involved in the CDC study.

"We've created this selective pressure," Offit says.

Meanwhile, pertussis vaccines often used in developing countries contain entire killed Bortedella pertussis bacteria, so they actually contain perhaps thousands of things the body is able to use to learn to recognize whooping cough. Those vaccines, which are cheaper to make, were discontinued in developed countries because they cause severe, if non-permanent, side effects, such as seizures in babies.

CDC researchers now are looking into whether losing pertactin is related to another phenomenon associated with the increasing popularity of the newer whooping cough vaccines. Recent studies have found that even those kids who get all their recommended pertussis shots—in the U.S. administered as the DTaP shot—are vulnerable again to whooping cough at about age 8 or 10. Researchers think the new vaccine is why the U.S. saw more cases of whooping cough in 2012 than it has in any year since 1955. The older shot, with the killed bacteria, protected people for longer. Scientists are unsure what exactly made the tougher stuff was longer-lasting, however.

Is pertussis’ evolution the answer? That’s not certain yet. “We couldn’t say yes or no at this point whether pertactin had a role in the waning of immunity,” Pawloski says.


    






A Guide To Spotting And Hiding From Drones

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Pater's Drone Survival Guide
Ruben Pater

Consider it a rough Audubon guide to the mechanical fauna of battlefields. Created by Amsterdam-based designer Ruben Pater, the Drone Survival Guide is, on one side, a rough bird watcher's guide to the modern robot at war. The other side is a short section of printed survival tips, and the guides are available in Pashto, Dutch, German, Italian, Indonesian, Arabic, and English. 

The selection of drones included in the guide leads heavily towards those from NATO member countries, with the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, and the United States all represented, as well as NATO itself, for the other member countries that use these drones. Partly because those are the countries that have used drones, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the most, but partly because they are just the countries where it is easier to get information about the scale and wingspan of their flying robots. 

Also represented are drones from China, Morocco, India, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel. In fact, Pater told Popular Science that part of his inspiration came from people in the Gaza Strip, who filmed Israeli drones overhead, and the challenge of making out what kind of machine it is from the silhouette alone. The silhouettes also resemble Airplane Spotter Cards, made during World War II so that servicemen could differentiate between aircraft, both friendly and allied.

The drones vary vastly in scale, from the 130-foot wingspan of the Global Hawk to the 23-inch width of the Parrot AR quadcopter. They're all divided into two categories, based on function: those that spy, and those that both spy and kill. The other distinctions, between military and domestic surveillance, are less solid. Pater gave an example of how something like the Scan Eagle complicates that. It's a military drone, used for years by NATO forces fighting abroad, but when police in Pater's Holland ("like one of the safest places on earth," he told Popular Science) obtained them, they started using them to track down drug dealers and illegal marijuana growers. The drone, after all, is a tool that is used by people. How it is used depends on the people themselves.

There's also the limited nature of a single-sheet survival guide. Pater concedes that it's mostly art. Several of the tips for survival come directly from an al Qaeda guide to countering drones, published by the Associated Press in January 2013. Included in these tips are "To hide under thick trees because they are the best cover against the planes," (note the hiding figure in the image) and "Spreading the reflective pieces of glass on a car or on the roof of the building," which Pater's guide mirrors by both being printed on reflective material and advocating space blankets (which also hide heat from infrared cameras) as a way to hide.

As a tool for survival, it might be limited, though no less so than other artist attempts at drone-proofing the world. As a work of design, and a rough guide for drone spotters, it's excellent. Pater hopes to see the guide in the hands of activists, and given the many languages it's been translated into, it could easily have an educational role in the right hands.

The drone guide, complete with survival tips, can be ordered from his site.

Reflective Form
Ruben Pater

    






Big Pic: Ho Ho Ho, Don’t Forget About Tuberculosis!

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illustrated poster showing Santa Claus pointing at a Christmas seal
Stamp Out Tuberculosis
Illustrated by Ernest Hamlin Baker. Available online from the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Why is this merry fellow advertising about tuberculosis? He's on a 1924 poster for that year’s "Christmas seal," a stamp-like thing that folks could buy to stick on their mail during the winter holidays. It wasn't a postage stamp; you still had to buy that separately. It was entirely decorative, but the proceeds went to tuberculosis treatment and research centers.

You may have even seen some Christmas seals yourself. The American Lung Association has sold them every year since at least 1920, to fund their activities into the treatment and prevention of lung cancer, asthma and other lung diseases. The first Christmas seals, however, were all about tuberculosis.

At the time of this advertisement, tuberculosis was the number-one cause of death by disease in industrialized nations. Seventy to 90 percent of city dwellers in Europe and North America carried the tuberculosis bacterium, according to the Harvard University Library. Eighty percent of those who developed active disease would die from it. Some of the world’s first modern public health campaigns aimed at preventing tuberculosis.

Christmas seals of the time, just like Christmas seals now, generally showed festive scenes and offered greetings like "Merry Christmas," "Health Greetings," or something similar. They didn't talk about tuberculosis, but the ads for them did, creating strange juxtapositions of Santa Claus and other cheerful characters alongside reminders of a deadly disease. The posters are beautifully done and are a fun glimpse into the history of medicine. You can see many of them at the U.S.' National Library of Medicine’s historical image database. You can also see images of the seals themselves via the American Lung Association.

Happy holidays and good health to you from Popular Science.


    






This Robot Just Won The DARPA Robotics Challenge

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The DRC Winner
Schaft

The DARPA Robotics Challenge, a search for the rescue robot of tomorrow, just ended its two-day competition, and the machine you see here is the glorious champion. Team Schaft, a Japanese start-up acquired by Google, not only won, but trounced the rest of the 'bots in the contest.

The competition had robots from 16 teams perform a series of tasks, including driving a car, climbing a ladder, opening a door, and attaching a hose to a wall connector. Three points were awarded for doing each task autonomously, and one point was awarded for doing the task without any human assistance. Out of a possible 32 points, Schaft scored 27, besting its nearest competitor, IHMC Robotics, which used the Google/Boston Dynamics ATLAS robot, by seven points. (Three teams actually scored zero points.)

The top eight teams will now be able to apply for $1 million in DARPA funding ahead of the finals next December, where a winner will be crowned and given $2 million more in cash. 

[BBC]


    






Why Robots Are Better Than Humans At Testing Human User Experiences

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photo of a robotic, prosthetic arm
Robot Arm
A robotic arm made by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects, not the same as the robot model used below
U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Flickr

Who would you want to test your touchscreen device? Maybe an older adult, to ensure it’s intuitive even to someone who isn’t a digital native? Maybe a kid, who’s got high expectations for modern tech? Well, Intel doesn’t use a person at all, MIT Technology Review reports. Instead, it uses robots to evaluate how much people will like new devices.

Unlike people, robots are tireless and provide exact numerical feedback on flaws, the magazine reports. For example, Intel’s robots do stuff like type and play cell phone games on a testing device while training a camera on the screen and recording data on how the screen responds to the robot’s finger. All major technology companies use testing robots, but don’t talk about it for fear of giving away an advantage to a competitor, Jason Huggins, co-founder of an app-testing company called Sauce Labs, told MIT Technology Review.

Check out the full article for other ways robots beat human testers. There’s also a great video of one of the Intel robots pinching to zoom, drawing with a stylus and otherwise using a cellphone much like you do, except with really perfect lines. Does a robot playing a cellphone game win every time? It depends, Intel engineer Eddie Raleigh tells the magazine. Engineers can program the robots to win all the time, or just sometimes.

[MIT Technology Review]


    






USDA Issues Livestock Permit For Magical Reindeer To Enter U.S.

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photo of a reindeer running

You guys. The U.S. Department of Agriculture would like you to know it has issued a permit for nine particular reindeer to enter the U.S. between the hours of 0600, December 24, 2013, and 0600 December 25, 2013. No time zone specified. Also, the press release says the permit is only for entry through northern ports, but what if America is an intermediate stop for Santa and he’s planning to come in from Mexico? It’s all right, at least the department plans to disinfect the sleigh once it enters the U.S., so it will not carry any invasive pests into the country, wherever it comes from.


    






How To Castrate A Hippo

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photo of a hippopotamus underwater
Hippopotamus Underwater, San Diego Zoo
cloudzilla on Flickr, CC BY 2.0

Hippopotami weigh anywhere from two to four tons and have got mouths that practically unhinge. I wouldn’t want to have to castrate one, but apparently, sometimes, zoos do. Maintaining male zoo hippos sans glands keeps males from fighting one another and provides population control for zoos that can’t care for baby hippos, science writer Elizabeth Preston reports on her blog, Inkfish.

Preston found perhaps one of the most arresting scientific papers published this year, a report on 10 hippo-neutering procedures European and Middle Eastern veterinarians performed. She describes the challenges of hippo castration, none of which I would have guessed. For example, did you know that hippos’ testes are located inside their bodies, unlike, say, the testes of humans and most other mammals? The paper Preston reports on, published in the journal Theriogenology in October, calls hippo testes “spatially dynamic.” That means they actually move around within the hippo body, sometimes after veterinarians have located them with ultrasound and gone in after them, surgically.

[Inkfish]


    







The Science Behind Reindeer's Color-Changing Eyes

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A reindeer in Sweden
Look Sharp! via Wikimedia Commons

Winter in the Arctic is grim—day and night blur together for 24 hour stints without sunlight. Reindeer manage to survive these gloomy weeks thanks to a peculiar adaptation. As the days grow darker, reindeer's eyes turn from gold to blue.

A study published earlier this year in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B journal explained the science behind reindeers' changing eyes. The color change happens in the tepetum lucid, which is the layer of tissue in the eye that reflects visible light back through the retina. This is the same component of the eye that makes cats' and dogs' eyes seem to glow in the dark. 

In the summer when days and nights are marked by nearly constant brightness, the eye tissue is tinged gold, which is common for ungulates such as reindeers. But once the darkness of winter hits, reindeer eyes change their hue to blue. The change of color is also associated with a reduction in light reflected, and an increase in captured light. The increased retinal sensitivity comes at a cost, though—the acuity of the reindeers sight is reduced, meaning the sharpness or clearness of what is seen is lower. But, just having the ability to see—no matter how blurry—could help the reindeer spot predators, or lead the way for Santa and his sleigh. 


    






Finally, A Super-Simple Modular Robotics Kit

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EZ-Robot Revolution JD
Brian Klutch

The robot of the popular imagination, whether it’s R2D2 or Rosie, just works. But in reality, making a robot just work takes a lot of hard work. Many would-be roboticists give up when faced with a soldering iron, an Arduino board, and lines of code. The EZ-Robot kits make constructing and coding modular, so anyone can build a custom bot in 30 minutes or less. 

Builders assemble their EZ-Robots physically and digitally. They attach motors and appendages to a controller board that contains a processor and a Wi-Fi radio. Alongside their creation, users configure their robot with the EZ-Builder PC software, selecting from more than 200 behaviors (dancing, chatting), which sync to the bot over Wi-Fi. Advanced users can code their own robotic quirks and even download plans to 3-D–print custom appendages for specific tasks. After all, who wouldn’t like a personal snow shoveler in January?

EZ-Robot Revolution JD

Motors: 6

Total Parts: 43

Price: $470

This article originally appeared in the January 2014 issue of Popular Science.


    






8 Ways Jellyfish Are Awesome And Terrifying

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Mooning
Moon jellies, which don't sting humans, are believed to be native to Europe, but have spread throughout the globe.
Mark Conlin/seapics.com& T. Brakemeir/Corbis

The jellyfish is a fascinating creature. Floating lazily along in the ocean current resembling plastic bags, the gelatinous zooplankton seem to do little more than add a colorful glow to our aquariums and occasionally give swimmers a reason to urinate on each other. But jellies are also efficient hunters, and increasingly, huge nuisances. In some regions, these blobby predators rule the seas—to the extent that they're killing off other marine life and swarming power plants.

In honor of these majestic, sometimes terrible creatures, here are eight reasons to be awed by jellies:

Click here to enter the gallery


    






FYI: Did Dinosaurs Get The Flu?

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Dino Flu
Left To Right: Christian Martínez Kempin/Getty Images; Syldavia/Getty Images; Christian Martínez Kempin/Getty Images

It’s very hard to figure out when the influenza virus first started making animals sick. Studies of the history of major human epidemics suggest the flu has been around for at least a thousand years. “The certainty diminishes as we go further back into the past,” says David Morens, of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “We can say for certain that influenza has been around since 1918 because we have the 1918 virus. Before that time, we have to speculate or make an educated guess.”

By looking for clues in contemporary accounts of disease outbreaks, Morens has concluded, with 95 percent certainty, that humans were getting the flu as far back as 1510 A.D. His confidence drops to about 80 percent for epidemics dating to the 800s. “Maybe the 590 A.D. epidemic was influenza,” he says, “but when we go back further than that, it’s just ‘Who knows?’”

Meanwhile, virologists have tried to find the genetic origins of influenza. Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona compares the genomes of influenza viruses with those of similar viruses that have been sequenced, in an effort to draw up a kind of evolutionary tree for pathogens. According to this method, the flu shares an ancestor with something called the infectious salmon anemia virus.

How long ago did the influenza and the salmon virus separate? That’s tricky. Viral genomes change more rapidly than an animal’s, in part because they don’t waste time fixing replication errors. “It’s like writing an e-mail really fast with your eyes closed and then sending it,” says Worobey. “Flu viruses accumulate a lot of mutations.”

At the same time, some key parts of a virus genome are very stable. Worobey helped identify relatives of HIV, for example, that had evolved in isolation off the coast of Africa over the course of 10,000 years. Even after all that time, their genomes still look very much the same. Scientists have also found evidence of an HIV-related virus that became embedded in the genome of the ferret eight million years ago.

No one has found similar evidence of ancient influenza. But could its ancestor— the one it shares with the salmon virus—have gone back to the dinosaurs? “For that, I don’t have even a gut feeling,” Worobey says. “It’s just kind of wide open.”

 

This article originally appeared in the January 2014 issue of Popular Science.


    






NASA's Plan To Deal With Pesky Moon Dust

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Dust Buster
Brian Klutch

The Problem

Moon dust is dangerous. Each mote is like a tiny shard of glass—there’s no wind or rain to soften the edges of lunar soil. During the Apollo missions, it jammed equipment and got stuck in the seals of space suits, causing a serious loss of pressure. Martian dust poses its own hazards. On the Red Planet, swirling dust storms have covered rovers’ solar panels, significantly reducing their power while they waited for a favorable gust of wind. And if these kinds of space dust get into an airlock, forget it: It can be toxic or irritating to the lungs and could endanger astronauts’ health on long missions.

The Solution

An electric charge can zap the stuff right off. NASA scientists proposed the idea in a 1967 paper, but the space agency didn’t return to it until 2003, when Carlos Calle and colleagues at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida considered building the technology into Mars rovers. Running mere milliwatts of power through thin wires creates electric fields that cleared away 99 percent of dust in simulated lunar and Martian conditions. The team tested wires of different materials embedded in various surfaces. Transparent indium-tin-oxide wires protected solar panels; aluminum or silver wires worked for reflective films that shield rovers and landers from excess heat and sunlight; copper wires were effective beneath white, heat-reflecting thermal paint. They’ve also tested conductive carbon-nanotube inks on cotton and will try them on space-suit fabrics. In 2016, NASA will finally begin testing the dust shields in space.

 

This article originally appeared in the January 2014 issue of Popular Science.


    






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