To search industries for UFO types of things

[ScienceNology] - Vladimir Pirozhkov told to RussiaToday that the Japanese system of analysis and Japanese understanding of space – the combination of small spaces are the best in the world. Vladimir Pirozhkov have worked for such world renowned companies as Citroen in Paris and Toyota in Nice. The video is the interview between RT and him.

“We really want to continue this legacy and we have the energy of our grandfathers, who built unbelievable things, and we can restore what needs to be restored,” says designer Vladimir Pirozhkov to RT.

After being part of the team that designed the interior of the world's best selling car, the Toyota Corolla, Russian designer Vladimir Pirozhkov has turned his skills to aircraft. His latest work is the livery of the Sukhoi SuperJet, and his ambitions spread even as far as into space.


More interview with him at Russia Today , 26 August 2009

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Bony robot mimicking human body

[ScienceNology] - Why try and build human-like robots from scratch if you can cash on thousands of years of evolution, which have produced a good working model – we humans. That’s the idea behind the Eccerobot project.

ECCEROBOT, which stands for “Embodied Cognition in a Compliantly Engineered Robot”, takes mimicking human body to a new level. Unlike robots such as Honda’s ASIMO, the machine – developed by several European institutes – is not only shaped as a humanoid, but also has an internal structure similar to the bones and muscles you and I have.



The robot’s anatomy is not organic, of course. The bones are made of a thermoplastic polymer, which can be molded by hand if heated to 60 degrees Celsius, but set at room temperature. And stiff kite-lines pulled by screwdrivers serve as the muscles.

The most difficult part is controlling all this machinery. The robot only has parts from the waist up, but it takes 80 artificial muscles to move them. Scientists hope in the future to use the human-like form to "explore human-like cognitive features".

For those concerned with the rise of machines and the decline of humanity, in the demo video, Eccerobot shakes hands with one of the researchers rather then pulling a laser gun on him.

The video below demonstrating the recently developed shoulder design which replicates the human model in great detail.




A News from RussiaToday , 25 August 2009

More on Eccerobot.org

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DNA fingerprints can be fabricated

[ScienceNology] - Forensic analysis of DNA used as court evidence can be made-up , Israeli scientists have shown. A person trained in biology who has lab access can copy an innocent person’s details using “biological identity theft”.

In a paper published in the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics, the team reports on how they’ve managed to take a sample of blood taken from a woman and forge it into that of a man. They separated cells containing genetic material from the female sample before combining it with DNA taken from the male’s hair. If planted at the scene of a crime, this blood sample could potentially incriminate an innocent man.

Another approach would require access to the genetic profile of a person and access to the gene database. A trained geneticist would be able to construct fake genetic material by mixing samples with other gene characteristics. The results of this would be untraceable. The forgers wouldn’t even need access to real genetic material to make this possible.

“You can just engineer a crime scene,” said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper. “Any biology undergraduate could perform this.”

The paper goes on to suggest a method of identifying faked DNA.

Modern forensic science relies on DNA evidence to provide court evidence which decides thousands of sentences; both convicting people of crimes and clearing them of charges. The paper casts doubt on how reliable the evidence is and will be in future trials.







“Stealing an identity is now a possibility, potentially someone could come along and collect your DNA without access to a tissue sample and make it look like your DNA using various complicated techniques,” commented Gail Javitt, from the Berman Institute of Bioethics at John Hopkins University.

“From now on in criminal procedures, they have to be careful about having a real DNA, not a faked one,” she added. “Outside the criminal context, we need clear policies that it’s “hands off our DNA” and maintain the privacy of our genetic information.”

However, skeptics point out that the majority of criminals wouldn’t have either the knowledge nor access to the required equipment to fabricate DNA evidence.




A News from RussiaToday , 19 August 2009

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New research supports model for nuclear pore complex

To protect their DNA, cells in higher organisms are very choosy about what they allow in and out of their nuclei, where the genes reside. Guarding access is the job of transport machines called nuclear pore complexes, which stud the nuclear membrane. Despite these gatekeepers’ conspicuously large size (they are made of 30 different proteins), they have proved largely inscrutable to researchers over the years. But bit by bit, scientists are learning how these machines work.

Now a new study reveals the structure of one of the proteins that makes up this molecule-trafficking complex. Researchers have also shown how that protein interacts with a partner, supporting a model that calls for a flexible “ring” around the opening of each pore. The work could offer a key insight into an important design feature of this little-understood and evolutionarily ancient structure, an innovation fundamental to the development of nearly all multicellular life on Earth.

<-- Paring the pore. A new model of how the nuclear pore complex might work suggests that an interaction between two proteins — key elements of the yellow ring pictured above — link together, forming a flexible fence around the pore’s opening.

The research, performed by Hyuk-Soo Seo, a postdoctoral associate, and André Hoelz, a research associate, both in Rockefeller University’s Laboratory of Cell Biology, determined the molecular structure of the only remaining unsolved protein in an important piece of the nuclear pore called the Nup84 complex. Nup84 is a Y-shaped element that was recently imaged in three dimensions by Martin Kampmann, also a member of the lab headed by Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Günter Blobel. In experiments published online last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Seo, Hoelz and colleagues focused on the behavior of this newly solved protein — or nucleoporin — called Nup120, one of seven comprising the Nup84 complex. They determined that one end of Nup120, the N-terminal domain, is attached by a stretchable tether to one other protein in the complex, Nup133.

Furthermore, the researchers showed in living cells that mutations to a critical region of the tether interfered with the export of messenger RNA, one of the nuclear pore’s chief responsibilities, confirming the functional importance of this loose linkage between the two proteins.

“It’s a very nice correlation from the structure to the function,” Hoelz says. “It’s the first example where we can really pin down how the [Nup84] complexes arrange with each other, and what we believe we see is a flexible ring that could expand and contract to import and export large molecules.”



A research from Rockefeller University , 18 August 2009

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Festo robotic projects

Airic's_arm



Airic's arm is a robot arm with artificial bones and muscles. A total of 30 muscles move the bone structure which , as with our own arms, consists of ulna and radius , metacarpal and finger bones, a shoulder joint and a shoulder bone-joints that are otherwise not encountered in this form in the world of technology. They were designed on computer and are grown in a three-dimensional polyamide structure using a state of the art laser sintering process.

The muscle, a product of Festo, are already widely found in industrial application under the name of Fluidic Muscles. These are tubes of elastomer reinforced with aramide fibers. When a Fluidic Muscles is filled with compressed air, its diameter increases and it is simultaneously shortened.

Using this technology, in conjunction with Festo’s tiny, highly innovative piezo-proportional valves, it is possible to precisely regulate the forces and rigidity within the construction. These actuators can be coordinated using state-of-the-art mechatronic systems and software.

The possibility of enhancing the Airic’s_arm sensors in the future, for instance by adding cameras or tactile perception elements, is just as feasible as the possibility of a further development in the form of back, hip and neck. Enhancements of this type will also be useful in robotics, as they could be used to assign even more hazardous tasks to technology.





Aqua_ray



Aqua_ray is a remote-controlled fish driven by water hydraulics, the shape and movements of which have been based on the model of a manta ray.

The central drive and control unit of Aqua_ray takes the form of a Festo Fluidic Muscle. This is combined with the Fin Ray Effect®, a design based on the functional anatomy of a fish’s fin that makes it possible to imitate the fin drive of the natural role model almost perfectly.

As the Aqua_ray can be manoeuvred extremely well, and can be operated both as a hydrostatic glider and with an active wing beat, substantial energy savings can be achieved. Thanks to its shape and method of movement, the Aqua_ray can be used in wide ranging areas of oceanography, without disrupting the natural environment.





Air_ray



Air_ray, modelled on the manta ray, is a remote-controlled hybrid construction consisting of a helium-filled ballonet and a beating wing drive. Its light design makes it possible for it to “swim” in the sea of air, boosted by helium, in a similar way to the manta ray in water.

Propulsion is achieved by a beating wing drive. The servo drive-controlled wing, which can move up and down, utilises the Fin Ray Effect® and is based on alternate pulling and pushing flanks connected via frames. When pressure is exerted on one flank, the geometrical structure curves automatically against the direction of the influencing force. A servo drive pulls the two flanks alternately in the longitudinal direction, thus moving the wing up and down.






Credit to : Festo

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Robots with high speed hands

From a Sensor fusion technology, came these high speed robotic hands. Sensor fusion is the combining of sensory data or data derived from sensory data from disparate sources such that the resulting information is in some sense better than would be possible when these sources were used individually. Sensor fusion is also known as (multi-sensor) Data fusion and is a subset of information fusion.

Look at those robots hand carefully in the video. They are really fast!

Resources:

- Sensor fusion definition from Wikipedia
- Robots from Ishikawa Komuro Laboratory

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A noodle cooked by robots

Now a robot can cook u a noodle. But how with the noodle taste? How it will know when its not too salty or tasteless? Come and watch this video from Msnbc because that's what happened in Japan now. The chef in that kitchen is not a human but totally a robot :D

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Believe it or not? Believe it :D

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Discovering Diversity In The Tropics

William Gerwick is quite happy to tell you about his scientific expeditions to Fiji. He can expound on the amazing explorations his group has led to Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, and other destinations in search of exotic molecules that could one day lead to new treatments for human diseases.

But broach the subject of Panama and it's time to get comfortable in your seat. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego professor's palpable enthusiasm is rooted in his laboratory's multifaceted drug discovery and training program that ranges from the Central American country's rain forest jungles to its underwater world.

Just mention a potential drug called "Coibamide" to uncork Gerwick's excitement. The island of Coiba off Panama's Pacific coast was free of human inhabitants for hundreds of years, save for the pirates that occasionally encamped there. A prison was housed in one section of the island for about a century until it closed in 2004. The rest of the island remained an undisturbed wilderness.

It was here, while exploring Coiba's shallow waters in June 2004 that Kerry McPhail, then a postdoctoral scientist working with Gerwick, discovered a cyanobacterium, a primitive photosynthetic organism with features unlike any previously encountered by scientists. Laboratory analysis and testing revealed that the organism naturally produces a potent cancer-fighting compound.

"To the full extent that we can tell, the compound is working by a novel mechanism to kill cancer cells," said Gerwick, a scientist with the Scripps Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine and the UCSD Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. "It has a very unusual molecular structure unlike any we've seen before."

Undisturbed locations such as Coiba are rare and disappearing around the world. Gerwick's research in Panama is helping to counteract that slide through a unique program that blends drug discovery from the natural world, the conservation of biodiverse sources, training for young scientists, and scientific as well as economic development in economically disadvantaged countries.

The International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups (ICBG) program, the brainchild of Josh Rosenthal and others at the Bethesda, Maryland-based Fogarty International Center, oversees a handful of programs around the world and regards Gerwick's Panamanian research center as a model of success.

"Through ICBG, we are involved in an integrative program of joint discovery that engages the host country, not only in the final rewards of drug discovery, but in the rewards that come from being engaged in the process," said Gerwick.

More article reading at http://explorations.ucsd.edu/Features/2009/Discovering_Diversity/


A video podcast from the University of California - San Diego , 3 July 2009

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