These “emotional heat maps” provide a glimpse into where people feel things.

Originally shared by AsapSCIENCE

These “emotional heat maps” provide a glimpse into where people feel things. 

#GIFs   #ScienceEveryday  

via: http://jakelodwick.tumblr.com/post/108500225991/emotional-heat-maps

Here's how fast New Horizons is moving, contextualized for us Earth dwelling humans.

Originally shared by AsapSCIENCE

Here's how fast New Horizons is moving, contextualized for us Earth dwelling humans. 

#GIFs   #ScienceEveryday   #NewHorizons  

via: http://www.sciencealert.com/this-gif-shows-how-mind-blowingly-fast-new-horizons-is-travelling-through-space

A self-folding origami robot.

Originally shared by AsapSCIENCE

A self-folding origami robot. 

#Tech   #Robot   #ScienceEveryday  

via: http://links.thisiscolossal.com/post/120438466276/watch-a-self-folding-origami-robot-that-can-walk

#robotics #drones #swarmintelligence #swarmrobotics

#robotics #drones #swarmintelligence #swarmrobotics

Originally shared by Lacerant Plainer

The SMAVNET project aims at developing swarms of flying robots that can be deployed in disaster areas to rapidly create communication networks for rescuers. Flying robots are interesting for such applications because they are fast, can easily overcome difficult terrain, and benefit from line-of-sight communication. 

To make aerial swarming a reality, robots and controllers need to be made as simple as possible. 

Designing swarm controllers is typically challenging because no obvious relationship exists between the individual robot behaviors and the emergent behavior of the entire swarm. For this reason, we turn to biology for inspiration. 

In a first approach, artificial evolution is used for its potential to automatically discover simple and unthought-of robot controllers. Good evolved controllers are then reverse-engineered so as to capture the simple and efficient solutions found through evolution in hand-designed controllers that are easy to understand and can be modeled. Resulting controllers can therefore be adapted to a variety of scenarios in a predictable manner. Furthermore, they can be extended to accommodate entirely new applications. Reverse-engineered controllers demonstrate a variety of behaviors such as exploration, synchronization, area coverage and communication relay. 

Designing swarm controllers is typically challenging because no obvious relationship exists between the individual robot behaviors and the emergent behavior of the entire swarm. For this reason, we turn to biology for inspiration. 

Full Article: http://lis.epfl.ch/smavs

Video link: Deployment of Large Aerial Swarms

#swarm   #swarmintelligence   #robots   #science   #sciencesunday   #scienceeveryday   #biology  

#robotics #swarmintelligence #swarmrobotics

#robotics #swarmintelligence #swarmrobotics

Originally shared by Lacerant Plainer

Swarm Robots

University of Colorado Boulder Assistant Professor Nikolaus Correll likes to think in multiples. If one robot can accomplish a singular task, think how much more could be accomplished if you had hundreds of them.

Correll and his computer science research team, including research associate Dustin Reishus and professional research assistant Nick Farrow, have developed a basic robotic building block, which he hopes to reproduce in large quantities to develop increasingly complex systems.

Recently the team created a swarm of 20 robots, each the size of a pingpong ball, which they call “droplets.” When the droplets swarm together, Correll said, they form a “liquid that thinks.”

To accelerate the pace of innovation, he has created a lab where students can explore and develop new applications of robotics with basic, inexpensive tools.

Similar to the fictional “nanomorphs” depicted in the “Terminator” films, large swarms of intelligent robotic devices could be used for a range of tasks. Swarms of robots could be unleashed to contain an oil spill or to self-assemble into a piece of hardware after being launched separately into space, Correll said.

Video link: http://www.colorado.edu/news/multimedia/researchers-creating-team-tiny-robots

#robotics   #robots   #science   #scienceeveryday  
http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2012/12/14/cu-boulder-team-develops-swarm-pingpong-ball-sized-robots

#robotics

#robotics  

Originally shared by Lacerant Plainer

Kinematics modular robotic building blocks :  Fascinating toys for kids to learn about robotics and renewable energy. Highly recommended by a friend, this looks real fun as well!

Article Extract: kinematics is a building block construction kit that allows children with no computer skills build interactive robots introducing them to mechanics, sensors and renewable energy. the modular kinetic parts and adaptor blocks were invented by leonhard oschütz at bauhaus university weimar developed through 3D printing technologies, which allowed them to easily draft up prototypes of the individual components. the construction system is composed from kinetic modules and adapter blocks which can easily be connected to one another freely without the use of cables. the major feature of the kit is that the components use an integrated servo motor that allows a variety of movements--three different modules for rotational, tilt and shift functions.

The highly creative modular robotic system, Kinematics, allows a wide range of applications. It is possible to construct models based on bionics as well as autonomously moving vehicles – anything is possible. Only a few examples are available now but in the next couple months many new models will be added. All modules can be connected to each other by a 360° rotating-plug-connector. This feature enables the user to both create stable constructions and also guarantees integrated data and power transmission. Stability and wireless connectivity ensures the foolproof joining and separation of, the modules and allows many types of design and movement configurations.

Article Link: http://www.designboom.com/design/kinematics-modular-robotic-building-blocks/

Additional article source: http://www.kinematicblocks.com/en/

Must watch YouTube video: Kinematics - Robotik für Kinder

Additional link : http://robotland.blogspot.in/2013/04/kinematics-next-generation-robotic.html

The science behind Kinematics (Paper) : http://ijeit.com/vol%202/Issue%206/IJEIT1412201212_06.pdf

Link to MIT DRL wiki: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/drl/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Read more about modular robots: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-reconfiguring_modular_robot

#science #scienceeveryday #toys #modular #robotics #kinematics  

#robotics #health

#robotics   #health  

Originally shared by Lacerant Plainer

Robotic maggots proposed for destroying Brain Tumors : Even though this is at the concept stage, its quite evocative!

From Sources (in links): Robotic maggots might be making their way into people's brains. Inspired by a TV show where plastic surgeons use maggots to eat away dead tissue, neurosurgeon J. Marc Simard of the University of Maryland School of Medicine has been developing a prototype for a larvae-esque robot that could get eat away at a brain tumor from the inside.

The bendy bot can zap tumors with an electrocautery tool, then suction out the dead tissue. It can be controlled remotely, making it possible for the surgeon to monitor the tumor and direct the robot to certain tissue while the patient is undergoing an MRI.

Steve Krosnick, M.D., a program director at NIBIB, says real-time MRI guidance during brain tumor surgery would be a tremendous advantage. “Unlike pre-operative MRI or intermittent MRI, which requires interruption of the surgical procedure, real-time intra-operative MRI offers rapid delineation of normal tissue from tumor while accounting for brain shifts that occur during surgery.”

Designing a neurosurgical device that can be used inside an MRI magnet is no easy task. When you scan a person’s brain during an MRI, he’s deep inside the machine’s tunnel. The problem is, how do you get your hands on the brain while the patient’s in the scanner? The team’s solution was to give the surgeon robotic control of the device in order to circumvent the need to access the brain directly.

The most challenging aspect of the project has been designing a robot that can be controlled inside the magnetic field of an MRI. While robots are often controlled via electromagnetic motors, this was not an option because, besides being magnetic, these motors create significant image distortion, making it impossible for the surgeon to perform the task. Instead, Desai decided to use shape memory alloy (SMA)—a material that alters its shape in response to changes in temperature—to control the robot’s movement. In the most recent prototype—developed by Desai and his team at the Robotics, Automation, and Medical Systems (RAMS) laboratory at the University of Maryland, College Park—a system of cables, pulleys and SMA springs are used. This cable and pulley system is an improvement from their previous prototype which caused some image distortion.


Main Article Link: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-09/robo-maggots-will-munch-through-brain-tumors

Additional Article source (NIH): http://www.nibib.nih.gov/news-events/newsroom/robots-could-one-day-help-surgeons-remove-hard-reach-brain-tumors

Maryland Robotics link (Really interesting) : http://robotics.umd.edu/research/projects/Desai_Intracranial_Robot.php

Additional News article: http://news.discovery.com/tech/robotics/maggot-like-robot-eats-brain-tumors-130910.htm

Video link: Minimally Invasive Neurosurgical Intracranial Robot

#science #scienceeveryday #robot #surgery #flexibility #MRI  

#robotics

#robotics  

Originally shared by SciFi Author: Lacerant Plainer

Bar2-D2 : Bar2-D2 is the complete package. Made by a hobbyist and salesman, Bar2-D2 can serve beers, make cocktails, and wheel over to someone badly in need of some refreshment. It also serves ice!

BaR2D2 is a mobile bar that features a motorized beer elevator, motorized ice/mixer drawer, computerized drink mixing, and sound activated neon lighting. The robot is drivable so you can take the party on the road! It was garage-built in about 8 months.

Article link: http://www.popsci.com/technology/gallery/2013-05/11-robots-will-tend-your-party?image=6

Product details: http://www.jamiepricecreative.com/bar2d2about.html

#sciencefiction #scifi #science #scienceeveryday #sciencesunday #robot #bar #r2d2  

#technology #wirelesspower

#technology   #wirelesspower  

Originally shared by Lacerant Plainer

When will wireless power reach the tipping point?

If you’re waiting to see when wireless power will hit the mass market, then you’re not alone. Delivering power wirelessly is perhaps one of the most hyped, long anticipated changes to the way we design and use products and machinery since the invention of electricity itself. But if you’ve been watching this space, you’ll know these solutions have been slow in coming to market and are anything but commonplace.

Why is that? What’s it going to take for this technology to hit the mainstream? Over the past two years we have witnessed first generation implementations of wireless power, mostly in the smartphone after-market. These come in the form of sleeves and charging pads but are rarely sighted amongst early adopters. Each claims to be supporting the best technology — the one that will lead the world in becoming completely unplugged. Yet, in my view, what we have seen and heard so far are a combination of impossible claims and poor end-user functionality.

WiTricity CEO Eric Giler imagines a future where power devices are embedded in the walls and carpets of homes, making for a truly wire-free household. He says with a big enough power supply and small wireless repeaters, one could even power a grocery store or office building. Conventional charging devices such as the cord for a cell phone use electromagnetic induction to transmit power. Through electromagnetic induction, an electric current is sent through a magnetic field generated by a power conductor to a smaller magnetic field generated by a receiving device. (See related quiz: "What You Don't Know About Electricity")

Eric Giler demo: Eric Giler demos wireless electricity

Article Link: http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/05/when-will-wireless-power-reach-the-tipping-point/

Natgeo article: http://news.nationalgeographic.co.in/news/energy/2012/12/121228-wireless-power/

WiTricity website: http://www.witricity.com/index.html (MIT commercial venture).

Thanks to James Brine  and Jonah Miller for mentioning Tesla.... well it got me thinking and researching!

#science #scienceeveryday #sciencesunday #electricity #wireless #wirelesscharging #wirelesselectricity  

My previous project ;)

My previous project ;)

#swarmrobotics   #symbrion  

Originally shared by Lacerant Plainer

Swarm robotics

Swarm robotics is a technological technique of using multiple simple robots to work as a team and follow instructions. This technology has been greatly inspired by the nature. There are many animals, insects and fishes which live in a swarm.

If you've ever seen a trail of ants streaming up a wall or over a counter, you'd be forgiven for thinking they were working in strict, militant harmony. Not so. A robotic test bed developed at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark shows that this apparent order can emerge in artificial bodies following just a few simple rules.

Symbrion (Symbiotic Evolutionary Robot Organisms) is a project funded by European Commissions to develop a framework in which a homogeneous swarm of miniature interdependent robots can co-assemble into a larger robotic organism to gain problem-solving momentum. One of the key-aspects of Symbrion is inspired by the biological world: an artificial genome that allows to store and evolve (sub)optimal configurations in order to achieve an increased speed of adaptation.

Dr Roderich Gross, head of the Natural Robotics Lab, in the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering at the University of Sheffield, says swarming robots could have important roles to play in the future of micromedicine, as 'nanobots' are developed for non-invasive treatment of humans. On a larger scale, they could play a part in military, or search and rescue operations, acting together in areas where it would be too dangerous or impractical for humans to go. In industry too, robot swarms could be put to use, improving manufacturing processes and workplace safety.

Sources: Wikipedia. Symbrion.eu, Newscientist, Phys.org

Further reading: http://phys.org/news/2013-03-swarming-robots-servants-future-video.html

Alicebots on NewScientist: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2013/03/swarming-alice-bots.html

Reference : http://www.symbrion.eu/tiki-index.php

#science #scienceeveryday #robots #robotics #swarm #swarming #artificialintelligence  

#health #sleep

#health   #sleep  

Originally shared by Vassil Vidinsky

Craving for sleep: Hypersomnolence

"Anna Sumner’s craving for sleep began when she was an 18-year-old high school senior [...] When it followed her to college, she blamed it on stress [...] Then she spent a winter working in London. There, her excuse was the dark and dreary sky [...] Sumner needed sleep like an addict needs a fix. Sumner was almost 30 before finally confronting her problem [...] In the fall of 2005, she sought help at the Emory Clinic Sleep Center. She learned that her problem, known as hypersomnolence, was rare but not unheard of. Over the next six years, a team of doctors there analyzed the chemicals in her brain and in the brains of 31 other hypersomniacs. They fingered one mysterious substance as the culprit.
When they tried to publish their data, many experts simply didn’t believe it..."

For ScienceSunday co-curated by Robby Bowles, Allison Sekuler, Rajini Rao, Chad Haney, Buddhini Samarasinghe 

#sciencesunday   #scienceeveryday  
http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/2012/11/22/re-awakenings/

#technology #onlineshopping #onlineshop #onlinepayment

#technology   #onlineshopping   #onlineshop   #onlinepayment  

Originally shared by EuroTech

The Convenient Bank Combicard For Your Wallet
by Sophie Wrobel, EuroTech; Germany

Monte Paschi’s latest bank card lineup presents a solution that convenience shoppers will love: an all-in-one bank card for credit card, debit card, cash card, and online transaction generator combined into one integrated piece of plastic.

Features:
• Credit card (Mastercard) functionality, including magnetic stripe, card number, and signature strip
• Debit card (Maestro) functionality, including electronic chip and card number
• NFC chip for contact-free payment
• Integrated TAN generator for online purchases

One secure step backwards?
Perhaps the most striking “feature” about this card is its integrated Transaction Number (TAN) generator. Online shoppers across Europe are no stranger to the TAN generation, which involves using a physical device to generate a unique transaction number based on some details from the transaction, date/time, and a key located on the physical hardware. That combination provides for additional security, and additional consumer annoyance.

The Combicard provides that magic number from a push button – without the need to enter transactional data. While that still requires a physical device and not just a memorized passphrase, there is no transaction-specific data involved in the TAN generation, and as such we’re back to the security level of indexed TANs (iTANS), in which consumers selected a TAN from a printed out sheet of paper with a long list of TANs on it. The problem there, of course, is that an evil party could, with sufficient computing power and stolen knowledge, compute the TAN list – but a transaction-specific data seed, the window in which the TAN is valid would be too small for a hacker to compute and use the TAN.

Convenience vs. security
We can probably expect the general population welcoming this new line of cards: consumers want convenience. And most people don’t understand the security mechanism, and therefore also not how, or why, the new card could be somewhat less secure.

Website: www.montepaschi.be/en/PaschiCombo.html
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#health

#health  

Originally shared by EuroTech

A Virus That Kills Cancer
by Sophie Wrobel, EuroTech; Germany

Two hours is all it takes for an adenovirus to send over 30% of NET cancer cells into suicide. The oncolytic adenovirus is a new therapeutic reagent for cancers. It is a genetically manipulated virus containing a payload to bind to targeted receptors, and inject a viral DNA snippet into the cell. The cell then executes the new DNA code, which, in cancer-fighting adenoviruses, contains a suicide signal.

This particular adenovirus is Ad5(CgA-E1A-miR122) or for short Ad5fk-FWKT. The cryptic name explains what exactly the virus is: Ad5 stands for human adenovirus serotyp 5, and everything after that describes the modifications to the Ad5 virus: fk stands for the fiber knob, and FWKT identifies the receptor that the adenovirus targets. Ad5 binds to the coxsackie-adenovirus receptor (CAR) – an expression that vanishes on neuroendocrine tumor cells, making them immune to the Ad5 attack vector. So, Dr. Magnus Essand’s team (or more specifically Dr. Justyna Leja, as this project was her thesis) has modified the target sequence to pick somatostatin receptors instead, which are plentiful on the neuroendocrine tumor cells, and attack those cells, effectively forcing them to commit suicide.

How do you recognize and target a cancer cell?
Neuroendocrine tumors are cancers of the gastrointestinal and lower respiratory tract. These cells express somatostatin 2 receptors (SSTRs), containing the ligand somatostain, and recognizable by the Phe-Trp-Lys-Thr loop (also known as FWKT) pattern marker. When the SSTRs are activated, the cells cannot grow anymore.

Safe treatment: No serious side effects
Adenoviruses have been around in medical research for over 15 years already. A dose of Ad5fk-FWKT may give you flu-like symptoms during treatment, but otherwise none of the serious side effects commonly associated with cancer treatment.

Lab studies on mice and on cultured tumor cells suggest that around a sixth of the cells are heavily infiltrated after 30 minutes of exposure to the adenovirus, and by heavily infiltrated, I mean that the chance of the cancer cell surviving is less than 10%. After two hours, a third of the cells are heavily infiltrated, and over 90% of the cells look like they might already have been infiltrated by the adenovirus.

When will we see it?
At the moment, never. The virus is currently sitting dormant in a freezer in Sweden. The researchers have already published their details in academic journals, which means it can’t be patented anymore. And without a patent, no big pharma business wants to invest the £2 million to take it through the next round of trials. But, perhaps we can help them raise sufficient funds –  with the promise of an unpatentable (and therefore inexpensive) cancer miracle treatment waiting at the other side.

Further reading
Telegraph article (with a juicy narrative): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9508895/A-virus-that-kills-cancer-the-cure-thats-waiting-in-the-coldc.html

Full text journal article:
http://www.bionity.com/de/fachpublikationen/264133/oncolytic-adenovirus-modified-with-somatostatin-motifs-for-selective-infection-of-neuroendocrine-tumor-cells.html

Donate on the project website: http://www.uu.se/en/support/oncolytic

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