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Lifeguard Drone Ready For Mass Production [Video]

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Pars Drone Demonstrator
RTS Labs

In the not too distant future, swimmers in distress may look up to the sky for help and find, not a lifeguard, but a drone, delivering a life preserver in their moment of need. Designed by Amin Rigi and RTS Labs in Iran, the Pars drone is a robotic lifesaver. First demonstrated in 2013, Rigi is launching an RTS Labs offshoot, RTS London, to mass produce the drones.

Here’s how Popular Sciencefirst covered the Pars drone in 2013:

The Pars Aerial Rescue Robot is designed to work as a mobile lifesaver dispensary, flying out to those in need and dropping vital flotation aids until better help can be secured. As currently designed, Pars starts with a quadrotor, which makes sense: quadrotors are versatile platforms, beloved by scientists because the machines can do things like test eagle arms and Kinect-based navigation. Quadrotors are also relatively strong. That means Pars wouldn't have any trouble carrying life preservers as well as a sophisticated navigation software and infrared cameras.

Since then, the drone has undergone a series of tests and improvements, moving from concept to prototype to demonstration. Here’s an early test, using an eight-rotor drone, a single inner tube, and a courtyard:

This next video starts off with animation about the drone concept, before cutting to tests with a working model. In one striking trial, the hexarotor reaches a swimmer in 22 seconds, more than a full minute faster than a lifeguard who started at the same time. 

The undersides of the hexarotor arms carry LED lights, so at night swimmers can see the drone coming to save them. The video also gives away an important detail: Pars is still remotely piloted by a human.

Future plans for the drone include floating stations with solar panels where several can recharge simultaneously, as well as more advanced features so drones can save lives on their own. With RTS London launched to manufacture these drones, the beaches of the future might just be safer thanks to some friendly robots.


Why Does My Dog Kick When I Scratch His Belly?

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It’s called the sweet spot. That perfect place on your dog’s belly or sides that, when scratched, causes your pet’s foot to go into crazy automatic kicking mode. Every dog owner knows where to find this magical region on his or her canine, as it usually offers up unmitigated joy.

As delightful as this puppy kicking is to watch, this reaction is actually a means of self-protection for your pet. It’s called the scratch reflex, and it’s an involuntary response that exists to keep your dog safe from dangerous bugs or irritants.

Underneath certain portions of your dog’s skin, there are collections of neural pathways that are connected to the spinal cord. When these nerves are activated – either by a scratch or a tickle – they quickly send messages to the spinal cord, which then instructs the dog’s leg to kick. For some dogs, the kicking can be more pronounced depending on how much scratching they feel.

“Dogs that have allergies in particular, it tends to be really easy to illicit that scratch reflex, because the dogs are borderline itchy anyway,” says Lore Haug, a veterinarian and animal behavior expert for Texas Veterinary Behavior Services. “But when you rub their skin more, it accentuates the scratching.”

According to Haug, the scratch reflex came about as way for animals to protect themselves against irritants on their bodies, especially invading bugs that could carry diseases. For example, if a dog has fleas running around on its skin, the insects’ itchiness will cause the scratch reflex to activate. Then, perhaps the kicking will knock some of the fleas off, alleviating the source of the itch.

It’s similar to the reflexes seen in humans, which usually exist to protect us in some way. “Let’s say you touch a hot stove, and before your brain recognizes it’s painful, the spinal cord recognizes the pain, and you involuntarily jerk your hand back,” Haug says. “If you had to wait until your conscious brain recognized something was in danger, your delay in reaction time could cause an injury or even death in some cases.”

The scratch reflex can be useful for your veterinarian to determine if your pet is suffering from any nerve damage, kind of like when your doctor tests your knee reflexes during checkups. Also, since the reflex is more for swatting away pesky bugs, it doesn’t necessarily mean your dog likes being scratched in that particular area. But of course, some dogs do enjoy a good rub on the belly. You’ll just have to pick up on cues from your pet to figure that out.

Video: Bionic Boots That Let You Run Up To 25 MPH

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In September, Popular Science attended World Maker Faire at the New York Hall of Science. We saw giant robots, tiny Tesla coils, and musical instruments made out of anything you can imagine. Check out some of the coolest projects with us!

Ever wanted to run like an ostrich? When Keahi Seymour was a teenager, he decided to create shoes that would let him emulate the birds’ springy gait and match their top speed—45 miles per hour. Many years and a dozen prototypes later, Seymour came to Maker Faire to show off the latest version of his “bionic boot.” This prototype boosts his pace to a brisk 25 miles per hour, but Seymour won’t rest until he can take the human body to the next level, and outrun some of Earth’s fastest land animals.

'3-D Cutter' Othermill Goes On Sale

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photo of an Othermill machine on a tabletop, with a person in the background
An Othermill
Other Machine Co.

You can think of an Othermill as the opposite of a 3-D printer. Instead of building up objects from raw materials, Othermills create objects by cutting away a larger block of material into something smaller. They're like tiny robotic sculptors, similar to the artists who chisel away at a big block of marble until it becomes a work of art.

Like home 3-D printers, however, Othermills are made to fit on a tabletop. And they've gone on sale this week, so just as with 3-D printers, you can now buy one.

One Othermill machine costs $2,200. It carves materials that are softer than its cutting instruments, including certain woods and plastics, printed circuit boards, and certain metals like brass, copper, and aluminum. The machine has a precision of one one-thousandth of an inch (about 0.02 millimeters) and works faster than 3-D printers do. Users load programs into the Othermill in popular file formats, which are listed on the Othermill website.

What can you make with all that? In a press release, Othermill's manufacturer, a San Francisco-based startup called Other Machine Co., talks about letting small businesses prototype electronics quickly. Meanwhile, Other Machine Co.'s Instructables profile has some more whimsical suggestions. There's a Halloween stamp kit, a tiny synth that makes eight-bit music, and a light-up necklace cut from circuit boards. You could potentially incorporate all of these at once into your Halloween costume.

The Othermill isn't the only tabletop "3-D cutter" you can buy. In March, Make magazine listed a few other options, including both commercially available carving machines and machines that are still Kickstarter projects. Othermill itself began as a Kickstarter project last year and only finished shipping products to its backers last month, the company reports. Now it's up and manufacturing for all customers.

To Kill Malaria Parasite, Feed Bacteria To Mosquitoes

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Blood Meal
An Anopheles albimanus mosquito bites a human. These species is a malaria vector in Central America.

The deadly malaria parasite, a protozoan named Plasmodium, rides inside the bellies of mosquitoes to get from human to human. While some scientists have proposed using genetically engineered or sperm-free mosquitoes to fight malaria, a new method aims straight for the stomach: Researchers have found that feeding mosquitoes bacteria inoculates the insects against Plasmodium. And if the mosquitoes can't carry the malaria parasite, they can't accidentally pass it on to the humans they bite.

In a study published last week in PLOS Pathogens, scientists introduced a bacteria called Chromobacterium Csp_P to a population of malaria- and dengue-infected mosquitoes. They found that in addition to wiping out a substantial chunk of the mosquitoes, it killed the Plasmodium pathogens in the stomachs of the survivors. They believe Chromobacterium-spiked traps could infect wild mosquitoes, effectively vaccinating them against malaria. Ideally, short-lived mosquitoes will contract Chromobacterium before they reach humans.

The Johns Hopkins team thinks the Chromobacterium fights Plasmodium in two ways. First, it activates mosquitoes' immune systems, which then destroy the malaria parasites as collateral damage. But Chromobacterium also kills Plasmodium and the dengue virus in laboratory cultures. This means it probably pumps out a slurry of chemicals that attack Plasmodium directly. The scientists speculate that these toxins might one day be used to fight malaria in people.

Researchers isolated the Chromobacterium from the mosquito species Aedes aegypti. There is no evidence that the bacteria can infect humans, but, Science reports, more research must still be done before scientists are sure its toxins are safe to use in the human body.

The fight against malaria in the developing world has ramped up in recent years. The WHO reports that efforts to combat the disease saved 3.3 million lives between 2000 and the end of 2013, but billions remain at risk--primarily in Africa. With treatment-resistant strains appearing, there is a demand for creative assaults on the parasite.

Chromobacterium is not the first bioagent deployed against malaria. Mosquito-killing diseases have joined chemical sprays and breeding disruption in the fight against the epidemic-carrying bugs for decades. But, if Chromobacterium works as planned, it would be the first dual-action bioagent, killing the disease and its biting vector.

Interstellar Travel Won't Look Anything Like The Movie

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The Interior Of An Imagined Colonial Transporter, Verdant With Life
Rick Guidice/NASA Ames Research Center via Wikimedia Commons

Christopher Nolan's Interstellar imagines a human journey to planets beyond our star. But that kind of trip would seem impossible in today's terms. Fortunately, a DARPA-funded task force is already working to make it happen in the next century.

Mae Jemison, leader of the 100 Year Starship Project (100YSS) told Popular Science that enormous challenges stand between human beings and colonizing a distant star system. But she believes 100YSS can bring together the diversity and creativity of invention necessary to make it happen.

Jemison has had a rare vantage point on human spaceflight. An engineer, physician, and—for six years—a NASA astronaut, she became the first woman of color in space when she orbited Earth in space shuttle Endeavour. Often, astronauts talk about the "overview effect" from space, a sense of oneness with Earth and its people. But Jemison says she found herself drawn in the opposite direction. 

"I looked down and I saw the Nile River go by, the pyramids, and my hometown Chicago, and I tried to make myself afraid. Outside of this hatch are forces totally inhospitable to human life," she said. "But I couldn't feel it. I would have loved to be up there in a bubble with just my cat."

The fact is, Jemison never strayed far from Earth. Shuttle astronauts, from the perspective of a solar traveller, barely got off the planet. No human being has gone beyond orbit of the far side of this planet's moon. Crossing the distances Interstellar imagines will involve gigantic leaps in technology and human infrastructure. Nolan gets it wrong, Jemison says, in populating his epic with vehicles that look a great deal like those travelling around Earth today.

The Not-So-Different Future
In the 'Interstellar' trailer, Matthew McConaughey sets off for the stars in a ship that looks a lot like the ones we use to orbit Earth.
Paramount Pictures and Warner Brothers

She likens Interstellar's challenge to crossing the Sahara desert—another vast, lifeless space that humans have nonetheless tamed. But in the 53 years since the Yuri Gagarin made the first trip into Earth's orbit, crewed missions have yet to make a substantial fraction of a trip to a foreign star. Like the nomads who build cultures around desert crossings, Jemison says our entire approach to space travel will have to change before we attempt the interstellar vastness.

Right now, a lack of powerful yet efficient propulsion limits human civilization to this solar system. For example, the Voyager I probe, launched in 1977, speeds away farther from Earth than any other spacecraft. In 2013 it became the first in interstellar space. However, it will be another 40,000 years before it even remotely enters another star's neighborhood. Any mission making the journey to a habitable exoplanet must move a much larger weight much faster—approaching a substantial fraction of light speed—to make the trip in even several generations.

Of the many technologies Jemison says might accelerate a spaceship to that velocity (and, equally as important, deccelerate on the other end), only one exists today: nuclear fission. Some power plants, military submarines, satellites, and aircraft carriers convert heat from decaying atoms into energy. But no reactor has ever propelled a space engine, partly because of the dangers and inefficiencies of fission, and partly because of international treaties governing the use of nuclear power.

Where fission fails, its cousin might succeed. That is, if we can ever make it work. Fusion—smashing together atoms to form larger elements while releasing incredible energy—powers every star in our universe. With some ingenuity, it could also help us reach them.

To illustrate the diffierence between fission and fusion, consider America's nuclear assault on Japan in 1945 used fission bombs and had a combined blast area of about 20 square miles. The blast of the largest fusion bomb ever tested, meanwhile, affected 1,520 square miles.

"We can't separate the vehicle from what it's doing and what it's carrying—it's got to be different."

The prospect of fusion-powered spaceflight is tantalizing, but efforts to even build an efficient reactor on Earth have stalled for several decadesAntimatter, produced in tiny, fizzling samples at CERN, annihilates with still greater power when it contacts matter. Yet scientists have only produced a few particles of the exotic substance, and the record storage time is 1,000 seconds before spontaneous annihalation. In short, we have a long way to go before filling up a gas tank with antimatter. Jemison also points to the possible construction of vast solar sails to catch photons and accelerate a craft over huge distances. Huge earthbound lasers and power sources could then propel the craft without the need to drag interstellar engines along.

But Jemison says propulsion is just the first and most obvious problem an interstellar ship's engineers have to address, and that this point is where many science fiction films like Interstellar fail. "One of the issues with applying today's space technology to the future is it blocks our way of thinking," she says. She would like to see a movie explore a more radical vision.

"Even the inside of the Enterprise [from Star Trek] looks a lot like what we have today, with grey walls and military hierarchies and buttons everywhere," she says. "We can't separate the vehicle from what it's doing and what it's carrying. It's got to be different." We should expect a starship built in 2114 to be as alien to us as the International Space Station would be to a biplane pilot in 1914. 

A ship making the journey to another solar system will likely have to leave without any plan to return. It'd also need to contain an environment that could nourish and protect decades or centuries' worth of travelers. Jemison says a lush, green ship might carry the first outbound crew. Components would self-repair, and food would grow within the walls. (Such engineering challenges plague Mars colonization ideas today.)

Even a giant, antimatter-driven, self-sustaining space colony, however, might fail on its journey. A suitable starship must be more than sustainable and powerful. It must also protect its inhabitants. Using today's technologies, an enormous lead shield would have to separate the ship's inhabitants from harsh radiation out there in the universe. (Some suggest a hollowed-out asteroid.) But in the future, magnetic technologies now bending radiation at cancer in the body might scale up to deflect gamma rays like Earth's protective magnetosphere. 

So, let's say we do build a ship that can safely carry a population over lightyears. It will be useless without a vibrant, skilled community to inhabit it, Jemison says. "That crew that goes, whether it's 50 or 10,000, needs to reflect the diversity of the planet it comes from—cultural, gender, and socioeconomic." About 10,000 travelers would be the minimum—any fewer than that, and genetic fitness would take a hit (see chart below).

space colony genetic health chart
Space Colony Genetic Variation
About 40,000 people would be needed to seed a genetically fit deep-space colony, according to one study.
Illustration by Katie Peek/Popular Science; chart adapted from Acta Astronautica

To bolster diverse thinking, Jemison invited researchers from wide-ranging fields onto the project, and set up programs designed to involve people without science PhDs in space travel. Today, fashion professor Karl Epselund, for example, investigates interstellar clothing for the project. And more than $2 million for advanced aerospace manufacturing training has already reached Orange Coast Community College in California, where many students now go on to work for SpaceX, according to dean Doug Benoit. Jemison says the longterm goal is to expand the base of skilled laborers and technicians who one day will form the bulk of a large interstellar crew. 

The course to a space-faring future for humanity is long and riddled with nebulae of uncertainty. Overcoming them will involve a generational shift in human ambition. Jemison says she's glad Nolan's film has built up buzz around the idea of interstellar adventures, but that she wishes such sci-fi films would show more creativity in their vision.

"I'm a little sad that the impetus of the movie is we've screwed the planet up," she says. "I hope the reason we do this will be more positive."

Your Washing Machine Could Charge Your Smartphone Someday

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illustration showing a tablet showing scissors cutting a power cord
Wireless Charging
Alison Seiffer

Hanging out in the kitchen? Chances are, you—and your smartphone—are within 15 feet of the refrigerator. Right now, two companies are planning for a future in which that means you could get the charge on your phone topped off.

Haier, a large-appliance maker, and Energous, a wireless-charging startup, have signed an agreement to develop their products together, Computerworld reports. The companies are thinking of placing Energous' WattUp transmitters inside Haier appliances, such as refrigerators and washing machines. The transmitters would send a charge through the air to any small devices nearby that have their own WattUp receivers embedded and turned on. Spend enough time in rooms with WattUp transmitters and you might never have to plug your phone or smartwatch into a charger again.

That's the idea, at least. Energous isn't selling anything yet (they're still working on their receiving chips, it seems), but they aim to roll out a product by Thanksgiving 2015, according to Computerworld. Meanwhile, its competitors are also seeking to charge your devices wirelessly and from a distance. WattUp works by sending charge over radio-frequency waves, while other products in development work via magnetic resonance (WiTriCity) and sound waves (uBeam).

In addition to sticking WattUp transmitters in other people's products, Energous seeks to make its own wireless charging "routers," analogous to WiFi routers. 

[Computerworld]

Shipping Containers Could Relay Quantum Information Across Oceans

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Cargo Ship

Physics says that if two particles are entangled on a quantum level, they are permanently linked -- a change in one particle will instantaneously affect the other one, no matter the distance between them. That’s something that could be fantastic for quickly transporting information across vast distances … but only if we can figure out how to use it.

Scientists (and corporations) are already building working computers that rely on quantum entanglement. Now one of the biggest challenges for quantum computing is distance. Unlike our current computing networks, which swiftly move information across thousands of miles via super-speedy cables, quantum computing doesn't have the same reach yet. The longest distance over which information has been transferred via a quantum network is just 300 kilometers, which might someday be enough for conveying information around a city or region, but not really enough for international quantum computing--especially across an ocean. 

Now, scientists think they might have found a decidedly old-fashioned way to solve the ocean problem. The solution is already in use at ports around the world: the humble container ship. Scientists writing in a paper posted to arXiv.org have proposed using shipping containers to transport critical parts of a computing network from one side of the ocean to the other. The container ships will function kind of like a Pony Express, but instead of carrying messages, the cargo will be slightly different: they'll be moving quantum objects.

The quantum objects might be made of diamond or silicon, and they would be entangled with other particles in a similar object across the world. While the quantum objects themselves won't take up much space, keeping them stable (so that people can actually recover the information) is a big challenge. The objects that we have so far can only keep the particles secure for short periods of time and at really chilly temperatures, so refrigeration and support infrastructure would take up the rest of the shipping container.  

In the weird world of quantum computing, the objects won't contain the information itself. Once the containers get to their destination, the objects can be used to instantaneously transfer the information stored in qubits from the paired object on the other side of the world.  

Other researchers are working on building repeaters that can keep all the entangled particles intact over long distances, but they tend to be really finicky machines—and on the seafloor, if something went wrong, repairing them would be extremely difficult and impractical. Enter the cargo ship, which is large enough to store the massive amounts of equipment, and relatively accessible for repairs.

With the cargo method, the lag won't be in the information transfer, just in travel time—how long it takes for the container ship to get from one side of the ocean to another.

In an age when transportation only seems to be getting faster on a personal delivery level, with same day and drone delivery on the rise, cargo shipping can seem like it moves at a snail’s pace. (Travel time on container ships has slowed considerably in recent years out of a desire to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and is similar today to the speed of vessels back in the 1900's.) In this case, hauling the quantum objects across the ocean could take weeks. But until scientists develop the equivalent of underwater telegraph cables for quantum computing, cargo ships, even with their slow pace, might be the missing link in a growing technological field.

For the rest of us, transporting information via traditional hard drives (spy cape and aluminum briefcase optional) is going to be a more practical option.


Big Pic: Jupiter Gets An Eye In Its Storm

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Hubble Telescope photo showing Jupiter with a dark, round spot inside its storm
True-Color Jupiter, April 21, 2014
NASA, ESA, and A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center)

When the Hubble Telescope snapped this true-color image in April, NASA scientists found Jupiter staring right back at them. That black dot is Ganymede's shadow, crossing Jupiter's Great Red Spot, creating an eerily blank-looking eye. It is almost certainly the eye of a large and emotionally stunted monster.

The shadows of Jupiter's four major moons--Ganymede, Io, Europa, and Callisto--often cross its surface, the Hubble team reports. So this image is actually not so rare, just well-aligned. Ganymede is the solar system's largest moon, so its shadow is especially impressive.

For another example of unintentionally spooky stuff in space, check out this image of the sun that NASA captured earlier this month.

Future Airplanes Might Replace Windows With OLED Screens

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Windowless Airplane Concept
Centre for Process Innovation

There may be no such thing as a window seat on the airliners of the future. A concept released by the U.K.’s Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) envisions airliners with thinner walls, made by doing away with cabin windows altogether. In their place, CPI sees OLED screens lining entire interior walls, which would show passengers the sky around them.

Weirdly, the OLED screens aren’t CPI’s selling point. Instead, their stated goal is fuel efficiency. A lighter airplane uses less fuel, and ultimately generates fewer emissions. From CPI:

For every 1% reduction in weight, the approximate fuel saving is 0.75%. If you save weight, you save fuel. And less fuel means less CO2 emissions into the atmosphere and lower operational cost... everyone wins.

Riding a metal tube through the sky at hundreds of miles an hour is strange enough with only a small portal to see the world below. Using OLED screens instead of windows means that passengers could see much much more of the sky than they’re used too. (Perhaps too much, if these humorous photoshopped versions of the concept art are any indication). 

OLED screens are thin, lightweight, and flexible. Arrayed in panels along the cabin walls and ceiling, the screens could show the outside world (as captured by wide-angle panoramic cameras on the outside of the plane) at a resolution of 150 dpi. CPI expects that the technologies needed to manufacture large OLED panels will be ready in about five years. Introduction into airplanes, along with airplanes specifically made without windows, will come later.

Until then, enjoy every window seat.

Watch a video about the concept below:

Microscopic Robots Learn To Move Like White Blood Cells

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Microscopic beads
Juan Aragones, Josh Steimel, and Alfredo Alexander-Katz

In the 90s kids show The Magic School Bus, eccentric teacher Ms. Frizzle took her class for a wild ride in a sick student’s immune system -- only to be attacked by white blood cells. White blood cells tracked the bus using the same chemical traces they follow to find infected sites or navigate their way to viruses. If microscopic robots could replicate this complex navigation system, which is shared by many different cells and bacteria, doctors could use them to provide real-time updates on internal structures or distribute drugs to specific targets within a body.

MIT physicists have begun to work toward this vision by developing a microscopic machine that can imitate certain movements of white blood cells and bacteria. In the study, published in Physical Review Letters, scientists used two tiny metal beads to model the tumbling action of bacteria as they migrate toward areas of higher friction.

The simple robot was manipulated with a rotating magnetic field, which propelled the machine to walk, or tumble, forward on a modeled cell surface. The model housed a complex terrain with varying degrees of friction created by layering vitamin particles and protein molecules to simulate the terrain of a cell surface. Through this artificial landscape, the machines automatically gravitated towards vitamin particles, areas that created higher friction.

Now, replace this model cell surface with an actual cell surface. The friction isn't created by particles on glass, it's created by the cell's surface receptors. The binding sites of these receptors are often the targets for many drugs.

“We could eventually use this as a way to tag on things and take them to remote places in your body and monitor different conditions in your body. That’s really far down the future,” says Alfredo Alexander-Katz, a professor at MIT and an author of the study.

The next step for scientists is to test the robot on live cells created in-vitro, says Alexander-Katz. It’s much different to create machines that will bind to a real cell than a model surface. So for now, tiny robots that infiltrate your body may be just as fictional as a magic morphing school bus.

What Happens To A Body When It's 'Sleeping With The Fishes'?

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Forensic scientists often have to reconstruct the events leading up to and following a person's death, in case of foul play. The state of the body can reveal when the person died, how, and where the body was disposed of.

Part of discerning that information depends on understanding the effects of decomposition. For that, scientists can observe bodies decaying on land in specially constructed body farms at universities. But what if a body ends up in the water instead of on land? There have been studies looking into decomposed remains, but actually observing how bodies decompose in water has remained elusive, and for good reason. The bodies that are typically detailed in case studies are victims recovered from the ocean after accidents, which aren't exactly observable from day one. 

To fill in the gaps, scientists from Simon Fraser University in Canada submerged three pig cadavers (a standard substitute for the much more difficult to obtain human variety) in an inlet off British Columbia. Their results were just published in a study in PLOS One.

They found that when two of the dead pigs were placed in the water while it had relatively high oxygen levels, the bodies were quickly scavenged by crabs, lobsters and shrimp, approaching skeleton status at around 25 days.

But when a third pig was placed in the same inlet when oxygen levels were low, the carcass was left relatively undisturbed, and a thick bacterial mat formed over the body. The mat remained until the oxygen level started to rise in the spring, when larger scavengers started to return. (The scavengers tend to avoid waters with low oxygen levels.) Even 135 days later, when they stopped the experiment, the third carcass wasn't fully skeletonized. 

The researchers monitored the state of the pig carcasses with the help of an underwater observatory named VENUS, which filmed and broadcasted the decomposition. Because the pigs were deployed at depths where there is no visible light, the cameras keeping track of the cadavers were only turned on a few times a day (30 minutes per session) to avoid scaring off the crustaceans from their watery pig pickin'.  

The scientists hope that this study, and others like it, will help not only with forensic analysis of bodies recovered from bodies of water, but could also help family members of the deceased manage their expectations of what condition their loved one's body might be in after they were lost at sea. 

Gallery: The Top 10 Failed NASA Missions

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screenshot showing the launchpad of the Antares rocket, with a  fire
View of the Antares Rocket After Launch, October 28, 2014
Screenshot from Wallops Flight Facility's live, public video feed

Orbital Science's Antares rocket exploded just seconds after liftoff yesterday. The rocket was carrying science experiments and supplies for the International Space Station. The mission was unmanned, and nobody on the ground was injured either, according to the public video feed from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility. The combined value of the destroyed rocket and cargo vessel, a Cygnus craft built by NASA, is $200 million.

As many commenters have noted, space is hard. It's unfortunate and costly when launches fail, but not unprecedented. We're republishing this gallery of unmanned NASA mission failures as a reminder of some recent history. Some of these examples even include fixes! Although we're guessing the experiments Antares was carrying won't be so easily repaired.

By the way, NASA is now collecting debris from the explosion to help engineers understand what went wrong. Those who live near Wallops and see what may be Antares debris can call NASA's incident response team at (757) 824-1295. People shouldn't touch the debris, which can be contaminated with toxic rocket fuel or other chemicals.

Click here to enter the gallery.

Lava Flow Swiftly Approaching Hawaiian Town

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Fence
Lava overruns a fence on October 28

Compared to most natural disasters, a lava invasion does not move all that fast. Nowhere is that more evident than the small Hawaiian community of Pāhoa, where a lava flow has been approaching the town since June 27. Now, the lava has finally arrived on the outskirts of town, overrunning private property. In the picture above, the lava behind the fence is chest-high. Geologists are keeping a close eye on the progress of the flow, which currently seems to be headed straight for Pāhoa Village Road, one of the village's main streets, and beyond that, for Highway 130, a traffic artery travelled by 10,000 cars a day. It's already crossed over one road, Cemetery Road, and a cemetery (presumably the road's namesake).  

Map
An annotated photograph showing the progress of the lava flow at 11:30 am on October 27

The flow is advancing at 48 feet/hour (approximately 0.009 miles/hour). Many people living in the path of the lava have evacuated their homes, school has been cancelled, and workers have constructed temporary access roads that could help manage traffic in the event that the lava overruns Highway 130.   

Lava flow
A shed is consumed by the lava flow on October 25
 

How Four Technologies Will Carry The Weight Of War

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U.S. Troops In Vietnam
Getty Images
"The ability to move is directly related to the ability to survive."

Shortly after iron swords and spearheads became common, soldiers in sixth-century Greece ran into a problem. Infantrymen carted around breastplates, helmets, bronze-lined wooden shields, and iron-tipped spears—as much as 70 pounds of extra weight. The loads were so intolerable that soldiers routinely abandoned them on the battlefield. The famous Spartan phrase “Come back with your shield or upon it” was not meant to inspire valor. It was a directive to stop troops from ditching essential equipment.

Since then, machine guns have replaced heavy javelins, but the weight soldiers carry into war has remained stubbornly consistent: Today, as in Roman times, the average foot soldier lugs about 55 percent of his bodyweight into combat. And though Kevlar is much lighter than bronze, new field tools such as radios, night vision goggles, and all the batteries necessary to power modern war have offset any lightening of loads.

That’s a significant issue. “The ability to move is directly related to the ability to survive,” says Lee Mastroianni, program manager at the Office of Naval Research. During the D-Day invasion of Normandy in World War II, for example, many U.S. Army soldiers drowned while attempting to wade ashore with 90 pounds of gear. Today, musculoskeletal injuries to the knee and back prompt twice as many medical evacuations from Iraq and Afghanistan as combat injuries, and they’re the number one reason for medical discharge from the U.S. military.

But new technology is now driving in-the-field solutions, helping scientists develop new ways to lighten troops’ burdens. Some shave away existing weight. Others, such as a real-life Iron Man suit or a robot mule, shoulder the load. But all of them will change how soldiers fight, making the terrible business of war just a little more bearable. 

Robotic Mule
Graham Murdoch

Click on the thumbnails below to explore emerging technologies that will help carry soldiers' burdens. 

This article orginally appeared in the November 2014 issue of Popular Science under the title, "The Weight Of War."


Smallpox Samples Slated For Immediate Destruction Are Still Intact, Pending Red Tape

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transmission electron micrograph (black and white microscope photo) showing smallpox viruses
Smallpox Virions
Imaged using a microscope, magnified about 370,000 times
CDC/ Dr. Fred Murphy; Sylvia Whitfield

After U.S. government researchers discovered six forgotten vials of smallpox in a freezer this past June, the plan was to destroy the vials. That's still the plan… but the demolition date has been pushed back, Nature News reports.

The actual destruction should be fairly easy, biosecurity consultant Erik Heegaard told Popular Science in July. (See more of his, and other experts', insights into deadly, forgotten samples.) Smallpox can killed by autoclaving, then incinerating it. However, officials from the World Health Organization are supposed to witness the destruction of the forgotten U.S. vials and the WHO is a bit busy right now with Ebola. Nature News reports:

The CDC promised to destroy the NIH samples immediately, with WHO officials present. But that has proved more difficult than anticipated. . . . no WHO employee is certified to enter the CDC's high-security smallpox lab. This means that a WHO official must fly to Atlanta to witness the destruction of the virus on closed-circuit television. Arranging the trip has been made more difficult by the Ebola crisis, says Alejandro Costa, head of the WHO team in Geneva, Switzerland, that monitors smallpox issues.

Meanwhile, the vials are being kept in a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention facility in Atlanta, Georgia, which is one of the two places in the world authorized to store smallpox, according to international agreement.

Check out Nature for more on the fate of not just the forgotten vials, but smallpox samples that officials are deliberately storing in the U.S. and Russia.

[Nature News]

How Benedict Cumberbatch Became A Dragon [VIDEO]

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(MGM)

A delightful clip of Benedict Cumberbatch playing Smaug for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug made the rounds last week, showcasing the weirdness of motion-capture performance. In the video, he wears a full body suit, and white dots are speckled on his face. Yet as funny as this site is, most people probably weren't surprised by it. After all, we've seen Hollywood actors decked out in ball-studded jumpsuits for motion capture roles throughout the past decade.

For The Hobbit, Cumberbatch is playing a flying, six-limbed reptile. But in reality he has cheeks, a mouth, and eyes on the front of his face -- no wings to speak of. Crossing that boundary is a strange feat for the actor, but it's even more demanding for the animators.

"I haven't yet met an actor who doesn't want to do it."

USC graphics researcher Paul Debevek discussed cross-species motion capture with Popular Science. Debevek spent time at Wetta Digital when the company worked on graphics for the latest Hobbit movie, and he also lent his talents to CGI-heavy films like King KongAvatar, and this past summer's Malificent. "There's a real creative challenge to figuring out how a creature's face should relate to a human face," he says.

Those white dots on Cumberbatch's famous mug help the computer track his expression--but that person-shaped constellation of markers doesn't fit easily onto a dragon. (Fun fact: even though Cumberbatch is light-skinned, white dots contrast more with his tone in absolute terms than black dots would, making them the ideal choice.)

Most famous examples of motion capture to date involve human-like characters. Andy Serkis, the human behind Gollum, King Kong, and Caesar the ape is perhaps the performer most well-known for motion capture technology roles. He has developed a reputation as a master of the form bringing all those nonhuman (but definitely bipedal) beings to life on screen. In the first Lord of the Rings film, he simply stood in for Gollum on set, and animators used software to paint the decayed Hobbit over his body, mimicking his actions. By for the second and third films, Serkis wore a suit much like Cumberbatch's. Reflective beacons at key points on the fabric bounced light at the cameras, allowing animators to match Serkis's motions to key points on a digital model of Tolkein's monster.

The advent of advanced face-acting motion capture has driven more mainstream stars like Cumberbatch into the game. James Cameron's 2009 blockbuster Avatar saw Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana, and Sam Worthington transformed into the giant blue Na'vi aliens--acting with head-mounted cameras like the one Cumberbatch wears recording their every grin and scowl. But the Na'vi, though an alien species, had the convenient builds of lanky bipedal acrobats and faces that closely resembled their performers. Translating human expressions for the nearly $500 million film was a comparatively simple task. (Ingredients: one celebrity, two silly ears.)

(Discovery)

The task of plastering human expressions across a non-human face involved a lot more decision-making after the performance itself was recorded. Debevek says the most important ingredient in Smaug was animators' creativity. Teams of artists and technicians had to decide how to extrapolate dragon-y motion from Cumberbatch's human-y grimaces. Debevek says he once witnessed visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri and his two top animators meet for half an hour to discuss whether Smaug's lips should "curl up or down a little bit" when the actor sneered. 

In the clip, Cumberbatch is prone presumably to best imitate a quadraped. But his knees don't even bend in the right way, and without wings those motions had to match his body through pure imagination. 

Despite these challenges Debevek says he believes more Hollywood stars will don bodysuits and head-mounted cameras for fantasy roles. "I haven't yet met an actor who doesn't want to do it," he says. "The performance capture process offers creative opportunities that would never otherwise be available."

In other words: who wouldn't want to play a dragon?

Feast Your Eyes On The Best Microscope Images Of The Year

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jumping spider eyes under a microscope
Jumping Spider Eyes
Noah Fram-Schwartz

Every year since 1974, Nikon has herded a gaggle of nerds into a room for an impossible task: Pore over thousands of microscope images and pick the very best ones.

I was lucky enough to join the judge’s circle this summer for Nikon Small World 2014—the 40th year of the microscopy competition. Our small group had to peruse more than 1,200 entries from 79 countries.

It wasn’t easy. Many of the images had just the right mix of contrast and color to make them nearly leap off the screen. But our judging criteria went beyond visual allure; a gorgeous-looking image can be surprisingly commonplace while a mysterious-looking shot is borderline revelatory. So, we selected the finest shots based not only on appearance but also creativity, informational content, and technical execution.

The 20 images you’re about to see (including Mr. Jeepers Creepers jumping spider eyes, above) really are the best. There’s everything from psychedelic-looking algae and frighteningly detailed caterpillar feet to hyperrealistic rotifers and rainbow-colored worm babies.

One more thing before you dive in: If you find yourself curious about the techniques used to make these award-winning images, I’d recommend a visit to Molecular Expressions and MicroscopyU. These sites aren't exactly light reading, but they do host countless interactive visuals—including this animation, which demystifies the complex, Nobel Prize-winning superresolution microscopy method—that go a long way in helping you understand how the techniques work.

Click an image below to start blowing your mind.

How Sneeze Particles Travel Inside An Airplane

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At first, the video displays the virtual insides of a crowded passenger airplane. Then all of a sudden, one of the passengers seated in the middle "sneezes." Hundreds of multicolored particles are jettisoned into the air, creating a rainbow-speckled cloud that lingers above everyone’s heads. The cloud dissolves, and the particles disperse, making their way to the unlucky few seated adjacent to the sick passenger.

By the end, the particles have spread all over the cabin, but it's the people seated to the left and to the right of the "sneezer" who are at the highest risk of infection.

This simulation video reveals just one of the many ways influenza particles can travel in a pressurized airplane cabin. Modeling these high-flying infectious scenarios is the job of ANSYS, a company that specializes in precise simulation software. ANSYS uses computational fluid dynamics to simulate the pattern of airflow in airplanes in order to help airlines and health officials trace how flu particles are distributed at 39,000 feet. You can watch a video of their simulation below:

"The particles are colored to show you where the stuff goes," Robert Harwood, aerospace and defense industry director for ANSYS, explains to Popular Science. "Those droplets get picked up by the airflow and get transplanted all over the cabin. They actually spread quite far."

Although the spread of Ebola may be on everyone’s minds, it’s important to remember that Ebola is not an airborne pathogen. You can't catch it if someone sneezes on an airplane. The flu, however, does spread through the air, and it poses a much more substantial threat in the United States, affecting tens of millions of Americans each year and causing up to 49,000 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Those droplets get picked up by the airflow and get transplanted all over the cabin. They actually spread quite far."

Since flu shots don’t provide 100 percent protection, health officials are always looking for ways to cut down on the virus’s spread. To do that, they often turn to airplanes -- one of the most efficient modes of travel for pathogens. Filled with hundreds of passengers, squished in and unable to escape, airplane cabins can be the perfect breeding ground for the flu; all you need is one sick passenger to get things started.

Figuring out how flu particles spread on airplanes has been a concern of the Federal Aviation Administration since the outbreak of SARS in 2002. "There were outbreaks all over the world, in Asia, Africa, and Europe," says Harwood. "The reason it happened so quickly was because people got on airplanes and spread the pathogen."

After the SARS outbreak, the FAA formed the Centers for Excellence for Airliner Cabin Environment Research to ensure the safety and health of airplane occupants. The program tested a number of new technologies for pathogen tracking, including new cabin sensor systems and contamination mitigation technology. And that’s when ANSYS’s simulation technology stepped into the realm of aviation.

"With traditional engineering, you come up with an idea, build a model or prototype, test it, and modify it until you get the product you want,” says Harwood. “The business we’re in, before you cut metal, you use computers to simulate the physical behavior of that product to cut down on modifications.”

ANSYS normally develops simulation software for engineering, physics, structural mechanics, elastics, fragmentation, and more. Their technology can tell you if the handle in your coffee cup is going to be strong enough, or if an airplane wing will have optimum lift and drag in the air. However, the company also has the ability to model the aerodynamics of fluids, making their software ideal for mapping the spread of flu in a contained space. So for years, scientists at the FAA’s Center of Excellence at Purdue University have studied ANSYS simulations, learning more about the mechanics of pathogen travel in pressurized cabins.

Within airplanes, the air is constantly being pumped in from inlets in the ceiling and recycled out through vents at the passengers' feet, making airflow models quite complicated to create. "Every two minutes, there’s a whole new set of air in the aircraft," Harwood says. To make their airflow simulations as realistic as possible, the researchers at Purdue consider everything that might impact the velocity and direction of the flow of air, from the positioning of the overhead air conditioning nozzles to the currents created by flight attendants as they push the food and drink carts.

Considering all these variables, the scientists can create hundreds of scenarios for how germs and other contaminants spread within an airplane. Then they use what they’ve learned to make recommendations to the FAA for creating better – and safer – cabin areas. “Since this work really started, you’ve got more advanced passenger environments,” Harwood says. “It’s a key protective battleground against the flu and other germs.”

ANSYS's software also helps airlines improve their cabin environments on the cheap. By simulating how new air conditioning systems will affect airflow, airlines can figure out which systems reduce germ travel for the lowest cost.

"Airlines are constantly fighting this trade off: The more systems you put in the aircraft, the more weight you have and the more money it costs," says Harwood. "They want the cheapest flight but also for their passengers to be healthy. Our technology is useful because they can see how they can achieve that and improve performance without sacrificing cost."

H1N1 Flu

Throwback Thursday: 11 Amazing Costume Ideas From The PopSci Archives

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Diving For Gold Diggers
Popular Science

Forget disco chic, or flower power-era costumes. Here are 11 truly retro Halloween costume ideas from our archives. This Throwback Thursday, we bring you the most eerie and wacky outfits to ever grace the pages of Popular Science.

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