Month: October 2014

WASHINGTON (TIP): A revolutionary new bionic eye implanted into a 66- year-old blind man in the US has allowed him to ‘see’ for the first time in 33 years. Larry Hester was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa when he was in his early 30s. At the time, the degenerative disease that would rob his sight was poorly understood, and there were no known treatments, researchers said.

On October 1, 2014 Hester became only the seventh person in the US to have a so-called bionic eye – an Argus II Retinal Prosthesis Device – activated as a visual aid to send light signals to his brain. The device incorporates technology initially developed by researchers at the Duke Eye Centre; its sophisticated features were further enhanced and marketed by a company called Second Sight Medical Products. Using wireless technology, a sensor is implanted in the eye to pick up light signals sent from a camera mounted on special eyeglasses.

Paul Hahn, a retinal surgeon at Duke, implanted the sensor on September 10 and activated the device three weeks later – to the sheer delight of Hester and his family. Hahn cautioned the device will not restore eyesight, but provide a visual aid that could help Hester distinguish a door from a wall, or a crosswalk painted in a roadway. ptiHester describes seeing flashes of light that are more intense when he aims the camera at lights or light-coloured objects.

During a clinic visit, Hester described “seeing” sights he had long believed were past memories – a white duck swimming in a pond, the harvest moon, his wife’s yellow chrysanthemums. Hester’s wife, Jerry, said her most cherished moment came while they were watching a football game. She was sitting in a dark chair, and her skin was enough of a contrast that Hester could see flashes. He reached out and touched her face.

WASHINGTON (TIP): A pair of American astronauts stepped outside the International Space Station on October 15 on a spacewalk to do repairs and upkeep at the orbiting outpost, Nasa said. Reid Wiseman and Barry “Butch” Wilmore began their spacewalk at 8:16 am (1216 GMT), starting an excursion that is scheduled to last six and a half hours. “During today’s spacewalk, Wiseman and Wilmore will replace a voltage regulation device called a sequential shunt unit and relocate camera and television equipment,” Nasa said in a statement. The spacewalk is being broadcast live on Nasa’s television and website.

LONDON (TIP): In a big blow to plans of colonizing the Red planet, scientists have confirmed that humans won’t last more than 68 days in Mars with present day technology. Researchers have said that an oppressive environment would suffocate the first settler within an estimated 68 days. The non-profit company Mars One announced plans to establish the first human settlement on Mars by 2025. Solar panel powered huts is expected to supply the colony’s electricity, while a system to extract water from the soil would supply drinking water.

But engineers at MIT say the project may have to take a step back, at least to reconsider the mission’s technical feasibility. The MIT researchers developed a detailed settlementanalysis tool to assess the feasibility of the Mars One mission and found that new technologies will be needed to keep humans alive on Mars. For example, if all food is obtained from locally grown crops, as Mars One envisions, the vegetation would produce unsafe levels of oxygen, which would set off a series of events that would eventually cause human inhabitants to suffocate.

To avoid this scenario, a system to remove excess oxygen would have to be implemented – a technology that has not yet been developed for use in space. Similarly, the Mars Phoenix lander discovered evidence of ice on the Martian surface in 2008, suggesting that future settlers might be able to melt ice for drinking water – another Mars One goal. But according to the MIT analysis, current technologies designed to bake water from soil are not yet ready for deployment, particularly in space.

The team also performed an integrated analysis of spareparts resupply – how many spare parts would have to be delivered to a Martian colony at each opportunity to keep it going. The researchers found that as the colony grows, spare parts would quickly dominate future deliveries to Mars, making up as much as 62% of payloads from Earth. As for the actual voyage to Mars, the team also calculated the number of rockets required to establish the first four settlers and subsequent crews on the planet, as well as the journey’s cost. According to the Mars One plan, six Falcon Heavy rockets would be required to send up initial supplies, before the astronauts’ arrival. But the MIT assessment found that number to be “overly optimistic”.

The team determined that the needed supplies would instead require 15 Falcon Heavy rockets. The transportation cost for this leg of the mission alone, combined with the astronauts’ launch, would be $4.5 billion – a cost that would grow with additional crews and supplies to Mars. It would also take seven months to get to Mars each time. Olivier de Weck, an MIT professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems says “We’re not saying, black and white, Mars One is infeasible. But we do think it’s not really feasible under the assumptions they’ve made.

We’re pointing to technologies that could be helpful to invest in with high priority, to move them along the feasibility path. One of the great insights we were able to get was just how hard it is to pull this mission off”. Graduate student Sydney Do simulated the day-to-day life of a Mars colonist. Based on the typical work schedule, activity levels, and metabolic rates of astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS), Do estimated that a settler would have to consume about 3,040 calories daily to stay alive and healthy on Mars. He then determined crops that would provide a reasonably balanced diet, including beans, lettuce, peanuts, potatoes and rice.

Do calculated that producing enough of these crops to sustain astronauts over the long term would require about 200 square meters of growing area, compared with Mars One’s estimate of 50 square meters. If, as the project plans, crops are cultivated within the settlers’ habitat, Do found that they would produce unsafe levels of oxygen that would exceed fire safety thresholds, requiring continuous introduction of nitrogen to reduce the oxygen level. Owens points to technologies such as 3-D printing, which may enable settlers to manufacture spare parts on Mars.

But the technology as it exists today is not advanced enough to reproduce the exact dimensions and functions of many space-rated parts. In 2012, the “Mars One” project, led by a Dutch non-profit, announced plans to establish the first human colony on the Red Planet by 2025. The mission would initially send four astronauts on a one-way trip to Mars, where they would spend the rest of their lives building the first permanent human settlement.

WASHINGTON (TIP): Inspired by the amazing ability of sidewinder snakes to quickly climb sandy slopes, researchers have created a robot that can climb sand hills better, an advance that may aid search-andrescue operations. Researchers report that sidewinders improve their ability to traverse sandy slopes by simply increasing the amount of their body area in contact with the granular surfaces they’re climbing.

As part of the study, the principles used by the sidewinders to gracefully climb sand dunes were tested using a modular snake robot developed at Carnegie Mellon University. Before the study, the snake robot could use one component of sidewinding motion to move across level ground, but was unable to climb the inclined sand track the way the real snakes could readily ascend. In a real-world application – an archaeological mission in Red Sea caves – sandy inclines were especially challenging to the robot.

However, when the robot was programmed with the unique wave motion discovered in the sidewinders, it was able to climb slopes that had previously been unattainable. “Our initial idea was to use the robot as a physical model to learn what the snakes experienced,” said Daniel Goldman, an associate professor in Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Physics. “By studying the animal and the physical model simultaneously, we learned important general principles that allowed us to not only understand the animal, but also to improve the robot,” said Goldman. The detailed study showed that both horizontal and vertical motion had to be understood and then replicated on the snake-like robot for it to be useful on sloping sand.