::First New Earth...!

You are looking at what could be the fourth planet on the Gliese 581 star system, 20.3 light years from Earth. If the NASA artist rendition looks very much like our Earth... it's because it is similar to Earth.

Gliese 581 is a red dwarf star. A starship traveling at near the speed of light would only take 20.3 years to get there, which is not that much. Until now, astronomers had discovered five planets around this star. Some of them were too close to it, making them too hot to be habitable. Others were too far and too cold. But now, a sixth planet has been discovered right on the "habitable zone", the fourth in distance from the star: Gliese 581g.

If the discoveries from the planet hunters at University of California Santa Cruz and the Carnegie Institution of Washington are right, Gliese 581g could be habitable.

Now, before you jump into the Enterprise and go there camping, roast some marshmallows, and get back leaving a lot of beer bottles and crap behind, being potentially habitable doesn't mean that we can just go there and thrive. It doesn't even mean that this planet is full of little green men or buxom big blue women. It just means that this is a planet that could sustain life, with liquid water and an atmosphere.

Gliese 581g has three to four times the mass of Earth, orbiting the star at an zippy 37 days. According to data gathered by the Keck I Telescope HIRES spectrometer, it's a rocky planet with a "solid surface and enough gravity to hold to an atmosphere."

More importantly, according to Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, not only their "findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet" but "the fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common."

In other words, the chances of the Universe being bubbling with life of all kinds and forms just jumped beyond our most optimistic hopes.

So get your starships up and running, off to Gleise 581g then...!

Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My Brain, NASA.

::X3 Gyroplane.

Looks like the autogyros aka gyrocopters are definitely back in fashion. After the Sikorsky X2 demonstrator, here is the latest one, the Eurocopter X3. It uses twin five-blade turboprops in addition to its main five blade rotor.

Invented by Juan de la Cierva in 1923, the autogyro was the precursor of the modern helicopter. It combined a conventional propeller, wings, and a vertically-powered rotor that allowed for vertical take-off and landing. It was quite successful, although it didn't had a lot of utility at the time, despite its obvious advantages over regular planes.

Now, companies are looking into it again, so civil and military passengers could enjoy the speed of turboprop aircraft while being able to land in a very small strip of land. According to the European company, the Eurocopter X3 will be able to zoom at 220 knots, although the testing will only take it to 180 knots this December. If all goes well, it would reach its top mark in March 2011.

According to the company, they wanted to increase the speed of a vertical take-off and landing aircraft without significantly increasing the cost.

Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My Brain, Eurocopter.

::How Injured Nerves Grow Themselves Back.

"We know a lot about how various cell types differentiate during development, but after a serious injury like an amputation, nerves must re-grow," said Allison Lloyd of University College London. "They need a new mechanism to do that because the developmental signals aren't there."

That kind of regrowth isn't easy to pull off. Peripheral nerves are long cells; their nucleus is in the spinal cord and the axons that extend from them and relay nerve messages can reach all the way down a leg. "When a nerve gets cut, all the axons downstream degenerate," Lloyd said. Regrowth requires that the two ends somehow find their way back to each other through damaged tissue.

Scientists knew that Schwann cells were important to that process. Those cells are found wrapped around axons, where under normal circumstances they are rather "quiet" cells. All of that changes when an injury occurs; those Schwann cells de-differentiate back to a stem-cell-like state and play an important role in bridging the gap to repair damaged neurons.

"Schwann cells could sit on a nerve for years and then, at any point, switch states," Lloyd said. "They are quite unusual cells." (There are other examples of cells that can return to a stem-cell-like state, she said. For instance, cells in the liver and the endothelial cells that line blood vessels.)

But, the new study shows, the Schwann cells need help to repair the nerves properly. That help comes from a well-studied cell type known to play a role in wound healing: fibroblasts.

"This is a new role for fibroblasts," Lloyd said, an exciting find given that the cells are the type that grows when you place animal tissue in cell culture and have been very well studied as a result. "There is lots known about them, and they are always present at wounds. This shows that they act in a completely new way."

The fibroblasts send a signal to the Schwann cells, causing them to sort themselves into clumps, or cords, that make their way out of the nerve stump as a group. Those cords guide the regrowth of axons across the wound. Lloyd's team found that the response to the so-called ephrin-B signal issued by the fibroblasts depends on a factor called Sox2, best known for its central role in embryonic stem cells. Sox2 is also one of a handful of ingredients that can help reprogram adult cells to behave like embryonic stem cells.

Without the ephrin-B signal, Schwann cells fail to migrate in an organized fashion and the axons don't grow back properly.

Lloyd said the new findings might lead to ways to improve the repair of peripheral nerves, noting that the natural process isn't all that efficient. "It's not perfect, but if a hand is cut off and sewn back on, you can get some movement," Lloyd said. Her team is actively exploring ways to improve upon the natural nerve-healing mechanism now.

The researchers also have plans to investigate whether similar mechanisms might be involved in the movement and spread of cancers of the peripheral nervous system. "We don't know yet, but it wouldn't be surprising if this is relevant to the movement of other cells," Lloyd said.

Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My Brain, Cell Press.

::Raytheon Sarcos XOS 2 Exoskeleton.

When we first laid eyes on the Sarcos XOS military exoskeleton three years ago, its sheer power and dexterity left us in awe... but as you can see immediately above, that wasn't enough for Raytheon. Today, the defense contractor's unveiling the XOS 2, a lighter, stronger robotic suit that uses 50 percent less power, and more importantly doesn't need to be tethered to a generator to drop and give us several hundred pushups. Video and a press release after the break doesn't specify the suit's military duties (they're focused on instilling the notion that the XOS 2 is a real-life Iron Man) but we can definitely imagine these causing some serious damage if Hammer Industries decided to weaponize that high-pressure hydraulic frame.

Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My Brain, Raytheon.

::Suspended Animation Human Trials OMG!

Legitimate, human trial suspended animation: Coming soon to Boston! What a lucky boy I am to have such mind-bending near-sci-fi research being conducted almost in my backyard, over at Massachusetts General Hospital.

It's true! Human trials for a cutting-edge suspended animation surgical treatment are all but set to begin at MGH. It's an incredible process that will see human beings (who have suffered trauma) cooled to the point of near-death using cooled saline solution, so that they can potentially survive longer and get the treatment they need in the OR:

The cold treatment, which is being developed at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and is featured in a BBC Two Horizon documentary, will see patient's bodies being cooled to as low as 10 degrees C.

The normal human body temperature is 37 degrees C and usually humans quickly die if the core body temperature drops below 22 degrees C. - The Telegraph

Dr. Hasan Alam, the man leading this research at Massachusetts General Hospital, is so optimistic about the effectiveness of the freezing technique that he now believes 90% of "certain death" trauma cases (horrific auto accidents, et al) can be saved once human trials are completed, with no side effects whatsoever:

"The body is essentially in real life suspended animation with no pulse, no blood pressure, no electrical waves in the brain." he told the Telegraph. "We didn't find any evidence of functional impairment after the surgery."

Aliens sleep chambers this development certainly isn't, but that's ok. This is wild enough already. 

Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My Brain, Telegraph.

::Molecular Motors.

One of the marvels of the microscopic world is the ability of cells to change shape, divide and even move under their own steam. The mechanics behind these processes is driven by a cell's cytoskeleton, a fibrous network of actin filaments that provides a kind of internal scaffolding.

This scaffolding is peppered with molecular motors called myosin, which grab hold of actin filaments and start pulling, like a pub team in a tug of war. This tugging is what causes a cell to change shape, divide and move.

And yet, exactly how a collection of motors pulling on these internal filaments can drive this this process isn't entirely clear, particularly when the motors and fibres are oriented more or less at random. One puzzle in particular, is how this tugging can change the bulk properties of the cell, such as its stiffness, by many orders of magnitude.

Today, we get some insight into this problem thanks to the work of Chase Broedersz and Fred MacKintosh at Vrije University in Amsterdam. These guys have created a 2D model of a cellular scaffold made of stiff filaments and sprinkled molecular motors within its structure. What they observe is an interesting insight into how the linear behaviour of the motors leads to a nonlinear change in the scaffold's stiffness.

The key is that the stresses within the scaffold are not evenly distributed to start off with: there is plenty of slack. This has a big effect on the bulk property of the cell, essentially making it floppy.

Switch the motors on and this changes rapidly, say Broedersz and MacKintosh. The motors rapidly reel in the slack and the scaffold stiffens. "The internal stresses generated by the motors pull-out the floppy bending modes in the system, leaving the stiff stretching modes," they say.

In a sense, instead of changing the properties of the scaffold, the motors simply reveal another aspect of it that is otherwise hidden. That's how the motors generate a nonlinear change in stiffness even though their own behaviour is linear.

From there, it's not hard to imagine how the selective stiffening and softening of the cellular scaffold in various parts of a cell can lead to changes in shape, cell division and even locomotion.

That's an idea that could have interesting implications and not just for our understanding of cellular mechanics. "These principles can inspire the design of novel active biomemetic materials with tunable elastic properties," say Broedersz and MacKintosh.

Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My Brain, KurzweilAI.

::Titanium Foam Builds Adamantium.

Eat your heart out, Wolverine. The X-Men superhero won't be the only one with metal fused into his skeleton if a new titanium foam proves suitable for replacing and strengthening damaged bones.

Bone implants are typically made of solid metal – usually titanium. Though well tolerated by the body, such implants are significantly stiffer than bone.

This means that an implant may end up carrying a far higher load than the bone it is placed next to, according to Peter Quadbeck of the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials Research in Dresden, Germany. In a worst-case scenario, the decrease in stress placed on the bone means it will deteriorate, while the implant loosens and needs to be replaced.

Spongy inspiration

Now Quadbeck and colleagues have created a titanium implant with a foam-like structure, inspired by the spongy nature of bone. The titanium foam does a better job than solid metal when it comes to matching the mechanical properties of bone, such as flexibility, and this encourages more effective bone regrowth.

What's more, the foam is porous, so the bone can grow around and within it, truly integrating the implant with the skeleton.

The titanium foam is made by saturating polyurethane foam with a solution of titanium powder and binding agents. The titanium clings to the polyurethane matrix, which is then vaporised away along with the binding agents. This results in a titanium lattice which is finally heat-treated to harden it.

Though the foam has yet to be approved for use in humans, Quadbeck and colleagues are now working with physicians to explore its suitability for treating certain injuries.

Peter Lee of the Department of Materials at Imperial College London is impressed. He says there are applications where inserting one of these titanium foams "looks like the most promising solution", such as bridging long gaps between broken bones.

Yuyuan Zhao, a materials engineer at the University of Liverpool, UK, adds that "if human bone isn't good enough, an implant could give your body better performance" than leaving bone to heal naturally or using other types of implant.

Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My Brain, NewScientist.

::Yesterday's Facebook Downtime.

Ever been on the phone to IT support and they told you to turn it off and then on again, and that sorts it out?

Facebook last night had that sort of problem. So they turned the site off and on again. And it fixed their problem. Literally.

As Robert Johnson, its director of software engineering, explained in aslightly shamefaced blogpost, the site was offline for about two-and-a-half hours – its worst outage in four years – due to some technical changes that Facebook had made.

It wasn't only the site itself which went belly-up; the Like buttons (which connect back to Facebook) vanished on 350,000 sites too, and the API which powers its OpenGraph system had serious problems.

The logistics of running a vast network like Facebook mean that you don't stick all your servers in a single place, of course. Facebook runs a big caching operation, so that lots of servers replicate its content. The cache gets updated periodically; it sits on a network called tfbnw.net (for "the Facebook network": you can see it here in this traceroute to Facebook, which shows what the intermediate networks are between one site and Facebook), which in effect sits like a ring around the "central" Facebook site.

Sometimes, things go wrong in the cache as values go out of date; but that's no problem, usually, because you can overwrite them with correct values from the centre. At least, you would like to.

Here's how Johnson explained it:

"The key flaw that caused this outage to be so severe was an unfortunate handling of an error condition. An automated system for verifying configuration values ended up causing much more damage than it fixed.

"The intent of the automated system is to check for configuration values that are invalid in the cache and replace them with updated values from the persistent store. This works well for a transient problem with the cache, but it doesn't work when the persistent store is invalid."

In other words: something went wrong inside the circle. And that wrong value got passed out to all the fbnw.net servers that would normally serve up Facebook pages.

Back to Johnson:

"Today we made a change to the persistent copy of a configuration value that was interpreted as invalid. This meant that every single client saw the invalid value and attempted to fix it. Because the fix involves making a query to a cluster of databases, that cluster was quickly overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands of queries a second."

Basically, tfbnw.net's servers started querying the central system all at once, which overwhelmed it.

"To make matters worse, every time a client got an error attempting to query one of the databases it interpreted it as an invalid value, and deleted the corresponding cache key. This meant that even after the original problem had been fixed, the stream of queries continued. As long as the databases failed to service some of the requests, they were causing even more requests to themselves. We had entered a feedback loop that didn't allow the databases to recover."

And now we come to the "oh my god, we're really going to have to do that?" moment:

"The way to stop the feedback cycle was quite painful – we had to stop all traffic to this database cluster, which meant turning off the site. Once the databases had recovered and the root cause had been fixed, we slowly allowed more people back onto the site."

And the result?

"This got the site back up and running today, and for now we've turned off the system that attempts to correct configuration values. We're exploring new designs for this configuration system following design patterns of other systems at Facebook that deal more gracefully with feedback loops and transient spikes."

That means that there may be some times over the next few days when you won't be able to reach Facebook in particular places, or that unusual things will happen.

"We apologize again for the site outage, and we want you to know that we take the performance and reliability of Facebook very seriously."

Well, of course: if the site's down, it can't sell ads, and if it can't sell ads, how is Mark Zuckerberg going to justify his enormous Forbes valuation?

Information Courtesy: Various sites.

::Canadian Student Builds Human-Powered Ornithopter.

When it come to flight, there aren’t a lot of “firsts” out there still to be accomplished. One of the great ones, though, pondered over by inventors and flight enthusiasts for over a hundred years, has been a human-powered ornithopter. And now, thanks to a Canadian engineering student, that dream can now be crossed off the list. Instead of blissfully dreaming about it, you can now watch it on video.

An ornithopter is an aircraft that flaps its wings like a bird to sustain forward momentum and some lift. While it’s been theorized plenty of times, and tried multiple times over the years, it was slotted into the “maybe” category once the Wright brothers showed us that there was a better way. While plenty of ornithopter’s have been created in the past, none of them have been successful at sustained flight. Until now.
Engineering student Todd Reichert is 28 years old, and studies for his PhD at the University of Toronto’s Institute for Aerospace Studies. He’s successfully created, and flown, what he’s calling The Snowbird. The flight is a record breaking one, as he managed to sustain about 16 MPH, and flew at a height of 475 feet. The Snowbird has a huge wingspan, measuring nearly to a Boeing 737, but they managed to cut the weight to only 94 pounds. Due to weight limitations, Reichert had to drop 18lbs of his own weight just to make sure that the ‘bird would fly.
As you can see in the video, there’s a tow vehicle that pulls The Snowbird forward until it successfully lifts off the ground. Once Reichert and his invention are in the air, he begins to use the pedals within the cabin to flap the wings, which work in such a graceful manner it’s hard to pull your eyes away from. As Reichert points out, “this represents one of the last of the aviation firsts.” Too true, but it’s great to see it accomplished nonetheless. Check out the video below to watch it for yourself.

HPO The Snowbird from U of T Engineering on Vimeo.

Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My Brain, PopSci.

::UTexas Researchers Develop High Capacity Organic Battery.

Christopher Bielawski, a brilliant mind working at the University of Texas at Austin, had this to say about his newest discovery: "I would love it if my iPhone was thinner and lighter, and the battery lasted a month or even a week instead of a day; with an organic battery, it may be possible." Anyone that has ever owned an iPhone (or a smartphone or any sort, really) can grok just how bold those words are, but according to Mr. Bielawski, "we're now starting to get a handle on the fundamental chemistry needed to make this dream a commercial reality." At the center of this potential revolution is a newfangled organic battery recently detailed in the journal Science, but just as important is the artificial photosynthesis that the research also touches on. Bielawski and colleague Jonathan Sessler have seemingly figured out how to create an electron transfer process that can proceed in the opposite direction, with this forward and backward switching of electron flow opening up new avenues for the historically stagnant battery innovation market. Granted, these guys have yet to demonstrate that the process can occur in a condensed phase, so actual commercialization is questionable.


Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My Brain, University of Texas, Austin.

::3D Models From 2D Photos.

Generating 3D models from a 2D picture isn’t new by any means, but the technology behind the systems is indeed getting better. And as it does, the whole thing gets faster, and the produced materials get better. This new system in particular, designed by researchers from Waseda University in Japan, manages to create 3D head models in just a matter of seconds from a 2D image.

According to the system’s makers, the system is perfectly capable of converting the image in just 1.2 seconds. Furthermore, you don’t need any kind of special camera to make it happen. The researchers point out that you only need a standard webcam to make the magic happen. However, they also mention that taking an image with a better camera, like an SLR, the results do get better. But, as an added bonus, other equipment like range scanners aren’t needed to get the job done, and therefore should save costs a bit, as well as time.


They get the job done so quickly by utilizing a database of over 1,000 people. When the system analyzes a picture, it compares that image against the database of collected people, and starts comparing certain points on the scanned image. These characteristic elements are used to speed up the whole system, and therefore is able to almost instantly create the 3D model. As for usefulness, the designers say that this could be used for video game developers, especially those who would like to put the face of the gamer into the video game itself. Check out the video below to see it in action.

Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My Brain, Crunchgear.

::Silicon Carbide Sensors, Transmission Inside Volcanos.

There's one serious obstacle to volcano research: volcanos, like, shoot lava. Sure, you could aim a thermal camera at one from a safe distance, but where's the fun in that? On the other hand, researchers at Newcastle University are developing silicon carbide-based components for a device that they say will be able to withstand 900° Celsius temperatures -- just the thing to sense what's going on inside a volcano and transmit the info in real-time. Not only will this allow researchers to better understand conditions leading up to an eruption, it might also someday signal an eruption before it occurs. "At the moment we have no way of accurately monitoring the situation inside a volcano," says NU's Dr. Alton Horsfall. "With an estimated 500 million people living in the shadow of a volcano this is clearly not ideal." Since silicon carbide is more resistant to radiation than plain ol' silicon, the tech can also be used inside nuclear power plants or even as radiation sniffers in places that might face a terror attack.


Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My Brain, TG Daily.

::SolarEagle will Soar the Skies for 5 Years.

We like airplanes, but we've always felt really boxed in by the short flight times fossil fuels force us into. Apparently DARPA was feeling the crunch too, so they've slid Boeing a cool $89 mil to develop a plane that stays in the air for five years. The 435-foot-wingspan'd SolarEagle will, unsurprisingly, use photovoltaics to help keep it at 65,000 feet, where Boeing spokesman Pat O'Neil says it will "perform persistent communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions," which we hope means it will just be hanging around doing "how's the weather down there" tweets all day long. SolarEagle's first demo flight is slated for 2014.


Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My Brain, Boeing.

::Fiber Optics for Humans.

The Department of Defense and Southern Methodist University have teamed up to develop prosthetics that use two-way fiber optic communication between artificial limbs and peripheral nerves to essentially give these devices the ability to feel pressure or temperature. The technology is called neurophotonics, and it will someday allow hi-speed communication between the brain and artificial limbs. But that's just the beginning -- the work being done at SMU's Neurophotonics Research Center might someday lead to brain implants that control tremors, neuro-modulators for chronic pain management, implants for treating spinal cord injuries, and more. And since we can't have a post about DARPA-funded research without the following trope, Dean Orsak of the SMU Lyle School of Engineering points out that "[s]cience fiction writers have long imagined the day when the understanding and intuition of the human brain could be enhanced by the lightning speed of computing technologies. With this remarkable research initiative, we are truly beginning a journey into the future that will provide immeasurable benefits to humanity." Truly.


Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My Brain, SMU Research.

::New Earth Like Planet by May 2011.

Using math way more complicated than I fully understand, a scientific paper predicts that we will find a potentially habitable Earth-like planet by early May 2011. Oh.

Sam Arbesman and Greg Laughlin, the authors of the scientific paper, used the history and dates of previously discovered exoplanets to develop their system. What they did was:

Using the properties of previously discovered exoplanets, we developed a simple metric of habitability for each planet that uses its mass and temperature to rate it on a scale of 0 to 1, where 1 is Earth-like, and 0 is so very not Earth-like. Plotting these values over time and taking the upper envelope yields a nice march towards habitability.

Using a simple bootstrap sampling analysis, we calculated when a logistic curve fit to such an upper envelope would get to a habitability of approximately 1. And the likeliest time is early to mid-2011, or more precisely, early May 2011.

And if not then, their data shows that there is a 75% chance that the discovery will happen by the end of 2013 (many astronomers predict this timeframe as well). In February 2011, NASA's Kepler mission will release a boatload of data that I'm assuming will help in find this Earthy planet. The universe is so big I'm surprised I didn't realize discovering another Earth-like planet was inevitable. There goes thinking that I'm a unique snowflake. 

Further Reading and Information Courtesy: My Brain, NASA.