A
robotic fly with a body not much taller than a penny standing on edge
has taken to the air, passing its tests with flying colors. The RoboBee,
as it's called, is the smallest artificial insect yet flown, according
to the team that built it.
It
lifts off the table, hovers, and flies in different directions. At this
point in its evolution, the bug is still tethered by thin wires that
allow its designers to power and guide it. And landing remains an issue.
The robot ends its sorties with all the grace of a mosquito nailed with
a burst of Raid.
Still,
the tiny craft's success – the team that designed it said it was the
first such object to fly in a controlled manner – represents a key step
in developing insect-size drones that designers say could one day search
collapsed buildings for survivors after a disaster, sample an
environment for hazardous chemicals before humans are sent in, or
pinpoint enemy soldiers or terrorists holed up in urban areas.
Some
members of the team suggest that future generations of the bug could
serve as a robotic pollinator for plants, though without the side
benefit of honey.
Over
the years, researchers have marveled at insect flight in no small part
because it appears to violate every principle that keeps a bird or an
airliner aloft.
Together
with an announcement this week that another team of researchers has
developed a buglike compound lens for collecting video taken with small
aerial vehicles, the description of RoboBee appearing in Friday's issue
of the journal Science signals how far robotic bug research has come in
the past decade.
RoboBee
is something of a misnomer. The team modeled its bug after a hoverfly,
which looks like a bee. Hoverflies show remarkable control over their
movements – from hovering, as the name implies, to lightly touching down
on a wind-tossed blossom.
The hoverfly wanna-be was built by researchers and graduate students at Harvard University
and weighs a scant .003 ounces. Its wingspan stretches just over an
inch, and its wings flap as many as 120 times a second, with each stroke
covering an angle of 110 degrees – all comparable to a hoverfly's
characteristics. Each of the two independently controlled wings weighs
about .00003 of an ounce.
The
bug is far too small for hardware typically used in robots as stand-ins
for muscles and joints, so the team "had to develop solutions from
scratch, for everything," said Harvard engineering professor Robert Wood, who led the team, in a prepared statement.
The
body of the bug was made from carbon-fiber composites with thin plastic
strips serving as joints. The team crafted muscles from thin layers of
ceramics that expand and contract when electricity is applied to them.
The bug's overall power consumption is a paltry .019 of a watt – so
small a flashlight bulb wouldn't notice.
Over
the past two years, the team has refined the manufacturing process to
such a degree that they can replace a bug that augers in fairly quickly.
In the past six months, the team has gone through 20 prototypes,
according to Kevin Ma, a graduate student at Harvard's School of
Engineering and Applied Sciences and one of two lead authors on the
formal research paper appearing in Science.
The
team's next challenge is to gradually move the bug from tethered to
increasingly autonomous. At some point, that means it needs to see where
it's going.
One potential solution appears in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature,
where an international team – including Kenneth Crozier, with Harvard's
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences – formally unveiled an
artificial eye similar in design to the eyes of a fire ant or bark
beetle. It boasts an array of 256 microlenses, 180 of which are used for
imaging. Each of these imaging lenses sits atop a light sensor. All sit
in tidy order on a half sphere.
In
nature, this arrangement gives insects an extraordinary field of view
and an ability to keep virtually everything they see in focus, no matter
how close or distant.
In
the past, researchers have developed layouts that mimic to some degree a
compound eye, but the arrays have been either flat or hemispherical but
laboriously handcrafted.
The team the University of Illinois's
Rogers guided found a way to use elastic materials to give the overall
array the shape it needed without throwing the microlenses and the light
sensors each was paired with out of alignment. The compound lens is
just under half an inch wide.
In
an e-mail, Rogers says the team hopes to improve the compound lens's
resolution – its ability to distinguish between two closely spaced
objects. Indeed, he says he's confident that the approach will yield
lenses that outperform even the best insect eyes.
"We
are working on that, and on schemes that allow the overall size of the
camera to be reduced," he says, including a size befitting a RoboBee.
|
|
A
team of mad scientists hiding an ivory tower successfully 3D-printed a
bionic ear that can restore the sense of hearing for the deaf. The ear's
shaped like a human ear, for the most part, but the ribbon of wires
that come out the back and attach to a person's nerve endings confirms that it's anything but. It is part of a much bigger plan, though. And get this: it even picks up radio signals.
Researchers at Princeton recently unveiled this bionic ear as the latest bit of progress in their greater ambition
to build spare parts for would be human cyborg. The ear takes advantage
of a new polymer-based gel that's partially made up of calf cells, and
it can ostensibly be used for other parts as well. Michael McAlpine, an
assistant engineering professor at Princeton and the mind behind the
ear, has sort of made powering electronics with human motion his life's work. He's not the only one working on integrating electronics into the human body, either.
For
the past few years, there have been myriad breakthroughs in cyborg-like
technology. Prosthetic limbs have becoming incredibly sophisticated
having leapt from wooden leg territory to the age of mind-controlled limbs. This couple with 3D printing moving from the fringes into the center of innovation in manufacturing all kinds of things, from guns to organs.
Anybody who understands the very basics of anatomy could surmise that
the ability to assemble an entire body from these printed parts and
robotic arms. All it would take is a lightning bolt to jolt him to life!
But
before I trip and fall too deep into that easy Frankenstein metaphor,
let me point out that there is progress being made in connecting
machines to our body. Cochlear implants, one of the first cyborg-like
technology, are fairly mainstream now, and the technology behind bionic
eyes is getting pretty good. Scientists are even working on a method for powering electronic devices not just using human motion but the human body itself. Yes, that is the premise for the popular 1999 movie The Matrix, and no, it probably won't ever happen.
For now, we've got a weird looking ear, an incredible brain-controlled robotic arm,
countless different models of cyborg-like prosthetics and a whole lot
of ambition. One day a bunch of mad scientists probably will build a
cyborg. Good luck, future mad scientists. Be sure to watch, well, pretty
much any science fiction movie with cyborgs in it before hitting the
"on" switch.
|
|
Iraqi leaders fear that the country is sliding rapidly into a new civil war which “will be worse than Syria”.
Baghdad
residents are stocking up on rice, vegetables and other foodstuffs in
case they are prevented from getting to the shops by fighting or
curfews. “It is wrong to say we are getting close to a civil war,” said a
senior Iraqi politician. “The civil war has already started.”
This
is borne out by the sharp rise in the number of people killed in
political violence in Iraq in April, with the UN claiming more than 700
people were killed last month, the highest monthly total for five years.
The
situation has suddenly deteriorated since the killing of at least 36
Sunni Arab protesters at a sit-in in Hawijah on 23 April. An observer in
Baghdad, who did not want to be named, said “ever since, Hawijah people
are frightened of a return to the massacres of 2006”. She added that
Sunni and Shia were avoiding going into each others’ areas. Signs of
deteriorating security are everywhere. Al-Qa’ida showed its reach on
Monday when five car bombs blew up in overwhelmingly Shia southern Iraq,
leaving 21 dead. The Sunni fundamentalist group, which had a resurgence
in 2012, is responsible for killing a majority of the almost 1,500
Iraqis who have died in political violence so far this year.
Its
members are now able to roam freely in Anbar province where a year ago
they were a secretive underground movement. In neighbouring Kirkuk,
al-Qa’ida last week seized the town of Sulaiman Bec, shot the chief of
police, stormed the police station and departed with their weapons after
agreeing a truce with the Iraqi army.
Residents
in Baghdad say that soldiers, whom they claim are Shia militiamen in
uniform, have massed around Sunni enclaves in the city and are setting
up checkpoints. Memories of the sectarian civil war in 2006 and 2007
when, in the worst months, some 3,000 people were butchered, may be
exacerbating the sense of threat, but old fears are reawakening. Bombs
have usually been directed against Shia in the past, but in recent weeks
Sunni mosques and cafés are being targeted. “Before we could escape to
Syria, but with the violence there where can we go?” asked one Iraqi.
“There is no way out.”
The
government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is floundering in its
response. In dealing with the four-month-old protest movement by the
Sunni Arabs, a fifth of Iraq’s population, who say they are treated as
second-class citizens, he varies between denouncing them as terrorists
and admitting that they have real grievances. The government has closed
the main road from Iraq to Jordan, which the Sunni say is a collective
punishment for their community. Overall, Mr Maliki has badly
miscalculated in believing that, if he played for time, the Sunni
protests would die away and he could divide the Sunni leadership with
promises of money and jobs.
Sunni
demonstrations, often taking the form of sit-ins in town and city
squares, are now being guarded by well-armed fighters who set up their
own checkpoints. At the weekend one stopped a car containing five Iraqi
soldiers in civilian clothes, who were suspected of being intelligence
officers, near a protest in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar. The men were
all killed. The Iraqi government depends on an alliance between the Shia
and the Kurds who, before the US invasion of 2003, were oppressed by
the Sunni-dominated regime of Saddam Hussein.
This
alliance is now frayed and much weaker than in the past. Iraqi army and
Kurdish troops (peshmerga) massed to confront each other last year in a
broad swath of disputed territories known as “the trigger line”.
A
Kurdish delegation led by the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional
Government (KRG), Nechervan Barzani, went to Baghdad to discuss a host
of divisive issues including security, oilfields and the Kurds’ share of
the federal budget. Mr Maliki has promised to visit the KRG in 10 days
and Kurdish ministers are ending their boycott of the cabinet, but the
Kurds do not expect progress on most matters in dispute.
Speaking
of the incipient Sunni revolt, Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of the
KRG President Massoud Barzani, said that “the western part of the
country is caught up in an uprising against the government. We don’t
want to have a second Syria here and we are heading in that direction.
The fire is very bad and we don’t have many firemen.” He believes the
present crisis is worse than previous ones because there is nobody to
mediate.
The
last American troops left at the end of 2011, President Jalal Talabani
is ill in hospital in Germany, and the Kurds themselves are too much at
odds with Baghdad to play a moderating role between Shia and Sunni. Mr
Hussein fears that if the present crisis deepens there is nothing to
prevent it exploding into a bloodbath.
The
crises in Iraq and Syria are now cross-infecting each other. The
two-year-old uprising of the Sunni in Syria encouraged their compatriots
in Iraq, who share a common frontier, to start their own protests.
These began last December and, until the army killed and injured scores
of protesters at Hawijah, were largely peaceful.
The
Iraqi Sunni drew strength from the fact that, while they are a minority
in their own country, they are a majority in the region.
The
revolts in the two countries are ever more running in parallel. Al-
Qa’ida in Iraq last month announced that it had founded the al-Nusra
Front, the most effective Syrian rebel military force, devoted half its
budget to support it and sent experienced al-Qa’ida fighters to Syria as
reinforcements.
When
Syrian government soldiers fled into Iraq in March and were being
repatriated to Syria, some 47 of them were ambushed and killed at
Akashat close to the Syrian border. The rebels claim that the
Shia-dominated Iraqi government is becoming a more active supporter of
President Bashar al-Assad. Rebels reported last week that an Iraqi air
force aircraft had bombed their forces at Deir Ez-Zhor in eastern Syria.
This
was more likely to be a Syrian aircraft that had briefly entered Iraqi
airspace, though the government in Baghdad issued no immediate denial.
Iraqi Shia volunteers have travelled to Damascus to defend the Shia
shrine of Sayida Zaynab though their numbers are unknown. The US alleges
that Iranian aircraft with arms for Assad’s forces regularly fly across
Iraq.
Iraqi
leaders in Baghdad and Erbil are convinced that the whole region is on
the edge of being convulsed by a sectarian war between Sunni and Shia.
In such a conflict Iran and Iraq will be very much in a minority.
Mahmoud
Othman, a veteran Kurdish leader and MP, believes that the government
in Baghdad has an exaggerated idea of its own strength and
underestimates the degree to which the international environment is
hostile to it. He says: “I remind them that of 56 Islamic states in the
world, only two are fully Shia.”
Many
Iraqi politicians blame Mr Maliki for exacerbating the crisis. As
leader of the religious Shia al-Dawa party, he has been Prime Minister
since 2006 when he was chosen by the US ambassador Zilmay Khalilzad as
the Shia leader most acceptable to the US, and who was also on good
terms with Iran.
The
US and Iran have remained crucial in him retaining his post, though one
British diplomat reflected later that the failure to veto Mr Maliki’s
reappointment was the worst mistake made by the US and Britain.
In
his earlier years in office Mr Maliki took a more inclusive and
conciliatory approach to the Sunni Arabs and the Kurds. This was partly
under American pressure. But Mr Maliki has secured his electoral support
as the main Shia leader by convincing Shia voters that he and his party
prevent a counter-revolution by the Baath Party which would evict the
Shia from power.
Playing
the sectarian card also has the advantage of making security, rather
than the government’s pervasive corruption and failure to provide
services, the main issue for the Shia majority. Mr Maliki’s mentality is
very much as a security man within the highly centralised and
authoritarian Dawa party which, in many ways, is a Shia version of
Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.
In
consolidating his support among the Shia, Mr Maliki has permanently
alienated the Sunni who view him with distrust. “He may have won over
the Shia but he has lost Iraq,” says Ghassan al-Attiyah, a political
scientist in Baghdad.
He
believes that the key to defusing the present crisis is for Mr Maliki
to step down and be replaced by a more neutral figure as prime minister
until the parliamentary elections next year.
It
is not likely to happen. The Shia of Iraq suspect that they may be
facing a fight for their existence. These fears may be exaggerated, and
deliberately inflated by the government, but they secure Mr Maliki’s
political base. The Iranians have their openly expressed doubts about
him, but they do not want to see him displaced while they are fighting
to save their ally in Syria.
They
believe it is a time for all Shia to stand together. The uprisings in
Syria and Iraq are coming together with explosive results for Iraq, the
region and the world. An Iraq only recently stabilised is becoming
unstable again. Only two months Sunni demonstrators were chanting
“Maliki or Iraq!”. But now they shout “War! War!”.
|
Senior
scientists have criticised the “appalling irresponsibility” of
researchers in China who have deliberately created new strains of
influenza virus in a veterinary laboratory.
They
warned there is a danger that the new viral strains created by mixing
bird-flu virus with human influenza could escape from the laboratory to
cause a global pandemic killing millions of people.
Lord
May of Oxford, a former government chief scientist and past president
of the Royal Society, denounced the study published today in the journal
Science as doing nothing to further the understanding and prevention of
flu pandemics.
“They
claim they are doing this to help develop vaccines and such like. In
fact the real reason is that they are driven by blind ambition with no
common sense whatsoever,” Lord May told The Independent.
“The
record of containment in labs like this is not reassuring. They are
taking it upon themselves to create human-to-human transmission of very
dangerous viruses. It’s appallingly irresponsible,” he said.
The
controversial study into viral mixing was carried out by a team led by
Professor Hualan Chen, director of China’s National Avian Influenza
Reference Laboratory at Harbin Veterinary Research Institute.
Professor
Chen and her colleagues deliberately mixed the H5N1 bird-flu virus,
which is highly lethal but not easily transmitted between people, with a
2009 strain of H1N1 flu virus, which is very infectious to humans.
When
flu viruses come together by infecting the same cell they can swap
genetic material and produce “hybrids” through the re-assortment of
genes. The researchers were trying to emulate what happens in nature
when animals such as pigs are co-infected with two different strains of
virus, Professor Chen said.
“The
studies demonstrated that H5N1 viruses have the potential to acquire
mammalian transmissibility by re-assortment with the human influenza
viruses,” Professor Chen said in an email.
“This
tells us that high attention should be paid to monitor the emergence of
such mammalian-transmissible virus in nature to prevent a possible
pandemic caused by H5N1 virus,” she said.
“It
is difficult to say how easy this will happen, but since the H5N1 and
2009/H1N1 viruses are widely existing in nature, they may have a chance
to re-assort,” she added.
The
study, which was carried out in a laboratory with the second highest
security level to prevent accidental escape, resulted in 127 different
viral hybrids between H5N1 and H1N1, five of which were able to pass by
airborne transmission between laboratory guinea pigs.
Professor
Simon Wain-Hobson, an eminent virologist at the Pasteur Institute in
Paris, said it is very likely that some or all of these hybrids could
pass easily between humans and possess some or all of the highly lethal
characteristics of H5N1 bird-flu.
“Nobody
can extrapolate to humans except to conclude that the five viruses
would probably transmit reasonable well between humans,” Professor
Wain-Hobson said.
“We
don’t know the pathogenicity [lethality] in man and hopefully we will
never know. But if the case fatality rate was between 0.1 and 20 per
cent, and a pandemic affected 500 million people, you could estimate
anything between 500,000 and 100 million deaths,” he said.
“It’s
a fabulous piece of virology by the Chinese group and it’s very
impressive, but they haven’t been thinking clearly about what they are
doing. It’s very worrying,” Professor Wain-Hobson said.
“The
virological basis of this work is not strong. It is of no use for
vaccine development and the benefit in terms of surveillance for new flu
viruses is oversold,” he added.
An
increasing number of scientists outside the influenza field have
expressed concern over attempts to deliberately increase the human
transmissibility of the H5N1 bird-flu virus. This is done by mutating
the virus so that it can pass by airborne droplets between laboratory
ferrets, the standard “animal model” of human influenza.
Two
previous studies, by Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Centre in
Rotterdam and Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, Madison,
caused uproar in 2011 when it emerged that they had created airborne
versions of H5N1 that could be passed between ferrets.
The
criticism led to researchers to impose a voluntary moratorium on their
H5N1 research, banning transmission studies using ferrets. However they
decided to lift the ban earlier this year, arguing that they have now
consulted widely with health organisations and the public over safety
concerns.
However, other scientists have criticised the decision to lift the moratorium.
|
|
Twenty-nine
percent of registered voters think that an armed revolution might be
necessary in the next few years in order to protect liberties, according
to a Public Mind poll by Fairleigh Dickinson University.
The
poll, which surveyed 863 registered voters and had a margin of error of
+/-3.4, focused on both gun control and the possibility of a need for
an armed revolution in the United States to protect liberty.
The
survey asked whether respondents agreed, disagreed, neither agreed nor
disagreed or did not know or refused to respond to the statement: "In
the next few years, an armed revolution might be necessary in order to
protect our liberties"
Twenty-nine
percent said they agreed, 47 percent said they disagreed, 18 percent
said they neither agreed nor disagreed, 5 percent said they were unsure,
and 1 percent refused to respond.
Results of the poll show that those who believe a revolution might be necessary differ greatly along party lines:
-
18 percent of Democrats
-
27 percent of Independents
-
44 percent of Republicans
The
poll found that 38 percent of Americans who believe a revolution might
be necessary support additional gun control legislation compared to 62
percent of those who don't think an armed revolt will be needed.
Dan Cassino, a professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson and analyst for the poll, says:
"The
differences in views of gun legislation are really a function of
differences in what people believe guns are for. If you truly believe
an armed revolution is possible in the near future, you need weapons and
you're going to be wary about government efforts to take them away."
The poll was conducted nationally between April 22 and April 28, 2013.
|
WASHINGTON —
North Korea's continuing development of nuclear technology and
long-range ballistic missiles will move it closer to its stated goal of
being able to hit the United States with an atomic weapon, a new
Pentagon report to Congress said Thursday.
The
report, the first version of an annual Pentagon assessment required by
law, said Pyongyang's Taepodong-2 missile, with continued development,
might ultimately be able to reach parts of the United States carrying a
nuclear payload if configured as an intercontinental ballistic missile.
North
Korea launched a multi-stage rocket that delivered a satellite into
orbit in December, an advance that "contributes heavily" to the
country's development of a long-range ballistic missile capability, the
report said.
It
is also continuing to refine its atomic weapons capability, including
with a nuclear detonation in February, and is capable of conducting
"additional nuclear tests at any time," the report said.
"These
advances in ballistic-missile delivery systems, coupled with
developments in nuclear technology ... are in line with North Korea's
stated objective of being able to strike the U.S. homeland," the report
said.
"North
Korea will move closer to this goal, as well as increase the threat it
poses to U.S. forces and allies in the region, if it continues testing
and devoting scarce regime resources to these programs," it said.
The
document characterized North Korea as one of the biggest U.S. security
challenges in the region because of its effort to develop nuclear arms
and missiles, its record of selling weapons technology to other
countries and its willingness to "undertake provocative and
destabilizing behavior."
The
report comes at a sensitive time in the region, with friction between
Washington and Pyongyang only now beginning to ease following two months
of increasingly shrill rhetoric that seemed to edge the Korean
peninsula close to war.
Tensions
between the two countries rose sharply after North Korea put the
satellite into space in late December and conducted the nuclear test in
February. The test triggered new U.N. sanctions, which led to a barrage
of threats from Pyongyang.
North
Korea went so far as to warn of nuclear strikes on the United States
and South Korea, as its new leader, Kim Jong Un, marked his first year
in office following the death of his father.
The
U.S. and South Korean militaries went ahead with a long-scheduled
military exercise despite the threats and Washington sending stealth
bombers and other planes to the region in a show of force.
North
Korea signed a deal to get rid of its nuclear program in exchange for
aid in 2005 but later backed out of the pact and now says it will not
give up its atomic weapons program.
The
United States has firmly rejected North Korean demands that it be
recognized as a nuclear-armed state. Washington has stepped up its
diplomacy with China over the issue.
|
Even
as most Americans wonder what planet politicians are from, is it
possible that the government is squelching evidence of extraterrestrials
visiting Earth? One former presidential hopeful says yes – and that the
conspiracy goes all the way to the top.
Former
Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) says the White House has helped keep the
truth about the “extraterrestrial influence that is investigating our
planet” from the public.
“It
goes right to the White House, and of course, once the White House
takes a position, ‘well there's nothing going on’...it just goes down
the chain of command, everyone stands toe,” Gravel tells Top Line.
Gravel
is one of six former congress representatives who were paid $20,000 by
the UFO advocacy group Paradigm Research to participate in a
Congressional-style Citizen Hearing on Disclosure
in Washington this week, where witness after witness has presented
first-hand accounts of UFO sightings and extraterrestrial visits.
Gravel
says the strongest accounts of alien encounters are from former
military officers, such as retired Air Force Capt. Robert Salas, who
testified that UFOs temporarily disabled nuclear weapons on his watch.
“The
smoking gun of the whole issue, which is when they saw hovering space
craft in Wyoming and South Dakota over the ICBM missile silos that the
missiles couldn't work,” Gravel says.
Gravel says the media has aided what he sees as a government cover-up by not taking reports of ET encounters seriously.
“What
we're faced with here is, in areas of the media, and the government
too, an effort to marginalize and ridicule people who have specific
knowledge,” he says.
When
asked about the fact that he was compensated for his participation in
the hearing, Gravel says it did not influence him to agree with the
testimony.
“This
is an opportunity which I've taken to focus on this issue for an entire
week and the preparation I made in coming to it, for my enrichment
that's very important,” Gravel says.
For
a ride into the outer limits of human knowledge on the possibility of
alien life, and to hear how Gravel thinks the world should treat
potential alien visitors, come along for this expedition of Top Line.
|
|
Care Act to be “null and void,” and criminalizes its implementation.
.