Micro stories - small news bits too small to have their own thread

[Hamartia Antidote]

• Teaming with the Air Force Research Laboratory and FlexSys Inc. of Ann Arbor, Michigan, NASA successfully tested a radical new morphing wing technology that allows an aircraft to seamlessly extend its flaps, leaving no drag-inducing, noise-enhancing gaps for air to flow through. FlexSys and Aviation Partners of Seattle already have announced plans to commercialize this technology..

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...ammed-into-american-museum-of-natural-history

Largest dinosaur species ever discovered crammed into American Museum of Natural History


Yesterday, the American Museum of Natural History opened the biggest dinosaur exhibit in its history, or at least the largest exhibit of any single dinosaur. The museum is showing the largest Titanosaur ever discovered. The bones were found in 2014 and the species is new enough that we don’t even have a formal name for it yet. Like the previous record-holder, Argentinosaurus, the as-yet-unnamed 122-foot Titanosaur was found in Argentina. A visual comparison of how various Titanosaurs compare to a human is below:



Titanosaurs, as the name suggests, are some of the very largest and heaviest dinosaurs to ever walk the Earth. They were sauropods, a type of dinosaur characterized by long necks, relatively small heads, and four thick legs that are more reminiscent of Grecian pillars than ordinary bones. The femur of this particular Titanosaur, for example, measured more than eight feet long. This particular specimen was an estimated 121 feet long and weighed in at 70 short tons (63 metric tons). That’s big, even by dinosaur standards, but scientists have determined that this dinosaur was only a juvenile.

This particular sauropod had pointier teeth than you might expect on a herbivore, according to Ars Technica, and scientists think it likely fed like a huge lawn mower — take a step, sweep the area in front of you for plant matter, swallow (without chewing), step, and sweep forward again. One of the misconceptions about sauropods in general is that they held their heads high, but their necks wouldn’t have been flexible enough to permit it in animals of this size. Titanosaurs are thought to have lived in herds for mutual defense and protection. The sheer size of a Titanosaur would have been its own defense — even Tyrannosaurus Rex, one of the largest predator dinosaurs (at least on land), would’ve weighed a fraction of a full-grown Titanosaur.

The new Titanosaur is thought to be ~10% larger than the Titanosaur Argentinosaurus, which was discovered in 1991. We only have a partial skeleton of that dinosaur, but scientists have done some interesting work on estimating how it walked and what its gait looked like. A 2013 digital reconstruction of the creature based on a musculoskeletal analysis (the first ever performed on this type of dinosaur) produced a video that makes the massive beast look almost dainty.

The maximum speed of Argentinosaurus was 5mph according to the reconstruction — not bad for a creature thought to weigh 80 tons (73 short tons). These sauropods are thought to have survived up to the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, but were wiped out, along with the other non-avian dinosaurs, when the meteor hit.

 

[Gauss]

When David Huffman died in 1999, the world lost a talented computer scientist — Huffman was best known for discovering the Huffman coding technique used in data compression.

But it also lost a pioneer in mathematical origami, an extension of the traditional art of paper folding that applies computational geometry, number theory, coding theory, and linear algebra. The field today is finding wide application, helping researchers to fold everything from proteins to automobile airbags and space-based telescopes.

Huffman was drawn to the work through his investigations into the mathematical properties of “zero curvature” surfaces, studying how paper behaves near creases and apices of cones. During the last two decades of his life he created hundreds of beautiful, perplexing paper models in which the creases were curved rather than straight.

But he kept his folding research largely to himself. He published only one paper on the subject, and much of what he discovered was lost at his death. “He anticipated a great deal of what other people have since rediscovered or are only now discovering,” laser physicist Robert Lang told the New York Times in 2004. “At least half of what he did is unlike anything I’ve seen.” MIT computer scientist Erik Demaine is working now with Huffman’s family to recover and document his discoveries.

“I don’t claim to be an artist. I’m not even sure how to define art,” Huffman told an audience in 1979. “But I find it natural that the elegant mathematical theorems associated with paper surfaces should lead to visual elegance as well.”

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Stanford invents lithium-ion battery that can’t overheat | ExtremeTech

Lithium-ion batteries are being used in an increasing number of portable gadgets. They are simply the best battery tech we have available today, but they aren’t 100% safe. We’ve all seen what can happen when one of these batteries gets damaged and overheats. Typically there will be a very hot ball of flames that consumes whatever device the battery was inside.

Until we have a replacement for lithium-ion, we need a way to mitigate that risk, and Stanford University looks to have come up with the solution: a lithium-ion battery that can’t overheat. And it’s all thanks to a human body temperature wearable sensor, which has been tweaked for use in batteries.

The tweaked sensor takes the form of a plastic polymer containing nickel particles that’s connected to the battery electrodes. Under normal circumstances electricity is allowed to flow through the nickel particles as they are touching each other. However, if the battery heats up, the polymer expands and at a set temperature the nickel particles separate and break their link. Electricity stops flowing and the battery can’t get any hotter.

The polymer is not only useful because it stops overheating, though. It also contracts as the temperature reduces. So while the battery may stop working to prevent an overheat, it will begin to work again once the temperature is back within acceptable limits. That means no expensive battery replacement for the user, unless of course the battery really is damaged and continues to try to overheat.

As the design is reliant on adding a polymer to existing battery designs, it shouldn’t be very expensive to implement and mass produce. So hopefully Stanford’s invention makes it into commercial batteries quickly, and keeps all our gadgets (and us) safer.

In October, researchers at the University of Cambridge developed a lithium-air battery that packs far more power into the same size pack as lithium-ion, though that design is years away from commercial mass production.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Scientists create touch-sensitive bionic finger | ExtremeTech

Dennis Aabo Sørensen can feel the difference between a rough and smooth surface, which is impressive when you consider he lost his hand. Advances in prosthetics give hope to amputees around the world that they can continue living normal lives after losing a limb. Even the intricacies of the hand are being worked out with advanced robotics. However, the ability to manipulate objects is only part of the equation. Most prosthetic hands can’t offer any semblance of the sense of touch the patient has lost, but a project at Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland might change that. That’s where Sørensen’s bionic fingertip was developed.

Researchers from EPFL believe this is the first time an amputee has been able to feel the texture of a surface with electronic sensors. Some prosthetic limbs can relay temperature or pressure information to the remaining skin where the device connects, but the bionic fingertip was wired directly into the nerves in Sørensen’s upper arm using thin needles.

The fingertip has a soft surface, not unlike the real thing. When Sørensen was wired in, a machine moved the fingertip across a smooth or rough surface. The flexible fingertip deforms, which causes electrical impulses that are interpreted in the signal processor. It then produces electrical spikes and transmits them to Sørensen’s nerves in an attempt to mimic the way a real nerve operates. In a blind test, Sørensen was able to tell the difference between the two surfaces with 96% accuracy. He said following the test that the sensation was very similar to that of a real finger, specifically the index finger of his phantom hand.

The study seems to indicate that the sensation of having a missing “phantom” limb actually makes the bionic finger more accurate. Non-amputees who tried the sensor were only able to tell the difference between the rough and smooth surface 77% of the time. EEG readings show that the same part of the brain is activated when these subjects use the bionic finger as when they use their real one. The fact that the brain was able to interpret the signals from an “extra” finger at all is potentially useful. That means future development of the sensor might not require amputees as test subjects.

In addition to making more useful prosthetics for amputees, the team sees remote surgical robots as a potential use case. Doctors could actually feel what a robot feels as if they were actually present to do the surgery themselves. Manufacturing robots could also benefit, allowing workers to feel what’s going on without putting their hands near anything dangerous.

 

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[Hamartia Antidote]

need updates here too @Sven

 

[Sven]

need updates here too @Sven

Curse you for trying to drag me back into the pit of PDF's postaholic lifestyle. But ok, I'll do a few.

Really should change the tread name to "cool sh*t" instead.

...

*Well I can't post links... so deal with it people.

Here's What Tomorrow's First Full-Scale Test of the Hyperloop Will Look Like

Tomorrow, in the Nevada desert, one of the companies working to develop a hyperloop will deliver a proof of concept—the first full-scale demonstration of the transportation technology that will be able to travel at speeds over 300 mph, radically changing the future of transit along the way.

What engineers are calling a “propulsion open-air test” (POAT) will be the first public peek at the electromagnetic propulsion system developed by Hyperloop One, formerly Hyperloop Technologies, which released this animation today. The company’s name change, also announced today, will differentiate the two-year-old startup from its competitor Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT). On Monday, HTT made its own announcement that it had licensed a different propulsion technology using passive magnetic levitation.

“We’ve tested levitation technologies, we’ve tested the aerodynamics in those low-pressure environments, we’ve tested the tube,” said CEO Rob Lloyd, when I met him at Hyperloop One’s headquarters in downtown Los Angeles, where about 160 employees are working on the project. “So we’ve done testing of all the systems but only can demonstrate this if we build it at full-scale.” At the end of last year, Hyperloop One acquired the land in Nevada to start building a complete full-scale prototype, which Lloyd estimates will be ready by the end of 2016.

Although Hyperloop One could not comment on announcements by its competitors, I did ask Josh Giegel, senior vice president of engineering, to explain the difference between passive magnetic levitation and Hyperloop One’s propulsion technology. He could not go into detail about what technology will be used on tomorrow’s test, only confirming that it uses electromagnets. But Giegel also said that Hyperloop One is not tied to any specific technology. “We believe strongly in testing design as quickly as we can to release the product, get feedback, and make upgrades,” he said. “We feel the propulsion technology that we are demonstrating right now is an extremely novel way of doing this.”

Beyond the propulsion tech demo, Hyperloop One also announced a long list of new partners today, most notably the addition of Danish architect Bjarke Ingels and his firm BIG. Ingels, who is known for his ambitious public infrastructure projects, will give some much-needed design direction for how Hyperloop Tech’s projects might start to integrate with the cities they’re meant to serve. “With hyperloop we are not only designing a futuristic station or a very fast train, we are dealing with an entirely novel technology with the potential to completely transform how our existing cities will grow and evolve, and how new cities will be conceived and constructed,” Ingels said in a statement.

Also partnering with Hyperloop One are engineering firms AECOM and Arup, as well as transportation and tunneling partners from Amberg Group (Switzerland), Deutsche Bahn (Germany), and Systra (France). This group of international consultants alludes to the fact that the first hyperloop will likely not be built in the US, but in a country with fewer regulatory restrictions. Among Hyperloop One’s investors are France’s railway system SNCF, which is eyeing hyperloop as a potential replacement for high-speed rail, according to several European publications. Earlier this year, Hyperloop One’s competitor HTT announced a plan to bring a hyperloop system to Slovakia, but the company still has yet to build a planned five-mile test track in Northern California.

While the original hyperloop concept was proposed by Elon Musk way back in 2013 as a way to move humans in a manner that might replace flying, Hyperloop One is focusing its efforts on a cargo transport system first, which many people—including myself—have said is a better use of the technology. Lloyd said he hopes to discover these potential case studies with a new call-for-proposals soliciting concepts for how hyperloop could benefit cities. A few of the feasibility studies already underway include a better infrastructural connection between Stockholm and Helsinki, the efficient movement of shipping containers through the Port of Los Angeles, and a tunnel-based cargo transport system for Switzerland.

What Lloyd and Geigel both referred to as the startup’s “Kitty Hawk moment,” alluding to the Wright Brothers’ famous first flight, will happen later this year when the full-size hyperloop prototype is ready. But tomorrow, there will be an important first step: the POAT. We’ll provide video of the test when it happens.[/QUOTE]

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Here's What Tomorrow's First Full-Scale Test of the Hyperloop Will Look Like