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.

Trove Of Water 400Km Beneath Earth's Surface

Seventy percent of the Earth’s surface is water. But that’s what just meets the eye. A trove of water – in fact as much water as all the oceans on the planet’s surface combined – is hiding 400km beneath our feet. Geoscientists had earlier thought that below the transition zone where the Earth’s mantle meets the crust (at 410km), a water filled mineral called brucite was unstable and decomposed. As they decomposed; they released the water, which was recycled back to surface via volcanic activity. But this discovery of a new high-pressure phase of brucite indicates that water could be efficiently transported to far deeper realms without decomposition, reports LiveScience.com. But new research suggests that before brucite which is 50% magnesium oxide and 50% water – decomposes, it transforms into another, more stable 3D structure. The finding, which was detailed in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, means there’s a stash of water located deeper in the Earth than was previously thought. Unable to probe the deep Earth directly, researchers used quantum mechanical calculations, analyzing various possible structures for brucite in deep Earth conditions. After months of running various structure through their computer programme, the researchers found a previously unknown phase of brucite that would be able to withstand the high pressures found in the lower mantle. Current estimates suggest that the deep Earth may hold as much water as all the oceans on the planet. This water and the additional trove brucite may also hold, are vitally important to the movement of materials through the Earth. As water containing minerals travel down through the Earth’s layers, the materials decompose, releasing the water that makes its way back to the surface, often through volcanic activity.

Experts Digitally Unwrap Secrets Of Mummies

The hidden secrets of Egyptian mummies, some up to 3,000 years old, have been virtually unwrapped and reconstructed for the first time using scanning technology in a joint British-Australian exhibition. Three-dimensional images of six mummies aged between 900BC and 140-180AD from ancient Egypt, which have been held at the British Museum but never physically unwrapped, give an insight into what it was like to live along the Nile River thousands of years ago. Researchers are revealing details of all their physical remains as well as the embalming material used by the embalmers like never before. A dual-energy computed tomography scanner at UK’s Royal Brompton Hospital – only a handful are in operation around the world – was used to obtain thousands of slices of images of the mummies, with volumetric software then harnessed to create 3D models. It allows visitors to virtually peel back the layers of history through interactive 3D visualizations of the CT scans. Researchers have been able to image the arteries of the mummies and able to look at whether they are suffering from diseases which many people are suffering from today, such as cardiovascular diseases. They hope to image the soft tissues at the cellular level to look at whether there’s any change or to find evidence, for example, of cardiovascular diseases but also things like cancer. The scans found that one of mummies, Tamut, a priest’s daughter from 900BC, had plaque in her arteries. Three dimensional printing was also used to recreate amulets fond during scans of her mummified remains.

Tequila Plant May Inspire Drought Resistant Crops

Agave – the cactus like plant used to make tequila – can survive the driest of conditions by “breathing” at night, scientist has found. Now, they hope to harness the plant’s reverse “body clock” to engineer drought-resistant crops that can adapt to changing climate. Researchers from Newcastle University found for the first time that the stomata – or “breathing” pores – on the Agave’s leaves remain shutting during the day to minimize water loss. Most plants keep their stomata open during the day so they can take in carbon dioxide and use the sunlight for photosynthesis. Thus, they lose water rapidly through evaporation. In the so-called CAM plants – Crassulacean Acid Metabolism plants like the Agave – several of the genes controlling stomata opening have had their abundance rescheduled or ‘flipped’ from being more abundant during the day to more abundant at night. Storing the carbon from the CO2 taken up overnight, the plants photosynthesis in the day like others but are able to carry out the process without opening their stomata.

Barcodes Help Families Track Elderly Members

A Japanese city has introduced a novel way to keep track of senior citizens with dementia who are prone to getting lost – tagging their fingers and toes with scanable barcodes. A company in Iruma, north of Tokyo, has developed tiny nail stickers, each of which carries a unique identity number to help concerned families find missing loved ones, according to the city’s social welfare office.  The adhesive QR-coded seals for nails – part of a free service launched this month and a first in Japan – measure just one centimeter (0.4 inches) in size. Being able to attach the seals on nails is a great advantage. There are already ID stickers for clothes or shoes but dementia patients are not always wearing those items. If an elderly person becomes disoriented, police will find the local city hall, its telephone number and the wearer’s ID all embedded in the QR code. The chips remain attached for an average of two weeks- even if they get wet – the official said, citing recent trials. Japan is grappling with a rapidly ageing population. Senior citizens expected to make up 40% of the population around 2060. Last month, Japanese police started offering noodle discounts at local restaurants to elderly citizens who agreed to hand in their driving licenses. The offer followed a series of deadly accidents involving elderly drivers – a growing problem in a country where 4.8 million people aged 75 of older hold a license.

Your Child's Toy Could Be A Threat To Privacy

European Union and US consumer watchdogs announced on 6 December they are filing complaints against a clutch of smart toys that can “spy” on children and their homes, for allegedly breaching privacy and data protection laws. The complaints target smart toys My Friend Cayla, i-QUE Intelligent Robot and Hello Barbie, according to the European Consumer Organisation BEUC and US groups like the Electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC). Complaints are being filed with French and other European authorities as well as the US Federal Trade Commission. Internet-connected Cayla and i-QUE, manufactured by Los Angeles- based Genesis Toys, hook up with a user via a phone or tablet while Hello Barbie links to the internet through Wi-Fi, said the consultancy Bouvet on behalf of the Norwegian Consumer Council. Hello Barbie is not sold in Europe. By purpose and design, these toys record and collect the private conversation of young children without any limitations on collection, use or disclosure of this personal information concerns toys that spy. The toys subject young children to ongoing surveillance and are deployed in homes across the United States without any meaningful data protection standards. They pose an imminent and immediate threat to the safety and security of children in the United States. BEUC, citing the study commissioned by the Norwegian Consumer Council, expressed security concerns. With simple steps, anyone can take control of the toys through a mobile phone. This makes it possible to talk and listen through the toy without having physical access to the toy. It alleged the terms breach the EU Unfair Contract Terms Directive and the EU data protection directive and possibly the toy safety directive. Anything the child tells the doll is transferred to the US-based company Nuance Communications, who specializes in speech recognition technologies. The company reserves the right to share this information with other third parties, and to use speech data for a wide variety of purposes. The toys are embedded with pre-programmed phrases, where they endorse different commercial products.

Google To Switch To Green Energy Entirely In 2017

Last year, Google consumed as much energy as the city of San Francisco. The online giant said on 6 December that all of its data centers around the world will be entirely powered with renewable energy sources sometime next year. This is not to say that Google computers will consume nothing but wind and solar power. Google gets electricity from a power company, which operates an energy grid supplied by hydroelectric dams, natural gas, and coal and wind power. Over the last decade, Google has made deals with renewable producers, guaranteeing to buy the energy they produce with their wind turbines and solar cells. With those guarantees, companies can obtain bank financing to build more turbines. The power created by the renewable is plugged into the utility grid, so that Google’s usage presents no net consumption of fossil fuels and the pool of electricity gets a larger share of renewable sources. Unlike carbon based power wind supply prices do not fluctuate. The more renewable energy it buys, the cheaper those sources get. About 25% of USs’ electricity goes to businesses, and companies like Google are now about 2 percentage points of that. Google operates eight businesses and runs on 13 data centers. The 5.7 terawatt hours of electricity Google consumed in 2015 is equal to output of two 500 megawatt coal plants. That is enough for 140,000 person towns.

A Robotic Hand Almost As Good As Real

Scientists have developed a robotic hand that can be controlled with the mind, allowing people with certain types of spinal injuries to perform everyday tasks, such as using a fork or drinking from a cup. The low-cost device was tested in Spain on six people with quadriplegia that affects one’s ability to grasp or manipulate objects. By wearing a cap that measures electric brain activity and eye movement, the users were able to send signals to a computer that controlled the glove like device attached to their hand. Participants were able to perform daily activities better with the robotic hand than without it, according to results published on 6 December in the journal Science Robotics. The principle of using brain-controlled robotic aids to assist people with quadriplegia isn’t new. But many existing systems require implants, which can cause health problems, or use wet gel to transmit signals from the scalp to the electrodes. The gel needs to be washed out of the user’s hair afterwards, making it impractical in daily life. The participants, who had previously expressed difficulty in performing everyday tasks without assistance, rater the system as reliable and practical, and did not indicate any discomfort during or after use. It took the participants just 10 minutes to learn how to use the system before they were able to carry out tasks such as picking up chips or signing a document. There were some limitations to the system though. Users had to have sufficient function in their shoulder and arm to reach out with the robotic hand. And mounting the system required another person’s help.

China Fires 'Mist Cannon' To Fight Air Pollution

As smog continued to blanket Beijing and many cities in China, engineers pressed in pollution-fighting artillery called “mist canon”, a large machine mounted on a truck that sprays water to dilute the haze. The machines were initially used at construction sites and mines to reduce dust. Now engineers have improved the machines to make them release tinier droplets of mist for combating fine airborne particles, said Xu Yuexin, an engineer with Beijing Capital Group Boom sound Environment Science & Technology Co Ltd. the truck works by nebulising water into tiny particles, with diameter in microns, the same as PM 2.5 and PM 10 and spraying them into the air. Then they combine with dust and fine particles to fall to the ground. Experts have found the mist canons have their limits. They are the only one of the measures being taken. In October, China deployed the world’s largest outdoor air purifier designed by a Dutch engineer in Beijing to combat smog. The capital issued its second-highest warning against air pollution, an orange alert, on 1 December. The mist cannon trucks are being used to spray in the mornings, and do so more frequently, some three to five times, during smoggy days. Authorities also spray special chemicals on the roads through regular watering vehicles once a week. The spray absorbs and consolidates the dust and pollutants from vehicle exhaust.

Soon, Choco With 40% Less Sugar

Nestle SA said that it has found a way to reduce the amount of sugar in chocolate by as much as 40%, a discovery that may give the Kit-Kat maker an edge as food producers face increasing pressure from governments, health advocates and shoppers to make products healthier. The world’s largest food company has developed a process to alter the structure of sugar that makes it taste sweeter in smaller amounts, according to chief technology officer Stefan Catsicas. Nestle will start selling products made using the new process in 2018 and will gradually reduce their sugar content. The move comes as the UK, Mexico and some US cities have levied sugar taxes to help fight childhood obesity and diabetes, which affects four times as many people now than in 1980. The World Health Organisation has said increasing the price of sugary drinks by 20% would reduce consumption by a fifth. “We want people to get used to a different taste, a taste that would be more natural,” Catsicas said. Nestle is seeking to patent the sugar-reduction process, which Catsics likened to making sugar crystals that are “hollow.” The crystals dissolve more quickly, stimulating the taste buds faster, he said. Unprocessed food has complex structures, which Nestle is trying to mimic by distributing the sugar in a less uniform way.

Apple Is Working On Autonomous Vehicles

Apple has revealed it is investing heavily in autonomous vehicles in a letter asking the US government to make it easier to develop self driving cars. The company is excited about the potential of automated systems in many areas, including transportation. Apple looks forward to collaborating with NHTSA and other stakeholders so that the significant societal benefits or automated vehicles can be realized responsibly, and expeditiously. Apple issued the letter because it is “investing heavily in machine learning and autonomous systems. Rumors about Apple’s ambitions in the sector have circulated for years. The company has a separate organization called ‘Project Titan’ that is developing automotive projects. However, in early September, The New York Times reported that the group had narrowed its ambitions. Instead of designing and producing a complete self-driving car, the group will now concentrate on developing underlying technologies for autonomous vehicles. In its letter, Apple urges the NHTSA no to penalize new participants in the sector by restricting the testing of cars under development on public roads, for which established automakers generally have exemptions. Most major auto manufacturers and many tech groups are currently developing autonomous vehicles, considered to be the future of the automobile, along with electric power, with first production models promised for around 2020.

Self Flying Ambulance Test Succeeds

An autonomous flying ambulance has successfully completed its first solo test flight, offering a potential solution for challenging search and rescue missions. Completing such missions in rough terrain or combat zones can be tricky, with helicopters currently offering the best transportation option in most cases. However, these vehicles need clear areas to land, and in the case of war zones, helicopters tend to attract enemy fire. The autonomous flying vehicle, dubbed the Cormorant, has been tested by an Israeli company and could one day go where helicopters can’t. The vehicle is designed to eventually carry people or equipment without a human pilot on board. Rather than using propellers or rotors to fly, the Cormorant uses ducted fans that are effectively shielded rotors, which means the aircraft does not need to worry about bumping into a wall and damaging the rotors. Another set of fans propels the vehicle forward. The vehicle is effectively a decision making system that can figure out what to do if there is a problem in the inputs from the sensors, the company, Urban Aeronautics, said.

Indian Discovered Bug To Bypass iPad Lock

An Indian security researcher has discovered a bug that allows one to bypass Apple’s activation lock in its iOS 10.1 version, according to a media report. Hemanth Joseph, resident of Kerala, succeeded in bypassing the activation lock of an iPad he had bough online by exploiting a weakness in the iOS device setup process. When Joseph was asked to select a Wi-Fi network, he chose ‘other network’ and selected WPA2-enterprise as  the type of network to connect to, that gave him three input fields to fill – name, username and password. Upon testing he came to know that there is no character restriction in those fields and he typed thousands of characters than what iOS could handle. This caused the iPad to freeze, following which he locked the device by closing Apple’s magnetic Smart Cover over the screen. After opening the cover, the device was at the same screen, but as few seconds passed by, it crashed to iOS home screen. This made Joseph bypass the activation lock and to have full access to the iPad. The bug discovered by Joseph was reportedly fixed in an iOS update last month. Researchers at a US-based lab had earlier discovered another bug that allowed one to break the Apple lock.

Oz Boys Make Expensive HIV Drug For A Dime

A group of Australian school children working on a shoestring budget have recreated the HIV drug whose price was controversially jacked up 5000% by a former hedge fund manager. US company Turning Pharmaceuticals’ former chief Martin Shkreli became a global figure of hate after buying the rights to Daraprim and then raising the price in the US from $13.50 a tablet to $750. Youngsters at a Sydney school decided to draw attention to the scandal and went to work creating pyrimethamine, the active ingredient for Daraprim, an anti-parasitic used to treat people with low immunity, such as those with HIV, chemotherapy patients and pregnant women. Student James Wood said he and his friends had started off with just $20 of the drug, and in one reaction had produced thousands of dollars’ worth. University of Sydney research chemist Alice Williamson helped the boys synthesize the medicine using an online platform Open source Malaria. The pupils “shared the outrage of the general public”. Turning Pharmaceuticals continues to sell the only FDA approved form of the drug in the US, but reportedly cut the price in half for hospitals after the outcry. Daraprim, which figures on the WHO list of essential medicines, is cheap in most countries, with 50 tablets selling in Australia for $10.