To collect whale snot, drones will replace crossbows. In an oceanic research move that seems like a quantum leap in technology, dronemaker Yuneec announced on Monday that it is collaborating with Ocean Alliance to collect health data on whales by using robots, instead of shooting the whales in the blowhole.
Once a research team spots the whales, they will fly Typhoon and Tornado drones that are carrying petri dishes into the cloud of snot exhaled by the whale blowholes. Collecting this data looks like this:
Gross, but a lot less invasive than snot research used to be. From a press release put out by Yuneec and Ocean Alliance:
In contrast, most current methods of physical sample collection involve pursuit in a motorized boat and firing a biopsy dart from a crossbow. In addition to causing stress to the whales, it is believed this approach can skew results, especially with regard to understanding stress levels for whales outside of captivity.
“Snot bots are designed to remove the potential harm caused to whales during the research process. After an extensive search, we determined the Yuneec product line of quiet and sophisticated drones gives us the best possibility of success,” Kerr added.
Previously, students from Olin college used drones to collect whale snot and Ocean Alliance this summer held a crowdfunding campaign for new snot bots. This collaboration gives the alliance new, reliable drones for their conservation work, and it lets Yuneec show off its machines performing well in sticky situations.
Svalbard, Norway is known for it's splendid Arctic scenery, frigid weather and polar bears. But it wasn't always like this. In a study published recently in Geology, researchers announce the discovery of a fossilized tropical forest in Svalbard.
Chris Berry and other researchers from Cardiff University found tropical tree stumps--the remains of an ancient tropical forest--during field work in the frigid latitudes.
380 million years ago, the continents were in vastly different places. The solid part of the Earth that we live on is broken into sections called tectonic plates. Over time, these plates move, pushed around by the Earth's mobile interior. Svalbard was near the equator 380 million years ago. (Watch this great animation to see where your home was back then.)
The fossilized tree stumps found by the researchers were lycopsids, early trees that are related to club moss.
Trees in fossil forest
Cardiff University
Scientists think that the explosive growth of these trees during this period helped to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
“During the Devonian Period, it is widely believed that there was a huge drop in the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, from 15 times the present amount to something approaching current levels," Berry said in a statement. “The evolution of tree-sized vegetation is the most likely cause of this dramatic drop in carbon dioxide because the plants were absorbing carbon dioxide through photosynthesis to build their tissues, and also through the process of forming soils.”
Today, Svalbard's frigid temperatures have made it very attractive to biologists, who took advantage of the cool climate to refrigerate the Doomsday Seed Vault, a repository of seed samples from around the world. The first withdrawal from the vault was made this year in response to the ongoing conflict in Syria, and surely more will come soon as climate change continues to impact both wild plants and agricultural crops around the world.
“It’s amazing that we’ve uncovered one of the very first forests in the very place that is now being used to preserve the Earth’s plant diversity,” Berry said.
Techno music features repetitive electronic beats. To produce these sounds automatically, artist Graham Dunning turned to a piece of technology much older than techno: the turntable. He modified several discs, assigned different sounds to each one, and stacked them in layers to create a mechanical DJ. To see each individual component, check out the above video, which came to our attention via Boing Boing.
Dunning has put his "Mechanical Techno" project to work in live musical performances. See it in action below.
Fusing machines and animals is a fairly common theme in both science and science fiction. You've heard of cyborg cockroaches, DIY cyborgs, and the Borg.
But what about melding plants and machines? That's something that hasn't been attempted as much. In a study published today in Science Advances, a team of researchers from the Laboratory of Organic Electronics at Linköping University in Sweden discovered a new use for cut roses: electronic circuitry.
The lab has been working on the problem off and on for over 20 years. They tried to incorporate electronics into trees back in the 1990's, but funding problems halted the project. Now, they've succeeded in building electronic circuits out of roses.
"Now we can really start talking about 'power plants' - we can place sensors in plants and use the energy formed in the chlorophyll, produce green antennas, or produce new materials. Everything occurs naturally, and we use the plants' own very advanced, unique systems." Magnus Berggren, lead author of the research said.
Here's how it works. The scientists invented a particular polymer called PEDOT-S that could be sucked into the rose's vascular system, just like a cut flower sucks up water and plant food in a vase. Once inside, the polymer forms 'wires' inside the plant's xylem, allowing electric signals to be transmitted, but still letting the plant get the nutrients and water it needs. Plants, just like people, naturally contain electrolytes, substances that can carry an electric charge. By connecting the wires to the electrolytes, the researchers were able to create a working transistor and a digital logic gate, the basic building block of a computer system. Using a similar polymer, the team was also able to create a colored display on the leaves of a rose, making the polymer inside the leaves change color.
While it's unlikely that your next computer will be grown, this kind of technology is hugely exciting for ecologists and plant biologists. By growing circuits inside plants, researchers could get an unprecedented look into how these living things function, and monitor their health on an amazingly intimate level--think of the sensors that we have for monitoring heart health or brain activity. Now, we might be able to do similar things with plants, a vital part of Earth's ecosystem.
Tough armor is great at protecting creatures from predators. But one little marine mollusk has armor that's even more useful. In fact, its armor doubles as eyes.
Now, eyes are not known for being tough: You can scratch them, jab them, they're soft little orbs. And notably, they're made of organic materials. Not so for the Acanthopleura granulata. This species of chiton has hundreds of tiny eyes dotting the plates that protect it, and the lenses are made of inorganic material. Where eyes are typically made out of protein, chiton eyes are made of a transparent aragonite, which is the same hard, ceramic material that its tough shell is made out of. The lenses, however, were made of larger aragonite crystals than the rest of the armor.
Microscope image of Chiton eyes within the armor
Image via Multifunctionality of chiton biomineralized armor with an integrated visual system
Scientists have known that these armored lenses exists for a while. But now, researchers at MIT, University of South Carolina, and Harvard have discovered that the eyes can actually see. That means the eyes perceive images, rather than just being able to perceive light. The scientists used high resolution microscopes and crystallography to understand the 3D structure of these unique eyes. In doing so, they discovered photoreceptor cells that help the creature focus images in their nervous system (since they lack a central brain).
MIT says that understanding how these eyes work and the materials that make them up could lead to manmade materials that are both protective and perceptive of their environments.
New Balance announced yesterday that it plans to launch a new running shoe for 2016 that would include a 3D printed midsole. The shoemaker known for its running gear hopes that this method will cut down on the overall cost of the shoe, and will allow users to customize their shoes to fit their athletic needs. The sneaker, which is still unnamed, is set to be available in select stores starting in April of next year.
New Balance isn’t the first shoe company or designer to invest in 3D printed shoes. For the past few years, major athletic companies have hinted at using 3D printing to create their running shoes, but it wasn’t until just recently that the goal has begun to come to fruition.
In October, Adidas announced its partnership with the 3D printing company Materialise to create a similar 3D printed midsole for a running shoe, and Nike also announced its intentions to make a 3D printed sneaker.
To create their midsole, New Balance partnered with 3D printing company 3D Systems to use its printers in combination with a newly developed elastomeric powder called "DuraForm Flex TPU," which helps keep the shoe lightweight and flexible.
The actual process involved isn't technically "3D printing" in the strictest sense, but rather selective laser sintering (SLS), which involves using lasers to fuse shapes out of powdered material, building an object up layer by layer. In the case of the New Balance sneaker, the midsole is the part that will be lasered out of powder. In this way, a shoe could be more accurately customized to fit the unique shape of an individual’s feet.
“3D printing allows us to design different performance functions into one part, and ultimately deliver individual performance features to an athlete,” Katherine Petrecca, General Manager for Studio Innovation at New Balance told Popular Science.
New Balance
As most runners and athletes know, the shape and feel of the midsole is a critical feature as it’s one of the main sources of support and shock absorption. So a midsole designed specifically for the particular needs of an individual athlete could not only provide comfort but also prevent injury.
According to Petrecca, the 3D printing method would also help the company’s designers reduce the amount of time it takes to design a specific shoe. Midsoles are usually designed and produced using a mold that typically takes a month to build. The 3D printer is able to print 16 different midsole designs in one day (per machine) so designers could more easily compare multiple concepts, without the added production lag time.
However, while the 3D printed midsole shoe is set to be released in April of next year, the ability to customize your own (which will likely cost more) is still at least another year out, and there is still no word on how much either of the designs will cost, which could be the single biggest factor that determines how widely it is adopted.
So what does the future hold for sneakers? In regards to the possibility that all shoes will be made via 3D printers, Petrecca is optimistic. “The necessary design tools, materials and part processing techniques have moved to a new level. The ability to scale this technology for production is the next challenge.”
The Snowflake: Winter's Frozen Artistry by Kenneth Libbrecht and Rachel Wing gives us all a close look at snowflakes, no matter where you spend your winters. And yes, there's that cliché that snowflakes are unique and special and blah blah blah, but seriously, you probably had no idea snowflakes came in this many shapes and sizes. Thankfully the authors are well-placed to be your guides to the tiny world of snowflakes. Libbrecht is a physics professor at Caltech, where he studies ice crystal growth. Wing is a park ranger in Monrovia, California, and works with Libbrecht as a snowflake chaser.
When hunting for the perfect snowflake, the first thing to know is how they're made. And in the book, Libbrecht and Wing include a handy guide. The below morphology diagram plots the main geometries based on temperature and humidity.
And finally, it's time for the snowflakes themselves. We've included a few of our favorites in the gallery below. You can read more in the book, which was published this fall.
We are living in a golden age of jetpacks, or at least of personal flying aircraft called jetpacks. Martin Aircraft is well on its way to commercial production, if not necessarily success, and they’ve already lined up buyers like Dubai's police for their one-person flying machines. Yesterday, Martin Aircraft released video and a statement about successful manned tests of the production model of the drone. A working prototype is good, but a working production model is even better.
Here, watch the jetpack with pilot take off, and note the DJI Inspire drone filming the flight in the background:
This is that same flight, from the Inspire drone’s camera:
The flights are in preparation for a manned flight display in China in early December. Watch the full video, with many more exciting angles of takeoff and landing, below:
Forest on a plateau (Nassau Mountains) in North Suriname
Hans ter Steege
Ever since we were children, we’ve learned in grade school and from Ranger Rick about the cutting down of the rainforest. We learned that it’s bad—that lots of animals and trees are killed and people’s livelihoods are turned upside down. We’ve been told random facts and figures about how many acres are destroyed every second. We eventually start to become numb to it.
So what’s really going on there? There are 15,000 known species of trees in the Amazon. How are those species of trees—the lifeblood and kings of the Amazon—faring? A large international team of researchers set out to find answers to just these questions. Perhaps not surprisingly, their findings were grim: up to 57 percent of all Amazonian tree species are likely to qualify as globally threatened.
What We Knew Before
The rainforests of Amazonia are estimated to have originally covered 2.2 million square miles—a staggering number. Amazonian forests have lost approximately 12 percent of that since industrialization began. Most of this has occurred in the southeastern part, in a region known as the “arc of deforestation.”
Many people have tried to understand and explain the consequences of massive forest loss at an ecosystem level i.e. soil erosion, diminished ecological services (not the least of which is oxygenation of the atmosphere) and climatic patterns gone haywire. But, no one has really attempted to figure out what is going on at a species level. In other words, we roughly know how much forest is being cleared, but what tree species are being destroyed, which ones are in the most danger, and how will that affect the overall destruction of the Amazon? Will the collapse of certain species have a domino or exponential effect on the process? That is precisely what tropical forest ecologist and leader of the study Hans ter Steege wanted to figure out.
Two Future Scenarios
Ter Steege and his team took highly a detailed model of tree abundance across Amazonia, developed from 1485 different forest inventories and overlaid two other models representing different deforestation scenarios. Each scenario combined historical, current, and projected rates of cutting. One scenario predicted what would happen if “business as usual” (BAU) or current rates of clearing continued. The other, titled the “improved governance scenario” (IGS) showed how much forest might be cleared if the integrity of indigenous peoples territories and protected areas were strictly maintained.
Under the BAU scenario, approximately 40 percent of the original Amazon forest would be destroyed by 2050, and under the less drastic IGS scenario, about 21 percent of original forest would be lost. Overall, and perhaps more startling, ter Steege and his team concluded that one-quarter to one half of all Amazonian tree species may experience population declines of over 30 percent. This affects all trees, including iconic species like the Brazil nut (63 percent could be lost by 2050) and wild populations of major food crops like cacao (which would see 50 percent population decline) and acai palm (which would experience a 72 percent loss).
Traditional slash and burn agriculture
Hans ter Steege
A positive outcome of this study, note the researchers, would be to officially classify up to 57 percent of all Amazonian tree species as threatened on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List (the highest regarded and most accurate database on the status of biodiversity all around the globe). “It’s [the IUCN Red List] a political instrument that has been used across a wide array of areas and situations” for conservation purposes and carries significant weight.
Ter Steege goes even further to suggest that most tropical tree species on earth may be eligible for official Threatened classification by the IUCN, considering that Africa and Asia have lost about 55 percent and 35 percent of their tropical forests respectively. And while it’s important to assess all species of flora and fauna, plant species can get overlooked. “Mammals and birds create more attention, but there are many more plant species, and our data on them is much less” says ter Steege.
What It Means
Ultimately, for the IUCN to be able to officially list a species in any category it must be fully assessed which requires a much more thorough hashing out of each species’ current state. But, since over 90 percent of all tree species on Earth are tropical, it might be a good idea to heed this advice. Despite the gloomy results, ter Steege remains hopeful. “Though 11% of the Amazon has been lost, more than 80 percent of it is still there. And around 50% of it has some conservation status. So while we might not be able to stop all deforestation we still have huge possibilities for comprehensive conservation in one of the richest terrestrial regions in the world.”
Caxiuana, Brazil
Hans ter Steege
It’s also important to remember that these estimates do not represent exactly what is going to happen. If the late Joe Strummer had anything to add when it comes to conservation it would probably be that “the future is unwritten.” This study presents a warning that most certainly requires our attention, for sure, especially with climate change exacerbating all environmental challenges of the present and future (climate change enhances the effects of deforestation like soil erosion and desertification), but it’s also a check up. It lets us know where we are, and what we need to do to avoid ending up somewhere we don’t want to be.
Sailors have for millennia known that the sea hides far more than it reveals. Nowadays, finding robots under the water is almost an inevitability, though that didn’t mean Maryland crabber David Haas was expecting to find one. On November 5th, near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, Hass was crabbing with his crew when they caught an underwater military drone.
“He said it was really foggy and almost hit it,” his wife, Laurie Haas, said in a follow-up interview Tuesday, Nov. 17. “It was floating on top of the water. They thought it was an upside-down sailboard at first.”
She said her husband brought home a 6- to 7-foot bright yellow tube with fins on the end. After inspecting it, a crew member found a service number on its underside and called it.
“We were a little concerned because it could have been very valuable and belong to someone,” Laurie Haas said.
The object, it turns out, was an autonomous underwater vehicle, or a sea drone, owned by defense giant Northrop Grumman. After the Hass family called the number on the side of the drone, the company picked up their watery robot the very next day. Motherboard identified the specific machine as a Remus 100, built by Norway’s defense giant Konsberg. The Remus series of underwater robots are scouts and patrol units, exploring below the sea, looking for explosive mines and other threats.
Unlike airborne drones, which are often remote-controlled, sea drones are more autonomous machines, since the signals needed to control them don’t travel so well through the water.
We don't know for sure what the robot was doing, but there's about 23 miles of water between the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and the Naval Research Lab's Chesapeake Bay Detachment. The Remus 100 can move for 22 hours at 1.5 mph, so that's at about the outer limits of how far it can go on its own.
That autonomy is great most of the time, but it also means the robots can get lost. When they do, it’s nice for them to find a friendly fisherman who can bring them home. Failing that, a crabby fisherman will do too.
SpaceX rockets have shuttled cargo to and from the International Space Station, and now NASA wants the company to get ready to carry humans onboard too. On Friday, the space agency announced a work order for a manned mission in late 2017.
Boeing, another company that aspires to carry astronauts to and from the space station, received a similar order in May. As Popular Scienceexplained at the time, the order is a way for NASA to give these companies a heads-up so they can get all their ducks in a row in time for the 2017 launches.
"It’s really exciting to see SpaceX and Boeing with hardware in flow for their first crew rotation missions," said Kathy Lueders, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, in a press statement. "It is important to have at least two healthy and robust capabilities from U.S. companies to deliver crew and critical scientific experiments from American soil to the space station throughout its lifespan."
As of yet, it's undecided whether Boeing or SpaceX will be the first private company to carry astronauts into space.
SpaceX rockets have been grounded since June, when an unmanned resupply mission to the ISS exploded. At the time, SpaceX and NASA said that the disaster would help to ensure the safety of future passengers, so the company could work out the kinks before putting any astronauts in harm's way.
Both the SpaceX and Boeing vehicles will still need to go through rigorous certification before astronauts will be let on board.
Swedish automaker Volvo has a long-held reputation as a car company that puts safety first. Some safety features, like replacing spear-like traditional steering wheel shafts with bulkier, non-impaley versions are easy to see. Other features, like laser sensors that detect the movements of nearby cars, are a little trickier to demonstrate on the showroom floor. So, to advertise their safety in the modern era, Volvo teamed with Microsoft to create models of the cars in virtual reality:
There are no actual cars in this showroom. Instead, prospective buyers wear goggles for Microsoft’s HoloLens system, which displays virtual objects like they’re holograms, and walk around virtual visions of both the car and the invisible systems that make the car and its safety features work. The cars' invisible sensor fields are envisioned as colorful waves, a neon-bright world of awareness that you'd never see in a regular showroom.
As new, safer cars get increasingly autonomous, convincing humans that it’s a good idea for a car to have control is a tricky proposition. Visualizing the sensors in such a compelling fashion is a pretty good way to sell it. Watch a promo for the HoloLens showroom below:
Albert Einstein as seen in a photograph from the U.S. Library of Congress
Albert Einstein is pictured in this photo from the Library of Congress dated 1900, about 15 years before the scientist began publishing a series of papers describing his theory of General Relativity, which remains a bedrock of modern physics 100 years later.
One hundred years ago this month, Albert Einstein redefined what gravity is, overthrowing his own hero Isaac Newton.
Newton had imagined gravity to be a force like any other that pulls on things to get them going. But Einstein wove gravity into very fabric of space and time, molding an invisible landscape of hills and valleys through which objects move.
The equations describing this vision, known as the general theory of relativity, have since become a cornerstone of modern physics—opening new doors for understanding everything from how planets and stars move to existence of dark matter and the early days of the universe itself.
“Today it really is the standard model for gravity,” says Clifford Will, a physicist at the University of Florida who has devoted his career to the theory. “It has passed every experimental test with flying colors.”
That hasn’t stopped people hoping to challenge the wild-hair genius from drawing up alternative theories. New ideas for modifying general relativity have multiplied in recent years. Some add extra dimensions to the universe. Others invent brand-new particles. All have one thing in common: no evidence has ever been found to back them up.
“There are hundreds of these theories in the scientific literature,” said Tessa Baker, a theoretical physicist at the University of Oxford. “You can build all sorts of gravity theories that behave in all sorts of different ways.”
No one seriously expects to ever throw out Einstein’s equations entirely—except maybe the crackpots who sent unsolicited manuscripts in the mail to science journalists like me. But physicists have good reason to be grumpy about general relativity, despite its success. It doesn’t get along with quantum mechanics, which governs the smallest scales of reality. And it includes a fudge factor that troubled Einstein himself, who added it to account for the accelerating expansion of the universe.
But here in our own solar system, general relativity has proven itself time and time again.
Consider the planet Mercury. The elliptical path it traces through the heavens moves around over time. Newton’s math could explain this precession for other planets, but not Mercury. It took Einstein to identify the cause: warped spacetime near the Sun has a pronounced effect on Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun.
General relativity also predicted how much those distortions from the Sun’s gravity should bend a ray of light passing nearby. Teams of British astronomers who traveled to South America and Africa famously confirmed that prediction by photographing stars visible close to the Sun during a solar eclipse.
Negative of a solar eclipse verifying Einstein's general relativity
In this 1919 negative of a solar eclipse, British scientist Sir Arthur Eddington helped verify Einstein's theory of general relativity, showing light bending around the Sun as predicted in the theory.
Others have since cast doubt on that experiment—claiming that the astronomers perhaps saw what they wanted to see—but the ability of stars and other celestial entities to not only bend light but shift its color is now well-proven. Some heavenly bodies even focus the light coming from distant objects, acting as lenses that, for instance, help planet hunters to find alien worlds around faraway stars.
Though Earth has a much weaker gravity than the Sun, technological advances have made it possible to confirm its uncanny effects closer to home. Spinning gyroscopes in orbit aboard NASA’s longest-running mission, Gravity Probe B, moved wobbled in a way consistent with Earth’s mass both warping the fabric of spacetime like a bowling ball on a trampoline and twisting it like a spoon twirled in honey. Here on the surface, the world’s most precise clocks, which keep time with vibrating atoms, tick slightly slower if placed on the floor instead of the table—thanks to the slightly stronger gravity on the floor slowing down time.
Illustration of spacetime warping around Earth
In this NASA illustration, the effects of Earth's gravity can be seen warping spacetime in accordance with Einstein's theory of general relativity. NASA's Gravity Probe B spacecraft is also depicted.
Thwarted by planets and stars, those hoping to poke holes in Einstein’s theory have begun to look to uncharted water elsewhere in the universe.
“About 5 to 10 years ago, people started to realize that we needed to test general relativity at larger scales,” says Luca Amendola, a theoretical physicist at the University of Heidelberg.
New projects that will check relativity’s predictions for the structure of the universe itself include European space mission Euclid and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, which broke ground this year in Chile and will use a panoramic camera to photograph galaxies.
Artist's rendering of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)
Artist's illustration showing the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope currently under construction at Cerro Pachón, Chile. The reflecting telescope includes the world'es largest digital camera and will survey the entire night sky every three nights for 10 years in an effort to understand its structure.
Others are focusing on the most gravitationally awesome objects in the universe: black holes.
“We want to test gravity in different regimes,” says Dimitrios Psaltis, an astrophysicist at the University of Arizona. “We want to see if we can find evidence of new physics that appears beyond some threshold.”
Psaltis has joined an international team of astronomers watching the black hole that lives at center of our galaxy. The black hole itself is invisible; its gravity is so strong that nothing crossing its event horizon, including light, can escape. But just outside of the event horizon lies a hazy ring of light and radio waves given off by dust falling into the black hole.
Nearly a dozen telescopes on four continents are tuning in to those radio waves to check whether that ring has the size and shape predicted by general relativity. Synchronized with atomic clocks, the network functions as one giant virtual telescope: The Event Horizon Telescope, which stretches from Spain all the way down to the newest member of the collaboration that joined this spring, the South Pole Telescope.
A European space mission due to launch this month also has black holes on the brain. Called LISA Pathfinder, it will try out technologies destined to fly on a 2034 mission, eLISA, that will check out what happens when two black holes orbit each other.
ESA LISA Pathfinder illustration
Artist's rendering of the LISA Pathfinder spacecraft, which will test the concept of low-frequency gravity waves.
General relativity predicts that such couples should create waves in spacetime that ripple outward, causing objects to expand and contract. LIGO, a ground-based instrument recently upgraded in September, has been trying unsuccessfully to catch those gravitational waves for years. eLISA will cast its net using three sets of free-floating objects.
In the quiet of space, the distance between those objects, as measuring by lasers that link the three spacecraft carrying them, should change slightly if a wave from two black holes in two merging galaxies passes by.
“LISA should see a few tens of these merger events over the length of the mission,” said Jonathan Gair at the University of Cambridge.
Catching a wave would not necessarily confirm Einstein’s theory; it must change distances only in directions perpendicular to the wave itself. Otherwise, physicists will need to go back to the drawing board.
Theorists can tell us little today about what new physics would be needed if any of these projects finds something strange. They will continue to play with their toy theories—refining and revising the math and throwing out ones that have problems—in the absence of an evidence to justify them. But they will dream of the day that the data challenges Einstein. Until then, his theory of gravity will continue its now-century-long reign.
This past week I was in Minneapolis, Minnesota for the Entomological Society of America's annual meeting. It was actually four conferences packed into the Minneapolis Convention center, combining entomology and agronomy in order to find solutions to problems such as the drought out west or colony collapse disorder. I was there to talk about comics and science communication on a symposium titled, Games, Comics, and Social Media: Outreach Education in Entomology. I was one of several amazing illustrators and entomologists there, and I'll have my sparse notes and tweets from that talk up soon. But for today, I wanted to showcase a slideshow of the really cool things I saw on the exhibit floor.
As if by fate, my first stop upon entering the exhibit hall was the expansive Bioquip booth. Though it might have had something to do with the crowd they had gathered. On display and up for sale was a fantastic collection of live and pinned athropods.
Bioquip also provides a huge range of entomological equipment, from specimen cases to microscopes to light traps for collecting. Not to mention some more unique tools...
These giant forceps might be used to feed more bitey tarantulas.
I didn't get to see it assembled, but they also have an insect bazooka. It doesn't actually shoot insects, but instead it attaches to a shop vac and sucks them up! It's basically the industrial version of that little spider vaccuum you can buy online.
Of course, I'd be remiss to neglect all the live tarantulas, centipedes, and scorpions they had for sale.
Each container was labeled with the species and location of the specimen, as well as a smiley face or frowny face—indicating how likely it is they'd bite you.
I deferred to Purdue University's Gwen Pearson in handling this ball of fuzz. It didn't feel like coming out, though.
Since the Atlas beetle (chalcosoma atlas) is somewhat of a mascot for my other comic, Sufficiently Remarkable, I couldn't leave Entsoc15 without picking up my very own atlas beetle specimen. Special thanks to all the folks at Bioquip!
Next stop was around the corner at LIVIN Farms, who was showing off their fancy new home insect hive.
"But Maki, why would I want a hive of insects in my home?"
To eat them, of course!
Photo by @bug_gwen
What can I say? I hadn't had breakfast yet. LIVIN Farms wants to literally kickstart the home insect protein market. Their farm lets you grow and maintain all sorts of delicious bugs.
Tastes like burnt popcorn!
It takes a lot of insects to amount to anything more than croutons on a salad, but with a home farm, you'll be making your own cricket meal in no time. If you want one of your own, you back the LIVIN Hive today!
Viewing specimens both inside and out in full color 3d has never looked so great thanks to Laser Ablation Tomography.
A 3d render of a horse fly head
l4is.com
LATScan uses an ultraviolet laser to vaporize a sample one layer at a time, photographing each step. Think of it like 3d printing in reverse. What you end up with is a slice-by-slice look at anything from plant matter to whole insects.
http://l4is.com/lat/
While you end up losing your sample in the process, the advantage over traditional scanning methods (Like CT or PET) is the full color images.
Another cool imaging device was Macroscopic Solutions'Macropod. It provides an incredibly stable platform and automates the focus stacking process.
Photographing small objects is tricky because the depth of field is so shallow. So if a sample fills the frame, it’s nearly impossible to have it all in focus. That’s why people use a technique called focus stacking. The macropod takes hundreds of photos, while slightly moving the focal depth each time. Afterwards, these images are combined to produce one complete image. You may be familiar with Thomas Shahan's gorgeous insect photos, which utilize the same technique.
Want to see just how great it is? Look at this photo. There's a beetle in there being photographed.
See it yet? It's right there... that little dot on the end of the string.
Now here it is after the magic is done.
Depending on your optics, the macropod and accompanying software is capable of dizzying levels of magnification. Just look at those scales!
I seriously cannot get enough of these photos.
On the Agronomy side of the exhibit hall was Rad Source Technologies, who was showcasing this device which irradiates insects with xrays. Not for Spider-Man purposes though. Instead, it renders them sterile so they can be released and help curb invasive populations.
Poor little bug.
Finally, I'll leave you with Coolbean the Soy Bean by Shawn Conley, Judy Mannes, and Marsha Rehns. It's a fun picture book all about the versatile super crop.
John Bisney and J. L. Pickering's latest, “Moonshots & Snapshots of Project Apollo,” is a stunning look at the Apollo program. This follow up book to “Spaceshots & Snapshots of Projects Mercury & Gemini” showcases not only uncommon NASA images from the Apollo program, but images from journalists and photographers that rarely, if ever, make it into photo essays about the lunar landing program. The selection of images is brilliant, offering a uniquely intimate look at Apollo. The NASA images are less common, showing the astronauts' candid moments in aircraft or quietly contemplating a pending lunar launch. These agency images are complimented by photographs from journalists and photographers, giving a different inside view on historic moments like Apollo 16’s launch.
Throughout the book, Bisney and Pickering explain the images, shedding light on little details few would notice let along think to ask about. (My personal favourite was the explanation behind the red helmets on Apollo 9 — I never knew that the Lunar EVA helmets were red and covered with white beta cloth for the lunar landing missions. Scott and Schweickart’s helmets just didn’t have that covering!) You don’t have to be an Apollo fanatic or even a space person to appreciate the story this book tells through its selection of images. Regardless of your own fandom, this is an extremely powerful collection.
On a related note to the power of Apollo images, my friend Trace Dominguez put together a fantastic response video to Kipp Teague posting the full Apollo Hasselblad magazines on Flickr last month. It's a beautiful expression of how these photographs can affect everyone in a different but meaningful way.
Reading has been around for millennia, but how we read (and what we read on) has changed dramatically over time. Take this story for example. You're reading it on some kind of computerized device, with pixels forming these words on a digital screen. Just a few decades ago you would probably be reading these words printed on paper. Time goes by so quickly doesn't it? Now go back even further. Several centuries before the present reading would be rare, and most important writing would be inscribed by hand onto prepared animal skins, but what kind of animal skins?
For a long time, people assumed that the finest parchment, used for delicate beautiful books like pocket bibles, came from smaller animals like rabbits, or was made from the skins of newborn or aborted calves and sheep.
The latter theory even gave rise to the name of the parchment, uterine vellum, but some researchers were skeptical, because using the skin from newborn or aborted farm animals would have been unsustainable agriculturally, especially with medieval farming practices.
A study published today in PNAS finds that the truth is not nearly as morbid. Using a new, non-invasive technique, the researchers found that really, the parchment just came from adult sheep and cow skins, similar to leather or sheepskin products today, but treated differently to get the desired thin, almost paper-like feel.
To reach their conclusion, the researchers looked at 220 samples from 72 13th-century pocket Bibles. To get their samples without damaging the precious books, they used a very simple tool: an eraser. By rubbing an ordinary PVC eraser (usually used in art classes or to remove dirt from old manuscripts) over the parchment they were able to get enough of the protein from the animal skin to run tests confirming what kind of animal the parchment was made of, and even where the animal came from geographically.
The development of a non-invasive test like this is a blessing for historians, who no longer have to take tiny clippings of parchment from these rare old books, keeping them preserved for future generations.
Apps and gadgets have made many of us obsessed with quantifying our health. And while there’s good reason to keep that information away from prying corporate eyes, pharmacies are finding new ways to incentivize customers to share that valuable data. This month, Walgreens has become the latest pharmacy chain to launch an app that gives customers small discounts in exchange for access to their digital health trackers (CVS has a similar program). And while this might be tempting especially for low-income patients, the information these companies are asking for is far too valuable to share for just a couple of dollars off, as Stat reports today.
When a patient downloads and agrees to the terms and conditions in one of these apps, she gives the pharmacy access to certain information, such as her weight tracker, pedometer, or sugar tracker (for diabetics). But she is also waiving the privacy protection afforded by HIPAA. That gives the pharmacy free reign to track and market specific products to these patients, pushing coupons for nearby locations or advertising medications based on a patient’s specific conditions, often via text message.
There are some benefits to doing this. Pharmacies purport that sharing this information will help ensure that patients are taking the correct amount of medication over the right period of time. But, as Stat notes, the pros outweigh the cons. As with many apps that track sensitive healthcare information, such as Apple’s ResearchKit, data that is supposed to go to just one place may end up being disseminated much more widely to employers or insurance providers, though Walgreens says it doesn’t sell identifiable information to third parties. Or the healthcare data could even be stolen and would sell for lots of money on the black market.
Even so, you may choose to download the new Walgreens app to save a buck. But you should know where that kind of data might end up—and that you might save more by selling your own healthcare info on the black market.
In the near future (possibly by the end of this year) Americans will have to register almost all of the small personal drones they buy in a great big government database that the public can’t access. At least, that’s one possible conclusion in the the final report from the FAA’s task force, appointed to study and provide recommendations for future drone laws.
The task force, which drew heavily on the existing aviation and retail industries, released their proposed rules for registering drones this weekend. While the task force won’t set the law, their recommendations will likely shape what drone law actually becomes.
Officially titled the “Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Registration Task Force (RTF) Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC)”, the group was assembled by the FAA last month to solve the problem of registering unmanned aircraft — an expansive definition for flying machines that may include everything from jet-sized Global Hawk drones to tiny paper airplanes with motors attached.
To steer the task force’s thinking, the FAA provided them with 14 questions on registration, like: “At what point should registration occur (e.g., point-of-sale (POS) or prior to operation)? How should transfers of ownership be addressed in registration?” and “How should the registration data be stored? Who should have access to the registration data? How should the data be used?”
These are big questions, especially given the category is big enough to include everything from homemade toy planes to giant machines akin to those used by the military. And the questions asked were pretty reasonable. The summarized version sounds like a pretty straightforward process:
Fill out an electronic registration form through the web or through an application (app).
Immediately receive an electronic certificate of registration and a personal universal registration number for use on all sUAS owned by that person.
Mark the registration number (or registered serial number) on all applicable sUAS prior to their operation in the NAS.
Drones weighing 250 grams or less (or roughly 0.5 lbs) would be exempt from these requirements, and drones larger than 55 pounds would get a different process. Owners of drones larger than that would register with an app or a website, and they’d have to provide their name and street address before their first flight. They’d have the option of providing email address, telephone number, and serial number of the aircraft.
Like an online account for email or social media, would-be drone owners would have to say they’re at least 13 years old to register (though proof-of-age would be difficult to enforce). They would have to provide their name and street address, as well as the number of drones they wanted to register. Then, they would receive a unique drone owner number, and they could either mark their drone(s) with the owner number, or a unique aircraft serial number. These numbers are supposed to be visible on the body of the drone, according to the task force's proposed regulations, making it possible for bystanders and other pilots to see the number on the aircraft they saw — sort of like license plates on a car.
And, in a break from existing registration laws, no one would need to be a U.S. citizen to register his or her drone, so foreign tourists could in theory bring their quadcopters to the country, register them online, and fly them legally.
In addition, the task force recommends a training component with the registration process, like the “Know Before You Fly” social media campaign that the FAA and drone industry groups launched for the 2014 winter holiday season (though the impact of that campaign remains unclear).
There’s some great math in this study (no, really!) that gets into the probability of tiny drones falling on people’s heads and killing them. After a few pages of questions, the task force reaches an estimate that drones weighing less than 250 grams, and also flying below certain altitudes and under certain speeds, would result in “less than 1 ground fatality for every 20,000,000 flight hours”.
While not a direct comparison, the Department of Transportation provides that in highway traffic in 2013 there was just over 1 fatality per million miles driven, so a standard of just 1 fatality per 20 million hours flown at least looks like an acceptable risk for most Americans. Drones this size also pose little, if any more risk to airplanes than that already posed by birds.
The math is good, but not all the policy implications are. One of the stranger recommendations is that the FAA should collect registration data for the government and then NOT disclose any of that data through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to journalists:
While the Task Force recognizes that a registrant’s email address and telephone number may be useful for the FAA to disseminate safety-related information to sUAS owners, the Task Force nevertheless believes disclosure of such information should be optional. With the exception of information released to authorized law enforcement agencies and state transportation and aviation offices, the Task Force urges the FAA to prevent the release of any personal information that the agency is not specifically required by law to disclose. Because this new requirement will impact unmanned aircraft owners who do not have the means to protect their identities and addresses behind corporate structures (as some manned aircraft owners currently do), it is important for the FAA to take all possible steps to shield the information of privately owned aircraft from unauthorized disclosure, including issuing an advance statement that the information collected will be considered to be exempt from disclosure under FOIA.
No law is made in a vacuum. Here’s how several industry groups responded to the announcement of the task force recommendations. Bear in mind that the FAA still has to decide what, if any, should be actually enforced as a matter of policy. So as of right now, drones follow the current regulations, which require that privately-owned drones flown for non-commercial purposes stay below 400 feet and 5 miles or further away from airports; and any owners of drones used for commercial purposes apply for, and receive, a certificate of permission to fly.
The Academy of Model Aeronautics, which represents model airplane enthusiasts and participated in the task force, was disappointed by the results, writing in part:
"Unfortunately, as written, these recommendations would make the registration process an unnecessary and unjustified burden to our 185,000 members, who have operated harmoniously within the aviation community for decades and who register and provide their personal contact information when joining the AMA. For this reason, AMA wanted to include dissenting comments in the final task force report, but was prevented from doing so...Unfortunately the task force recommendations may ultimately prove untenable by requiring the registration of smaller devices that are essentially toys and do not represent safety concerns..."
Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a drone industry lobbying group that was part of the task force, supported the group’s work, but says the FAA needs to do more to integrate drones into American skies, with their statement reading in part: "The FAA’s small UAS rulemaking has been beset by several delays. Considering that safety is at stake, we cannot afford to continue waiting. The FAA needs to make UAS integration a top priority."
DJI, the Chinese company responsible for the enormously popular series of Phantom drone for consumers (instantly recognizable by their white and red or yellow striped bodies), also participated in the task force. DJI released a statement today reading in part:
We share the concerns of many of the 4,700 people who filed comments that this process was initiated in response to sensational headlines rather than data-based risk assessments, and contradicts the provisions of several federal statutes. Nonetheless, we undertook in good faith the assignment, which was not to argue the law, but to use our expertise and knowledge as the world's largest drone manufacturer to recommend to the Administrator a national drone registration system intended to be minimally burdensome to consumers and professionals, and effective at the stated goals. The result is a recommended registration system that, if it were to become a legal mandate, reflects weeks of respectful dialog, genuine compromise, and a balancing of interests among the participants. While several aspects of the report might be of concern to one group or another, and remain so to DJI, we believe in the reasonable approach to accountability that is reflected in the package of recommendations sent to the Administrator.
Read the full list of recommendations here. And remember, if you get a drone this holiday season or have one already, fly safe!
Illustration of Earth coated in dark matter filaments
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Regular matter--the stuff that makes up everything humans have ever seen or felt--makes up just 5 percent of the universe. The rest is made up of dark matter and dark energy.
Although we’ve never detected dark matter, scientists know that it exists, and there are several theories as to what it’s like. It seems the stuff doesn’t interact with light, but gravity does have an effect on it. Now, in the Astrophysical Journal, one scientist has calculated that a planet’s gravity could give dark matter a hair-like shape.
Simulations done in the 1990s suggested that dark matter moves around us in massive streams, some as large as our solar system. Gary Prézeau, a physicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, has calculated what might happen when those streams of particles flow into a planet such as Earth.
Unlike other kinds of matter, the dark matter particles would pass right through Earth unaffected. However, they are affected by Earth’s gravity, which narrows the particle streams into dense filaments. Earth could be coated in these invisible “hairs.”
A planet with more gravity would sport a shorter dark-matter hairstyle.
The “roots” of the hairs are located about 600,000 miles from Earth, or about twice the distance to the Moon. This is where the dark matter particles are densest. The hair “tips” extend outward to about 1,200,000 miles. That’s some pretty long hair.
By comparison, a planet with more gravity would sport a shorter dark matter hairstyle. For example, Jupiter's greater gravity pulls harder on the dark matter particles, pulling the filaments in closer to the planet. So Jupiter's roots would begin at approximately 125,000 miles from the planet's center, and wouldn't extend as far as Earth's, Prézeau explained in an email with Popular Science.
The hirsute discovery could be a boon for dark matter researchers, since the particles would be densely clustered in these areas, which might make the particles easier to detect.
"If we could pinpoint the location of the root of these hairs, we could potentially send a probe there and get a bonanza of data about dark matter," Prézeau said in a press release.
