Tag: Science & Technology

London (TIP): A new ‘Top Gun’ Xray helmet for fighter pilots can allow them to see through their aircraft walls, even if they are looking down.

The Striker helmet, made by a UK firm, interacts with cameras dotted all over the plane. Sensors in the helmet are able to tell exactly where the pilot is looking.

When matched up with cameras around the plane, the helmet system is able to superimpose a picture from the outside of the plane onto the pilots display, allowing them to see through the plane, the BBC news said.

“If a pilot wears a Striker helmet — essentially a helmet with an integrated display – when he sees something on the ground he can just turn his head, put a symbol across on to the point of interest, press a button, and the system will calculate the object’s co-ordinates ,” Alan Jowett of BAE Systems said.

The technology can even pass the information to a weapon such as an unmanned drone, said Peter Robbie, vice-president of business development at European aerospace and defence firm EADS.

“The UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) would be an additional weapons carrier, and the pilot could pass targeting information to it. So if he sees a target, by pressing a button it would become the unmanned vehicle’s target,” Robbie said. “The pilot could authorize it to drop a missile and then monitor through his helmet where it is going to go,” he said.

The Striker helmet can also be fitted with dual night vision goggles, and BAE says it is even developing a 3D audio system to allow pilots to hear information from all around them.

London (tip): Scientists have developed a new stem cell therapy which can help people with broken spines to recover feelings in previously paralysed body areas.

Two of the three patients have reported a positive outcome after receiving injections of neural stem cells, doctors at the Zurich University said. Doctors say the ultimate aim is to help those paralysed by injury to walk again, The Telgraph reported.

The trial worked on the theory that injected adult stem cells would transform themselves into spinal cord nerves, reconnecting brain and lower body.

Professor Armin Curt, who lead the study, described the result as “fundamental” .

“To find something that can repair the spinal cord is a huge breakthrough. If we can show that something has changed for the better (as a result of stem cell therapy) that’s fundamental,” he said.

He presented the findings at the annual conference of the International Spinal Cord Society in London on Monday.
“We think these stem cells are one of the first tools we have for actually repairing the central nervous system. To see this kind of change in patients who truly have the worst-of-the-worst type of injury to the spinal cord is very exciting,” Dr Stephen Huhn, from the firm, said.

The three patients, who all had complete spinal injury and could feel nothing below their nipples, were each given a dose of 20 million ‘adult’ neural stem cells about six months ago. This was primarily a safety trial, and Curt said monitoring had shown “a very good safety profile”.

Detailed questioning and objective tests also showed signals were passing up the injured spine to the brain, when they had not before.

One of the patients, a 46-year-old Norwegian financial consultant, said, “I’ve noticed changes. When somebody touches my stomach, I can feel something. I can’t be specific, but I can sense it.”
Stem cell research for spinal injury “requires an incremental approach where we build the therapy one brick at a time” , Huhn said. Walking was not the only aim: people paralysed also wanted to regain sensation, bowel and sexual function, he said.

WASHINGTON (TIP): Soon you can get rid of that beer belly with a single jab! Researchers have developed an injection of a tiny capsule, containing heat-generating cells, which they claim can burn abdominal fat. The mice injected with the capsule in the abdomen initially lost about 20% of belly fat.

Researchers were surprised to see that the injected cells even acted like “missionaries”, converting existing belly fat cells into so-called thermogenic cells, which use them to generate heat. Over time, the mice gained back some weight, but they resisted any dramatic weight gain on a high-fat diet and burned away more than a fifth of the cells that make up their visceral fat which surrounds the organs and is linked to higher risk for Type 2 diabetes, cancer and heart disease. Scientists took advantage of the heat-generating properties of a so-called ‘good fat’ in body, to cut back on the white cells that compose the visceral fat.

They combined those brown fat thermogenic cells with genetically modified cells missing an enzyme that leads to visceral fat growth. The engineered cells were placed inside a gel-like capsule that allowed for release of its contents without triggering an immune response.

“With a very small number of cells, the effect of the injection of this capsule was more pronounced at the beginning, when the mice dramatically lost about 10% of their weight,” said Ouliana Ziouzenkova, assistant professor of human nutrition at Ohio State University and lead author of the study.

“They gained back some weight after that. But then we started to look at how much visceral fat was present, and we saw about a 20% reduction in those lipids,” he said.

LONDON (TIP):
Scientists have developed glasses that allow a deaf person to “see” when a loud sound such as the honk of a car is made and give an indication of where it came from.

Researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejeon in South Korea made a pair of glasses for deaf people who lack access to such potentially life-saving cues.

An array of seven microphones, mounted on the frame of the glasses, pinpoints the location of such sounds and relays that directional information to the wearer through a set of LEDs embedded inside the frame, the New Scientist reported. The glasses will only flash alerts on sounds louder than a threshold level, which is defined by the wearer.

The prototype requires a user to carry a laptop around in a backpack to process the signal. However, lead researcher Yang-Hann Kim has stressed that the device is a first iteration that will be miniaturised over the next few years. The KAIST team presented the work at the InterNoise conference in New York City.

HOUSTON (TIP):
Students worldwide have a chance to name an asteroid, which is the subject of an upcoming Nasa mission. The mission, scheduled to be launched in 2016 is called Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx ).

It will return samples from the surface of the near-Earth asteroid called (101955)1999 RQ36 and it could hold clues to the origin of the solar system and organic molecules that may have seeded life on Earth.
The competition is open to students under the age of 18 from anywhere in the world. Each contestant can submit one name, up to 16 characters long. Entries must include a short explanation and rationale for the name. Submissions must be made by an adult on behalf of the student. The contest deadline is December 2, 2012.

LOS ANGELES (TIP): NASA beamed back more spectacular pictures from Mars on Monday – and a first voice message — likening it to the lunar landmark led by Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon who died last week. In the audio message, broadcast from the surface of the Red Planet by the Curiosity Rover, NASA administrator Charles Bolden forecast that a manned mission to Mars could happen “in the not too distant future.”

“Another small step has been taken extending the human presence beyond earth,” said NASA expert Dave Lavery, echoing Armstrong’s famous first words on the Moon in 1969. Experts at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California released more pictures taken by the $2.5 billion rover, which landed at Gale Crater on the Red Planet on August 6. One showed a panorama, in pinsharp resolution showing individual rocks, of the landscape visible from the rover, including Mount Sharp, the slopes of which Curiosity plans to drive toward in the coming weeks and months.

Mission chief scientist John Grotzinger said the landscape looked like “something that comes out of a John Ford movie,” referring to typical backdrop in films by the classic Western director. And he compared the tire tracks made by Curiosity, visible in some of the photos, to images of the first footprints on the Moon made by Armstrong, whose death at 82 was announced by his family on Saturday.

“What we are seeing here is the results of tracks involving the first motions of the rover. I think instead of a human it’s a robot pretty much doing the same thing,” said Grotzinger. In a pre recorded voice message, uploaded to the rover before being beamed back to Earth, Bolden said he was “speaking to you via the broadcast capabilities of the Curiosity rover which is now on the surface of Mars.” “Since the beginning of time, Human kind’s curiosity has led us to constantly seek new life new possibilities just beyond the horizon,” he said, adding that the rover “prepares the way for a human mission in the not too distant future.” “This is an extraordinary achievement. Landing a rover on Mars is not easy. Others have tried. Only America has fully succeeded,” he added.

LONDON (TIP): A radical new therapy could knock out high blood pressure by zapping the kidneys with radio waves, a new research demonstrates. The procedure may be available early after trials produced dramatic improvements in the condition. It could be offering succour to the thousands of blood pressure patients who don’t respond to drugs. The technique delivers a burst of radio frequency energy through a catheter to deactivate tiny nerves present in the lining of the kidney arteries. High blood pressure (BP) may be caused by faulty signals from the brain to these nerves.

Tens of millions of people suffer from high BP, a third of whom don’t know they do, and the condition is a risk factor in heart disease, stroke, and kidney failure, the Daily Mail reports. Cutting back on salt and alcohol and exercising, can control BP. But many who are on medication, as many as five different types, still have difficulty with it. It is this group who can be helped.

Mark Caulfield, professor at the William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary College, London, who has been involved in trials of the technique – known as renal denervation – said: “It could make a profound difference to a significant minority of high-risk patients, it might be tens of thousands.” Latest findings from a trial show reductions in BP persist for at least 18 months after treatment. Doctors in the UK are setting up a registry to allow long-term monitoring of all those having the procedure, but so far trials have shown no ill-effects.

MELBOURNE (TIP): A new smartphone case, made up of same material as Nasa spacecraft, claims to reduce cellphone radiation and cancer risks as it cuts the exposure by up to 95%. Although it still remains unclear as to exactly how bad the problem of cellphone radiation is, the WHO has already reclassified it as “potentially carcinogenic for humans”. The manufacturer claims to resolve the problems associated with mobile devices of emitting microwave energy as majority of it is absorbed by the heads and bodies of phone users while making calls. The accessory is available for a range of different smartphones.

According to the company’s chief technology officer, Ryan McCaughey, their invention doesn’t make empty promises to ward off deadly radiations, and the case has been rigorously tested to check its effectiveness. “The scale we base our research is the industry standard of SAR. What we do is compare the effect of a cellphone on SAR with and without the Pong case,” he said

BEIJING (TIP): Neil Armstrong’s 1969 lunar landing marked a pinnacle of US technological achievement, defining what many saw as the American century, but the next person to set foot on the moon will likely be Chinese. As the United States has scaled back its manned space program to cut costs — a move strongly criticized by Armstrong, who died on Saturday — Asian nations have aggressively expanded into space exploration.

China, Japan and India all have their own space programs. New Delhi, which envisages its first manned mission in 2016, recently unveiled ambitious plans to launch a space probe that would orbit Mars. Japan participates in the International Space Station program and launched its first lunar probe in 2007. It is planning a follow-up that it hopes will find “organic substances or minerals containing water” on an asteroid. But experts say that China, which as recently as the 1980s was focused solely on developing satellites, is the closest to landing an astronaut on the moon. Beijing launched its manned space program in 1999 and has developed rapidly since, sending its first astronaut into space in 2003 and completing a space walk in 2008.

This year, it conducted its first manned space docking – the latest step towards setting up a space station — during a mission that included its first woman in space. In its last white paper on space, China said it was working towards landing a man on the moon — a feat so far only achieved by the United States, most recently in 1972 — although it did not give a time frame. It will attempt to land an exploratory craft on the moon for the first time in the second half of 2013 and transmit back a survey of the lunar surface. “Nobody knows where the next astronauts on the moon will come from. But I expect there is a good chance that they will be Chinese,” said Morris Jones, an Australian space expert. “China’s space program is moving steadily forward. If they continue at this pace, they will develop the capability to reach the moon around 2030.” China’s space program remains far behind that of the United States – as evidenced by the fact that the recent manual space docking trumpeted by Beijing was mastered by the United States in the 1960s.

US President Barack Obama said in 2010 he would drop the costly Constellation space program, killing off future moon exploration. But the United States is developing a new rocket, and this month landed a rover the size of a car on Mars for a two-year mission to explore the Red Planet for signs it could support life. Beijing has spent about 39 billion yuan ($6.1 billion) on its manned space program since it began 20 years ago, state media have said. It sees the program as a symbol of its rising global stature, growing technical expertise, and the Communist Party’s success in turning around the fortunes of the once poverty-stricken nation. Experts, however, say national pride is just one of the motivating factors in China’s ambitious space program. “Trips to the moon have always involved prestige, but there is also science,” said Jones. “A new trend could involve mining the moon for nuclear fuel. China has made no secret of their interest in this possibility.”