A Longer-living, Healthier Mouse That Could Hold Clues To Human Aging
Mice lacking the insulin receptor substrate-1 are more resistant to aging than normal mice. The research adds to a growing body of work showing the importance of insulin signaling pathways as an aging mechanism in mammals — and potentially humans.
Age Affects Motivation For Quitting Smoking
A new study shows that obstacles to smoking cessation and motives for quitting smoking vary with age. -more-
The biggest sex event on Earth
It’s probably not what you think. Every year, and shortly after a full moon, billions of corals across a third of a million square kilometers of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef enter in a frenzy of reproduction. Now, an international team of Australian and Israeli researchers has discovered the key to this moonlight romance. It is an ancient light-sensitive gene, known as a cryptochrome, which is present not only in corals, but in insects, fish and mammals — including humans. These genes are primitive light-sensing pigment mechanisms which predate the evolution of eyes — and are pretty sensitive to blue light. read story
Playground Politics: Lack Of Athletic Skill Often Means Loneliness And Peer Rejection
A new study looking at the connections between athletic skill and social acceptance among school children has found that kids place a great deal of value on athletic ability, and youngsters deemed unskilled by their peers often experience sadness, isolation and social rejection at school. -more-
A Bad Month for Human Robot Relations
Two recent stories show that we’ve still got a ways to go in making human robot interaction safe and effective. In an article titled, “Erratic fleshies sabotage, wreck innocent flying robot”, the Register reports on new air safety recommendations for the use of autonomous and remotely-piloted flying robots in US air space. The recommendations stem from last year’s crash of a Predator B robot, caused by a sequence of events that followed a software lock up on the remote control console. While the robot was destroyed, no humans were hurt in the Predator crash. The outcome was not so lucky in a more recent robotics-related incident in which an Oerlikon GDF-005 robotic anti-aircraft cannon “malfunctioned”, killing 9 people and wounding 14. It’s believe the incident was caused by either a mechanical or software problem. Interestingly, this weapon is a simple automated machine operated under the control of a human and not a fully autonomous weapon like the Samsung Techwin SGR-A1, which autonomously makes it’s own decisions about who to kill. So at least the ethical and legal ramifications of the accident should be no different than those of a conventional industrial or military accident.
Creating High-quality Paths for Motion Planning
Many algorithms have been proposed that create a path for a robot in an environment with obstacles. Most methods are aimed at finding a solution. However, for many applications, the path must be of a good quality as well. That is, a path should be short and should keep some amount of minimum clearance to the obstacles. Traveling along such a path reduces the chances of collisions due to the difficulty of measuring and controlling the precise position of the robot. This paper reports a new technique, called Partial shortcut, which decreases the path length. While current methods have difficulties in removing all redundant motions, the technique efficiently removes these motions by interpolating one degree of freedom at a time. Two algorithms are also studied that increase the clearance along paths. The first one is fast but can only deal with rigid, translating bodies. The second algorithm is slower but can handle a broader range of robots, including three-dimensional free-flying and articulated robots, which may reside in arbitrary high-dimensional configuration spaces. A big advantage of these algorithms is that clearance along paths can now be increased efficiently without using complex data structures and algorithms. Finally, we combine the two criteria and show that high-quality paths can be obtained for a broad range of robots.
Sea Cucumbers Fast Track Organ Regrowth By Healing Their Wounds
Sea cucumbers are the champions of organ regrowth because they direct their wound healing abilities towards restoring their organs. The discovery that Holothuria glaberrima uses similar cellular mechanisms during wound healing and organ regeneration gives us the opportunity to discover how to repair our own wounds and, perhaps eventually, how to regenerate body parts.
Geometric Motion Planning Analysis for Two Classes of Underactuated Mechanical Systems
In this paper we generate gaits for two types of underactuated mechanical systems: principally kinematic and purely mechanical systems. Our goal is to specify inputs in the form of gaits, that is, a sequence of controlled shape changes of a multi-bodied mechanical system that when executed would produce a desired change in the unactuated position or orientation variables of the entire mechanical system. In other words, we want to indirectly control the unactuated degrees of freedom of the mechanical system utilizing a controlled “internal” shape change. More precisely, in this paper we develop a gait evaluation tool which easily measures the change of position, computed in a body-attached coordinate frame, due to any closed curve in the shape space. This evaluation tool is simple enough that we can use it to generate gaits or to design curves that move the mechanical system along a desired direction. Finally, we verify that this gait analysis technique applies to two seemingly different classes of mechanical systems, purely mechanical and principally kinematic systems, and unify the gait generation problem for both classes.
Sea Cucumbers Fast Track Organ Regrowth By Healing Their Wounds
Sea cucumbers are the champions of organ regrowth because they direct their wound healing abilities towards restoring their organs. The discovery that Holothuria glaberrima uses similar cellular mechanisms during wound healing and organ regeneration gives us the opportunity to discover how to repair our own wounds and, perhaps eventually, how to regenerate body parts.