Trionic Morphatractable Engineer – by Andrew Chase

The cheetah measures 24″ high (61cm) and 50″ nose to tail (127cm) and weighs about 40 lbs. She took about 60 hours, spaced over 10 weeks time to build. She’s constructed out of . . . electrical conduit, transmission parts, and 20 gauge steel.

In the world of engineered animals, none seems as graceful as the messenger cheetah. She races on her mechanical limbs, seeking the tiny racing gadgets that make up her diet. And she’s joined by a herd of mechanical allies.

You may already be familiar with the work of Andrew Chase, who has been designing a series of mechanical animals for a picture book called the Trionic Morphatractable Engineer. The cheetah messenger is his latest. A photographer and designer by day, Chase invents anatomically complicated animals out of metal, including elephants, a giraffe, and now this cheetah

http://io9.com/5314885/the-trionic-morphatractable-engineer-strikes-again/gallery/

Chase Studios – http://www.andrewchase.com/index.php?p_resource=photography

Inside the New Harry Potter Movie’s VFX Tech

Millennium Bridge

At the beginning of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince—the first Potter film in two years, out today—things are looking pretty grim not just for the boy wizard, but for everyone. Gray storm clouds roll ominously over London as pedestrians, eyes on the sky, hurry across the city’s Millennium Bridge. Suddenly, the bridge begins to quake. Cables snapping, the bridge undulates and twists, pulling free of its piers, and crashes violently into the Thames. Voldemort has recently returned from the dead, and he isn’t satisfied to wreak havoc only in the wizarding world: His Death Eaters take his campaign of violent mayhem into the Muggle realm by destroying the Millennium Bridge in the film’s dramatic opening sequence.

The establishing shot of the 1241-foot steel suspension bridge is of the real bridge over the Thames River in London. But for the bridge’s collapse, filmmakers switched to an all-virtual plate, building the bridge and London completely in the computer. Creating a photorealistic computer-generated copy of a bridge millions of people have walked across is no easy feat. Director David Yates and Half-Blood Prince’s VFX supervisor Tim Burke tasked London-based VFX house Double Negative, which also created effects on three previous Potter films, with the job.

In addition to taking high-dynamic-range-image (HDRI) photography of the bridge and the area along the Thames River, Double Negative worked with the architects of the bridge. “They were given plans and CAD files that were used to recreate it as accurately as possible, down to every nut and bolt,” Burke says. A team of five to 20 people spent several months building, texturing and rigging the bridge in 3D animating program Maya, using the HDRI photography to create the right texture and detail.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4324866.html?page=1

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4324866.html?page=2

Architects Propose Expanding New York Into The Water To Go Green

While many visions of a future New York showcase its lauded ability to grow upwards, architects Richard Garber and Brian Novello have suggested it grow outwards — into the water — to increase public space and harness hydropower.

Garber and Novello have proposed a series of mobile docking platforms that would be added onto New York’s current docks to provide more green space, in a city best known for its greyness. Underneath the mobile platforms would rest a series of unidirectional turbines, designed harness power from the natural ebb and flows of the East and Hudson Rivers to power streetlamps in New York.

http://io9.com/5314651/architects-propose-expanding-new-york-into-the-water-to-go-green

http://www.metropolismag.com/pov/20090709/next-gen-notables-docking-stations

http://www.metropolismag.com/nextgen/ng_story.php?article_id=3953

100 Geeky Places to Take Your Kids This Summer

There is plenty of summer vacation season left on the calendar, and boredom may already be settling in around the house. So what are some fun, geeky places to take your geeklets? Even better, what are some fun, geeky places that kids and adults will all enjoy?

I was sitting down making some plans for my geeklets this summer. The list of places we wanted to go kept getting longer, and eventually turned into a wishlist, which I then put up for the GeekDads to add to. But this list is by no means complete. Please feel free to add your favorite places in the comments, and we’ll try to add them to the map, too.

The list is alphabetical so you can search by name and see if your favorite places are included. If you want to browse geographically, there is an interactive map embedded at the end of the post.

1. Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum – Chicago. Inspiring the next generation of explorers and celebrating the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 during the month of July.
2. American Museum of Natural History – New York, NY. One of the largest and most celebrated museums in the world, comprised of 25 interconnected buildings that house 46 permanent exhibition halls.
3. Ames Exploration Center – Moffett Field, California. Experience NASA technology and missions first hand.
4. Arizona Science Center – Phoeniz. See Jenny Williams’ prior GeekDad post: To Boldly Go… to the Arizona Science Center.
5. Atomium – Brussels. The Belgium response to the Eiffel Tower at the Brussels World’s Fair in 1958 is a tower in the shape of an iron crystal.
6. Austin Children’s Museum – Texas. Even adults have fun at the Austin Children’s Museum.
7. Belgian Comic Strip Museum – Brussels. It brings together everything related to the comic strip, from its prestigious beginnings to its most recent developments, on more han 4,000 square meters of museum floors.
8. Bletchley Park – UK. A museum dedicated to the World War II code breakers.
9. California Academy of Sciences – San Francisco. See Thomas Hawk’s GeekDad post: 10 Great Places to Take Your Kids in the San Francisco Bay Area.
10. Chabot Space and Science Center – Oakland, California. See Thomas Hawk’s GeekDad post: 10 Great Places to Take Your Kids in the San Francisco Bay Area.
11. Wisconsin Maritime Museum – Manitowoc, Wisconsin. See Ken Denmead’s GeekDad post: GeekDad Wayback Machine: Wisconsin Day Trip.
12. Woods Hole Science Aquarium – Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Voted “best rainy day activity on the upper cape.”
13. Your local library – There are always great adventures in those book stacks.

 

To see the Complete list – http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/07/100-geeky-places-to-bring-your-kids-this-summer/

New Map Hints At Venus’s Wet, Volcanic Past

Venus Express has charted the first map of Venus’s southern hemisphere at infrared wavelengths. The new map hints that our neighbouring world may once have been more Earth-like, with both, a plate tectonics system and an ocean of water.

The map comprises over a thousand individual images, recorded between May 2006 and December 2007. Because Venus is covered in clouds, normal cameras cannot see the surface, but Venus Express used a particular infrared wavelength that can see through them.

Although radar systems have been used in the past to provide high-resolution maps of Venus’s surface, Venus Express is the first orbiting spacecraft to produce a map that hints at the chemical composition of the rocks. The new data is consistent with suspicions that the highland plateaus of Venus are ancient continents, once surrounded by ocean and produced by past volcanic activity.

“This is not proof, but it is consistent. All we can really say at the moment is that the plateau rocks look different from elsewhere,” says Nils Müller at the Joint Planetary Interior Physics Research Group of the University Münster and DLR Berlin, who headed the mapping efforts.

The rocks look different because of the amount of infrared light they radiate into space, similar to the way a brick wall heats up during the day and gives off its heat at night. Besides, different surfaces radiate different amounts of heat at infrared wavelengths due to a material characteristic known as emissivity, which varies in different materials. The Visible and Infrared Thermal Imaging Spectrometer (VIRTIS) instrument captured this infrared radiation during Venus’s night-time orbits around the planet’s southern hemisphere.

The eight Russian landers of the 1970s and 1980s touched down away from the highlands and found only basalt-like rock beneath their landing pads. The new map shows that the rocks on the Phoebe and Alpha Regio plateaus are lighter in colour and look old compared to the majority of the planet. On Earth, such light-coloured rocks are usually granite and form continents.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090714085818.htm

Memory Test And PET Scans Detect Early Signs Of Alzheimer’s

PET scans can detect the decline in glucose metabolism associated with decreased cognitive function, particularly in the temporal and parietal lobes located on the sides and the back of the brain, the regions associated with memory formation and language. UC Berkeley researchers are finding that brain imaging shows promise as a method of detecting early signs of Alzheimer’s disease. On the left is a PET scan showing normal levels of glucose metabolism, indicated in yellow and red. The levels of glucose metabolism in the brain are decreased in patients with mild cognitive impairment (middle) and with Alzheimer’s disease (right). (Credit: Cindee Madison and Susan Landau, UC Berkeley)

A large study of patients with mild cognitive impairment revealed that results from cognitive tests and brain scans can work as an early warning system for the subsequent development of Alzheimer’s disease.

The research found that among 85 participants in the study with mild cognitive impairment, those with low scores on a memory recall test and low glucose metabolism in particular brain regions, as detected through positron emission tomography (PET), had a 15-fold greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease within two years, compared with the others in the study.

The results, reported by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, on July 14, at the Alzheimer’s Association 2009 International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease in Vienna, Austria, are a major step forward in the march toward earlier diagnoses of the debilitating disease.

“Not all people with mild cognitive impairment go on to develop Alzheimer’s, so it would be extremely useful to be able to identify those who are at greater risk of converting using a clinical test or biological measurement,” said the study’s lead author, Susan Landau, a post-doctoral fellow at UC Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090714085812.htm

Darwin’s Mystery Of Appearance Of Flowering Plants Explained

Blue flax. The appearance of many species of flowering plants on Earth, and especially their relatively rapid dissemination during the Cretaceous (approximately 100 million years ago) can be attributed to their capacity to transform the world to their own needs, according to a new theory. (Credit: iStockphoto/Jostein Hauge)

 The appearance of many species of flowering plants on Earth, and especially their relatively rapid dissemination during the Cretaceous (approximately 100 million years ago) can be attributed to their capacity to transform the world to their own needs.

In an article in Ecology Letters, Wageningen ecologists Frank Berendse and Marten Scheffer postulate that flowering plants changed the conditions during the Cretaceous period to suit themselves. The researchers have consequently provided an entirely new explanation for what Charles Darwin considered to be one of the greatest mysteries with which he was confronted.

During the Cretaceous, the Earth’s surface underwent one of its greatest changes in vegetation composition, a change which also took place with unprecedented speed. Frank Berendse (Professor of Nature Conservation and Plant Ecology), and Marten Scheffer, (Professor of Aquatic Ecology), both at Wageningen University, wanted to understand how this happened. They looked for the explanation in a totally unconventional direction.

Before the early Cretaceous, the vegetation consisted primarily of gymnosperms and ferns. These plants were largely replaced by an entirely new group of plants: the angiosperms (flowering plants). During the early Cretaceous – approximately 125 million years ago – the first flowering plants evolved. Soon thereafter, the gymnosperms in the tropics were replaced almost entirely by the angiosperms. And by the end of the Cretaceous (65 million years ago), the empire of the flowering plants had become definitively established in much of the rest of the world. The gymnosperms continued to exist only in the far north – which is the case even today.

The rapid increase in the fantastic diversity of flowering plants – linked to their rapid conquest of the Earth – was one of the greatest puzzles faced by Charles Darwin. In a letter to Joseph Hooker dated 22 July 1879, he referred to an “abominable mystery”. The great diversity of fossil flowering plants from the late Cretaceous, while there were virtually no fossils known from the early Cretaceous, appeared to be completely in conflict with his vision that the emergence of new species could only take place very gradually.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090713211621.htm

New Doubts About Fasting Leading To Longer Lives Based On Study In Flies

They’re called “fruit flies” for a reason, and it sure isn’t for lack of appetite. But like most animals, the pests typically lose their appetite when they get infected. We humans go them one better: Even when bug-free and hungry, some of us are tempted to do some serious fasting, in hopes of living longer, healthier lives.

Many studies indicate that caloric restriction extends life spans in fruit flies, mice and, most recently, rhesus monkeys, apparently by slowing the aging process. But virtually all these studies have been performed in sterile environments, on animals raised under relatively pathogen-free conditions. So Stanford University School of Medicine researchers decided to see if reduced caloric intake also helps creatures cope with infection.

Appetite loss as a response to infection seems a bit paradoxical. “Mounting a robust immune response is very energy-consuming,” said David Schneider, PhD, associate professor of microbiology and immunology. “You might think an infected animal would be better off eating more, not less.”

Working with fruit flies, Schneider and his graduate student Janelle Ayres have shown that caloric restriction can indeed alter the flies’ response to infection, but in different directions depending on what they’ve been infected with. (Ayres has since received her PhD and is a now postdoctoral researcher at the University of California-Berkeley.) This has potentially significant implications for humans, since flies are an excellent model system for studying certain aspects of our immune response.

In their study, to be published online July 13 in PLoS-Biology, the researchers measured the appetites of infected versus uninfected fruit flies, as well as the effects that restricting food intake in advance of an infection might have on flies’ response to the infection.

Ayres had previously conducted a search for mutant fruit flies that died faster, or more slowly, than normal flies after being infected with pathogenic bacteria. That laborious operation required injecting so many tiny flies with a special syringe that, Ayres said, “at one point, my hand got stuck in injecting position and I had trouble unfolding it.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090713201444.htm

New Advance In Revolutionary ‘Bullet Fingerprinting’ Technique

Optical microscope image of a fingerprint on brass. (Credit: University of Leicester)

‘Bullet fingerprinting’ technology developed at the University of Leicester in collaboration with Northamptonshire Police is now being advanced in new ways.

Dr John Bond, from Northamptonshire Police Scientific Support Unit and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Leicester’s Forensic Research Centre developed, in collaboration with university scientists, a method to ‘visualise fingerprints’ even after the print itself has been removed.

Continuing work exploring this forensic technique in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Leicester is uncovering new ways of recovering fingerprints from metal surfaces.

Researcher Alex Goddard has uncovered a natural technique that he believes is so simple, which can explain why it has been overlooked until now.

The technique involves studying the chemical and physical interactions occurring between the metal and the fingerprint sweat deposit. Using advanced surface imaging techniques, such as an atomic force microscope, nanoscale observations of fingerprinted brass samples can identify optimum conditions to promote the natural enhancement of the fingerprint, vastly improving their recovery rate. It has also proven that components of the sweat deposit survive washing and wiping of the surface.

Goddard explains, “Once a finger has touched the metal surface, a residue remains behind, this starts to react with the metal and an image of the fingerprint can be developed by use of elevated temperature and humidity, with the resultant image becoming a permanent feature on the surface of the metal.”

“Currently, fingerprint recovery from bullets is very low; less than 1 percent. This uses a natural process and even if it only leads to small increase in success rate, then that would be significant.

“Previous recovery methods include applying powder to the material which can actually damage the evidence. This new technique promotes a naturally occurring process which does not involve adding anything to, or damaging, the evidence. Instead, it employs heat and humidity to promote the enhancement of the fingerprint image, there are also indications that it could be used after other techniques have failed, perhaps as a last resort.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090713085018.htm

Your phone could buy you dinner and take you home

O2 has told reporters it is confident consumers will see ’substantial progress’ in bringing a mobile phone able to make contactless payments in the very near future.

Ronan Dunne, O2’s UK Chief Executive, said O2’s move into the financial space with O2 Money was the “first step” on the journey towards a contactless future.

“As you know O2 led trials [of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology in mobile phones] last year, and we engaged with a number of commercial organisations in that area,” said Dunne.

“Customers loved it, and the challenges now are with electronic point of sale capability, and deployment across mass retail.

“We’ll be talking to large retailers, grocers for instance, also people in the transport industry [about bringing the technology to market].”

O2 used around 500 people in the trial, which saw them using their mobile phone to make smaller payments, similar to Visa’s Paywave system, and swapping an Oyster card for a phone in London too.

Not a foregone conclusion

However, Dunne pointed out while NFC might be coming to fruition, the next stage of deployment is far from a foregone conclusion:

“It’s one of those situations where the technology is ready to go, but we need more deployment to get critical mass. We’re confident you’ll see substantial progress in that space, under the O2 brand, in the not too distant future.

“I think the wholly held industry view is that NFC has proven capability; we’re just waiting for mass deployment of terminals and other key components.

“For instance, we first saw contactless technology is things like the Oyster card, which was originally deployed just in central London but now rolled out to the suburbs, which is the sort of thing that happens when you get critical mass.

http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/o2-oyster-cards-in-mobiles-ready-to-roll-616541