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KITE: THE AMAZING SQUARE MOSQUITO REPELLANT STICKER, COULD END THE SPREAD OF MOSQUITO-BORNE DISEASES IN AFRICA

The Kite Patch acts like an impenetrable force field to keep mosquitos from biting people. (Click Image To Enlarge)

The Kite Patch is a little square sticker that emits a cloak of chemical compounds that block a mosquito's ability to sense humans. Image: ieCrowd

Mosquitos were born to bite us, and aside from lighting worthless tiki candles, haplessly swatting them away, or resorting to spraying toxic DEET all over ourselves, there’s really not a whole lot we can do about it. Imagine then, if you could be encapsulated in an anti-mosquito bubble simply by wearing a small square sticker. Not only would it save mosquito-magnets like myself some really uncomfortable moments, it could be a major game changer in the way we prevent mosquito-borne illnesses like Malaria, Dengue Fever, and West Nile Virus.

The Like Patch has one purpose: Make humans "invisible" to mosquitos (Click Image To Enlarge)

The good news is that a sticker like this is not some far away concept dreamed up by scientists in a lab–it’s actually a real thing that you’ll likely be able to find on the shelves of your local Walgreens sometime in the not-so-distant future.

The Kite Patch could be the solution to ending the spread of mosquito transmitted diseases like Malaria, Dengue Fever, West Nile Fever (Click Image To Enlarge)

Essentially, the Kite Patch is a little square sticker that emits a cloak of chemical compounds that blocks a mosquito’s ability to sense humans. According to its developers, users simply have to place the patch onto their clothes, and they become invisible to mosquitoes for up to 48 hours. This is big news for developing countries like Uganda, where residents have little beyond mosquito nets and toxic sprays to combat the illness-spreading insects.

Olfactor Laboratories developed non-toxic compounds that work against mosquitoes' long-range abilities to detect humans through CO2, as well as dampening the bug’s short-range ability to sense us from our basic human odors. Image courtesy of Olfactor Laboratories (Click Image To Enlarge)

That’s exactly where Kite’s creators, a collaborative team made up of innovation venture capital group ieCrowd and Olfactor Laboratories, intend to ship these off to as soon as they’re done blowing past their second goal on global crowdsourcing site Indiegogo. Launched just last month, the campaign surpassed its original goal of $75,000 in just four days and is now gunning for a new goal of $385,000 (currently at $336,000).

 

Though the Kite seems a little fantastical, it’s backed by some legitimate technology. Back in 2011, Dr. Anandasankar Ray, an entomologist at the University of California, Riverside (and founder of Olfactor Labs), found that certain chemical compounds can inhibit the carbon dioxide receptors in mosquitoes. These smelly compounds, which act like a anti-mosquito force field, are able to disorient the bugs, whose main method of tracking down humans is through our exhalation of CO2.

A scientist testing the chemical compounds in the Kite Patch. Image courtesy of Olfactor Laboratories. (Click Image To Enlarge)

The findings were considered a breakthrough moment in the field, but the technology was far from ready to be applied to a consumer product mostly because the compounds were toxic and wouldn’t be able to pass through FDA and EPA approval.  Grey Frandsen, Vice President at ieCrowd explains.  

“It wasn’t ready to be placed into a product that could mean something globally.” 

The hand on the left shows how mosquitos react to the Kite Patch not containing the mosquito repellant compounds, and the hand on the right shows that mosquitos are repelled as a result of the repellant compounds in the Kite Patch. (Click Image To Enlarges)

That’s where his company came in.

ieCrowd basically functions as the belt of an innovation assembly line, guiding an idea through the necessary steps so it can become a widely distributed, (hopefully) world-changing product.  It begins with acquiring the intellectual property, like they did with Dr. Ray’s research. From there they provide all of the business infrastructure, marketing, and general support so subsidiary companies can focus exclusively on developing new technology.   In the case of the Kite Patch, ieCrowd worked with a group of scientists at Olfactor Laboratories, a research facility in Riverside, Calif. that developed a new targeted library of chemical compounds based on Dr. Ray’s original research.

Olfactor’s non-toxic compounds work against mosquitoes’ long-range abilities to detect humans through CO2, as well as dampening the insect’s short-range ability to sense us from our basic human odors.  These chemicals, which give off a “faint pleasant smell,” will be applied to a small sticker, which Frandsen notes is the cheapest, easiest, and most adaptable way to design a spatial insect repellant. The patches will then be shipped off to Uganda for field testing, which should begin before the end of the year. Frandsen says of ieCrowd’s method.

“Really, what we’re doing is creating a rapid scientific development process, a rapid prototyping process and then a very aggressive go to market strategy.” 

The Kite Patch needed to be affordable, adaptable and easy to use, which is why it was designed as a square sticker. Image by ieCrowd.  (Click Image To Enlarge)

The product has had a little help along the way, namely from the National Institutes of Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. Frandsen says.

“The big names behind us have helped us advance the science.  But those grants do not cover product development.”

All of the money raised from the Indiegogo campaign will be funneled into extensive field testing. Originally, the testing was going to provide 20,000 patches (around 1 million hours of coverage) to one district in Uganda. The extra money raised will double the number of Kite Patches shipped and expand the coverage to four million hours in three political districts in the country.

The idea is to refine the Kite as much as possible during the field testing and hone in on three main goals:  

• Analyze the adaptability of the patch.  
  • Is it easy to apply and wear? 
  • Does it work well both at morning and at night? 
  • Does it fall off people’s clothing at after a certain point? 
• Test the effectiveness of the technology in harsh conditions found in places like Sub-Saharan Africa. Scientists have yet to determine exactly how far the sticker’s spatial radius extends and will be looking to see how it reacts to wind and extreme weather. 
• Begin field testing to evaluate how the sticker interacts with and can supplement current malaria prevention technology like bed nets.

Frandsen says.

“We’re looking at: What are any shortfalls specifically relating to the design that we can solve for that don’t come from testing it with 100 people in the Canadian Rockies or in Florida?  So there’s this real life, real world use and evaluation of that.”

The Kite has reportedly performed well inside the highly-controlled confines of a lab, but Frandsen says the most vital evaluation will come from the Kite Patch’s time in Africa.  He says of the extensive field testing. 

“It’s a really unique way of doing product development.  It’s a lot easier to deal in private-equity markets or investments and just finish it.”

But, he continues,

“This technology is too important to just funnel directly to the Walgreens. It needs to be part and parcel of people’s daily lives all over the world.”

You can donate to the Kite Patch campaign on Indiegogo.

COMMENTARY:    The Kite Patch is a no-brainer that is destined to become a game changer.   The Kite Patch is a product that screams for capital to speedup the research needed to test the patch's adaptability, efficacy and begin field testing.  I say the faster the better.  The Kite Patch is needed right now, especially in tropical countries of the world where mosquito-borne diseases like Malaria, kill millions of people each year.  

Courtesy of an article dated August 16, 2013 appearing in Wired 

 

IT'S A DANGEROUS PLACE OUT THERE, 10,000TH NEAR-EARTH OBJECT FOUND IN SPACE, BUT NUMBER COULD BE 10 TIMES HIGHER

Asteroid 2013 MZ5 as seen by the University of Hawaii's PanSTARR-1 telescope. In this animated gif, the asteroid moves relative to a fixed background of stars. Asteroid 2013 MZ5 is in the right of the first image, towards the top, moving diagonally left/down. Image credit: PS-1/UH   Larger view | Unannotated version

More than 10,000 asteroids and comets that can pass near Earth have now been discovered.

The 10,000th near-Earth object, asteroid 2013 MZ5, was first detected on the night of June 18, 2013, by the Pan-STARRS-1 telescope, located on the 10,000-foot (3,000-meter) summit of the Haleakala crater on Maui. Managed by the University of Hawaii, the PanSTARRS survey receives NASA funding. 

Ninety-eight percent of all near-Earth objects discovered were first detected by NASA-supported surveys. 

Plot of orbits of known potentially hazardous asteroids (size over 460 feet (140 m) and passing within 4.7 million miles (7.6×10⁶ km) of Earth's orbit) as of early 2013 (Click Image To Enlarge)

Lindley Johnson, program executive for NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program at NASA Headquarters, Washington, said.

"Finding 10,000 near-Earth objects is a significant milestone.  But there are at least 10 times that many more to be found before we can be assured we will have found any and all that could impact and do significant harm to the citizens of Earth."

(Click Image To Enlarge)

During Johnson's decade-long tenure, 76 percent of the NEO discoveries have been made. 

Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are asteroids and comets that can approach the Earth's orbital distance to within about 28 million miles (45 million kilometers). They range in size from as small as a few feet to as large as 25 miles (41 kilometers) for the largest near-Earth asteroid, 1036 Ganymed. 

1036 Ganymed, is the code name of an asteroid that has a diameter of 34 kilometers. The giant asteroid ever discovered by Walter Baade on October 23, 1924. (Click Image To Enlarge)

Asteroid 2013 MZ5 is approximately 1,000 feet (300 meters) across. Its orbit is well understood and will not approach close enough to Earth to be considered potentially hazardous. 

Eliptical orbit of near-Earth object codename 2013 MZ5 as of June 28, 2013 (Click Image To Enlarge)

Don Yeomans, long-time manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said.   

"The first near-Earth object was discovered in 1898.  Over the next hundred years, only about 500 had been found. But then, with the advent of NASA's NEO Observations program in 1998, we've been racking them up ever since. And with new, more capable systems coming on line, we are learning even more about where the NEOs are currently in our solar system, and where they will be in the future." 

Of the 10,000 discoveries, roughly 10 percent are larger than six-tenths of a mile (one kilometer) in size - roughly the size that could produce global consequences should one impact the Earth. However, the NASA NEOO program has found that none of these larger NEOs currently pose an impact threat and probably only a few dozen more of these large NEOs remain undiscovered. 

The vast majority of NEOs are smaller than one kilometer, with the number of objects of a particular size increasing as their sizes decrease. For example, there are expected to be about 15,000 NEOs that are about one-and-half football fields in size (460 feet, or 140 meters), and more than a million that are about one-third a football field in size (100 feet, or 30 meters). A NEO hitting Earth would need to be about 100 feet (30 meters) or larger to cause significant devastation in populated areas. Almost 30 percent of the 460-foot-sized NEOs have been found, but less than 1 percent of the 100-foot-sized NEOs have been detected. 

Barringer Meteorite Crater (aka Meteor Crater), near Winslow, Arizona, is one of the best known impact craters on planet Earth. (Click Image To Enlarge)

Barringer Meteorite Crater, near Winslow, Arizona, is one of the best known impact craters on planet Earth.  The crater is one mile wide, and up to 570 feet deep. Historically, this crater is the first recognized to be caused by an impact rather than a volcanic eruption.  A scientific investigation indicates that the asteroid responsible for the crater, a 300,000 ton nickel-iron meteor, impacted Earth near Flagstaff, Ariznona some 50,000 years ago.  Estimates suggest that it was about 130 feet across and was traveling over 26,000 miles per hour.  For comparison, the asteroid or comet impactor that created the Chicxulub crater 65 million years ago, and is thought to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, was 6 to 12 miles across.

When it originated, the NASA-instituted Near-Earth Object Observations Program provided support to search programs run by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory (LINEAR); the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NEAT); the University of Arizona (Spacewatch, and later Catalina Sky Survey) and the Lowell Observatory (LONEOS). All these search teams report their observations to the Minor Planet Center, the central node where all observations from observatories worldwide are correlated with objects, and they are given unique designations and their orbits are calculated. 

Tim Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center says.

"When I began surveying for asteroids and comets in 1992, a near-Earth object discovery was a rare event.  These days we average three NEO discoveries a day, and each month the Minor Planet Center receives hundreds of thousands of observations on asteroids, including those in the main-belt. The work done by the NASA surveys, and the other international professional and amateur astronomers, to discover and track NEOs is really remarkable."

Within a dozen years, the program achieved its goal of discovering 90 percent of near-Earth objects larger than 3,300 feet (1 kilometer) in size. In December 2005, NASA was directed by Congress to extend the search to find and catalog 90 percent of the NEOs larger than 500 feet (140 meters) in size. When this goal is achieved, the risk of an unwarned future Earth impact will be reduced to a level of only one percent when compared to pre-survey risk levels. This reduces the risk to human populations, because once an NEO threat is known well in advance, the object could be deflected with current space technologies. 

Currently, the major NEO discovery teams are the Catalina Sky Survey, the University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRS survey and the LINEAR survey. The current discovery rate of NEOs is about 1,000 per year. 

NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program manages and funds the search for, study of and monitoring of asteroids and comets whose orbits periodically bring them close to Earth. The Minor Planet Center is funded by NASA and hosted by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, MA. JPL manages the Near-Earth Object Program Office for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects is available at:http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/, http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch and via Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/asteroidwatch.

Courtesy of an article dated June 24, 2013 by NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory

VOYAGER 1 SPACECRAFT OFFICIALLY ENTERS INTERSTELLAR SPACE AFTER A JOURNEY OF 36 YEARS AND 12 BILLION MILES

The Space Between: This artist's concept shows the Voyager 1 spacecraft entering the space between stars. Interstellar space is dominated by plasma, ionized gas (illustrated here as brownish haze), that was thrown off by giant stars millions of years ago. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech (Click Image To Enlarge)

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft officially is the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space. The 36-year-old probe is about 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) from our sun. 

New and unexpected data indicate Voyager 1 has been traveling for about one year through plasma, or ionized gas, present in the space between stars. Voyager is in a transitional region immediately outside the solar bubble, where some effects from our sun are still evident. A report on the analysis of this new data, an effort led by Don Gurnett and the plasma wave science team at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, is published in Thursday's edition of the journal Science. 

 

Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, said.  

"Now that we have new, key data, we believe this is mankind's historic leap into interstellar space.  The Voyager team needed time to analyze those observations and make sense of them. But we can now answer the question we've all been asking -- 'Are we there yet?' Yes, we are." 

Voyager 1 first detected the increased pressure of interstellar space on the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles surrounding the sun that reaches far beyond the outer planets, in 2004. Scientists then ramped up their search for evidence of the spacecraft's interstellar arrival, knowing the data analysis and interpretation could take months or years. 

This artist's concept shows NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft in a new region at the edge of our solar system where the amount of high-energy particles diffusing into our solar system from outside has increased. Voyager 1 is in an area scientists are calling the stagnation region, at the outer layer of the heliosphere, or magnetic bubble that the sun blows around itself (Click Image To Enlarge)

Voyager 1 does not have a working plasma sensor, so scientists needed a different way to measure the spacecraft's plasma environment to make a definitive determination of its location. A coronal mass ejection, or a massive burst of solar wind and magnetic fields, that erupted from the sun in March 2012 provided scientists the data they needed. When this unexpected gift from the sun eventually arrived at Voyager 1's location 13 months later, in April 2013, the plasma around the spacecraft began to vibrate like a violin string. On April 9, Voyager 1's plasma wave instrument detected the movement. The pitch of the oscillations helped scientists determine the density of the plasma. The particular oscillations meant the spacecraft was bathed in plasma more than 40 times denser than what they had encountered in the outer layer of the heliosphere. Density of this sort is to be expected in interstellar space. 

The plasma wave science team reviewed its data and found an earlier, fainter set of oscillations in October and November 2012. Through extrapolation of measured plasma densities from both events, the team determined Voyager 1 first entered interstellar space in August 2012. 

This artist's concept shows the outer layers of our solar bubble, or heliosphere, and nearby interstellar space. NASA's Voyager 1 just passed through the Sun's heliopause or outer edge of the heliosheath and is officially in the region known as interstellar space, which is the space between stars that still feels charged particle and magnetic field influences from the heliosphere. The magnetic field lines (yellow arcs) appear to lie in the same general direction as the magnetic field lines emanating from our sun. (Click Image To Enlarge)

Gurnett said. 

"We literally jumped out of our seats when we saw these oscillations in our data -- they showed us the spacecraft was in an entirely new region, comparable to what was expected in interstellar space, and totally different than in the solar bubble.  Clearly we had passed through the heliopause, which is the long-hypothesized boundary between the solar plasma and the interstellar plasma." 

The new plasma data suggested a timeframe consistent with abrupt, durable changes in the density of energetic particles that were first detected on Aug. 25, 2012. The Voyager team generally accepts this date as the date of interstellar arrival. The charged particle and plasma changes were what would have been expected during a crossing of the heliopause. 

Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., said.  

"The team's hard work to build durable spacecraft and carefully manage the Voyager spacecraft's limited resources paid off in another first for NASA and humanity.  We expect the fields and particles science instruments on Voyager will continue to send back data through at least 2020. We can't wait to see what the Voyager instruments show us next about deep space."

Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, were launched 16 days apart in 1977. Both spacecraft flew by Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 2 also flew by Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 2, launched before Voyager 1, is the longest continuously operated spacecraft. It is about 9.5 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) away from our sun. 

Beyond the Bubble: The general locations of Voyager 1 and 2 are shown in this illustration at the edge of the heliosphere, the bubble created by solar wind. Image by NASA-JPL-Caltech (Click Image To Enlarge) 

Voyager mission controllers still talk to or receive data from Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 every day, though the emitted signals are currently very dim, at about 23 watts -- the power of a refrigerator light bulb. By the time the signals get to Earth, they are a fraction of a billion-billionth of a watt. Data from Voyager 1's instruments are transmitted to Earth typically at 160 bits per second, and captured by 34- and 70-meter NASA Deep Space Network stations. Traveling at the speed of light, a signal from Voyager 1 takes about 17 hours to travel to Earth. After the data are transmitted to JPL and processed by the science teams, Voyager data are made publicly available. 

This schematic shows our solar bubble moving through nearby interstellar space, or the space between stars. Interstellar space is shown in blue because it is filled with plasma, or ionized gas, that has a lower temperature than what is inside our solar bubble, also known as the heliosphere. Blue is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (6,000 Kelvin). Red indicates hotter temperatures of about 2 million degrees Fahrenheit (1 million Kelvin). The black lines indicate the flow of the solar wind inside our solar bubble, and the flow of the interstellar wind in interstellar space. (Click To Enlarge Image)

John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science in Washington, said. 

"Voyager has boldly gone where no probe has gone before, marking one of the most significant technological achievements in the annals of the history of science, and adding a new chapter in human scientific dreams and endeavors.  Perhaps some future deep space explorers will catch up with Voyager, our first interstellar envoy, and reflect on how this intrepid spacecraft helped enable their journey." 

Scientists do not know when Voyager 1 will reach the undisturbed part of interstellar space where there is no influence from our sun. They also are not certain when Voyager 2 is expected to cross into interstellar space, but they believe it is not very far behind. 

JPL built and operates the twin Voyager spacecraft. The Voyagers Interstellar Mission is a part of NASA's Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. NASA's Deep Space Network, managed by JPL, is an international network of antennas that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions and radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe. The network also supports selected Earth-orbiting missions. 

The cost of the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 missions -- including launch, mission operations and the spacecraft's nuclear batteries, which were provided by the Department of Energy -- is about $988 million through September. 

For a sound file of the oscillations detected by Voyager in interstellar space, animations and other information, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/voyager and http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/interstellarvoyager/ . 

For an image of the radio signal from Voyager 1 on Feb. 21 by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Long Baseline Array, which links telescopes from Hawaii to St. Croix, visit: http://www.nrao.edu .

COMMENTARY:    Pioneers 10 and 11, which preceded Voyager, both carried small metal plaques identifying their time and place of origin for the benefit of any other spacefarers that might find them in the distant future. With this example before them, NASA placed a more ambitious message aboard Voyager 1 and 2-a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record-a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.

The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University, et. al. Dr. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Carter and U.N. Secretary General Waldheim.

Each record is encased in a protective aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and a needle. Instructions, in symbolic language, explain the origin of the spacecraft and indicate how the record is to be played. The 115 images are encoded in analog form. The remainder of the record is in audio, designed to be played at 16-2/3 revolutions per minute. It contains the spoken greetings, beginning with Akkadian, which was spoken in Sumer about six thousand years ago, and ending with Wu, a modern Chinese dialect.

Following the section on the sounds of Earth, there is an eclectic 90-minute selection of music, including both Eastern and Western classics and a variety of ethnic music. Once the Voyager spacecraft leave the solar system (by 1990, both will be beyond the orbit of Pluto), they will find themselves in empty space.

It will be forty thousand years before they make a close approach to any other planetary system. As Carl Sagan has noted,

"The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet."

The definitive work about the Voyager record is "Murmurs of Earth" by Executive Director, Carl Sagan, Technical Director, Frank Drake, Creative Director, Ann Druyan, Producer, Timothy Ferris, Designer, Jon Lomberg, and Greetings Organizer, Linda Salzman. Basically, this book is the story behind the creation of the record, and includes a full list of everything on the record. "Murmurs of Earth", originally published in 1978, was reissued in 1992 by Warner News Media with a CD-ROM that replicates the Voyager record. Unfortunately, this book is now out of print, but it is worth the effort to try and find a used copy or browse through a library copy.

 

Bon Voyage to Voyager 1 as it enters interstellar space and continues on its journey to other solar systems, perhaps making contact with intelligent beings like us.

Courtesy of an article dated September 12, 2013 appearing in NASA JPL

THE 'AEROVELO ATLAS' HUMAN-POWERED HELICOPTER WINS THE 2013 IGOR I SIKORSKY HUMAN-HELICOPTER COMPETITION

A bike rider suspended beneath the Atlas, provides the power for the machine, the winner of the Sikorsky Human-Powered Helicopter contest prize (Click Image To Enlarge)

THE WINNERS OF THE SIKORSKY HUMAN POWERED HELICOPTER COMPETITION DIDN’T "THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX." THEY JUST CHOSE THE RIGHT BOX TO THINK IN.

On June 13, an enormous, ridiculous-looking pedal-powered contraption wafted itself into midair and made history. The helicopter, called Atlas, was designed to win an aviation challenge--the Igor I. Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Competition--that had defeated scores of aircraft designers and engineers for 33 years. The task sounds simple:  Create a human-powered aircraft that can hover three meters in the air for at least a minute without drifting outside a 10-meter square. But satisfying those constraints meant designing an aircraft like nothing you’ve ever seen:

On June 13th, 2013, the AeroVelo Atlas Human-Powered Helicopter captured the long standing AHS Sikorsky Prize with a flight lasting 64.1 seconds and reaching an altitude of 3.3 metres. Visit www.aerovelo.com for more details. (Click Image To View Video)

Cameron Robertson, Atlas’s chief structural engineer, told Co.Design.

"Until a few weeks ago, the people who literally wrote the book on the helicopter said that this problem is too hard--that this is actually physically impossible."  

So how did Robertson and his team at AeroVelo--which he describes as "not specialists"--crack the problem? The answer is in that ungainly, ridiculous-looking contraption itself. It’s not anyone’s idea of a "practical" aircraft. It’s designed to do one thing, and one thing only: Win the Sikorsky prize, by any means necessary.   Robertson says.  

"We weren’t afraid to construct a Rube Goldberg machine."

This kind of innovation strategy often goes by clichéd names like "lateral thinking" or "thinking outside the box."  But according to Robertson, "the box" was actually the key to succeeding where 33 years’ worth of other designs had failed. Atlas won the Sikorsky prize by zeroing in on the right box to think inside--and then rigorously, intensely, and persistently analyzing it. He says.  

"Achieving the so-called 'impossible' is a matter of removing unnecessary constraints, and understanding what’s in the box."

The "most salient feature" of Atlas’s winning design, according to Robertson, is its sheer size. It relies on four pedal-powered rotors for lift--and each one is 10 meters in diameter.   He says.

"Atlas is the size of every other human-powered helicopter [in the competition], combined."  

Other design teams knew that size was important, too.

Robertson says.  

"Everyone else said, 'We’re on a campus, so let’s find the biggest gym to build and test this aircraft in,'  which translates to, 'How big is the gym we have? Let’s build our helicopter that big.' But that’s not a real constraint on designing the 'copter. That’s artificial. So we removed it."

Click Image To Enlarge

By realizing that the literal size of "the box" wasn’t actually relevant to solving their problem, AeroVelo tested Atlas in an enormous indoor soccer stadium near Toronto. But that insight wasn’t enough to make the rest of the process simple. Robertson, chief aerodynamicist Todd Reichert, and the rest of the team spent months digitally modeling the physical parameters of their newly liberated problem:   Robertson says.  

"Structure, aerodynamics, engine thermodynamics, pilot physiology, kinematics, all these different design considerations."

They also programmed an "optimizer" to take these variables and relentlessly iterate on possible designs--not with perfect fidelity but with a "good enough" set of tolerances.   Robertson says.

"Then you hit 'go,' and it designs the helicopter.  It only takes five minutes to run on a laptop."

Click Image To Enlarge

It’s often said that solving tough design problems isn’t about bashing your way to a difficult solution as much as it’s about bashing your way to the right question. Atlas is indeed a Rube Goldberg machine--not much good for anything but winning the Sikorsky Prize. But as a proof of concept for an innovation strategy, Atlas’s example can apply to problems far more serious than hovering a furiously pedaling human being in midair.

Robertson asserts.  

"We don’t have 50 years to reevaluate our infrastructure, address climate change, or deal with other 'impossible’ problems.  Getting 2% improvement is no longer acceptable as the right answer. We all need to start really questioning the state that we’re in and how to move beyond it at a much more rapid pace than ever before, and this approach of removing artificial or unnecessary constraints is one way to do that. We knew nothing about helicopters, but we were able to do the impossible. Everybody can become better problem solvers and global citizens by inhabiting that state of mind."

[Read more about Atlas here.]

COMMENTARY:    Wow, that's an incredible achievement.  Without aeronautics knowledge or experience, and without even knowing whether the AeroVelo Atlas would even fly, these guys do the impossible.  How the AeroVelo Atlas is able to lift-off with those four, slow-revolving helicopter blades, is beyond me.  It's nothing short of a miracle.  They deserve the $250,000 price for winning.  

Courtesy of an article dated July 24, 2013 appearing in Fast Company Design

HOW A PHOTOGRAPHER REDISCOVERED AND VISITED THE CRUMBLING REMAINS OF THE TATOOINE MOVIE SET FROM THE FILM STAR WARS

A PHOTOGRAPHER FINDS ABANDONED SETS USED IN THE STAR WARSFILMS CRUMBLING IN THE DESERT.

In Star Wars (or Episode IV if you want to be like that), Luke Skywalker spends the first 15 minutes whining about his misfortune for having been born on Tatooine. He can’t go to Beggar’s Canyon to shoot womp rats with pals because he has to work his uncle’s moisture farm. Then he has to clean the new droids before suffering through a perfunctory family meal that ends in a storm-out, his ego bruised and dreams momentarily crushed.

An image from Rä di Martino’s 'Every World’s A Stage' set among the remnants of films sets used in Star Wars (Click Image To Enlarge)

The second half of 1 diptych from "Every World’s A Stage." (Click Image To Enlarge)

The photo set consists of 3 diptychs, with 2 black-and-white anagogic prints depicting the same subject but from different angles (Click Image To Enlarge)

Of course, fate (or destiny, in Lucas’s lexicon) would provide Luke with an escape. The cost would be tragic, and the 17-year old Jedi-to-be would never see his home again. Neither would the filmmakers. Lucas and his crew left the Lars Homestead set to rot after filming wrapped more than 35 years ago. In that time, the domed shell of the homestead sat unprotected from the desert winds, its location known to only a few locals. That is, until recently, when Luke’s erstwhile home was rediscovered by New York-based photographer Rä di Martino.

From "Every World's A Stage" (Click Image To Enlarge)

The Lars homestead - From Rä di Martino’s "No More Stars," which documents the ruins of Luke Skywalker’s home on the fictional planet Tatooine (Click Image To Enlarge)

The sets were abandoned after filming wrapped. Located near Tozeur in central Tunisia, near Algeria, the alien structures are virtually unknown by locals, and some can only be found with coordinates (Click Image To Enlarge)

She found it by accident, she tells Co. Design. A few years ago, when Di Martino was working on a project on the Chott El Jerid, a salt lake in Tunisia, she was scanning the site on Google Earth.

"I saw a tourist photo on Google Earth of a ruin used for the Star Wars films that was attached to the location."

She tracked the structure to somewhere near Tozeur, an oasis city in the country’s central region close to the Algerian border.

Di Martino spotted the sets in the Tunisian desert while scanning Google Earth (Click Image To Enlarge)

Di Martino calls the sets "strange archeological sites," fortuitously preserved by sand and a hot, arid climate (Click Image To Enlarge)

She traveled to the site and documented what had happened to the homestead in Luke’s absence (Click Image To Enlarge)

Tozeur and the surrounding region, it turns out, have served as the backdrop to many Hollywood’s memorable epics, including Raiders of the Lost Ark, another Lucas romp, and The English Patient. Yet, there’s little glamour to be excavated at these abandoned sites. They sit in perfect stillness, at the crest of the Sahara Desert, eaten away by dust and sand.

"No More Stars" (Click Image To Enlarge)

When she traveled to Tunisia in September 2010, Di Martino had only a printout of a satellite image with imprecise markers indicating where the mysterious ruin was supposed to be. Upon arriving, however, she found it nearly impossible to track it down.

"I ended up having to ask some frontier guards close by [in Tozeur] and showed them pictures of the site."

Luckily, one of the guards recognized it and delivered her to the doorstep of the Lars Homestead.

Di Martino found the fictional birthplace of the Rebellion’s savior in tatters. She preserved Luke’s humble digs for posterity in a series of photographs entitled "No More Stars." Di Martino discovered several more Star Wars sets, which she documented in "Every World’s a Stage." In the latter, Di Martino’s lens finds a nomad in the rubble of Mos Espa, a circle of mud-hewn habitations--really, cement-covered MDF--whose walls are festooned with coiled aluminum probosces signifying high-tech gadgetry. Passing through these non-ruins, di Martino says, was surprisingly moving.

"These places have existed only in our imaginations for so long for a lot of us, yet here they were,only now biologically decayed."

COMMENTARY:   I wished Di Martino had posted the Google Earth coordinates so I could locate the Tatooine movie set site.  I think it's incredible that it is still is fairly good condition in spite of the sand storms of the Sahara Desert.

Courtesy of an article dated May 8, 2013 appearing in Fast Company Design 

 

DEEP INSIDE A MOUNTAIN IN ITALY, RESEARCH IS BEING CONDUCTED OF A MYSTERIOUS SUBSTANCE KNOWN AS 'DARK MATTER'

Schematic drawing of the Gran Sasso National Laboratory underground facility in Italy's Gran Sasso mountain range (Click Image To Enlarge)

In a man-made cavern, deep beneath a mountain, scientists are hoping to shed light on one of the most mysterious substances in our Universe - dark matter.

The Gran Sasso National Laboratory seems more like a Bond villain's lair than a hub for world class physics.

It's buried under the highest peak of Italy's Gran Sasso mountain range; the entrance concealed behind a colossal steel door found halfway along a tunnel that cuts through the mountain.

At the forefront of the hunt for elusive particles is the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, the largest underground facility of its kind (Click Image To Enlarge)

But there's a good reason for its subterranean location. The 1,400m of rock above means that it is shielded from the cosmic rays that constantly bombard the surface of our planet.

It provides scientists with the "silence" they need to understand some of the strangest phenomena known to physics.

Inside three vast halls, a raft of experiments are running - but with their latest addition, DarkSide50, scientists are setting their sights on dark matter.

Everything we know and can see in the Universe only makes up about 4% of the stuff that is out there.

The rest, scientists believe, comes in two enigmatic forms.

They predict that about 73% of the Universe is made up of dark energy - a pervasive energy field that acts as a sort of anti-gravity to stop the Universe from contracting back in on itself.

The other 23%, researchers believe, comes in the form of dark matter. The challenge is that until now nobody has seen it.

Layout of Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy's Gran Sasso mountain range houses the world's largest underground facility of its kind for conducting research on sub-atomic particles includes Project Xenon which is conducting research for detecting dark matter (Click Image To Enlarge) 

What is dark matter?

• Normal matter gives out or absorbs light to make it visible, but matter doesn't have to interact with light this way
• Astrophysicists calculate that there isn't enough visible matter to explain the rotation of galaxies
• They proposed a type of matter that we can't detect in the normal way - dark matter
• You can't see dark matter directly with telescopes, but its gravitational effect can be seen on visible matter
• Dark matter should be all around us, so scientists are developing new ways to detect these mysterious particles

Dr Chamkaur Ghag, a particle physicist from University College London, explains:

"We think it is in the form of a particle. We have protons, neutrons and electrons and all these regular normal particles that you associate building things with. We think dark matter is a particle too, it's just an odd form of matter in the fact that we don't perceive it very readily.  And that is because it doesn't feel the electromagnetic force - light doesn't bounce off it, we don't interact with it very strongly."

Physicists have called these dark matter contenders Weakly Interacting Massive Particles - or WIMPS.

They believe millions of them are passing through us every second without a trace.

But very occasionally one will bump into a piece of "regular" matter - and that is what they are hoping to detect with DarkSide50.

Inside the Gran Sasso National Laboratory scientists hope to detect that rare event when a particle of dark "stuff" bumps into regular matter (Click Image To Enlarge)

Inside a house-sized tank, a large metal sphere holds a particle detector called a scintillator.

This container is filled with 50kg of liquid argon and a thick layer of the element in its gas form.

Dr Ghag says.

"If a dark matter particle comes in and hits the argon, the recoiling atom gets a kick of energy and it quickly tries to get rid of it.  In argon it gets rid of it by kicking out light; it sheds photons.  But it also gives charge: some electrons that are liberated from the interaction site. And those electrons drift up into a gas layer, and when they hit the gas and you get another flash of light."

As dark matter particles steam through the detector, scientists hope that a few will collide with the argon atoms. This will generate two flashes of light - one in the liquid argon and another in the gas - which will be detected by the receptors. (Click Image To Enlarge)

In DarkSide, dark-matter particles are detected in a two-phase liquid-argon TPC surrounded by a neutron veto of liquid scintillator (spherical vessel), inside 1000 m3 of water to veto muons. Image credit: DarkSide collaboration. (Click Image To Enlarge)

Until now, the hunt for dark matter has proved elusive.

Some experiments claim to have seen signals of dark matter in the form of annual modulation.

This is the idea that the number of these particles we should be detecting changes as the seasons change.

That's because as the Earth moves around the Sun, it is moving into a stationary field of dark matter - and for half the year it will be moving against the tide of dark matter - just like driving into the rain. But for the other half it will be moving with this tide and less dark matter will hit.

But other researchers have questioned attributing these seasonal variations that have been detected to dark matter.

Scientists of the Gran Sasso National Laboratory are conducting experiments to detect dark matter inside a cavernous room underground (Click Image To Enlarge)

Other experiments have run for long periods of times without so much as a hint of the stuff.

One, called XENON100, which is also in Gran Sasso, ran for the course of a year, but only saw two "events" - not enough to rule out that this might have been some stray background radiation.

But with DarkSide50, there seems to be a new push to find some answers.

Alongside this experiment, another large detector - LUX - which is in a gold mine in South Dakota in the US will soon be coming online.

And in the next few years, scientists are planning even more ambitions detectors, such as XENON1T and LUX-Zeplin - they are hoping to find the first experimental evidence of these particles.

Aldo Ianni, from the DarkSide50 team, says:

"Dark matter is really a major scientific goal at the present time.  It will help us understand a big fraction of our Universe that we don't understand at the present time. We know there is dark matter - but we have to understand what this dark matter is made of."

Fruitless search?

Professor Stefano Ragazzi, director of the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, hopes that the first glimpse of dark matter will be in his research facility.

He explains.

"There is competition amongst different experiments - so when you compete you prefer to win rather than coming second or third.  The feeling is that dark matter could be just around the corner, so everybody is rushing to be the first to find it."

However, he admits that there is always the chance that these experiments may find nothing at all - and dark matter may not be in the form of WIMPs.

Professor Ragazzi says:

"We may find that we have the wrong hypothesis… [dark matter] may be something completely different.  But it may be even more interesting not finding dark matter than finding it."

In the next few weeks DarkSide50 will be fully kitted out, the surrounding tank flooded with purified water, and then the scientists will have to watch and wait.

But Dr Ghag says despite the uncertainties, the potential reward of finding dark matter would be huge.

He explains.

"If we did find dark matter, then we'd have done would be to solved one of nature's best kept secrets. And that would have been to have figured out what a quarter of the Universe is made of. That would be a revolutionary discovery - it would change our understanding of the Universe, the way it formed, and the way it will evolve."

COMMENTARY:    

Why Scientists Believe Dark Matter Exists

The following video from Canada's Perimeter Institute For Theoretical Physics explains why scientists believe there is "missing or unseen mass" that does not emit, reflect or absorb any type of electromagnetic radiation or light and is necessary in order to keep galaxies from spinning out of control and breaking apart as they spin.  This missing mass is now referred to as dark matter, or matter that cannot be seen.    

 

The Technology Behind DarkSide50

DarkSide50 is a new experiment that uses novel techniques to suppress background sources as much as possible, while also understanding them well. The programme centres on a series of detectors of increasing mass, each making possible a convincing claim for the detection of dark matter based on the observation of a few well characterized nuclear-recoil events in an exposure of several years. The design concept involves a two-phase, liquid-argon time-projection chamber (LAr-TPC) in which the energy released in WIMP-induced nuclear recoils can produce both scintillation and ionization. Arrays of photomultiplier tubes at the bottom and top of the cylindrical active volume detect the scintillation light. A pair of novel transparent high-voltage electrodes and a field cage provide a uniform drift field of about 1 kV/cm to extract the ionization produced. A reflective, wavelength-shifting lining renders the scintillation light from the argon (wavelength 128 nm) visible to the photomultipliers.

In a two-phase argon TPC, rejection of background comes from three independent discrimination parameters: pulse-shape analysis of the direct liquid-argon scintillation signal (S1); the ratio of ionization produced in an event to scintillation, where the former is read out by extracting ionization electrons from the liquid into the gaseous argon phase, where they are accelerated and emit light through electroluminescence (S2); and reconstruction of the event’s location in 3D using the TPC. The z co-ordinates for the event are determined by the time delay between S2 and S1, while the transverse co-ordinates are determined through the distribution of the S2 light across the layer of photomultiplier tubes.

In a typical target, there are three main sources of background at energies up to tens of kilo-electron-volts: natural β and γ radioactivity, which induces electron recoils; α decays on the surface of the target in which the daughter nucleus recoils into the target and the α particle remains undetected; and nuclear recoils produced by the elastic scattering of background neutrons. This latter process is nearly indistinguishable from the signals expected for WIMPs and requires an efficient neutron veto in the apparatus.

As in other experiments searching for rare events, DarkSide’s detectors will be constructed using materials with low intrinsic radioactivity. In particular, the experiment uses underground argon with extremely low quantities of ³⁹Ar, which is present in atmospheric argon at levels of about 1Bq/kg as a result of the interaction of cosmic rays, primarily with ⁴⁰Ar. The DarkSide collaboration has developed processes to extract argon from underground gas wells, where the proportion of ³⁹Ar is low. A particularly good source of underground argon is in the Kinder Morgan Doe Canyon Complex in Colorado. The CO₂ natural gas extracted there contains about 600 ppm of argon. The DarkSide collaboration has operated an extraction facility at the Kinder Morgan site since February 2010; it has to date extracted some 90 kg of underground depleted argon and subsequently distilled 23 kg to about 99.99% purity. (The throughput is about 1 kg/day, with 99% efficiency.) Studies of the residual ³⁹Ar content of the distilled gas with a low-background detector at the Kimballton Underground Research Facility, Virginia, give an upper limit for the ³⁹Ar content equivalent to 0.6% of the ³⁹Ar in atmospheric argon.

It is not only the argon that has to have low intrinsic radioactivity. Nuclear recoils produced by energetic neutrons that scatter only once in the active volume form a background that is, on an event-by-event basis, indistinguishable from dark-matter interactions. Neutrons capable of producing these recoil backgrounds are created by radiogenic processes in the detector material. In detectors made from clean materials, the dominant source of the radiogenic neutrons is typically the photodetectors, so ultralow background photodetectors are another important goal for DarkSide. A long-term collaboration with the Hamamatsu Corporation has resulted in the commercialization of 3-inch photomultiplier tubes with a total γ activity of around only 60 mBq per tube, with a further 10-fold reduction foreseen in the near future.

To measure and exclude neutron background produced by cosmic-ray muons, the DarkSide TPC will be deployed within an active neutron veto based on liquid scintillator, which will in turn be deployed within 1000 m³ of water in a tank 10 m high and 11 m in diameter, which was previously used in the Borexino Counting Test Facility at Gran Sasso. The liquid-scintillator neutron veto is a unique feature of the DarkSide design and is filled with ultrapure, boron-loaded organic scintillator, which has been distilled using the purification system of the Borexino experiment. The water serves as a Cherenkov detector to veto muons. Monte Carlo simulations suggest that with this combined veto system, the number of neutron events generated by cosmic-rays at the depth of the Gran Sasso Laboratory should be negligible, even for exposures of the order of tonne-years.

The DarkSide programme will follow a staged approach. The collaboration has been operating DarkSide 10, a prototype detector with a 10 kg active mass, in the underground laboratory at Gran Sasso since September 2011. This has been a valuable test bed during the construction of the veto system. It has allowed the light-collection, high-voltage and TPC field structures – and the data-acquisition and particle-discrimination analysis systems – to be optimized using γ and americium-beryllium sources. The first physics detector in the programme, DarkSide 50, should be deployed inside the completed veto system in the Gran Sasso Laboratory by the end of 2012. Looking forward to the second generation, upgrades to the underground argon plants are planned, and the nearly completed veto system has been designed to accommodate a DarkSide-G2 detector, which will have a fiducial mass of 3.5 tonnes.

Courtesy of an article dated February 5, 2013 appearing in BBC News Science & Environment and article dated May 31, 2012 appearing in CERN Courier

HOW NASA PLANS ON USING GIANT SPIDER ROBOTS TO CREATE A 3D PRINTED LUNAR BASE USING MICROWAVE ENERGY

3D concept illustration of NASA JPL's first lunar base (Click Image To Enlarge)

The first lunar base on the Moon may not be built by human hands, but rather by a giant spider-like robot built by Nasa that can bind the dusty soil into giant bubble structures where astronauts can live, conduct experiments, relax or perhaps even cultivate crops.

Shackleton Crater, the site of NASA JPL's proposed lunar base (Click Image To Enlarge)

Location and cutaway view of Shackleton Crater, the site of NASA JPL's proposed lunar base (Click Image To Enlarge)

We've already covered the European Space Agency's (ESA) work with architecture firm Foster + Partners on a proposal for a 3D-printed moonbase, and there are similarities between the two bases -- both would be located in Shackleton Crater near the Moon's south pole, where sunlight (and thus solar energy) is nearly constant due to the Moon's inclination on the crater's rim, and both use lunar dust as their basic building material. However, while the ESA's building would be constructed almost exactly the same way a house would be 3D-printed on Earth, this latest wheeze -- SinterHab -- uses Nasa technology for something a fair bit more ambitious.

Click Image To Enlarge

The product of joint research first started between space architects Tomas Rousek, Katarina Eriksson and Ondrej Doule and scientists from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), SinterHab is so-named because it involves sintering lunar dust -- that is, heating it up to just below its melting point, where the fine nanoparticle powders fuse and become one solid block a bit like a piece of ceramic. To do this, the JPL engineers propose using microwaves no more powerful than those found in a kitchen unit, with tiny particles easily reaching between 1200 and 1500 degrees Celsius.

Click Image To Enlarge

Nanoparticles of iron within lunar soil are heated at certain microwave frequencies, enabling efficient heating and binding of the dust to itself. Not having to fly binding agent from Earth along with a 3D printer is a major advantage over the ESA/Foster + Partners plan. The solar panels to power the microwaves would, like the moonbase itself, be based near or on the rim of Shackleton Crater in near-perpetual sunlight.

Click Image To Enlarge

"Bubbles" of binded dust could be built by a huge six-legged rClick Image To Enlargeobot (OK, so it's not technically a spider) that can then be assembled into habitats large enough for astronauts to use as a base. This "Sinterator system" would use the JPL's Athlete rover, a half-scale prototype of which has already been built and tested. It's a human-controlled robotic space rover with wheels at the end of its 8.2m limbs and a detachable habitable capsule mounted at the top.

Here's a video of it dancing, because science:

 

Athlete's arms have several different functions, dependent on what it needs to do at any point. It has 48 3D cameras that stream video to its operator either inside the capsule, elsewhere on the Moon or back on Earth, it's got a payload capacity of 300kg in Earth gravity, and it can scoop, dig, grab at and generally poke around in the soil fairly easily, giving it the combined abilities of a normal rover and a construction vehicle. It can even split into two smaller three-legged rovers at any time if needed. In the Sinterator system, a microwave 3D printer would be mounted on one of the Athlete's legs and used to build the base.

Click Image To Enlarge

Rousek explained the background of the idea to Wired.co.uk:

"Since many of my buildings have advanced geometry that you can't cut easily from sheet material, I started using 3D printing for rapid prototyping of my architecture models. The construction industry is still lagging several decades behind car and electronics production. The buildings now are terribly wasteful and imprecise -- I have always dreamed about creating a factory where the buildings would be robotically mass-produced with parametric personalisation, using composite materials and 3D printing. It would be also great to use local materials and precise manufacturing on-site."

He continued:

"It's good to realise that we have this unique chance to jump from our atmosphere and go to the next evolutionary level -- it's comparable with leaving the ocean and climbing down from the trees. I went to Strasbourg to study space architecture at the International Space University in France, where I formed the team with Ondrej Doule and Katarina Eriksson. Our friend there, Richard Rieber from Nasa's JPL, is one of the co-authors of the 3D printing system based on the Athlete robot. We were inspired by their invention and immediately started designing architecture that would use this technology."

Sintering is quite cheap, in terms of power as well as materials, and an Athlete rover should be able to construct a bubble volume in only two weeks, Rousek estimates. He said:

"It would have a very good cost-value ratio as you don't need to import as much material from Earth. The whole expandable module, with the membranes to cover the base when built, would be carried by the same rocket that would bring other modules of the outpost, but it can build a volume four times bigger than a rigid cylindrical module. Since we don't have the necessary transport capacity to the Moon at the moment, estimating a price now would be very inaccurate. As a comparison, the International Space Station has so far cost approximately $150bn (£99bn) but a lunar base could be designed much more cheaply with private companies."

3D concept illustration of NASA JPL's Sinterator moon crawler robot (Click Image To Enlarge)

Another benefit of sintering is that astronauts could use it on the surface of the Moon surrounding their base, binding dust and stopping it from clogging their equipment. Moon dust is extremely abrasive -- without natural weathering or erosion like on Earth, dust isn't ground down into smooth spheres. Instead it remains tiny yet jagged, perfect for getting into any exposed cracks, scratching lenses, wearing down airtight seals and becoming deeply embedded into human lungs. Former Apollo astronaut Harrison Schmidt has called the dust the biggest environmental issue on the Moon, even more so than radiation (which in SinterHab would be blocked by a combination of the Moon dust structure, "strategically located water tanks" and layers of inflatable polymers).

NASA JPL's Sinterator moon crawler robot (Click Image To Enlarge)

London-based space architect Rousek, director of A-ETC, has continued working on SinterHab with Doule and Eriksson since first proposing the idea in 2010 at the International Aeronautical Congress as a way of taking advantage of the Sinterator system. The design -- now published in the journal Acta Astronautica-- is based on the equilibrium found in bubbles. You might have noticed, the last time that you had a bubble bath, the way that groups of bubbles join together naturally to form a more solid structure -- that's exactly what SinterHab will look like. A bunch of rocky bubbles connected together, with cladding added later. Rousek explained:

"The internal structure was selected to demonstrate how we can arrange the interior and create walls inside. The first version should probably have only a single volume to decrease the risk. Then we could think about a bigger module, which would use connected volumes."

A second version of SinterHab -- SinterHab 2.0 -- is "currently being developed under the leadership of Ondrej Doule from the Florida Institute of Technology," Rousek said.

"We plan to further develop the interior design, deployment and construction process and life-support system. We would like to also do research about possible spin-offs of such construction methods on Earth."

Nasa is keen on figuring out a way to build a lunar base, and as one of several proposals being batted around inside the organisation it's been used in a proposal for further development of sintering technology -- and I, for one, welcome our new robo-spider space architect overlords.

COMMENTARY:    Presently 3D printers are only able to print, if you can call it that, small objects like a cup, vase or head bust.   The machines that perform the printing are relatively small, fairly expensive and difficult to operate.  What NASA JPL is proposing would simply be amazing and on a much larger scale.  Sinterator would have to do its work of building the lunar base completely autonomously and without human intervention.  This presents tremendous technological challenges for NASA JPL scientists and engineers.  

Since there is no water on the Moon, and transporting building materials there from the Earth would be very costly, it is obviously cheaper to use directly the Moon's resources in order to make water-free concrete. US scientists developed a method that would allow for substituting water with the sulfur found in lunar dust. The resulting concrete would be very solid and would dry much faster than the regular one obtained here on Earth.

The sulfur that would act as a binder for the Moon dust can be extracted directly from it.  The sulfur must to be in a liquid or semi-liquid form to work as a binding agent.  This would imply that the dust is heated to temperatures of about 130° to 140° C.  After cooling, the mixture immediately becomes rock-solid, ultimate-strength concrete able to bear about 170 times the atmospheric pressure (approximately 17 megapascals).   With normal concrete you have to wait seven days, in extreme cases even 28 days to get maximum strength.

Courtesy of an article dated March 1, 2013 appearing in Wired U.K. Technology 

THE MOST INNOVATIVE SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANIES 2013, AND THE LIST DOESN'T INCLUDE FACEBOOK, TWITTER OR GOOGLE+

IN AN INCREASINGLY SOCIAL WORLD, IF YOU'RE NOT EVOLVING, YOU'RE NOT WINNING. THESE COMPANIES IMPRESS US WITH THEIR SOCIAL MEDIA SAVVY.

1. Tencent

For building a suite of communications apps (instant messaging) that 300 million Chinese are talking through. That massive audience has flocked to Tencent's WeChat (or Weixin, as it's known in China), the Chinese Internet giant's suite of social networking plug-ins, in less than two years. Why? WeChat is less expensive, clearer, and faster than calling people on the phone. Late last spring, Tencent opened up its platform to other developers to create cool things for WeChat. Plus, Tencent's aggressive international rollout--rare for a Chinese company--has added millions of expats who can now communicate with folks back home, increasing its popularity. In America, WeChat is a top 20 free social networking app in Apple's App Store.

Tencent's WeChat messaging app (Click Image To Visit Site)

2. Pinterest

For unlocking our image obsession. A year ago, the social scrapbooking site was dubbed the fastest-growing web service in history. Where do you go from there? Up. Pinterest is now one of the top 50 most-visited sites in the U.S., and retailers are excited. The average purchase off a pinboard nets more than double those off a wall post or a tweet. Late last year, it simplified the process for companies to create pinboards. In January, it made its first aquisition, the recipe site Punchfork. Meanwhile, the Pinterestization of the web continues--a trend as hot as Pinterest itself.

Click Image To Visit Site

3. Buzzfeed

For reinventing how news (and advertising) is shared. When he founded BuzzFeed in 2006, serial entrepreneur Jonah Peretti--who'd previously cofounded the Huffington Post--thought of it as a new-media mad-science lab. Social sharing was the next big distribution channel, he reasoned, and BuzzFeed was a place to create silly shareable content. The site is still brimming with listicles and cat videos, but over the past year, BuzzFeed has undergone a remarkable transformation: It's now also a serious news site and a pioneer in the world of social advertising.

Click Image To Visit Site

4. ModCloth

For letting its community help fill the racks. Customer engagement proves profitable for Susan Gregg Koger and her husband Eric, founders of the virtual thrift shop turned e-commerce success story. Through its Be The Buyer program, products brought to market through customer voting sell twice as much. ModCloth took that to the next level in 2012 by letting the community actually submit designs too. Visit any of their social platforms, from Facebook to Twitter, and you'll see creative interactive campaigns and a commitment to user engagement.

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5. Science

For creating a socially-savvy e-commerce startup factory. The name is not an accident. For CEO Michael Jones and his partners, launching disruptive e-commerce companies means deep analysis of big bets. They also specialize in identifying the best social tools to create fans and turn them into customers and brand advocates. For example, Heather Lipner's Uncovet harnesses social data to make a virtual, personalized boutique for each of her 200,000-plus subscribers; Hello Insights helps companies use a data-driven approach to turn Pinterest users into shoppers; Dollar Shave Club's Michael Dubin created the viral marketing video of the year for his subscription shaving gear.

Click Image To Visit Site

6. Fab

For evolving into the social commerce destination for design wares. Visit Fab's website, and you find something akin to a social network for the design-obsessed. In fact, Fab started off as a social network, so you could say social media is baked into its DNA. CEO Jason Goldberg and cofounder Bradford Shellhammer constantly reimagine Fab, which matured last year from three-day flash sales to dozens of online boutiques of design-centric products for such niches as foodies and pet lovers.

Click Image To Visit Site

7. Tumblr

For proving that ads and great content can mix in social media. Last May, the image-heavy, meme-tastic social network entered the fraught world of social media advertising--but demanded that brands act like its users. That meant creating visual, beautiful, fun, shareable content. The response was impressive: By year's end, Tumblr had vaulted into the top 10 most-visited websites in America, with more than 80 million blogs that net more than 700 million visits and almost 18 billion page views.

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8. AngelList

For being the Match.com for startups. Venture capital was a who-you-know business, until AngelList made a mass introduction. Like online dating, its transparent network connects startups with accredited investors, and now even well-connected entrepreneurs are using it. Success stories include Uber, BranchOut, and GetAround--and its recent partnership with the private exchange SecondMarket lets any accredited investor put as little as $1,000 into a startup.

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9. Github

For speeding up the pace of software development. It's not just a social platform, it's a collaborative platform: Like a coder's wiki, it allows programmers to co-develop and share code. Facebook used it to build a bug-tracking tool; LinkedIn uses it to maintain its People You May Know and Skills & Endorsement features. GitHub also offers custom services for corporations, to let businesses collaborate on code internally.

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10. Branch

For reimagining what conversation looks like online. Branch is a place where Twitter conversations go to live better. Where Twitter is an egalitarian free-for-all--anyone can butt in, uninvited, to any public conversation on Twitter, for better or worse--Branch fosters highly-curated conversation. Hosting a Branch is like holding a dinner party or a salon in a glass living room: anyone can watch, but only the chosen can participate. Unlike most other social networks, Branch isn't cloistered away inside its own domain or apps: Branch conversations can be embedded on other websites; chaotic Twitter conversations can be "Branched" into more serene Branch threads; and individual Branch comments can be Branched into separate conversations, as well.

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COMMENTARY:    Tencent Holdings,which operates as QZone, has sharpened its focus on Southeast Asia’s mobile messaging space after it opened a joint-venture in Indonesia, the region’s largest country. The move is aimed at increasing the presence of its WeChat service among the country’s 249 million population, according to Daily Social.   

China's Top 4 Social Networks in 2012 (Click Image To Enlarge)

The Chinese Internet giant has linked hands with local company MNC Media to create ‘MNC Tencent’ with the express intention of taking the WeChat app — which recently passed 300 million downloads — to the next level, and establishing a pathway to promote other services.

The company has not provided specific market data, but Tencent previously identified Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam as markets were it is seeing promising traction and has the potential for further growth.

China's Top 4 Social Network Demographics and Statistics (Click Image To Enlarge)

Tencent has been busy promoting WeChat in Indonesia through a campaign that has combined local meet-ups with celebrities, visible marketing campaigns and — as of last week — a broadcast TV ad campaign. Daily Social says that these efforts have seen its daily sign-up rate for WeChat hit an impressive 90,000 in the country.I

I love BuzzFeed, Science, ModCloth, Fab and GitHub.  They definitely are on specific missions to solve a real problem or fill an interesting need in the marketplace.  Not all of them are social networks, but do serve a social purpose. I didn't even know about Science, ModCloth and GitHub until I read Fast Company's post.  Well worth checking these out. 

If you are looking for angel capital, AngelList should be on the top of your list.  If you get turned down, don't feel bad.  About 97% of venture founders applying for seed capital get turned down. I got turned down at least three times.  

Courtesy of an article dated February 13, 2013 appearing in Fast Company an article dated February 28, 2013 appearing in TNW The Next Web

HOW THE PRENSILIA ROBOTIC HAND IS WIRED DIRECTLY TO A PATIENT'S NERVOUS SYSTEM TO ALLOW AMPUTEE'S TO FEEL WHEN THEY TOUCH

 

WIRED DIRECTLY INTO THEIR NERVOUS SYSTEM, THIS REMARKABLE ROBOTIC HAND WILL SOON ALLOW ONE AMPUTEE TO ACTUALLY TOUCH AND FEEL THINGS AGAIN.

Soon, the first feeling, articulating hand will be transplanted into a living patient (Click Image To Enlarge) 

About 50% of amputees don’t use their prosthesis because of relatively basic issues of design--comfort, aesthetic, and controllability. This has led inventor Dean Kamen to famously lament about humanity’s inability to offer our amputees anything better than “a hook on a stick.” Put in those terms, the lack of innovation makes your stomach churn.

It follows up research from 2009 (we believe, seen here) in which a patient was able to feel pin pricks in a tethered robotic hand. He could also wiggle its fingers (Click Image To Enlarge)

But soon, a new bionic hand made by Prensilia may change that. Through a highly experimental test surgery, in a project led by Dr. Silvestro Micera of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, the prosthesis will be wired directly into one test patient’s nervous system, which should enable movement through thought alone, along with the ability for the patient to actually feel what touches his or her mechanical hand.

Today, the hand has been improved. It now has sensors on the palm, fingers, and wrist (Click Image To Enlarge)

The story almost sounds too amazing to be true. But the upcoming surgery is actually a follow up to a 2009 study in which a simpler, fixed model of the hand was wired into a man’s nervous system to provide a sense of touch. It only had basic sensors embedded in the palm, but the patient was able to wiggle his fingers and feel pricks of a needle. Now, the latest wave of hardware and software technology will enable the transplant of a fully articulating, bionic hand (with sensors distributed in each fingertip, the palm, and the wrist). It’s also built with an improved interface that should permit multiple feelings and gestures at once, while the 2009 hand had an extremely limited bandwidth.

 

That patient will wear the hand for just a month before it’s removed, and then two years later, they’ll receive a more permanent, polished version of the technology.

Plus, it has more bandwidth. So the patient should be able to both feel and move his fingers at the same time (Click Image To Enlarge)

You really can’t overstate the accomplishment at work. Hooked right into the amputee’s nervous system, this hand will be driven by thought alone (and probably a battery pack) (Click Image To Enlarge)

The human hand has always seemed like an invention that only nature could have made over the course of billions of years. Strong enough to crush an orange, deft enough to thread a needle, we’re downright lucky to be born with a pair of the most perfect tools that respond to our every whim. But it’s their ability to feel that elevates them from another tool to part of us, that enables the thousands of tiny compensations we make all day as we interact to the world with softness and force. That’s why this single invention and single surgery is so exciting--it could solve one of the ultimate human-factor issues in medicine. And better still? Researchers say if all goes well, we’ll see widespread clinical adoption of such prostheses in the not-so-distant future.

Successful or not, the hand will live on the patient for just a month, after which time the team will spend the next two years polishing a more final, potentially clinical-ready version (Click Image To Enlarge)

And for the first time in history, we may have developed a halfway decent solution for those missing our most crucial tool, the human hand (Click Image To Enlarge)

COMMENTARY:   Prensilia's amazing robotic hand is the closest thing to a real hand by allowiing amputee's to actually feel what they touch.  The sense of touch has been missing from artificial limbs and hands for a long time, and finally it looks like we have overcome that weakness.  I don't know how much that Prensilia robotic hand will cost, but I have a feeling that it will be relatively expensive until the company can produce them at scale.  Hopefully, federal gencies like Medicare and Medicaid will cover all or most of the cost.  The world needs this product because it fills such a huge need among disabled amputee's.

Courtesy of an article dated February 27, 2013 appearing in Fast Company Design

HOW TO WATCH ASTEROID 2012 DA14 AS IT SAFELY PASSES ONLY 17,000 MILES FROM EARTH

NASA artist concept of asteroid 2012 DA14 (Click Image To Enlarge)

The best way for most of us to watch asteroid 2012 DA14 come within 17,200 miles of Earth on Friday, and then recede harmlessly into the cosmos, is to fire up your Web browser and watch the show online. Pictures of the space rock, which is about half the length of a football field, are already starting to roll in.

NASA's experts on near-Earth objects say that the time of closest approach will come at 2:25 p.m. ET, when the asteroid is zooming above the eastern Indian Ocean at a speed of almost 17,500 mph (7.8 kilometers per second). It'll be too dim to see with the naked eye, but observers in Australia, Asia and Europe might be able to follow it with binoculars or small telescopes if they know exactly where to look. (If you want to try it, follow the directions at the bottom of this item.)

 

Then there are the professionals: Astronomers around the world are tracking 2012 DA14 with optical telescopes and radar dishes to learn more about the asteroid's color, shape, spin and reflectivity. Such data could tell them what the object is made of, and perhaps provide insights into how similar objects could be diverted if they were on a threatening course. Which this one is not.

Experts estimate that asteroids the size of 2012 DA14 hit our planet every 1,200 years or so, exploding with the energy of a 2.5-megaton atomic bomb: The last such impact struck a remote region of Siberia without warning in 1908, flattening 820 square miles of forest. If an object that big were to hit in just the wrong place, it could wipe out a city. Coincidentally, a much smaller meteoroid came down over Russia on Friday, sparking a fireball and a glass-shattering shock wave.

The size of the asteroid 2012 DA14 in comparison to a football field (Click Image To Enlarge)

Even though the 150-foot-wide (45-meter-wide) asteroid is the biggest object of its kind to be seen coming this close to Earth, its orbit is so well-known that NASA's Near-Earth Object Program can rule out any chance of collision in the foreseeable future. And even though 2012 will fly 5,000 miles closer than satellites in geosynchronous orbit, NASA says its mostly south-to-north orbital path goes through a "sweet spot" that keeps it far away from those satellites — as well as from other spacecraft that are in closer orbits, including the International Space Station.

 

Thus, astronomers don't expect to see anything go boom on Friday. But they could pick up on some subtler phenomena, such as seismic disturbances in the asteroid that are induced by Earth's gravitational kick, or characteristics of the asteroid's spin that are affected by radiation absorption and emission.

This animated set of three images shows 2012 DA14 as it was observed by the Faulkes Telescope South in Australia on Feb. 14 at a distance of 465,000 miles. The asteroid is the moving bright spot in the middle.NASA's website provides details. Credit: LCOGT / E. Gomez / Faulkes South / Remanzacco Observatory. (Click Image To Enlarge)

Radar readings provide the best way to get a fix on the asteroid's shape and spin, in part because observations from multiple radio telescopes can be combined to produce a clearer picture. During 2012 DA14's flyby, radio telescopes in California, New Mexico and Puerto Rico will be tracking the asteroid. NASA's 230-foot (70-meter) dish at Goldstone, Calif., is expected to collect radar imagery good enough to produce a 3-D movie mapping the space rock from all sides.

Graphic depicts the trajectory of asteroid 2012 DA14 on Feb 15, 2013. In this view, we are looking down from above Earth's north pole. Image credit of NASA-JPL-Caltech (Click Image To Enlarge)

Other telescopes, spread out from Australia to Israel to the Canary Islands to the U.S., will be gathering optical data — and the images from some of those telescopes will be shared on Friday. Here's the viewing schedule:

Noon ET: NASA plans to start streaming near-real-time imagery of the asteroid's flyby, as provided by telescopes in Australia and Europe, weather permitting. Watch JPL video on Ustream.

2 p.m. ET: To mark the time of closest encounter, NASA will present a half-hour program with commentary from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The show will feature computer animations as well as any live or near-real-time imagery that becomes available from telescopes in Australia. Watch video on NASA.gov or Ustream. (NBCNews.com also plans to stream the show.)

3:15 p.m. ET: The Bareket Observatory in Israel says it will air a three-hour webcast featuring imagery from the flyby. Static images of the asteroid and its celestial surroundings will be refreshed every 30 to 60 seconds. Watch Bareket's webcast.

5 p.m. ET: The Virtual Telescope Project 2.0 will present live video of the asteroid flyby from a telescope in Italy, weather permitting. Video site: Watch Virtual Telescope Project's webcast.

6 p.m. ET: Weather permitting, the Clay Center Observatory in Massachusetts will stream real-time, high-definition video from 6 p.m. ET until 4 a.m. ET Saturday. Watch Clay Center video on Ustream.

9 p.m. ET: Slooh Space Camera plans to present several live shows about the asteroid flyby, accompanied by expert commentary. Weather permitting, imagery will be beamed to Slooh HQ from telescopes on the Canary Islands and in Arizona. Watch the show on Slooh.com.

9 p.m. ET: A video feed of the flyby from a telescope at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center will be streamed for three hours. During the live-streaming event, viewers can ask researchers questions about the flyby via Twitter or the Ustream chat window. Watch Marshall's Ustream channel.

Got any other websites worth watching? Or any asteroid questions you're wondering about? Feel free to share them in your comments below.

COMMENTARY:  

Courtesy of an article dated February 15, 2013 appearing in NBC News Cosmic Log and an article date February 12, 2013 appearing in Space.com and an article dated February 14, 2013 appearing in Space.com and an article dated February 15, 2013 appearing in NASA.gov