New Autogyro Is An Alternative to Flying Cars | Autopia. Never mind the flying car. It’s all about slowed-rotor/compound, according to Carter Aviation Technologies. SR/C is what the Texas company considers the key to a practical, personal transportation aircraft. And from the looks of its new, second-generation aircraft, Carter might be on to something. The company’s latest flight test aircraft is a proof-of-concept version of a four-seat autogyro capable of vertical takeoff and landing. Using the SR/C technology, the Carter autogyro can cruise more efficiently than a helicopter by using the slowed rotor and wings during level flight. Carter’s new aircraft is a four-place version of its prototype that became the first aircraft to achieve mu-1. The mu ratio for a rotary wing aircraft is the ratio between the forward speed of the aircraft itself and the forward speed of the tip of the rotor. Images: Carter Aviation Technologies.
The first mammoth cloning experiment is officially underway. 34,000 Year Old Life Found Trapped in Salt Bubbles. R39a et R39b : Ecologie et diversité des hommes du Paléolithique, M. Patou-Mathis et C. Vercoutère « Regards. La Société Française d’Ecologie (SFE) vous propose cette semaine deux regards de Marylène Patou-Mathis et Carole Vercoutère, chercheuses en Préhistoire respectivement au CNRS et au Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN), sur l’écologie, la diversité et l’évolution des sociétés humaines au Paléolithique. MERCI DE PARTICIPER à ces regards et débats sur la biodiversité en postant vos commentaires et questions après ces articles; les auteurs vous répondront.
R39a : Les relations Homme-Nature durant les temps anciens R39b : Rencontre entre deux humanités Glossaire Forum de discussion sur ces deux regards R39a : Les relations Homme-Nature durant les temps anciens Marylène Patou-Mathis(1) et Carole Vercoutère(2) (1) Directrice de recherche CNRS et (2) Maître de Conférence MNHN, Département Préhistoire du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN), UMR 7194 Petit préambule sur la recherche en Préhistoire (1) : Les mots suivi d’un astérisque sont définis dans le glossaire en fin d’article. The Sagan Series - Waterfox. The Biological Advantage of Being Awestruck - by @JasonSilva on Vimeo - Waterfox.
New Brain-Machine Interface Taps Human Smarts to Enhance Computers' Abilities, Instead of Vice Versa. Brain-machine interfaces hold potential for a variety of ends, from helping the neurologically or physically disabled communicate and interact with their environments, to creating thought-controlled computers that augment the brain with computing power. A group of researchers at Columbia are turning that model on its ear, using brain power to augment computing tasks. Their device couples the human brain and computers to perform tasks neither could do as efficiently on their own. The device, known as C3Vision (cortically coupled computer vision) taps into the fast processing power of the brain to help computer programs manage complex problem, particularly those posed by image recognition. An electroencephalogram (EEG) cap on the head of a human user is used to detect neurological signals in the brain. The computer then flashes images up on the screen at a rate of about ten per second.
The system is great at working our problems that computer language has a problem tackling. How DARPA Is Making a Machine Mind out of Memristors. Artificial intelligence has long been the overarching vision of computing, always the goal but never within reach. But using memristors from HP and steady funding from DARPA, computer scientists at Boston University are on a quest to build the electronic analog to a human brain.
The software they are developing – called MoNETA for Modular Neural Exploring Traveling Agent – should be able to function more like a mammalian brain than a conventional computer. At least, that's what they're claiming in a new feature in IEEE Spectrum. There's reason to be optimistic that this attempt might be different from all the previous AI let-downs that have come before it. Why? The Boston U. team, by its own admission, doesn't yet know exactly what these platforms will look like, but they seem very confident that they will soon be a reality. Decide for yourself if MoNETA is the real deal by clicking through the source link below.
[IEEE Spectrum] Implant Harnesses Electricity From Consumed Food. The First Brain Transplant. Young Boy Becomes First Human to Live With a Permanent 'Robot Heart" Health and Medicine. Immortality only 20 years away says scientist. Nanotech Could Make Humans Immortal By 2040, Futurist Says - CIO. Computerworld — In 30 or 40 years, we'll have microscopic machines traveling through our bodies, repairing damaged cells and organs, effectively wiping out diseases.
The nanotechnology will also be used to back up our memories and personalities. In an interview with Computerworld , author and futurist Ray Kurzweil said that anyone alive come 2040 or 2050 could be close to immortal. The quickening advance of nanotechnology means that the human condition will shift into more of a collaboration of man and machine , as nanobots flow through human blood streams and eventually even replace biological blood, he added.
That may sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, but Kurzweil, a member of the Inventor's Hall of Fame and a recipient of the National Medal of Technology, says that research well underway today is leading to a time when a combination of nanotechnology and biotechnology will wipe out cancer, Alzheimer's disease , obesity and diabetes . Continue Reading. A Simple, Tentacle-Like Prosthesis Gets a Grip, to Leave the Biological Hand Free. If it wouldn't be completely ironic to do so, we could write at length about the value of elegance in simplicity. Instead, we offer by way of example this tentacle-like prosthesis designed by recent U. of Washington industrial design grad Kaylene Kau. It's simple, both aesthetically and mechanically, and it solves a problem smartly.
Prodded by one of her professors to think differently about upper-limb prostheses, Kau found – perhaps not surprisingly – that prosthetics really work as assistants to the functioning limb. The resulting design is flexible and adjustable, providing a grip that changes to accomodate the object. The amount of curl in the arm is controlled by two buttons mounted on the prosthesis, which direct a single motor to either increase or decrease curl via two cables running the length of the arm. [Coroflot] Ancient "Fossil" Virus Shows Infection to Be Millions of Years Old. Viruses can be thought of as hyperspeed shape-shifters, organisms that can adapt quickly to overcome barriers to infection. But recent research has been finding ancient traces of many viruses in animal genomes, DNA insertions that have likely been there for much longer than the viruses were previously thought to have existed at all.
A new study describes evidence of a hepadnavirus (a virus group that includes hepatitis B, which infects humans as well as other mammals and ducks) hiding in the genomes of modern songbirds. By tracing back to these bird species' common ancestors, the researchers behind the new work estimate that this family of viruses has been around for at least 19 million years—and possibly as long as 40 million years—rather than the several thousand years researchers had estimated. The new estimate would slow the average rate of hepadnavirus mutation some 1,000-fold, wrote the researchers of the new the study, published online September 28 in PLoS Biology. Ancient Mass Extinctions Hint at Possible Ocean Future | Wired Science. In sediment traces and fossil records from one of Earth’s most tumultuous periods, geologists have found a narrative linking mass extinctions with planetary biological and geological change.
After dramatic oceanic extinctions 250 million and 200 million years ago, the global carbon cycle turned chaotic. Earth’s biogeochemistry went boom and bust for millions of years thereafter, as if some regulating mechanism were lost — which is exactly what happened. “People talk about saving biodiversity, and isn’t it good to have a variety of all these creatures. But the reason it matters is because ecosystem function is itself dependent on diversity in the face of normal environmental changes,” said geologist Jessica Whiteside of Brown University.
Whiteside specializes in reading the geological record of past extinctions, teasing from rocks and fossils the story of those times in Earth’s history when, for one reason or another, most forms of life ceased to exist. See Also: Volcanic Eruptions May Have Wiped Out Neandertals. A cave in the northern Caucasus Mountains may hold a key to the long-standing mystery of why the Neandertals, our closest relatives, went extinct. For nearly 300,000 years the heavy-browed, barrel-chested Neandertals presided over Eurasia, weathering glacial conditions more severe than any our own kind has ever faced. Then, starting around 40,000 years ago, their numbers began to decline. Shortly after 28,000 years ago, they were gone. Paleoanthropologists have been debating whether competition with incoming modern humans or the onset of rapidly oscillating climate was to blame for their demise.
But new findings suggest that catastrophic volcanic eruptions may have doomed the Neandertals—and paved the way for modern humans to take their place. Researchers led by Liubov Vitaliena Golovanova of the ANO Laboratory of Prehistory in Saint Petersburg studied the deposits in Mezmaiskaya cave, located in southwestern Russia. Neanderthals cooked and ate vegetables. 27 December 2010Last updated at 20:44 By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News Hunter, gatherer, vegetarian masterchef? Neanderthals cooked and ate plants and vegetables, a new study of Neanderthal remains reveals. Researchers in the US have found grains of cooked plant material in the teeth of the remains. The study is the first to confirm that the Neanderthal diet was not confined to meat and was more sophisticated than previously thought.
The research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The popular image of Neanderthals as great meat eaters is one that has up until now been backed by some circumstantial evidence. This perceived reliance on meat had been put forward by some as one of the reasons these humans become extinct as large animals such as mammoths declined.
But a new analysis of Neanderthal remains from across the world has found direct evidence that contradicts the chemical studies. Continue reading the main story More like us. The Cavemen's Complex Kitchen. New research suggests that our ancestors may have been more skillful in the kitchen than we thought. A team of Italian scientists has found what may be the oldest direct evidence of humans grinding plants into flour, suggesting that grains were on the menu 20,000 years before farming became the norm. The idea of "man the hunter" dominates popular preconceptions of early humans. But that's grossly oversimplified, says lead author Anna Revedin of the Italian Institute of Prehistory and Early History in Florence. Although meat was a crucial part of the early human diet, she says, plants were necessary fare as well. Plant remains don't last as long as bones, however, and even though some studies have found evidence of potential grinding tools in prehistoric sites, the stones may have been used just to crush red ochre for cave or face painting.
That's why the new find is so important, says Revedin. . * This article has been corrected. Infologia ! "Chilling" Child Sacrifices Found at Prehistoric Site. The skeletons of dozens of children killed as part of a ritual bloodletting sacrifice a thousand years ago have been discovered in northern Peru, a new study says. The remains are the earliest evidence of ritualized blood sacrifice and mutilation of children that has so far been seen in the South American Andes, according to study leader Haagen Klaus. Seeds of a paralytic and hallucinogenic plant called Nectandra, which also prevents blood clotting, were found with the skeletons, suggesting the children were drugged before their throats were slit and their chests cut open. During the sacrifices, sharp bronze knives were used to hack the children to death.
One skeleton had more than 25 cut marks on it. "It is so beyond what is necessary to kill a person. "But we are trying to understand this on their terms, not ours. " Sacrifice Children Not Considered Human? It's unclear why their chests were cut open, but it may have been to cut out their hearts, Klaus said. Maggots Part of Reverent Burial. Armenian Cave Yields Oldest Known Leather Shoe. Perfectly preserved under layers of sheep dung (who needs cedar closets?)
, the shoe, made of cowhide and tanned with oil from a plant or vegetable, is about 5,500 years old, older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids, scientists say. Leather laces crisscross through numerous leather eyelets, and it was worn on the right foot; there is no word on the left shoe. While the shoe more closely resembles an L. L.Bean-type soft-soled walking shoe than anything by Jimmy Choo, “these were probably quite expensive shoes, made of leather, very high quality,” said one of the lead scientists, Gregory Areshian, of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
It could have fit a small man or a teenager, but was most likely worn by a woman with roughly size 7 feet. “It’s sort of a Pompeii moment, except without the burning,” said Mitchell Rothman, an anthropologist and Chalcolithic expert at Widener University who is not involved in the expedition. Dr. Humans Left Africa Earlier, During Ice Age Heat Wave. A warm spell during the Ice Age gave early humans a route out of Africa 20,000 years earlier than thought, say scientists who've uncovered a prehistoric tool kit in Arabia. During this period of climate change , about 130,000 years ago, water travel would have been easier than in more typical Ice Age periods.
Seas in the region would still have been at relatively low, Ice Age levels, making for shorter crossings. On top of that, though, warmer, wetter weather would have created navigable lakes and rivers in what are now the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, the study says. Such a shift would have offered early modern humans—which arose in Africa about 200,000 years ago—a new route through the formerly parched northern deserts into the Middle East. ( See an atlas of human migration. ) The new paper was spurred by the discovery of several 120,000-year-old tools at a desert archaeological site in the United Arab Emirates .
Climate Gave Humans "Brief Window" to Leave Africa. Neanderthals Had Feelings, Too | Wired Science. For decades, Neanderthal was cultural shorthand for primitive. Our closest non-living relatives were caricatured as lumbering, slope-browed simpletons unable to keep pace with nimble, quick-witted Homo sapiens. However, anthropologists have found evidence in recent years suggesting considerable Neanderthal sophistication, and not only in tool-making and hunting, but in their ability to feel. “We don’t know that their compassion is exactly the same thing that early humans had. But at the broadest level, in the connection to others, the ability to extend ourselves beyond our own skin, Neanderthals would have shared that,” said archaeologist Penny Spikins of England’s University of York.
Wired.com talked to Spikins, co-author of The Prehistory of Compassion, about the feelings of humanity’s closest nonliving relative. Wired.com: What do you think Neanderthals felt? Penny Spikins: We see compassion in our nearest living relatives, chimpanzees. Wired.com: What’s the evidence? See Also:: Observatory - Neanderthals Developed Tools on Their Own, Study Finds. Ancient Maya Temples Were Giant Loudspeakers? American Indian Sailed to Europe With Vikings? In an Ancient Mexican Tomb, High Society and Human Sacrifice - N. New Crop of Elderly Outsmart Their Predecessors: Scientific American Podcast. Is God an Ancient Astronaut? Will E.T. Look Like Us? Looking for Life in the Multiverse. HUMAN 2.0 - CREATING GODS pt.2. Ancient Aliens 2012 part 1 HD.
The Mind. Evolution. Human evolution. Field Researchers Discover a Language New to Science. Life Form Created With Man-Made DNA Offers Benefits, Dangers - B. Researchers Create the World's First Fully Synthetic, Self-Repli. 12 Events That Will Change Everything, Made Interactive: Scienti. The Journal Science Interviews J. Craig Venter About the first " Singularity University, Where You Major In Immortality. From Fermilab, a New Clue to Explain Human Existence? - NYTimes. Early Reports From the ‘Dark Matter’ of the Genome | Wired Science. Xmds: eXtensible Multi-Dimensional Simulator.
Are you conscious now. The Anthropocene Debate: Marking Humanity’s Impact by Elizabeth. ITER - the way to new energy. Boundary Institute - Randomness. Seven-month-old babies can 'read minds' Procreative Sex May Soon Be a Quaint Relic, Study Says | Popular. Male menopause is 'rare' but it is not a myth. Jews worldwide share genetic ties. The Pentagon's Newest Project: Zombies. Meltdown. Air Force's Hypersonic X-51 WaveRider Ready For First Test Fligh. Tissue.prn: Desktop Printer Technology Used to Lay Down Regenera. Superbombs and Secret Jails: What to Look for in WikiLeaks’ Iraq Docs | Danger Room.
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