When an infected tsetse fly bites humans or other mammals to feed on their blood, microscopic parasites (African trypanosomes) in the fly's saliva are transferred. The unfortunate recipient of the bite, once infected, often faces severe health consequences, even death.
Unfortunately, current public health approaches to control African sleeping sickness are limited. Diagnosis and treatment are especially difficult in remote areas of sub-Saharan Africa where the disease is pronounced. To complicate matters further, the trypanosomes have evolved so that they can evade their victim's immune response and sustain an infection.
But a promising disease control strategy being developed by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health might overcome these challenges. It involves blocking the transmission of parasites at the point of entry: the bite site.
Until recently, examining molecular and biochemical metacyclic cells (the infectious form of the parasite that is deposited at the bite site) has been hampered by the relatively small number of parasites present in saliva and by the presence of various non-infectious parasite developmental forms in the fly's salivary glands.
In a new study published in the journal PNAS, a team of researchers led by Yale School of Public Health Professor Serap Aksoy describe how they performed single-cell RNA sequencing of individual parasite cells (T. brucei brucei) from infected tsetse salivary glands. The cells were sorted into distinct developmental forms, the data from which provides unique and high-resolution insights into the molecular processes that give rise to infective metacyclic parasites transmitted at the host bite site. The study also identified a new family of surface proteins (known as Fam10), which are uniquely associated with the infectious metacyclic parasites. Vaccination of mice with one member of this family (SGM1.7) significantly reduced parasitemia early during the infection process. This indicates that Fam10 proteins are promising vaccine candidates for blocking transmission of the parasite at the bite site.
This has never been done before and it marks an important step toward curbing the severe threat posed by the tsetse fly and its parasites.
"The ability of African trypanosomiases parasites to bypass the mammalian immune responses by changing their surface coat proteins has hampered development of vaccines. Our discovery has opened up a new chapter into these investigations," said Aksoy, a member of the Yale School of Public Health's Department of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases).
Future studies will test the efficacy of multivalent protein vaccines that target the trypanosome Fam10 protein family to enhance transmission blocking. The Fam10 proteins are also found on the surface of other disease-causing African trypanosomes, indicating their potential use for combatting a plethora of devastating tsetse-transmitted infections.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, West African trypanosomiasis, which is more widespread than a second form of the disease known as East African trypanosomiasis, results in 7,000 to10,000 new human cases each year, though many cases are not recognized or reported and the actual number of cases is likely far higher.
The disease's toll on domesticated animals, meanwhile, is rampant throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
More information: Aurélien Vigneron et al, Single-cell RNA sequencing of Trypanosoma brucei from tsetse salivary glands unveils metacyclogenesis and identifies potential transmission blocking antigens, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2020). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1914423117
Provided by Yale School of Public Health
Citation: A tsetse fly's bite can be fatal: New research takes a step toward ending that (2020, January 31) retrieved 31 January 2020 from https://phys.org/news/2020-01-tsetse-fatal.html
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A new robotic hand has a surprisingly humanlike way to cool off: it can sweat. This isn't a traditional all-metal construction bot, in which case oozing water would probably mean something’s going wrong, or pose a threat to the electronics inside. The sweaty robot, described in a new study in Science Robotics, is made of flexible hydrogels.
Hydrogel robots, also called “soft” robots, are useful because they’re less dangerous—say, for example, a factory worker hits their head on one—compared to colliding with something made of metal. But soft robots also come with a different set of engineering challenges.
When a robot does anything that requires energy, it starts to heat up, and if it gets too hot, it will break. Metal can heat up and cool down relatively quickly. But a hydrogel, which is about 50 percent water, is more difficult to cool down once its temperature starts to rise.
Luckily, it’s a problem that had been solved before in nature. Mammals, like humans, are also largely made of water. And in our case, the solution to high temperatures is sweat.
“As is often the case, biology provided an excellent guide for us as engineers,” co-author and materials scientist TJ Wallin, who participated in the research at Cornell but now works at Facebook Reality Labs, said at a press briefing, per the Guardian’s Ian Sample. “It turns out that the ability to perspire is one of the most remarkable features of humans.”
The researchers created hydrogels with multiple layers. A balloon of water that controlled the way each finger bent was placed at the core. Then, the innermost layer was made to shrink above 86 degrees Fahrenheit. The outer layer was full of micron-sized holes that open at the same temperature. When the inner layer shrinks, it rings itself out, and the water leaks out of the micron pores.
At high temperatures, water leaks out of micron-sized pores in the hydrogel.
(From “Autonomic Perspiration in 3D-Printed Hydrogel Actuators,” by Anand K. Mishra et al., in Science Robotics, Vol. 5, No. 38; January 29, 2020 via Scientific American)
When set in front of a fan, the sweating robot cooled off six times faster than a robot that didn’t sweat. The cooling was also three times faster than the most efficient sweating mammals: humans and horses, according to a statement.
Perspiration cools us, horses, and robots down because the liquid water in sweat needs some energy in order to evaporate and become gas. The molecules in sweat get their energy from your body heat, and vice versa—when the water evaporates, your skin temperature goes down. The researchers made their robotic skin extra-efficient by making it textured, increasing the amount of surface area that the water can draw energy from. All-in-all, "it's a really great idea," as soft robotics expert Cecilia Laschi of the BioRobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa, Italy, tells Sophie Bushwick at Scientific American.
“I think it’s a really great idea,” says Laschi, who was not involved in the new study. “One of the main contributions of this field is really to make us imagine this kind of robot with lifelike abilities, something that was not possible before, with traditional robotics technology.”
Sweat has two major downfalls for humans, though: it makes our grip slippery, and we need to constantly drink water to not become dehydrated.
The researchers at Cornell confirmed the robots gripping ability with a 3-pronged grabber—more like the claw in an arcade game than a human hand. The claw picked up hot objects and the material reacted to the high temperature by sweating—no extra sensors or electronics required, explains Wallin, per the Guardian. This version of the bot didn’t have a way to take in more water, but the researchers say that a future iteration could. Doing so would provide a natural solution to one of soft robotics' biggest hurdles, says Jonathan Rossiter, head of the soft robotics group at Bristol Robotics Laboratory, who was not invovled in the study.
“If future robots could be cooled naturally and automatically then they could perform much better in a much wider range of environments,” Rossiter tells the Guardian. “Humans can survive in the heat of the Sahara and in the freezing conditions of the Antarctic. Future robotics should be able to do the same.”
WASHINGTON — Maxar Technologies on Jan. 31 announced a $142 million NASA contract to demonstrate in-space assembly using a robotic arm.
Maxar said the contract will take its Dragonfly robotics program, which started in 2015 as a DARPA study, and pair it with Restore-L, a refueling spacecraft the company is building for NASA.
Dragonfly has now been renamed the Space Infrastructure Dexterous Robot, or SPIDER, and will launch onboard Restore-L in the mid-2020s.
Al Tadros, Maxar’s vice president of space infrastructure and civil space, said the NASA contract funds SPIDER through completion. It also funds a SPIDER demonstration with Tethers Unlimited’s MakerSat to build a 10-meter boom in space and attach it to Restore-L, he said.
Maxar’s demonstration contract calls for the in-orbit assembly of multiple antenna reflector dishes into one single reflector. Communications satellites use reflectors to beam television channels and internet connectivity to users.
Maxar said SPIDER’s demonstration could show how commercial satellites and telescopes could carry fixtures currently too large to fit inside rocket payload fairings.
Tadros said NASA will select the launch vehicle for Restore-L, equipped with SPIDER. He declined to give a launch time frame more specific than the “mid-2020s.” Restore-L was previously planned to launch in 2022.
Maxar is building SPIDER at its Pasadena, California, facility. Tadros said Maxar will leverage past experience building robotic arms for NASA Mars programs in building SPIDER.
Maxar said it is evaluating having independent verification for SPIDER and other work worth around $2 million performed at West Virginia University’s Robotic Technology Center.
Restore-L’s primary mission is to refuel Landsat 7, an Earth observation satellite launched into a sun-synchronous orbit in April 1999. Tadros said SPIDER’s demonstrations could begin about six months after Restore-L completes its refueling mission.
Chi Chen, a Boston University graduate researcher, and Ranga Myneni, a BU College of Arts & Sciences professor of earth and environment, released a new paper that reveals how humans are helping to increase the Earth's plant and tree cover, which absorbs carbon from the atmosphere and cools our planet. The boom of vegetation, fueled by greenhouse gas emissions, could be skewing our perception of how fast we're warming the planet.
Taking a closer look at 250 scientific studies, land-monitoring satellite data, climate and environmental models, and field observations, a team of Boston University researchers and international collaborators have illuminated several causes and consequences of a global increase in vegetation growth, an effect called greening.
In a new study, published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, the researchers report that climate-altering carbon emissions and intensive land use have inadvertently greened half of the Earth's vegetated lands. And while that sounds like it may be a good thing, this phenomenal rate of greening, together with global warming, sea-level rise, and sea-ice decline, represents highly credible evidence that human industry and activity is dramatically impacting the Earth's climate, say the study's first authors, Shilong Piao and Xuhui Wang of Peking University.
Green leaves convert sunlight to sugars while replacing carbon dioxide in the air with water vapor, which cools the Earth's surface. The reasons for greening vary around the world, but often involve intensive use of land for farming, large-scale planting of trees, a warmer and wetter climate in northern regions, natural reforestation of abandoned lands, and recovery from past disturbances.
And the chief cause of global greening we're experiencing? It seems to be that rising carbon dioxide emissions are providing more and more fertilizer for plants, the researchers say. As a result, the boom of global greening since the early 1980s may have slowed the rate of global warming, the researchers say, possibly by as much as 0.2 to 0.25 degrees Celsius.
"It is ironic that the very same carbon emissions responsible for harmful changes to climate are also fertilizing plant growth, which in turn is somewhat moderating global warming," says study coauthor Dr. Jarle Bjerke of the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research.
Boston University researchers previously discovered that, based on near-daily NASA and NOAA satellite imaging observations since the early 1980s, vast expanses of the Earth's vegetated lands from the Arctic to the temperate latitudes have gotten markedly more green.
"Notably, the NASA [satellite data] observed pronounced greening during the 21st century in the world's most populous and still-developing countries, China and India," says Ranga Myneni, the new study's senior author.
Even regions far, far removed from human reach have not escaped the global warming and greening trends. "Svalbard in the high-arctic, for example, has seen a 30 percent increase in greenness [in addition to] an increase in [summer temperatures] from 2.9 to 4.7 degrees Celcius between 1986 and 2015," says study coauthor Rama Nemani of NASA's Ames Research Center.
Over the last 40 years, carbon emissions from fossil fuel use and tropical deforestation have added 160 parts per million (ppm), a unit of measure for air pollutants, of CO2 to Earth's atmosphere. About 40 ppm of that has diffused passively into the oceans and another 50 ppm has been actively taken up by plants, the researchers say. But 70 ppm remains in the atmosphere, and together with other greenhouse gases, is responsible the land warming patterns that have been observed since the 1980s.
"Plants are actively defending against the dangers of carbon pollution by not only sequestering carbon on land but also by wetting the atmosphere through transpiration of ground water and evaporation of precipitation intercepted by their bodies," says study coauthor Philippe Ciais, of the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences, Gif-sur-Yvette, France. "Stopping deforestation and sustainable, ecologically sensible afforestation could be one of the simplest and cost-effective, though not sufficient, defenses against climate change," he adds.
It is not easy to accurately estimate the cooling benefit from global greening because of the complex interconnected nature of the climate system, the researchers say. "This unintended benefit of global greening, and its potential transitory nature, suggests how much more daunting, and urgent, is the stated goal of keeping global warming to below 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius, especially given the trajectory of carbon emissions and history of inaction during the past decades," says study coauthor Hans Tømmervik of the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, Norway.
More information: Shilong Piao et al, Characteristics, drivers and feedbacks of global greening, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s43017-019-0001-x
Citation: As our planet gets greener, plants are slowing global warming (2020, January 31) retrieved 31 January 2020 from https://phys.org/news/2020-01-planet-greener-global.html
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Theoretical physicists from Trinity College Dublin have found a deep link between one of the most striking features of quantum mechanics—quantum entanglement—and thermalisation, which is the process in which something comes into thermal equilibrium with its surroundings.
Their results are published today [Friday 31st January 2020] in the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters.
We are all familiar with thermalisation—just think how your coffee reaches room temperature over time. Quantum entanglement on the other hand is a different story.
Yet work performed by Marlon Brenes, Ph.D. Candidate, and Professor John Goold from Trinity, in collaboration with Silvia Pappalardi and Professor Alessandro Silva at SISSA in Italy, shows how the two are inextricably linked.
Explaining the importance of the discovery, Professor Goold, leader of Trinity's QuSys group, explains:
"Quantum entanglement is a counterintuitive feature of quantum mechanics, which allows particles that have interacted with each other at some point in time to become correlated in a way which is not possible classically. Measurements on one particle affect the outcomes of measurements of the other— even if they are light years apart. Einstein called this effect 'spooky action at a distance'."
"It turns out that entanglement is not just spooky but actually ubiquitous and in fact what is even more amazing is that we live in an age where technology is starting to exploit this feature to perform feats which were thought to be impossible just a number of years go. These quantum technologies are being developed rapidly in the private sector with companies such as Google and IBM leading the race."
But what has all this got to do with cold coffee?
Professor Goold elaborates: "When you prepare a cup of coffee and leave it for a while it will cool down until it reaches the temperature of its surroundings. This is thermalisation. In physics we say that the process is irreversible—as we know, our once-warm coffee won't cool down and then magically warm back up. How irreversibility and thermal behaviour emerges in physical systems is something which fascinates me as a scientist as it applies on scales as small as atoms, to cups of coffee, and even to the evolution of the universe itself. In physics, statistical mechanics is the theory which aims at understanding this process from a microscopic perspective. For quantum systems the emergence of thermalisation is notoriously tricky and is a central focus of this current research."
So what's all this got to do with entanglement and what do your results say?
"In statistical mechanics there are various different ways, known as ensembles, in which you can describe how a system thermalizes, all of which are believed to be equivalent when you have a large system (roughly on scales of 10^23 atoms). However, what we show in our work is that not only is entanglement present in the process, but its structure is very different depending on which way you choose to describe your system. So, it gives us a way to test foundational questions in statistical mechanics. The idea is general and can be applied to a range of systems as small as a few atoms and as large as blackholes."
Marlon Brenes, Ph.D. candidate at Trinity and first author of the paper, used super-computers to simulate quantum systems to test the idea.
Brenes, a numerical specialist, said: "The numerical simulations for this project that I performed are at the limit of what can currently be done at the level of high-performance computing. To run the code I used the national facility, ICHEC, and the new Kay machine there. So, as well as being a nice fundamental result the work helped us really push the boundaries of this type of computational approach and establish that our codes and the national architecture are performing at the cutting edge."
More information: Marlon Brenes et al, Multipartite Entanglement Structure in the Eigenstate Thermalization Hypothesis, Physical Review Letters (2020). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.040605
Citation: How supercomputers are helping us link quantum entanglement to cold coffee (2020, January 31) retrieved 31 January 2020 from https://phys.org/news/2020-01-supercomputers-link-quantum-entanglement-cold.html
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Like clockwork, every January Americans return to gyms and fitness studios across the country in rejuvenated numbers. Some are driven by a New Year’s resolution to get in shape; for others, it’s just another routine month in a culture that prizes physical fitness.
Among viral Peloton memes and ClassPass fundraising clamor, the StairMaster remains a quiet presence in most gyms. The machine, which features an infinite loop of stairs and demands a notoriously tough cardio workout, is as common as a treadmill or a stationary bike. But the StairMaster’s ubiquity belies a colorful history that skyrocketed it to fame during the 1980s.
The StairMaster was born during an oil crisis in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Jim Walker and George Schupp, a pair of entrepreneurs who owned a manufacturing company that primarily worked with clients in the energy industry, knew it was time to pivot their focus when oil prices peaked at $103.95 in 1980. The trouble was, they didn’t know where to go next. They were in the midst of exploring their options when, by chance, Walker bought a used car from a hobbyist inventor named Lanny Potts.
The trio forged a close relationship. Potts brought curiosity and creativity to their brainstorming sessions, while Walker and Schupp had the manufacturing know-how to puzzle out what it would take to bring a new product to market. As they explored the possibility of designing exercise equipment, Potts’ thoughts drifted back to his time in the Air Force—specifically, his memory of living in a walk-up apartment while stationed in Italy. The machine he proposed would replicate the taxing four-story climb, minus the joint-straining need to walk downstairs again.
By 1983, Potts, Walker and Schupp had founded a company called Tri-Tech and were ready to launch their first product. Originally dubbed the Ergometer 6000, the stepper was renamed the StairMaster 5000 by then-marketing director Ralph Cissne. The machine debuted at the National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA) trade show in Chicago, to attendees who worked in the country’s growing sporting goods industry. These potential buyers would have primarily worked in retail or wholesale—the first links in a long chain that would end in neighborhood gyms.
The following years brought new iterations. In March 1984, Tri-Tech released the StairMaster 6000—essentially the same design, but with the addition of a digital screen. Early advertisements for the StairMaster 6000, still bearing a “patent pending” disclaimer, emphasized the new machine’s digital benefits, such as readouts that showed the calories burned and audio tones that would ring when users climbed a virtual flight of stairs.
Lanny Potts' "Stair Climbing Exercise Apparatus," patented November 24, 1987
The company’s next chapter began with a patent application Potts filed in August 1986, describing a new machine called the StairMaster 4000 PT (short for Personal Trainer). This version replaced the machine’s escalator-like stairs (which made it, technically, a stepmill) for a pair of pedals that “simulate stair-climbing for a user.” Instead of climbing the rotating flight of stairs, StairMaster 4000 PT users could set the resistance level, then “climb” the pedals as if standing while pedaling a bike.
The StairMaster’s innovation lay in the stairs themselves: it was possible to adjust the height of the stairs individually. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, users could climb stairs spaced according to their height. The design even allowed users to safely set two different increments—a helpful feature for anyone whose stride isn’t perfectly even. Two days before Thanksgiving in 1987, the StairMaster 4000 PT’s patent was granted.
Tri-Tech’s decision to manufacture exercise equipment was far from random. In fact, Walker and Schupp’s decision to pivot to fitness was perfectly timed. Fitness “absolutely explode[d]” during the 1980s, according to Natalia Mehlman-Petrzela, a professor of history at the New School in New York City who is currently writing a book about the history of fitness culture. “Gym culture evolved from being a very strange subculture as late as the 1950s and even 1960s to being the ubiquitous cultural phenomenon that we see today,” says Mehlman-Petrzela. Though some people purchased StairMasters for personal use—particularly the 4000 PT, which was sleeker—the StairMaster’s rise to fame was inextricably intertwined with the boom in gyms and fitness clubs.
National survey data backs up Mehlman-Petrzela’s assessment. The same year the StairMaster 4000 PT received its patent, 69 percent of Americans self-reported regular exercise—up from just 24 percent in 1960. The International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association (IHRSA) began collecting consumer data in 1987, marking a new era for the fitness industry. Although the U.S. Census did not recognize the fitness industry until 1992, IHRSA data and contemporary reports suggest that approximately 17.3 million Americans belonged to gyms in 1987, compared to only 1.7 million in 1972.
Why the sudden spike in exercise? Historians say that gym-going was a response to a complex melange of cultural pressures. Mehlman-Petrzela cites several shifting cultural notions that gained purchase during the 1970s, one of the most important being widespread acceptance of the existence of a mind-body connection. This concept suggested that sweating on the StairMaster was not only physically rewarding, but mentally or emotionally enriching, too. According to Marc Stern, a history professor at Bentley University, fitness quickly became linked to corporate prestige and the aesthetics of beauty.
“In the 1980s, the gym gained a reputation of being a place to meet [people],” Stern says. Singles donned form-fitting Lycra, hoping to catch a potential date’s eye from across the room. An episode of Seinfeld that aired in 1993 reflects this commonplace voyeurism: “I usually last about ten minutes on a StairMaster,” Jerry Seinfeld says. “Unless, of course, there's someone stretching in front of me in a leotard. Then I can go an hour.”
Oprah Winfrey stands next to a StairMaster during her talk show in Chicago on November 15, 1989.
(Mark Elias/AP)
The StairMaster had cameos in movies and picked up endorsements from celebrities. By 1990, Tom Cruise, Robert De Niro, Oprah and the entire cast of Three Men and a Baby had all publicly declared their love for the StairMaster. Later, athletes including the Knicks’ Patrick Ewing were known to incorporate the StairMaster into their training. “When you see the rich and famous exercising in a particular way or with a particular machine, that operates to make a product aspirational,” Mehlman-Petrzela says, “not necessarily just a program you do to lose weight or to get stronger.”
The StairMaster entered the market as these forces reached their apex, and as gyms and fitness centers swept the nation. Though private gym memberships were pricey, it was still less expensive than assembling a home gym from scratch. A 1985 article published in the Washington Post described monthly fees ranging from $22 to $100, plus initiation fees that could cost as much as $650. Gyms and fitness clubs also granted access to high-end equipment, such as the StairMaster or weight circuit machines by Nautilus. By comparison, a single exercise machine could come with a price tag well into the thousands.
Back in the fall of 1983, Stern carefully weighed his decision to join an independently owned gym in East Setauket, New York, against his meager graduate student budget. The gym he ultimately joined had separate areas for cardio and weightlifting, booming disco music and a hot tub for mingling with fellow members. Trainers roamed the floor, monitoring exercisers and interjecting to provide guidance. Stern even tried the StairMaster a few times, then a new addition.
The experience was novel enough to spark Stern’s academic interest. He found himself contemplating the performances of strength playing out in gyms’ Panopticon-like mirrored rooms, musings that eventually became an academic paper. The StairMaster commanded attention, ensuring that users could see—and be seen. “The StairMaster is at the center of the gym,” Mehlman-Petrzela says. “It's a bit of an exhibitionist kind of machine.”
By the late 1980s, StairMasters had become a fixture in gyms across the country. In a 1989 New York Times “Metropolitan Diary,” a subscriber named Cynthia Arnold described her obsession with the new machine. “It allows you to climb tall buildings while trudging in place, a supposedly efficient form of exercise that doubles the torture in half the time,” she wrote. The statement, which could easily be mistaken for criticism, was meant as glowing praise. “Stairmaster, I love you!” Arnold concluded.
Arnold’s experience encapsulates what drew users to the StairMaster in droves. The machine was originally designed to reduce the physical strain of a cardio workout; users’ joints are dealt roughly half the impact of running. Yet the StairMaster gained a reputation for being particularly grueling. “The Stairmaster in some ways really embodies that kind of Sisyphean task,” Mehlman-Petrzela says, calling it a “stairway to nowhere.”
Still, the StairMaster’s rise to fame wasn’t without stumbles. By the end of the 1980s, the StairMaster was competing in an increasingly crowded market, and legal jostling ensued. In 1991, Tri-Tech sued—and was sued by—Tru-Trac Therapy Product, a rival stairclimber manufacturer, over alleged patent infringement. Just a few months later, two more stairclimber manufacturers, Laguna Tectrix and Pro-Form Fitness Products, tangled in a similar legal fight. At the time, stairclimbing machines claimed an approximately $320 million slice of the fitness market, and everyone wanted to secure their piece.
Sales of the StairMaster eventually declined. In 2001, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and laid off employees in its Tulsa and Washington state locations. But that’s not the end of the StairMaster story.
“[T]he StairMaster name is ingrained in fitness-dom,” fitness and travel writer Therese Iknoian wrote at the time. “If the price is right, what company wouldn't want to own that piece of history and the steppers—still popular home equipment—that goes with it?”
That company turned out to be Nautilus, Inc.—and business rebounded. By 2007, the StairMaster “hit sales volumes they haven't reached in more than a decade,” according to a report published in Tulsa World. The company predicted that it would sell 7,000 StairMaster machines that year. "I don't think it'll slow down any time soon," plant manager Rob Myers told a reporter.
In 2009, StairMaster was acquired by Michael Bruno, who was then operating Land America. That same year, Bruno created Core Health and Fitness, which today owns a collection of fitness brands including Schwinn, Nautilus, Star Trac and Throwdown. In 2012, the company unveiled a refreshed version of the TreadClimber, a treadmill-stepclimber hybrid originally sold by Nautilus, followed by a new version of the StairMaster (called the Gauntlet) in 2014.
In 2017, the National Fitness Trade Journal ran a cover story that repositioned the StairMaster as an effective way to deliver a trendy high intensity interval training (HIIT) workout. “With StairMaster HIIT, club owners can create a new revenue stream while tapping into a massive growing market,” the article suggested, promising that the StairMaster would leave members “hurting for more.” To sweeten the deal, StairMaster provided HIIT resources for trainers, suggesting ways to include its machines in larger HIIT programs.
Now, nearly four decades into its history, the StairMaster is facing new competition from smart mirrors and spin classes, barre and bootcamp. Despite all the fitness trends that may challenge its legacy, its staying power lies in its simplicity.
Its truly basic name says it all.
“[It] implies total mastery of something that should be normal,” Stern says. “You're gonna climb some stairs."
WASHINGTON — Rocket Lab successfully launched a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office Jan. 30 in the first of up to a dozen launches planned by the company this year.
Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket lifted off from the company’s launch site on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula at 9:56 p.m. Eastern. The launch, dubbed “Birds of a Feather” by Rocket Lab, was the 11th mission for the Electron rocket and its first launch of 2020.
“Starting our 2020 launch manifest with a successful mission for the NRO is an immensely proud moment for our team. It once again demonstrated our commitment to providing responsive, dedicated access to space for government small satellites,” Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, said in a statement.
The rocket was carrying a payload for the NRO designated NROL-151. The agency procured the launch through its Rapid Acquisition of a Small Rocket, or RASR, program, which it started in 2018 to procure small launch vehicles responsively. This launch was the first under the RASR program.
Neither Rocket Lab nor the NRO released details about the payload, including whether it was one or more satellites or their purpose. Amateur satellite observers noted the mission appeared to be going into a high inclination orbit of about 70 degrees, but not a sun-synchronous orbit commonly used by Earth observation missions.
The NRO released a logo for the mission prior to the launch that drew comparisons online to those of the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team and Jägermeister liquor. The logo is adorned with good luck charms like a horseshoe, four-leaf clover and wishbone. The NRO said in a tweet that the logo was “a light-hearted way to wish #NROL151 good fortune & luck on its mission.”
For almost 6 decades, the NRO has answered the hardest national security questions w/ bold, innovative technology, & #NROL151 stands firm in this tradition. The logo is a light-hearted way to wish #NROL151 good fortune & luck on its mission. Launch date is Jan. 31 (NZDT). pic.twitter.com/XGfokrIdTV
Rocket Lab also used the launch to further its efforts to recover and reuse the Electron first stage. The company said that, was with the previous Electron launch in December, the first stage survived reentry and remained intact until it hit the ocean.
In a December interview, Beck said that, after this test, the company would “go quiet” for a few months in its reusability efforts as it makes another block upgrade for the rocket to incorporate parachutes and other changes for recovering the stage. “The next step is to splash it down into the water gently, and then the step after that is to recover it in mid-air with a helicopter,” he said then.
This launch was the first of up to a dozen the company expects to carry out this year. That will include the first launch from the company’s Launch Complex 2 at Wallops Island, Virginia. That launch, carrying a U.S. Air Force research and development smallsat called Monolith on a mission designated STP-27RM, is scheduled for the second quarter of 2020.
Rocket Lab is also building a second launch pad in New Zealand, which will be ready by late this year, the company announced in December. The company announced Jan. 14 it is constructing a new headquarters and factory in Long Beach, California, that will be able to produce 12 or more Electron rockets a year, while adding a second mission control center.
In addition to its launch vehicle efforts, the company is working on a satellite bus called Photon based on the kick stage of the Electron rocket. In a Jan. 29 presentation at the 23rd Annual Commercial Space Transportation Conference here, Shane Fleming, vice president of global commercial launch services at Rocket Lab, said that first Photon mission should take place this year. “We’re very excited to have our first Rocket Lab satellite on orbit,” he said.
A view of Argentina's Belgrano II Antarctic base and its landscape where ESA's Tempus Pro telemedicine devices are being put to the ultimate test. Credit: ESA
ESA is working with Argentina to test telemedicine device Tempus Pro in the harsh conditions of Antarctica as Europe prepares for its next phase of human exploration in space.
The development of these devices was supported by ESA and it is thought they could be used by astronauts and medical teams during future exploration missions. The testing and validation of Tempus Pro in Argentinian Antarctic bases marks a new era of cooperation between ESA and Argentina—a nation that is already a long-standing partner of ESA in Latin America.
ESA telemedicine monitors have been deployed for testing at two of Argentina's Antarctic bases—Belgrano II and Carlini.
Belgrano II is located less than 1,300 km from the South Pole, with temperatures that can drop below –35C over summer. Isolated, and built on rocky outcrops, it is seen as a good analogue for missions to the Moon and Mars.
Carlini is located at South Coast Potter Cove, on King George Island. Being less isolated than Belgrano II, it will allow teams to compare two different, but extreme, environments.
Tempus Pro in action
Tempus Pro telemedicine devices have been used by ESA medical teams to record and transmit the vital signs of ESA astronauts after landing since the return of Thomas Pesquet from his Proxima mission in May 2017. The technology will be used again in February when ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano returns from his second six-month mission to the International Space Station, known as "Beyond."
Tempus Pro, a portable vital-signs monitor capable of telemedicine via satellite, is helping medics at ESA astronaut landings. Thomas Pesquet was the first to benefit following his Proxima mission. Credit: ESA
The device also allows geolocation and voice communications between rescue teams and receivers and is regularly used by civilians and military personnel around the world to measure and transmit life parameters such as a patient's heartrate, blood pressure, respiration rate and temperature to medical doctors.
The harsh environment of Antarctica will provide the ultimate viability test.
Connecting in harsh conditions
Members of ESA's space medicine team at ESA's astronaut centre (EAC) in Cologne, Germany prepared the Tempus Pro devices for testing in Earth's southernmost continent in late 2019. Dr. Victor Demaria-Pesce, senior scientific advisor at EAC, and Dr. Daniel Vigo from the Catholic University of Argentina then traveled to Antarctica with the devices to support their deployment and the testing that is currently underway.
Victor and Daniel believe the strength of Tempus Pro lies in the way the device combines all medical techniques needed to carry out an initial medical assessment in a single, robust unit, as well as its flexibility to transmit information via a range of voice and data networks. Non-medical users can also operate the units thanks to detailed instructions on screen.
In Antarctica, there are few reliable options for data transmission. In addition to their own base transmission systems, operators will use an antenna to connect Tempus Pro to the Iridium satellite network that orbits Earth. These satellites will then retransmit the medical data to a receiver in a different location.
Made up of 66 cross-linked satellites in Low-Earth Orbit, the Iridium network enables global coverage even when traditional systems are unavailable and will allow users in Antarctica to communicate, by voice in addition to sending data, with the medical team at EAC as well as Dr. Juan Manuel Cuiuli and colleagues from the Joint Antarctic Command in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Testing the Tempus Pro telemedicine device in Antarctica outside Argentinian base Belgrano II. Credit: ESA
Spotlight on simulation
Six simulations, similar to what astronauts may encounter during future missions to the Moon and Mars, are planned for the two Tempus Pro devices during their time in Antarctica. These simulations include nominal and off-nominal scenarios such as emergencies where the medical officer is incapacitated, medical emergencies in an outdoor environment and situations where communication is limited.
The devices will be used by researchers as well as by the medical officer of the bases for everyday medical purposes while the technology is evaluated for potential use during space missions.
Device development
The Tempus Pro devices were developed in the UK with funding and support from the Business Applications part of ESA's Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems program.
"The fact that ESA's medical operations team already use this commercially-successful technology for their operations as well space exploration preparatory activities closes the loop nicely," says Arnaud Runge, medical engineer who supervised the technical development of the Tempus Pro. "It demonstrates ESA's ability to support industry in many different areas."
Their journey to Antarctica marks the first step in a recent agreement between ESA, the Argentine Antarctic Directorate (DNA) and the National Commission of Space Activities (CONAE). This growing scientific cooperation will include other institutions such as the Catholic University of Argentina, National University of Quilmes and CONICET. It will allow further development of scientific and operational projects in the extreme environment of the Antarctic continent as ESA prepares for further exploration of our solar system.
First results of the experiments should be available in the coming weeks and demonstrate how Tempus Pro can be used to medically support a crew of explorers in a situation and environment that most closely resembles what future astronauts will encounter on Mars.
Citation: From Antarctica to space: Telemedicine at the limit (2020, January 31) retrieved 31 January 2020 from https://phys.org/news/2020-01-antarctica-space-telemedicine-limit.html
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Researchers in Austria have used lasers to levitate and cool a glass nanoparticle into the quantum regime. Although it is trapped in a room-temperature environment, the particle's motion is solely governed by the laws of quantum physics. The team of scientists from the University of Vienna, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) published their new study in the journal Science.
It is well known that quantum properties of individual atoms can be controlled and manipulated with laser light. Even large clouds of hundreds of millions of atoms can be pushed into the quantum regime, giving rise to macroscopic quantum states of matter such as quantum gases or Bose-Einstein condensates, which today are also widely used in quantum technologies. An exciting next step is to extend this level of quantum control to solid-state objects. In contrast to atomic clouds, the density of a solid is a billion times higher, and all atoms are bound to move together along the object's center of mass.
However, entering this new regime is not at all a straightforward endeavor. A first step for achieving such quantum control is to isolate the object under investigation from influences of the environment and to remove all thermal energy—by cooling it down to temperatures very close to absolute zero (-273.15 degrees Celsius) such that quantum mechanics dominates the particle's motion. To show this, the researchers chose to experiment with a glass bead approximately 1000 times smaller than a grain of sand and containing a few hundred million atoms. Isolation from the environment is achieved by optically trapping the particle in a tightly focused laser beam in high vacuum, a trick that was originally introduced by Nobel laureate Arthur Ashkin many decades ago, and that is also used for isolating atoms. "The real challenge is to cool the particle motion into its quantum ground state. Laser cooling via atomic transitions is well-established and a natural choice for atoms, but it does not work for solids," says lead author Uros Delic from the University of Vienna.
For this reason, the team has been working on implementing a laser-cooling method that was proposed by Austrian physicist Helmut Ritsch at the University of Innsbruck and, independently, by study co-author Vladan Vuletic and Nobel laureate Steven Chu. They had recently announced a first demonstration of the working principle, cavity cooling by coherent scattering; however, they were still limited to operating far away from the quantum regime.
"We have upgraded our experiment and are now able not only to remove more background gas, but also to send in more photons for cooling," says Delic. In that way, the motion of the glass bead can be cooled straight into the quantum regime. "It is funny to think about this: The surface of our glass bead is extremely hot, around 300 degrees Celsius, because the laser heats up the electrons in the material. But the motion of the center of mass of the particle is ultra-cold, around 0.00001 degrees Celsius away from absolute zero, and we can show that the hot particle moves in a quantum way."
Researchers cooled a levitated nanoparticle to the quantum groundstate for the first time. This work was made possible by the recent breakthrough application of coherent scattering in the field of cavity optomechanics. Credit: Kahan Dare, Lorenzo Magrini, Yuriy Coroli, University of Vienna
The researchers are excited about the prospects of their work. The quantum motion of solids has also been investigated by other groups all around the world, along with the Vienna team. Thus far, experimental systems consisted of nano- and micromechanical resonators—in essence, drums or diving boards that are clamped to a rigid support structure. "Optical levitation brings in much more freedom: By changing the optical trap—or even switching it off—we can manipulate the nanoparticle motion in completely new ways," says Nikolai Kiesel, co-author and Assistant Professor at the University of Vienna.
Several schemes along these lines have been proposed, amongst others by Austrian-based physicists Oriol Romero-Isart and Peter Zoller at Innsbruck, and may now become possible. For example, in combination with the newly achieved motional ground state the authors expect that this opens new opportunities for unprecedented sensing performance, the study of fundamental processes of heat engines in the quantum regime, as well as the study of quantum phenomena involving large masses. "A decade ago, we started this experiment motivated by the prospect of a new category of quantum experiments. We finally have opened the door to this regime."
Citation: A quantum of solid: A glass nanoparticle in the quantum regime (2020, January 31) retrieved 31 January 2020 from https://phys.org/news/2020-01-quantum-solid-glass-nanoparticle-regime.html
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NASA has said goodbye to the Spitzer space telescope after 16 years of service using infrared light to unveil otherwise invisible features of the universe, including seven planets the size of Earth around the star Trappist-1.
"It's quite amazing when you lay out everything that Spitzer has done in its lifetime, from detecting asteroids in our solar system no larger than a stretch limousine to learning about some of the most distant galaxies we know of," said Spitzer project scientist Michael Werner in a NASA statement on Thursday.
Spitzer, which was sent into orbit and began astronomical observations in 2003, is one of the powerful telescopes exploring things beyond the range of the human eye, examining electromagnetic radiation of various wavelengths, just like the Hubble, Compton and Chandra telescopes do, Efe news reported.
This 'scope focuses on infrared light, which can reveal different characteristics of the universe from normal "visible" light, including objects that are too cold to emit visible light such as exoplanets, brown dwarfs - star-like bodies with insufficient mass to actually shine - or the cold material that is present between the stars.
Infrared light - which is merely what we commonly know as "heat" - is invisible to the human eye, but some of its waves can pass through clouds, gases and dust that are opaque to visible light.
"Spitzer taught us how important infrared light is to understanding our universe, both in our own cosmic neighbourhood and as far away as the most distant galaxies," said the director of astrophysics at NASA Headquarters, Paul Hertz, in a statement. "The advances we make across many areas in astrophysics in the future will be because of Spitzer's extraordinary legacy."
The Tarantula Nebula was one of the first celestial objects that the Spitzer telescope observed, a region of space where one of the most-studied stars in the universe - one called 1987A - exploded as a supernova in 1987 with the brightness of 100 million Suns, although because it is located 168,000 light years away from Earth (about one million trillion miles) it was too faint for humans to see without a telescope.
Spitzer's original astronomical mission was extended five times, after it exhausted its store of coolant - specifically liquid helium - in 2009.
The coolant was used to chill the telescope's 33.5-inch main mirror to within five degrees of absolute zero, about minus 450 degrees Fahrenheit. The mirror needed to be that cold to be able to pick up faint infrared radiation from deep space that cannot be detected from the ground.
However, since the telescope is so far from the Sun, NASA experts were able to keep using the space-based telescope and its retirement had been planned for 2018, when the James Webb Space Telescope was to be launched, although that mission was delayed and Spitzer's service life was prolonged.
The James Webb orbiting telescope will also be used to observe space in the infrared spectrum starting in March 2021, although a recent report by the US Government Accountability Office said that it is highly probable that its launch will be delayed for "technical" reasons.
NASA is planning to reveal the newly established launch date for the James Webb telescope in the spring of 2020, according to the report.
In 2018, NASA earmarked $9.7 billion for the construction and launch of that telescope, some $828 million more than had been budgeted in 2011 for the project.
Richard Leshner, vice president of government and regulatory affairs at Planet Labs, said space entrepreneurs need to better understand cybersecurity threats.
WASHINGTON — Satellites and their ground infrastructure have become targets for hackers and other cyber criminals, experts warn. But many emerging companies in the space industry lack cybersecurity expertise and may be ill prepared to prevent or respond to attacks, warned Richard Leshner, vice president of government and regulatory affairs at Planet Labs.
Planet Labs is a subsidiary of Planet, an Earth observation company that operates about 150 imaging satellites.
Speaking Jan. 30 at the 2020 Commercial Space Transportation Conference, Leshner said there is a gulf between the space and the cybersecurity sectors and that everyone would benefit from closer collaboration.
Leshner recalled that during a workshop on commercial remote sensing regulations hosted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it became apparent neither the cybersecurity nor the space experts in the room knew much about each others’ business.
Officials from the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology — the agency that sets cybersecurity standards for different industries — had a “real desire to know more about our business,” said Leshner.
The entrepreneurs who create space businesses tend to have deep backgrounds and technical expertise in space, he said. “What doesn’t exist is something that enables, as that company grows, to learn from experts about the nature and source of new and different threats.”
The space industry needs to get up to speed on cybersecurity, Leshner said. “Where are these new threats coming from? What do they look like?” Companies need to get ahead of these threats “in ways that enable them to be proactive and not responsive to appropriately hair-on-fire regulators,” said Leshner. A key concern of governments, for example, is to make sure space companies protect their satellite ground stations.
Rather than just requiring companies to comply with a checklist of regulations, government agencies could also help educate the industry on how to prepare and prevent attacks, he said. “If we can move from the checklist reactive model to a collaborative information sharing proactive model, that would be very welcome.”
Kile Thompson, global compliance counsel at Spire, said the threat of cyber intrusions to satellite constellations is real.
Spire operates about 70 satellites in low Earth orbit that gather weather data, track ships and aircraft.
“This is something that we take incredibly seriously,” Thompson said at the conference. “We have encrypted downlinks and we build technology into our satellites so we have situational awareness of them at all times,” he said. “We do work with some public agencies on this.”
There are concerns that criminals could break into ground stations and try to take control of satellites, said Thompson. “We make sure our satellites respond only to proper signals.”
A recent study by the Aerospace Corp. said the vulnerability of satellites and other space assets to cyber attacks is “often overlooked in wider discussions of cyber threats to critical national infrastructure.”
In response to these concerns, space companies last year formed a Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or Space ISAC, to share intelligence on cyber threats. The group said it plans to start operations this spring with the launch of an unclassified portal where companies can share and analyze cybersecurity information.
From our vantage point on Earth, the sun is often a miraculous sight, shining brightly on clear days and bathing the sky in vivid color as it rises and sets. This week, astronomers released stunningly detailed images of the sun’s surface—revealing that up close, the star is pretty spectacular, too.
As Alexandra Witze reports for Nature, these are the first images taken with the National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, which sits atop Haleakala, a dormant volcano in Hawai‘i. The Inouye Solar Telescope is the most powerful solar telescope in the world, and according to the National Science Foundation (NSF), its images show the sun in “unprecedented” detail.
The celestial body looks like a bubbling expanse of golden kernels, which in fact represent plasma that covers the sun. The kernels—or “cell-like structures,” as the NSF puts it—are each about the size of Texas. Hot solar plasma rises up in the center of the cells and then cools, sinking down from the surface—“a process known as convection,” the NSF notes.
The sun is a constant swirl of violent activity, burning around 5 million tons of hydrogen fuel every second. That energy radiates into space, and the movement of the sun’s plasma “twists and tangles” solar magnetic fields, according to the NSF.
From 93 million miles away, we can’t see all this motion, but we sometimes feel its effects. For instance, coronal mass ejections from the sun shoot charged particles into space that can collide with the Earth’s atmosphere and disrupt satellites, telecommunications and navigation systems, and power grids. In 2017, a solar flare caused blackouts across a wide geographic area, including the Caribbean—where, in an unfortunate coincidence, Hurricane Irma was raging and emergency radio communications were knocked out.
Scientists hope that the Inouye Solar Telescope will help them gain a better understanding of “space weather,” a general term that refers to conditions on the sun, in the solar wind, and within Earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere and thermosphere, according to NASA. The standard notification time for space weather is currently 48 minutes; experts want to extend that period to 48 hours, allowing for more time to secure infrastructure and satellites.
“On Earth, we can predict if it is going to rain pretty much anywhere in the world very accurately, and space weather just isn’t there yet,” says Matt Mountain, president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, which manages the Inouye Solar Telescope. “Our predictions lag behind terrestrial weather by 50 years, if not more.”
The new telescope features a 13-foot mirror. More than seven miles of underground piping are required to cool the instrument as it collects solar heat. “The greater size of the mirror, abetted by adaptive optics that reduce atmospheric blurring, offers higher resolution,” explains Dennis Overbye of the New York Times. Engineers are still working to finish the telescope’s dome, according to Nature, and studies will begin “in earnest” this summer. With this powerful technology at their fingertips, scientists may be able to shed light on some of the sun’s more confounding secrets—like why the corona, or outer atmosphere of the sun, is millions of degrees hotter than its surface.
So while the new close-ups of the sun are fascinating, experts say the images represent just a tantalizing glimpse into the telescope’s capabilities.
“These first images are just the beginning,” claims David Boboltz, a program director in NSF’s Division of Astronomical Sciences. “The Inouye Solar Telescope will collect more information about our sun during the first five years of its lifetime than all the solar data gathered since Galileo first pointed a telescope at the sun in 1612.”
WASHINGTON — Comtech is acquiring Gilat Satellite Networks for $532.5 million, a move the company says will position it to capitalize on large anticipated demand for new ground segment infrastructure.
Melville, New York-based Comtech Telecommunications Corp announced the Gilat acquisition Jan. 29, the same day it said it would also buy antenna builder CGC Technology Limited in the United Kingdom for approximately $23.7 million.
In a Jan. 29 earnings call, Comtech executives said advances in satellite communications technologies, coupled with growing demand for inflight connectivity, 5G backhaul over satellite, and secure military communications are driving demand for satellite ground infrastructure.
“There is an accelerating growth in the supply of low cost bandwidth,” said Michael Porcelain, Comtech’s president and chief operating officer. “Like any technology, the lower the cost, generally the more people can afford to use it, and in this case we believe they will.”
Comtech is buying Gilat for $10.25 a share, paid 70% in cash and 30% in Comtech stock. Comtech expects the combined company will generate close to $1 billion in annual sales.
Fred Kornberg, chief executive of Comtech, said Israel-based Gilat is not a competitor to Comtech because the two companies have different product strengths and geographic exposures.
“We’re essentially in the same markets supplying communications users, but supplying different products,” he said.
Comtech regularly sells satellite ground equipment to the U.S. government, while Gilat is far more successful in international markets, he said. Together the companies can cross-sell into each other’s respective markets, he said.
Comtech said it will list its shares on the Nasdaq and Tel Aviv Stock Exchanges once the merger closes, which Porcelain said is expected by July but could take until December.
Kornberg said Gilat will bring expertise in satellite user terminals that use a communications method called Time Division Multiple Access, or TDMA, that is useful for networks with multiple terminals that don’t need to transfer data across long distances.
“We’ve had no expertise in there,” he said. “That brings us this brand-new technology, as well as another product line.”
Kornberg said Comtech’s background is with Single Channel Per Carrier, or SCPC, a satellite communications method that uses dedicated point-to-point links for transferring video and data.
Dov Baharav, Gilat’s board chairman, said Gilat has modems in more than 500 networks globally. He said Gilat will seek to sell modems, amplifiers and antennas to the U.S. military as a Comtech subsidiary.
Comtech executives said they expect to keep all Comtech’s and Gilat’s locations open and fully staffed after the acquisition closes. The companies expect to shed $2 million in costs associated with public listing by trading as a single company.
“Both companies’ talented global workforces are expected to remain in place,” Porcelain said.
In a news release, Comtech said it is drawing on a new $800 million loan from a network of seven banks to finance the Gilat purchase. Comtech expects the loan to have a cash interest rate of 4-5% annually, though the exact terms are not finalized.
Comtech is also buying very small aperture terminal provider UHP Network of Canada for $40 million in a deal announced in November.
Kornberg said Gilat and UHP Networks will fill a TDMA void in Comtech’s product line. Gilat will also expand Comtech’s presence in the inflight entertainment and connectivity market.
Kornberg said Comtech sells amplifiers to aviation connectivity customers, while Gilat sells modems. Gilat has also developed a new electronically steered antenna for use on aircraft that Comtech is confident “will have a bright future,” he said.
Kornberg said buying CGC Technology was “complementary” to Gilat, since the two companies sell different types of antennas. CGC Technology’s antennas are mechanically steered and are designed for use as ground stations for satellite constellations in medium Earth orbit and below.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It may sound more like science fiction than science fact, but researchers have created bionic jellyfish by embedding microelectronics into these ubiquitous marine invertebrates with hopes to deploy them to monitor and explore the world’s oceans.
A jellyfish augmented with a microelectronics implant designed by researchers Nicole Xu and John Dabiri is seen in an artist's rendering released January 30, 2020. Rebecca Konte/Caltech/Handout via REUTERS.
A small prosthetic enabled the jellyfish to swim three times faster and more efficiently without causing any apparent stress to the animals, which have no brain, central nervous system or pain receptors, the researchers said.
The next steps will be to test ways to control where the jellyfish go and develop tiny sensors that could perform long-term measurements of ocean conditions such as temperature, salinity, acidity, oxygen levels, nutrients and microbial communities. They even envision installing miniscule cameras.
“It’s very sci-fi futuristic,” said Stanford University bioengineer Nicole Xu, co-author of the research published this week in the journal Science Advances. “We could send these bionic jellyfish to different areas of the ocean to monitor signs of climate change or observe natural phenomena.”
An initial goal will be deep dives because measurements at great depths are a major gap in our understanding of the oceans, added California Institute of Technology mechanical engineering professor John Dabiri, the study’s other co-author.
“Basically, we’d release the bionic jellyfish at the surface, have it swim down to increasing depths, and see just how far we can get it to go down into the ocean and still make it back to the surface with data,” Dabiri added.
The study involved a common type of jellyfish called moon jellyfish, with a diameter of 4-8 inches (10-20 cm).
Jellyfish propel themselves through the water by contracting their muscles to collapse their umbrella-shaped body, and then relaxing. The prosthetic - basically a chip, battery and electrodes that stimulate the muscle - causes the jellyfish to pulse their bodies more frequently, akin to how a pacemaker regulates heart rate. The prosthetic is eight-tenths of an inch (2 cm) in diameter.
Jellyfish are known to secrete mucus when stressed. No such reaction occurred during the research and the animals swam normally after the prosthetic was removed, the researchers said.
“Care is taken not to harm the jellyfish,” Dabiri said.
There are many existing technologies to study the ocean near the surface including satellites and robotic sailboats called saildrones, Dabiri said.
But knowledge of the ocean declines at depths greater than about 65 feet (20 meters), where researchers must rely either on instruments deployed from ships - costly to operate - or use smaller underwater vehicles typically limited to day-long operation due to energy-storage limitations, Dabiri added.
“Jellyfish have existed for over 500 million years, and over that time, their body structure has remained largely unchanged, so it’s interesting to figure out what makes them so special and how we can learn from them,” Xu said.
“Because we use animals with natural swimming motions, the hope is that they won’t disturb the environment in the same way that a submarine might, so we can expand the types of environments we can monitor,” she added.
