Source : 07 May 2016

Cosmic rays allow us to slice through the structure of a pyramid, revealing the ancient and fine engineering at its heart.

You may have wondered what the inside of a pyramid looks like. Not the cavities and passages you see on The Mummy - the actual structure of the creation, how it was built to last all these years.

The pyramids of ancient Egypt are around 4,500 years-old. They've stood the test of time, great monuments on the landscape. Dusty gold and majestic.  Now, we can learn a little more about them thanks to cosmic rays. Archeologists have begun to utilise new technology to better refine our understanding of pyramids' internal make up. Cosmic rays allow us to slice through the structure of a pyramid, revealing the ancient and fine engineering at its heart.

The new Scans Pyramids project uses cosmic rays to build 'inside' maps of the Egyptian attractions. The images show the internal crooked chamber of a 4,600-year-old pyramid known as the 'Bent Pyramid'. It's a 345-foot monument 25 miles south of Cairo.

In ancient times, the pointed building was known as the Southern Shining Pyramid. It's believed to be one of Egypt's earliest designs. It looks odd, probably built in a time of transition, when engineering moved from stepped pyramids to smooth.

The cosmic rays used to unlock the secrets of the structure might be compared to X-rays. Scientists are using muon particles, which come from cosmic rays, to penetrate deep into stone.Using these, researchers can gauge how thick the stonework is, and build up a map of the internal organs of a building. It took 40 days of exposure to the particles to garner enough information. Now, there are images that capture the scale of the craftmanship involved.

And this is just the beginning. There are plenty more pyramids to look at...

© Flickr/ NASA Johnson
For years, NASA has been working on an engine capable of providing tons of thrust without consuming fuel. It now looks like that pursuit is bearing fruit: the second-generation EmDrive upgrade gives necessary "anomalous thrust signals" while its main characteristics have been solidly improved, Paul March, a researcher participating in the project, wrote on the online NASA Space Flight forum. A peer-reviewed article on the successes of the EmDrive project is yet to be published, but the online "leak" clearly indicates humanity may be a step closer to a brand-new range of speeds.

From @digitaltrends: NASA Confirms that the EM Drive thrusters work, after new tests https://t.co/l7u4iA9PZG pic.twitter.com/2yCjGzMjpy— Perth Observatory (@perthobs) November 5, 2015

A magnetron and microwaves create a propellant-less propulsion system. Basically, waves resonate inside an enclosed conical container, generating thrust toward the wide end of the cone.

It goes against the traditional laws of physics, and the initial design of the system by British researcher Roger Shawyer was met with skepticism by specialists worldwide back in 2003. Luckily, NASA has been known for supporting experiments, so it took the discovery under its wing.

Just think about all the possibilities a fuel-free drive promises. With 'warp-drive,' a journey to Mars could take just two and a half months.

A Moscow laboratory has conducted the first successful organ translation [transplant] using a unique Russian 3D-printing technology. The breakthrough could potentially help millions suffering from thyroid disorders - and paves the way for printing other human organs.

The thyroid, a butterfly-shaped gland in the neck, can have a dramatic impact on a huge variety of human bodily functions. The groundbreaking operation, thus far only in rodents, was performed by a team from the 3D Bioprinting Solutions Laboratory in the Russian capital some three months ago.  "Then we were monitoring them over eight weeks and the level of the hormone continued growing," said Elena Bulanova, 3D Bioprinting Solutions Laboratory Head.

The thyroid glands in mice were first killed by a radioactive iodine injection, before the research team transplanted newly-printed organs into their subjects.Three weeks into the experiment, the team, headed by Vladimir Mironov, observed "higher" levels of the hormone T4, which is responsible for growth and the metabolism, and measured higher body temperatures, Bulanova said.  After 11 weeks of monitoring the subjects' 3D printed thyroid glands, they were fully functional with completely restored thyroid function.  "All in all we consider experiment to be successfully conducted because we managed to raise the level of hormone T4," Bulanova said.

The 3D-printed organ consists of several types of tissues, and features blood vessels to substitute the thyroid gland of a living organism. The lab's undertaking to transplant the thyroid first began in March 2015, when the organ was first printed using the Russian bio printer FABION.  In further experiments and in printing other organs, potentially human, researchers are planning to use undifferentiated stem cells taken from an adult organism, which are very similar to embryonary cells. "There are many new and interesting but complicated tasks which need to be completed, but it is another level of the development of the industry," said 3D Bioprinting Solutions Executive Director Youssef Hesuani.

The breakthrough of 3D Bioprinting Solutions Laboratory was presented at a scientific conference in the Netherlands earlier this month. During the presentation the head of research, Vladimir Mironov told the scientific community that their 3D-printed organ is able to restore thyroid function in mice suffering from hypothyroidism — a condition where thyroid gland doesn't produce enough hormones.  Scientists hope that the new breakthrough will one day help millions of people with different thyroid disorders, as the thyroid gland influences almost all of the metabolic processes in human body.

Researchers in Peru have a new way to capture electricity from plants and bacteria to help rainforest communities.

Researchers at the Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología (UTEC) have developed a technique for capturing the electricity emitted from plants. Actually, to be fair, it's Geobacter— a genus of bacteria that live in the soil — that do the grunt work. Robby Berman at Slate explains the process:  "[N]utrients in plants encounter microorganisms called 'geobacters' in the dirt, and that process releases electrons that electrodes in the dirt can capture. A grid of these electrodes can transfer the electrons into a standard battery."

UTEC has partnered with global ad agency FCB to produce 10 prototypes and distribute them to houses in the rainforest village of Nuevo Saposoa. Each contains an electrode grid buried in dirt, in which a single plant grows. The grid connects to a battery, which powers a large LED lamp attached to an adjustable arm on the outside of the box. The UTEC video below shows the boxes in action (including a money shot of a lamp being triumphantly turned on):

For Nuevo Saposoa and other underserved communities, this is more than just a crackerjack bit of biological engineering. Electricity, and lighting in particular, are a very real need. Berman writes: "In the rainforest villages of Nuevo Saposoa and Pucallpa in Perù, there's an existing electrical grid, but since a flood last March damaged its cables, it hasn't been working. Forty-two percent of the communities in the rainforest don't have even that much. Sundown means lights out, a real problem for families with small children—and for students who need to study—unless they resort to unhealthy and dangerous kerosene lamps."

UTEC has a tradition of this sort of humanitarian innovation, Berman explains. "A while back, it found a way of growing plants on platforms using clean moisture pulled from the air in a region whose groundwater—and ground—has been ruined by pollution."

If the "plant lamps" (that's UTEC's name, not mine) are successful, their appeal isn't going to be limited to rainforest communities. Who wouldn't want a houseplant that cut back on their electric bill? Add a bit of green to your bank account and your bedroom.

Karli Petrovic : iQ: 15 Feb 2016

Shocked to learn a braille printer can cost $2,000, preventing many blind kids and adults from being able to read braille, one 12-year-old boy used Legos to create a cost-effective option.
When Shubham Banerjee's mother vetoed his initial science fair project idea — an experiment involving colored lights and plant growth — saying he could do better, the then 12-year-old was forced to get creative.

Around the same time, Banerjee found a pamphlet requesting donations for the blind. Intrigued, he asked his parents how blind people learned to read. His busy parents directed him to Google. "So I Googled it, 'how blind people read,' and I found out about braille, braille printers, how much they cost," Banerjee said, shocked that a traditional printer was $2,000. "I've been to India a couple times, and I've seen blind people and a lot of poverty everywhere, and it's very hard for them."

Banerjee empathized when he and a friend closed their eyes in attempts to navigate the world as if they were blind.  "We couldn't walk more than five seconds without thinking there was a pole in front of us," he said.  He knew there must be a better way to help the blind see.  "I felt like they should not pay over $1,000 just to get what they need to become literate."  So he got to work building a better, more affordable braille printer using an unlikely material:Lego Mindstorms EV3.

After seven frustrating attempts to modify Lego cars and mechanisms to create holes necessary for braille, he had a breakthrough. Braigo was born.  Excited but filled with self-doubt, he called out for his mom. It was 2 a.m.  "She was very mad," he said. "I showed it working, and she was really happy. Then she went back to bed."

Despite using his entire summer vacation to craft the $350 Braigo, Banerjee knew the machine needed a "better brain." So he built a second version using Intel Edison technology and Python code.  "The Edison didn't cost too much, and it had built-in wireless, which was super important," Banerjee explained. "I needed the printer to easily communicate directly with the computer."

Banerjee also appreciated the Edison's size, performance and Bluetooth capabilities. When he finished putting the pieces altogether, however, the real reward came from watching other kids use the printer.  "Henry [Wedler] tested both my products," Benerjee said. "I printed out, 'Hello, my name is Shubham,' and he could read that perfectly. That was just amazing, and seeing that it really worked...was just the best feeling."  It also inspired him to keep working and innovating.

"When I saw the braille dots that came out, I started Braigo Labs, a company dedicated to developing 'humanely optimized' technologies that offer affordable solutions to life's most critical problems."

© Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine
Scientists have used 3D-printing technology to create first-of-their-kind structures made of living tissue. The bioprinter breakthrough has shown promise with cartilage, bone and muscle, opening the prospect of creating replacement human body parts.

Researchers using a bioprinter, described Monday in Nature Biotechnology, say that they've found a way to manufacture living muscle, bone and cartilage. They say that this technology can make unprecedented advances in the healing of battlefield injuries by using a combination of living cells and a plastic-like material.

While printed tissue has been accomplished before, scientists have not figured out a way to nourish the tissues by allowing blood vessels to colonize them after they are transplanted.  "Cells simply cannot survive without a blood vessel supply that's smaller than 200 microns [0.07 inches], which is extremely small," Atala told Gizmodo. "That's the maximum distance. And that's not just for printing, that's nature."

So far, the manufactured body parts have only been tested on laboratory animals, but the transplants were stable enough to be considered successful in those tests. "It can fabricate stable, human-scale tissue of any shape," Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in North Carolina, said in a statement. "With further development, this technology could potentially be used to print living tissue and organ structures for surgical implantation."

The groundbreaking bioprinter creates the custom organs by layering patterns of artificial, biodegradable WHAT? that contains cells from the patient who will receive the implant. Then the device adds a temporary shell that scaffolds the structure together while it is put into the host's body. The artificial materials then slowly degrade while the cells grow strong enough to support themselves. "Our results indicate that the bio-ink combination we used, combined with the microchannels, provides the right environment to keep the cells alive and to support cell and tissue growth," Atala said.

To test the body parts, scientists printed human-sized ears and grafted them to mice and witnessed the circulation of blood and formation of cartilage tissue within two months. They also implanted muscle tissue in rats and noted that nerves began to form within two weeks. Bone implants, which were printed using human stem cells and implanted in rats, triggered the formation of a blood vessel system that could be observed after five months.

While it has yet to be used in humans, Atala and his colleagues say that the bioprinter's principles are the same in people as they are in animals. Replacement pats can be made to order based on 3D body scans, they said.

Evan Ackerman : IEEE Spectrum : 01 Feb 2016

No matter how many regulations are put in place, drones are cheap enough now that frequent misuse is becoming the norm. There's no good way of dealing with a dangerous drone: you can jam its radios to force it to autoland, or maybe try using an even bigger drone to capture it inside a giant net. In either of these cases, however, you run the risk of having the drone go completely out of control, which is even more dangerous. Or, you can be like the Dutch National Police, and train eagles to take down drones for you.

The Dutch police (like police everywhere) know that drones are going to become even more of a problem than they already are, so they've been testing ways of dealing with a drone in an emergency, like if a drone is preventing an air ambulance from landing. The police are looking into electronic solutions, but also physical ones, including both nets and trained eagles.

The Dutch police have partnered with Guard From Above, a raptor training company based in The Hague, to determine whether eagles could be used as intelligent, adaptive anti-drone weapon systems. The eagles are specially trained to identify and capture drones, although from the way most birds of prey react to drones, my guess is that not a lot of training was necessary. After snatching the drone out of the sky, the eagles instinctively find a safe area away from people to land and try take a couple confused bites out of their mechanical prey before their handlers can reward them with something a little less plastic-y. The advantage here is that with the eagles, you don't have to worry about the drone taking off out of control or falling on people, since the birds are very good at mid-air intercepts as well as bringing the drone to the ground without endangering anyone.

While the eagles are (unsurprisingly) very competent at taking out something the size of a DJI Phantom, for larger drones the safety of the bird seems like it should be a concern: my guess is that large carbon fiber props could do damage to a bird's legs or toes, and at least here in the United States, that would be a big problem, because eagles and many other kinds of birds are protected species. The video apparently mentions something about designing a protection system for the birds, which is good. Even so, I doubt that using attack eagles as drone interceptors will ever turn out to be a practical solution in most places, but since I got to write an article about using attack eagles as drone interceptors (!), as far as I'm concerned, it's been totally worth it.

According to the Dutch Police, these tests should last a few months, at which point they'll decide whether using the eagles in this way is an effective and appropriate means of preventing unwanted drone use.

The rest of the article can be accessed here.

PhysOrg : 23 Dec 2015

A team led by researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has created a super-strong yet light structural metal with extremely high specific strength and modulus, or stiffness-to-weight ratio. The new metal is composed of magnesium infused with a dense and even dispersal of ceramic silicon carbide nanoparticles. It could be used to make lighter airplanes, spacecraft, and cars, helping to improve fuel efficiency, as well as in mobile electronics and biomedical devices.

To create the super-strong but lightweight metal, the team found a new way to disperse and stabilize nanoparticles in molten metals. They also developed a scalable manufacturing method that could pave the way for more high-performance lightweight metals. The research was published today in Nature.

"It's been proposed that nanoparticles could really enhance the strength of metals without damaging their plasticity, especially light metals like magnesium, but no groups have been able to disperse ceramic nanoparticles in molten metals until now," said Xiaochun Li, the principal investigator on the research and Raytheon Chair in Manufacturing Engineering at UCLA. "With an infusion of physics and materials processing, our method paves a new way to enhance the performance of many different kinds of metals by evenly infusing dense nanoparticles to enhance the performance of metals to meet energy and sustainability challenges in today's society."

Structural metals are load-bearing metals; they are used in buildings and vehicles. Magnesium, at just two-thirds the density of aluminum, is the lightest structural metal. Silicon carbide is an ultra-hard ceramic commonly used in industrial cutting blades. The researchers' technique of infusing a large number of silicon carbide particles smaller than 100 nanometers into magnesium added significant strength, stiffness, plasticity and durability under high temperatures.

The researchers' new silicon carbide-infused magnesium demonstrated record levels of specific strength—how much weight a material can withstand before breaking—and specific modulus—the material's stiffness-to-weight ratio. It also showed superior stability at high temperatures.

Ceramic particles have long been considered as a potential way to make metals stronger. However, with microscale ceramic particles, the infusion process results in a loss of plasticity.  Nanoscale particles, by contrast, can enhance strength while maintaining or even improving metals' plasticity. But nanoscale ceramic particles tend to clump together rather than dispersing evenly, due to the tendency of small particles to attract one other.

To counteract this issue, researchers dispersed the particles into a molten magnesium zinc alloy. The newly discovered nanoparticle dispersion relies on the kinetic energy in the particles' movement. This stabilizes the particles' dispersion and prevents clumping.  To further enhance the new metal's strength, the researchers used a technique called high-pressure torsion to compress it.  "The results we obtained so far are just scratching the surface of the hidden treasure for a new class of metals with revolutionary properties and functionalities," Li said.

The new metal (more accurately called a metal nanocomposite) is about 14 percent silicon carbide nanoparticles and 86 percent magnesium. The researchers noted that magnesium is an abundant resource and that scaling up its use would not cause environmental damage.

Journal Reference: Lian-Yi Chen et al. "Processing and properties of magnesium containing a dense uniform dispersion of nanoparticles," Nature (2015). DOI.

US scientists have developed a new polymer that has a unique capacity to remove pollutant substances from water "in seconds." The discovery could revolutionize the water-purification industry, make the process cheaper, and involve minimum energy. A team of researchers from Cornell University made the breakthrough. The full research has been published in Journal Nature this week.

"What we did is make the first high-surface-area material made of cyclodextrin [sugar molecules bound together in a ring]," said Will Dichtel, associate professor of chemistry, who led the research, "combining some of the advantages of the activated carbon with the inherent advantages of the cyclodextrin." "These materials will remove pollutants in seconds, as the water flows by," he said. "So there's a potential for really low-energy, flow-through water purification, which is a big deal."

The polymer has already shown the "uptake of pollutants through adsorption at rates vastly superior to traditional activated carbon - 200 times greater in some cases,"says the press release of the university. According to Dichtel, activated carbons don't bind pollutants as strongly as the new polymer. "We knew that [water filtering] would be a likely application if we were successful," Dichtel says. "We were definitely pleasantly surprised with just how good the performance is."

Dichtel hopes this new material can open ways to commercial water purification and also improve life in developing countries.

Charles Q. Choi : IEEE Spectrum : 14 Dec 2015

Solar heat could help generate both electricity and hydrogen fuel at the same time in a system that scientists in Switzerland and the United States call "hydricity." Such a system could supply electricity round-the-clock with an overall efficiency better than many photovoltaic cells, researchers add.

There are two ways solar energy is used to generate electricity. Photovoltaic cells directly convert sunlight to electricity, while solar thermal power plants—also known as concentrating solar power systems—focus sunlight with mirrors, heating water and producing high-pressure steam that drives turbines.

Photovoltaic cells only absorb a portion of the solar spectrum, but they can generate electricity from both direct and diffuse sunlight. Solar thermal power plants can use more wavelengths of the solar spectrum, but they can only operate in direct sunlight, limiting them to sun-rich areas. Moreover, the highest conversion efficiencies reported yet for solar thermal power plants are significantly less than those for photovoltaic cells.

Scientists now suggest that coupling solar thermal power plants with hydrogen fuel production facilities could result in "hydricity" systems competitive with photovoltaic designs.

Today's solar thermal power plants operate at temperatures of up to roughly 625 degrees C. However, the researchers noted that solar thermal power plants are more efficient at higher temperatures. What's more, when they reach temperatures above 725 degrees C they can split water into it's constituents, hydrogen and oxygen.

An integrated "hydricity" system would produce both steam for generating electricity and hydrogen for storing energy. And each makes the other more efficient. Set to produce hydrogen alone, its production efficiency approaches 50 percent, the researchers claim. This is because the high-pressure steam the system generates can easily be used to pressurize hydrogen. The substantial amount of power needed to compress hydrogen fuel for later transport and use is often neglected when it comes to calculating hydrogen production efficiency.

Furthermore, this new solar thermal energy design can generate electricity with standalone efficiencies approaching up to an unprecedented 46 percent, researchers say. This is because the high-temperature steam leaving high-pressure turbines can run a succession of lower-pressure turbines, helping make the most of the solar thermal energy the system collects.

Moreover, the hydrogen fuel the system generates can be burned to generate electricity after nightfall, for round-the-clock power. The researchers say the efficiency of this hydrogen-to-electricity system could reach up to 70 percent, comparable to the highest reported hydrogen fuel cell efficiencies.

Altogether, the researchers say the sun-to-electricity efficiency of hydricity, averaged over a 24-hour cycle, might approach roughly 35 percent, nearly the efficiency attained using the best multijunction photovoltaic cells combined with batteries. In addition, they note that the hydrogen fuel the system produces could find use in transportation, chemical production, and other industries. Finally, unlike batteries, stored hydrogen neither discharges over time nor degrades with repeated use.

The scientists at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., and the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne in Switzerland detailed their findings online 14 December in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Sumitra : Oddity Central : 28 Nov 2015

Meet Aisa Mijeno, a Filipino architect and scientist who invented a revolutionary lamp that runs on a glass of saltwater instead of batteries. Her vision in creating the SALt (Sustainable Alternative Lighting) lamp was to "light up the rest of the Philippines sustainably," by finding an environment-friendly alternative light source suitable for people in coastal areas. She came up with the idea after spending time with the locals of the Butbut tribe in the Kalinga Province of Philippines, who had no access to electricity.

The lamp can apparently run for eight hours on just two tablespoons of salt and a glass of water. "It is made of tediously experimented and improved chemical compounds, catalysts, and metal alloys that when submerged in electrolytes will generate electricity," Mijeno explained. The idea behind it is the chemical conversion of energy, but while it works on the scientific principle of the galvanic cell, it makes use of a harmless, non-toxic saline solution instead of hazardous electrolytes.

This saltwater lamp not only makes lighting available to remote areas, it's also a lot cheaper than conventional kerosene or electric lamps, considerably safer since it does not have components and compounds that may spark fire, and, most importantly, it's environment-friendly since it does not emit toxic gases and leaves a minimal carbon footprint."This isn't just a product," Mijeno said. "It's a social movement."

Although the SALt lamp isn't being mass produced yet, it has received global recognition. Mijeno has won several awards and competitions in Philippines, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea for the work that she put into the device. And The New York Times reported that she recently attended a discussion of climate change hosted by President Obama, where she spoke about the SALt lamp in detail. He called her venture a "splendid thought", while referring to her as "the perfect example of young entrepreneurs coming up with leapfrog technology."

For now, Mijeno's immediate challenge lies in finding a way to manufacture the lamp so that it remains durable, economical, and easy to maintain. If it manages to work as promised, it can produce about 90 lumens of light at just $20, plus $3 to replace the anode every six months. That's perfect for areas with no electricity grid, and safer than kerosene lamps. SALt also features a USB port that can be used to charge mobile phones or other electrical devices. If everything goes according to plan, Mijeno believes the product should be available on the market in 2016.

"The danger in (kerosene) lamps is it could cause fire accidents," she said. "We want to provide a lighting option that is more cost-effective, more safe, more sustainable and environmentally friendly by way of a lantern that uses saline solution or ocean water as a catalyst to generate electricity. Just imagine, if we're able to power a whole island using ocean water. That's what we're trying to aim for."

© Wei Sun/Drexel University : Researchers have figured out a way to print 3D blocks of living stem cells.

Gone are the days when 3D printers merely built plastic trinkets — scientists say 3D-printed structures loaded with embryonic stem cells could one day help doctors print out micro-organs for transplant patients.

Embryonic stem cells, obtained from human embryos, can develop into any kind of cell in the body, such as brain tissue, heart cells or bone. This property makes them ideal for use in regenerative medicine — repairing and replacing damaged cells, tissues and organs.

Scientists typically experiment with embryonic stem cells by dosing them with biological cues that guide them toward developing into specific tissue types — a process called differentiation. This process begins with the cells forming spherical masses called embryoid bodies — an activity that mimics the early stages of embryonic development.

Previous research suggested the best way to grow embryonic stem cells is not in flat lab dishes, but in 3D environments that mimic how these cells might develop in human bodies. Recently, scientists developed 3D printers for embryonic stem cells. A 3D printer works by depositing layers of material, just as ordinary printers lay down ink, except it can also lay down flat layers on top of one another to build 3D objects.

Until now, 3D printers for embryonic stem cells just generated flat arrays or simple mounds, called "stalagmites," of cells. Now, researchers say they have, for the first time, developed a way to print 3D structures laden with embryonic stem cells.

"We are able to apply a 3D-printing method to grow embryoid bodies in a controlled manner to produce highly uniform blocks of embryonic stem cells," study co-author Wei Sun, a professor of mechanical engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing and Drexel University in Philadelphia,told Live Science.

In principle, these blocks could be used like Lego bricks to build tissues "and potentially even micro-organs," Sun added.

To read the entire article, click here.

Blind people have long relied on sound as a substitution for sight, and some even use echo-location to navigate around objects. But it turns out that sound can be specifically designed to convey visual information. Now, that phenomenon is being used in an attempt to build better navigation aids for blind people.

Researchers from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena have built smart glasses that translate images into sounds that can be intuitively understood without training.  The device, called vOICe (OIC stands for "Oh! I See"), is a pair of dark glasses with an attached camera, connected to a computer. It's based on an algorithm of the same name developed in 1992 by Dutch engineer Peter Meijer. The system converts pixels in the camera's video feed into sound, mapping brightness and vertical location to an associated pitch and volume.

A cluster of dark pixels at the bottom of the frame sounds quiet and has a low pitch, while a bright patch at the top would sound loud and high-pitched. The way a sound changes over time is governed by how the image looks when scanned left to right across the frame. Headphones sends the processed sound into the wearer's ear.

"You're taking something from vision and you're putting it into audition," says Caltech's Noelle Stiles, who works on vOICe. "Your brain is doing the opposite - it's taking in all of the sounds and it's making sense of them visually."

Integrating the senses
In a paper published this week, Stiles and her colleague Shinsuke Shimojo explain that mapping visuals to sound in this way reflects how we integrate data from different senses. Perceiving a rose, for instance, means experiencing more than just its colour - its scent, the texture of its petals and the rustle of its leaves also count.

Shimojo and Stiles worked to understand how people intuitively map objects to sounds. They asked sighted volunteers to match images (stripes, spots and natural textures) to sounds, while blind volunteers were asked to feel textures and select sounds that seemed to correspond to them. The pattern of choices directly shaped vOICe's algorithms and seemed to produce an intuitive result.

Tested on the device, blind people with no experience of using it were able to match the shapes to the sounds as often as those who had been trained - both groups performed 33 per cent better than by chance. But when the encoding was reversed, so that a high part of the image became a low pitch and a bright part of the image became a quiet sound, volunteers found it harder to match image to sound.

Intuitive mapping
"The result that select natural stimuli could be intuitive with sensory substitution, with or without training, was unexpected," the researchers write."This research shows it's not just important how much information you provide, but whether you provide it in a way that the person can intuitively make sense of," says Ione Fine of the University of Washington in Seattle.  "They are basically saying that the magic bullet is going to be finding an intuitive mapping system and not relying on training," she says.

Fine points out that there's a gulf between distinguishing patterns in a lab and using vOICe to observe and understand the real world. But she says the work could ultimately help design better vision aids. Traditionally, these have relied on training users to understand the patterns they produced when converting vision to other stimuli. "It's much better to find something intuitive and easy to use," she says.

Stiles and Shinsuke are now using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data to analyse activity within the brain, looking for that intuitive mapping system.

Journal reference: Scientific Reports, DOI: 10.1038/srep15628

Scientists in Japan say they've fashioned glass that's almost as strong as steel.

The ability to make super strong glass could lead to a whole new generation of windows in buildings and vehicles, but could also prove useful in screens for electronics, like tablets, computers, and smartphones. The team, from the University of Tokyo's Institute of Industrial Science, had their findings published earlier this month in Scientific Reports by Nature.

"We are looking to commercialize the technique within five years," University of Tokyo assistant professor Atsunobu Masuno told Asahi Shimbun.

Here's the secret ingredient in such tough glass: alumina. It's an oxide of aluminum, and mixing it with silicon dioxide makes glass way tougher. Problem is, when scientists have tried to use large amounts of alumina in the past, it caused the mixture to crystallize as soon as it touched any kind of container, preventing glass from being formed.

So the Tokyo team brewed up a method of making glass that required no container at all: they used gas to push the chemical components into the air, where they synthesized together. The result? A transparent ultra glass that's 50% alumina and rivals the Young's modulus of steel and iron, which measures rigidity and elasticity in solids.  The practical uses are broad, since the study notes that alumina glass made via aerodynamic levitation can yield a product that's thin, light, and has excellent optical properties. We say, bring on commercialization.

If you are interested in “free energy” and clean energy technologies, you should pay attention to graphene, an emerging material that has some very interesting characteristics. Some of graphene’s interesting characteristics are its thickness, electrical conductivity and amazing energy transferring ability.
What is graphene?
Graphene is the thinnest material known to mainstream scientists. To be more specific, it is about one million times thinner than paper. Because graphene is so thin, some scientists consider it to be two dimensional. At the atomic level, graphene is made of a single layer of carbon atoms. These carbon atoms are bonded together in a repeating pattern that is shaped like a hexagon.

Even though graphene is super thin, as a material it is phenomenally strong. This special material is so strong that it is 200 times stronger than steel. Furthermore, graphene conducts electricity and heat better than any material known to mainstream scientists.  Another cool feature of graphene is that it is very flexible. Because of its flexibility, it can be twisted and curved to a certain extent without breaking. This characteristic of graphene allows it to be used as a material to cover all types of surface.

Graphene and fuel cells
Graphene’s ability to conduct electricity beyond ordinary methods is one of the reasons why it is being studied as a material to be used in clean energy and “free energy” applications. According to scientists, graphene allows electrons, which are the particles that make up electricity, to move 200 times faster than silicon.

The rest of the article can be read at : source.

YouTube video published on Oct 8, 2012
A TV screen as thin and flexible as paper. A cook's pot that flashes a warning if it detects E. coli. Possible treatments for damaged spinal cords. It's not science fiction -- these are all possible applications of a material known as graphene.  This so-called "wonder material" is 100 times stronger than steel but thinner than any known solid. And It's the focus of the latest episode of ChemMatters.

The video explains how graphene's incredible properties come from the unique arrangement of its atoms. Graphene, like diamonds and coal, is made up entirely of carbon. But unlike those materials, graphene's carbon atoms are arranged in two-dimensional sheets, making it incredibly strong and flexible. Since graphene also conducts electricity as well as copper, it could lead to flexible cell phone touchscreens and transparent, inexpensive solar cells. Ongoing advances in manufacturing graphene are bringing these and other devices closer to reality.

Animation and motion graphics by Sean Parsons  :   Directed by Adam Dylewski

[Correction: The video's narration incorrectly states that Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov are chemists. Both Geim and Novoselov are physicists. Bytesize Science regrets the error.]