Skip to main content

Home/ Technology Trends/ Group items tagged Center

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Duane Sharrock

As Hurricanes Approach, the Robotic Storm Chasers of the Future Are Ready | Popular Sci... - 0 views

www.popsci.com/...noaa-robots

hurricanes robotic storm science EMILY NOAA robot forecasting hurricane forecasting storm forecasting tools data streaming

shared by Duane Sharrock on 30 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • Authorities like NOAA gather storm data from a few different sources--from aircraft circling the weather system from tens of thousands of feet, from stationary weather buoys scattered throughout the Gulf of Mexico, from Earth-orbiting satellites--giving scientists a great view of the area around the storm.
  • “Currently there are only two or three ways to get this kind of data,” Dr. Alan Leonardi, deputy director of NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, says. “First, you can have a storm serendipitously traverse over a buoy that happens to already be in the water, and that doesn’t happen as frequently as some might believe. Another would be to position a ship out there to collect this data, but that creates a dangerous situation for any crew that might be aboard the ship, so we’re not going to do that. The third--and we have done this--is to deploy instruments from aircraft in front of a storm that can collect data as the storm passes. We then go back in a ship and pick up those buoys--if they survive and don’t end up sinking.”
  • NOAA’s two robotic platforms are being developed independently of one another, yet their roles dovetail neatly. The Liquid Robotics Wave Glider platform is designed as a kind of storm monitoring sentry--like a weather buoy, but one that researchers can move at will. Wave Gliders harvest their propulsive energy from ocean waves themselves and power their onboard electronics with solar energy. This means they are not very fast--too slow to actually chase a storm in most cases--but they can remain at sea for months on end, waiting and watching.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • With an operational life of ten days, EMILY can be dropped into the water ahead of a storm, navigate its way into the very center, and remain there, tracking the storm as it moves while streaming data all along the way.
  • the eyewall--the ring of powerful thunderheads that encircle the eye of the storm.
  • the agency already has one Wave Glider in the water north of Puerto Rico as a test-bed for the dozens NOAA hopes will follow. Isaac tracked south of Puerto Rico and missed the prototype, but the robot did manage to capture data from some intense weather along the outer bands of the system--the first of what NOAA hopes will be a new wealth of hurricane data produced by its robotic fleet.
  • Better hurricane prediction translates directly to lowered economic losses, better mitigation of property damage, and--as it goes without saying on the eve of Katrina’s anniversary--lives saved.
  • Duane Sharrock on 30 Aug 12
     
    As the 2012 hurricane season reaches full tilt, researchers at NOAA are hard at work hacking two different maritime robots that the agency hopes will become critical storm forecasting tools of the future. The first, Liquid Robotics' Wave Glider, is envisioned as a persistent surveillance platform, an army of mobile monitoring stations that will remain at sea for the duration of a hurricane season, waiting to swarm into the path of a developing storm. The second--Hydronalix's Emergency Integrated Life Saving Lanyard, or EMILY (a 2010 PopSci Best of What's New award winner)--will be capable of tracking the storm itself for days at a time, streaming continuous data directly from the center of the storm to researchers ashore.
thinkahol *

Medical Daily: Reproductive scientists create mice from 2 fathers - 0 views

www.medicaldaily.com/...create-mice-from-2-fathers.htm

Medical Daily: Reproductive scientists create mice from 2 fathers

shared by thinkahol * on 12 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 12 Dec 10
     
    Using stem cell technology, reproductive scientists in Texas, led by Dr. Richard R. Berhringer at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, have produced male and female mice from two fathers.
thinkahol *

Dr. Daniel G. Nocera - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

Personalized Energy for 1 (x 6 Billion): A Solution to the Global Challenge Dr. Daniel G. Nocera - YouTube

shared by thinkahol * on 12 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 12 Aug 11
     
    The supply of secure, clean, sustainable energy is arguably the most important scientific and technical challenge facing humanity in the 21st century. Rising living standards of a growing world population will cause global energy consumption to double by mid-century and triple by the end of the century. Even in light of unprecedented conservation, the additional energy needed is simply not attainable from long discussed sources these include nuclear, biomass, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric. The global appetite for energy is simply too much. Petroleum-based fuel sources (i.e., coal, oil and gas) could be increased. However, deleterious consequences resulting from external drivers of economy, the environment, and global security dictate that this energy need be met by renewable and sustainable sources. The dramatic increase in global energy need is driven by 3 billion low-energy users in the non-legacy world and by 3 billion people yet to inhabit the planet over the next half century. The capture and storage of solar energy at the individual level personalized solar energy drives inextricably towards the heart of this energy challenge by addressing the triumvirate of secure, carbon neutral and plentiful energy. This talk will place the scale of the global energy issue in perspective and then discuss how personalized energy (especially for the non-legacy world) can provide a path to a solution to the global energy challenge. Daniel G. Nocera is the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Director of the Solar Revolutions Project and Director of the Eni Solar Frontiers Center at MIT. His group pioneered studies of the basic mechanisms of energy conversion in biology and chemistry. He has recently accomplished a solar fuels process that captures many of the elements of photosynthesis outside of the leaf. This discovery sets the stage for a storage mechanism for the large scale, distributed, deployment of solar energy. He has b
thinkahol *

Quantum Levitation - YouTube - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

Quantum Levitation - YouTube

shared by thinkahol * on 18 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 18 Oct 11
     
    Video courtesy of Association of Science - Technology Centers (ASTC), representing the science centre and museum field worldwide. To learn more, visit http://www.astc.org/. Follow us on Twitter: @ScienceCenters. Tel-Aviv University demos quantum superconductors locked in a magnetic field (www.quantumlevitation.com).
Duane Sharrock

Medical devices powered by the ear itself - MIT News Office - 0 views

www.mit.edu/...biological-battery-1107.html

medical devices powered ear mit news battery otolaryngology Focus Center Research Program the National Institute Deafness and Other Communication Disorders Bertarelli Foundation

shared by Duane Sharrock on 09 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Health Sciences and Technology (HST) demonstrate for the first time that this battery could power implantable electronic devices without impairing hearing.
  • The devices could monitor biological activity in the ears of people with hearing or balance impairments, or responses to therapies. Eventually, they might even deliver therapies themselves
  • “In the past, people have thought that the space where the high potential is located is inaccessible for implantable devices, because potentially it’s very dangerous if you encroach on it,” Stankovic says. “We have known for 60 years that this battery exists and that it’s really important for normal hearing, but nobody has attempted to use this battery to power useful electronics.”
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The ear converts a mechanical force — the vibration of the eardrum — into an electrochemical signal that can be processed by the brain; the biological battery is the source of that signal’s current. Located in the part of the ear called the cochlea, the battery chamber is divided by a membrane, some of whose cells are specialized to pump ions. An imbalance of potassium and sodium ions on opposite sides of the membrane, together with the particular arrangement of the pumps, creates an electrical voltage.
  • Low-power chips, however, are precisely the area of expertise of Anantha Chandrakasan’s group at MTL
  • The frequency of the signal was thus itself an indication of the electrochemical properties of the inner ear.
  • in cochlear implants, diagnostics and implantable hearing aids. “The fact that you can generate the power for a low voltage from the cochlea itself raises the possibility of using that as a power source to drive a cochlear implant,” Megerian says. “Imagine if we were able to measure that voltage in various disease states. There would potentially be a diagnostic algorithm for aberrations in that electrical output.”
  • “I’m not ready to say that the present iteration of this technology is ready,” Megerian cautions. But he adds that, “If we could tap into the natural power source of the cochlea, it could potentially be a driver behind the amplification technology of the future.”
  • Duane Sharrock on 09 Nov 12
     
    "For the first time, researchers power an implantable electronic device using an electrical potential - a natural battery - deep in the inner ear."
  • Duane Sharrock on 09 Nov 12
     
    "All of D-Lab's classes assess the needs of people in less-privileged communities around the world, examining innovations in technology, education or communications that might address those needs. The classes then seek ways to spread word of these solutions - and in some cases, to spur the creation of organizations to help disseminate them. Specific projects have focused on improved wheelchairs and prosthetics; water and sanitation systems; and recycling waste to produce useful products, including charcoal fuel made from agricultural waste."
1 - 6 of 6
Showing 20▼ items per page