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Mars Base

Speed-bump device converts traffic energy to electricity - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...raffic-energy-electricity.html

scibyte21 traffic electricity

shared by Mars Base on 10 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • A Maryland company
  • has devised that kind of speed-bump device
  • has devised that kind of speed-bump device
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • A Maryland company
  • that harvests kinetic energy from vehicles and converts the energy into electricity
  • for installation where vehicles are traveling faster than 15 mph and are slowing-down before stopping, including parking lots, border crossings, exit ramps, neighborhoods with traffic calming zones, rest areas, toll booths, and travel plazas
  • devices become a part of the toll booths, rest areas, parking lots, airport arrival and departure areas, city lighting systems, zones in other places where traffic should be slowing down—scenarios that can benefit from a greener approach to energy and electricity cost savings.
  • devices become a part of the toll booths, rest areas, parking lots, airport arrival and departure areas, city lighting systems, zones in other places where traffic should be slowing down—scenarios that can benefit from a greener approach to energy and electricity cost savings
  • recently got a boost in publicity by partnering with the city of Roanoke in Virginia to put its MotionPower Express system to the test
  • recently got a boost in publicity by partnering with the city of Roanoke in Virginia to put its MotionPower Express system to the test
  • that harvests kinetic energy from vehicles and converts the energy into electricity
  • for installation where vehicles are traveling faster than 15 mph and are slowing-down before stopping, including parking lots, border crossings, exit ramps, neighborhoods with traffic calming zones, rest areas, toll booths, and travel plazas.
  • during a busy time when the center was hosting a gun show and circus. A total of 580 cars passed over the rumble strip in six hours.
  • was during a busy time when the center was hosting a gun show and circus. A total of 580 cars passed over the rumble strip in six hours.
  • Reports claim this traffic over this amount of time generated enough electricity to power an average U.S. home for a day
  • Reports claim this traffic over this amount of time generated enough electricity to power an average U.S. home for a day.
  • traffic over a six hour period was claimed to produce enough electricity for a 150 square-foot electronic billboard or marquee for a day.
  • traffic over a six hour period was claimed to produce enough electricity for a 150 square-foot electronic billboard or marquee for a day
  • estimated that each MotionPower speed bump would cost $1,500 to $2,000 and earn back its cost in two to three years
  • estimated that each MotionPower speed bump would cost $1,500 to $2,000 and earn back its cost in two to three years.
Mars Base

Heart-powered pacemaker could one day eliminate battery-replacement surgery - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...ttery-replacement-surgery.html

scibyte36 heart health

shared by Mars Base on 04 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • A new power scheme for cardiac pacemakers turns to an unlikely source: vibrations from heartbeats themselves.
  • a device that harvests energy from the reverberation of heartbeats through the chest and converts it to electricity to run a pacemaker or an implanted defibrillator.
  • new energy harvester could save patients from repeated surgeries. That's the only way today to replace the batteries, which last five to 10 years.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • use ambient vibrations that are typically wasted and convert them to electrical energy
  • researchers haven't built a prototype yet
  • made detailed blueprints and run simulations demonstrating that the concept would work
  • A hundredth-of-an-inch thin slice of a special "piezoelectric" ceramic material would essentially catch heartbeat vibrations and briefly expand in response
  • Piezoelectric materials' claim to fame is that they can convert mechanical stress (which causes them to expand) into an electric voltage.
  • have precisely engineered the ceramic layer to a shape that can harvest vibrations across a broad range of frequencies
  • incorporated magnets, whose additional force field can drastically boost the electric signal that results from the vibrations.
  • new device could generate 10 microwatts of power, which is about eight times the amount a pacemaker needs to operate
  • originally designed the harvester for light unmanned airplanes, where it could generate power from wing vibrations
Mars Base

Mars Science Laboratory: Rover Team Working to Diagnose Electrical Issue - 0 views

mars.jpl.nasa.gov/...index.cfm

scibyte110 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 26 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Science observations by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity have been suspended for a few days while engineers run tests to check possible causes of a voltage change detected on Nov. 17
  • "The vehicle is safe and stable, fully capable of operating in its present condition, but we are taking the precaution of investigating what may be a soft short," said Mars Science Laboratory Project Manager
  • The team detected a change in the voltage difference between the chassis and the 32-volt power bus that distributes electricity to systems throughout the rover
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • A "soft" short is a leak through something that's partially conductive of electricity, rather than a hard short such as one electrical wire contacting another
  • A soft short can cause such a voltage change
  • The rover's electrical system is designed with the flexibility to work properly throughout that range and more -- a design feature called "floating bus."
  • Curiosity had already experienced one soft short on landing day in August 2012
  • The level had been about 11 volts since landing day, and is now about 4 volts
  • That one was related to explosive-release devices used for deployments shortly before and after the landing
  • It lowered the bus-to-chassis voltage from about 16 volts to about 11 volts but has not affected subsequent rover operations
  • Soft shorts reduce the level of robustness for tolerating other shorts in the future, and they can indicate a possible problem in whichever component is the site of the short
  • Operations planned for Curiosity for the next few days are designed to check some of the possible root causes for the voltage change
  • Analysis so far has determined that the change appeared intermittently three times during the hours before it became persistent
  • The electrical issue did not cause the rover to enter a safe-mode status, in which most activities automatically cease pending further instructions, and there is no indication the issue is related to a computer reboot that triggered a "safe-mode" earlier this month
Mars Base

Laser lightning rod: Guiding bursts of electricity with a flash of light - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...lightning-rod-electricity.html

scibyte38 lightning

shared by Mars Base on 14 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • New research reveals that brief bursts of intense laser light can redirect these high-power electrical discharges.
  • French researchers have coaxed laboratory-generated lightning into striking the same place, not just twice, but over and over
  • used femtosecond (one quadrillionth of a second) pulses of laser light to create a virtual lightning rod out of a column of ionized gas
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Previous experiments confirmed that femtosecond laser could produce ultrashort filaments of ionized gas that act like electrical guide
  • Further studies revealed that these filaments could function over long distances, potentially greater than 50 meters.
  • of new experiments
  • research team sent a laser beam skimming past a spherical electrode to an oppositely charged planar electrode
  • laser stripped away the outer electrons from the atoms along its path
  • a plasma filament that channeled an electrical discharge from the planar electrode to the spherical one
  • researchers added a longer, pointed electrode to their experiment
  • Without the laser, the discharge obeyed this rule and always struck the taller, pointed electrode
  • With the laser, however, the discharge was redirected, following the filaments and striking the spherical electrode instead
  • even after the initial path of the discharge began to form
Mars Base

Double Dispatch: Self-Balancing Electric Unicycle - 0 views

www.stephanboyer.com/...lancing-electric-unicycle.html

scibyte27

shared by Mars Base on 30 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • A custom MIG-welded steel chassisA 450 Watt electric motorTwo 7 Ah 12 Volt batteriesA 5DOF intertial measurement unitThe OSMC H-bridgeAn ATmega328P microcontroller
  • operates much like a Segway -- you lean forward to accelerate, and lean back to brake
  • holding in my right hand (in the video at the bottom) is a "kill switch" -- if I let go of it, the unicycle deactivates the motor,
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Bullet integrates readings from the gyro and accelerometer using a complementary filter. To balance, the angle estimate is fed through a PID loop (with no integral term). The loop runs at 625 Hz. The output from this stage determines the duty cycle of a 1.22 kHz PWM signal, which is connected to the H-bridge. The code was written in C, and is in the public domain.
  • It took me several hours to be able to ride in a straight line without crashing, and it took several days to learn how to turn in a controlled manner. Many of my friends have tried riding it, usually with little success (including some actual unicyclers).
  • I am certainly not the first person to build an electric unicycle. Perhaps the most well-known self-balancing unicycle is Trevor Blackwell's Eunicycle, which also uses the OSMC. His design is similar to mine, but uses a much more expensive battery pack ($218 for his vs $44 for mine). Also, the Eunicycle's motor and gearbox cost a grand total of $644, whereas Bullet's drive system (including the wheel itself) was $195. Finally, the IMU he uses is about $100 more than mine. Overall, Bullet is several hundred dollars cheaper than the Eunicycle, but this comes at a price (mostly weight).
Mars Base

Mars Science Laboratory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Mars_Science_Laboratory

scibyte22 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 17 Nov 11 - Cached
  • Launch vehicle Atlas V 541
  • Mission duration 668 Martian sols (686 Earth days)
  • Landing August 5, 2012 (planned
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Mass 900 kg (2,000 lb)[
  • Power Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG)
  • the general public had an opportunity to rank nine finalist names through a public poll on the NASA website
  • Curiosity was selected, which was submitted by a sixth-grader, Clara Ma, from Kansas in an essay contest
  • 10 ft (3.0 m) in length
  • radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), as used by the successful Mars landers Viking 1 and Viking 2 in 1976
  • Radioisotope power systems are generators that produce electricity from the natural decay of plutonium-238, which is a non-fissile isotope of plutonium used in power systems for NASA spacecraft. Heat given off by the natural decay of this isotope is converted into electricity, providing constant power during all seasons and through the day and night, and waste heat can be used via pipes to warm systems, freeing electrical power for the operation of the vehicle and instruments
  • designed to produce 125 watts of electrical power from about 2000 watts of thermal power at the start of the mission
  • lifetime of 14 years, electrical power output is down to 100 watts
  • "Rover Compute Element" (RCE), contain radiation hardened memory to tolerate the extreme radiation environment from space and to safeguard against power-off cycles
  • 256 kB of EEPROM, 256 MB of DRAM, and 2 GB of flash memory
Mars Base

Hearing quality restored with bionic ear technology used for gene therapy - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...ionic-ear-technology-gene.html

scibyte128 MedicalDevice

shared by Mars Base on 24 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Researchers
  • have for the first time used electrical pulses delivered from a cochlear implant to deliver gene therapy, thereby successfully regrowing auditory nerves
  • The research also heralds a possible new way of treating a range of neurological disorders, including Parkinson's disease, and psychiatric conditions such as depression through this novel way of delivering gene therapy.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • "People with cochlear implants do well with understanding speech, but their perception of pitch can be poor, so they often miss out on the joy of music," says UNSW Professor Gary Housley
  • The work centres on regenerating surviving nerves after age-related or environmental hearing loss, using existing cochlear technology
  • The cochlear implants are "surprisingly efficient" at localised gene therapy in the animal model, when a few electric pulses are administered during the implant procedure.
  • It has long been established that the auditory nerve endings regenerate if neurotrophins – a naturally occurring family of proteins crucial for the development, function and survival of neurons – are delivered to the auditory portion of the inner ear, the cochlea.
  • until now, research has stalled because safe, localised delivery of the neurotrophins can't be achieved using drug delivery, nor by viral-based gene therapy
  • developed a way of using electrical pulses delivered from the cochlear implant to deliver the DNA to the cells close to the array of implanted electrodes. These cells then produce neurotrophins.
  • the neurotrophin production dropped away after a couple of months
  • ultimately the changes in the hearing nerve may be maintained by the ongoing neural activity generated by the cochlear implant.
  • "We think it's possible that in the future this gene delivery would only add a few minutes to the implant procedure,"
  • Jeremy Pinyon, whose PhD is based on this work
  • "The surgeon who installs the device would inject the DNA solution into the cochlea and then fire electrical impulses to trigger the DNA transfer once the implant is inserted."
  • Integration of this technology into other 'bionic' devices such as electrode arrays used in deep brain stimulation
  • the treatment of Parkinson's disease and depression, for example) could also afford opportunities for safe, directed gene therapy of complex neurological disorders
  • implications far beyond hearing disorders
  • Professor Matthias Klugmann
  • "Gene therapy has been suggested as a treatment concept even for devastating neurological conditions and our technology provides a novel platform for safe and efficient gene transfer into tissues as delicate as the brain."
Mars Base

Robotic Rehab Helps Paralyzed Rats Walk Again - ScienceNOW - 0 views

news.sciencemag.org/...tic-rehab-helps-paralyzed.html

scibyte49 MedicalTreatment

shared by Mars Base on 01 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • employing a combination of drugs, electrical stimulation, and robot-assisted rehabilitation, researchers have restored a remarkable degree of voluntary movement in rats paralyzed by a spinal cord injury
  • After several weeks of treatment, the rodents were able to walk—with some assistance—to retrieve a piece of food, even going up stairs or climbing over a small barrier to get it
  • Spinal injuries cause paralysis because they sever or crush nerve fibers that connect the brain to neurons in the spinal cord that move muscles throughout the body
  • ...22 more annotations...
  • These fibers, or axons, are the long extensions that convey signals from one end of a neuron to another, and unfortunately, they don't regrow in adults
  • Restoring axons' ability to regrow using growth factors, stem cells, or other therapies has been a longstanding—but frustratingly elusive—goal for researchers.
  • Most spinal injuries in people do not sever the spinal cord completely
  • To approximate this situation in rats, his team made two surgical cuts in the spinal cord, severing all of the direct connections from the brain, but leaving some tissue intact in between the cuts
  • had the rodents begin a rehab regime intended to bypass the fractured freeway, as it were, by pushing more traffic onto neural back roads and building more of them
  • This regime, which began about a week after the rats were injured, lasted about 30 minutes a day
  • During each session, the researchers injected the animals with a cocktail of drugs to improve the function of rats' neural circuits in the part of the spinal cord involved in leg movements
  • stimulated this area with electrodes
  • With its spinal cord thus primed for action, a rat was fitted into a harness attached to a robotic device that supported its weight and allowed it to walk forward on its hind legs to the extent that it was able
  • At first, the rats could not move their legs at all, let alone walk.
  • after 2 or 3 weeks, the rodents began taking steps toward a piece of food after a gentle nudge from the robo
  • By 5 or 6 weeks, they were able to initiate movement on their own and walk to get the food
  • after a few additional weeks of intensified rehab, they were able to walk up rat-sized stairs and climb over a small barrier placed in their path
  • did not undergo rehab, in contrast, showed no improvement at all
  • Rats suspended over a moving treadmill that elicited reflex-like stepping movement
  • full recovery depends on making intentional movements, not just any movement
  • Additional experiments in the paper make a compelling case that the rats' recovery is due to new neural connections forming to create a detour around the injury
  • s work suggests that all three components of the rehab strategy—the drugs, the electrical stimulation, and the robot-assisted physical therapy
  • case study published last year reported some recovery of voluntary movements in a man paralyzed in a vehicle accident, after he underwent a combination of electrical stimulation and physical therap
  • two more patients are undergoing similar rehab now, and his group hopes to add drug therapy to enhance nerve repair in the future
  • the strategy's limitations. For one thing, it wouldn't work if the spinal cord were completely severed
  • treated rats could only make voluntary movements while the electrical stimulation was turned on, and the same was mostly true of the patient Edgerton and colleagues worked with. "This is not a cure for spinal cord injury," Courtine says. "It's a promising proof of principle."
Mars Base

Invention Awards 2014: Charge Gadgets With Your Footsteps | Popular Science - 0 views

www.popsci.com/...-charge-gadgets-your-footsteps

scibyte129

shared by Mars Base on 04 May 14 - No Cached
  • of a hiker’s heel releases enough energy to illuminate a light bulb
  • Matt Stanton, an engineer and avid backpacker, created a shoe insole that stores it as electricity
  • Instead of using piezoelectric and other inefficient, bulky methods of generating electricity, the pair shrunk down components similar to those found in hand-cranked flashlights.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • The result is a near standard–size removable insole that weighs less than five ounces, including a battery pack, and charges electronics via USB.
  • current version, to be released later this year, requires a lengthy 15-mile walk to charge a smartphone.
  • the company is working toward a design that can charge an iPhone after less than five miles of hiking and withstand about 100 million footsteps of wear and tear. 
  • How It Works
  • 1) A drivetrain converts the energy of heel strikes into rotational energy, spinning magnetic rotors
  • 2) The motion of the rotors induces an electrical current within coils of wire
  • 3) Electricity travels along a wire and into a lithium-ion polymer battery pack on a wearer’s shoelaces.
Mars Base

T. K. Mattingly Oral History - 0 views

www.jsc.nasa.gov/...MattinglyTK_11-6-01.htm

scibyte91 Apollo13

shared by Mars Base on 18 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • The Race to the Moon book’s description is probably a little better
  • The way back, the spacecraft started drifting off its trajectory, and now they had to make their midcourse corrections to get back
  • turns out that, too, we had practiced in some simulation somewhere. It’s not very accurate, but it doesn’t have to be
  • ...40 more annotations...
  • It was hard to get people to recognize that we do that, but you don’t need to be the nearest five degrees
  • didn’t solve any problems in the simulator
  • actually ran those procedures, verified them, made some red lines, I think, brought them back over
  • They had to take their flight plan and turn it over and tear out pages and write on the back of it. The only thing they had were pencils and ball pens
  • actually had extra electrical power in the lunar module batteries
  • Somebody came in and found a way to do a jumper cord and take battery power out of the lunar module and top off the command module and to use that power to help get the command module stuff started so we didn’t use all the power from the batteries. So we ended up with a good margin on the batteries
  • Because all our procedures were based on two practical rules. One of them is, structural things don’t break. Actually, that drove everything. Fluid lines and structural—you know, joints can leak, shorts can happen to wires, but physical structure doesn’t break
  • if you admitted to that, then the number of things that you could have to prepare for is infinite.
  • had done a lot of testing of this, a lot of margin of safety in the hardware, so we never looked at those kinds of implications
  • Got in the car to drive back up. This is two days, I think, two days before launch, I think. I’m driving up the road, turned the radio on, and they interrupt the news announcement that this afternoon NASA has announced that they have changed and substituted Jack Swigert for me.
  • Gene says, “Sy, didn’t Jim say that he looked out the window and there’s stuff out in the sky and he heard something?” He says, “Does that sound like instrumentation to you?”
  • thanks to the kind of simulation training program we had, maybe the things weren’t exactly the same or in an exactly the same order, but everything we ended up doing had been done somewhere.
  • somewhere in an earlier sim, there had been an occasion to do what they call LM lifeboat, which meant you had to get the crew out of the command module and into the lunar module, and they stayed there
  • when you get out in space, that all those black spots in between the stars are filled with stars, and those constellations are nowhere near as obvious as they were
  • The guys in the lunar module electrical system had calculated how much time we had, and the two numbers didn’t match. So bringing on this platform is probably the biggest energy user in the spacecraft. Didn’t want to do it
  • They had a capability to maneuver, and they knew where they were, and now they could figure out what to do
  • a big debate about what to do next, as I recall, the books and the movies and all don’t really capture.
  • That debate of what to do next was also rather charged because there was one group of people that said, “You know, this has really been a bad day. We don’t know the condition of any piece of hardware we’ve got. We don’t want to do anything. Don’t touch anything. Let’s just figure this out.”
  • There’s others that said, “There’s only this much electricity and water in the lunar module. We need to turn around and come home as fast as possible.
  • Somewhere in there—I don’t remember all the details—we found out that a family that had gone to a picnic with Charlie and his family over the weekend, one of their kids had the measles, and Charlie was considered exposed
  • One of the many lessons out of all this is starting on day one it was from the very first moment, assume you’re going to succeed and don’t do anything that gets in the way.
  • you had to write down all the numbers in the command module, put them on a list, and then do some math, and then punch the numbers into the lunar module computer
  • you could get a very good alignment so that now you could go in with the lunar module and make a little tweak to tighten up the alignment
  • to get back before the batteries run out
  • while
  • debating what to do with this inertial unit in the command module we had to bring up from scratch, these units are very, very delicate
  • they were allowed to run at a temperature of like 70 plus or minus one. They were tested to see that they would work at plus or minus 10.
  • had one that we don’t know what its temperature is, but we know it’s below freezing
  • didn’t do any testing at those kind of temperatures
  • semi-apocryphal story is that one of the employees at the company
  • had a snowstorm
  • last winter
  • had an IMU in the back of the station wagon
  • took it inside
  • hooked it up and ran it, and they didn’t have any trouble
  • they had had a problem down on the spacecraft, some kind of a problem with detanking the oxygen from the service module
  • took all night and a good bit of the next day
  • to review
  • they’d seen a problem like this before, and even though the regular drain system wasn’t working, they could boil the oxygen out
  • the oxygen tank that we discussed prior to launch was, in fact, the culprit in the explosion. It was damaged in the process that we used in ways that we didn’t anticipate
Mars Base

Moon Patterns Explained - Science News - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...Moon_patterns_explained

GrabBag LunarSwirls

shared by Mars Base on 11 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • New research suggests that swirling designs on the dusty lunar surface might be the product of electric fields generated by pockets of magnetic bubbles.
  • looking at these strange, mysterious structures since the invention of the telescope
  • long suspected that weak magnetic fields near the moon’s surface might shape the looping patterns
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • created a scaled-down laboratory version to find out if man-made magnetic bubbles could also deflect rushing rivers of particles
  • used a device called a solar wind tunnel to shoot a jet of blazing particles down a tube
  • a thin electric field formed around the magnet, shielding it — and anything behind it — from the scorching flow
  • if a tiny magnet — only slightly larger than an eraser tip — could make a protective electric skin, the moon’s much larger magnetic bubbles might also be able to
Mars Base

Bionic retina runs on laser power - 0 views

optics.org/1

Scibyte55 RestoringVision

shared by Mars Base on 18 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • tiny implant that is inserted into the eye and attached to the retina in a minimally invasive procedure no more complicated than conventional cataract surgery
  • consists of photodetectors, microelectrodes and electronic circuitry that act together to replace the eye’s natural photoreceptors that have been damaged by AMD and feed visual information to the brain
  • photoreceptors in a healthy retina convert light into a series of electrical signals which are transmitted to the brain via complex neural pathways
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • AMD, the photoreceptors do not function, which prevents the brain from receiving these signals from the eyes
  • bio-retina implant is essentially a combined imaging circuit and neural interface which is glued rather than sutured to a patient’s macula
  • area of the retina responsible for high-resolution central vision
  • Measuring 3 x 4 mm and 1 mm thick, the implant is designed to capture light through the normal optical track of the eyeball and stimulate neurons to transmit information to the brain, essentially restoring the function of the damaged photoreceptors
  • Light incident on the implant is collected by an array of CMOS pixels
  • first-generation bio-retina will use an array of 600 pixels, although the aim is to increase this to 5000 pixels in future generations
  • Nano Retina has dedicated a substantial amount of time developing a proprietary algorithm that translates the received visual information and image into the neuron language
  • translating circuitry that discriminates 100 gray-scale levels and responds to varying light levels. It is a sophisticated process
  • implant uses an array of micro-electrodes that first penetrate into the retina, then connect closely to the neurons and thereafter transmit the information. The goal is that every pixel will connect to a neuron, so that every pixel in the array would use a micro-electrode
  • neurons must be stimulated electrically
  • the bio-retina implant also requires a source of electrical power
  • Patients who undergo surgery to implant a bio-retina will need to wear a special set of glasses
  • glasses feature a built-in battery and an infrared diode laser. “The infrared laser light is transmitted into the eye and captured by a miniature photovoltaic cell on the bio-retina
  • harvests the energy, which in turn powers the electronic circuitry. Our goal is for the imager and the electronics to consume no more than 1mW
Mars Base

Eye implants make vision-restoring progress - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...implants-vision-restoring.html

Scibyte55 RestoringVision

shared by Mars Base on 18 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Second Sight’s Argus II, a retinal prosthesis already on the market in Europe
  • Bio-Retina from NanoRetina, which is to start clinical trials next year
  • Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System was developed to provide electrical stimulation of the retina to induce visual perception
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • system includes an antenna, an electronics case, and electrode array
  • designed to bypass damaged photoreceptors altogether
  • video camera in the glasses captures a scene
  • video is sent to a small patient-worn computer VPU where it is processed and transformed into instructions sent back to the glasses via a cable
  • transmitted wirelessly to the antenna in the implant
  • signals are sent to the electrode array, which emits small pulses of electricity. The pulses bypass the damaged photoreceptors and stimulate the retina’s remaining
  • Users of the Argus II bionic eye say that they can see rough shapes and track the movement of objects; they can slowly read large writing.
  • Anticipation is high, meanwhile, for a bionic retina that has been designed to restore sight at less cost and with a different technique
  • Bio-Retina developed by Nano Retina does not make use of an external camera
  • vision-restoring sensor is placed inside the eye, on top of the damaged retina
  • 24×24-resolution (576-pixel) sensor atop the damaged retina. The device generates a grayscale image
  • implant is inserted through an incision in the eye
  • procedure takes 30 minutes and requires only local anesthesia
  • transforms naturally received light into an electrical signal that stimulates the neurons, which send the pictures received by Bio-Retina to the brain
  • rechargeable, battery-powered mini-laser on a pair of eyeglasses powers the implant wirelessly
  • anticipated recover time is up to one week
  • patients able to distinguish faces and to be able to look from side to side with their eyes rather than needing to turn their heads
Mars Base

Germany sets weekend record for solar power - 0 views

phys.org/...rmany-weekend-solar-power.html

scibyte49 solarcell

shared by Mars Base on 30 May 12 - No Cached
  • Solar power plants in Germany have set a new record. “Never before anywhere has a country produced as much photovoltaic electricity,"
  • plants peaked at 22 gigawatts of output for a few hours over the weekend, on Friday and Saturday
  • they yielded almost half the country's energy mid-day electricity needs
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • 22 gigawatts is up from 14 GW a year ago. Also, this 22 gigawatts of output is equal to about 20 nuclear plants.
  • 2012 Environment Ministry report showed that German taxpayers pay an extra four billion euros per year on top of their electricity bills to support solar power
  • The new record-breaking figures from Germany, however, do not quiet some energy experts who stress that without good storage strategies for excess power, such record-breaking numbers are not meaningful. They say the real point is to get consistently large percentages of power from renewable sources.
Mars Base

Mars Rover Curiosity Sidelined by Electrical Glitch | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/riosity-electrical-glitch.html

scibyte110 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 23 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • (Nov. 17), the mission team noticed a change in the voltage difference between the body of the Curiosity rover and its electricity-distributing power bus
Mars Base

Breakthrough therapy allows four paraplegic men to voluntarily move their legs - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...araplegic-men-voluntarily.html

scibyte126

shared by Mars Base on 08 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Four young men who have been paralyzed for years achieved
  • moving their legs—as a result of epidural electrical stimulation of the spinal cord
  • All four participants were classified as suffering from chronic, motor complete spinal cord injuries and were unable to move their lower extremities prior to the implantation of an epidural stimulator
  • ...42 more annotations...
  • The stimulator delivers a continuous electrical current to the participants' lower spinal cords, mimicking signals the brain normally transmits to initiate movement
  • an initial study, published in May 2011
  • evaluated the effects of epidural stimulation in the first participant
  • who recovered a number of motor functions as a result of the intervention
  • three years later, the key findings documented
  • detail the impact of epidural stimulation in a total four participants, including new tests
  • What is revolutionary
  • is that the second, third and fourth participants
  • were able to execute voluntary movements immediately following the implantation and activation of the stimulator.
  • The participants' results and recovery time were unexpected, which led researchers to speculate that some pathways may be intact post-injury and therefore able to facilitate voluntary movements.
  • Two of the four subjects were diagnosed as motor and sensory complete injured with no chance of recovery at al
  • Because of epidural stimulation, they can now voluntarily move their hips, ankles and toes
  • groundbreaking for the entire field and offers a new outlook that the spinal cord, even after a severe injury, has great potential for functional recovery.
  • In epidural stimulation, the electrical current is applied at varying frequencies and intensities to specific locations on the lumbosacral spinal cord
  • corresponding to the dense neural bundles that largely control the movement of the hips, knees, ankles and toes
  • With the participants, once the signal was triggered, the spinal cord reengaged its neural network to control and direct muscle movements.
  • When coupling the intervention with rehabilitative therapy, the impact of epidural stimulation intensified
  • Over the course of the study, the researchers noted that the participants were able to activate movements with less stimulation, demonstrating the ability of the spinal network to learn and improve nerve functions
  • uncovered a fundamentally new intervention strategy that can dramatically affect recovery of voluntary movement in individuals with complete paralysis, even years after injury
  • The belief that no recovery is possible and complete paralysis is permanent has been challenged
  • Beyond regaining voluntary movement, the research participants have displayed a myriad of improvements in their overall health
  • increases in muscle mass and regulation of their blood pressure, as well as reduced fatigue and dramatic improvements to their sense of well-being.
  • all four men were able to bear weight independently, as reported by the team
  • The study offers hope that clinical therapies can be developed to advance treatment for the nearly 6 million Americans living with paralysis, including nearly 1.3 million with spinal cord injuries.
  • The four paralyzed participants ranged in neurological level from C7–T5 and were at least two years post-injury at the time of the intervention
  • Two of them had been rated "A" on the American Spinal Injury Association's classification system, meaning they had absolutely no sensation or cognition below the site of their injury
  • surprising the scientists, who believed at least some of the sensory pathway must be intact for epidural stimulation to be successful.
  • With this study, the investigators show that their findings about a motor complete patient regaining movement, as published three years ago in The Lancet, were not an anomaly
  • At the present time,
  • there are no effective evidence-based treatments for chronic spinal cord injury
  • , the implications of this study for the entire field are quite profound, and we can now envision a day when epidural stimulation might be part of a cocktail of therapies used to treat paralysis
  • first learned that a patient had regained voluntary control as a result of the therapy, we were cautiously optimistic
  • The research was funded by the Reeve Foundation and the National Institutes of Health
  • the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, the Kessler Foundation, the University of Louisville, the Jewish Hospital and St. Mary's Foundation, the Frazier Rehab Institute and University Hospital.
  • Investing in epidural stimulation
  • Now that spinal stimulation has been successful in four out of four patients, there is evidence to suggest a large cohort of individuals,
  • previously with little realistic hope of any meaningful recovery from spinal cord injury, may benefit from this intervention
  • how we see motor complete spinal cord injury
  • don't have to necessarily rely on regrowth of nerves in order to regain function
  • observed this in four out of four people suggests that this is actually a common phenomenon in those diagnosed with complete paralysis
  • The scientists are optimistic that the therapy intervention will continue to result in improved motor functions
  • based on observations from the research, there is strong evidence that with continued advancements of the epidural stimulator, individuals with complete spinal cord injuries will be able to bear weight independently, maintain balance and work towards stepping
Mars Base

Subsystems | ESTCube - 0 views

www.estcube.eu/subsystems

scibyte86 ESTCube

shared by Mars Base on 13 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • The satellite consits of
  • ADCS - attitude determination and control system, determines and modifies satellite's alignment
  • CAM - onboard camera for taking pictures of the Earth and the unreeled tether
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • CDHS - command and data handling system, the satellite's main onboard computer
  • COM - communications system for up- and downlinks
  • EPS - electrical power system, provides electrical power for the satellite
  • PL - payload, the satellite's experiment module, that containt the tether and everything else related to the experiment
  • STR - satellite's structure
Mars Base

ESTCube-1 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/ESTCube-1

scibyte86 ESTCube

shared by Mars Base on 13 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • scheduled to be launched to orbit in second half of 2013
  • Student Satellite is an educational project that university and high school students can participate in
  • The CubeSat standard for nanosatellites was followed during the engineering of ESTCube-1, resulting in a 10x10x11.35 cm cube, with a volume of 1 liter and a mass of 1.048 kg.
  • ...44 more annotations...
  • According to the CubeSat standard there are three different sized CubeSats corresponding to size 1U, 2U and 3U. Base side lengths are the same but height is 2 to 3 times bigger than 1U CubeSats
  • Mass is also set in CubeSat standard, the highest possible mass for 1U CubeSat is 1300 grams, 2U CubeSat 2600 grams and 3U CubeSat 4000 grams
  • CubeSat base side length must be 100.0±0.1 millimeters and satellite height must be 113.5±0.1 mm
  • the Estonian satellite
  • a 1U CubeSat
  • Although
  • its main purpose was to educate students, the satellite does have a scientific purpose.
  • On board of the satellite is an electric solar wind sail (e-sail) which was created by a Finnish scientist Pekka Janhunen
  • it is the first real experimentation of the e-sail
  • 10 meters of e-sail 50 to 20 micrometers thick wire of high-technology structure so-called Heytether will be deployed from the satellite.
  • The deployment of the Heytether can be detected by decrease of the satellite's speed of rotation or by a on-board camera
  • To control the loaded solar wind sail elements interaction with the plasma surrounding the earth and the effect it has on the spacecraft spinning speed the spacecraft has two on-board nanotechnologic electron emitters/gun
  • The electron emitters are connected to the e-sail element and by shooting out electrons it loads the e-sail element positively to 500 volts
  • The positive ions in the plasma push the e-sail element and have an influence on the satellites rotation speed
  • The effect of the e-sail is measured by the change in rotation speed
  • The camera is used to take a picture of Earth and the successfully deployed Heytether. [edit]
  • ESTCube-1 will be sent to orbit by the European Space Agency's rocket Vega in spring of 2013
  • Start in spring of 2013
  • Half an hour after the satellites deployment from the start capsule satellites antennas will be opened and radio transmitter and important subsystems will be switched on
  • First days or weeks will be used to test the satellite and set it to work on full capacity.
  • Orienting the satellite so the on-board camera will be faced to earth
  • trying to take a picture of Estonia
  • Rotating the satellite on an axis with a speed of 1 revolution per second
  • E-sail element deployment from the satellite by a centrifugal force and confirming the deployment via the on-board camera
  • Activating the electron emitter and loading the e-sail
  • Measuring the e-sails and Lorentz force by satellites revolutions per second
  • If possible using the negatively charged e-sail to take the satellite off orbit and burn it in the earths atmosphere
  • If everything goes perfect the mission can be completed within a few weeks to a month
  • Lifespan of the satellite
  • Measurements and weight
  • Scientific purpose
  • Communicating with the satellite
  • held by two International Amateur Radio Unions three registered frequencies
  • Periodic but very slow communication is done on a telegraphic signal on a frequency of 437.250 MHz
  • the most important satellite parameters are transmitted every 3 to 5 minutes
  • For fast connections FSK-modulation radio signal on a frequency of 437.505 MHz with a 9600 baud connection speed and AX.25 standard is used.
  • Somewhat slow connection speed is caused by the usage of amateur radio frequencies which allow a maximum of 25 kiloherz bandwidth
  • Fast connection is used only when the satellite has been given a specific
  • Using the GFSK-modulation maximum possible connection speed is 19,200 bits per second
  • Software
  • FreeRTOS on the satellite's Command and Data Handling System and camera module
  • TinyOS on the satellite's communication module
  • Financing and costs
  • Cheapest possibility to send a satellite onto orbit is offered by European Space Agency. Because Estonia is an associated member of ESA most of the launch expenses (about 70,000 euros) will be covered from Estonian member fee for educational expenses. With the launch total expenses for the project are approximately 100,000 euros.
Mars Base

Multiple sclerosis breakthrough: Trial safely resets patients' immune systems and reduc... - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...breakthrough-trial-safely.html

scibyte97 MultipleSclerosis

shared by Mars Base on 06 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • In MS, the immune system attacks and destroys myelin, the insulating layer that forms around nerves in the spinal cord, brain and optic nerve
  • When the insulation is destroyed, electrical signals can't be effectively conducted, resulting in symptoms that range from mild limb numbness to paralysis or blindness
  • A phase 1 clinical trial for the first treatment to reset the immune system of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients showed the therapy was safe and dramatically reduced patients' immune systems' reactivity to myelin by 50 to 75 percent
  • ...23 more annotations...
  • The therapy stops autoimmune responses that are already activated and prevents the activation of new autoimmune cells
  • In the trial, the MS patients' own specially processed white blood cells were used to stealthily deliver billions of myelin antigens into their bodies so their immune systems would recognize them as harmless and develop tolerance to them
  • Current therapies for MS suppress the entire immune system, making patients more susceptible to everyday infections and higher rates of cancer
  • the study did show patients who received the highest dose of white blood cells had the greatest reduction in myelin reactivity
  • While the trial's nine patients
  • were too few to statistically determine the treatment
  • primary aim of the study was to demonstrate the treatment's safety and tolerability
  • the intravenous injection of up to 3 billion white blood cells with myelin antigens caused no adverse affects in MS patients
  • it did not reactivate the patients' disease and did not affect their healthy immunity to real pathogens
  • researchers tested patients' immunity to tetanus because all had received tetanus shots in their lifetime
  • One month after the treatment, their immune responses to tetanus remained strong, showing the treatment's immune effect was specific only to myelin
  • human safety study sets the stage for a phase 2 trial to see if the new treatment can prevent the progression of MS in humans
  • the trial, which has already been approved in Switzerland
  • patients' white blood cells were filtered out, specially processed and coupled with myelin antigens by a complex GMP manufacturing process
  • In the phase 2 trial we want to treat patients as early as possible in the disease before they have paralysis due to myelin damage
  • Then billions of these dead cells secretly carrying the myelin antigens were injected intravenously into the patients
  • The cells entered the spleen, which filters the blood and helps the body dispose of aging and dying blood cells
  • During this process, the immune cells start to recognize myelin as a harmless and immune tolerance quickly develops
  • This therapy,
  • may be useful for treating not only MS but also a host of other autoimmune and allergic diseases simply by switching the antigens attached to the cells
  • recently published research in mice in which he used nanoparticles—rather than a patient's white blood cells—to deliver the myelin antigen
  • Using a patient's white blood cells is a costly and labor-intensive procedure
  • study showed the nanoparticles, which are potentially cheaper and more accessible to a general population, could be as effective as the white blood cells as delivery vehicles
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