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Oct 16, 2020

FAA Revamps Space Launch Rules as SpaceX, Blue Origin Expand

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, government, space travel

Commercial rocket ventures including Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin should get a clearer path to space under new regulations that oversee non-government launches.

Oct 16, 2020

Engineers produce a fisheye lens that’s completely flat

Posted by in categories: augmented reality, virtual reality

IS THE METAMATERIAL FISHEYE LENS AN ANSWER FOR RETINAL PROJECTION? There is a race to figure out the best way to project images onto the human retina, for augmented reality devices. Since the human retina is curved, unlike a photographic plate, a wide-angled, curved image designed to fit with the inherent curvature of the retina is in order. Planetariums can use fisheye lenses to project onto a curved dome in a similar way. Can modification of the new method for creating flat, wide angled fisheye metalenses be used for this purpose? There would be three immediate applications of such a capability: 1) Augmented reality projection which is not limited to a narrow portion of the visual field. 2) Full immersion virtual reality devices. 3) Night vision glasses that take large areas of aperture and project wide-angled images through a smaller exit pupil than the human pupil. It is possible that such a lens would be used in combination with another complementing metalens to allow the proper projection.


To capture panoramic views in a single shot, photographers typically use fisheye lenses — ultra-wide-angle lenses made from multiple pieces of curved glass, which distort incoming light to produce wide, bubble-like images. Their spherical, multipiece design makes fisheye lenses inherently bulky and often costly to produce.

Now engineers at MIT and the University of Massachusetts at Lowell have designed a wide-angle lens that is completely flat. It is the first flat fisheye lens to produce crisp, 180-degree panoramic images. The design is a type of “metalens,” a wafer-thin material patterned with microscopic features that work together to manipulate light in a specific way.

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Oct 16, 2020

Tobacco Plants Contribute Key Ingredient For COVID-19 Vaccine

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

It looks like the Tabacco plant is being used for the Covid19 vaccine.


Historically, tobacco plants are responsible for their share of illness and death. Now they may help control the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two biotech companies are using the tobacco plant, Nicotiana benthamiana, as bio-factories to produce a key protein from the coronavirus that can be used in a vaccine.

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Oct 16, 2020

Roboticizing fabric

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, wearables

Fabrics are key materials for a variety of applications that require flexibility, breathability, small storage footprint, and low weight. While fabrics are conventionally passive materials with static properties, emerging technologies have provided many flexible materials that can respond to external stimuli for actuation, structural control, and sensing. Here, we improve upon and process these responsive materials into functional fibers that we integrate into everyday fabrics and demonstrate as fabric-based robots that move, support loads, and allow closed-loop controls, all while retaining the desirable qualities of fabric. Robotic fabrics present a means to create smart adaptable clothing, self-deployable shelters, and lightweight shape-changing machinery.

Fabrics are ubiquitous materials that have conventionally been passive assemblies of interlacing, inactive fibers. However, the recent emergence of active fibers with actuation, sensing, and structural capabilities provides the opportunity to impart robotic function into fabric substrates. Here we present an implementation of robotic fabrics by integrating functional fibers into conventional fabrics using typical textile manufacturing techniques. We introduce a set of actuating and variable-stiffness fibers, as well as printable in-fabric sensors, which allows for robotic closed-loop control of everyday fabrics while remaining lightweight and maintaining breathability. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of robotic fabrics through their application to an active wearable tourniquet, a transforming and load-bearing deployable structure, and an untethered, self-stowing airfoil.

Oct 16, 2020

Rapid rescue of buried people

Posted by in category: futurism

When someone is buried by an avalanche, earthquake or other disaster, a rapid rescue can make the difference between life and death. The Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR has developed a new kind of mobile radar device that can search hectare-sized areas quickly and thoroughly. The new technology combines greater mobility with accurate detection of vital signs.

Oct 16, 2020

Neuroadaptive modelling for generating images matching perceptual categories

Posted by in categories: computing, neuroscience

Brain–computer interfaces enable active communication and execution of a pre-defined set of commands, such as typing a letter or moving a cursor. However, they have thus far not been able to infer more complex intentions or adapt more complex output based on brain signals. Here, we present neuroadaptive generative modelling, which uses a participant’s brain signals as feedback to adapt a boundless generative model and generate new information matching the participant’s intentions. We report an experiment validating the paradigm in generating images of human faces. In the experiment, participants were asked to specifically focus on perceptual categories, such as old or young people, while being presented with computer-generated, photorealistic faces with varying visual features. Their EEG signals associated with the images were then used as a feedback signal to update a model of the user’s intentions, from which new images were generated using a generative adversarial network. A double-blind follow-up with the participant evaluating the output shows that neuroadaptive modelling can be utilised to produce images matching the perceptual category features. The approach demonstrates brain-based creative augmentation between computers and humans for producing new information matching the human operator’s perceptual categories.

Oct 16, 2020

Holo-UNet: hologram-to-hologram neural network restoration for high fidelity low light quantitative phase imaging of live cells

Posted by in categories: biological, holograms, robotics/AI

Intensity shot noise in digital holograms distorts the quality of the phase images after phase retrieval, limiting the usefulness of quantitative phase microscopy (QPM) systems in long term live cell imaging. In this paper, we devise a hologram-to-hologram neural network, Holo-UNet, that restores high quality digital holograms under high shot noise conditions (sub-mW/cm2 intensities) at high acquisition rates (sub-milliseconds). In comparison to current phase recovery methods, Holo-UNet denoises the recorded hologram, and so prevents shot noise from propagating through the phase retrieval step that in turn adversely affects phase and intensity images. Holo-UNet was tested on 2 independent QPM systems without any adjustment to the hardware setting. In both cases, Holo-UNet outperformed existing phase recovery and block-matching techniques by ∼ 1.8 folds in phase fidelity as measured by SSIM. Holo-UNet is immediately applicable to a wide range of other high-speed interferometric phase imaging techniques. The network paves the way towards the expansion of high-speed low light QPM biological imaging with minimal dependence on hardware constraints.

Oct 16, 2020

Intercontinental comparison of optical atomic clocks through very long baseline interferometry

Posted by in categories: physics, space

The comparison of distant atomic clocks is foundational to international timekeeping, global positioning and tests of fundamental physics. Optica l-fibre links allow the most precise optical clocks to be compared, without degradation, over intracontinental distances up to thousands of kilometres, but intercontinental comparisons remain limited by the performance of satellite transfer techniques. Here we show that very long baseline interferometry (VLBI), although originally developed for radio astronomy and geodesy, can overcome this limit and compare remote clocks through the observation of extragalactic radio sources. We developed dedicated transportable VLBI stations that use broadband detection and demonstrate the comparison of two optical clocks located in Italy and Japan separated by 9,000 km. This system demonstrates performance beyond satellite techniques and can pave the way for future long-term stable international clock comparisons.

Oct 16, 2020

Apparent evidence for Hawking points in the CMB Sky ★

Posted by in category: cosmology

ABSTRACT. This paper presents strong observational evidence of numerous previously unobserved anomalous circular spots, of significantly raised temperature, in the cosmic microwave background sky. The spots have angular radii between 0.03 and 0.04 rad (i.e. angular diameters between about 3° and 4°). There is a clear cut-off at that size, indicating that each anomalous spot would have originated from a highly energetic point-like source, located at the end of inflation – or else point-like at the conformally expanded Big Bang, if it is considered that there was no inflationary phase. The significant presence of these anomalous spots, was initially noticed in the Planck 70 GHz satellite data by comparison with 1000 standard simulations, and then confirmed by extending the comparison to 10 000 simulations. Such anomalous points were then found at precisely the same locations in the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) data, their significance was confirmed by comparison with 1000 WMAP simulations. Planck and WMAP have very different noise properties and it seems exceedingly unlikely that the observed presence of anomalous points in the same directions on both maps may come entirely from the noise. Subsequently, further confirmation was found in the Planck data by comparison with 1000 FFP8.1 MC simulations (with l ≤ 1500). The existence of such anomalous regions, resulting from point-like sources at the conformally stretched-out big bang, is a predicted consequence of conformal cyclic cosmology, these sources being the Hawking points of the theory, resulting from the Hawking radiation from supermassive black holes in a cosmic aeon prior to our own.

Oct 16, 2020

The No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) Program kicks off trade space analysis and conceptual design for long-endurance Unmanned Surface Vessels (USV)

Posted by in categories: health, military, robotics/AI, space travel

Seven performers selected to pursue novel USV concepts and enabling technologies.


DARPA has awarded seven contracts for work on Phase 1 of the NOMARS program, which seeks to simultaneously explore two competing objectives related to unmanned surface vessels (USV) ship design: the maximization of seaframe performance when human constraints are removed; and achieving sufficient vessel maintenance and logistics functionality for long endurance operations with no human crew onboard. NOMARS aims to disrupt conventional naval architecture designs through creative trade space explorations that optimize useable onboard room considering a variety of constraints. This should pave the way for more capable, affordable small warships that can be procured and maintained in large numbers.

Autonomous Surface Vehicles, LLC, Gibbs & Cox Inc., and Serco Inc. received Phase 1 Track A awards, and will work toward developing novel NOMARS demonstrator conceptual designs. These awards will focus on maximizing vessel performance gain across new design criteria, with potential considerations to include: unusual hull forms, low freeboard, minimizing air-filled volumes, innovative materials, repurposing or eliminating “human space” exploring distributed system designs, and developing architectures optimized for depot-maintenance.

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