Archive for: June, 2008
June 18th, 2008
Robotic Humvees in the sky?
According to Computerworld, a Colorado-based company has developed a prototype of a ‘flying Humvee’ robotic aircraft to ship supplies to military troops. This robotic aircraft, dubbed the V-STAR, short for “VTOL Swift Tactical Aerial Resource,’ should be operational around 2010. If calling it a ‘flying Humvee’ is a figure of style, this unmanned aircraft has impressive characteristics. It will fly at an altitude of 15,000 feet (4,600 meters) at a cruise speed of 288 knots (530 km/h) for more than 600 miles (1,000 kilometers). The V-STAR will be able to carry payloads of about 400 pounds (180 kilograms) and each of these birds will cost about $4 million when it is in production mode. But read more…
This robotic aircraft is built by Frontline Aerospace, Inc.. It will have a length of 21.5 feet (6.5 meters) and a width of 16.5 feet (5 meters). The illustration above shows a Front Line Delivery System (FLDS) simulation in which the V-STAR will bring food or ammunition to military troops. (Credit: Frontline Aerospace) Here is a link to a larger version.
June 17th, 2008
Robots working 6,000 meters below sea level
MercoPress, a news agency based in Uruguay, reports that German engineers are using an aquatic robot able to work 6,000 meters below sea level. This remotely operated vehicle (ROV), dubbed Kiel-6000, is operated by the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences from the University of Kiel. The robot weighs 3.5 tons on the ground and it is 3.5 meters long and 1.9 meter wide, with a height of 2.4 meters. With its video cameras, it can transmit images to a mother vessel via a 6.5 kilometer-long fiber glass cable. According to the project leader, Kiel-6000 ‘will have access to 95% of the entire world’s sea beds.’ But read more…
Before going further, let’s look at some pictures of Kiel-6000. The picture above shows the ROV Kiel-6000 diving from research vessel ALKOR operated by the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences from the University of Kiel (IFM-GEOMAR). Here is a link to
a much larger version of this photo from A. Villwock, IFM-GEOMAR.
And here is the ROV Kiel-6000 on board of the French Research Vessel L’Atalante. (Credit: IFM-GEOMAR) Here is a link to a slightly larger version of this picture.
As said Colin Devey, the project leader, “‘For us it’s the opening of whole new dimension, who added ‘that the robot is capable of taking water samples, sediments and rocks from the bottom sea using the two extensible arms with which it has been equipped.’”
This underwater robot will also be used for environmental research.
June 16th, 2008
Nanoscale microscope on a chip
New Scientist recently reported that a UK company is developing a microscope on a chip four times more powerful than the best scanning electron microscopes (SEMs) available today. The best SEMs have a resolution of 0.05 nanometer. This new one, which will be small enough to fit onto a fingertip, should achieve a resolution of 0.01 nanometer. The prototype should be ready by the end of the year. If successful, it could be used for a variety of applications, such as making holograms of large single molecules. But read more…
You can see above a diagram of NFAB’s prototype microscope. (Credit: NFAB), a company whose motto is “Generating a Revolution in Electron Microscopy.”
This project has been led by Derek Eastham of NFAB, a condensed matter physicist who was previously the technical coordinator of the EU-funded Monarch project, whose aim was to develop a “ultra-bright nanoscale SEM-on-a-chip.”
Now, let’s read the New Scientist article to discover how Eastham plans to build such a small microscope with a resolution much better than other SEMs.
June 15th, 2008
A 30-picowatt processor for sensors
University of Michigan (U-M) researchers have developed an ultra low power microchip which ‘uses 30,000 times less power in sleep mode and 10 times less in active mode than comparable chips now on the market.’ It only consumes 30 picowatts in sleep mode, which means that a simple watch battery could power the chip for more than 200 years. Of course, this is not a processor for your next computer. It is designed for sensor-based devices such as medical implants, environment monitors or surveillance equipment. However, the design is very clever. But read more…
You can see above a die photo of the Phoenix Processor. (Credit: University of Michigan)
This project has been led by Scott Hanson and Mingoo Seok, two doctoral students in the U-M Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS.) They were supervised by professors David Blaauw and Dennis Sylvester, in charge of the VLSI Design/Automation Lab.
So how did these scientists build this very efficient chip? The answer is extremely simple: they’ve reduced the battery size. “Phoenix is the same size as its thin-film battery, marking a major achievement. In most cases, batteries are much larger than the processors they power, drastically expanding the size and cost of the entire system, said David Blaauw, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. For instance, the battery in a laptop computer is about 5,000 times larger than the processor and it provides only a few hours of power.”
The other great idea behind this design was to concentrate on the sleep mode of the chip.
June 14th, 2008
A graphical interface to medical knowledge
In ‘Road signs for physicians,’ I’ve told you six weeks ago that French researchers had developed a new iconic drug information system named VCM, short for ‘Visualization of Medical Knowledge.’ Now, the same team has designed a graphical interface for facilitating the access to medical knowledge. Here is a link to a very technical paper about this graphical interface dubbed ‘Mister VCM’ and based on the VCM iconic language. But read more…
You can see above an example of the ‘Mister VCM’ interface. (Credit: Jean-Baptiste Lamy) This research project is the result of a collaboration between scientists Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Alain Venot, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard and Catherine Duclos.
This research work has been published in a BioMed Central open access journal, BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making under the name “Design of a graphical and interactive interface for facilitating access to drug contraindications, cautions for use, interactions and adverse effects” (Volume 8, Article 21, June 2, 2008). The full article is available as a provisional PDF document (21 pages, 725 KB).
If you don’t want to read the whole document, here is some background. “When prescribing a drug, the physician needs to ensure that the prescription is safe. However, medication errors are frequent and constitute a public health problem [1]. Serious events reported to the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) increased 4 times faster than the total number of outpatient prescriptions. In the prescription process, the physician must first decide whether he is sufficiently familiar with the various contraindications, drug interactions and cautions for use. If not, he must consult the drug monograph. It may take too long to read this monograph in full if the text is long, and this reading requires a cognitive effort.”
This is why the researchers decided to develop a graphical user interface (GUI) to drug monographs. Here is the approach they’ve used: “(i) distinguishing a first, graphical, part of the screen that displays synthetical information about drug properties, on which the physician can interact in order to display drug monograph excerpts in a second, textual, part, (ii) dividing the graphical part in three zones, respectively for contraindications, cautions for use, and adverse effects, (iii) drawing an anatomical schema in each of the three zones, and (iv) representing the drug properties by adding interactive icons on these anatomical schemas; when one of these icons is clicked, the corresponding excerpts in the drug monograph is displayed in the textual part of the interface.”
So far, the results about the correctness of the responses of physicians using ‘Mister VCM’ was significantly higher than with the textual interface: 16 errors were recorded with the graphical interface and 27 with the textual one. This doesn’t look like a big difference, but the physicians who tested the system also delivered faster answers with this system.
Finally, here is an excerpt from the team’s conclusions. “The results obtained with ‘Mister VCM’ seem very promising for facilitating physicians’ access to drug monograph content relevant to the specificities of individual patients. This interface now requires evaluation in physicians’ routine practice. [...] This type of interface, where a graphical overview of the content is presented to the user, could be applied to other types of medical document including clinical guidelines. This approach could be also used in the domain of electronic patient records. We are currently developing similar applications to synthetize the patient diseases, risks, and treatments.”
Sources: BioMed Central, June 2008; and various websites
You’ll find related stories by following the links below.
June 13th, 2008
Pigeons are as clever as 3-year-old children
Japanese scientists from Keio University have found that pigeons have self-cognitive abilities higher than 3-year-old humans. They have ‘trained pigeons to discriminate real-time self-image using mirrors as well as videotaped self-image, and proved that pigeons can recognize video images that reflect their movements as self-image.’ Until recently, it was widely admitted that only humans and primates such as chimpanzees could recognize images of themselves. Now, researchers have found that dolphins or elephants also could do it. But these Japanese scientists have proven that pigeons also were able to do it — and even discriminate paintings of Van Gogh from Chagall. But read more…
This research project has been led by Professor Shigeru Watanabe of the Graduate School of Human Relations of Keio University at his Laboratory of Comparative Cognitive Neuroscience. You can see above Shigeru Watanabe with a pigeon he trained. (Credit: Keio University) Tsukuba University graduate student Kohji Toda collaborated with him.
On the left is a picture of a pigeon looking at a painting. (Credit: Keio University)
So how this pigeon was trained? “The pigeon was trained to discriminate two types of video images in the following method. First, live video images of the present self (A) and recorded video images of the pigeon that moves differently from the present self (B) are shown. When the pigeon learns to discriminate these two images, the video image of (A) is shown with a temporal delay, so that the monitor shows the image of the pigeon a few seconds before. If the pigeon remembers its own movements, it can recognize it as self-image even with the delay.”
But how these Japanese researchers were able to compare the self-cognitive abilities of pigeons and those of 3-year olds?
June 12th, 2008
NASA robots on Moses Lake dunes
According to the Tri-City Herald, WA, NASA engineers in space suits have tested new robotic vehicles for two weeks on the dunes of Moses Lake, WA. These robots could be used on future NASA missions on the Moon and on Mars. According to the newspaper, five robotic vehicles were tested: ‘a six-wheeled lunar truck, a six-legged all-terrain vehicle that can carry payloads or astronaut habitats, an autonomous drilling rover, a mapping robot and a crane that can stand on its head to load itself onto a transport.’ But read more…
Below are five pictures taken by Paul T. Erickson, from the Tri-City Herald, WA. They have been picked from a this 70-picture photo gallery. (Credit for all pictures: Paul T. Erickson, Tri-City Herald) I hope they will not sue me to use some of these pictures, given that I hope it will increase their audience.
(Link to the original version)
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Now, let’s go back to the Tri-City Herald article to learn why NASA decided to use the Moses Lake dunes as a field test. “NASA chose the dunes for the demonstrations because the sand, mixed with ash from Mount St. Helens, is a suitable replica of lunar soil, called regolith.”
And this is the conclusion of the article. “Fred Horz, a geologist for NASA in Houston, said it has been too long since the United States last was committed to lunar trips. A planetary scientist for NASA since the Apollo missions, Horz has stayed busy over the decades studying samples of materials from comets, meteorites, Mars — even cosmic dust in the earth’s stratosphere. But lunar exploration excites him in a different way, he said. ‘You betcha. You’re always in love with your first love, you know?’ he said with a laugh.”
And big thanks to Joe Chapman and Paul T. Erickson of the Tri-City Herald, WA.
Sources: Joe Chapman, Tri-City Herald, Kennewick, WA, June 11, 2008
You’ll find related stories by following the links below.
June 11th, 2008
Testing new transistors in space
Northwestern University researchers have developed new transistors which are currently tested on the International Space Station (ISS) to see how they react to cosmic radiation. These transistors, which are using a new kind of gate dielectric material called a self-assembled nanodielectric (SAND), are exposed to radiation outside the ISS since March 22, 2008, and will stay there for one year. According to the researchers, these new transistors could be used ‘on long space missions since early experiments on Earth indicate that the transistors hold up well when exposed to radiation.’ But read more…
You can see above several pictures of these arrays of printed transistors on plastic. (Credit: Tobin Marks Group, Northwestern University). Here is a link to a larger version of this picture extracted from a McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University, “Northwestern Transistors Blast Off Into Space, Hang Out At International Space Station.”
This research work has been led by Tobin Marks, Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, and other members of his research group. It’s also interesting to note that Marks was one of the five scientists who received the 2008 Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research for creating ‘new materials for the benefit of mankind.’
So how are these transistors different from previous ones?
June 10th, 2008
Can we trust our GPS devices?
In recent years, we have become increasingly dependent on applications using the Global Positioning System (GPS), such as railway control, highway traffic management, emergency response or commercial aviation. But in a very short news release, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) warns us that we can’t always trust our GPS gadgets because ‘electrical activity in the upper atmospheric zone called the ionosphere can tamper with signals from GPS satellites.’ However, new research studies are under way and ‘may lead to regional predictions of reduced GPS reliability and accuracy.’ But read more…
Before going further, you can see above an artist rendition of the next-generation Global Positioning System satellites known as GPS III. (Credit: Lockheed Martin). Here is a link to a larger version of this illustration. And here are some more details from this Lockheed Martin’s Global Positioning System page. “On May 15, 2008,the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif. awarded a team led by Lockheed Martin a $1.46 billion contract to build the next-generation Global Positioning System Space System program, known as GPS III. This program will improve position, navigation, and timing services for the warfighter and civil users worldwide and provide advanced anti-jam capabilities yielding superior system security, accuracy and reliability.”
This brings us back to our subject: GPS reliability. This is the focus of several scientific reports included in the latest issue of Space Weather, an AGU publication. Here is a link to a special section about ‘Space Weather Effects on GPS.’ If you’re an AGU member, you’ll be able to read 7 scientific reports. Otherwise, you’ll only have access to the abstracts.
June 9th, 2008
Monitoring our immune system
You might be surprised to learn that there are no clinical tools to track the human immune system today. This might change soon. UCLA researchers have developed a new PET scanning probe that will allow monitoring of our immune system. The scientists have used one of the most commonly used chemotherapy drugs, gemcitabine, and slightly altered its molecular structure to create a new molecule called FAC. This new imaging technique also will help monitor response to new cancer therapies, even if it was not the initial goal. As said the lead researcher, ‘this is not a cure or a new treatment, but it will help us to more effectively model and measure the immune system.’ But read more…
You can see on the left how “a new PET imaging probe illuminates immune cells as it attacks infection within a mouse. Green areas indicate the presence of active immune cells.” (Credit for the picture: UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center). The caption comes from a Technology Review article, “Tracking the Immune System” (Jennifer Chu, June 9, 2008).
This project has been led by Owen Witte, a professor at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) lead investigator.
Here is a description of what did the research team.
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