Caleb Harper

Joi Ito

Caleb Harper is the founder of CityFARM at the MIT Media Lab, a program dedicating to exploring the future of agriculture through “food computing.” Popular Science spoke with him about his Thanksgiving plans for this year.

What are you eating and/or growing for Thanksgiving?

My work involves growing food in environments that we can control with a computer. Imagine a box in which we can create a climate by controlling things like carbon dioxide, oxygen, temperature, humidity, and light. We have sensors running in that box to monitor what’s going on inside, and the computers adjust the variables to the levels we want.

I currently have seven of these little boxes in seven schools throughout Boston. Students from 7th through 11th grade are growing vegetables like mustard greens, kale, basil, and radishes. This week we harvested a bunch of vegetables so the students could take them home for Thanksgiving.

Caleb Harper showing students how controlled environment plant-growing works.

Caleb Harper

It turns out about 90 percent of what we like about the food we eat comes from the environment. People often claim things like the “best strawberries come from Mexico” or the “best tomatoes come from New Jersey,” but really the best strawberries and tomatoes come from whatever climates produce the size, sweetness, and colors that we like. Since we’re coding the climate, we can code the flavor that comes out on the other end. It’s like we’re creating little worlds.

We’re also growing plants in big boxes about the size of shipping containers, which we use for research. We’re harvesting those for Thanksgiving as well, and donating vegetables to local food shelters in the Boston area, including Pine Street Inn, Haley House, and Daily Table.

Little plant boxes at MIT Media Lab's CityFARM

Caleb Harper

How do you know what “codes” a perfect strawberry?

A big part of my research is figuring out correlations between environmental variables and how plants express things like taste, color, and texture. We’re trying to create a model of the plants and understand how they express different features over time.

The goal is to make this open-source -- imagine a Wikipedia full of “climate recipe” files that people can upload and download. Let’s say I’ve grown some really good broccoli and I upload a digital recipe for how to grow it. You might see “Caleb’s broccoli” online, download that digital recipe to the plant box in your house, and put a broccoli seed in. You’ll have almost 100 percent success in growing broccoli that has the same characteristics mine had.

We see kids already doing this in schools. They’ll e-mail each other climates they’ve created and say, “Hey, this is what we did to make the basil taste really sweet or grow super tall.” Then other kids might tweak that recipe and upload it again, saying “Hey, we changed one thing and it made the basil more spicy.”

You can get really specific with the parameters you’re controlling, from the minerals that are in the water to the temperature of the water relative to the temperature of the air. For each plant we might be monitoring somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 variables.

Students check out the roots on vegetables grown in one of Harper's computer-controlled plant boxes.

Caleb Harper

What does this mean for the future of agriculture?

First of all, we can use the little food computers to help a lot more kids understand the production of food. With a digital interface for growing plants, more people can be farmers -- you don’t have to be a farmer’s daughter or son, you can be an electrical engineer and contribute to global food solutions. Producing next-generation farmers is one of the most exciting things to me.

On a more practical side, you can produce a lot more food where it’s consumed. We’re experimenting with warehouse-sized boxes that could allow people who live in cities to grow a substantial amount of nutritious food. In the next 10 to 15 years, city-dwellers might get 30 percent of their food from where they live in, whereas right now it could be zero to five percent depending on the city. By eliminating shipping, we’d be cutting down on carbon emissions and food waste.

Students throughout Boston grew vegetables in controlled-environment boxes for Thanksgiving this year.

Caleb Harper

There are also applications for space. This is the type of technology that could be used by folks at SpaceX or Lockheed Martin who are interested in colonizing Mars. There are already growing experiments on the International Space Station that's similar to the work we do.

But ultimately, this technology would be good in a lot of places, like the Middle East or Northern Africa, where you can't currently grow a lot of food. Qatar imports over 90 percent of its food and Japan imports about 60 percent. If you watch the movie The Martian, you’ll see that the landscape looks a lot like the landscape in New Mexico. I think the movie itself was shot in Jordan. As much as this technology could be important on Mars One, it could be as important in Dubai.

When I first heard about edible water bottles—blobs of water encased in edible membranes—I was impressed. Waste from discarded plastic bottles is a huge problem, so a product that replaces plastic with a biodegradable material should get a big thumbs up. But then I thought again. I carry water in my oversized purse—if I threw an edible water bottle in among the loose pens, notebook, and snack (why, what do you carry in your purse?), wouldn't the membrane burst? And even if it was tough enough to survive inside a crowded bag, what would it taste like when I finally retrieved it?

I decided to make some edible water bottles and put them to a taste test. Note: The method that I used is NOT the method used to make Ooho, a commercial product that's currently seeking beta testers. Instead, I used a method created by Inhabitat, and based on existing molecular gastronomy techniques. I mixed sodium alginate and water to get a gooey substance that would go inside the water bottles. Then I dipped spoonfuls of this mixture into a bath of water and calcium lactate, which encased them in skin-like membranes.

Finally, I placed the bottles in a bath of clean water. Then I made asked my Popular Science coworkers to give them a try. The consensus? Edible water bottles—at least the DIY versions—taste nasty. The sodium-alginate-laced water is too thick to feel like a proper liquid, and the outer membrane is unpleasantly slimy. As for the flavor, it was slightly chalky—one taster compared it to ground-up Tums.

If you decide to make your own edible water bottles, I'd recommend adding some sort of sweetener or flavor to the sodium alginate mixture, even if that made juice bottles rather than water bottles. Or you could try to remedy the texture by using a reverse-spherification process: Put scoops of the thinner, more drinkable calcium lactate mixture into a bowl of sodium alginate mix, instead of the other way around. This might produce a drink that's more like water and less like goo. (I would try it myself, but I ran out of taste test victims volunteers). If your experimentation yields more palatable DIY water bottles, then let us know! Send the recipe to manual@popsci.com.

Wikimedia

Dave Arnold is a food innovator, writer, and host of the radio show Cooking Issues. Arnold is the founder and president of the Museum of Food and Drink and the brains behind Booker and Dax, a food and drink research lab in New York City. He is also the author of Liquid Intelligence: The Art & Science of the Perfect Cocktail. Popular Science spoke with him about his Thanksgiving plans for this year.

What are you eating and/or cooking for Thanksgiving?

I’m cooking two heritage turkeys. One is 10 pounds and one is 18 pounds. The only difference in the way I cook them will be the way they’re finished. I do all my cooking the day before Thanksgiving, and then I can do the finishing in several minutes. This frees up my oven for when people invariably come over and say, “I need to throw my x, y, and z in the oven” and you’re like, “Really? I have a turkey in there.”

So this year I’m cutting the bird down the backside and ripping out the rib cage, collar bones, and whatnot. I’ll rip the thighs and legs off with the meat and bones, but I’ll leave the skin still attached to the breast meat. I’ll salt and herb the thighs and legs and confit them for three and a half hours at 85 degrees Celsius.

I’ll also salt and herb the breast, which has the skin of the entire turkey attached to it. I'll cook it in a vacuum-sealed or zip-lock bag in a water bath at 64 degrees Celsius for about an hour and a half. The breast meat won’t need to cook for too long because it will be boneless and flat. Then I’ll shove the confit thighs and legs into the skin from whence they came, and reassemble the entire bird like it’s whole again.

I’m going to deep-fry one of the birds -- that one I’m not going to put stuffing in because it would absorb a lot of grease. I’ll finish the other bird in my tandoor oven, suspended on skewers so the turkey is cooked from all directions. The tandoor oven will cook the outside of the turkey in super high heat, so I’ll want stuffing within the turkey to help cook the insides.

I’ve never cooked turkey in a tandoor oven before, but I have this idea that anything can be cooked to good advantage in a tandoor oven if you figure out the right way to do it. I love my tandoor.

What are some other methods you’ve tried for cooking turkey?

Everything I do is in service of cooking the turkey well while trying to maintain the American tradition of having a turkey that at least externally looks like a whole bird.

If you cook the turkey whole, you run into problems because the breast meat wants to cook at a lower temperature than the thigh and leg meat. People try different techniques to solve this problem, like shielding the breast meat, or only brining the breast meat so it has a longer window to stay juicy.

Last year, I cut the raw bird down the backside and removed the rib cage, collar bones, and thigh bones. Removing the thigh bones helps you address the problem of having persistent pink action near the ball socket where the thigh meets the bird. I roasted the bones and made a stock so I didn’t have to use alternative stock or only use drippings for the gravy.

Then, instead of brining the breast meat I injected it with its own stock. This addresses the two main complaints from anti-brine people. One complaint is that when you’re wet-brining a turkey, you’re just making the turkey watery. The other is that you end up with drippings that are unpalatably salty.

After brining the turkey, I made stuffing with bread, mushrooms, mandarin orange, sage-y breakfast sausage, celery, onions, eggs, herbs, salt, loads of butter... and that crappy ‘70s style poultry seasoning. To me, the stuffing just doesn’t taste right without poultry seasoning. This is the one time each year I bust it out.

I sculpted the stuffing in the shape of the turkey cavity using pictures I took of the carcass. Then I heated the stuffing in a zip-lock bag with a sous-vide water circulator until the stuffing was nice and hot. I put the raw bird over the hot stuffing so it started cooking the bird from the inside out, and then threw the whole thing in a hot oven.

Because the bird had no bones, and it was being cooked from both inside and outside, the whole thing was done in just a little over an hour. Taking the skeleton out of the turkey also means it is a freaking dream to carve.

What would you say is the most successful method you’ve tried?

From a technical standpoint, the most successful turkey I’ve made is the bionic turkey, which I’ve made four or five times. That involves pumping hot oil into the turkey legs through fake aluminum bones.

To make a bionic turkey, cut two pieces of aluminum tubing to the same length as the leg and thigh bones. Make holes in the tubes so they act like sprinklers, and join the tubes at the "knee" with a length of rubber tubing.

Cooking Issues

To make the bionic turkey, I removed the bird’s entire carcass by turning the meat inside out, almost like how you’d take a glove off. I ran the knife around the thighs and legs to take the bones out, but I never cut the skin on the back or breast. The wing bones are the only bones left in the bird, because there’s not much you can do with them anyway.

I took aluminum tubing that’s roughly the same size as the thigh and leg bones, and joined them with flexible high-heat tubing. I cut holes in the metal tubes, kind of like the ones in a sprinkler. Then I pushed these fake bones into the thigh and leg meat.

The sprinklers delivered a hot mixture of butter and duck fat into the legs, which is usually where you get the most redness. Years ago I ran a test where I cooked the turkey at different low temperatures. I learned that the longer it takes you to cook the meat, the more persistent pinkness you get. Pumping hot oil into the turkey legs cooks them really quickly, so you solve that problem.

The hot fat surged through the turkey legs and then poured out of the turkey's butt into a lower-temperature, circulating oil bath. After pumping oil into the turkey legs for about half an hour, I immersed the entire bird into the circulating bath. I jammed herbs and some wadded-up aluminum foil into the bird, leaving a decent amount of open space, to heat up the inside of the bird.

To cook a bionic turkey, first pump hot oil into the legs through aluminum tubes. Then immerse the entire bird in a lower-temperature oil bath and cook it with aluminum foil stuffed in the cavity.

Cooking Issues

With no bones, all that meat cooked in under two hours. I pulled the parts out of their baths, let everything cool down, and carefully extracted the aluminum foil and aluminum bones. So I had a completely hollow turkey shell that was perfectly cooked.

To finish, you can deep fry or oven roast the whole bird in high heat. You could also heat stuffing up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, and shove the piping hot stuffing into the turkey with thick cooking gloves. Then let the bird come to room temperature as it’s heating from the inside out, and flash heat the entire thing.

Tara Whitsitt

Tara Whitsitt

Tara Whitsitt is an artist, food activist, and fermentation educator who just completed a two-year project called Fermentation on Wheels. During that time she travelled across the United States in a converted school bus and taught free food and fermentation workshops to communities of all ages and socioeconomic levels. In between going to big cities, Whitsitt worked on farms so she could bring freshly harvested produce to her workshops. Popular Science talked with her about her Thanksgiving plans for this year.

What are you eating and/or fermenting for Thanksgiving?

This will be my first Thanksgiving back home in Eugene, Oregon in two years, so I’m pretty excited. I spend most of my time living in intentional communities, and we make really big Thanksgiving meals with all locally-sourced ingredients.

I bring the ferment with some sauerkraut and ciders. This year I made a sauerkraut with green and red cabbage, carrots, green onion, and watermelon radish. For ciders I let the apples ferment naturally with wild yeast, and just add some cinnamon and nutmeg. I don’t add any inoculators of any sort, like yeast or bacteria. I just let the mixture sit for about a week, and I end up with a light, boozy beverage with around 4 or 5% alcohol content.

Lately I’ve been very into tempeh and miso as well. Tempeh is something that’s kind of hot in vegetarian circles for Thanksgiving. It’s traditionally made from soy, but you can use other legumes and mix it up with grains. I’ve done a tempeh with roasted barley and Jacob’s Cattle beans. Some people also make tempeh with quinoa -- you can get pretty creative with grains and legumes. The most recent miso I made was with red lentils, roasted barley, and soy beans.

Fermentation aside, this week I also made some baba ghanoush, and I imagine we’ll make a big butternut squash-apple soup because Oregon’s a great place for squash in the fall. A lot of us are from the South, so we might make Southern-style yams, greens, and hams to go with the turkey. We’re a very food-based, heart-and-spoon community, so we’ll go all out and cook for 48 hours.

Tara Whitsitt teaching a fermentation workshop

Edsel Little

Why do you teach fermentation workshops?

Fermentation is an easy process anyone can do at home with very simple tools. You don’t need any heat, you pretty much just need salt and vegetables. Sometimes I’ll teach fermentation classes with starter cultures, like for making sourdough, kombucha, yogurt, or kefir, but I mostly teach vegetable fermentation because it’s so approachable. I like to talk about where our food comes from and the importance of microbes, from the ones in the soil all the way to the ones in the end fermentation product.

Paul Liebrandt

Leslie Hassler

Paul Liebrandt is a British chef who has been awarded two Michelin stars and earned three stars from the New York Times at age 24. He has opened two restaurants in New York, Corton and the Elm, both of which served French-inspired cuisine. He was the subject of the 2011 HBO documentary A Matter of Taste: Serving Up Paul Liebrandt, and has published a memoir-cookbook called To the Bone. He is currently at work on a new project scheduled for next year. Popular Science spoke with him about his Thanksgiving plans.

What are you eating and/or cooking for Thanksgiving?

Being that I’m British, I grew up eating turkey on Christmas Day. Even after being in the U.S. for 15 years, I still feel like I’m eating turkey a month early. I usually do Thanksgiving at my house with friends, but I like to put a little British twist on it.

On Christmas Day in England you traditionally do roasted turkey, with roast potatoes, brussels sprouts with bacon, cranberry sauce, and sage and onion stuffing. It’s very similar to Thanksgiving food but we wouldn’t do things like sweet potatoes, which aren’t native to England, or green bean casserole.

I like to cook the turkey in pieces rather than the whole thing at once. It cooks perfectly that way. It’s hard to not undercook or overcook an entire turkey that weighs 20 pounds or more, especially in the commercial ovens people have in their homes.

I brine the breasts and very lightly roast them in a little turkey fat, butter, and garlic. I cook the legs with a little stock made from the carcass, braise them, take all the meat off, and mix the meat with stuffing. I use the braising liquid to make turkey.

For desserts, I like to do minced pies and Christmas pudding with brandy cream. Christmas pudding is a dense cake, kind of similar to a traditional wedding fruit cake. You put raisins, sultanas, nuts, and other candied fruits in it, and you steam it, like you would a traditional pudding, for several hours. Once it’s done you put brandy over the top so it sinks into the cake, and you flame it. It’s an acquired taste because it’s very, very heavy.

Christmas Pudding

James Petts

With leftovers I like to do a turkey version of a traditional British dish called coronation chicken, which was made for Her Majesty in 1977 on her Silver Jubilee. It’s cold breast meat diced up with mayo, celery, green apple, a pinch of curry powder, and sometimes almonds. You mix it up and make a really nice sandwich with it.

So then do you eat turkey again on Christmas, as per British tradition?

Oh no, I can only eat turkey once a year. Christmas is Chinese food for me -- some good Cantonese food.

Photo Credit: http://www.biofortified.org/

Project: GMOExperiment.com

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been around since the early 1980s, and have proven popular enough with farmers that by 2004, genetically modified crops were being grown by 8.25 million farmers in 17 countries. Although the general scientific consensus is that GMOs are safe, and have many benefits (including increased yield and better food security, especially for third world countries), GMOs have their opponents. Anti-GMO advocates are concerned that they have not been tested enough and may be harmful to humans and animals.

Meanwhile, on the Internet, all kinds of theories and claims abound, and unfortunately many of these are proclaimed as truth when they haven't been verified. Biology Fortified, Inc. (BFI), a non-profit organization made up of science communicators, has decided to test one such claim (that wild animals avoid eating genetically modified corn) by launching a massive citizen science experiment.

For the experiment, registrants will receive four ears of corn, which will be enough to do two experiments. The ears will be placed on a special stand, and then placed outside on a dry day, in a place where squirrels, birds, etc., are likely to find them. Citizen scientists will take measurements, and send pictures and the data with an easy-to-use web portal. The ears themselves will be barcoded and double-blinded to safeguard the results of the experiment.

We’re doing this experiment in a very open and public way so everyone can trust the results and see how science is done at the same time. ~ Karl Haro von Mogel, one of the project organizers.

Although the crowdfunding phase of this project is already closed (the project was funded very quickly to 218% of it's goal), there may still be some experiment kits left. You can register at this link, or if you would simply like to fund a kit for a school child, you can donate at this link.

You can also check out their Google Hangout or YouTube channel.

Chandra Clarke is a Webby Honoree-winning blogger, a successful entrepreneur, and an author. Her book Be the Change: Saving the World with Citizen Science is available at Amazon. You can connect with her on Twitter @chandraclarke.

As far-fetched as it sounds, the era of drones delivering packages is about to begin, according to Amazon. Earlier today, the company released a new ad on YouTube showing controversial British TV host Jeremy Clarkson praising the benefits of Amazon's still in-development drone delivery service, Amazon Prime Air, along with an all new "hybrid" drone design that can switch between vertical and horizontal flight.

"A miracle of modern technologies," Clarkson says, as the ad cuts to scenes of a father and mother using an Amazon Kindle Fire tablet to place an order for their daughter's new soccer shoes using a new Amazon Prime Air button, which promises delivery in 30 minutes or less.

The ad then shows off a striking, all new, rectangular blue-and-white drone with rotors at the back and underbelly -- a starkly different design than the black quadrocopter drone Amazon showed off in its announcement about Amazon Prime Air last year. Amazon Prime Air's change of design mirrors that of Google's Project X wing drone. That drone started as a tail-sitting plane, but now looks like a quadcopter with additional forward propellers.

Clarkson points out the new Amazon delivery drone rises vertically like a helicopter "to nearly 400 feet" before switching to horizontal flight orientation, "streamlined and fast," like an airplane. That altitude is no coincidence, as it's what the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration says is the upper limit for hobby aircraft, including drones. This friendliness with aerial regulation is new for Amazon; earlier this year, the company sparred with the FAA over delivery regulations. Amazon, as well as Google and several other companies, were recently part of an FAA task force to figure out drone registration rules.

Clarkson further adds that this new drone can fly for 15 miles straight, has automatic "sense and avoid" systems, and will be the first in a "whole family of Amazon drones, [with] different designs for different environments." The drone appears to fly autonomously or beyond the line of sight of a pilot, which is currently against FAA rules for commercial drones but is likely to change with future legislation.

Amazon still hasn't said exactly when the service will launch, but on its Prime Air website, the company says it "will not launch Prime Air until we are able to demonstrate safe operations" and "will deploy when and where we have the regulatory support needed to safely realize our vision," which is quite vague. We've reached out to Amazon for more information and will update when we get it. In the meantime, watch its new drone take flight above.

Rain drops keep falling on my head

Jason Schneider

Modern touchscreens like the one on an iPhone work by measuring the change in charge and voltage across a grid of hair-thin electrodes, aka capacitance. “When you touch your finger to the screen, it sucks out some of the charge,” says Geoff Wilson, a mobile-technology consultant and former touch technologist at Intel. That’s because your body is made mostly of water, which is extremely conductive. The touchscreen locates your finger on the grid by measuring how much the charge drops between two intersecting electrodes, a process called “mutual capacitance.”

The problem is that drops of sweat or rain can reduce the charge too by providing another conduit between the electrodes. Thankfully, over the past few years, touchscreen engineers have solved the water problem by drawing on a different mode of touch sensing called “self-capacitance.”

Instead of measuring the charge across pairs of electrodes, the touchscreen measures the increase in charge between an individual electrode on the screen and the ground you’re standing on. Because water droplets aren’t grounded, the phone’s firmware is better able to ignore them.

However, this method alone won’t work for most smartphones because it can’t handle multitouch gestures such as pinches and zooms. The signal corresponds to rows or columns of the electrode grid, as opposed to individual points. With more than one touch, a phone might register ghost points in addition to real ones.

The solution? Combine the two methods in a single touchscreen. If the device checks for both signals, it can pick up multitouch gestures while controlling for sweat, rain, and other moisture. “It’s the same electrodes and the same controller,” Wilson says. “The only difference is the firmware, which has to be smart enough to combine the measurements.”

Some phones already come equipped with the combo, but that’s rarely advertised. It’s tough to make “mutual and self-capacitance” sound sexy in an ad.

This article was originally published in the November 2015 issue of Popular Science

In the movies, the leg is arguably the best place to be shot; bad guys hardly seem to react to the injuries. But in reality, leg wounds can result in amputated limbs or even death, if a piece of shrapnel or a bullet ruptures particular veins or arteries. Now scientists have precisely modeled the fluid dynamics of a gunshot wound to the leg, in order to better staunch the bleeding in emergency situations. The researchers presented their work last week at the conference of the American Physics Society, as the New Scientist reports.

Though other researchers have modeled the fluid dynamics of blood and looked at the effects of gunshot and shrapnel wounds to various parts of the body, this is the first time this modeling has been done for the legs, which are a very common site of injury, not only from gunshots, but also from mines and IEDs. To create the simulation, the researchers created scans of different layers of the leg: the hard bone, the soft tissue (containing muscle and blood vessels), and the skin encapsulating it all. Working with pre-determined rates of blood flow from specific arteries and veins, they then used a well-known model of fluid dynamics to simulate how much blood would exit the body, should the bullet pass through certain parts of the leg.

The researchers hope to use these simulations for real-time training exercises for combat medics. That would allow the doctors to immediately test different methods of staunching the bleeding from wounds in order to perform better in real-life battlefield scenarios.

The models are certainly an improvement on the current training method, which requires doctors to work on animals. But the models aren’t perfect—they don’t take into account things like broken bones or multiple wounds on the same limb.

As the models become more sophisticated, however, they may be able to incorporate more variables. But for now, the researchers are satisfied that their work has brought them one step closer to eradicating the animal models. “We’re genuinely hopeful that our simulations will enhance the educational experience for medical trainees,” Jeff Eldredge, the director of the Simulations of Flow Physics and Acoustic laboratory at the University of California Los Angeles who led the research, told New Scientist. “But I’m really pleased just to get visceral reactions from my kids. That probably makes me a horrible father.”

Small Asteroids Could be Captured by Spacecraft and Mined for Water and Minerals

Planetary Resources Inc.

On Wednesday, as most Americans were stuck in holiday traffic or prepping their Thanksgiving feasts, President Obama signed the Space Act of 2015.

The bill is designed to encourage the fledgling private space industry. Among other things, it extends a sort of "grace period" that gives spaceflight companies the right to launch rockets with as little government oversight as possible, and gives companies property rights to the resources they mine from asteroids or other celestial bodies. Congress passed the bill earlier this month, and with Obama's signature, it's officially a law.

The asteroid resources portion of the bill may cause an uproar overseas, particularly in Russia and China. According to the Outer Space Treaty, which the U.S. has signed and ratified, space belongs to no nation. As such, some space law specialists think the U.S. has no right to dole out property rights in space, and that any decision on that matter should be made by the international community.

Various experts interpret the Outer Space Treaty's meaning differently.

Gbenga Oduntan, who studies international commercial law at the University of Kent, called the bill"a full-frontal attack on settled principles of space law."

[T]he very first provision of the Outer Space Treaty (1967), to which the US is a signatory, is that such exploration and use shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries. This therefore prevents the sale of space-based minerals for profit. The treaty also states that outer space shall be the “province of all mankind … and that states shall avoid harmful contamination of space".

On the other hand, Frans von der Dunk, a space law professor at the University of Nebraska, compares space to the high seas--everybody owns it, but fishermen don't have to apply to an international authority to go out and fish.

Although companies are still many years away from having the technology to actually go out and mine on the Moon or on asteroids, they are of course celebrating the legal win.

"A hundred years from now, humanity will look at this period in time as the point in which we were able to establish a permanent foothold in space," Peter Diamandis, co-founder and co-chairman of Planetary Resources, said in a statement.

Dairy cows

The type of cows--and their genes--in the Chinese facility might be different, but the industrial-scale production of cow products is the same.

Scott Bauer, USDA ARS via Free Stock Photo

As the population of China has become wealthier and increasingly urbanized, the country’s consumption of meat has reportedly quadrupled in the past 40 years, and producers have struggled to keep up with demand. Now commercial genetics company BoyaLife plans to increase the supply of beef by cloning cows on an industrial scale, according to a recent press release.

Cloning livestock enables farmers to ensure a high, consistent quality of meat by allowing them to choose animals with the most desirable qualities, such as resistance to disease and large size. So it's not surprising that this technology isn't new; since Dolly the sheep was born in 1996, scientists have cloned animals including goats, horses, cats, and rabbits. Last year, another Chinese company called BGI opened a factory that produced pork from cloned pigs.

But this is the first time cloned cattle have been produced on an industrial scale. At first, the company plans to produce 100,000 cloned cows per year—more than 6 times the size of the largest American cattle farms, and 200 times the number of pigs produced annually at BGI’s facility—and will gradually build up to 1 million per year.

Genetically modified crops are a contentious issue in China, but it’s unclear if cloned beef will undergo the same scrutiny. In the U.S., opinions vary. In 2006, the FDA concluded that meat from cloned animals is safe and wouldn’t require any additional labeling to be sold commercially. However, detractors say the agency hasn’t looked at the long-term effects on human health, and some vendors such as Whole Foods have vowed not to sell meat from cloned livestock.

BoyaLife left out some important details from its press release, including how it will find the feed for so many cattle when the industry is already under strain in China, and how it will mitigate the environmental impact of so many cattle. At its facility in the Tianjin Economic and Technological Development Area, not far from Beijing, the company also plans to clone dogs for pets and sniffing as well as racehorses. The company plans to start using the facility in the first half of 2016.

Aselsan Hisar Missile System

Aselsan

What goes up, sometimes must be shot down. Last week, Turkish F-16 fighters shot down a Russian jet near the Syrian border, sparking fears of escalation and revealing just how contested the skies are near the war-torn country. In response, Russia announced that it was deploying powerful, long-range anti-air missiles to Syria to protect its own aircraft. Now, Turkey says it wants to develop its own high-tech weapons for punching airplanes out of the sky.

Turkey, a member of the NATO military alliance, has backed out of contracts with both Chinese and, more recently, American and European suppliers. Instead it appears Turkey will turn towards a collaboration between state-owned defense companies, Roketsan and Aselsan. As with most technologically advanced weaponry, it is faster and often cheaper to collaborate with a country that’s already developed the weapon. Aselsan is already making both short- and medium-range anti-air missiles, which are scheduled to finish development by 2018 and should be capable of hitting targets 15 miles away and 30,000 feet above the ground. That’s enough to defend against many threats, but where a small system can defend a section of the border or an airbase, a long-range missile can cover almost an entire country.

Besides the simple power of a new missile, there’s an element of national pride at play in the long-range weapon system. Last March a Turkish government defense official told an industry gathering that“If Turkey opts for direct purchase of the system then it will be obliged to make new off-the-shelf purchases 15 or 20 years later. We will not settle for this. Our target is to gain national technological capability in the missile project.” Any new Turkish missile is likely at least a decade or two away from deployment, so Turkey researching long range weapons won’t change the situation in Syria. It does, though, along with the Russian weapon deployment, signal a future with lots of missiles waiting on the ground, and fewer planes flying.

[DefenseNews]

Scientists have used a gene drive to spread malaria-resistant genes through populations of Anopheles stephensi, a mosquito

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Your monthly roundup of infestations, contagions, and controls from around the web.

In disease news

While health authorities proclaimed Sierra Leone Ebola-free earlier this month, the virus still lurks in Liberia. Read this Wired piece by Sarah Zhang on how the WHO messed up the Ebola response, and why that matters for future outbreaks of any disease.

There’s a dengue fever outbreak on Hawaii’s Big Island, infecting a reported 107 people.

France had its first reported bird flu outbreak in eight years. So far, it appears to be limited to a small backyard chicken operation.

Congenital syphilis cases are on the rise in the U.S., according to this NPR report.

And check out this interesting read on the origin of plague, by Carrie Arnold at Quanta.

In antibiotics news

A newly-discovered strain of E. coli in China is apparently resistant to the “last resort” antibiotic colistin, which is bad news for global public health. Check out this Stat piece by Helen Branswell for more.

We should be able to collectively help stall such superbugs by only taking antibiotics when they’re actually necessary, says Julie Belluz at Vox.

But while that’s true, it turns out the public is woefully uneducated when it comes to antibiotic resistance. Read Ed Yong’s Atlantic piece about a disturbing failure in science communication.

In agriculture news

The Environmental Protection Agencywants to withdraw its approval of Enlist Duo, the next-generation of herbicide intended for herbicide-tolerant crops. According to NPR, the move “stunned both foes and friends of the new herbicide.”

There’s more bad news for bees: neonicotinoids, a popular class of insecticides, may be affectingbumblebees’ ability to pollinate.

And here is an interesting history on American and European views on GMOs, at the Conversation.

In creepy crawly news

Scientists have successfully created gene-drive mosquitoes to fight off malaria. A gene drive is a method that spreads a particular gene through a population far more quickly than happens in normal circumstances; in this case, researchers want to spread a genetic mutation that makes the mosquitoes resistant to malaria. To read more about gene drives, check out this piece by Sharon Begley at Stat.

American scientists are increasingly worried about the kissing bug, which can spread Chagas disease. Still, just because the bugs show up throughout the southern U.S. doesn’t necessarily mean there will be a widespread boost in Chagas infections](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/26/health/no-kissing-bugs-are-not-a-new-scourge.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0).

And a new study suggests that a spider’s personality affects what kind of insects it can catch. Read more at Elizabeth Preston’s Inkfish blog.

Model Airplane On Runway

Holger Ellgaard via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0

Two sticks of butter weigh about half a pound. While the sticks themselves won’t fly, under a set of proposed drone regulations, people will have to register any remotely controlled flying machine that weighs more than two sticks of butter with the FAA. The recommended rules, formulated by a group heavily weighted towards industry, would, if enacted, turn the entire world of model aviation into a newly regulated world of light drones.

While many people will become drone operators for the first time this holiday season, model aviation as a hobby goes back decades. The Academy of Model Aeronautics is a non-profit which aims to represent and promote the interests of all model aircraft enthusiasts, and they boast a membership roll of 185,000. The AMA was part of the FAA’s task force to come up with new drone rules, but the group appears to be dissatisfied with the results, claiming “these recommendations, as written, would make the registration process an unnecessary and unjustified burden” to its members, and noting that for decades model airplanes and people-carrying airplanes have coexisted.

Model aircraft have had a unique legal definition that sets them apart from other unmanned aerial vehicles. That may be changing.

Model airplanes derive their current legal status from the 2012 FAA Modernization And Reform Act. That act set out new, tentative rules for drones, and required the FAA to figure out how to incorporate drones into American skies in the future. At the same time, it spelled out unique rules for model airplanes, which were a separate category from other unmanned aircraft. These rules defined model aircraft as "capable of sustained flight in the atmosphere, flown within visual line of sight of the person operating the aircraft; flown for hobby or recreational purposes," weighing less than 55 pounds, and flown safely, away from airports and other traffic. The Act also said model airplanes should be governed by community standards (like those of the AMA). It's a definition focused more on use than anything else.

The 2012 Act required that, by December 31, 2015, "the Administrator [of the FAA] shall develop and implement operational and certification requirements for the operation of public unmanned aircraft systems in the national airspace system." The FAA is tasked with ensuring the safety of the skies, and a registration plan is seen as a way to help with that--if the FAA can't stop a drone from flying where it shouldn't, they'll at least be able to trace a registered drone back to its pilot. The fundamental tension in the proposed registration is between the existing lenient rules for model airplane pilots, and the FAA's desire to treat everything flying and unmanned the same.

To understand what the proposed regulations would mean for model airplane hobbyists, we reached out to the AMA. Reached by email, Chad Budreau, a member of the AMA’s Government and Regulatory Affair department, noted that model aircraft have a unique legal definition that sets them apart from other unmanned aerial vehicles, and clarified for Popular Science that “Congress made clear in section 336 that the FAA doesn't have the authority to promulgate any new rules or regulations on model aircraft that meet certain criteria.”

A Pair Of Model Airplanes

Pedroluand2015 CC BY-SA 4.0

Only exempting aircraft below half a pound from registration also seems to miss a large segment of the market. Brian Reinhart, director of risk management for the hobby toy distributor Horizon Hobby, gave an example by phone. “We have a SportsmanS HobbyZone light airplane you’ll see flown in hobby fields,” he says. “It’s 950 grams [or about 2 pounds] and made of foam, has an auto-land feature, can fly a holding pattern of 120 feet, a virtual fence will keep in line of sight, and it has a panic button.” If a foam drone with safety features doesn’t meet the model airplane exemption, it leads one to wonder what does?

The AMA wants more depth in the weight categories, so that things like 2-pound foam drones aren’t regulated the same way as, say, 55-pound camera-toting quadcopters. As Budreau explained in email, the AMA feels “Aircraft weighing 250 grams easily belong in the toy category,” and suggests instead we look to our neighbors to the north for regulatory guidance. “Canada has a tiered system that starts with aircraft weighing more than 2 kg. The FAA/DOT Task Force weight limit of 250 grams is unrealistic and overly burdensome. More importantly, we believe weight should not be the only determining factor to trigger registration. AMA has said before that the capability of the aircraft - for example, whether or not it can fly beyond the operator’s line of sight - should also be a factor in determining the threshold for UAS registration."

"Weight should not be the only determining factor to trigger registration."

Reinhart, like the Academy of Model Aeronautics, thinks a 2 kilogram (or about four and a half pound) limit makes more sense. Giving a rough estimate of the model airplanes Horizon Hobby carries, out of 80 or so models about 20 fall under 250 grams, and about 20 are over 2 kilograms. A greater weight limit could keep the hobby open for people who want to try flying model aircraft but are wary of government registration. In fact, keeping it strictly to weight could mean a drone like the PowerUp 3.0, which consists of a motor that can attach to a paper airplane, is sometimes a drone and sometimes not, depending on the heaviness of the paper used.

The AMA feels strongly that community standards are sufficient for hobbyist registration, saying, “Our members abide by a safety and privacy code which has resulted in an impeccable track record of safe and responsible flying for 80 years! AMA members effectively meet the intent of registration by providing their personal identification and contact information when joining the Academy. They are further instructed to place their membership number or their name and address on or within their model aircraft to link the owner/operator to the model should such identification be necessary.” The proposed FAA drone registration system is similar, though in it people register with the government and not a third-party non-profit.

Lazy Bee Model Airplane

Kollern via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0

Still, if there must be registration, the AMA sees federal as preferable to state-level, noting, “For those platforms that meet an appropriate threshold of weight and safety characteristics, federal UAS registration makes some sense. A patchwork of state-level UAS registration systems, on the other hand, would be even more cumbersome and confusing and is not necessary.”

So what impact would these changes have? Popular Science talked to Steven Miller, a partner at the Hanson Bridgett law firm in Northern California, who writes Hoverlaw, a blog about drones and regulations. He said he sees two major benefits of a drone registry system. “There’s a category of folks who are in a 'here hold my beer, watch this' category who may misuse a drone in a way that is offensive to the general public privacy rights or unsafe,” and a drone registry will help enforce regulation against that behavior. Secondly, people or local governments who own critical infrastructure, like bridges or power grids, Miller says, “really want to know the difference between an enthusiast and an enemy, users who have ill intent.” So the sight of registered drones may bring peace of mind, while unregistered drones would scan instead as a threat.

Overall, Miller is skeptical of a national registry that works to prevent harms done by drones. Instead, he sees a lot of potential in changing our understanding of Trespass Law. “I think the law of trespass is going to be developed to accommodate technology like drones,” Miller said, “to include trespass that's not a physical actual trespass but is trespass using a device to acquire information. There’s a legal distinction between standing outside a fence on a ladder holding a camera and hovering a drone outside a window, and maybe there shouldn’t be.

Before Amazon Prime Air starts delivering packages, before the skies above farms are swarming with agricultural drones, the new drone rules are likely to have an outsized impact on the civilians who have flown unmanned aircraft the longest.

The FAA is still in the process of finalizing the rules, and it looks like they'll conclude around the summer of 2016. It remains to be seen how much weight they’ll give to the concerns of hobbyists. Maybe it will be even more than two sticks of butter.

A genetic alteration can lead Candida to form hyphae in Cystic Fibrosis patients

Source: Wikipedia

Cystic fibrosis (CF) affects about 30,000 Americans leaving them with a variety of symptoms ranging from gastrointestinal problems to the more recognized respiratory complications. The condition is caused by a mutation in the genetic makeup of individuals leaving them unable to control salt concentrations in the cell. This single alteration allows bacteria and fungi to grow freely in the lungs leading to recurring and/or chronic infections.

Within the lung, bacteria such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa take advantage of the altered salt concentration and the subsequent production of mucus to form biofilms leading to an increased chance for infection and respiratory complication. As for the fungi, they take advantage of the compromised immune system and find a home in the warm, moist, mucus-filled environment. Some species, such as Aspergillus fumigatus, are inherently pathogenic and must be dealt with immediately. Yet, another group of fungi, yeasts, seem to vary in their ability to cause troubles.

When a yeast cell enters the lung, it can act as a bystander, enjoying the environment and offering no ill will. But over time, the yeast may gain a stronghold and begin a change from a cellular appearance to one that forms branches, also known as hyphae. When this happens, trouble is soon to follow. The immune system cannot deal with these larger structures and attempt to find other ways to combat the growing colony. Unfortunately, this leads to a response akin to an allergy leaving the person with even more respiratory struggles. Without proper treatment, the process can end up being life-threatening.

The dire consequences of hyphae formation has led researchers to figure out how yeast cells can go from harmless colonizers to potential killers. Most work has focused on polymicrobial interactions between bacteria and fungi through chemical communication, also known as quorum sensing. Yet, in 2011, research suggested the bacteria prevented hyphae formation through this route. By 2013, the relationship was proven to be testy rather than mutually beneficial.

The confounding results meant yeasts had to find another route to trigger hyphae formation. With the immune system and now bacteria out of the question, the only possible option was inside the fungal cell at the genetic level. But to determine which genes were responsible, a large-scale analysis had to be performed.

Last week, that study happened. A Canadian team of researchers unveiled the first global analysis of fungi in the cystic fibrosis lung in the hopes of determining the reason yeasts became pathogenic. What they found suggested the old adage of sacrifice in the name of greater gain is alive and well in the microbial world.

The group examined 111 sputum samples from 28 different CF patients. The samples were then analyzed to determine the variety of fungal species living in the lungs. Standard tests such as growth variability and susceptibility to antifungals were performed to examine whether any of the patients were outliers from the others in terms of their fungal population. When that was over, the examination for the trigger could begin.

The fungal species of choice was Candida albicans. It’s known to have a dual role in human ecology both as a bystander and also a hyphae-producing pathogen. Isolates were examined at the genetic level in the hopes of finding any type of mutation that could lead to virulence. While a variety of mutations were found, most were unique to the isolate. Yet, there was one change that seemed to be globally present and also could control the transition from cell to hyphae.

It’s called NRG1 and acts as a negative regulator of glucose-repressed genes. It was initially found in another yeast species, Saccharomyces cerevisiae although it is also found in Candida. The gene is responsible for keeping the cellular form of the yeast and prevention of hyphae. Lower expression allows the transition from harmless entity to growing pathogen.

When the researchers examined the extent of change to NRG1, they expected to see little change in the gene makeup. But in almost every case, the actual sequence was changed. The result was a complete loss of function; NRG1 was simply not working. This meant the fungal cells could transform into hyphae without any restrictions. As for those bacteria capable of controlling this switch, they were completely ineffective.

The results of this study are less than encouraging for CF patients. According to the authors, this loss of NRG1 is most likely due to the consistent pressures attempted to prevent hyphae formation. When all else fails, the gene is sacrificed so the transition can occur.

Moving forward, this study may allow for more rapid analysis of fungi in the lungs and gain an appreciation of the situation based on the status of the gene. If the mutation is found, public health officials will know this means trouble and can engage in an antifungal strategy to clear the invaders. Although this means more medications for patients, at least it will help to prevent both short term and lasting consequences that could affect quality of life and ultimately, life itself.

Workbench

Photograph by Jonathan Kambouris

Having the right tool and finding it in a pinch is critical to home repair. With these three new devices—and a workbench to store them in—the molding will get hung in record time.

Ryobi AirStrike P320

This air-powered, cordless 18-volt nail gun sinks fasteners up to 2 inches long. All that power without the awkwardness of an air compressor hose means there’s enough run time to drive 700 nails on a single charge—a room’s worth of base and crown molding. $130

Milwaukee Fuel 2704-22

The brushless motors in Milwaukee’s 18-volt drills were already efficient and powerful. But the newest drill more than doubles the torque—with 1,200 inch-pounds. It’s also a half-inch shorter and a half-pound lighter than the previous model. More power in a smaller package. $300

Husky Double Ratcheting Wrench Set

This combination wrench employs a ratchet at both ends—an innovative step for an open-end wrench. With its 100 locking positions, its especially useful for fastening or loosening bolts in tight spaces—like under a sink, where you might otherwise bust your knuckle. $40

Husky Mobile Workbench

This beefy 21-gauge workbench stores up to 1,000 pounds of tools. While the casters that help usher it around are nice, it’s the wide drawers, steel construction, and integrated pegboard that really seal the deal. Keeping tools at eye level just became really easy. $288

This article was originally published in the November 2015 issue of Popular Science, under the title “Zip Through Home Repairs.”

Angel Gabriel fresco

A fresco depicting the archangel Gabriel in the Holy Cathedral of the Assumption of Virgin Mary, Greece.

Wikimedia Commons (CC-By-2.5)

If your conversations with digital personal assistants like Apple's Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, or Google Now haven’t been useful enough, a new challenger of Biblical proportions is about to arrive.

Gabriel, a project by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, and funded by the National Science Foundation, is a personal cognitive assistant that “whispers” instructions into a user’s ear, for things like how to change a tire, perform CPR, or even assemble IKEA furniture. It would be like GPS for everyday actions, but one that knows when to shut up, according to principal investigator Mahadev Satyanarayanan.

The name comes from the angel Gabriel, who Biblically served as the messenger of God.

CMU's Gabriel is just a software platform, though. It says that the hardware could be something like Google Glass, or any other head-mounted display. However, the long-range goal is that this is something that everyone could wear.

The ideal use for Gabriel would, according to a CMU spokesperson, is to replace the experience of going on YouTube to learn how to do something.

Carnegie Mellon has been working on the basic technology behind Gabriel for more than a year, which includes specific applications of computer vision and bringing cloud computing to mobile devices.

Researchers have actually come up with simplified versions of the tasks that Gabriel would be able to accomplish, like building with LEGOs, or learning to draw.

To make this happen, the CMU team are leaning heavily on cloudlets, a middle-man for cloud computing that allows the computer to carry out tasks faster. Instead of having to send information all the way back over the internet to a remote server, the wearable or mobile device sends the computing to a machine nearby, maybe over a Wi-Fi network, which shaves precious milliseconds off the time it takes for the computer to make a decision. That low latency allowed the CMU team to build a ping-pong assistant earlier this year.

The NSF grant is a 4-year, 2.8 million dollar award, with instructions to advance the field of wearable personal assistants.

“Ten years ago, people thought of this as science fiction,” Satyanarayanan said in a statement. “But now it’s on the verge of reality.”

Dinosaurs in Scotland

An artist's impression of what the Scottish island of Skye might have looked like when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

Jon Hoad/University of Edinburgh

Dinosaurs ruled the world for over 180 million years, spreading across the oceans and continents. After all that time, it stands to reason that they left a few things behind. We've all seen fossils in books and museums, but dinosaurs left behind far more than just their bones. They also left their footprints.

Even though we generally think of footprints as ephemeral, in the right conditions, footprints can be preserved for an extraordinarily long time, even millions of years. Preserved footprints give paleontologists details that fossils alone can't. By looking at the sediments or rocks where the footprints are located, researchers can get an idea of what kind of environment the dinosaurs were living in. By looking at their size and depth, they can get a better idea of how big or small the dinosaur was, even without any remaining flesh. Looking at how different tracks of footprints overlaps can even tell scientists how different species of dinosaurs interacted with each other. And looking at the spacing between footprints, scientists can figure out how fast the dinosaurs were going when they walked the Earth those many years ago. Looking at how different tracks of footprints overlaps can even tell scientists how different species of dinosaurs interacted.

In a paper published today in Scottish Journal of Geology researchers from the University of Edinburgh announced the discovery of dinosaur footprints along an ancient marsh now in the Isle of Skye, Scotland's largest island. The tracks were made by long-necked sauropods wandering around 170 million years ago, nearly 50 feet long and weighing 10 tons. The footprints themselves are huge, over two feet across.

Skye Footprints

Steve Brusatte

The fact that the footprints are found in lagoon-type sediments provides more evidence that these animals were not purely land-dwellers as previously assumed. Why these huge dinosaurs liked hanging out in water-logged environments remains to be determined. In the paper, the authors suggest that there might have been more plants available in those environments, or, alternatively, the marshy ground might have been a deterrent to predators.

“The new tracksite from Skye is one of the most remarkable dinosaur discoveries ever made in Scotland. There are so many tracks crossing each other that it looks like a dinosaur disco preserved in stone. By following the tracks you can walk with these dinosaurs as they waded through a lagoon 170 million years ago, when Scotland was so much warmer than today.” Steve Brusatte, the lead author of the study said in a statement.

If you can't make it out to Skye to see the dinosaur footprints, look for some trackways closer to home. Dinosaur Valley State Park in Texas, Dinosaur State Park in Connecticut, and many other locations around the world have a variety of dinosaur tracks that are well preserved and ready for a visit.

Ceres is no moon, but it did help to kill a planet. The large dwarf planet, originally classified as a real planet, was one of several celestial bodies that called into question Pluto’s own status. Thanks to NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, earlier this year humans got a close look at Ceres for the first time. The images together revealed some stunning (and possibly planet-destroying) features, but they hadn’t yet been stitched together creating a whole vision for the dwarf planet. Well, until now.

Planetary researchers at the German Aerospace Center last week announced a completed atlas of the Ceres. From their announcement:

"It was important to select images that covered the entire dwarf planet under the same illumination conditions," explains Thomas Roatsch from the DLR Institute of Planetary Research. "This allowed us to calculate a uniform, homogenous terrain model." In turn, the model was used as a basis for further processing, in which the individual images were put together to form a global mosaic of the dwarf planet. This was then used to produce the various maps contained in the atlas.

The images used for the first atlas have a resolution of 400 metres per pixel. The images acquired during lower orbits will serve as a basis to refine the terrain model and to create more detailed atlases.

Below are the other image plates from the atlas. Be sure to pore over them closely, in case there’s any signs of a womp rat-sized thermal exhaust port.

Occator Region Of Dwarf Planet Ceres

German Aerospace Center

Kerwan Region Of Dwarf Planet Ceres

German Aerospace Center

Between 2009 and 2013, the Kepler telescope stared at a patch of stars in some faraway constellations. It waited patiently for planets to cross in front of those stars, detecting their presence when light from the star dipped.

A technical failure interrupted Kepler's stargazing in 2013, but not before the telescope tracked down and confirmed 1,030 planets, as well as 2,740 unconfirmed candidates (according to the Kepler website). More may yet be found in the data that Kepler sent back before it broke.

Now you can see how these alien solar systems stack up against our own. In a new animation, astronomy grad student Ethan Kruse compares the orbits of many exoplanets to those of the planets in our neighborhood. Our solar system is shown on the right-hand side of the animation.

The planets are not drawn to scale compared to the stars and orbits (you wouldn't be able to see them if they were), and the stars aren't located this close together in real life. Still, you can see the relative size of the planets as well as an estimate of their temperatures. The animation also underlines something Kepler taught us: that our solar system isn't the standard model for the galaxy. Before Kepler, scientists thought that other solar systems would be shaped like ours, with small rocky planets on the inside, icy planets on the outside, and gas giants in between. Now we realize that solar systems come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.

However, the Kepler data we see here is biased. In order to confirm an exoplanet, Kepler had to see it cross the star several times--this meant it was more likely to notice planets that orbit close to their stars and therefore pass more frequently. And, since Kepler discovered the planets by the light they blocked, it was easier to detect massive Jupiter- and Neptune-sized planets than small worlds like our own.

Kruse says the animation shows 685 multi-planet systems, representing 1,705 exoplanets. By the sounds of it, he's including unconfirmed planets in the animation, assuming that most of them will turn out to be real planets. It's a fair assumption, since other studies estimated that at least 90 percent of candidates would turn out to be real planets.

Daniel Fabricky from the University of Santa Cruz has created similarly mesmerizing animations of Kepler data. Whereas his latest was from 2013, Kruse's animations include the latest findings.

[H/T Boing Boing]