Sphero – the Robotic Ball You Control with Your Smart Phone

Posted on September 30, 2011  Comments (2)

A nice, fun gadget for your friday. Sphero is the first ever robotic ball which can be controlled just by using your smart phone.

Developed by the Orbotix Team, you can use sphero in various applications. It is controlled using your smartphone (SDK exist for iOS and Android to let you have some fun hacking new ideas. The size is approximately that of a baseball. It has a customizable LED that allows you to change the glow according to your mood. You can check out more of Sphero features.

Use sphero like an remote controlled car but with a twist of boost mode for a more exciting chase with your pet cat. Yes, Sphero has an application specially designed for cats called the Sphero KittyCam app. Let the cat chase the robot and catch all the cat’s movements in video. You can upload it share the wild reactions of your cat.

Invite a friend over to play with sphero using the mixed reality pong. We all know pong and the developers of sphero found a way to incorporate technology with the classic game. Use your smartphones as your virtual paddle and control the sphero, which acts as your pong ball, to win the game.

Sphero is a fun gadget to have and you do activities like golf, racing and many more. If you want to order you can check out this link and fill up the order form.

Related: Friday Fun: Cats and Kids with iPads – Friday Robot Fun: i-SOBOT – Awesome Cat Cam

Backyard Wildlife: Bears

Posted on September 26, 2011  Comments (0)

Here is a video of some bears wandering around in a backyard. This was the first time the owner saw bears in their backyard. The bears found a great source of food in the apple tree. It is exciting to see nature in our own backyards. Though admittedly most people could would rather have nature be limited to animals that cannot harm them or their family.

photo of a black bear in an apple tree

Black bear in an apple tree in a Ashville, North Carolina yard.

Related: The Cat and a Black Bear – Friday Fun: Mother Bear Rescues Cub From a Tree – Backyard Wildlife: Fox – Bear Defeats Combination Bear Lock

Student Engineers Without Borders Project: Learning While Making a Difference in Kenya

Posted on September 25, 2011  Comments (0)

photo of workers digging a large hole dug for the bio-gas latrine, while schoolchildren look on.

Engineers Without Borders students make progress, learn lessons in Kenya

Knowing nothing about Third-World development, the original [Engineers Without Borders] EWB students accepted an assignment from the national EWB to bring clean water wells and sanitary latrines to 58 elementary schools in the poor Khwisero district, where villagers live by subsistence farming.

Each year, new MSU students take up the challenge, aiming not only to provide healthier drinking water but to relieve Kenyan children of the chore of hiking more than a mile to fetch water every day from dirty water holes, which cuts into their schooling, particularly for girls.
…
They finally broke ground on their first pipeline system, which has been three years in the making. It will bring piping water from a high-quality well to several villages and eventually to a health clinic and a market. Villagers have committed to digging trenches for the water pipes.

This is a great program. Students learn a great deal by taking on real world problems and implementing solutions. As I have said before, I really love to see appropriate technology solutions put in place. We can drastically improve people’s lives by helping put solutions in place that work, are cost effective and can be maintained. Improving people’s quality of life is at the core of why engineering is so wonderful.

Related: Smokeless Stove Saves Lives – Engineering a Better World: Bike Corn-Sheller – High School Inventor Teams @ MIT Bring Clean Water to Village – Water and Electricity for All
Read more

Faster Than Light Speed Anomaly Reported by CERN

Posted on September 23, 2011  Comments (1)

The OPERA result is based on the observation of over 15000 neutrino events measured at Gran Sasso, and appears to indicate that the neutrinos travel at a velocity 20 parts per million above the speed of light, nature’s cosmic speed limit. Given the potential far-reaching consequences of such a result, independent measurements are needed before the effect can either be refuted or firmly established. This is why the OPERA collaboration has decided to open the result to broader scrutiny. The collaboration’s result is available on the preprint server arxiv.org.

The OPERA measurement is at odds with well-established laws of nature, though science frequently progresses by overthrowing the established paradigms. For this reason, many searches have been made for deviations from Einstein’s theory of relativity, so far not finding any such evidence. The strong constraints arising from these observations makes an interpretation of the OPERA measurement in terms of modification of Einstein’s theory unlikely, and give further strong reason to seek new independent measurements.

“This result comes as a complete surprise,” said OPERA spokesperson, Antonio Ereditato of the University of Bern. “After many months of studies and cross checks we have not found any instrumental effect that could explain the result of the measurement. While OPERA researchers will continue their studies, we are also looking forward to independent measurements to fully assess the nature of this observation.”

“When an experiment finds an apparently unbelievable result and can find no artefact of the measurement to account for it, it’s normal procedure to invite broader scrutiny, and this is exactly what the OPERA collaboration is doing, it’s good scientific practice,” said CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci. “If this measurement is confirmed, it might change our view of physics, but we need to be sure that there are no other, more mundane, explanations. That will require independent measurements.” This is a great reminder of the proper application of the scientific inquiry process. Our understanding moves forward based on evidence and incredible results require a high burden of proof before we accept them.

In order to perform this study, the OPERA Collaboration teamed up with experts in metrology from CERN and other institutions to perform a series of high precision measurements of the distance between the source and the detector, and of the neutrinos’ time of flight. The distance between the origin of the neutrino beam and OPERA was measured with an uncertainty of 20 cm over the 730 km travel path. The neutrinos’ time of flight was determined with an accuracy of less than 10 nanoseconds by using sophisticated instruments including advanced GPS systems and atomic clocks. The time response of all elements of the CNGS beam line and of the OPERA detector has also been measured with great precision.

“We have established synchronization between CERN and Gran Sasso that gives us nanosecond accuracy, and we’ve measured the distance between the two sites to 20 centimetres,” said Dario Autiero, the CNRS researcher who will give this afternoon’s seminar. “Although our measurements have low systematic uncertainty and high statistical accuracy, and we place great confidence in our results, we’re looking forward to comparing them with those from other experiments.”

“The potential impact on science is too large to draw immediate conclusions or attempt physics interpretations. My first reaction is that the neutrino is still surprising us with its mysteries.” said Ereditato. “Today’s seminar is intended to invite scrutiny from the broader particle physics community.”

The OPERA experiment was inaugurated in 2006, with the main goal of studying the rare transformation (oscillation) of muon neutrinos into tau neutrinos. One first such event was observed in 2010, proving the unique ability of the experiment in the detection of the elusive signal of tau neutrinos.

This is great stuff, wether it turns out to be an amazing result that changes our understanding of physics or even if it doesn’t (if it turns out the apparent result is not what it seems). It is great to see us attempt to learn. My guess is that we find some explanation for the anomaly that does avoids something traveling faster than the speed of light.

Brian Cox on the BBC 6: “This is the way science works, we go away and do it again and check, and then do it again and check. If it is confirmed then it will be the most significant discovery in physics in the last, at least, 100 years.”

Related: full press release – The Sun is a Miasma of Incandescent Plasma – Gravity and the Scientific Method – More Mysterious Space Phenomenon – Neutrino particle traveling faster than light? Two ways it could rewrite physics

Cat Goes to the Train Station to Meet Its Owner Each Evening

Posted on September 21, 2011  Comments (3)

Graeme, a cat in Melbourne, Australia, walks to the train station with its owner in the morning and then goes off to play (and probably lots of sleep, it is a cat) and then returns in time to meet its owner at the train station after the work day.

The pampered cat cannot get enough of attention, with scores of regulars calling him by name as they stop for a chat and give him a pat on the head. Safety conscious, the sociable moggie is meticulous about using the subway to cross to the city-bound platform, rather than take a dangerous short cut across the tracks.

When the evening peak comes around, Graeme puts on an encore performance, arriving at the opposite platform in time to greet owner Nicole Weinrich as she returns home from work. “He always seems to know which train carriage I am on and will be sitting there behind the yellow line when the doors open, because he is all about safety,” Ms Weinrich said.
…
But sometimes Graeme can take his desire to be close to his fans a bit too far – he has been known to jump on the train and get off a station or two later. “He doesn’t do it often, but we do worry about that,” Ms Weinrich said.

She said Graeme, believed to be about 12, had roughed it on the street before being saved from the RSPCA’s “death row” six years ago, so his love of people is tempered by his survival instincts.

Related: Cat Rids the Bus (without paying) – The Wonderful Life of a Cat – The Engineer That Made Your Cat a Photographer

Molecule Found in Sharks Kills Many Viruses that are Deadly to People

Posted on September 20, 2011  Comments (1)

photo of 3 dogfish sharks
Shark Molecule Kills Human Viruses, Too

“Sharks are remarkably resistant to viruses,” study researcher Michael Zasloff, of the Georgetown University Medical Center, told LiveScience. Zasloff discovered the molecule, squalamine, in 1993 in the dogfish shark, a small- to medium-size shark found in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.

“It looked like no other compound that had been described in any animal or plant before. It was something completely unique,” Zasloff said. The compound is a potent antibacterial and has shown efficacy in treating human cancers and an eye condition known as macular degeneration, which causes blindness.
…
By studying the compound’s structure and how it works in the human body, Zasloff thought it might have some antiviral properties. He saw that the molecule works by sticking to the cell membranes of the liver and blood vessels. While there, it kicks off other proteins, some of which are essential for viruses to enter and survive in the cell.

The researchers decided to test the compound on several different live viruses that infect liver cells, including hepatitis B, dengue virus and yellow fever. They saw high efficacy across the board.
…
Zasloff hopes to start human trials in the next few years.
…
Marc Maresca, a researcher at Paul Cézanne University in Aix-en-Provence, France, who wasn’t involved in the study, agreed that the concentrations used were quite high, possibly in toxic ranges for some cells, but in an email to LiveScience Meresca also called the study “very exciting.”

Related: Alligator Blood Provides Strong Resistance to Bacteria and Viruses – Female Sharks Can Reproduce Alone – Monarch Butterflies Use Medicinal Plants

Gamers Use Foldit to Solve Enzyme Configuration in 3 Weeks That Stumped Scientists for Over a Decade

Posted on September 18, 2011  Comments (1)

Gamers have solved the structure of a retrovirus enzyme whose configuration had stumped scientists for more than a decade. The gamers achieved their discovery by playing Foldit, a very cool online game that allows players to collaborate and compete in predicting the structure of protein molecules that I wrote about before: Foldit – the Protein Folding Game. You can download it, play, and help move our understanding forward.

After scientists repeatedly failed to piece together the structure of a protein-cutting enzyme from an AIDS-like virus, they called in the Foldit players. The scientists challenged the gamers to produce an accurate model of the enzyme. They did it in only three weeks.

This class of enzymes, called retroviral proteases, has a critical role in how the AIDS virus matures and proliferates. Intensive research is under way to try to find anti-AIDS drugs that can block these enzymes, but efforts were hampered by not knowing exactly what the retroviral protease molecule looks like.

“We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed,” said Dr. Firas Khatib of the University of Washington Department of Biochemistry. Khatib is a researcher in the protein structure lab of Dr. David Baker, professor of biochemistry.

Remarkably, the gamers generated models good enough for the researchers to refine and, within a few days, determine the enzyme’s structure. Equally amazing, surfaces on the molecule stood out as likely targets for drugs to de-active the enzyme.

“These features provide exciting opportunities for the design of retroviral drugs, including AIDS drugs,” wrote the authors of a paper appearing Sept. 18 in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. The scientists and gamers are listed as co-authors.

This is the first instance that the researchers are aware of in which gamers solved a longstanding scientific problem.

“The focus of the UW Center for Game Sciences,” said director Dr. Zoran Popovic, associate professor of computer science and engineering, “is to solve hard problems in science and education that currently cannot be solved by either people or computers alone.”

The solution of the virus enzyme structure, the researchers said, “indicates the power of online computer games to channel human intuition and three-dimensional pattern matching skills to solve challenging scientific problems.”

With names like Foldit Contenders Group and Foldit Void Crushers Group, the gamer teams were fired up for the task of real-world molecule modeling problems. The online protein folding game captivates thousands of avid players worldwide and engages the general public in scientific discovery.

Direct manipulation tools, as well as assistance from a computer program called Rosetta, encourage participants to configure graphics into a workable protein model. Teams send in their answers, and UW researchers constantly improve the design of the game and its puzzles by analyzing the players’ problem-solving strategies.

Figuring out the shape and misshape of proteins contributes to research on causes of and cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, immune deficiencies and a host of other disorders, as well as to environmental work on biofuels.

Dr. Seth Cooper, of the UW Department of Computing Science and Engineering, is a co-creator of Foldit and its lead designer and developer. He studies human-computer exploration methods and the co-evolution of games and players.

“People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at,” Cooper said. “Games provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans. The results in this week’s paper show that gaming, science and computation can be combined to make advances that were not possible before.”

Games like Foldit are evolving. To piece together the retrovirus enzyme structure, Cooper said, gamers used a new Alignment Tool for the first time to copy parts of know molecules and test their fit in an incomplete model.

According to Popovic, “Foldit shows that a game can turn novices into domain experts capable of producing first-class scientific discoveries. We are currently applying the same approach to change the way math and science are taught in school.”

Related: Letter on the discovery – Algorithmic Self-Assembly – Phun Physics Software Game – Cool Mechanical Simulation System

Amber Pieces Containing Remains from Dinosaurs and Birds Show Feather Evolution

Posted on September 15, 2011  Comments (0)

Dinosaur feather evolution trapped in Canadian amber

a study of amber found near Grassy Lake in Alberta – dated from what is known as the Late Cretaceous period – has unearthed a full range of feather structures that demonstrate the progression. “We’re finding two ends of the evolutionary development that had been proposed for feathers trapped in the same amber deposit,” said Ryan McKellar of the University of Alberta, lead author of the report.

The team’s find confirms that the filaments progressed to tufts of filaments from a single origin, called barbs. In later development, some of these barbs can coalesce into a central branch called a rachis. As the structure develops further, further branches of filments form from the rachis.

“We’ve got feathers that look to be little filamentous hair-like feathers, we’ve got the same filaments bound together in clumps, and then we’ve got a series that are for all intents and purposes identical to modern feathers,” Mr McKellar told BBC News.

“We’re catching some that look to be dinosaur feathers and another set that are pretty much dead ringers for modern birds.”
…
a picture is emerging that many dinosaurs were not the dull-coloured, reptilian-skinned creatures that they were once thought to be. “If you were to transport yourself back 80 million years to western North America and walk around the forest… so many of the animals would have been feathered,” said Dr Norell.

“We’re getting more and more evidence… that these animals were also brightly coloured, just like birds are today.”

Very cool. Science really is great.

Related: Dino-Era Feathers Found Encased in Amber (2008) – Dinosaur Remains Found with Intact Skin and Tissue – Marine Plankton From 100 Million Years Ago Found in Amber – Giant Duck-Billed Dinosaur Discovered in Mexico

Robot Tennis Partners Coming Soon?

Posted on September 12, 2011  Comments (0)

The robots in the video, and many more, are being tested at the Flying Machine Arena at the The Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology – Zurich.

They also usually have a number of challenging projects available. Qualified, motivated students should visit the Theses/Projects page and contact them to learn more. We need more people working on these types of things so I can have my robot basketball team available when I want to play.

Related: Robot Playing Table Tennis – Robocup 2010, Robot Football – Dolphin Kick Gives Swimmers Edge

Bill Dietrich Gives Carnegie Mellon University $265 Million

Posted on September 8, 2011  Comments (0)

Carnegie Mellon is one of the crown jewels of engineering in the USA. While we are busy squandering the economic gains gained through science and engineering investments in the 1950′s, 60′s and 70′s a few universities are continuing to provide huge economic benefit: MIT, Stanford, CalTech, Harvard, University of Wisconsin – Madison… Schools unfortunately seem to be wasting lots of money (on vanity projects and ever increasing administration, and huge pay to overpaid executives), but even so they provide much much more benefit than the costs. Funding from rich, successful businesspeople (Bill Dietrich was a steel executive) is now a huge reason these shiny lights of the American economy continue to shine. On Bill Dietrich’s donation:

This fund, which will become operational upon Dietrich’s passing, will serve as a catalyst for the university’s global initiatives and for its fusion of left-brain and right-brain thinking, such as studies connecting technology and the arts, as well as support future academic initiatives across the university, including undergraduate and graduate programs, scholarship, artistic creation and research.
The gift furthers the university’s ability to educate students in strong interdisciplinary problem-solving and supports the unique recipe for education offered by Carnegie Mellon’s seven schools and colleges, all of which are leaders in their fields.
…
Dietrich’s gift, among the 10 largest in the United States, is believed to be the 14th largest gift to higher education worldwide.

Related: Board of Trustees gets new chairperson: Dietrich (July 2001 article) – $400 Million More for Harvard and MIT – Economic Strength Through Technology Leadership – Stanford Gets $75 Million for Stem Cell Center – Great Engineering Schools and Entrepreneurism

Large Crabs Invading Antarctic as Waters Warm

Posted on September 7, 2011  Comments (0)

photo of giant red king crab

Giant red king crabs

Large crabs are invading the Antarctic environment and due to their numbers and practices could cause havoc. They look yummy though. And eating them would be doing nature a favor unlike the overfishing of the oceans. Abstract of the open access article, A large population of king crabs in Palmer Deep on the west Antarctic Peninsula shelf and potential invasive impacts:

Lithodid crabs (and other skeleton-crushing predators) may have been excluded from cold Antarctic continental shelf waters for more than 14 Myr [million years]. The west Antarctic Peninsula shelf is warming rapidly and has been hypothesized to be soon invaded by lithodids. A remotely operated vehicle survey in Palmer Deep, a basin 120 km onto the Antarctic shelf, revealed a large, reproductive population of lithodids, providing the first evidence that king crabs have crossed the Antarctic shelf. DNA sequencing and morphology indicate the lithodid is Neolithodes yaldwyni Ahyong & Dawson, previously reported only from Ross Sea waters. We estimate a N. yaldwyni population density of 10 600 km−2 and a population size of 1.55 × 106 in Palmer Deep, a density similar to lithodid populations of commercial interest around Alaska and South Georgia. The lithodid occurred at depths of more than 850 m and temperatures of more than 1.4°C in Palmer Deep, and was not found in extensive surveys of the colder shelf at depths of 430–725 m. Where N. yaldwyni occurred, crab traces were abundant, megafaunal diversity reduced and echinoderms absent, suggesting that the crabs have major ecological impacts. Antarctic Peninsula shelf waters are warming at approximately 0.01°C yr−1; if N. yaldwyni is currently limited by cold temperatures, it could spread up onto the shelf (400–600 m depths) within 1–2 decades. The Palmer Deep N. yaldwyni population provides an important model for the potential invasive impacts of crushing predators on vulnerable Antarctic shelf ecosystems.

Related: Giant Star Fish and More in Antarctica – 2,000 Species New to Science (600 of them crabs) from One Island – Antarctic Fish “Hibernate” in Winter

Older posts →