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China Shows Off Less Deadly Rocket Launcher

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DZJ08 Rocket Launchr
This rocket launcher is similar to the new Shoulder-Launched Rocket with Low Collateral Damage.
Baike.Baidu

It’s not often that a military advertises a weapon on what it doesn’t do, but at the Africa Aerospace and Defence exposition in Pretoria, South Africa, that’s exactly what Chinese arms manufacturer Poly Technologies did. The “Shoulder-Launched Rocket with Low Collateral Damage” is a weapon designed to give troops all the utility of a wall-piercing explosion, with a lot less of the accidental casualty downside.

As advertised, the weapon creates openings for troops to walk through in doors, walls, bunkers, and other sturdy positions, but the blast wave from the rocket is limited to 23 feet, limiting the number of people who are badly hurt when the weapon is fired. It’s an improvement on the DZJ08 design, which is a similar shoulder-mounted rocket launcher, made for fighting in cities, that lacks the collateral-damage reduction. In addition to punching holes in buildings, the weapon is reportedly useful against light vehicles.

This rocket launcher is still explicitly a lethal weapon, but marketing it as low-collateral damage shows an understanding of urban combat, as well as concern for the innocents that may find themselves in city battlefields. In a similar vein, the U.S. Office of Naval Research is developing non-lethal and less-lethal weapons for Marines, after the experience of urban combat in Fallujah taught them that sometimes, a less-deadly weapon is better.

[IHS Janes]

 


Mousetronauts To Live In Space For the Longest Stretch Yet

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photo of a white lab most standing on a model spacecraft
Mouse in Space!
Not really: This lab mouse is posing on a model spacecraft.
NASA

Among the 2.5 tons of cargo that's set to go up to the International Space Station this weekend, there will be five mice with a particular genetic mutation. The mice lack a gene that normal mice have, called Muscle Ring Finger 1, or MuRF-1 (rhymes with Smurf). Scientists are hoping the missing gene will keep those mice healthier in space than their five ordinary compatriots that will be riding up with them.

These 10 mice—along with 10 others from another experiment—will live on the ISS for a month. They'll be the first mammals, excluding humans, to spend so much time in space. (The typical length for a mouse's stay on the ISS is more like two weeks.) This is just a hint of what's to come: The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, which manages U.S. research in the ISS, has been pushing for more mice and rats to live in the station, to help scientists learn more about the effects of microgravity in humans.

"By flying a mouse, whose typical lifespan is much shorter than humans', you can follow the course of bone and muscle loss over a much greater percentage of the mouse lifespan than you can in humans," Michael Roberts, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space's senior research manager, tells Popular Science.

That's good for current astronauts, future astronauts who may spend longer stretches in space, and maybe even folks on Earth. Roberts' center is hoping to sell university and pharmaceutical-company scientists on the idea that by sending mice and rats to space, they can learn more about Earthly disease symptoms whose effects on mammals are similar to microgravity's.

Researchers have been pushing for more mice and rats to live in the ISS, to help scientists learn more about the effects of microgravity in humans.

In the case of the MuRF mice, scientists are hoping to learn more about what role the MuRF-1 gene plays in muscle loss. The gene is responsible for tagging proteins in the muscles for destruction, scientists know. Both mice and humans have it. It's a part of the body's normal cycle of getting rid of old muscle cells to make way for new ones. But scientists think MuRF-1 may also play a role in the accelerated muscle loss people experience as they age, or have certain chronic diseases.

Several studies done on Earth have shown that mice genetically engineered not to have the MuRF-1 gene don't lose muscle as quickly as normal mice. The MuRF-in-space experiment will check if that's true in microgravity as well.

"We want to see whether we can preserve muscle mass" by knocking out MuRF-1, says physiology researcher Sam Cadena. Cadena works for Novartis, the large Swiss pharmaceutical company that is running this study. In the future, the MuRF-1 gene may prove to be a target for drugs that prevent muscle loss. "It's definitely of interest," he says.

The other mice-in-space experiment, run by NASA, will examine microgravity's effects on the animals' immune systems.

NASA has been developing special boxes for mice and rats to live in, long-term, on the space station. Among other things, the so-called Rodent Research habitats have to keep their occupants' food and water from floating around; isolate the rodents' waste; and filter the air that leaves the habitat before it enters the space station's living areas. By the way, from previousshorter experiments, scientists know that mice in space soon learn to hold onto wire mesh in their cages to crawl across the walls. "They don't just float around," Roberts says.

After this mission, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space will try to send mice and rats up for longer periods. The center has planned a 45-day mousetronaut mission, then a 60-day one. Six months is the ultimate goal. 

photo of a box-like rodent habitat for use on the International Space Station
A Rodent Research Habitat Module, 2014
NASA/Dominic Hart

Self-Driving Cars: A Marketer's Dream?

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Prototype Google Self-Driving Car
Google

Picture this: You're on a cross-country road trip with your kids, passing through some dusty corner of Nevada in your self-driving 2030 Chevrolet Lumina. Your car then sends an invisible message across the desert: Three passengers. Two in child seats. Sixth hour without a break. A distant server whirrs, combs through a database of your and your kids' past online behavior, and beams a command back to your car. A grinning clown dances across your windshield and a familiar jingle plays. "McDonalds!" your kids squeal. Suddenly you have lunch plans.

As driverless cars become more and more commonplace, this scene soon could become a reality, according to Daniel Fagnant, who studies self-driving tech and its implications at the University of Utah. The technologies that enable autonomous navigation are expensive, and since people won't be driving these vehicles, ads that help subsidize part of a car's cost could play across their screens without distracting any drivers. Like any complex computer system, a self-driving car will be able to record all kinds of statistics about itself, including its route, location, and possibly even which passengers are inside. That information will be incredibly valuable to advertisers. And as more cars link up to the Internet and share data with one another, it could become difficult to control.

Researchers, policymakers, and automakers tell Popular Science that coming up with rules to govern how that data can be used is important. But there's little to be said about the details. It seems obvious that your creepy neighbors shouldn't be able to track your movements, but what about Mercedes-Benz? What about law enforcement -- or Google?

"What all that means to me is in the absence of regulation, the tie goes to the manufacturer," Fagnant says. Not everyone agrees with Fagnant's dystopian vision. John Maddox, a researcher at the University of Michigan's test space for connected and automated cars, says these concerns don't reflect reality. "We've shown you can get truly anonymous data from vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure networks," he says.

He points out that many people are already sending tremendous amounts of data about themselves to companies not bound by any regulations. Many apps on smartphones, like Google Maps, collect data about your movements for companies that profit from ad revenue. In a world where huge industries already exist to track people for the sake of targeted advertising, the car may not seem like such a special case. But Fagnant says self-driving vehicles present a unique opportunity to advertisers.

"When you are in a car you are essentially captive," he says, "If you are able to display in-vehicle ads then you are able to foist your advertising on consumers right at the point when they are close to markets."

And in a car that can drive itself, you have no more urgent tasks -- like, say, steering -- to distract from that McTriple.

The Week In Drones: Robots Piloting Robots, Indiana Drones, And More

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Triton Drone Completes Its First Flight
Alex Evers, via Wikimedia Commons

Here's a roundup of the week's top drone news: the military, commercial, non-profit, and recreational applications of unmanned aircraft.

Robot Pilots

Most drones are actually human-piloted, with the controls elsewhere and the pilot steering remotely. In this video, the pilot is itself a humanoid robot, learning how to fly an airplane in a flight simulator. With a panel of controls in its mechanical fingers, the PIBOT uses visual information, presented on a computer monitor, to inform its flying. Right now, the concept is limited to piloting simulators, but the researchers hope to have PIBOT actually steer a plane some day.

Watch it below:

Navy Drone Crosses The Continent

Triton is a large drone. At 130 feet, it’s wingspan is over twice as long as that of the iconic Predator. It’s much closer to the Air Force’s long-endurance Global Hawk surveillance drone, only outfitted to fly over sea instead of desert. This week, it completed an 11-hour 3,790 mile flight from Palmdale, California, to the southern U.S. border, the Gulf of Mexico and across Florida, before reaching its destination at the Patuxent River naval base. Long-endurance flights over land and water mean that, when adopted by the service, the Triton can watch great swathes of the ocean for anything that looks like a threat to America’s Navy.

Indiana Drones

Researchers from University California San Diego flew drones with lasers over Mayan ruins in Guatemala. The lasers, a sensing system known as LIDAR, can see through the thick layers of plant life in the jungle, letting researchers find ruins too short to peek over the treetops and plants. The quadcopters, traveling through the air, can also move through the jungle faster than people on foot.

Watch a video of the process below:

Screaming For Help

Small flying aircraft can get lost. Sometimes there’s a strong, unexpected wind, sometimes pilots are inexperienced, sometimes a ram headbutts you out of the sky. That’s where Screamy comes in. A Kickstarter project with 27 days left, Screamy is a drone alarm that’s about the size of a quarter. When it's triggered by its owner, it emits a loud sound that can be heard from 1/8th a mile away. The alarm is also open source, making it an appealing addition to hobbyist drones.

Drone Laws Advance

In California, a bill to require warrants for some types of government drone use is advancing to the governor’s desk. The bill is a modest step to protect the privacy of citizens, and it’s one of many state proposals to address the challenge of unmanned aircraft before the FAA sets out national rules. California’s bill means that America’s most populous state will soon have guidelines for how to operate drones.

South Africa, meanwhile, is set to announce drone regulations in March 2015. The current policy, which is to fine users for unregulated drone use, was challenged by a group of drone-toting South African businesses, who pointed out that there were no regulations to violate. The South African Civil Aviation Authority agreed, and anticipates releasing some form of regulation next year.

Did I miss any drone news? Email me at kelsey.d.atherton@gmail.com.

Astounding Auroras, Hiding Black Holes, And More Amazing Images Of The Week

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Small Galaxy, Big Hole
Don’t underestimate little galaxies, because they can pack one big punch. On Wednesday, a team of astronomers recently revealed that the dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 is actually home to a giant, supermassive black hole. The momentous discovery goes against the conventional belief that only big galaxies can house giant black holes at their center. With this unveiling, described in the journal Nature, it could mean that the universe is home to many more black holes than previously thought; we just weren’t looking in all the right places. This image is an artist's illustration of what M60-UCD1's black hole could look like.
NASA, ESA, STScI-PRC14-41a

Next Week Is Climate Week

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Climate Change Collage
Wikimedia Commons

Next week is Climate Week in New York City. The happenings begin on Sunday with what promises to be a massive march demanding action to curb human-propelled global warming. On Tuesday, the United Nations will hold an all-day climate-focused summit for world leaders.

Each day will also brim with meetings, panels, and exhibits on climate change, energy, and resilience happening all over town. PopSci will be covering the summit and the best of the rest, so check back here for updates.

Tuesday's climate summit is being held at UN headquarters, but isn't officially part of the existing international climate treaty process (the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC). So it's not going to end with a unified international statement on how we'll curb global warming.

But organizers hope that it will help those negotiations, by amping up the momentum for getting a strong agreement in late 2015, at the official climate talks in Paris – an agreement that must do more than current international efforts if we're to keep the average future temperature increase below 2 degrees Centigrade.

To help make that happen, UN officials have teased big announcements on Tuesday including:

  • Statements from world leaders on the greenhouse gas pollution cuts they will offer in France in 2015
  • News from significant business and finance entities about setting a price on carbon emissions
  • More action on resilience and risk reduction: increasing the capacities of communities worldwide to withstand the impacts of climate change
  • Shifts of global business investments into climate-friendly economic sectors

Over 100 national leaders are expected to be at the summit, where they'll hear from scientists, activists, businesses, and each other. UN officials say it will be the most heads of state present at any international climate meeting. (Of the dozens who attended 2009's treaty talks in Copenhagen, most have since left office.)

The week's climate focus will come on the heels of today's announcement by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that globally, August 2014 was the warmest August since record-keeping began in 1880.

Click here for more of PopSci's climate change coverage.

Video: Peter Thiel On How We Can Make The Future Awesome

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Peter Thiel
The entrepreneur and author of a new book, Zero To One, stopped by the Popular Science offices for a chat.
Popular Science

Peter Thiel has never shied from speculating on the future—and then pouring money into technologies that match that vision. As a cofounder of Paypal, he pioneered a new form of e-commerce. As an investor, he made an early bet on Facebook and SpaceX. Breakout Labs, a program of the Thiel Foundation, provides philanthropic support to startups that are radically reinventing food systems, medical devices, and energy sources.

Thiel has also, as Popular Science described in our September issue, created an alternative path to traditional education--one that pays a select group of students $100,000 to pursue their own entrepreneurial dreams, on the condition they drop out of school to do it. For anyone else who wants to change the world with a groundbreaking technology, Thiel offers his insights in the book Zero to One, published this week. (Two takeaways: Your creation should be 10 times better than the closest substitute. Also, “real technologists wear T-shirts and jeans.”)

This week, Thiel stopped by the Popular Science office to share his observations on successful startups. (His advice to our reader-inventors: Partner with a business person.) But while he was here, we couldn’t resist asking his thoughts on a wide range of subjects, from commercial space flight to the Singularity. Here's what he had to say.

How Gorilla Poop Could Help Stop Ebola

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Jock, A Western Lowland Gorilla
Police drove through Kroo Bay this morning, past the open sewers and snuffling pigs, yelling at people to go inside—largely to no avail. All the 14,000 residents of the shanty town in Freeport, Sierra Leone, had been ordered to stay indoors for three days, to try to stop the spread of Ebola.

Sierra Leone’s attempted lockdown is unprecedented: The whole country has been placed on house arrest and 20,000 volunteers have been recruited to help identify suspected Ebola carriers. “Some of the things we are asking you to do are difficult, but life is better than these difficulties,” President Ernest Bai Koroma said.

Nothing about controlling the spread of the virus has come easy. Yesterday, the bodies of eight people, part of a delegation of health officials and journalists, were found in a remote village in Guinea, apparently killed by people throwing rocks. Health workers around the region, including in Liberia and Sierra Leone, have been physically threatened by misinformed people who fear they are actually spreading the disease. In the midst of this widespread panic, the World Health Organization reports that more than 700 new cases were recorded this week; despite all efforts, the outbreak is still growing.

"Everything is linked to animals."

But a rare spot of good news came in the form of a diagnostic test that may help prevent future epidemics. Dr. William Karesh, Executive Vice President for Health and Policy at EcoHealth Alliance and a wildlife veterinarian who has studied Ebola in great apes for years, has discovered a method of detecting Ebola antibodies in feces. Up till now, detection methods in the wild relied on collecting blood or tissue from infected apes, one of the animal reservoirs for the disease. (The direct introduction to humans in this current outbreak is suspected to have come from fruit bats, not apes.) Since collecting poop is much easier than taking blood samples or carting carcasses out of the jungle, this technique can help scientists canvas larger areas and more accurately pinpoint hotspots likely to be at risk for future outbreaks.

Gorillas are actually even more susceptible to Ebola than humans, with a mortality rate approaching 95 percent. Over the last twenty years, Ebola outbreaks in apes have decimated populations; Karesh estimates some 25 percent of wild apes in the Congo have been killed by the virus. Karesh hopes his technique will help scientists detect Ebola in apes sooner.

This could help scientists better target susceptible populations for possible future vaccination campaigns. That day might not be too far away: although no vaccine currently exists, ‘orphan’ vaccines, originally developed for people but abandoned during the lengthy licensing process (this can happen for many reasons, including the discovery of harmful side effects) may protect apes against the virus. A study published in PNAS this spring suggests that one such vaccine, developed by the biotech company Integrated Biotherapeutics, prevents mice from developing the disease.

As Karesh says, "everything is linked to animals." If gorilla poop can create a road map for understanding how Ebola spreads, both vulnerable species and the human populations who surround them will benefit. 


The Week In Numbers: Origami Microscopes, Laser Turrets, And A Bit More Than One Texas

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Mark Those Birds!
Zooniverse Penguin Watch

50: number of cameras researchers are using to study penguin populations in the Antarctic. You can help researchers identify penguins in adorable photographs, all while helping to train their artificial penguin-spotting intelligence.

1/2 millimeter: width of a huge "artificial atom" used to build a photon lattice at Princeton University. (That's big enough to see with the naked eye!)

ABC Laser Turret In Test Flight
Air Force Research Laboratory

360 degrees: range of a missile-downing laser that could be mounted on warplanes. Strategists hope it wil serve as an alternative to stealth technology for certain missions.

150: clincial trials the NIH has funded targeting minority populations since 1993.

10,000: trials funded overall.

15:phony cell towers in Washington D.C. alone. (Plus another three in nearby Virginia.)

The Arabian Sea's Algae Bloom, As Seen From From Space.
Norman Kuring/NASA

268,820 square miles: size of Texas, a close match for the above algal bloom in the Arabian sea.

600:open-source hardware inventors hawking their wares on Tindie, a homespun electronics site.

Looking Glass
Courtest U.C. San Diego/Jacobs School of Engineering

57 cents: cost of an origami microscope. Its designers hope the device will inspire kids to pursue science.

40 cents: cost of a lens upgrade for the scope.

The Salem Nuclear Power Plants
PeretzP via Wikimedia Commons

11: percent of the world's electricity provided by nuclear energy.

At least 8: number of separate disorders that are diagnosed as schizophrenia using current models.

The Preservation Of Lonesome George

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On the day that Lonesome George died, in June 2012, Eleanor Sterling made a panicked phone call.  “George!” she recalls saying. “What do we do now?”

Lonesome George was a tortoise—the most famous one ever, in fact. Decades after the last giant tortoise was thought to have disappeared from the island of Pinta in the Galapagos, Lonesome George turned up in 1971 and became a conservation icon. Scientists spent years trying to get him to mate, to pass on his genes, but the efforts failed. When he died, his entire subspecies may have died with him.

“I knew we needed to do something right away” to preserve Lonesome George’s body, says Sterling. Luckily, as a conservation scientist at the American Museum Of Natural History (AMNH), she knew to call another George—specifically, George Dante, a taxidermist for a company called Wildlife Preservations, who has worked with the museum before. He sent Sterling a list of instructions on how to prevent the tortoise's body from decomposing so that it could be taxidermied.

Some of the instructions were straightforward—such as wrapping Lonesome George’s soft parts in tissues. Others were more challenging, like finding a freezer large enough to fit the five-foot-long, 165-pound tortoise. But the biggest challenge was finding thick freezer plastic, Sterling says, because Lonesome George died in a remote part of Ecuador. When Sterling went to the local hardware store to find the plastic, they were sold out, and another shipment wouldn’t arrive for another two weeks.

“We kept asking, ‘Is it okay if they’re just plastic bags taped together?’” But that would risk letting Lonesome George’s skin dehydrate, which would ruin the specimen.

“So then we went back to the hardware store and we said, ‘This is for Lonesome George. This is not something that can wait for two weeks.’ And so they called somebody, who called somebody, who called a pig farm, and suddenly there we got our plastic.”

Lonesome George spent the next nine months in a freezer while Sterling arranged the permits to transfer him to the U.S. “We were biting our fingernails,” she says. “We knew when we wrapped him up that he was in really good shape, but when you live in a tropical country, electricity goes out on a regular basis.”

Lonesome George Gets Unpacked.
AMNH/D. Finnin

George made the long journey from Galapagos to New York, where he arrived still frozen solid, thankfully. Then began the most unique taxidermy project of Dante’s career.

“George was a piece that’s very custom,” Dante says. “A lot of times today, there are pieces that we work on, that we can purchase parts for. With George, everything was 100 percent custom.”

Since there aren’t any pre-made taxidermy skeletons for Pinta Island tortoises, Dante would have to sculpt the specimen's inner armature himself.

In the beginning, Dante says he just stared at Lonesome George to try to get a feel for the tortoise’s character. The company doesn’t usually perform taxidermies on pets, because it’s so difficult to capture an animal’s personality in a way that makes the owner happy. George was particularly challenging because “he was like the world’s pet,” says Dante.

Luckily, George was also one of the world’s most photographed tortoises, so Dante was able to look through thousands of photos to learn more about what the tortoise was like in life.

One of the first major decisions was, “What posture should a tortoise have?” said curator Christopher Raxworthy yesterday as AMNH unveiled Lonesome George’s taxidermied body. Tortoises “spend most of their time fast asleep, with their heads tucked into their shell. But we wanted something to capture the majesty of George.”

Lonesome George Gets Measured.
AMNH/D. Finnin
The posture they decided to go with was one of George standing and stretching his long neck upward, perhaps to grab some leaves to munch on, or to assert his dominance over other males (had they existed).

Finally, the taxidermy process began. George’s skin was removed, de-greased, and pared down. It took three people four days to remove all the muscle and fat from beneath the delicate skin, to get it ready for tanning.

During the tanning, George’s skin and shell were soaked in a chemical called Safety Acid. “It’s basically an acid bath that pickles the skin,” says Dante. After the soaking, the taxidermists shaved down the skin again and rubbed it with tanning oil, which would replace the natural proteins in the skin to make it soft and life-like.

Meanwhile, Dante’s team began sculpting the inner support structure from an oil-based clay. To see how it fit, they draped George’s tanned skin over it, and compared it to reference photos. Once the fit was perfect, the taxidermists got feedback from scientists to make sure the depiction was accurate.

Clay Model.
AMNH/D. Finnin

But using an armature made of oil-based clay armature would ruin George’s skin. So the next step was to create a cast of the clay armature, into which a urethane foam could be poured and shaped into the final armature. Inside, steel supports reinforce George’s legs and shell.

Then Dante's team coated the armature in a water-based clay, draped the skin over it, and sculpted George's wrinkles and idiosyncracies into the clay through the skin. 

A coating of paraloid B72 sealed the skin and provides a protective layer so that anything that happens on top of the skin is reversible—for example, if museum curators ever need to remove George’s paint, his skin will still be perfectly preserved.

Painting the specimen was a several-day affair, says Dante. “They actually sent us a packet of soil from Pinta Island, that we used to match the colors of the actual soil, because that gave George his patina--that dust that was constantly in his shell and skin.”

The Pose.
AMNH/C. Chesek

The resulting tortoise looked a little too perfect, said Raxworthy. So around George’s mouth they added the green stains of his last meal.

George’s glittering eyes had to be specially made – because, unsurprisingly, glass eye companies do not keep a stock of imitation eyeballs from extinct tortoises. To get custom-made Pinta tortoise eyes, Dante’s team needed to provide reference photos to the glass eye company. Problem was, there weren’t any good pictures of Lonesome George’s eyes.

“Every tortoise you look at on Google or in a magazine, the eyes look black," says Dante. "Because of the light, you can’t photograph them well." So his team ended up visiting a local zoo to photograph the eyes of other tortoises. Even then it was difficult because of the glare, until finally someone shined a flashlight into one of the tortoise’s eyes, and they got the perfect shot. “Those images went to our glass eye company to make the first and most accurate tortoise eyes ever,” says Dante.

Why go to all this trouble to taxidermy a tortoise? Because, says Dante, George was loved by too many people for his body to end up in a landfill. And there’s a chance that his preserved state could still have scientific value—for instance, scientists could extract DNA from his skin, or use the model to understand how he lived and moved. And the education value is obvious.

“Somewhere else, there might have been a decision made to just put him in alcohol--to make a wet specimen that would be in a museum collection, never to be seen again,” Dante says. “Now we have this monument for conservation that visitors can look at and make a connection with.”

Lonesome George is on display at the AMNH in New York until January, when he’ll be returned to Ecuador.

Lonesome George On Display At The American Museum Of Natural History
AMNH/R. Mickens

Defend Your Home With Artificial Intelligence

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Canary
Price: $250. Height: 6 inches. Diameter: 3 inches. Weight: 0.83 lbs.
Photograph by Sam Kaplan
A Multitude of Sensors
You’re out of town for the weekend, and you want to keep tabs on your home. You could set up a sophisticated security system -- with live video feeds, multiple sensors, and remote access -- and suffer the hefty installation cost and monthly bills that come with it. Or, you could use Canary.

The all-in-one security system packs eight different environmental sensors into a single machine and arms it with artificial intelligence. It plugs directly into an outlet, connects to a network by Wi-Fi or ethernet, and begins logging sensor data within seconds of being taken out of the box.

Once users start interacting with Canary, an algorithm learns their daily schedules, minimizing false alarms. A smartphone app enables users to review past events that were deemed suspect as well as a live video feed.

The device alerts users with a push notification when it detects unusual activity on any of its sensors, such as an abrupt crashing sound or unusual movement in the home. And thanks to machine learning, you’ll never have to worry about Canary mistaking your house pet for a home invader, or worse, the other way around.

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

Mussels Inspire A Glue That Works Underwater

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There's a new prototype glue that sticks like mussels to a rock—literally. The glue, which works underwater, incorporates proteins that mussels normally use to adhere to rocks, jetties, and larger sea critters. But the manmade adhesive isn't an exact replica of mussel glue. Its ingredients also include proteins that E. coli produce when they make slime colonies. The result is the strongest bio-inspired adhesive that works underwater, according to the glue's engineers.

It might also be the grossest-sounding adhesive ever, but we're not here to judge.

In the future, adhesives that work underwater might be used to repair ships or undersea structures. Or they might find their way into medicine--surgeons are on the lookout for something that's able to bind wounds in wet conditions. This mussel-inspired glue is still a long way from practical applications, however. Its creators, a team of engineers from MIT, aren't yet able to make large amounts of it. But the story of how they came up with it in the first place is a glimpse into how practical adhesives might be prepared in the future.

illustration showing string-like proteins sticking to a rounded silica surface
Illustration Showing the Molecular Structure of a Mussel-Inspired Glue
You can see a strand of the glue sticking to a rounded, silica tip that researcher use to test its adhesiveness.
Yan Liang, MIT News

The researchers chose their glue's proteins from a database of animal- and plant-made sticky molecules that scientists have compiled over decades of research. Then, when the engineers wanted to experiment with their chosen proteins, they didn't harvest it from mussels. Instead, they genetically engineered E. coli bacteria to make the two proteins they wanted. The resulting proteins were a sort of hybrid between the mussel proteins and the bacteria's biofilm protein. When researchers mixed the engineered proteins together in equal proportions, they became a glue. 

To check the glue's properties, its makers tested how well it stuck to silica, gold, and polysterene, a manmade material that goes into Styrofoam. They examined the glue's molecular structure under a microscope, to learn how its protein ingredients work together to adhere. The final glue is 1.5 times stickier than natural mussel glue, the team found. It also works in neutral and basic liquids, but not so well in acidic liquids.

The team published its work yesterday in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

The 7 Most Important Fitness Tracker Measurements

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Gaming Your Health
Illustration by Peter and Maria Hoey
In early 2015, Apple will release its first major product since 2010 -- a health tracker dubbed Apple Watch -- that will reportedly log a litany of biometric information using 10 different sensors. The wrist device has the same aesthetic as the Nike Fuelband, FitBit Flex, and the countless other fitness bands already available. With a rising number of wearables hitting the shelves, you’d better know what information is vital and how to make the most of it.

1. Step Detection

An algorithm translates an accelerometer reading into distance traveled and helps estimate activity level and calories burned.

Healthy Range: About 10,000 steps per day

2. Pulse

A sensor opposite an LED monitors fluctuations in light transmitted through your finger. The rise and fall of light indicates heart rate.

Healthy Range: 60 -- 100 beats per minute

3. Heart Rate Variability

A heart rate monitor measures the variation of beat-to-beat intervals. High variability is indicative of good health and a high level of fitness.

Healthy Range: 18 -- 44 percent variability while resting

4. Blood Oxygenation

A pulse oximeter detects the light absorption of hemo-globin to see how much oxygen reaches your extremities. That data helps athletes determine whether they’ve recovered fully from a workout.

Healthy Range: 95 -- 99 percent

5. Body Temperature

A thermometer that sits against the skin assesses surface temperature. Abnormal spikes or drops are early warning signs of sickness.

Healthy Range: 97.6 -- 99.6 degrees Fahrenheit

6. Sleep

Sensitive 3-D accelerometers detect small body movement during the night. When paired with continuous heart rate monitoring, it offers a rough idea of sleep stages -- light, deep, and REM.

Healthy Range: 7-- 9 hours of sleep

7. Blood Sugar

Sensors measure glucose in skin fluid using infra-red light or low-power radio waves. For diabetics, it’s a pinprick alternative. For others, it’s a way to see how diet affects health.

Healthy Range: 80 -- 140 milligrams per deciliter

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

New Armored Vehicle In The Works For Australia

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A Patria AMV In Solvenian Service
MORS, via Wikimedia Commons

Over the past century, Australia has quietly participated in more major wars than expected. From a disastrous assault on the Ottoman-held Gallipoli in World War I to fighting alongside British forces in World War II and Korea, as well as fighting alongside American forces in Vietnam and participating in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Australia’s military was present in many major 20th and 21st century conflicts. Only 12 countries spend more than Australia on defense, and this year, some of that money is going towards a new armored vehicle.

The vehicle is part of an initiative named “Land 400 Phase 2 Defence program (titled in the same jargony way that transcends national boundaries to infiltrate all military bureaucracies). In addition to being deadly and armored, the vehicles in the system have a network so they can communicate with each other. Australia’s 2013 Defense White Paper outlines roles for the vehicle, but it is vague on specifics.

Inside that vague void is a partnership that wants to put new abilities inside an old, familiar body. Today BAE, a British defense company, and Patria, a predominantly Finnish defense company, announced a partnership to try and make the future vehicle Australia wants. Their proposed solution: a modified version of Patria’s highly customizable Armored Modular Vehicle (AMV).

The AMV is an eight-wheeled armored body, used by militaries from Poland to South Africa. It can go faster than 60 mph, and with its large tires and suspension system, it can cross rougher terrain than many vehicles. Where it shines, however, is with what goes on top. Weapons from small guns to big guns to tank-like cannons can be mounted in turrets on top, as well as artillery pieces or other specialized weapons.

With specific tailoring, a specialized AMV could be the deadly and useful scout Australia wants for the future. Here’s hoping that, however the vehicle turns out, it can survive another one of Australia’s brutal Emu wars.

Patria AMV In Swedish Service
The side view mirrors are a nice touch.
kallerna, via Wikimedia Commons

An All-Liquid Battery For Storing Solar And Wind Energy

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photo of a room-temperature, liquid battery in a clear glass container
Liquid Battery
This room-temperature liquid battery was made with mercury, salt water, and steel foam, to show the design of the high-temperature liquid battery described below.
Felice Frankel

You could call it a rainy-day fund. A team of MIT researchers has built an all-liquid battery prototype that's designed to store excess energy from solar and wind power plants. When the sun isn't shining, or the wind isn't blowing, future versions of this battery could release energy captured during more productive times into nations' power grids.

Cheaper, more efficient energy storage would be a big boost for alternative energy technologies. It would help solar panels and wind turbines provide grids with steady electricity—instead of surges during sunny or windy times—so it's always there in case of high demand. It also might make sun- and wind-produced electricity cheaper; by storing extra energy that isn't being used, less electricity is wasted in the long run.

There are already solid batteries sold now to store energy from solar panels. They're mostly used in single homes, however. As solar facilities get larger, solid batteries get more expensive and less efficient, compared to how much energy the whole facility makes. The MIT team thinks an all-liquid battery, filled with searingly hot, molten metals, might be a good alternative. Liquid batteries may be easier (and thus cheaper) to manufacture in larger sizes, and they're expected to last longer than solid ones.

The battery is filled with searingly hot, molten metals.

The team previously made a prototype all-liquid battery filled with magnesium and an element called antimony. With this latest version, the team has made a battery with lithium and antimony mixed with lead. It has some advantages compared to its predecessor. Mixing the antimony with lead makes the materials cheaper. Plus, the battery can be kept at lower temperatures. It works at 450 degrees Celsius, versus 700 degrees Celsius.

The team even conducted a durability test, charging and discharging the liquid battery for 1,800 hours. From that data, it predicts that the battery would lose 15 percent of its capacity after 10 years of daily use.

Engineers have long known about how important storage is to solar and wind energy, given their unreliable natures. For example, evenings can be a high-demand time for electricity, but they're not particularly sunny. Additionally, there can be an overproduction of solar energy during daylight hours, meaning valuable electricity goes to waste frequently. Research groups are working on a number of storage schemes to fix these issues, from flywheels to liquid nitrogen and oxygen.

The MIT team published its work yesterday in the journal Nature


Live-Blogging The United Nations Climate Summit

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United Nations Climate Summit 2014
United Nations Climate Summit
Police checkpoint on 46th St. in Manhattan near the U.N.
Emily J. Gertz

In December 2015 world leaders are scheduled to negotiate the final touches in a new international treaty to cut greenhouse gas pollution, save forests, and take other actions to curb climate change as well as deal with the impacts that can't be stopped. If the agreement were based solely on the best climate science, strong action would be a no-brainer. So today I'm live blogging this special one day climate summit organized by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki Moon. He hopes this event will help educate current world leaders-most have come into office sin the 2009 Copenhagen negotiations-and improve the chances that they'll agree to a strong treaty next year.

Note: Refresh this page to see the latest updates. All times EDT.

12:38 p.m. A representative of Rainforest Alliance -- one of a few non-profits here today lauding the palm oil pledge -- stands up and says "We stand ready" to help advance the "palm oil sustainability agenda."

12:15 p.m.: Back in the lovely wifi room. The Indonesian government and agri-giants Cargill, Golden Agri Resources (GAR), Wilmar, and Asian Agri are stating publicly at this climate summit that they're committed to stopping deforestation, supplanting it with "sustainable palm oil operations," and getting the same going all along the global supply chain. This "palm oil pledge" is major conservation-and-climate news.

Palm oil is Indonesia's single biggest economic sector, helping to reduce the nation's intense poverty. Palm oil is also such a lucrative global business that it's expanding into other tropical nations. But palm oil has been the cause of intense rates of forest and peatland destruction, ecosystems that would otherwise be storing much more carbon than the palm plantations that replace them. These tropical forests are also important biodiversity hot spots that support incredible wildlife. 

Shinta Widjaja Kamdani of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce tells the press that this pledge is not just about signatures on a page, but is going to result in serious action.

Franky Oesman Widjaja, chair and CEO of GAR, tells the press that his firm has had a "zero-burning policy" since 2007, and since 2010 has been working to preserve forest and peatlands that store a lot of carbon. He says his firm is working with Greenpeace and Forest Trust on improving its sustainable palm oil practices.

 

12:03 p.m.: Even Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the U.N.'s top climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has to go through security to get into the  building.

11:52 a.m.: "What strikes me today is the mobilization of all actors" to take action on climate change, says president Francios Hollande of France - from governments to civil society organizations to the private sector. Thank you, high school and college French classes: I'm listening in to his press conference on the public channel, which has no simultaneous translation, while sitting on the floor near a security point in the Secretariat Building. His diction is excellent.

Ban Ki Moon thanks Hollande and France for committing $1 billion to the Green Climate Fund.

11:07 a.m.: And now I'm being kicked out of the room and off this wonderful wifi because the next press conference "is for French journalists only." Quelle domage.

10:55 a.m.: A reporter asks the panel if this joint call for a price on carbon is just "bluewashing" by participating companies that want to hide or diminish attention on the damage they're doing to the environment. It's the kind of question a reporter asks to try and provoke an unscripted response. No one bites hard on the bait. "We're in an ongoing struggle" to redirect the energies and strategies of the business world, answers Kell. Lund adds, "It's a lot more important to see that the evolution of a big polluter is the appropriate one" than trying to keep such companies out of the global carbon price coalition.

10:44 a.m.:   There's been pressure for several years now on industrialized nation pension funds, sometimes called "institutional investors" and which collectively have over $15 trillion invested in global commerce, to reduce or eliminate their fossil fuel holdings 

And they've been listening. Last week, just ahead of a big private sector climate forum held alongside today's political summit, a group of powerful institutional investors issued a public call for a global price on carbon. Here, Frank Pegan of Catholic Super, an Australian pension fund, is underlining that announcement.

"This is the first time there is a global movement starting for a global carbon pricing," adds George Kell, executive director of UN Global Compact.

10:38 a.m.: "Inaction is not an option," says a representative Helge Lund of Statoil, best known as a European natural gas supplier. "Without sustainable energy, there cannot be sustainable growth." He goes on, "Business cannot succeed on a planet that fails...We need an international carbon price."

10:32 a.m.: Next up, a press conference on the economic case for putting a global price on carbon. Lately some in the "business community" are getting more vocal that this measure -- derided by opponents in the United States as a "carbon tax" -- is essential to cutting their financial exposure to risks of climate change like increasing drought, storm damage, strained fresh water supplies, and such. If it cost money for businesses to pour greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the reasoning goes, they'd start to cut down on that pollution.

10:25 a.m. I have found the press conference, taking place in a room that's about a quarter-mile walk from the media center, through two lobbies and down an escalator. Unfortunately, it's almost over. But the wifi here is great.

9:46 a.m.: The UN has given over this shed-like space to the international press corps for the 2014 Climate Summit. The wifi is so overloaded that it's about to faint. The screen features feeds from three simultaneous high-level sessions where world leaders are giving speeches about taking action on climate change. These are mildly interesting, but I'm heading over to a press conference on cities and climate change.

The Glamour of Journalism
The UN has given over this shed-like space to the international press corps for the 2014 Climate Summit. It's crowded and the wifi is overloaded, so I'm heading over to a press conference on cities and climate change.
Emily J. Gertz

 

9:30 a.m.: That's a pretty big deal. Full funding of the GCF by industrialized nations is crucial to getting a new climate treaty worked out for 2015. As is always the case with money, however, some nations are holding back because they can't agree on how to spend and track the cash.

9:27 a.m.: The president of Korea just pledged $100 million to the Green Climate Fund, or GCF, to help developing nations undertake low-carbon economic growth.

8:44 a.m.: Almost through security, at long last.

8:10 a.m.: Here's a map of the "frozen zone" around the United Nations (note: today isn't a good day to drive anywhere near Manhattan.):

U.N. Frozen Zone
Emily J. Gertz

8:06 a.m.: I'm in line to go through security. We're told the wait is 40-60 minutes. At least it's nice outside.

United Nations Security Line
Emily J. Gertz

Measuring Brainwaves Could Lead To An Objective Autism Diagnosis

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Simulated Testing
A child dons an EEG sensor cap, simulating how a developing child would be tested.
Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Currently, diagnosing autism is more of an art than a science. To determine whether a kid has the disorder, trained professionals look for behaviors that are characteristic of the condition--for example, failure to make eye contact, or repetitive mannerisms.

Although these methods have proven effective for years, researchers still hope to find a more objective way of diagnosing autism. Now, new research suggests that a child’s brainwaves may hold the key. Scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University have discovered a significant relationship between the severity of a child’s autism and the way his or her brain processes different sight and sound stimuli. And fortunately, they can measure this brain activity in an easy, non-invasive way.

According to study leader Sophie Molholm, it’s possible that the autistic brain has a much more difficult time processing all of the information it receives from the body’s sensory systems. “We have to organize all of this incoming information, and it’s a big and important task for the brain,” Molholm tells Popular Science. “There’s possibly a break down in how this information is processed, and that may be related to some of the symptoms of autism.”

The connection makes sense. Many autism patients will report that certain types of stimulation are disturbing to them, while others are oblivious to stimuli that most people would typically notice. Given these trends, Molholm and her team have been studying brainwave electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings of autistic patients for years. EEGs measure voltage fluctuations in the brain’s neurons, revealing when certain processes are working smoothly – and when they’re struggling.

“We have a net of sensors that’s like a skull cap, and you put that on the head,” Molholm says. “Wires come out from that and record the brain activity. It’s completely noninvasive, and it’s giving you an indication directly of one of the primary signals of the brain: electrical activity.”

The researchers used the cap to measure the brain activity of 43 children with autism (ages 6 to 17) as they were presented with various auditory and visual stimuli. Sure enough, the researchers noticed an inverse relationship between the subjects’ brain activity and the severity of their autism. The worse a child’s autism symptoms, the fainter the signals from the brain during multi-sensory integration. Or in other words, autism severity correlated with a slower time processing incoming information.

Since this relationship was so strong, Molholm hopes that one day, EEG recordings might contribute to a more objective diagnosis for autism, as well as better categorize where people are on the spectrum. “It’s an extremely heterogeneous disorder,” says Molholm. “If you’ve met one person with autism, you don’t have a representative picture of what autism is.” It’s possible that different subgroups are able to respond better to different levels of treatment, making a much more sensitive, scientific test all the more valuable.

The researchers published their work in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disabilities.

Kicking Ice And Taking Names

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The Polarstern
AWI/Polarstern
To get a grip on climate change, researchers must go to where it’s changing fastest. Even in winter’s deep freeze, this 387-foot steel vessel pulverizes ice floes to study greenhouse gas concentrations and ice melt at the poles. “Polarstern is able to take scientists to fantastic environments where other ships can’t,” says scientific coordinator Rainer Knust. Three decades of data from the icebreaker’s expeditions help climatologists better understand and predict rates of change. In October, the ship will shove off with a new underwater drill capable of exploring the geology 250 feet below the Antarctic seafloor. 

By The Numbers

20,000Combined horsepower of the ship’s four diesel engines

-58Minimum temperature, in degrees Fahrenheit, at which Polarstern’s engines still function

4.92Thickness, in feet, of ice it can break through while maintaining a speed of 5.8 mph. (It can get through thicker ice by ramming.)

1,620,000Miles Polarstern has traveled in its lifetime, equivalent to 67 circumnavigations of Earth 

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

The Greatest New Photo Gear

Turn A Shoe Box Into A Phone Projector [Video]

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Don’t watch that YouTube clip on a tiny screen—project it onto the wall instead! The picture may not be movie-theater quality, but it improves if the phone is very bright and the room is very dark.

Time: 20 minutes

Cost: $2

Difficulty: Easy

Materials

• Shoe box

• Magnifying glass

• Black tape

• Thick card

• 2 rubber bands

Instructions

1. Cut a hole in one end of the shoe box and cover with the magnifying glass. Use tape to ensure light will only enter the box through this lens.

2. To find the focus, point the lens at a nearby window or light source. Move the card through the box until it displays the external image sharply.

3. Wrap the rubber bands around the card to make a phone holder. Tape the card upright at the focus point you just identified.

4. Secure the phone upside down (its image will be flipped). Finally, adjust the box’s position until it throws a picture onto the wall.

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

Shoe Box Phone Projector
Sam Kaplan
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