August 2020 show notes
For more about me, see: https://ralphbond.wixsite.com/aboutme
Story 1: Tiny, Decoy “Sponges” Attract Coronavirus Away from Lung Cells
Source: Boston University
- Imagine if scientists could stop the coronavirus infecting our lungs simply by diverting its attention away from normal lung cells?
- That’s what a team of researchers from Boston University and the University of California San Diego plan to do with an ingenious “decoy” approach to fool, trap and kill the coronavirus.
- Here’s how it works in a nutshell:
- First they took nanosized drops of soft biodegradable polymers [each one a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair]
- These drops are so tiny vast numbers of them could be introduced into a patient’s lungs using a nasal spray.
- Each droplet is covered in fragments of modified living lung cells and immune cell membranes designed to be irresistible to the coronavirus.
- Here’s how the decoy trick works:
- The fragments of lung cell and immune cell membranes combined with the droplets have none of the internal cellular properties [or “mechanics”] of normal living lung cells.
- The virus needs those cellular properties to successfully infect lung tissue.
- So, when the coronavirus binds with the decoy droplet’s cell fragments the coronavirus can’t replicate, and then dies.
- Right now this is in early lab testing – and deployment is yet to be determined.
- Added super bonus – this approach has the potential to be adapted to combat virtually any virus, such as influenza or even Ebola
Story 2: Space Perspective wants to sell balloon rides to the edge of space
Source: CNET on MSN.com
Source: UK’s Evening Standard
Link: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/ballon-rides-space-florida-start-up-a4484941.html
See video here: https://youtu.be/QKq4sLERZ4M
- A Florida-based company Space Perspective plans to start testing its passenger balloon designed to reach the edge of space as early as next year.
- The balloon design is based on technology NASA has used for decades to fly large research telescopes high above the earth.
- When in operation within the next few years, eight passengers and a pilot would travel up to 100,000 feet to the stratosphere in a reusable pressurized capsule, suspended from a balloon, get this, as wide as a football field.
- It will take approximately two hours to ascend to about 19 miles above the Earth.
- Satellite communications will enable passengers to post on social media and share photos.
- For its main launch site, the company plans to use The Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak Alaska.
- Space Perspective plans to complete an unmanned test flight from the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida next year.
- Okay, now for the ticket shock: Each passenger could pay an estimated $125,000 for a six-hour journey.
Story 3: This New High-Tech Face Mask Can Translate Your Voice Into 9 Languages
Source: Robb Report Story by Bryan Hood
Link: https://robbreport.com/gear/gadgets/donut-robotics-c-mask-face-mask-translation-2933529/
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=H6uF83V1cGQ&feature=emb_logo
- A Japanese startup with the funny name of Donut Robotics has developed a high-tech, internet-connected “smart mask” they call “c-mask”
- The plastic “c-mask” fits over standard face masks and connects wirelessly using Bluetooth to a smartphone or tablet application.
- The c-mask can translate and transcribe multiple languages including Japanese, English, Chinese, French, Korean, Thai, Spanish and Vietnamese.
- As an added bonus, when used with a smartphone you can make phone calls using voice commands.
- And the mask can also amplify your voice [something that could help people who must wear a mask all day at work].
- The c-mask will cost $40 a piece.
- The first shipment of 5,000 masks will arrive in Japan starting September, with later shipments set for China, the United States and Europe.
Story 4: Engineers are creating bomb sniffing cyborg locusts
Source: Washington University in St. Louis Story by Beth Miller
Link: https://source.wustl.edu/2016/06/engineers-use-cyborg-insects-biorobotic-sensing-machines/
See videos:
- Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are looking to capitalize on the amazing sense of smell locusts have.
- The goal is to turn them into flying, remote controlled bio-robotic sensing systems that can fly into areas inaccessible to a bomb sniffing dog.
- To accelerate the research the University recently received a three-year, $750,000 grant from the Office of Naval Research.
- Here’s how the cyborg locusts work:
- First, locusts have antennae with hundreds of thousands of sniffing sensors.
- After years of research the University team found that they could tap the brains of locusts and monitor how they identify specific odors even in a complex environment filled with many other odors.
- To do that they developed a tiny, remote-controlled computer chip attached to the back of a locust with an electrode implanted into the insect’s brain.
- And no battery is needed to run the chip – the locust’s movements generate the power needed to power the chip.
- With the brain-implanted electrode the researchers can monitor the neural activity in the brain to train the locust to recognize certain odors [for example TNT].
- When a cyborg locust is deployed to a target location, and a specific odor is detected the chip wirelessly transmits the information back to the human monitor.
- To control the locust’s flight direction, the researchers applied a light activated, heat producing ultra-thin film tattoo on the wings.
- Light shined on the left or right wing produces heat which controls flight direction.
- And once they reach a target location, these cyborg locusts can find and then collect samples of target organic compounds and bring them back for analysis.
- This is a great example of biomedical engineering, materials science and computer scientists working together.
Story 5: Researchers in Switzerland are working on an artificial intelligence-based system that can listen to your cough and help indicate whether you have COVID-19.
Source: Embedded Systems Lab website
Link: https://actu.epfl.ch/news/a-new-app-can-help-detect-the-coronavirus/
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=9&v=3a6ZlKGXUgw&feature=emb_logo
- Dry coughs are one of the symptoms of coronavirus.
- What if there was a free at-home self-test you could take to determine if your cough is symptomatic of the coronavirus?
- That’s what a team of researchers from the Embedded Systems Lab in Switzerland are working on.
- It’s called the CoughVid Initiative.
- Here’s how it works:
- First you install the team’s smartphone app.
- Then you record your coughing.
- Your digital recording is then uploaded to a cloud-based storage system and then downloaded to the Lab’s servers.
- CoughVid then uses artificial intelligence to analyze your recording to see if it matches the classic sound pattern of a coronavirus cough.
- This is a sophisticated, Artificial Intelligence diagnostic approach modeled after the way doctors rely on their personal experience of listening to their patients’ coughs to diagnose, for example, asthma and pneumonia.
- The results of your cough are then sent back to your phone’s CoughVid app.
- Right now the Embedded Systems Lab research team is asking for volunteers to submit recordings.
- The goal is to train their artificial intelligence program to distinguish between the coughs of people with COVID-19 or people with other kinds of respiratory ailments.
Story 6: Scientists Build Terminator-Style Robot Jaws to Chew Drug-Laced Gum
Source: Futurism.com Story by Victor Tangermann
Link: https://futurism.com/neoscope/scientists-robot-jaws-chew-drugs-gum
- Let’s set the stage:
- We’re all familiar with tablets you put under your tongue to quickly dispense a medication orally – within 30 seconds to a minute.
- That’s great, but what if you want to dispense a drug orally, but at a much slower rate?
- Enter the idea of using chewing gum to orally, but slowly introduce a medication.
- But, here’s the problem with that idea to date – A lack of standards in testing the use of chewing gum as a drug dispensing method have held back making this a widely used treatment option.
- To come up with a standardized testing method, a team of researchers from the University of Bristol in the UK built a set of robot jaws that can chew gum much like a human.
- The robot even features artificial saliva to allow for xylitol, a common sugar substitute in gum, to dissolve.
- They are using xylitol to imitate dissolvable drugs for their testing purposes.
- In an experiment the team compared how much xylitol remained in a stick of gum after their robot jaws had a go at it versus human participants.
- They found that the release rate of the xylitol was comparable between the robot and the human volunteer participants.
- So, as a viable stand-in for human subjects, the robot jaws will help speed up the validation of drug dispensing chewing gum – and its future use as a treatment option.
Story 7: Artificial Intelligence helps drone swarms navigate through crowded, unfamiliar spaces – even indoors!
Source: Engadget Story by Jon Fingas
Link: https://www.engadget.com/caltech-drone-swarm-ai-174642584.html
See videos here:
- Drone swarms, like the one featured in the Super Bowl half time show, must fly outside in wide open-air spaces for a reason: it’s difficult for the robotic fliers to navigate in tight spaces without hitting each other – especially indoors.
- The big news is a team of Caltech researchers has developed a machine learning Artificial Intelligence algorithm to enable drone swarms to fly indoors, and through tight spaces.
- Instead of relying on rigid, pre-programmed maps, their new system has each drone learning how to navigate a given space on its own even as it coordinates with other drones in the pack.
- This decentralized model helps the drones improvise as the navigation computing is independently spread across many robot drones.
- This breakthrough technology also helps the drones compensate for aerodynamic interactions, such as the downwash from a robot flying overhead.
- Here’s one exciting potential application – This AI-based technology could enable search and rescue drones to safely navigate indoor areas in packs.
Story 8: Researchers introduce FingerTrak, a hand tracking wristband for Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality input
Source: VentureBeat Story by Jeremy Horwitz
Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=OO1iwrx3OLI
- Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality researchers are now in a race to develop input movement control solutions that will feel more natural than holding bulky handheld controllers.
- This month, researchers from Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin announced FingerTrak.
- FingerTrack is a small, lightweight wristband-based control solution that uses four miniature thermal cameras to track hand movements in 3D.
- It can identify 20 finger joint positions from the contours on the wearer’s wrist.
- FingerTrak uses a deep neural network to stitch together input from the thermal cameras mounted around the wrist to capture entire hand poses which, in turn, are used to navigate a VR or AR environment.
- Other potential applications for FingerTrak include human-robot interaction and control, sign language translation, and much more.
Story 9: How About a Space Station at the Bottom of the Ocean?
Source: Popular Mechanics Story by Caroline Delbert
Link: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a33406526/undersea-lab-ocean-space-station/
Source: CNN Story by Jacqui Palumbo
- Fabien Cousteau [the grandson of the famous underwater explorer and conservationist Jacques Cousteau] is advocating the construction of what would be the world’s largest underwater research station and habitat.
- It would be a 4,000-square-foot modular lab, which would make it four times larger than any previous underwater habitat.
- To realize his dream, Fabien Cousteau is collaborating with a team from Northeastern University, which is a private research university in Boston.
- The plan is to place the two-story circular structure grounded to the ocean floor on stilts 60 feet underwater off the shore of the Caribbean island of [Koo-ra-sao] Curacao.
- The structure will have space for research labs, sleeping quarters, an underwater greenhouse, and a video production facility to livestream educational programming.
- And the structure will be powered by wind and solar energy, and ocean thermal energy conversion.
- The goal is to have divers live on a facility at the same depth they plan to study, thus eliminating the need to make time consuming depressurizing pitstops required when you dive from the surface down to a deep destination, and then back.
- Researchers could spend weeks making hands-on exploration and research their full-time job.
- OK Reality Check time: the plans aren’t finalized by any means. They are very ambitious and will require significant funding partners.
Story 10: NASA’s Recently Launched Mars Perseverance Rover is carrying an innovative helicopter drone
Source: Business Insider Story by Morgan McFall-Johnsen
Link: https://bit.ly/2PxZOIF
See animation here: https://i.insider.com/5f1f80803ad8613e7f039664?width=700&format=gif
- NASA stowed a solar-powered helicopter in the belly of its Perseverance Mars rover, which was launched on July 30.
- Perseverance will be NASA’s fifth rover to Mars, but its helicopter stowaway, called Ingenuity, will be the first spacecraft of its kind.
- About two months after the rover lands on Mars, the Rover is programmed to lower the helicopter to the Martian surface, back away, and then watch as the tiny drone carries out a series of test flights.
- If successful, these will be the first controlled flights ever conducted on another planet.
- Ingenuity and Perseverance will both record video as the helicopter flies across an open Martian field.
- However, here’s the big challenge:
- The Ingenuity drone only weighs four pounds, but flying in the Martian atmosphere [which is 1% the density of Earth’s atmosphere] is a big challenge.
- To catch enough air for flight, the helicopter’s four carbon-fiber blades have to spin in opposite directions at about 2,400 revolutions per minute.
Story 11: GMC has a Hummer all-electric pickup in the works with an amazing range
Source: Electrek Story by Fred Lambert
Link: https://electrek.co/2020/07/29/gmc-hummer-electric-pickup-new-pictures-features/
Source: Green Car Reports Story by Bengt Halvorson
See the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=at4wtDEwBoU&feature=emb_logo
- The GMC Hummer EV electric pickup is set to hit the market in the fall of 2021 — along with a wave of new electric pickup trucks from Tesla, Ford, and others.
- The new GMC Hummer EV is going to be unveiled this fall, and GM confirmed that it will start taking reservations at that time.
- Here’s just a sample of the amazing features:
- 1,000 horsepower
- 11,500 pound feet of torque
- 0 to 60 acceleration in 3 seconds
- Removable, modular sky panels
- And how about an Adrenaline mode for high-performance street driving, and a Crab mode for off-roading in rough terrain.
- But, most exciting of all – Super fast charging, with an estimated range of 400 miles!
Story 12: A simple blood test may soon detect Alzheimer’s years in advance.
Source: Medical News Today
Link: https://bit.ly/2PD7M3g
- A new blood test for a protein could identify people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease a decade or more before symptoms, such as a decline in memory and thinking, emerge.
- The discovery was made by an international team including researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO and the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases.
- The test looks for changes in levels of the neurofilament light chain protein. The protein normally resides inside brain cells, or neurons, as part of their internal structure.
- However, damaged and dying brain cells can leak the neurofilament light chain protein into surrounding cerebrospinal fluid. The protein then travels from the fluid into the bloodstream.
- The researchers suggest that a quick and inexpensive blood test method could one day also test for other conditions involving brain damage, such as traumatic brain injury, multiple sclerosis, and stroke.
Story 13: Ready for a World of No-Touch Touchscreens?
Source: Popular Mechanics Story by Courtney Linder
See video here: https://youtu.be/ODFxKRNB55E
- Touchscreens are everywhere in our digital lives – our smartphones, tablet computers, many retail credit card processing devices, on the dash of modern cars, you name it!
- But, in our Coronavirus world today, we need to reduce touching things that may have been touched by others.
- At the University of Cambridge, researchers have designed a new kind of touchscreen that’s actually touchless.
- The patented tech is called “predictive touch,” and it uses Artificial Intelligence and a suite of sensors to identify a user’s intended target.
- The system includes:
- a gesture tracker, including radio frequency sensors;
- a user profile,
- data about the environment,
- and a specialized user interface design to provide some context on past actions.
- It also has other sensors, like an eye-tracker, to determine a user’s intent as they point at the screen in real time.
- The system, originally intended for use in cars to keep drivers’ attention on the road, could also see widespread adoption across all kinds of touchscreens in the wake of COVID-19.
Story 14: Swedish tech company Tobii releases an eye tracking PC add-on designed to give serious gamers a competitive edge
Source: CNN Story by Shannon Liao
- We’ve all seen eye-tracking technology help people who have lost the use of their arms and legs to use their eye movements to control a computer or TV.
- In the world of competitive PC gaming [and this was news to me], advanced gamers use eye tracking technology to detect where they are looking while playing fast-paced games like “Fortnite”.
- For example, Swedish start-up Tobii Technology recently released the Tobii Eye Tracker 5, which costs $229
- It’s a slim clip-on for the bottom of your PC monitor – kind of looks like a webcam attachment
- It uses an algorithm for tracking the eye’s patterns with its camera, enabling the software to pinpoint the direction of a subject’s gaze, and over time, patterns of behavior.
- It can track players’ eyes and the direction of their heads, helping them determine where their blind spots are – giving the gamer a big advantage.
Story 15: Could a solar-powered steam generator made from wood and bacteria help bring clean water to the world?
Source: Popular Mechanics Story by Caroline Delbert
- Scientist around the world have been exploring the use of solar powered filtration technology to transform dirty water into clean, safe water
- Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China have developed a new concept for a solar steam generator for this purpose.
- Here’s what the Chinese researchers have done:
- First, they created a structure built from wood.
- The surface is then seeded with bacteria that begin to ferment the surface cellulose into nanofibers.
- Then, the researchers spray on glass microbubbles that bond with the cellulose to form a gel structure.
- Finally, the entire surface is frosted with carbon nanotubes.
- All these materials then naturally grow together into a cohesive structure.
- What results is a layered material that draws dirty water up through the wood and cellulose and into the nanotubes, where sunlight warms the water and evaporates it as steam.
- The steam is then condensed into drinkable water.