The doughnut is making a comeback – at least as a possible shape for our Universe.
The idea that the universe is finite and relatively small, rather than infinitely large, first became popular in 2003, when cosmologists noticed unexpected patterns in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – the relic radiation left behind by the Big Bang.
Researcher Daan Hobbelen of TU Delft has developed a new, highly-advanced walking robot: Flame. This type of research, for which Hobbelen will receive his PhD on Friday 30 May, is important as it provides insight into how people walk. This can in turn help people with walking difficulties through improved diagnoses, training and rehabilitation equipment.
TU Delft is a pioneer of the other method used for constructing walking robots, based on the way humans walk. This is really very similar to falling forward in a controlled fashion. Adopting this method replaces the cautious, rigid way in which robots walk with the more fluid, energy-efficient movement used by humans.
Read Complete @ physorg.com
In the wake of a thousand-year drought in Australia and last weekend's lethal cyclone in Burma, the world's climate modellers are drawing up plans for a global supercomputing centre that would provide detailed local forecasts of future climate change.
Meeting at the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts in Reading, UK, the scientists liken the billion-dollar project to CERN, the international particle accelerator near Geneva, and to the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb. They hope to present their plan to the G8 meeting in Japan this summer.
The modellers say they need a centre with computing power of 100 petaflops – two thousand times greater they have access to today.
"We think we know how to do it, but we need the computing power," said Jagadish Shukla, chair of a meeting of 150 top modellers drawing up the plans.
Read Complete @ newscientist.com
Software engineer Rex Jameson, wearing a robotic soldier suit being made for the U.S. Army by Raytheon, poses next to a mockup statue of a future soldier on Monday, April 14, 2008, in Salt Lake City. The suit can multiply its wearer's strength and endurance as many as 20 times, with relatively little loss of agility, by sensing and almost instantly amplifying every movement the wearer makes. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)
Read Complete @ physorg.com
n 1957, the Soviet Union caught the US completely off-guard. Its military launched Sputnik – the world's first artificial satellite – heralding the dawn of the space age.
President Eisenhower's response was to create the Advance Research Projects Agency (ARPA) with a clear mission: "prevent technological surprise". Eisenhower hoped that the agency would produce revolutionary technologies and thus guarantee that never again would the US military be caught with its technological trousers down.
Now in its 50th year, the Defence Advance Research Projects Agency has an impressive list of accomplishments behind it.
After playing an integral role in the fledgling US space programme, DARPA gave us the satellite-based global positioning system (GPS), stealth aircraft and the precursor to the internet. So it is hard to argue that the agency hasn't lived up to Eisenhower's early dream.
Read Complete @ www.newscientist.com
t was once considered the most dangerous object in the universe, heading for Earth with the explosive power of 84 Hiroshimas. Now an asteroid called 2000SG344, a lump of rock barely the size of a large yacht, is in the spotlight again, this time as a contender for the next giant leap for mankind.
Nasa engineers have identified the 1.1m tonne asteroid, which in 2000 was given a significant chance of slamming into Earth, as a potential landing site for astronauts, ahead of the Bush administration's plans to venture deeper into the solar system with a crewed voyage to Mars.
Read Complete @ www.guardian.co.uk
Dr. Moll, 56, is a soft-spoken man who can look uncomfortable on stage. Yet his role in founding Intuitive Surgical, the company that now dominates the field, and his current involvement with three other robotics companies, has kept him in the sights of investors, health care providers and fellow entrepreneurs.
He’s now best known as chief executive of Hansen Medical, a publicly traded robotics company focused on minimally invasive cardiac care. But he’s also an investor in and a board member of Mako Surgical, an orthopedics robotics company that recently went public, and he is a co-founder and chairman of Restoration Robotics, a start-up company focused on cosmetic surgery.
Spiraling pine tree-like nanowires created by University of Wisconsin-Madison chemistry professor Song Jin and graduate student Matthew Bierman are evidence of an entirely different way of growing the tiny wires, one that could be harnessed to make better nanowires for applications such as high performance integrated circuits, LEDs and lasers, biosensors, and solar cells. The rapid elongation of the trunks is driven by a spiral defect within them called "screw dislocation," which causes them to twist as they grow and their branches to spiral.Photo by: courtesy Song Jin
Read Complete @ www.physorg.com