10 Amazing Animals that Use Camouflage 0

The animal kingdom is a wild, wacky place where animals have to be clever in order to survive. One of the most amazing techniques for survival is animal camouflage. Animals have the ability to mimic plants, ground cover, or even other animals in order to hide or hunt. The following is a list of some animals that are particularly gifted in the art of invisibility.

1. Chameleons

Contrary to popular belief, chameleons only change color when in imminent danger. Their everyday skin color, a light khaki, keeps them hidden from enemies during those not-so-dangerous times. Nearly half the world's chameleon species live in Madagascar, but they're also found in Africa, the Middle East, and southern Europe.

2. Leopards

Whether their coats are spo­tted (useful for hiding in sun-dappled areas in the African outback) or black (perfect for nighttime stalking or lurking in shadows), these elegant and deadly cats are born with fashionable camouflage. Rabbits, young buffalo, and monkeys don't stand a chance when a hidden leopard makes a surprise attack.

3. Polar Bears

Other bears and human poachers are the biggest threats to the majestic polar bear, but by blending into the blindingly white snow of the Arctic with equally white fur coats, some danger can be avoided. Only a polar bear's nose and foot pads are without fur.

4. Turtles

If you're a fish, you better look twice before resting near that big rock . . . it could be an snapping turtle. There are hundreds of species of turtles and tortoises that use camouflage to blindside their prey and hide from large predators like alligators. Sadly, camouflage can't protect turtles from the poacher's fishnet.

Sure, chameleons are well-known to change color and blend into surroundings, but some of the animals who use camouflage on the next few pages may surprise you.

5. Arctic Owls

Ah, the Arctic tundra: cold, barren, and totally white. Arctic owls have a coat of snow-white feathers to keep them warm and safe from predators, such as foxes and wolves.

6. Bark Bugs

For most bugs, birds are the bad guys. For bark bugs, which hang out on trees around the world, this is especially true. In order to hide in the middle of nature's birdhouses, bark bugs appear to be part of the tree itself.

7. Gaboon Vipers

In order to hide from their prey, gaboon vipers -- among the most venomous snakes on Earth -- make the most of their brownish-gray, mottled scales. These big snakes hide in the layer of dead leaves that carpets the African rain forest floors. They also like to snuggle into forest floor peat and sneak up on unsuspecting prey.

8. Leaf Butterflies

Complete with fake leaf stalk, fake leaf veins, and perfect dead-leaf coloring, leaf butterflies have the whole camouflage thing down pat. Birds pass them by without a second glance since these insects from southeast Asia look more like dead leaves than butterflies.

9. Dragon Lizards

Spiders, snakes, birds, and even other lizards all want a piece of the dragon lizard, so they have some of the most effective camouflage around. Not only do dragon lizards look nearly invisible when hanging out on a tree branch, they keep extraordinarily still, knowing that their predators react to the smallest movements. It doesn't make for an exciting life, but at least they live to tell about it.

10. Flower Mantises

Careful-- that flower you're thinking about smelling might have a flower mantis hiding inside. The flower mantis of western Africa uses colorful, pistil-and-stamen-like camouflage to trick smaller insects into smelling the roses, then snap -- lunch is served.

(Story Source:Editors of Publications International, Ltd.)

10 Snowiest Places on Earth 0

Mt. Washington, New Hampshire 21.75 feet (6.6 meters)

Mt. Washington may be best known for its powerful winds, but it makes the snow list as well. In fact, it's one of the snowiest spots in the eastern United States.

Although the summit gets hit with a lot of snow, the snow doesn't stick around for long, according to meteorologists at the Mt. Washington Observatory, a non-profit science center on the peak. The snow gets blown off the mountain into the surrounding ravines. In some years, up to 80 feet (24 meters) piles up in nearby Tuckerman Ravine. It's likely the folks in the popular ski area don't mind the extra white stuff.

Chamonix, France 31.4 feet (9.6  meters)

Credit: Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.

In Europe, this French alpine town wins the snow contest. And although it's a popular ski destination — it served as the host of the world's first winter Olympics in 1924 — serious business goes on in the mountains, too. In this photo, pararescuemen, members of a special operations unit from the 56th Rescue Squadron, an arm of the U.S. Air Force stationed in Lakenheath, England, practice rescue techniques near Mont Blanc above Chamonix

 Nagano, Japan 36 feet (11 meters)

This mountainous area, just tens of miles from central Japan's northern Pacific coastline is also a popular ski resort. (Are you sensing a theme?)

In addition to getting loads of snow, the area is also home to some pretty tough monkeys. After spending time in the snow, these Japanese macaques warm up by taking a dip in hot springs that dot the area.

Kirkwood Mountain, California 39.4 feet (12 meters)

Credit: Courtesy of Kirkwood Mountain Resort.

Sunny California may seem like an unlikely record-holder for average annual snowfall, but this mountain region just south of Lake Tahoe gets slammed every year. Along the western edge of the Sierras, Kirkwood is the first peak hit with any moisture coming off the Pacific. The surrounding mountains and valleys help funnel these winter storms to the area and hold them longer.

Alyeska, Alaska 42.75 feet (13 meters)

Credit: Ken Graham Photography.

Just outside Anchorage, Alyeska stands near a long ocean inlet that stretches into Alaska's southern shoreline. The resort area is hemmed in on all sides — Chugach State Park surrounds the town, and the water runs along its southern edge. But if you manage to make it here, the skiing is said to be sublime.

Alta Ski Area, Utah 43.5 feet (13.3 meters)

The Great Salt Lake is one of the culprits behind the annual pile of snow that is dumped on this region in the Little Cottonwood Canyon, high above Salt Lake City in the Wasatch Mountains. Here, skiers rule the mountain — no snowboarders allowed on the slopes.

Mt. Fidelity, Glacier National Park, BC, Canada 48.25 feet (15 meters)

Credit: Parks Canada.

Many mountainous spots in Canada dominated this list, but as far as we can tell, this place is the big winner.  This mountain is one of the few inland spots to make the list that doesn't have a large, watery neighbor. Big, open bodies of water that don't freeze over in cold weather are one of the main factors behind the massive snowfalls.

Niseko, Japan 49.5 feet (15 meters)

Credit: David McKelvey.

Legend has it that skiing was brought to Japan only 100 years ago. According to the story, a major in the Austrian army gave the first ski lesson to locals in January, 1911. The sport has more than caught on in the intervening century, and this ski town, on Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, is a destination for skiers from all over the world. 

Paradise Ranger Station, Mt. Rainier, Washington 56.3 feet (17 meters)

According to some data, this mountain pass in the Pacific Northwest gets more snow annually than any other spot on Earth. And no pricey lift-tickets are required to see this snowed-in spot. Located inside Mount Rainier National Park, the annual snow spectacle is open to all.

(Courtesy: Our Amazing Planet )

Robotic Bug Gets Wings, Sheds Light On Evolution of Flight 0

Adding wings to a robotic bug improved running performance and stability. However, the boost may not have been good enough for flight. (Credit: Image by Kevin Peterson, UC Berkeley Biomimetic Millisystems Lab, All rights reserved.)

When engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, outfitted a six-legged robotic bug with wings in an effort to improve its mobility, they unexpectedly shed some light on the evolution of flight.

Even though the wings significantly improved the running performance of the 10-centimeter-long robot -- called DASH, short for Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod -- they found that the extra boost would not have generated enough speed to launch the critter from the ground. The wing flapping also enhanced the aerial performance of the robot, consistent with the hypothesis that flight originated in gliding tree-dwellers.
The research team, led by Ron Fearing, professor of electrical engineering and head of the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab at UC Berkeley, reports its conclusions online on Oct. 18, in the peer-reviewed journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics.
Using robot models could play a useful role in studying the origins of flight, particularly since fossil evidence is so limited, the researchers noted.
First unveiled by Fearing and graduate student Paul Birkmeyer in 2009, DASH is a lightweight, speedy robot made of inexpensive, off-the-shelf materials, including compliant fiber board with legs driven by a battery-powered motor. Its small size makes it a candidate for deployment in areas too cramped or dangerous for humans to enter, such as collapsed buildings.
A robot gets its wings
But compared with its biological inspiration, the cockroach, DASH had certain limitations as to where it could scamper. Remaining stable while going over obstacles is fairly tricky for small robots, so the researchers affixed DASH with lateral and tail wings borrowed from a store-bought toy to see if that would help.
"Our overall goal is to give our robots the same all-terrain capabilities that other animals have," said Fearing. "In the real world, there will be situations where flying is a better option than crawling, and other places where flying won't work, such as in confined or crowded spaces. We needed a hybrid running-and-flying robot."
The researchers ran tests on four different configurations of the robotic roach, now called DASH+Wings. The test robots included one with a tail only and another that just had the wing's frames, to determine how the wings impacted locomotion.
With its motorized flapping wings, DASH+Wings' running speed nearly doubled, going from from 0.68 meters per second with legs alone to 1.29 meters per second. The robot could also take on steeper hills, going from an incline angle of 5.6 degrees to 16.9 degrees.
"With wings, we saw improvements in performance almost immediately," said study lead author Kevin Peterson, a Ph.D. student in Fearing's lab. "Not only did the wings make the robot faster and better at steeper inclines, it could now keep itself upright when descending. The wingless version of DASH could survive falls from eight stories tall, but it would sometimes land upside down, and where it landed was partly guided by luck."
The flapping wings improved the lift-drag ratio, helping DASH+Wings land on its feet instead of just plummeting uncontrolled. Once it hit the ground, the robot was able to continue on its way. Wind tunnel experiments showed that it is aerodynamically capable of gliding at an angle up to 24.7 degrees.
Tree-dwellers vs. ground-runners
The engineering team's work caught the attention of animal flight expert Robert Dudley, a UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology, who noted that the most dominant theories on flight evolution have been primarily derived from scant fossil records and theoretical modeling.
He referenced previous computer models suggesting that ground-dwellers, given the right conditions, would need only to triple their running speed in order to build up enough thrust for takeoff. The fact that DASH+Wings could maximally muster a doubling of its running speed suggests that wings do not provide enough of a boost to launch an animal from the ground. This finding is consistent with the theory that flight arose from animals that glided downwards from some height.
"The fossil evidence we do have suggests that the precursors to early birds had long feathers on all four limbs, and a long tail similarly endowed with a lot of feathers, which would mechanically be more beneficial for tree-dwelling gliders than for runners on the ground," said Dudley.
Dudley said that the winged version of DASH is not a perfect model for proto-birds -- it has six legs instead of two, and its wings use a sheet of plastic rather than feathers -- and thus cannot provide a slam-dunk answer to the question of how flight evolved.
"What the experiments did do was to demonstrate the feasibility of using robot models to test hypotheses of flight origins," he said. "It's the proof of concept that we can actually learn something useful about biological performance through systematic testing of a physical model."
Among other robotic insects being tested in the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab is a winged, bipedal robot called BOLT (Bipedal Ornithopter for Locomotion Transitioning) that more closely resembles the size and aerodynamics of precursors to flying birds and insects.
"It's still notable that adding wings to DASH resulted in marked improvements in its ability to get around," said Fearing. "It shows that flapping wings may provide some advantages evolutionarily, even if it doesn't enable flight."
The National Science Foundation's Center of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory helped support this research.
(University of California - Berkeley)

Goats Could Increase the Risk of a Rare Lung Cancer, Researchers Find 0

Exposure to goats could increase the risk of a certain type of lung cancer, according to French researchers.

The study, presented at the European Respiratory Society's Annual Congress in Amsterdam, has linked a professional exposure to goats with a distinct subset of lung cancer, known as pneumonic-type lung adenocarcinoma (P-ADC).
This form of lung cancer has a weak association with tobacco smoking when compared with other types of the disease. In attempting to identify other triggers that may cause the disease, scientists have previously noticed similarities between P-ADC and a viral infection which causes growths in the lungs of sheep. Given these similarities, the researchers have investigated whether a viral agent found in sheep and goats could be easily transferred to people who work with the animals, leading to a partiality for P-ADC.
The current epidemiologic study involved 44 patients with P-ADC and 132 controls without the disease. All participants were given a questionnaire assessing a number of risk factors including their smoking status, their personal history of cancer and their exposure to goats.
The results showed that people who had experienced a professional exposure to goats during their lifetime were five times more likely to get P-ADC compared with other types of lung cancer.
The findings also showed that P-ADC was significantly associated with females, and people who had never smoked or had any personal history of cancer.
Dr Nicolas Girard, from the Louis Pradel Hospital, Hospices Civils de Lyon, said: "Scientists have noticed similarities between P-ADC and a contagious viral infection in sheep before. This led us to explore the possibility that professional exposure to cattle could make humans more susceptible to P-ADC. These findings demonstrate that exposure to goats could be a risk factor for this type of lung cancer, however further studies are needed to assess other potential risk factors for the disease."
via ScienceDaily

Hot Rocks Could Help Trigger Earthquakes 0

The heat from rocks scraping against each other could be a major cause of faults weakening in the beginning stages of earthquakes, scientists have found.
When rocks grind against each other, they generate extreme temperatures at scattered microscopic bumps, called asperities, where they make contact. This process is similar to producing heat by rubbing your hands together, but on an extreme scale.
At major faults such as the San Andreas in California, researchers think flashes of heat from rocks shearing past each other melts the rock. This makes the rocks slippery at those microscopic contact points, lowering the friction between them enough to trigger a significant amount of stress and setting the stage for an earthquake.
To learn more about this flash heating, scientists rubbed together different types of rocks commonly found in faults, such as quartzite, granite and gabbro. They simulated earthquake speeds of close to 1.6 feet per second (0.5 meters per second). The bumps, or asperities, each had a surface area of less than 10 microns wide, or about a tenth of the diameter of a human hair.
The researchers found that intense flash heating could heat asperities dramatically, perhaps up to 3,270 degrees Fahrenheit (1,800 degrees Celsius), enough to melt most rock types associated with earthquake faults. Remarkably, this intense heat was confined to the hot spots — the temperature of the surrounding rock remained largely unaffected. Still, it could cause friction between rocks to drop significantly across distances of just 1.7 inches (4.5 centimeters).
These findings hint that flash heating may be a major contributor to the weakening of faults during both small earthquakes and the early stages of large quakes.
"These findings give us a much clearer picture of what might be happening at faults during an earthquake, and has implications on how earthquake ruptures travel within the earth," researcher David Goldsby, a geophysicist at Brown University, told OurAmazingPlanet.
Although this current work slid bare rock surfaces past each other, future research could see what heating might occur when surfaces covered with ground-up rock are rubbed against each other for a potentially even more realistic scenario, Goldsby said.
Goldsby and his colleague Terry Tullis detail their findings in tomorrow's (Oct. 14) issue of the journal Science.

(Via OurAmazingPlanet )

Giant Amoebas Discovered in Deepest Ocean Trench 0

Gigantic amoebas have been found in the Mariana Trench, the deepest region on Earth.

National Geographic Society Remote Imaging engineers Eric Berkenpas (bottom) and Graham Wilhelm prepare to deploy Dropcam. CREDIT: National Geographic Society Remote Imaging Dropcam
During a July 2011 voyage to the Pacific Ocean chasm, researchers with Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and National Geographic engineers deployed untethered landers, called dropcams, equipped with digital video and lights to explore the largely mysterious region of the deep sea.
The team documented the deepest known existence of xenophyophores, single-celled animals exclusively found in deep-sea environments. Xenophyophores are noteworthy for their size, with individual cells often exceeding 4 inches (10 centimeters), their extreme abundance on the seafloor and their role as hosts for a variety of organisms.
Extreme environment, extreme creature
The researchers spotted the life forms at depths up to 6.6 miles (10,641 meters) within the Sirena Deep of the Mariana Trench. The previous depth record for xenophyophores was approximately 4.7 miles (7,500 m) in the New Hebrides Trench, although sightings in the deepest portion of the Mariana Trench have been reported. [Infographic: Tallest Mountain to Deepest Ocean Trench]
Scientists say xenophyophores are the largest individual cells in existence. Recent studies indicate that by trapping particles from the water, xenophyophores can concentrate high levels of lead, uranium and mercury and are thus likely resistant to large doses of heavy metals. They also are well suited to a life of darkness, low temperature and high pressure in the deep sea.
"The identification of these gigantic cells in one of the deepest marine environments on the planet opens up a whole new habitat for further study of biodiversity, biotechnological potential and extreme environment adaptation," said Doug Bartlett, the Scripps marine microbiologist who organized the expedition.
Tip of the iceberg
The xenophyophores are just the tip of the deep-sea ecosystem iceberg. The expedition also found the deepest jellyfish observed to date, as well as other mysterious animals.
"As one of very few taxa found exclusively in the deep sea, the xenophyophores are emblematic of what the deep sea offers. They are fascinating giants that are highly adapted to extreme conditions but at the same time are very fragile and poorly studied," Levin said. "These and many other structurally important organisms in the deep sea need our stewardship as human activities move to deeper waters."
The dropcams used to observe the creatures contained an HD camera and lighting inside a glass bubble that can withstand the extreme pressures encountered at these depths.
"Seafloor animals are lured to the camera with bait, a technique first developed by Scripps professor John Isaacs in the 1960s," said Kevin Hardy, a Scripps ocean engineer and cruise participant. Hardy advanced the ultra-deep glass sphere design used on 'dropcams' more than a decade ago. "Scripps researchers hope to one day capture and return novel living animals to the laboratory for study in high-pressure aquariums that replicate the trench environment."

NASA's Spitzer Detects Comet Storm in Nearby Solar System 0

This artist's conception illustrates a storm of comets around a star near our own, called Eta Corvi. Evidence for this barrage comes from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, whose infrared detectors picked up indications that one or more comets was recently torn to shreds after colliding with a rocky body. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected signs of icy bodies raining down in an alien solar system. The downpour resembles our own solar system several billion years ago during a period known as the "Late Heavy Bombardment," which may have brought water and other life-forming ingredients to Earth.
During this epoch, comets and other frosty objects that were flung from the outer solar system pummeled the inner planets. The barrage scarred our moon and produced large amounts of dust.
Now Spitzer has spotted a band of dust around a nearby bright star in the northern sky called Eta Corvi that strongly matches the contents of an obliterated giant comet. This dust is located close enough to Eta Corvi that Earth-like worlds could exist, suggesting a collision took place between a planet and one or more comets. The Eta Corvi system is approximately one billion years old, which researchers think is about the right age for such a hailstorm.
"We believe we have direct evidence for an ongoing Late Heavy Bombardment in the nearby star system Eta Corvi, occurring about the same time as in our solar system," said Carey Lisse, senior research scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., and lead author of a paper detailing the findings. The findings will be published in the Astrophysical Journal. Lisse presented the results at the Signposts of Planets meeting at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., on Oct. 19.
Astronomers used Spitzer's infrared detectors to analyze the light coming from the dust around Eta Corvi. Certain chemical fingerprints were observed, including water ice, organics and rock, which indicate a giant comet source.
The light signature emitted by the dust around Eta Corvi also resembles the Almahata Sitta meteorite, which fell to Earth in fragments across Sudan in 2008. The similarities between the meteorite and the object obliterated in Eta Corvi imply a common birthplace in their respective solar systems.
A second, more massive ring of colder dust located at the far edge of the Eta Corvi system seems like the proper environment for a reservoir of cometary bodies. This bright ring, discovered in 2005, looms at about 150 times the distance from Eta Corvi as Earth is from the sun. Our solar system has a similar region, known as the Kuiper Belt, where icy and rocky leftovers from planet formation linger. The new Spitzer data suggest that the Almahata Sitta meteorite may have originated in our own Kuiper Belt.
The Kuiper Belt was home to a vastly greater number of these frozen bodies, collectively dubbed Kuiper Belt objects. About 4 billion years ago, some 600 million years after our solar system formed, scientists think the Kuiper Belt was disturbed by a migration of the gas-giant planets Jupiter and Saturn. This jarring shift in the solar system's gravitational balance scattered the icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt, flinging the vast majority into interstellar space and producing cold dust in the belt. Some Kuiper Belt objects, however, were set on paths that crossed the orbits of the inner planets.
The resulting bombardment of comets lasted until 3.8 billion years ago. After comets impacted the side of the moon that faces Earth, magma seeped out of the lunar crust, eventually cooling into dark "seas," or maria. When viewed against the lighter surrounding areas of the lunar surface, those seas form the distinctive "Man in the Moon" visage. Comets also struck Earth or incinerated in the atmosphere, and are thought to have deposited water and carbon on our planet. This period of impacts might have helped life form by delivering its crucial ingredients.
"We think the Eta Corvi system should be studied in detail to learn more about the rain of impacting comets and other objects that may have started life on our own planet," Lisse said.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
(NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

Nearby Planet-Forming Disk Holds Water for Thousands of Oceans 0

For the first time, astronomers have detected around a burgeoning solar system a sprawling cloud of water vapor that's cold enough to form comets, which could eventually deliver oceans to dry planets.

An illustration depicting the sprawling cloud of cold water vapor that astronomers have detected around the burgeoning solar system at the nearby star TW Hydrae. The cold water vapor could could eventually deliver oceans to dry planets that are forming in the system. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (SSC/Caltech)

Water is an essential ingredient for life. Scientists have found thousands of Earth-oceans' worth of it within the planet-forming disk surrounding the star TW Hydrae. TW Hydrae is 176 light years away in the constellation Hydra and is the closest solar-system-to-be.
University of Michigan astronomy professor Ted Bergin is a co-author of a paper on the findings published in the Oct. 21 edition of Science.
The researchers used the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far-Infrared (HIFI) on the orbiting Hershel Space Observatory to detect the chemical signature of water.
"This tells us that the key materials that life needs are present in a system before planets are born," said Bergin, a HIFI co-investigator. "We expected this to be the case, but now we know it is because have directly detected it. We can see it."
Scientists had previously found warm water vapor in planet-forming disks close to the central star. But until now, evidence for vast quantities of water extending into the cooler, far reaches of disks where comets and giant planets take shape had not emerged. The more water available in disks for icy comets to form, the greater the chances that large amounts will eventually reach new planets through impacts.
"The detection of water sticking to dust grains throughout the planet-forming disk would be similar to events in our own solar system's evolution, where over millions of years, these dust grains would then coalesce to form comets. These would be a prime delivery mechanism for water on planetary bodies," said principal investigator Michiel Hogerheijde of Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Other recent findings from HIFI support the theory that comets delivered a significant portion of Earth's oceans. Researchers found that the ice on a comet called Hartley 2 has the same chemical composition as our oceans.
HIFI is helping astronomers gain a better understanding of how water comes to terrestrial planets -- Earth and beyond. If TW Hydrae and its icy disk are representative of many other young star systems, as researchers think they are, then the process for creating planets around numerous stars with abundant water throughout the universe appears to be in place, NASA officials say.

University of Michigan.

Robot Builds Itself With Foam 0

Foambot (Image: Modular Robotics Laboratory)

Combine off-the-shelf insulation foam and modular robot components and you get a self-assembling robot that could be fit to a variety of tasks.
The Modular Robotics Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, in a project led by Shai Revzen, has created a robot that can be assembled from foam that hardens and pieces that allow the robot to move. The “foambot” looks ungainly, and it is. But once you have a shape -- and a task -- in mind, the foam sprayer can lay down a body plan that fits.
For example, lining up a bunch of the actuators (the modular robot parts) can create a snake-like bot that can move into small, narrow spaces, while arranging them in another pattern allows for a more conventional four-legged arrangement.
A key advantage of this kind of construction is that you don’t need to know what your robot has to do beforehand. Robots today are, for the most part, designed with very specific tasks in mind. Think of a Roomba –- it is designed solely to vacuum floors. But if one is sending a robot someplace where it isn’t clear what you need, then it helps to be able to decide on the task and build on the spot.
The robot’s parts are CKBot modules, which can be taken apart and reassemble themselves, because the components can recognize where they are in relation to each other. The foam is commercially available insulation, and it turns out such foams are a great material. Revzen noted in an email that they expand to 30 times their initial size, and are actually quite strong. That means that the apparatus building a robot can be smaller than what it is building.
This has applications in areas such as space exploration, where building a robot that can crawl, slither or climb allows for exploring an unknown landscape, or rescue operations, where the situation is unknown and it isn’t clear what you need a robot to do (crawl through small spaces or clamber over rubble, or both).

Team Tokai wins 2011 World Solar Challenge 0

Team Tokai has just reached the finish line in Adelaide, Australia, to become the winner of the 2011 World Solar Challenge. The victory makes it back-to-back wins for the Japanese team which took out the previous event in 2009.

The Tokai University Team has taken out the 2011 World Solar Challenge ( All Photos: Gizmag.com)
All of the top three places are set to match the 2009 results when Nuon Solar Team from the Netherlands finished in second place, followed by the University of Michigan in third.
The Nuon Solar Car Team was hot on the heels of the Tokai vehicle throughout the final day this year, with Nuna6 running just 30 minutes behind - a very tight margin after four days on the road. Nuon is now expected to arrive at the finish line at around 10am tomorrow after running out of energy at Angle Vale, just north of Adelaide.

After starting in fifth position in Darwin, the Tokai team took the lead on the first day of the race and was never headed throughout the grueling 1800-odd mile journey, which this year posed extra challenges in the form of bushfires and road closures.
The Tokai Challenger 2 is a three-wheeler featuring carbon monocoque construction that harnesses solar energy using a six meter square array of silicon solar cells with a conversion efficiency of 22 percent. The vehicle has a claimed top speed of 160 km/h (99 mph). Energy capacity of the 21 kg (46.2 lb) lithium-ion battery is 5 kWh - which by way of comparison, is roughly the same amount of energy it takes to run an electric clothes dryer for one hour.

In 2009, Team Tokai completed the race in 29 hours and forty-nine minutes, averaging 100.54 km/h (62.47 mph). The average time set this year is expected to be very similar - we'll confirm the exact figure when official results are in. Either way, it's a remarkable achievement in a vehicle powered only by the Sun's rays.
The Tokai University vehicle reached the ceremonial finish line at approximately 2pm local time. The victory was a particularly emotional one for the Japanese team who were seeking to highlight the potential for solar power and the world-leading status of Japan's technologies in the aftermath of the Fukishima nuclear disaster.
We'll keep you posted on the official results as the remaining teams complete the Solar Challenge in coming days. In the meantime, Tokai University is set to celebrate its well earned win - check out the gallery for more photos.

Climate Change Could Shrink Animals 0

Climate change could result in a planet full of cold-blooded runts.

 A whale shark feasts on plankton. (Wikimedia Commons)

In a warming world, copepods, tiny crustaceans that make up the bulk of the ocean's animal plankton, could end up stunted. Copepods cope with warmer temperatures by maturing faster, but they don't grow as fast as they mature, so they end up runts.
The same phenomenon, called the “temperature-size rule,” affects most cold-blooded animals, so as the planet heats up, many animals' sizes may go down.
Researchers at the University of London examined the case of the incredible shrinking organisms in the journal The American Naturalist.
“We’ve shown that growth and development increase at different rates as temperatures warm. The consequences are that at warmer temperatures a species grows faster but matures even faster still, resulting in them achieving a smaller adult size,” said lead author Andrew Hirst in a press release.
Since copepods are food for marine animals, from fish to whales, what happens developmentally to the shrimp-y crustaceans could affect the entire ocean's food web.
“Decoupling of these rates could have important consequences for individual species and ecosystems,” Hirst added.

Black Death genome reconstructed 0

(Photo: Museum of London)

It's hard to comprehend the impact of the Black Death. The "Great Pestilence" is believed to have originated somewhere in Northern Asia in the 1330s before hitting Europe in 1347. It killed an estimated 75 million people worldwide - that's around 25 per cent of all humans in existence at the time. Now in an effort to better understand modern infectious diseases, scientist have sequenced the entire genome of the Black Death.
The research is based on analysis of skeletal remains from the East Smithfield "plague pits" in London using a previously developed methodology for extracting degraded DNA fragments of the bacteria that caused the plague - Yersinia pestis.

(LEFT IMAGE: Hendrik Poinar, associate professor and director of the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre)

The international team, led by researchers from McMaster University and the University of Tubingen, say this is the first time a reconstructed genome of any ancient pathogen has been drafted.
So why is this relevant in the 21st Century?
Descendants of the specific variant of the Yersinia pestis found in the 14th Century remain exist today, killing an estimated 2,000 people a year. By drafting the reconstruction of the genome scientist are able to see changes in the pathogen's evolution - which in this case have been minor - and gain a better understanding of such deadly infections.
"The genomic data show that this bacterial strain, or variant, is the ancestor of all modern plagues we have today worldwide," says Hendrik Poinar, associate professor and director of the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre. "Every outbreak across the globe today stems from a descendant of the medieval plague. With a better understanding of the evolution of this deadly pathogen, we are entering a new era of research into infectious disease."
There are still questions that remain unanswered about why the Black Death was so devastating however.
"We found that in 660 years of evolution as a human pathogen, there have been relatively few changes in the genome of the ancient organism, but those changes, however small, may or may not account for the noted increased virulence of the bug that ravaged Europe," says Poinar. "The next step is to determine why this was so deadly."

 Close-up of teeth from a plague victim (Photo: Museum of London)

In other words, the research may have knocked out one of the main contenders in establishing why the Black Death had such a deadly impact. The Paper states that because the Black Death may not have been due to bacterial phenotype, "factors other than microbial genetics, such as environment, vector dynamics and host susceptibility, should be at the forefront of epidemiological discussions regarding emerging Y. pestis infections."
It has also been shown that the variation of Yersinia pestis that caused the medieval plague originated sometime around the 12th Century, which means that it was not the cause of the Justinian plague that struck the Byzantine Empire around 540 CE was not caused by the same pathogen as once thought.
"Using the same methodology, it should now be possible to study the genomes of all sorts of historic pathogens," says Johannes Krause of the University of Tubingen Krause. "This will provide us with direct insights into the evolution of human pathogens and historical pandemics."
The research is published online in the scientific journal Nature

Source: McMaster University