Retaking Control Of Self-Driving Cars Risky

Retaking control of an autonomous car affects human steering behavior, according to a new Stanford study that may help in the design of future self driving vehicles. When human drivers retake control of an autonomous car, the transition could be problematic, depending on how conditions have changed since they were last at the wheel, researchers said. There is this physical change and they need to acknowledge that people’s performance might not be at its peak if they have not actively been participating in the driving. The trouble the drivers had getting used to different driving conditions was not enough to cause them to miss their turns, but it was noticeable in the researcher’s measurements and by watching them wobble the wheel to account for over and under steering. These challenges bring up the possibility that, depending on the particulars of the driver, the driving conditions and the autonomous system being used, the transition back to driver controlled driving could be an especially risky window of time.

Soft Robotic Hand 'Feels Like Humans'

Scientists have developed a soft robotic hand that can feel its surroundings internally, just as humans, and performs tasks like picking out ripe tomatoes. Most robots achieve grasping and tactile sensing through motorized means, which can b excessively bulky and rigid. Researchers from Cornell University in the US, led by assistant professor Robert Shepherd, showed how stretchable optical waveguides can act as curvature, elongation and force sensors in a soft robotic hand. Most robots today have sensors on the outside if the bodies that detect things form the surface. These sensors are integrated within the body, so they can actually detect forces being transmitted through the thickness of the robot, a lot like we and all organisms do when we feel pain. Optical waveguides have been in use since the 1970s for numerous sensing functions. The team used its prosthesis to perform many tasks, including probing for shape and texture. The hand was able to scan tomatoes and determine, by softness, which was the ripest.

Methane In Air Rising 10 Times Faster Than Before, Warn Experts

A decade long surge of the potent greenhouse gas methane threatens to make the fight against global warming even harder, researchers warned on 12 December. Additional attention is urgently needed to quantify and reduce methane emissions. After rising slowly from 2000 to 2006, the concentration of methane in the air climbed 10 times more quickly the following decade, according to that study, published in the peer reviewed Earth System Science Data. The largely unexplained – increase was especially sharp in 2014 and 2015. Keeping global warming below 2°C is already a challenging target. On current trends, average global temperatures are on track to jump by more than 3°C by 2100, even if national carbon cutting pledges annexed to the Paris Agreement are honored. Methane is 28 times more efficient at trapping the Sun’s heat than CO2. About a third of human generated methane is a byproduct of the fossil fuel industry, while two-thirds come from livestock production and agriculture.

Insulin Cells Under Skin Could Save Diabetics From Jabs

Scientists have created artificial cells that act as sugar sensors and insulin producers, an advance that may spell an end to painful needle jabs to monitor blood glucose levels, making the everyday life of diabetics easier. Researchers have used the simplest approach yet to produce artificial beta cells from human kidney cells. The therapy involves a capsule of genetically engineered cells implanted under the skin that automatically release insulin as required. Diabetic mice that were treated with the cells were found to have normal blood sugar levels for several weeks. Previous approaches were based on stem cells, which the scientist allowed to mature into beta cells either by adding growth factors of by incorporating complex genetic networks. For the new approach, researchers at ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich) used a cell line based on human kidney cells, HEK cells. The researchers used the natural glucose transport proteins and potassium channels in the membrane of the HEK cells. They enhanced these with a voltage dependent calcium channel and a gene for the production of insulin and GLP-1, a hormone involved in the regulation of the blood sugar level. In the artificial beta cells, the HEK cells’ natural glucose from the bloodstream into the cell’s interior. When the blood sugar level exceeds a certain threshold, the potassium channels close. This flips the voltage distribution at the membrane, causing the calcium channels to open. As calcium flows in, it triggers the HEK cells’ built-in signaling cascade, leading to the production and secretion of insulin or GLP-1. In developing the artificial cells, experts had the help of a computer model which allows predictions to be made of cell behavior, which can be verified experimentally.

Experts Inch Closer To 'Star In Jar' Reactor

Scientists have taken a big step towards developing a ‘star in a jar’ nuclear fusion reactor that can provide Earth with limitless clean energy in the same manner as the Sun and other stars. The Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) fusion energy device currently operated by Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Germany is on track and working as planned, experts said. The system, known as a stellerator, generated its first batch of hydrogen plasma when it was first fired up earlier this year. A fusion reactor works by fusing the nuclei of lighter atoms into heavier atoms. The process releases massive amounts of energy and produces no radioactive waste. The ‘fuel’ used in a fusion reactor is simple hydrogen, which can be extracted from water. However, to achieve fusion, scientists must generated enormously high temperatures to heat the hydrogen into a plasma state, ‘Live Science’, reported. That is where the W7-X stellerator design comes in. the device confines the plasma within magnetic fields generated by superconducting coils cooled down to near zero. The plasma never comes into contact with the walls of the containment chamber.

Japan Launches Craft To Collect Space Junk

Japan launched a cargo ship on Friday bound for the International Space Station, carrying a ‘space junk’ collector that was made with the help of a fishnet company. The vessel, dubbed “Kounotori” (stork in Japanese), blasted off from the southern island of Tanegashima just before 10:27pm on 9 December local time attached to an H-IIB rocket. Scientists at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency are experimenting with a tether to pull junk out of orbit around Earth, clearing up tonnes of space clutter including cast-off equipment from old satellites and pieces of rocket.

Virus In Mummy May Rewrite Smallpox History

The discovery of smallpox DNA in a 17^th century child mummy may shorten the timeline of the deadly infectious diseases history, according to a study published on 8 December. Specimens of the smallpox causing variola virus now exist only in secured laboratory freezers. The highly contagious and sometimes fatal disease was eradicated in the late 1970s through a worldwide vaccination campaign. But the origins of the virus remain unknown. The discovery of the smallpox virus within the DNA of the mummy child, found in a crypt underneath a Lithuanian church, could shed light on how it began and developed, researchers said in the study published in the US scientific journal Current Biology. There have been signs that Egyptian mummies that are 3,000 to 4,000 years old have pock-marked scarring that have been interpreted as cases of smallpox. The new discoveries really throw those findings into question, and they suggest that the timeline of smallpox in human populations might be incorrect. The researchers reconstructed the genome of the ancient strain of the virus and compared it with versions of the variola virus genome dating from the mid-1900s and before its eradication.