museum of the weird – Page 15 – Museum of the Weird

Posted on September 8, 2012 by MOTW Admin

REMOTELY-CONTROLLED CYBORG COCKROACHES ARE A REAL THING

A simple setup and this roach can be accurately remote-controlled.

I feel like whenever a big giant roach crosses my path, it comes right at me as if it’s being remotely controlled by someone who has learned my deepest, darkest fears and is using them to torment and ‘bug’ me. Well, it seems I may be right!

Scientists from North Carolina have developed remotely-controlled roaches, not to torment me, more like to help find and save survivors of natural disasters.

National Geographic writes:

The sight of a cockroach scuttling across the floor makes most of us shudder, but in a disaster, roaches might prove to be our new best friends.

Cockroaches that are surgically transformed into remote-controlled “biobots” could help locate earthquake survivors in hard-to-access areas. This new video from North Carolina State University’s iBionics Laboratory shows how the lab’s enhanced roaches can be steered with surprising precision.

To learn more, Amanda Fiegl spoke to assistant professor of engineering Alper Bozkurt, who led the roach biobot project.

What exactly is a biobot? Is it like a cyborg, a combination of a living organism and a robot?

“Biobot” is short for “biological robot.” It is the first stage of creating what we would call an insect cyborg.

Currently, we can steer these roaches remotely and make them stop, go, and turn. If we can have them interact independently with the technologies we’ve surgically implanted in them, then they will become true cyborgs.

Is it hard to perform surgery on a cockroach?

No, it’s quite simple. Insects can be anesthetized by putting them in the fridge for a few hours—the cold basically makes them hibernate, so they don’t move. Then you just need tweezers and a microscope.

We do a simple surgery to insert the electrodes in the roaches’ antennae and cerci [rear sensors]. We also use medical-grade epoxy to glue tiny magnets to their backs, so that we can just snap on the backpack containing the wireless control system.

Your paper mentions that these biobots could help rescue earthquake survivors. How, exactly?

Their backpacks can carry a locator beacon and a tiny microphone to pick up cries for help. Of course, a human operator or computer still has to be listening and steering them. Our biobots are basically just beasts of burden. They could also carry a camera or any other kind of miniaturized sensor one can imagine.

These experiments were done in a very controlled laboratory environment, on a flat surface, so we are now in the process of building test-beds that mimic some real-life scenarios. I don’t think it will be very long before we can deploy them to actually help rescue people.

Read more of the Q & A at news.nationalgeographic.com

Posted on September 7, 2012 by MOTW Admin

‘GENIUS APE’ STUMPS SCIENTISTS

Natasha, shown above, has a wide range of abilities her average chimp-mates do not.

The gap between man and monkey seems to be growing smaller all the time, whether the humans are getting dumber or the apes are getting smarter has still yet to be decided.

Discovery News writes:

Certain apes appear to be much smarter than others, with at least one chimpanzee now called “exceptional” when compared to other chimps.

The standout chimp, an adult female in her 20s named Natasha, scored off the charts in a battery of tests. The findings, published in the latest Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, suggest that geniuses exist among non-humans, but that no one attribute constitutes intelligence.

Instead, a perfect storm of abilities seems to come together to create the Einsteins of the animal kingdom. Natasha’s keepers at the Ngamba Island chimpanzee sanctuary in Uganda knew she was special even before the latest study.

“The caretakers named Natasha as the smartest chimpanzee, precisely the same chimpanzee that our tests had revealed to be exceptional,” study authors Esther Herrmann and Josep Call of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology wrote.

“All three of the most experienced caretakers included Natasha in their lists (of the most intelligent chimps),” they added.

Natasha has made headlines over the months for her attention-grabbing antics. For instance, she repeatedly escaped her former enclosure, surrounded by an electric fence. She did this by tossing branches at the fence until she didn’t see a spark, letting her know that the power was off.

She also learned how to tease humans, beckoning them to throw food her way, only to spray the unsuspecting person with water.

MAN SURVIVES FALLING 13,000FT AFTER PARACHUTE FAILS!

A skydiver survived falling 13,000ft without a working parachute.

Still not sure if skydiving is something you want to do? Well, you can read this story and know that even if your ‘chute doesn’t open, you can still survive the few thousand feet drop like this man did in New Zealand just the other day1

The Telegraph writes:

Liam Dunne, 35, who is a father of two, broke his back after dramatically crashing into the ground at high speed and landing in the soft, waterlogged area.

His reserve parachute opened at the last moment on the horrifying descent at a festival in Moteuko, New Zealand, but it was still too late to prevent him suffering serious injury.

Mr Dunne, originally from St Annes, Lancashire, was treated at the scene by medics and taken to a specialist spinal unit in Christchurch where doctors have advised him he should walk again.

Since the accident two weeks ago, he has astonished doctors with his recovery after undergoing surgery to insert metal pins into his shattered spine.

Speaking from his hospital bed, Mr Dunne said: “Those last 1,000 feet it was like ‘here we go, this is it’. It wasn’t nice. But that said, it was a one in a million accident and a one in a million save.

“Skydiving is an awesome sport, and I’ve done 4,000 jumps and never had a problem.”

Mr Dunne, who now lives in Taupo, said his canopy opened normally after he jumped from 3,900m at a festival. But he went into an unrecoverable spin, had to ditch his main chute, and couldn’t find the reserve canopy’s handle.

It finally opened just 228m from the ground.

He said: “As my reserve chute was coming out I realised it was too late, so I just braced for the impact.

“Luckily I hit the softest patch of ground on the whole airfield. I bounced hard and my whole left side went numb.

“It felt like I had broken every bone in my body, and I couldn’t breathe. I was just sitting there dying. But my friend landed next to me, and she said ‘you’re all right, you can breathe’.

“She looked at my leg and said ‘look, it’s still there, it’s not deformed or anything’.

“She was with me the whole time. Then the ambulance came and filled me full of drugs.

“I probably ought to be dead the speed I hit. Twelve weeks of spinal rehab and I’ll be fine.

A ZOMBIE FOR 2012?

Seems like one of this’s years presidential candidates is full of huge ideas for those not currently being spoken for, although lacking in a few areas, mainly having a pulse, Mr A. Zombie believes he has a fighting, or should I say “biting” chance to come out on top in 2012.

The Telegraph writes:

After being helped into a NASCAR uniform the zombie candidate was lifted into a race car and taken on a few laps around Charlotte’s Speedway track.

Mr A. Zombie and his wife are part of a promotional stunt by American network AMC to get their post-apocalyptic television series The Walking Dead on the Dish Network, that dropped the show after a contract dispute.

“My husband is running for president, because he could have taken a certain issue issue lying down, well, because he was already lying down, but he decided to stand up and pledge to fight for equal viewing opportunities for all,” Ms Morgan-Zombie said.

She added her husband was working tirelessly to improve the lives of his fellow zombies and get them more jobs.

“He has vowed to increase the workforce for every zombie out there,” she said.

HUNDREDS OF ICE AGE REMAINS FOUND IN MEXICO

Some of the remains belong to well known ice age creatures, some have yet to be identified.

While building a new wastewater treatment plant near Mexico City, workers discovered the largest cache of ice age animal bones ever.

The Telegraph writes:

The bones could be between 10,000 and 12,000 years old and may include a human tooth from the late Pleistocene period, Mexico‘s National Institute of Anthropology and History said on Thursday.

Tusks, skulls, jawbones, horns, ribs, vertebrae and shells were discovered 65 feet deep in Atotonilco de Tula, a town in the state of Hidalgo, as workers built a drain, the institute said.

These remains belong to a range of species including mastodons, mammoths, camels, horses, deer and glyptodons, the armadillo’s ancestor. Some bones may belong to bison, while others have not been identified.

Archeologists have worked for the past five months to recover the bones.

“It is the largest and most varied discovery of extinct megafauna found together in the Mexico basin,” archeologist Alicia Bonfil Olivera said in a statement.

8 YEAR OLD FINDS VOMIT WORTH A FORTUNE

That chunk of whale vomit is worth a bit more than you'd think.

This has got to be the most valuable and disgusting thing to come OUT of something’s body, a $63,000 piece of throw-up from a whale!

Huffington Post writes:

An 8-year-old boy in Bournemouth, Great Britain, may have some gross profits after finding a piece of whale vomit that may be worth $63,000.

Charlie Naysmith was walking on the beach of Hengistbury Head when he came across a big hunk that looked like a yellowish beige rock with a waxy finish and picked it up, according to the Daily Echo newspaper.

With the help of his parents, he discovered his hunk was not a rock, but a piece of ambergris, a substance barfed or pooped up by sperm whales.

As disgusting as that sounds, the substance is actually in demand with perfume makers as it helps prolong the scent of perfume. That’s why a pound of the whale waste sells for as much as $10,000.

Naysmith’s piece of cetacean upchuck has been estimated to be worth as much as $63,000, but, according to his dad, Alex Naysmith, they are still researching the product.

“He is into nature and is really interested in it. We have discovered it is quite rare and are waiting for some more information from marine biology experts,” Naysmith, Sr., said, according to AsianTown.net.

‘CYBORG’ TISSUE CREATED WITH LIVING CELLS AND ELECTRONICS

The line between human and robot begins to blur.

The future is now folks!

Scientist’s have developed human tissue that is half electronics and half organic cells!

New Scientist writes:

They beat like real heart cells, but the rat cardiomyocytes in a dish at Harvard University are different in one crucial way. Snaking through them are wires and transistors that spy on each cell’s electrical impulses. In future, the wires might control their behaviour too.

Versions of this souped-up, “cyborg” tissue have been created for neurons, muscle and blood vessels. They could be used to test drugs or as the basis for more biological versions of existing implants such as pacemakers. If signals can also be sent to the cells, cyborg tissue could be used in prosthetics or to create tiny robots.

“It allows one to effectively blur the boundary between electronic, inorganic systems and organic, biological ones,” says Charles Lieber, who leads the team behind the cyborg tissue.

Artificial tissue can already be grown on three-dimensional scaffolds made of biological materials that are not electrically active. And electrical components have been added to cultured tissue before, but not integrated into its structure, so they were only able to glean information from the surface.

Lieber’s team combined these strands of work to create electrically active scaffolds. They created 3D networks of conductive nanowires studded with silicon sensors. Crucially, the wires had to be flexible and extremely small, to avoid impeding the growth of tissue. The scaffold also contained traditional biological materials such as collagen.

The researchers were able to grow rat neurons, heart cells and muscle in these hybrid meshes. In the case of the heart cells, they started to contract just like normal cells, and the researchers used the network to read out the rate of the beats.

When they added a drug that stimulates heart cell contraction, they detected an increase in the rate, indicating the tissue was behaving like normal and that the network could sense such changes.

Lieber’s team also managed to grow an entire blood vessel about 1.5 centimetres long from human cells, with wires snaking through it. By recording electrical signals from inside and outside the vessel– something that was never possible before– the team was able to detect electrical patterns that they say could give clues to inflammation, whether tissue has undergone changes that make it prone to tumour formation or suggest impending heart disease.

FIRST MUSIC EVER PLAYED ON MARS

Pop music artist Will.i.am’s newest song “Reach For The Stars” is the first man-made made music to be broadcasted on another planet.

The Telegraph writes:

The extraordinary feat was among several astonishing achievements by US space agency’s £1.6 billion Curiosity rover, which landed on the surface of the Red Planet earlier this month.

The Black Eyed Peas rapper’s song, titled Reach for the Stars, was beamed more than 300 million miles back to Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

The first music broadcast from another planet came after the planetary explorer beamed back incredible high-resolution, colour portrait images from Mars.

Nasa staff clapped their hands and held their arms in the air, smiling and swaying to the rhythm during the slightly less scientific use of the rover’s hi-tech equipment and communications ability.

The achievement also gave great delight to dozens of students who gathered at the laboratory to listen.

“It seems surreal,” said will.i.am, who is also an actor.

He explained how Charles Bolden, the Nasa administrator, had called him to suggest beaming a song back from Mars as part of educational outreach efforts by the US space agency.

The song, which includes lyrics “I know that Mars might be far, but baby it ain’t really that far”, involved a 40-piece orchestra including French horns, rather than a more modern electronically-generated sound.

The 37-year-old, whose real name William James Adams, told a student audience that he didn’t “want to do a song that was done on a computer,” given that it was going to be the first piece of music broadcast back to the Earth from Mars.

“I wanted to show human collaboration and have an orchestra there and something that would be timeless, and translated in different cultures, not have like a hip hop beat or a dance beat,” he said.

THE HOVER BIKE OF THE FUTURE AVAILABLE TODAY

The Aerofex hover vehicle looks a little familiar.

If we weren’t living in enough of ‘The World of the Future” as we’ve seen in novels, movies and television for your liking, it looks like someone has taken a step in the right direction… up.

Space.com writes:

A resurrected hover vehicle won’t fly through dense forests as effortlessly as the “Star Wars” speeder bikes from “Return of the Jedi,” but its intuitive controls could someday allow anyone to fly it without pilot training.

The aerial vehicle resembles ascience fiction flying bike with two ducted rotors instead of wheels, but originates from a design abandoned in the 1960s because of stability and rollover problems. Aerofex, a California-based firm, fixed the stability issue by creating a mechanical system — controlled by two control bars at knee-level — that allows the vehicle to respond to a human pilot’s leaning movements and natural sense of balance.

“Think of it as lowering the threshold of flight, down to the domain of ATV’s (all-terrain vehicles),” said Mark De Roche, an aerospace engineer and founder of Aerofex.

Such intuitive controls could allow physicians to fly future versions of the vehicle to visit rural patients in places without roads, or enable border patrol officers to go about their duties without pilot training. All of it happens mechanically without the need for electronics, let alone complicated artificial intelligence or flight software. [See Hover ‘Bike’ Fly (Video)]

“It essentially captures the translations between the two in three axis (pitch, roll and yaw), and activates the aerodynamic controls required to counter the movement — which lines the vehicle back up with the pilot,” De Roche told InnovationNewsDaily. “Since [the pilot’s] balancing movements are instinctive and constant, it plays out quite effortlessly to him.”

FOOTAGE OF THE CURIOSITY ROVER LANDING ON MARS IN HI-DEFINITION

The original, but quite shaky and hard to view, footage has been re-done in beautiful HD.

You have got to watch this:

The LA Times writes:

You may have seen video of Curiosity’s descent before, but you haven’t seen it like this — with the craters on Mars rendered in high definition, the contrast amped up, and the whole thing set to a string score by Kevin Macleod that helps heighten the grandeur, and also the loneliness, of the rover’s descent to the red planet.

(Never underestimate the importance of a soundtrack!)

Consider it the Mars Curiosity descent post-production video. It’s like the original, but better.

The video was put together by Dominic Muller, known on Reddit as Godd2, reports iO9.

On the video’s YouTube page Muller explains that he used an editing technique called frame interpolation, which allowed him to take the original choppy video released by NASA and smooth it out. He writes that it took him four straight days to put it together.

You can find a thorough and technical explanation of how Muller made this video on Reddit.

Or you can just watch this over and over again and think about how awesome Mars looks.

As one commenter wrote, “It’s weird that we’re looking at another world.”