Lifeboat Foundation

A solution that enables industrial robots to scan and manipulate metallic objects that are too “shiny” for machine vision to process has been developed by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and ROS-Industrial, the industry consortium initiated by SwRI in 2012 to support cost-shared applied R&D for advanced factory automation. The project integrates intelligent part reconstruction using the second generation of the Robot Operating System (ROS2) framework to improve 3D image perception when robots autonomously sand and finish parts.

ETH spin-off Archilyse promises nothing less than the “world’s most comprehensive architecture analysis” on its website. The young entrepreneurs are attracting a lot of interest in the real estate sector.

Is a four-room apartment family-friendly or more suitable for a couple? How can office space be optimally divided so that its users feel comfortable? Archilyse helps to answer these kinds of questions. Based on address information, floor plans and 3D models, the ETH spin-off’s platform delivers various simulations and analyses of a property and makes them available to project developers, architects and real estate companies via an interface.

“A young family, for example, might be interested in the soundproofing between the children’s rooms and the living room, whether you can see the play area from the living room and whether the children’s rooms are bright enough to not impair the children’s cognitive abilities,” explains Archilyse founder Matthias Standfest.

Continue reading “Transparent architecture” »

The gene-editing tool has been used in a trial to enhance the blood cells of two patients with cancer.

The trial: The experimental research, under way at the University of Pennsylvania, involves genetically altering a person’s T cells so that they attack and destroy cancer. A university spokesman confirmed it has treated the first patients, one with sarcoma and one with multiple myeloma.

Slow start: Plans for the pioneering study were first reported in 2016, but it was slow to get started. Chinese hospitals, meanwhile, have launched a score of similar efforts. Carl June, the famed University of Pennsylvania cancer doctor, has compared the Chinese lead in employing CRISPR to a genetic Sputnik.

Continue reading “CRISPR has been used to treat US cancer patients for the first time” »

We’ve seen autonomous aircraft doing everything from spraying crops to surveying wildlife, and now the Swiss air rescue organization Rega has announced a drone that’s capable of searching for and finding missing people all on its own.

Back in the ancient universe, shortly after the Big Bang, the first atoms formed out of free particles. Only light elements like hydrogen and helium could form at high temperatures, but as the universe cooled, those atoms turned into every single thing we see in our world today. And now, scientists have spotted the type of molecule that formed the very first time two atoms combined.

Theories have predicted for decades that the first molecule that could form would be between the first two elements: hydrogen and helium. But the “helium hydride” molecule, as it’s known, had never been spotted before, Gizmodo explained. This led to some doubt as to whether this theory could even be true. But thanks to a modified Boeing 747 dubbed SOFIA, or Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, we have finally detected the elusive molecule in a far-off nebula called NGC 7027.

Now that it’s confirmed that the universe is capable of forming the helium hydride molecule naturally, this knowledge is helping astronomers better understand how the universe worked in the time just after the Big Bang. The research, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, has made sense of the “dawn of chemistry,” the authors state. Read more about this exciting find at Gizmodo. Shivani Ishwar.

Continue reading “Scientists detect the oldest type of molecule in the universe” »

Pig Brains Partly Revived By Scientists Hours After Animals Died : Shots — Health News The cells regained a startling amount of function, but the brains didn’t have activity linked with consciousness. Ethicists see challenges to assumptions about the irreversible nature of brain death.

Unusual Trajectory

The new research hasn’t yet been published, but it’s available on the preprint server ArXiv as of Monday. In it, Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb — the same dude who doubled down on the idea that ‘Oumuamua could be an alien spacecraft — suggests that a three-foot-wide interstellar meteor flew over Papa New Guinea’s Manus Island before crashing down.

Because of the meteor’s high speed and particular trajectory past Earth, Loeb and his student Amir Suraj suggest that it couldn’t have been bound in an orbit about the Sun. Rather, they argue, it might have come from somewhere beyond our solar system.

Continue reading “An Interstellar Rock Like ‘Oumuamua May Have Hit Earth In 2014” »

A new study suggests that 40 percent of insect species are in decline, a sobering finding that has jarred researchers worldwide.

“To me, it’s very simple. If a rogue nation or other entity shoots an ICBM, inter-continental ballistic missile, at us, we intercept it.” — #USArmy Maj. Jason Brewer, Colorado National Guard #CombatReadyForce