Good simple idea. And then executed well – for nighttime at least. Crosswalk lights up when in use giving drivers a more visible clue to stop.
Related: Ministry of Silly Walks – Kindergarten Students Pedel Their Own Bus to School – Passion for Mechanical Engineering Nurtured as a Child – Bird Feeder That Automatically Takes Photos When Birds Feed – Encouraging Curiosity in Kids
Another inspirational kid that shows that the potential for human good is much greater than the talking heads and politicians that litter the TV screen so often.
In the video Kelvin says, “That is my aim: to Promote Innovation in Seira Leone, among young people.” See another video as Kelvin explains his homemade battery.
Support these young engineers in Sierra Leone via innovate Salone.
Related: Inspirational Engineer Build Windmill Using Trash – Supporting the Natural Curiosity of Kids – What Kids can Learn If Given a Chance – I was Interviewed About Encouraging Kids to Pursue Engineering
Arduino is a very cool open source programable hardware engineering initiative. It is great for kids and adults who like to learn and create electronic devices. The Arduino Starter Kit is a great education gift for those interested in such things.
The video explains how to build a basic circuit with the Arduino board, and how to use each of the basic components such as LEDs, switches, and resistors. See more videos on related topics. Massimo Banzi, the co-creator and CEO of Arduino, and seen in the videos, also has a book: Getting Started with Arduino.
Related: Schematics of Electronic Circuits – EZ-Builder Robot Control Software
Deepika Kurup, a 14-year-old New York student, won the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge for her invention of a solar-powered water jug that changes dirty water into purified drinking water. She won the top prize of $25,000.
During “the 5 minutes of my presentation 15 children have died from lack of clean drinking water.”
I am thankful we have kids like this to create solutions for us that will make the world a better place. We rely on hundreds of thousands of such people to use science and engineering methods to benefit society.
Related: Strawjet: Invention of the Year – Cheap Drinking Water From Seawater – Water and Electricity for All – Thanksgiving, Appropriately (power of capitalism and people to provide long term increases in standards of living)
Quite a fun video. Frans de Waal shows us a task he gave Capuchin monkeys to see if they responded to a sense of fairness. See the rest of the talk.
Frans de Waal is a Dutch primatologist and ethologist. He is the Charles Howard Candler professor of Primate Behavior in the Emory University psychology department in Atlanta, Georgia. His research centers on primate social behavior, including conflict resolution, cooperation, inequity aversion, and food-sharing.
Related: Rats Show Empathy-driven Behavior – Capuchin Monkeys Using Stone Tools – Dolphin Delivers Deviously for Rewards – overpaid executives harm companies – Crow Using a Sequence of Three Tools
Toyota continues to develop their partner robot initiative. Demographics in Japan make a compelling case for the need to provide solutions to those who need assistance to support independent living.
The aim is to contribute to the maintenance and improvement of quality of life.
In cooperation of the Yokohama Rehabilitation Center, Toyota conducted experiments for disabled people, using HSR in their homes, in 2011. Toyota has been integrating the feedback to the design, based on actual user experience.
The Human Support Robot (HSR) can pick up something on and bring it to the person. Also it can do small tasks such as opening the curtains.
Controlling the robot can be done easily, by using the voice recognition function or using a tablet control. In addition, Toyota is designing it to directly assist the person, helping them get into and out of a bathtub, for example.
They are also developing new features for remote viewing and remote operation (to provide off site help to make the robot more useful). They are working with health care professionals, including nurses, and research institutions aimed at practical use for such a robot.
Toyota, along with several other Japanese companies, continue to invest a great deal to create personal care robots.
Related: Toyota Partner Robots – Toyota Develops Thought-controlled Wheelchair – Honda’s Robolegs Help People Walk – Toyota Winglet, Personal Transportation
A new study of giant viruses supports the idea that viruses are ancient living organisms and not inanimate molecular remnants. The study may reshape the universal family tree, adding a fourth major branch to the three that most scientists agree represent the fundamental domains of life. But I am not sure that makes sense. The reason given for viruses not being “life” is that they cannot reproduce themselves – they hijack living cells to reproduce. The research in the past history of viruses as they evolved into current viruses is interesting but I don’t see the reason to classify current viruses as life.
The researchers used a relatively new method to peer into the distant past. Rather than comparing genetic sequences, which are unstable and change rapidly over time, they looked for evidence of past events in the three-dimensional, structural domains of proteins. These structural motifs, called folds, are relatively stable molecular fossils that Рlike the fossils of human or animal bones Рoffer clues to ancient evolutionary events, said University of Illinois crop sciences and Institute for Genomic Biology professor Gustavo Caetano-Anoll̩s, who led the analysis.
“Just like paleontologists, we look at the parts of the system and how they change over time,” Caetano-Anollés said. Some protein folds appear only in one group or in a subset of organisms, he said, while others are common to all organisms studied so far.
“We make a very basic assumption that structures that appear more often and in more groups are the most ancient structures,” he said.
Most efforts to document the relatedness of all living things have left viruses out of the equation, Caetano-Anollés said.
“We’ve always been looking at the Last Universal Common Ancestor by comparing cells,” he said. “We never added viruses. So we put viruses in the mix to see where these viruses came from.”
The researchers conducted a census of all the protein folds occurring in more than 1,000 organisms representing bacteria, viruses, the microbes known as archaea, and all other living things. The researchers included giant viruses because these viruses are large and complex, with genomes that rival Рand in some cases exceed Рthe genetic endowments of the simplest bacteria, Caetano-Anoll̩s said.
Related: Plants, Unikonts, Excavates and SARs – Bacteriophages: The Most Common Life-Like Form on Earth – 8 Percent of the Human Genome is Old Virus Genes – Microbes Retroviruses
Open access paper: Giant Viruses Coexisted With the Cellular Ancestors and Represent a Distinct Supergroup Along With Superkingdoms Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya
Very clever technique. Quite an effective strategy to take a byproduct of people (bread) and use it to lure in your prey. I posted another bird fishing using bait webcast previously: that post includes links to more such videos.
Related: Orangutan Attempts to Hunt Fish with Spear – Dolphins Using Tools to Hunt – Intelligent Dolphin Strategy for Hunting Fish
230-Million-Year-Old Mite Found in Amber by Charles Choi
“Amber is an extremely valuable tool for paleontologists because it preserves specimens with microscopic fidelity, allowing uniquely accurate estimates of the amount of evolutionary change over millions of years,” Grimaldi said.
Scientists have now revealed arthropods trapped in 230-million-year-old amber from northeastern Italy, which appears to hold the most abundant outcrops of Triassic amber in the world. These are the oldest amber-trapped arthropods by about 100 million years, and are the first arthropods to be found in amber from the Triassic.
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These mites are unexpectedly similar to their closest relatives, modern gall mites, creatures that feed on plants and cause abnormal growths known as galls to form around them.
“You would think that by going back to the Triassic you’d find a transitional form of gall mite, but no,” Grimaldi said. “Even 230 million years ago, all of the distinguishing features of this family were there — a long, segmented body; only two pairs of legs instead of the usual four found in mites; unique feather claws.”
These discoveries are very cool. The process of the discovery is often fairly tedious.
Related: Marine Plankton From 100 Million Years Ago Found in Amber – Dino-Era Feathers Found Encased in Amber – Amber Pieces Containing Remains from Dinosaurs and Birds Show Feather Evolution
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldren land on the moon: July 20, 1969. As Neil Armstrong took humanity’s first step onto the Moon he said:
Related: Experiment, dropping a hammer and feather on the Moon – Planetary scientist Jennifer Heldmann discusses the Moon – Apply to be an Astronaut – One Giant Leap For Mankind