Quantcast
Channel: Popular Science | RSS
Viewing all 20161 articles
Browse latest View live

Chinese Businessman Builds Nation's First City-To-City Electric Car Charging Route

0
0

photo of a parking garage with electric car charging stations
A U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory charging lot for employees' electric cars
Dennis Schroeder

Well, this is one way to get things done. Businessman Zong Yi has set up China's first between-city electric-car charging route, Caixin Online reports. The route winds from Beijing to Guangzhou, covers 3,570 miles, and includes 20 charging stations Zong paid for himself.

Zong, a resident of Guangzhou in the south, was inspired after he bought a Tesla Model S from a dealer in Beijing in the north. He soon realized there were no charging stations on his route home with his shiny new toy. So he called Tesla's China operations to buy charging stations from them, then took to social media to recruit hotel owners to allow him to install the stations in their parking lots. (It is not clear if and how Zong got his Model S home before the route was ready.)

Zong's dedication reminded us of the U.S. Tesla owner who undertook a 24-day, cross-country, all-electric road trip in April. "One of the reasons to do a journey like this is to point out the incredible importance of building out the fast-charging stations all over the United States," Norman Hajjar told Popular Science at the time. Hajjar's trip was only possible because Tesla had already built a series of its Supercharger stations that spanned the country. Even so, he spent five or six hours a day just charging his car. It seems folks who love their Teslas really love their Teslas.

Should governments and companies follow Zong's lead? Perhaps not exactly. His route has some drawbacks. While the stations are able to charge non-Tesla electric cars, they are spaced too far apart for any other commercial model's range. The stations also use older technology that requires about eight hours to fully juice a car, compared to the one-hour charging that the latest technology offers. American Norman Hajjar advocates for the installation of more expensive, but faster-working, stations.

[Caixin Online]









Video: A Jet-Powered Train That Made History

0
0

Jet-train
The train with rockets atop it. Don Wetzel can be seen looking out from the cabin.
Don Wetzel via GE Reports

Engineer Don Wetzel always loved trains, ever since his dad took him on trips to Ohio trainyards when he was a kid during the Depression. After joining the Marines, he spent some time as a military pilot, and became familiar with jet engines. In July, 1966, Wetzel combined these interests, leading a team that strapped two GE J47-19 jet engines onto the top of a modified railcar--and let rip.

"We wanted to prove that we could run trains faster over conventional rail and gather technical and operating data,” Wetzel said. “We didn’t think we were making history.”

But history he made. On that fateful day Wetzel piloted the train to a speed of nearly 184 mph and the car rocketed from Butler, Ind., to Stryker, Ohio. To this day it holds the record for being the fastest self-propelled train. Wetzel said in the video below that he would have pushed the train even faster had he known his exact speed, and "sure as hell" would have beat the land speed record at the time, which was 202 mph. 

Check out the video of Wetzel telling about his speeding adventures, and for footage of the actual train in motion: 








New Material, Darker Than Black, Could Help Space Cameras See Better

0
0

scanning electron microscope image of vertical carbon nanotubes
NanoTube Black, As Seen Under a Scanning Electron Microscope
Evangelos Theocharous et al., Optics Express, 2014

The latest super-dark material absorbs so much light, you can't tell when it's been crumpled or folded.

"You expect to see the hills and all you can see … it's like black, like a hole, like there's nothing there. It just looks so strange," Ben Jensen, chief technical officer of Surrey Nanosystems, told the Independent. Surrey NanoSystems researchers worked with the U.K.'s National Physics Laboratory and a U.K.-based company, ABSL Space Products, to make this new material, called Vantablack. The name hints at the material's microstructure, which makes use of a VANTA (vertically aligned carbon nanotube array). Vantablack absorbs 99.965 percent of the visible light that hits it. The previous record-holder for the world's darkest material absorbed a mere 99.960 percent of the visible light it encountered, the Guardian reports.

Vantablack's ability to absorb visible light is just the tip of the iceberg. It also absorbs other types of radiation, including more than 99.85 percent of the infrared radiation it encounters, according to Surrey Nanosystems. Its makers have tested it to see if it's durable enough to head into space with satellite missions, where it could help calibrate super-sensitive infrared cameras. This is a common job description for super-black materials. Research groups, including NASA, have long worked to make blacker blacks to absorb unwanted light before it reaches imaging equipment used in space.

Scientists make Vantablack by depositing carbon nanotubes close together on a thin sheet of aluminum. The tiny spaces between the tubes trap light, preventing it from reflecting off the material. A number of research groups have made super-absorbing black materials with similar microstructures. One advantage of Vantablack is that it doesn't require as high of temperatures to make as other carbon nanotube materials, according to Surrey NanoSystems. That means engineers can deposit Vantablack coatings on a wider range of materials.








In Flight Test, British Stealth Drone Is Actually Stealthy

0
0

Taranis Drone In Flight
BAE Systems

Last week, the U.K. Ministry of Defense announced that, after a successful series of trials, BAE Systems' Taranis test drone is as stealthy as hoped. This is good news for people who like stealth drones, and bad news for people who want to shoot them down. 

The major challenge for a stealthy drone is making it invisible from hostile detection while communicating with the people piloting it. America's similarly shaped X-47B got around this problem by flying autonomously, with computers inside the vehicle making flight decisions. While possible, it's unlikely that the Taranis did that here, as its first flight was done with remote piloting. Instead, BAE changed the signals the antennas broadcast. To make sure it looked as small as possible on radar, BAE also removed the large front probe (visible above) which was required for earlier testing.

With that narwhal-nose removed, the Taranis finally demonstrated the stealth promised by the plane's flat shape and rounded edges. Much about Taranis remains unknown, and a successful stealth flight doesn't mean the United Kingdom is going to start flying stealth combat drones anytime soon. Instead, data collected from the tests will inform future design decisions, and lessons learned from Taranis could end up in a new war drone of the future.








Wanted: Uteruses To Populate Space Colony

0
0

NASA's First Class of Female Astronauts, 1979.
Sally Ride (right) became NASA's first female astronaut in 1983--twenty years after the first men went up. Next to her is Anna Lee Fisher, renowned for becoming the first mother in space.
NASA

Who will make our sandwiches in space? In the 1960s, the vision of the perfect female astronaut was as a space mom—a woman who would cook and clean and sew spacesuits, all while using her bounteous uterus to give birth to the little boys and girls who would populate the final frontier.

Female spacefarers are no longer expected to make anyone’s sandwiches, but an essay in The Appendix explores a gaping disparity in the way we view lady space explorers even now. Lisa Ruth Rand, a doctoral candidate studying the history and sociology of science, writes:

Before we shake our heads blithely and chalk this up to 1960s chauvinism, keep in mind that the role of women as interplanetary breeding technology persists in current American scientific and popular culture. Biological studies of the challenges of human reproduction in space have been periodically published in the intervening decades, with one article by NASA researchers on the subject published as recently as 2010. As of April 2014, the Wikipedia page for “Women in Space” is roughly half composed of discussions of motherhood in space—whether it is possible to become a mother in outer space, special risks for astronauts who are also mothers, and studies of mammalian reproduction in space science research.

Even in science fiction, Rand points out, writers build worlds where space explorers travel at the speed of light, make contact with alien civilizations, and order dinner through “Replicators” that synthesize food on demand—but women are rarely separated from their “biological destiny”. (That is, except in dystopian novels such as Brave New World.)

Some brands of feminism contend that women will never truly be equal to men until they have the choice to distance themselves from reproduction. Notably, science may be further along in this regard than science fiction. In 2005, Popular Science documented one scientist’s quest to build an artificial womb. Since then, artificial placentas and uteruses have kept goat fetuses alive for up to a week, and have successfully reared shark pups in an effort to save a species from extinction. It’s an area of research that’s fraught with ethical, sociological and scientific challenges—in short, it ought to be the perfect fodder for interesting sci-fi. 

[The Appendix]








Scientifically Measuring A Sitting Butt With An MRI Machine

0
0

photo of a FONAR Upright MRI machine
FONAR Upright MRI Machine
So you can scan someone while she sits
FONAR

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, a team of four scientists put together a paper about scanning a healthy lady's butt with an MRI machine. They team wanted to measure what happened to her buttocks when she sat. This fantastic tale might have been lost among the millions of scientific papers that are published every year, but luckily, Discover magazine's "Seriously, Science?" blog found it.

You can read the paper's abstract at "Seriously, Science?" or right in PubMed, the U.S. National Library of Medicine's extensive database of biology and medicine papers. In short, sitting moves your butt muscles around and flattens them. SS/PubMed can tell you how, exactly.

Other relevant points we discovered:

  • The first two authors of the paper are from the Rehabilitation Engineering and Applied Research (REAR) Lab. We are not kidding, this is a real lab at Georgia Tech. Lab members normally study things like how to prevent ulcers from extensive wheelchair use and how to design better wheelchairs, all admirable goals.
  • Another author, John Winder of the University of Ulster in the U.K., specializes in medical imaging. His other publications include "The establishment of a 3D breast photography service in medical illustration" and "'Virtual unwrapping' of a mummified hand."
  • Scientists have long studied how sitting affects the buttocks. Such research goes into reducing ulcers in paraplegics and into designing better chairs.
  • If you perform a Google Scholar search for "buttocks," you might find this patent, which seems like it could really make an impression with the middle school set.

[Seriously, Science?, 3-dimensional buttocks response to sitting: A case report]








Gallery: Darwin's Library From the HMS Beagle—The Digital Edition

0
0

For all five years of the 1831-1836 scientific voyage of HMS Beagle, young scientist Charles Darwin worked and slept in the same cabin as the ship's library. The 404-volume, multi-language collection was cutting-edge, including the era's top works on natural science, geology, travel and exploration, history and more. 

Although the physical collection was scattered after Beagle returned, and no single record of its contents remains, the Beagle catalog and library have been reconstructed in its entirety online, by John van Wyhe of the University of Singapore, and they're searchable via the Darwin Online website.  

These books are the cream of late 18th and early 19th century science, often containing contain illustrations of landscapes, animals, plants, maps and more that are simply wonderful to look at; some are online for the first time ever via this project. 

As for this website's late 20th century web design and tools: While usable, and clearly the result of many hours of dedicated effort, they need updating. Darwin Online hack-a-thon, anyone?

Click here to enter the gallery








Friends Who Are Unrelated Share A Surprising Amount Of DNA

0
0

They may share more than just their lunch.
Fernando de Sousa via Wikimedia Commons

You and your best friend have a lot in common: your favorite food, your taste in music, maybe your hometown. But a new study finds that your similarities may even extend to a genetic level.

The researchers, James Fowler of University of California San Diego and Nicholas Christakis of Yale University, used data collected during the famous Framingham Heart Study, running since 1948 in the small town in Massachusetts. When participants shared their DNA with researchers for the study, they shared lots of other information, too, including who they hang out with. "Because the study started in a small community, many people that were named as friends, also happened to be involved in the study," Fowler explained to the BBC. He and Christakis looked at almost 2,000 participants and identified about 1,400 pairs of friends. 

The findings, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that people share 0.1 percent more DNA with their friends than with perfect strangers. That’s about the same genetic similarity you share with your fourth cousin.

So why might this be the case? The study authors had a few theories. Maybe people with similar genes seek out similar environments and then meet others like them. Or, people who share DNA could have comparable skill sets, so they work together better over long periods of evolutionary time.

The study has a few limitations. For one, Fowler's team didn't look across the entire human genome--they compared only about 500,000 of each person's three billion DNA base-pairs. Even though the researchers excluded anyone who was related in any way, Framingham’s population is made up mostly of descendants of Italian and Irish immigrants, so the genetic variation may not be large enough to make a broader conclusion. Evan Charney, a professor of public policy at Duke University, said that, to maintain the study’s integrity, the researchers could only study a population in which individuals are completely unrelated to one another, which is admittedly very difficult to find. Rory Bowden, a statistician at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics in Oxford, also had reservations about how countries of origin could affect the communities that people seek out, such as church groups and cultural associations, which would align people with similar genetics.

But others, including the researchers, stand by the conclusions. Findings such as this, Fowler notes, could influence theories about how altruism has developed over evolutionary time.

Of course, Fowler and Christakis don’t have all the information yet. Interestingly, they found that the biggest genetic similarities were found in friends’ sense of smell. They’re not quite sure why that would be the case, but future studies may help them sniff out the answers.









Bic Pic: A Six-Foot-Long Iron Meteorite On Mars

0
0

image of an iron meteorite named Lebanon on Mars
"Lebanon" the Meteorite
NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP/LPGNantes/CNRS/IAS/MSSS

Meet Lebanon, an iron meteorite that NASA's Curiosity rover ran into on its 640th sol (Martian day) on Mars. Back here on Earth, it was May 25, 2014.

It's not clear why Curiosity's engineers named this hunk o' rock "Lebanon." Maybe it's a reference to the Middle Eastern country, which is sort of shaped like this. Other Martian iron meteorites have also received geographic names, including Block Island and Oileán Ruaidh, which is the Gaelic name for an island off the coast of Ireland.

[Jet Propulsion Laboratory]

 








How To Engineer Humans To Save The Planet

0
0

illustration of a man with a glowing chest
A Better Human
John MacNeill

Just in case you were looking for some ideas for your next dystopian novel… in a new feature, the BBC reports on ideas for combating anthropogenic climate change by engineering humans to use less resources.

How about giving people patches that would make them allergic to meat? As someone who is intolerant to alcohol, I can confirm this should dramatically cut people's meat consumption. Or how about cutting people's height by 25 percent? That should reduce how much food they eat and how much energy they need to get around.

Nobody is seriously considering these options, but they're interesting conversation-starters. And anyway, societies have historically implemented "human engineering" to save their resources. The BBC points to China's one-child policy as an example.

Are you still itching for more ideas? You can check out this 2012 paper (PDF)  by New York University philosopher Matthew Liao, whom the BBC interviews. The paper delves into the science that might make something like a meat-allergy patch possible in the future. It also includes more human-engineering ideas the BBC didn't cover. Ever considered giving people shots or pills to make them more empathetic? Maybe that would solve a lot more than just climate change.

[BBC]








Moon Boot-Inspired Sneakers Are Out Of This World

0
0

'The Missions' Sneaker.
GE/Android/JackThreads

Forty-five years ago, on July 20, man first landed on the moon. It was a major accomplishment of research and engineering, helping humans assert our dominance over the forces of nature. But before there was a man on the moon, there was a boot on the moon--one that was specially designed for lunar landings.

Aeronautical engineer Joe Kosmo (yes, Kosmo) designed the spacesuits that would be used for all of the Apollo missions, all the way down to the footwear, which had an inner flame-resistant “pressure boot” as well as an extra thermal covering made of Mylar to protect against the Moon’s extreme temperatures. The sole had to be flexible but still keep a grip on the Moon’s slippery surface, so it was made of thick silicon. The result was functional, but a bit of a fashion faux pas:

EVA boots worn by Jack Schmitt on Apollo 17.
NASA

To commemorate Neil Armstrong's historic first step, the companies GE, JackThreads and Android Homme have redesigned the moon boot into shoe that celebrates “the possibilities of design and function unlocked by advanced materials,” according to the press release. 'The Missions' sneaker certainly can’t be worn on the moon, but it has some cool design similarities to the original moon boots. Stabilized carbon fiber makes the boots light weight, and the reflective coating is reminiscent of the metallic sheen on the original boot. Another special coating makes the shoes water resistant, and the thermoplastic soles were made by GE, which manufactured the super-thick soles of the original moon boots. The result is an oddly triangular sneaker that may not ensure your safe footsteps on the lunar surface, but embodies the sorts of advances that got us there in the first place. 








Does 'The Ocean Cleanup' Stand Up To Peer Review?

0
0

Dozens of small pieces of plastic found in stomach of dead sea bird
Ocean Plastic Debris
All of these pieces of plastic were removed from the stomach of a single north fulmar, a seabird, during a necropsy at the National Wildlife Health Lab.
Carol Meteyer, USGS

Dutch engineering student Boyan Slat has a plan to cull millions of tons of animal-killing, economy-hurting plastic debris out of the world's oceans. Called “The Ocean Cleanup”, the plan involves putting specially-designed V-shaped booms in the world's major marine gyres. As the water flows under the booms, specially designed filters hanging beneath them would collect the plastic.

According to its website, Slat believes his device could clean a given gyre of plastic bits in 7-10 years, at costs 33 times lower than current cleanup methods, and that “a major part of these costs” could be recouped by selling the collected plastic for re-use.

Slat came out of nowhere when he proposed this idea a couple years ago at age 17, and has become global sensation on the new-thinking, TED-talk, social enterprise circuit: The notion of using the ocean's own energy and motion to clean up our mess seems elegant. The possibility that a kid might invent something that solves a serious and all but intractable pollution problem seems Hollywood-ready.

The plan itself also has an entrepreneurial, this-can-pay-for-itself angle that flies well during a rocky economy, and the guy making it happen is a soulful, optimistic young man with the best of intentions. The project has raised over $1.16 million of a $2 million crowdfunding goal with 59 days to go, and has just released a first feasibility study.

But whether or not it can really work still seems uncertain. According to two marine scientists at Deep Sea News, the feasibility study has fundamental scientific shortcomings that include:

  • An “overarching use of average rather than extreme current speeds to estimate operational limits in the design process”
  • No real solutions for how biofouling – the growth of marine life on the boom assembly – would affect its durability and functions. “As currently designed, the moored array is under-engineered and likely to fail.”
  • Inadequate sampling of plastic pollution at depth
  • No substantial plans on how to address environmental issues, snaring unwanted critters, or “high seas law”

Deep Sea News apparently knew they were taking a tiger by the tail with this review, the first time they've covered The Ocean Cleanup since March 2013. “Originally, we had decided not to engage with this project again, since being a naysayer is neither fun nor professionally rewarding,” they note. But with the amount of approval, attention and money flowing into the project, it warrants the same kind of scrutiny that scientific work in similar fields regularly receives.

“We believe in the peer review process, both before publication and post-publication,” writes DSN. “Science is built on criticism. While peer review is by no means perfect, we have both found that a robust peer review process has greatly improved our own science. Since crowdfunding sidesteps the formal grant review process and makes funding requests public, it is appropriate that the review be public as well.”

The plastic debris problem may also be more complex than The Ocean Cleanup's initial feasibility study accounted for. A new, first-of-its-kind map of ocean plastic debris has revealed a surprising absence of the stuff on the water's surface. Scientists involved are not yet sure where the plastic is going, or which organisms may be affected. It's research that Slat probably needs to consider as he continues to develop and promote his project.








When Predators Become Prey

0
0

Hammerheads
Alexander Safonov/Getty Images

Hammerhead sharks’ oversize fins allow them to maneuver underwater with incredible control. The fish evolved this and other traits over the span of 10 million years, turning them into one of the ocean’s most agile hunters. “But today, the rules of the game have changed,” says University of Miami biologist Austin Gallagher. “People are now in the picture.” In a paper published in June, he describes how adaptations that make the sharks so deadly to sea creatures also leave them vulnerable to humans.

Hammerheads, like sports cars, are built to accelerate in short, energy-intensive bursts, Gallagher says, which means encounters with fishhooks are often fatal. Once caught, a super-high stress response causes the shark to fight furiously, often until it dies of exhaustion. Between accidental bycatch, recreational fishing, and a booming shark-fin industry, some populations have plummeted 99 percent in the past century.   

Another adaptation could help. Electrosensory organs in the sharks’ heads detect prey in wide swaths of seawater. Lanthanide hooks, which create an electromagnetic field in saltwater, could signal sharks to steer clear. 

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








Marines Prepare For Future War With Robot Horses And Swimming Trucks

0
0

Legged Support System Robot In Hawaii
U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Matthew Callahan

Last week in Hawaii, a squad of U.S. Marines brought a robot deep into the jungle. The Legged Support System (LS3) robot walks on four legs, carries 400 pounds, and shambles its way over rough terrain, like a mechanical mule in a future war. It’s all part of the Advanced Warfighting Experiment, and if the Marine Corps thinks the tests went well, future invasions may come with robotic horses doing some heavy lifting.

The whole experiment is a subset of a larger multinational military exercise. Dubbed RIMPAC (for Rim of the Pacific, not to be confused with the Guillermo del Toro robots-versus-monsters movie), the exercise is held by the U.S. Navy and includes participants from 22 nations, with 55 ships, 200 aircraft, and 25,000 people. It also includes three LS3 robots

Marines typically carry between 100 and 135 pounds of gear, which includes not just weapons and ammunition but also water and food. While it's important for troops to carry food with them when operating far from base, they don't need to have their lunch physically on their person at all times. That's where the Legged Support System comes in. Major Christopher Orlowski, program manager of the LS3 program for DARPA, told Popular Science that the program's greatest success is "meeting the requirements, demonstrating an unmanned legged system than can carry upwards of 350, 400 pounds of gear, and demonstrating it effectively. In this case, DARPA set out a goal and it was able to meet that goal."

DARPA just creates the technology, and leaves it up for the rest of the military to determine how best it's used.

Lieutenant Colonel Don Gordon of the U.S. Marine Corps spoke to Popular Science about the how the Marines are using LS3 in their Warfighting Experiment. The LS3 carries food, water, and ammunition supplies for a squad of seven to nine marines. According to Gordon,

What’s unique about the LS3 is normally you take additional supplies and put it on a vehicle and distribute it around to companies. The LS3 can maneuver with companies down to the squad level over terrain that you couldn’t necessarily get a wheeled or tracked vehicle through just due to the density of trees and the kind of terrain. ... [S]o it can go out around on patrol and carry supplies to those marines as they maneuver about the battlespace.

That's the theory, at least. Having the Legged Support System at these exercises is, according to Gordon, "really the first opportunity for the Marine Corps to put it into an exercise and provide it to a force that’s actually exercising the same way they would in actual operations.” There was one immediate challenge. While the Marines landed in an MV-22 Osprey, there wasn't enough room for both the Marines and their robotic mule. Instead, after arriving, the Marines met up with another group that handed off the robot.

Here's what it looks like in action:

To get gear like the LS3 from ships onto the beaches, marines are testing other new technologies. When I spoke to Gordon, he was watching a swimming cargo mover land on the Hawaiian beach. Marines, as a rule, think about beaches differently than most folk, and the cargo mover Gordon described was no idle beach comber. Named the Ultra Heavy-lift Amphibious Connector, or UHAC, the vehicle looks like the treads of a giant future tank stuck on the body of a small modern tractor. Gordon explained the vehicle:

One of the Marine Corps concepts as we face a future environment, embedded in a document called Expeditionary Force 21, is looking at ways to move supplies from ship to shore. UHAC is one of the technologies we're looking at to embark in the well deck aboard a ship, load it up with equipment, and carry that equipment from the ship to the beach. What's really neat about the UHAC is I’m watching it crawl across terrain right now that would normally be impossible for some of our current ship-to-shore connectors  to cross.

Here's what the UHAC looks like in water:

UHAC Swims To Hawaii
U.S. Marine Corps

And here it is triumphantly on land.

Marine UHAC Storms A Beach
Ultra Heavy-Lift Amphibious Connector swam from the USS Rushmore to land on a Hawaiian beach as part of military exercises there.
U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Matthew J. Bragg







Robots Morph From Solid To Squishy

0
0

The material, rigid on the left and squishy on the right.
Courtesy of the researchers
Well it looks like science has brought us another step towards a real-life Skynet and the destruction of mankind. Researchers led by MIT’s Anette Hosoi have developed a low-cost phase-changing material that could be used to allow robots to shift between soft and hard states – just like the T-1000 did in the movie Terminator 2. Robots made of this material could change from rigid, solid shapes into fluid, squishy objects capable of moving around easily.

The material could potentially spawn robots with all kinds of new functions, such as surgical robots that could slither through the body without damaging vital organs or vessels, or search-and-rescue robots that navigate safely through collapsed structures and rubble.

The biggest surprise, however, is how inexpensive and simple it is to construct this material. It’s cheap polyurethane foam soaked in a wax bath – things commonly found in a craft store. The researchers ran a wire along the edges of the 3D-printed structure and induced a current to apply heat. Through the flick of a switch, the structure gets hot and turns soft like jelly. Turning the current off cools it down and lets the material get rigid again.

Through selective deformation of parts of the structure, the researchers demonstrated how to create joints in the structure, which could allow a robot to crawl and squeeze into tight spaces like a mouse or octopus.

And for what might be the most intriguing (and alarming) aspect, the material, like the T-1000, can repair itself to a certain extent. “This material is self-healing,” Hosoi tells MIT News. “So if you push it too far and fracture the [wax] coating, you can heat it and then cool it, and the structure returns to its original configuration.”

The research, published in the latest issue of Macromolecular Materials and Engineering, was done in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute and Stony Brook University.









The CDC Goes Before Congress And Five More News Updates Since Last Week's Smallpox Find

0
0

photo of a scientist in a biohazard suit placing samples into liquid nitrogen storage
A CDC Scientist Puts Samples Into Liquid Nitrogen For Storage
James Gathany, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Last week, we learned that U.S. government scientists found six vials of smallpox virus that they didn't know they had. Because the virus is so deadly, only two labs in the world are supposed to hold samples of it. Other labs are not prepared to secure the vials as well as they should.

Although nobody got sick from the smallpox discovery, it was an unsettling mistake for what were supposed to be some of the most secure labs in the world. Since then, there's been a lot of activity—and a few new revelations—at the U.S. agencies that deal with deadly pathogens. Here's the rundown:

  1. Scientists determined some of the 60-year-old forgotten smallpox vials contained virus that was still "alive" enough to reproduce. This means that if other facilities around the world also have forgotten smallpox samples—a likely scenario—those may also be alive enough to cause illness.

  2. Top leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention learned that CDC workers had accidentally shipped virulent H5N1 to another federal lab. Prior to the smallpox incident, lapses in lab procedures meant dozens of CDC workers could have been exposed to anthrax.

    No one has fallen ill from any of these mistakes, but they are serious and troubling.

  3. The CDC temporarily closed its flu and anthrax labs. It also temporarily stopped shipping certain pathogens.

  4. The National Institutes of Health plans to reconvene the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, which hasn't met in almost two years.

  5. A House of Representatives committee questioned CDC Director Tom Frieden about the agency's recent security lapses. Frieden said that the CDC needs to improve its "culture of safety."

  6. The CDC revealed that federal scientists had discovered 327 vials of decades-old, forgotten samples labeled as pathogens such as dengue, influenza, Q fever and rickettsia. The samples were discovered in the same area as the forgotten smallpox vials. All the vials were well sealed and free of leakage.








A Drone For Dangerous Missions

0
0

As early as next year, the Depart­ment of Defense will test-fly an entirely new type of combat drone. The craft is called Ares, for Aerial Reconfigurable Embedded System, and it’s designed to take off and land vertically. Unlike airplane-esque drones, which are cumbersome to launch and land, Ares could drop into a tight spot, unload supplies or rescue soldiers, and then zip up and away.

The remote-controlled prototype, now under construction by helicopter manufacturer Pia­secki Aircraft and defense giant Lockheed Martin, relies on two massive, articulating ducted fans for lift and forward thrust in flight, much like the tilt-rotor Osprey used by the Marines. If all goes as planned, a fully autonomous production version is next, capable of carrying up to 3,000 pounds and forever changing the art of warfare. 

The Ares
Courtesy Lockheed Martin

Ares Combat Drone

Weight: about 7,000 lbs.

Payload: 3,000 lbs.

Wingspan: 42 feet

Range: 250 nautical miles

Top speed: 230 mph

 

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








This Grill Packs Power

0
0

BioLite BaseCamp
Ralph Smith

BioLite BaseCamp

Energy output: 5 watts 
Weight: 20 pounds
Cooktop diameter: 13.25 inches (fits eight burgers)
Price: $299

Two years ago, BioLite introduced its CampStove, the first portable cooker to convert waste heat into electricity. The stove produced enough power to recharge a phone—perfect for an overnight in the woods—but lacked the juice to allow a whole campsite to go off the grid. The new BaseCamp generates more than double the electricity of its compact predecessor—enough to power strings of lights, charge GoPros, and furnish other comforts. Engineers overhauled the unit’s thermo-electric generator (TEG), incorporating a new fan design that delivers more hot air, increasing the TEG’s output. The electricity created powers the fan while charging a device plugged in via USB (or an onboard 2,200-milliampere battery). A side door lets campers feed the flame, so the lights will last as deep into the night as the campers do. 

Four Ways To Supercharge A Barbecue

Bison Airlighter

With this souped-up lighter, coals will be ready five times faster—no lighter fluid needed. It’s battery-powered and jets a four-inch flame onto coals; an internal fan stokes the fire. The embers will be ready for burgers in about five minutes. $100

iGrill2

Mom wants her steak well done,Dad prefers his bloody, and the kids like theirs slightly pink? No problem. The iGrill2 lets the chef track the progress of four cuts at once. Temperature probes relay data to a smartphone app over Bluetooth, so you’ll know when your food is cooked without having to babysit it. $100

BakerStone Pizza Oven Box

Using a combination of convective, conductive, and radiant heat, the Pizza Oven Box turns a grill into a makeshift wood-fired oven. Place the cooking chamber on the grill surface, and in 15 to20 minutes, it will heat to as high as 800°F. Once at full force, the box will bake a pizza in two to four minutes. From $129

Grillbot

Scrubbing a grill isn’t nearly as appealing as cooking on one, but this robotic brush does the dirty work for you. After dinner, drop the nine-inch bot on the cooled cooktop, and set it for 10-, 20-, or 30-minute cycle, depending on how grimy the surface is. It will scurry back and forth like a Roomba until the job’s done. From $120

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








One-Third Of Borneo's Rainforest Has Been Cut Down

0
0

In the image on the right, areas in red have been logged between 1973 and 2010.
PLOS ONE
In the last 40 years, nearly one-third of the rainforest on Borneo have been cut down. That's nearly twice as fast as the average deforestation rate for tropical rain forests worldwide. That raises the question: What's going on?

In part, it's because of the high-quality forests on Borneo, the world's third-largest island, an incredibly biologically diverse landmass that is divided between Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia, and is one of only two remaining habitats for orangutans. Between 1980 and 2000 more wood was harvested from Borneo than from Africa and the Amazon combined, for example.

This logging can take place because many areas of the island are not protected, or their protections are not well enforced. Protections are "often inadequate or are flagrantly violated, usually without any consequences," the environmental group WWF noted. Illegal logging has also become a way of life and source of income for many communities, they added. 

Many areas of Borneo are also perfect for growing palm oil plantations, and as demand for this oil has increased--especially in the last decade--more land has been cleared for this purpose. About 10 percent of the entire island now consists of single-crop monocultures such as these plantations, according to the study that documented the deforestation, published in PLOS ONE.

The study documented forest loss by using satellite images, which can gauge by how much light is reflected what type of vegetation exists over an area. The study was done in part because deforestation isn't well-documented by local governments, and some statistics kept by the Indonesia, for example, are highly suspect, underestimating forest loss, the authors wrote. Borneo also has large coal deposits, as well as abundant minerals--including tin, copper, gold, silver, coal, diamonds--which are increasingly being mined, and land developed to allow for this activity.

In semi-related and less depressing news, a new species of ground squirrel was recently discovered in Borneo, which breaks a record for tail size and may eat deer's hearts. 








What Sort Of Weapon Shot Down Flight MH-17?

0
0

Slovenian Soldiers With MANPADS
These are SA-18 Igla Man Portable Air Defense Systems.
MORS, via Wikimedia Commons

Earlier today, Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down over Eastern Ukraine, killing all 295 people on board. Following Ukraine's ouster of Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovich, and the subsequent seizure of Crimea from Ukraine by Russia, a violent and armed separatist movement emerged in Eastern Ukraine, centered around the city of Donetsk. These Donetsk rebels, with help from a certain foreign backer, have successfully shot down several Ukrainian military aircraft. Now, it looks like intentionally or not, they destroyed a civilian aircraft.

Previously, the Donetsk rebels used Man Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS) to shoot down Ukrainian military attack helicopters, surveillance aircraftmilitary cargo planes, and other aircraft. But in this case, instead of a MANPADS, it's likely a larger anti-air missile shot down the airliner. The cargo plane was shot down near an airport. The Hind helicopters shot down can't fly above 15,000 feet, and typically operate at less than half that altitude. The An-30 surveillance plane can fly higher than both, but at the time it was hit still flying low enough for the small anti-air missile to get it.

Infantry firing at airplanes is as old as using airplanes in war, but anti-air missiles for infantry really got their start in the 1950s, with the United States' Red Eye missile. The Red Eye could hit targets almost 3 miles away, but only if they were below 9000 feet in elevation. Since then, countries developed many newer and better MANPADS systems, but the fundamental constraint remained: there is only so high a shoulder-fired missile can go. The SA-18 Igla, one of the more advanced MANPADS in existence and one the Donetsk separatists likely have, can only hit targets at an altitude of 11,500 feet.

MANPADS are still a deadly small weapon. The Federation of American Scientists estimates there are over 500,000 in the world today, and if fired near an airport they can cause tremendous damage and loss of life. But there are limits to MANPADS, and one of them is limited altitude. When shot down, MH-17 was flying at 33,000 feet, well beyond the reach of a man-carried missile.

Early information comes from an advisor to the Ukrainian interior minister, Anton Gerashenko. In a Facebook post he says the plane was "hit by a missile fired from a Buk launcher."

The Buk missile and launcher (these things tend to be paired) entered Soviet service in 1979. It's 18 feet long, carried on the back of an armored, tracked vehicle, and can hit targets at almost 50,000 feet in the air. The Buk missile could certainly shoot down an airliner, though there is no confirmation yet of any Buk missile systems in Donetsk. That said, in late June  Russian state-owned radio news service Voice of Russia claimed Donetsk rebels captured a Ukrainian base containing many Buk missile launchers. If it was a ground missile that shot down flight MH-17, it's likely it was a Buk or something similar.

Ground-to-air missiles aren't the only way to shoot down an airliner. In 1983, when Korean Airlines Flight 007 from New York to Seoul by way of Anchorage drifted a little from its flight path into possible Russian airspace, Soviet jets shot it down. While the Donetsk separatists are unlikely to have any aircraft of their own, a Russian fighter could easily shoot down an airplane. Without Cold War tensions behind it, though, it's unlikely this is the case.

Buk Missile System
Stanislav Kozlovskiy, via Wikimedia Commons

 








Viewing all 20161 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images