BigDog

Boston Dynamic's BigDog throws a cinder block.

MaNEP: Superconductivity

MaNEP is celebrating 100 years of Superconductivity.

In April 1911, the Dutchman, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (Nobel Prize for Physics 1913) and his student Gilles Host made the most important discovery of their careers.  By studying the electrical resistance of mercury, they discovered that this resistance fell sharply when lowering the temperature to a temperature close to absolute zero (-273 °C)!  This mysterious discovery opened up new horizons in physics research.  While research advanced, it remained mostly within the confines of the physics laboratory until the great breakthrough of 1986 when German scientist, George Johannes Bednorz and Swiss scientist, Karl Alex Müller (in the research laboratories of IBM in Zurich, Rüschlikon) discovered superconductors with a much higher critical temperature.  This resulted in them being awarded the Nobel Prize just one year later.
They discovered a matter that becomes a superconductor at -238°C, whereas the previous record held since 1973 was at -249.8°C for niobium germanium.  This was followed a few months later by other researchers announcing that similar compounds were super-connecting at -180°C.  This was a very important step because these substances can now be cooled with liquid nitrogen (-196°C), which up until then were cooled with the more expensive liquid helium (-269°C).
Despite 100 years of research, researchers in superconductivity are still kept in suspense including those of many of the researchers in the MaNEP National Centre for Research on new materials with exceptional properties.

Quadrocopter

From the Flying Machine Arena Website:

The Flying Machine Arena (FMA) is a portable space devoted to autonomous flight. Measuring up to 10 x 10 x 10 meters, it consists of a high-precision motion capture system, a wireless communication network, and custom software executing sophisticated algorithms for estimation and control.The motion capture system can locate multiple objects in the space at rates exceeding 200 frames per second. While this may seem extremely fast, the objects in the space can move at speeds in excess of 10 m/s, resulting in displacements of over 5 cm between successive snapshots. This information is fused with other data and models of the system dynamics to predict the state of the objects into the future.

The system uses this knowledge to determine what commands the vehicles should execute next to achieve their desired behavior, such as performing high-speed flips, balancing objects, building structures, or engaging in a game of paddle-ball. Then, via wireless links, the system sends the commands to the vehicles, which execute them with the aid of on-board computers and sensors such as rate gyros and accelerometers.
Although various objects can fly in the FMA, the machine of choice is the quadrocopter due to its agility, its mechanical simplicity and robustness, and its ability to hover. Furthermore, the quadrocopter is a great platform for research in adaptation and learning: it has well understood, low order first-principle models near hover, but is difficult to characterize when performing high-speed maneuvers due to complex aerodynamic effects. We cope with the difficult to model effects with algorithms that use first-principle models to roughly determine what a vehicle should do to perform a given task, and then learn and adapt based on flight data.

'Meteor Fever'

BBC >>

What's more, according to Russia's Subsoil Law, there are no legal grounds for prohibiting people from collecting, selling and exporting meteorite fragments.
However, potentially lucrative finds are already raising eyebrows. The Internet is full of ads selling so-called fragments of the Chebarkul meteorite, with prices ranging from a few thousand to 500,000 roubles (£11,000).
The Chelyabinsk police department has already questioned one "businessman" - a resident of Emanzhelinka village - who has sold several fragments for 15,000 roubles. He could be charged with fraud if the stones are found to be fake.

Nuclear Leak

Underground tanks containing nuclear waste from the Manhattan Project are leaking in Washington state:

The Department of Energy, which oversees the site, said last week that one of the 177 tanks at the site was leaking radioactive waste liquids at a rate of 150 to 300 gallons per year. The department said then that the tank, which holds approximately 447,000 gallons of sludge, was the first one documented to be losing liquids since interim stabilization of Hanford’s tanks was completed in 2005.

>>NYTimes

>>Hanford Site [Wiki]

Graphene Update

ScienceDaily >>

"Crumpling" application of graphene:

The lattice, known as graphene, is made of pure carbon and appears under magnification like chicken wire. Because of its unique optical, electrical and mechanical properties, graphene is used in electronics, energy storage, composite materials and biomedicine.
However, graphene is extremely difficult to handle in that it easily "crumples," which, depending on circumstances, can be a positive or negative characteristic. Unfortunately, scientists have been unable to control the crumpling and unfolding of large-area graphene to take advantage of its properties.
Duke engineer Xuanhe Zhao, assistant professor in Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, likens the challenge of controlling graphene to the difference between unfolding paper and wet tissue.
"If you crumpled up normal paper, you can pretty easily flatten it out," Zhao said. "However, graphene is more like wet tissue paper. It is extremely thin and sticky and difficult to unfold once crumpled. We have developed a method to solve this problem and control the crumpling and unfolding of large-area graphene films."

>>Dr. Zhao's Research Page

ShapeShift

Electro-active material:

ShapeShift is an experiment in future possibilities of architectural materialization. This project explores the potential application of electro-active polymer (EAP) at an architectural scale. EAP offers a new relationship to space built through its unique combination of qualities. It is an ultra-lightweight, flexible material with the ability to change shape without the need for mechanical actuators. As a collaboration between the chair for Computer Aided Architectural Design (ETHZ) and the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA), shape-shift bridges gaps between advanced techniques in architectural design / fabrication and material science as well as pushing academic research towards real world applications.

More info:
>>ShapeShift blogspot