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Curious Cat Science and Egineering blog full tag cloud
Very cool, it is amazing what happens in life. And that bird is remarkably patient. Getting, even playfully, ambushed by a cat doesn’t seem like something what would come naturally. At least with polar bears and huskies they both are used to playing rough with their own.
Related: fun with cats - Bunny and Kittens - Bird Brains: thinking crows - Photos by Fritz the Cat - animal planet on the cat and crow
| Adaptive Flight Control With Living Neuronal Networks on Microelectrode Arrays (open access paper) by Thomas B. DeMarse and Karl P. Dockendorf Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida
investigating the ability of living neurons to act as a set of neuronal weights which were used to control the flight of a simulated aircraft. These weights were manipulated via high frequency stimulation inputs to produce a system in which a living neuronal network would “learn” to control an aircraft for straight and level flight.
A system was created in which a network of living rat cortical neurons were slowly adapted to control an aircraft’s flight trajectory. This was accomplished by using high frequency stimulation pulses delivered to two independent channels, one for pitch, and one for roll. This relatively simple system was able to control the pitch and roll of a simulated aircraft. |
When Dr. Thomas DeMarse first puts the neurons in the dish, they look like little more than grains of sand sprinkled in water. However, individual neurons soon begin to extend microscopic lines toward each other, making connections that represent neural processes. “You see one extend a process, pull it back, extend it out — and it may do that a couple of times, just sampling who’s next to it, until over time the connectivity starts to establish itself,” he said. “(The brain is) getting its network to the point where it’s a live computation device.”
To control the simulated aircraft, the neurons first receive information from the computer about flight conditions: whether the plane is flying straight and level or is tilted to the left or to the right. The neurons then analyze the data and respond by sending signals to the plane’s controls. Those signals alter the flight path and new information is sent to the neurons, creating a feedback system.
“Initially when we hook up this brain to a flight simulator, it doesn’t know how to control the aircraft,” DeMarse said. “So you hook it up and the aircraft simply drifts randomly. And as the data come in, it slowly modifies the (neural) network so over time, the network gradually learns to fly the aircraft.”
Although the brain currently is able to control the pitch and roll of the simulated aircraft in weather conditions ranging from blue skies to stormy, hurricane-force winds, the underlying goal is a more fundamental understanding of how neurons interact as a network, DeMarse said.
Related: Neural & Hybrid Computing Laboratory @ University of Florida - UF Scientist: “Brain” In A Dish Acts As Autopilot, Living Computer - Roachbot: Cockroach Controlled Robot - New Neurons in Old Brains - posts on brain research - Viruses and What is Life - Great Self Portrait of Astronaut Engineer
Gut Bacteria May Cause And Fight Disease, Obesity
But as soon as we pass out of the birth canal, when we are fetched by a doctor’s hands, placed in a hospital crib, put on our mother’s breast, when we drag a thumb across a blanket and stick that thumb in our mouths, when we swallow our first soft food, we are invaded by all sorts of bacteria. Once inside, they multiply - until the bacteria inside us outnumber our human cells.
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University of Chicago immunologist Alexander Chervonsky, with collaborators from Yale University, recently reported that doses of the right stomach bacteria can stop the development of type 1 diabetes in lab mice. “By changing who is living in our guts, we can prevent type 1 diabetes,” he told The Wall Street Journal.
The bottom line: We now have two sets of genes to think about - the ones we got from our parents and the ones of organisms living inside us. Our parents’ genes we can’t change, but the other set? Now that is one of the newest and most exciting fields in cell biology.
Follow link with related podcast: Gut bacteria may cause and fight, disease, obesity. This whole area of the ecosystem within us and our health I find fascinating. And I fall for confirmation bias on things like becoming inefficient at converting food to energy as a way reduce obesity.
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They then gave an example of the difference being 95 calories versus 99 calories. Hardly seems huge but it would add up. Still that is a less amazing difference than I was expecting.
Related: Energy Efficiency of Digestion - Waste from Gut Bacteria Helps Host Control Weight - Obesity Epidemic Partially Explained - Foreign Cells Outnumber Human Cells in Our Bodies
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Now that is some cool engineering: a bridge that becomes a tunnel. The Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel is a 4.6 miles (7.4 km) crossing for Interstate 664 in Hampton Roads, Virginia, USA. It is a four-lane bridge-tunnel composed of bridges, trestles, man-made islands, and tunnels under a portion of the Hampton Roads harbor where the James, Nansemond, and Elizabeth Rivers come together in the southeastern portion of Virginia.
It was completed in 1992, after 7 years of construction, at a cost $400 million, and it includes a four-lane tunnel that is 4,800 feet (1,463 m) long, two man-made portal islands, and 3.2 miles (5.1 km) of twin trestle.
Photos by Virginia Department of Transportation. Details from wikipedia. Google satellite view of the bridge-tunnel.
Related: Extreme Engineering - Cool Falkirk Wheel Canal Lift - The Dynamics of Crowd Disasters: An Empirical Study - A ‘Chunnel’ for Spain and Morocco - Swiss dig world’s Longest Tunnel
This is one of those area I find very interesting: People Have More Bacterial Cells than Human Cells. Colin Nickerson has written an interesting article on the topic: Of microbes and men
But what’s setting science on its heels these days is not the boggling numbers of bugs so much as the budding recognition that they are much more than casual hitchhikers capable of causing disease. They may be so essential to well-being that humans couldn’t live without them.
In this emerging view, humans and their microbes - or, as some biologists playfully put it, microbes and their attached humans - have evolved together to form an extraordinarily complex ecosystem.
The understanding of the complex interaction is something I came to through reading on the overuse of antibiotics. And the more I read the more interesting it gets.
However, in the opinion of some researchers, this strange union may be headed for trouble because of profligate use of antibiotics and antiseptic lifestyles that deter the transfer of vital strains of bacteria that have swarmed in our systems at least since early humans ventured out of Africa.
Related: Tracking the Ecosystem Within Us - Skin Bacteria - Move over MRSA, C.diff is Here - Cats Control Rats … With Parasites - Beneficial Bacteria
In Our Genes, Old Fossils Take On New Roles
The thousands of human endogenous retroviruses, or HERVs, sketch a history of rough times during the 550 million years of vertebrate evolution. The best-preserved one, HERV-K113, probably arrived less than 200,000 years ago, long after human beings and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor.
But these retroviruses are more than just curiosities. They are some of the most important enemies we ever had. They helped mold the immune system that is one of the evolutionary marvels of life on Earth.
I must say there is tons of amazing stuff I learn about but I still find retroviruses amazing.
Related: Amazing Science: Retroviruses - Old Viruses Resurrected Through DNA - One Species’ Genome Discovered Inside Another’s - Our Genome Changes as We Age - posts on genes and genome
Silent Spring by Lauren Monaghan, Cosmos
But the truth is quite the opposite. The exclusion zone is teeming with wildlife of all shapes and sizes, flourishing unhindered by human interference and seemingly unfazed by the ever-present radiation. Most remarkable, however, is not the life buzzing around the site, but what’s blooming inside the perilous depths of the reactor.
Sitting at the centre of the exclusion zone, the damaged reactor unit is encased in a steel and cement sarcophagus. It’s a deathly tomb that plays host to about 200 tonnes of melted radioactive fuel, and is swarming with radioactive dust.
But it’s also the abode of some very hardy fungi which researchers believe aren’t just tolerating the severe radiation, but actually harnessing its energy to thrive.
“Our findings suggest that [the fungi] can capture the energy from radiation and transform it into other forms of energy that can be used for growth,” said microbiologist Arturo Casadevall from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York, USA.
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Taken together, the researchers think their results do indeed hint that fungi can live off ionising radiation, harnessing its energy through melanin to somehow generate a new form of biologically usable growing power.
If they’re right, then this is powerful stuff, said fungal biologist Dee Carter from the University of Sydney. The results will challenge fundamental assumptions we have about the very nature of fungi, she said.
It also raises the possibility that fungi might be using melanin to secretly harvest visible and ultraviolet light for growth, adds Casadevall. If confirmed, this will further complicate our understanding of these sneaky organisms and their role in ecosystems.
Pretty amazing stuff. It really is great all that nature gives us to study and learn about using science.
Related: Radiation Tolerant Bacteria - Not Too Toxic for Life - Bacterium Living with High Level Radiation - What is an Extremophile?
Very cool. Get your Phun (2D physics software) for free. Phun is a Master of Science Theises by Computing Science student Emil Ernerfeldt.
Some other very cool stuff: Cool Mechanical Simulation System - Scratch from MIT - What Kids can Learn - Lego Autopilot First Flight - Awesome Cat Cam
Photo by, and of, Astronaut Clay Anderson, Expedition 15 flight engineer. He used a digital camera to expose a photo of his helmet visor during the mission’s third planned session of extravehicular activity (EVA) on the International Space Station (15 August 2007). Also visible in the reflections in the visor are various components of the station and a blue and white portion of Earth. During the 5-hour, 28-minute spacewalk, Anderson and astronaut Rick Mastracchio (out of frame), STS-118 mission specialist, relocated the S-Band Antenna Sub-Assembly from Port 6 (P6) to Port 1 (P1) truss, installed a new transponder on P1 and retrieved the P6 transponder.
NASA provides their content, photos etc. online in an open access spirit. When linking to content (especially images) it is best to provide context (and with the internet the easiest way to do is so is relevant links). You can find many low resolution pictures of the image above around the internet. Trying to find the context around the image is not so easy - it took me quite awhile to do so. I try to provide the context and links. Lately some more sites will link to some original sources but this is still done far to infrequently.
There are also still far too many pointy haired bosses (PHB) making decisions to break the web by killing pages: web pages must live forever. Those PHB’s decisions do reduce the great benefit of linking but it is still worth doing for those cases where web sites are managed by people with the knowledge and ability to manage an internet resource properly.
Photo: NASA - high resolution version
Related: Van Gogh self portrait - Mars Rovers Getting Ready for Another Adventure - NASA Robotics Academy
Parasite Rex is a great book by Carl Zimmer (one of the bloggers listed in the Curious Cat directory of science blogs). This is the first book read as part of my specific plan to read more about bacteria, cells, virus, genes and the like.
One of the most enjoyable aspects of writing this blog is that I have focused much more on cool things I read. And over time the amazing things I posted about related to these topics made me realize I should put some focused effort to reading more on these topics. Some of the posts that sparked that idea: Tracking the Ecosystem Within Us - Inner Life of a Cell: Full Version - Where Bacteria Get Their Genes, People Have More Bacterial Cells than Human Cells, Biological Molecular Motors - Energy Efficiency of Digestion - Old Viruses Resurrected Through DNA - Midichloria mitochondrii - Microbes - Using Bacteria to Carry Nanoparticles Into Cells - How Bacteria Nearly Destroyed All Life - New Understanding of Human DNA - Soil Could Shed Light on Antibiotic Resistance - Symbiotic relationship between ants and bacteria
Parasite Rex was a great place to start. Carl Zimmer is a great writer, and the details on how many parasites there are and how interconnected those parasites are to living systems and how that has affected, and is affecting, us is amazing. And the next book I am reading is also fantastic: Good Germs, Bad Germs. Here is one small example from Parasite Rex, page 196-7:
Malaria is a parasite. One of the amazing things with repeated examples in the book were parasites that seemed to have extremely complicated life cycles (that don’t seem like a great strategy to prosper but obviously work). Where they grow in one life form (an insect or mammal or whatever) but must leave that life form for some other specific life form for the next stage in life (they cannot have descendants without doing so…). Seems like a crazy way to evolve but it happens over and over again.
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Humans Carry More Bacterial Cells than Human Ones
How cool is science? Very, I think 
Related: Tracking the Ecosystem Within Us - Beneficial Bacteria - Energy Efficiency of Digestion - Large Number of Bacteria on our Skin - Where Bacteria Get Their Genes - Amazing Science: Retroviruses
One of the great things about writing this blog is I find myself more focused on reading about interesting science. Retroviruses are very interesting and frankly amazing. Darwin’s Surprise by Michael Specter, The New Yorker:
When the sequence of the human genome was fully mapped, in 2003, researchers also discovered something they had not anticipated: our bodies are littered with the shards of such retroviruses, fragments of the chemical code from which all genetic material is made. It takes less than two per cent of our genome to create all the proteins necessary for us to live. Eight per cent, however, is composed of broken and disabled retroviruses, which, millions of years ago, managed to embed themselves in the DNA of our ancestors. They are called endogenous retroviruses, because once they infect the DNA of a species they become part of that species. One by one, though, after molecular battles that raged for thousands of generations, they have been defeated by evolution. Like dinosaur bones, these viral fragments are fossils. Instead of having been buried in sand, they reside within each of us, carrying a record that goes back millions of years. Because they no longer seem to serve a purpose or cause harm, these remnants have often been referred to as “junk DNA.” Many still manage to generate proteins, but scientists have never found one that functions properly in humans or that could make us sick.
How amazing is that? I mean really think about it: it is incredible. The whole article is great. Related: Old Viruses Resurrected Through DNA - DNA for once species found in another species’ Genes - New Understanding of Human DNA - Retrovirus overview (Tulane) - Cancer-Killing Virus
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Watch video of Professor Werren describing the genome-in-a-genome at the University of Rochester.
More incredible gene research. Scientists at the University of Rochester and the J. Craig Venter Institute have discovered a copy of the genome of a bacterial parasite residing inside the genome of its host species. The research, reported in today’s Science, also shows that lateral gene transfer—the movement of genes between unrelated species—may happen much more frequently between bacteria and multicellular organisms than scientists previously believed, posing dramatic implications for evolution.
Such large-scale heritable gene transfers may allow species to acquire new genes and functions extremely quickly, says Jack Werren, a principle investigator of the study. If such genes provide new abilities in species that cause or transmit disease, they could provide new targets for fighting these diseases.
The results also have serious repercussions for genome-sequencing projects. Bacterial DNA is routinely discarded when scientists are assembling invertebrate genomes, yet these genes may very well be part of the organism’s genome, and might even be responsible for functioning traits.
“This study establishes the widespread occurrence and high frequency of a process that we would have dismissed as science fiction until just a few years ago,” says W. Ford Doolittle, Canada Research Chair in Comparative Microbial Genomics at Dalhousie University, who is not connected to the study. “This is stunning evidence for increased frequency of gene transfer.”
Related: Opossum Genome Shows ‘Junk’ DNA is Not Junk - Bdelloid Rotifers Abandoned Sex 100 Million Years Ago - Scientists discover new class of RNA - Where Bacteria Get Their Genes - New Understanding of Human DNA - Old Viruses Resurrected Through DNA
Gut Check: Tracking the Ecosystem Within Us
Another intriguing observation, Palmer noted, was a tendency for sudden shifts in the composition of the infants’ intestinal microbial communities over time as different species of bacteria ebbed and flowed.
I find this area and this study fascinating. I’m not exactly sure why this study and the incredibly significant positive bacteria for human life news doesn’t get more notice. Oh well I guess there are not cool pictures of robots or scary stories of potential threats to those reading which makes the news less interesting to some. Still I find this stuff amazing: Energy Efficiency of Digestion - Beneficial Bacteria - Skin Bacteria - Hacking Your Body’s Bacteria for Better Health - Where Bacteria Get Their Genes
CatCam by Juergen Perthold - this great project involved taking a digital camera and some additional equipment to create a camera that his cat wore around his neck which took pictures every 3 minutes. The pictures are great. The cat got photos of several other cats and seemed to like cars.
See more cool gadgets, See our other popular posts and our cat related posts.
For the second try I used the plastic package of a child toy (Kinderueberraschung), put a stone in it for loading it with some weight and attached it again to the cat collar. This time the part returned - dirty and scratched outside, water inside. What the hell is the cat doing !? This raised the requirements for the camera protective housing a lot
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Big moment no. 1: attach the collar with the camera to the cat. The reaction was not very happy but finally accepted. Reality check passed
This is my favorite home engineering project. The concept is great. The explanation of the technology is great. The adjustment to real life situations is great. The end result (the photos) is great. This wins the non-existent Curious Cat Cool Contraption award. If someone doesn’t start selling prefabricated cat cameras I will be very surprised (if I was more enterprising I would do it myself). Maybe J. Perthold will, in any event he should inspire many to try making their own.
Related: The Cat and a Black Bear - Automatic Cat Feeder - The sub-$1,000 UAV Project
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Cool device from MIT: A Shrewd Sketch Interpretation and Simulation Tool.
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