Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/03/justin-bieber-i-want-to-be-a-role-model/
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Friday, March 29, 2013
The Engadget Show 42: Expand with OUYA, Google, DJ Spooky, robots, space, hardware startups and more!
Listen, we're not going to promise you that watching an hour-long episode is the same as going to Expand. The good news for those of you who were unable to attend due to scheduling or geography, however, is that the ticket price is a bit lower, and many of our favorite moments have been saved for posterity. We've done our best to whittle a weekend at San Francisco's beautiful Fort Mason center into one bite-sized chunk of Engadget Show goodness. We'll take you behind the scenes at the event and show you what it takes to run your very own consumer-facing electronics show.
We've got conversations with Google's Tamar Yehoshua, OUYA's Julie Uhrman, Jason Parrish and Corinna Proctor from Lenovo, Chris Anderson, DJ Spooky, Mark Frauenfelder, Veronica Belmont, Ryan Block, plus folks from NASA, 3D Robotics, Oculus, Google Lunar X Prize, TechShop, Lunar and IndieGogo. We'll go for a spin on ZBoard's latest electric skateboard and show off the da Vinci surgical robot, the Ekso robotic exoskeleteon and the latest UAV from 3D Robotics -- we'll also be taking you out on the town in a Tesla Model S. And for a little bit of high drama, there's our first-ever Insert Coin: New Challengers competition, including conversations with the semi-finalists and the big moment of truth. All that plus kids, dogs and your favorite Engadget Editors. Join us after the break for a warm and fuzzy Engadget Show, won't you?
Filed under: Cellphones, Cameras, Displays, Misc, Gaming, Handhelds, Home Entertainment, Household, Laptops, Meta, Peripherals, Robots, Tablets, Transportation, Wearables, Wireless, Networking, Science, Internet, Software, HD, Mobile, Alt, Samsung, Microsoft, HTC, Google, Sprint, Lenovo, NVIDIA
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/EmulD-BGvuE/
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North readies rockets after U.S. flies stealth bombers over South
By David Chance and Phil Stewart
SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea put its rocket units on standby on Friday to attack U.S. military bases in South Korea and the Pacific, after the United States flew two nuclear-capable stealth bombers over the Korean peninsula in a rare show of force.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un signed off on the order at a midnight meeting of top generals and "judged the time has come to settle accounts with the U.S. imperialists in view of the prevailing situation", official KCNA news agency said.
On Thursday, the United States flew two radar-evading B-2 Spirit bombers on practice runs over South Korea, responding to a series of North Korean threats. They flew from the United States and back in what appeared to be the first exercise of its kind, designed to show America's ability to conduct long-range, precision strikes "quickly and at will", the U.S. military said.
The news of Kim's response was unusually swift.
"He finally signed the plan on technical preparations of strategic rockets of the KPA, ordering them to be standby for fire so that they may strike any time the U.S. mainland, its military bases in the operational theaters in the Pacific, including Hawaii and Guam, and those in south Korea," KCNA said.
The North has an arsenal of Soviet-era Scud missiles that can hit South Korea, but its longer-range missiles are untested. Independent assessments of its missile capability suggest it may have theoretical capacity to hit U.S. bases in Japan and Guam.
The North has launched a daily barrage of threats since early this month when the United States and the South, allies in the 1950-53 Korean War, began routine military drills.
The South and the United States have said the drills are purely defensive in nature and that no incident has taken place in the decades they have been conducted in various forms.
The United States also flew B-52 bombers over South Korea earlier this week.
The North has put its military on highest readiness to fight what it says are hostile forces conducting war drills. Its young leader has previously given "final orders" for its military to wage revolutionary war with the South.
Despite the tide of hostile rhetoric from Pyongyang, it has kept open a joint economic zone with the South which generates $2 billion a year in trade, money the impoverished state can ill-afford to lose.
Pyongyang has also canceled an armistice agreement with the United States that ended the Korean War and cut all communications hotlines with U.S. forces, the United Nations and South Korea.
U.S. SAYS NORTH ON DANGEROUS PATH
"The North Koreans have to understand that what they're doing is very dangerous," U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters at the Pentagon.
"We must make clear that these provocations by the North are taken by us very seriously and we'll respond to that."
The U.S. military said that its B-2 bombers had flown more than 6,500 miles to stage a trial bombing raid from their bases in Missouri as part of the Foal Eagle war drills being held with South Korea.
The bombers dropped inert munitions on the Jik Do Range, in South Korea, and then returned to the continental United States in a single, continuous mission, the military said.
Thursday's drill was the first time B-2s flew round-trip from the mainland United States over South Korea and dropped inert munitions, a Pentagon spokeswoman said.
Victor Cha, a North Korea expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the drill fit within the context of ramped efforts by the Pentagon to deter the North from acting upon any of its threats.
Asked whether he thought the latest moves could further aggravate tensions on the peninsula, Cha, a former White House official, said: "I don't think the situation can get any more aggravated than it already is."
Despite the shrill rhetoric from Pyongyang, few believe North Korea, formally known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, will risk starting a full-out war.
Still, Hagel, who on March 15 announced he was bolstering missile defenses over the growing North Korea threat, said all of the provocations by the North had to be taken seriously.
"Their very provocative actions and belligerent tone, it has ratcheted up the danger and we have to understand that reality," Hagel said, renewing a warning that the U.S. military was ready for "any eventuality" on the peninsula.
North Korea conducted a third nuclear weapons test in February in breach of U.N. sanctions and despite warnings from China, its one major diplomatic ally.
(Additional reporting by David Alexander in Washington; Editing by Warren Strobel, Paul Simao and Mark Bendeich)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/north-readies-rockets-u-flies-stealth-bombers-over-231837163.html
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Manufacturing: Plasma treatments on a roll
Mar. 27, 2013 ? A revolutionary atmospheric-pressure plasma boosts adhesion of polymer films for roll-to-roll solar-cell production.
Mass manufacture of photovoltaic materials is often achieved inexpensively by screen printing organic solar cells onto plastic sheets. The polymer known as poly(ethylene terephthalate), or PET, is a key part of the technology. Well known as the inexpensive plastic used to make soda bottles, PET has garnered increasing use as an optoelectronic substrate because of its strength and flexibility. But printing conductive solar-cell coatings onto PET is a challenge: it has a non-reactive surface and is frequently contaminated with static electric charges, which makes adhesion to other materials difficult.
Linda Wu from the A*STAR Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology and co-workers have now devised an innovative plasma treatment to 'activate' PET surfaces for improved bonding during roll-to-roll processing1. The team's experiments with 'diffuse coplanar surface barrier discharge' (DCSBD) technology show that large-area PET sheets can be microscopically abraded and chemically modified to increase surface adhesion nearly instantaneously, thanks to plasma ions generated under open-air conditions.
Plasma treatments can quickly clean the surfaces of PET and other plastics2 without affecting their underlying properties or appearance. Normally, this technology requires clean rooms and vacuum chambers to turn noble gases into polymer-scrubbing plasma ions. The DCSBD technique, on the other hand, operates at atmospheric pressure and generates its plasma from ordinary air molecules. It achieves this through an inventive system of parallel, strip-like electrodes embedded inside an alumina ceramic plate. Applying a high-frequency, high-voltage electric field to these strips produces a thin and very uniform plasma field from ambient gases close to the ceramic plate (see image). The planar arrangement of this device makes it simple to treat only the top of the substrate using DCSBD in roll-to-roll lines.
When the researchers treated a PET substrate with a DCSBD plasma source, they saw immediate changes to the polymer surface: single-second plasma exposure times were sufficient to transform it from a water-repellent to a water-attractive surface. These modifications occurred uniformly over the entire PET substrate and provided improved adhesion power that lasted for more than 300 hours. X-ray and atomic force microscopy revealed that the short plasma bursts increased the proportion of surface polar groups and significantly enhanced microscale roughness.
Wu notes that the DCSBD technology is safe to touch, easy to operate, and can be deployed in humid and dusty industrial environments. The team is currently investigating if the high power densities present in these atmospheric plasmas can be exploited for future nanomaterial deposition applications.
The A*STAR-affiliated researchers contributing to this research are from the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal References:
- Tom?? Homola, Jind?ich Matou?ek, Be?ta Hergelov?, Martin Kormunda, Linda Y.L. Wu, Mirko ?ern?k. Activation of poly(ethylene terephthalate) surfaces by atmospheric pressure plasma. Polymer Degradation and Stability, 2012; 97 (11): 2249 DOI: 10.1016/j.polymdegradstab.2012.08.001
- Tom?? Homola, Jind?ich Matou?ek, Be?ta Hergelov?, Martin Kormunda, Linda Y.L. Wu, Mirko ?ern?k. Activation of poly(methyl methacrylate) surfaces by atmospheric pressure plasma. Polymer Degradation and Stability, 2012; 97 (6): 886 DOI: 10.1016/j.polymdegradstab.2012.03.029
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
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Solar Impulse to fly across the US, pilots preparing for a trip around the world in 2015
We've been tracking the sun-powered plane known as Solar Impulse for years as it roved hither and yon. Today, Solar Impulse's pilots, Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg, came to NASA's Ames research center to announce their plan to fly across America. The cross-country tour will begin in the Bay Area and end in New York, with stops in Phoenix, Dallas and Washington DC in between. Solar Impulse will also land in either Atlanta, Nashville or St. Louis, with the plane and its pilots set to stay in each locale for about a week to ten days to talk about the project before moving on. For the next month, Piccard and Borschberg will perform test flights around the Bay Area in preparation, and the plan is for the journey to start on May 1st, with an estimated arrival in Gotham sometime in early July.
The point of this new flight is to inspire and educate the public in general of the benefits of renewable energy and efficiency, and to encourage school children and university students in particular to "think off the grid" and innovate and invent on their own. To that end, the pilots will be broadcasting live transmissions and allowing the public to speak with them as they fly, in addition to providing access to flight planning information on the Solar Impulse website. Read on to learn a bit more about the Solar Impulse project and it's future plans.
Filed under: Transportation
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/57fVZc9ok_w/
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Thursday, March 28, 2013
Buzz Aldrin's Moon Toothbrush (And Much, Much More) Is For Sale
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Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Clean electricity from bacteria? Researchers make breakthrough in race to create 'bio-batteries'
Mar. 25, 2013 ? Scientists at the University of East Anglia have made an important breakthrough in the quest to generate clean electricity from bacteria.
Findings published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) show that proteins on the surface of bacteria can produce an electric current by simply touching a mineral surface.
The research shows that it is possible for bacteria to lie directly on the surface of a metal or mineral and transfer electrical charge through their cell membranes. This means that it is possible to 'tether' bacteria directly to electrodes -- bringing scientists a step closer to creating efficient microbial fuel cells or 'bio-batteries'.
The team collaborated with researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington State in the US.?
Shewanella oneidensis is part of a family of marine bacteria. The research team created a synthetic version of this bacteria using just the proteins thought to shuttle the electrons from the inside of the microbe to the rock.
They inserted these proteins into the lipid layers of vesicles, which are small capsules of lipid membranes such as the ones that make up a bacterial membrane. Then they tested how well electrons travelled between an electron donor on the inside and an iron-bearing mineral on the outside.
Lead researcher Dr Tom Clarke from UEA's school of Biological Sciences said: "We knew that bacteria can transfer electricity into metals and minerals, and that the interaction depends on special proteins on the surface of the bacteria. But it was not been clear whether these proteins do this directly or indirectly though an unknown mediator in the environment.
"Our research shows that these proteins can directly 'touch' the mineral surface and produce an electric current, meaning that is possible for the bacteria to lie on the surface of a metal or mineral and conduct electricity through their cell membranes.
"This is the first time that we have been able to actually look at how the components of a bacterial cell membrane are able to interact with different substances, and understand how differences in metal and mineral interactions can occur on the surface of a cell.
"These bacteria show great potential as microbial fuel cells, where electricity can be generated from the breakdown of domestic or agricultural waste products.
"Another possibility is to use these bacteria as miniature factories on the surface of an electrode, where chemicals reactions take place inside the cell using electrical power supplied by the electrode through these proteins."
Biochemist Liang Shi of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory said: "We developed a unique system so we could mimic electron transfer like it happens in cells. The electron transfer rate we measured was unbelievably fast -- it was fast enough to support bacterial respiration."
The finding is also important for understanding how carbon works its way through the atmosphere, land and oceans.
"When organic matter is involved in reducing iron, it releases carbon dioxide and water. And when iron is used as an energy source, bacteria incorporate carbon dioxide into food. If we understand electron transfer, we can learn how bacteria controls the carbon cycle," said Shi.
The project was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the US Department of Energy.
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of East Anglia.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Thomas A Clarke, Gaye White, Julea N Butt, David J Richardson, Zhri Shi, Liang Shi, Zheming Wang, Alice C Dohnalkova, Matthew J Marshall, James K Fredrickson and John M Zachara. Rapid electron exchange between surface-exposed bacterial cytochromes and Fe(III) minerals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, March 25, 2013
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
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Syrian rebels asks US to shoot down Assad's warplanes with Patriot missiles
Mohamed Al-husain / Shaam News Network / Reuters
A look back at the conflict that has overtaken the country.
By Ayman Mohyeldin and F. Brinley Bruton, NBC News
A Syrian opposition leader said Tuesday that he had asked the United States to defend rebel-held areas with Patriot missiles.?
NATO already has Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries in NATO-member Turkey to help defend the country from potential airstrikes by?President Bashar Assad's regime.
Syrian opposition leader Mouaz al-Khatib -- who appeared Tuesday as the representative of Syria at an Arab League summit meeting following the Assad regime's suspension -- said that he had asked Secretary of State John Kerry "to extend the umbrella of the Patriot missiles to cover the Syrian north and he promised to study the subject," Reuters reported.
The insurgents have few weapons to counter Assad's helicopter gunships and warplanes. Al-Khatib added that the United States should play a bigger role in helping end the two-year-old conflict in Syria, blaming Assad's government for what he called its refusal to solve the crisis.?
Al-Khatib, who is considered a moderate preacher, appeared at the summit despite his?resignation as the head of the?Syrian National Coalition?on Sunday, when he slammed the lack of action by the international community.?An estimated 70,000 Syrians have been killed in the two-year conflict.
?We have been slaughtered under the watchful eyes of the world for two years, in an unprecedented manner by a vicious regime,? he said Sunday.
?Everything that happened to the Syrian people ? from destruction of infrastructure, arrest of tens of thousands of their children, displacement of tens of thousands, and other tragedies ? is not enough for the world to make an international decision to allow people to defend themselves," he added.
However, NATO said on Tuesday that it was not going to get involved in the conflict. "NATO has no intention to intervene militarily in Syria," a NATO official told Reuters.
The founder of the Free Syrian Army lost a leg in an explosion in Syria, according to Reuters. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.
Anti-Assad forces suffered a further blow Sunday night when the founder of the insurgent Free Syrian Army had his leg severed by an explosion in an apparent assassination attempt, opposition sources told Reuters. Colonel?Riad al-Asaad's?wounds were not life-threatening and he was moved from Syria to a hospital in Turkey, a Turkish official said.
The West and Arab nations? perceived inaction in the face of the slaughter and destruction infuriates many Syrian opposition members, who say they cannot topple Assad without military hardware like anti-tank mines and anti-aircraft missiles.
That hesitancy is especially galling for many in the opposition given that other countries are already involved in the war to an extent: Russia, Iran and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah support the regime more-or-less openly, while the United States, Europe and much of the Sunni Arab world are arrayed behind the rebels.
There are fears in the West that heavy weapons given to the rebels could fall into the hands of extremist groups fighting alongside them, such as Jabhat al-Nusra.
Despite of attempts to contain the crisis, the conflict is bleeding across its borders.
The civil war has already displaced an estimated 3 million Syrians, and sent more than a million fleeing into neighboring countries.
The conflict has also inflamed sectarian tensions in neighboring Lebanon, which suffered its own vicious civil war. Fears are growing that the violence will ignite simmering Sunni-Shiite tensions in Iraq.
On Monday, Jordan closed its main border crossing with Syria after two days of fighting there between Syrian troops and rebel fighters.
Rebels have also overrun several towns near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights,?fueling?tensions in the sensitive military zone.?
Reuters contributed to this report.
Related:?
'Chemical weapon' rockets fired in Syria, rebels say
Kerry urges Iraq to stop arms flow to Syria on Baghdad visit
Full Syria coverage from NBC News
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Meet a one-eyed, six-legged, flying whale chaser
Wayne Perryman, NOAA
A NOAA hexacopter out for a spin. Scientists use the device to track marine life.
By Becky Oskin, OurAmazingPlanet
Low, slow and loud ? counting marine life by plane has some drawbacks. Though scientists can cover wide swaths of ocean, engine noise may disturb animals and the surveys always present some risk to pilots and crew.
So some biologists are turning to less obtrusive unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to spot species including whales, dolphins, sea lions and penguins. From small helicopters to planes with a 10-foot (3 meters) wingspan, the battery-powered craft could become a popular new tool.
"What makes these things so effective is they capture a tremendous amount of information," said NOAA marine biologist Wayne Perryman, based at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, Calif.
For years, Perryman has experimented with military reconnaissance techniques to track marine life. He collaborates with former Navy officer Don LeRoi of Aerial Imaging Solutions in Connecticut.
Their latest device is a hexacopter. With six quiet engines, internal gyroscopes, an accelerometer and a GPS, the mechanical bird has great maneuverability, Perryman said. For the past two years, Perryman has snapped shots of penguin and seal colonies in Antarctica with the hexacopter. Future trips include a jaunt to Alaska to survey stellar sea lions.
"When you get into aggregations of thousands of animals, humans are lousy at determining how many animals there are," Perryman told OurAmazingPlanet. "With photography, you can go back in time and see something you maybe wouldn't have noticed," he adds.
Sperm whale spotting
In February and March, Perryman and LeRoi helped an international science team track sperm whales near New Zealand by capturing whale photos with the copter. The scientists attached tracking tags to the whales, and knowing their size and shape from the photos improves understanding of how the whales dive underwater, Perryman said. It was the first ship-based test for the 'copter, named Archie by the scientists onboard.
There were lessons learned. Even with a gyroscope-stabilized platform brought on ship to calibrate the hexacopter's stabilizing systems, Archie ended up in the ocean on one flight. "We picked it up and rinsed it off with fresh water, and within a week, we were flying again," Perryman said.
For their ease-of-use and cool aerial photos and videos, hexacopters are also popular with hobbyists, who can build a bird with off-the-shelf parts for less than $1,000.
Perryman said it would cost $60,000 to design a hexacopter for marine research, and he hopes to find funding for a pilot trainer.
"We need to build a tough little aircraft that has all the same components as our sampling bird, but one you can crash and knock it into things and fly into trees and it keeps on ticking," he said.
Abandon ships?
Researchers at Murdoch University in Australia are also testing a small fixed-wing plane to survey and count marine life, including dugongs, an animal similar to manatees, and humpback whales. [ Whales: Giants of the Deep ]
Perryman sees potential for using aerial devices to place tracking tags on animals, collect skin specimens and sample breath, which contains information about an animal's health. Currently, scientists invest many hours following whales and other species to collect this information and place tags, typically in small rubber boats.
The photographic detail achievable with these vehicles could also help differentiate between species, Perryman said.
"In the Antarctic, there may be four undescribed species of killer whales. If you're going to ask questions about size and shape and growth, you have to have a way of collecting very accurate information without handling the animals, and that's what this can do," Perryman said.
Email?Becky Oskinor follow her@beckyoskin. Follow us?@OAPlanet,Facebook?orGoogle +.Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.
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Lil Wayne Makes Human Being II Member-Only
Weezy's countless crude-yet-creative penis references keep his 10th solo LP light.
By Rob Markman
Lil Wayne
Photo: Gustavo Caballero/Getty
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1704333/lil-wayne-i-am-a-human-being-ii-references.jhtml
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Ghanaian pregnant women who sleep on back at increased risk of stillbirth
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 25-Mar-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Mary Masson
mfmasson@umich.edu
734-764-2220
University of Michigan Health System
Maternal sleep position may influence pregnancy outcomes, according to University of Michigan-led study
Ann Arbor, Mich. Pregnant women in Ghana who slept on their back (supine sleep) were at an increased risk of stillbirth compared to women who did not sleep on their back, according to new research led by a University of Michigan researcher.
In the study, published this month in the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, researchers found that supine sleep increased the risk of low birth weight by a factor of 5 and that it was the low birth weight that explained the high risk for stillbirth in these women.
The study's senior author, Louise O'Brien, Ph.D., M.S., associate professor in U-M's Sleep Disorders Center, says that although this study was conducted in a maternity hospital in Ghana -- a country that has high perinatal mortality -- a recent case-control study from New Zealand also found a link between maternal supine sleep and stillbirth.
Stillbirth is a traumatic event that occurs in about 2-5 babies out of every 1,000 babies born in high-income countries. In low income countries, such as those in Africa, about 20-50 babies out of every 1,000 babies are stillborn.
"But if maternal sleep position does play a role in stillbirth, encouraging pregnant women everywhere not to sleep on their back is a simple approach that may improve pregnancy outcomes," says O'Brien.
Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate of stillbirth in the world and little progress has been made in reducing those deaths.
"In Ghana, inexpensive interventions are urgently needed to improve pregnancy outcomes. This is a behavior that can be modified: encouraging women to avoid sleeping on their back would be a low-cost method to reduce stillbirths in Ghana and other low-income countries," says O'Brien.
Jocelynn Owusu, M.P.H., of the Department of Health Behavior and Education in the U-M School of Public Health, the study's first author, interviewed women soon after delivery at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra Ghana.
O'Brien says that the possibility that supine sleep has a part in low birth weight and subsequently stillbirth is plausible because of uterine compression on the inferior vena cava, resulting in reduced venous filling and cardiac output.
"The data in this study suggests that more than one-quarter of stillbirths might be avoided by altering maternal sleep position," O'Brien says. "This supports the need to develop simple intervention trials."
###
Additional authors: From the University of Michigan School of Public Health: Frank J. Anderson, clinical associate professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education; Of Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Ghana: Jerry Coleman, Samuel Oppong, Joseph D. Seffah and Alfred Aikins.
Journal reference: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijgo.2013.01.013
University of Michigan's Program for Sexual Rights and Reproductive Justice: Join us May 29-31, 2013 for an innovative meeting to advance reproductive justice by exploring the intersections of activism, advocacy, and academia. To date, advocacy groups have advanced reproductive justice agendas around the country and the world. We believe it is time for academic institutions to step up to support their work by providing a forum for meaningful dialogue and the development of research agendas and applied projects. This meeting will allow advocates, activists and academics to collectively explore how we can design research informed by advocacy and generate useful and reliable data and findings that promote reproductive justice. More info and registration: https://sites.google.com/site/a3ina2/
About the U-M Sleep Disorders Center: The Sleep Disorders Center diagnoses and treats patients who have problems with their sleep or level of alertness. The Center is among the largest academic facilities of its kind in the country and includes several parts: a number of general and more specialized Sleep Disorders Clinics; the Michael S. Aldrich Sleep Disorders Laboratory; the University of Michigan Sleep Disorders Laboratory South State Street; active training programs; and productive research projects.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 25-Mar-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Mary Masson
mfmasson@umich.edu
734-764-2220
University of Michigan Health System
Maternal sleep position may influence pregnancy outcomes, according to University of Michigan-led study
Ann Arbor, Mich. Pregnant women in Ghana who slept on their back (supine sleep) were at an increased risk of stillbirth compared to women who did not sleep on their back, according to new research led by a University of Michigan researcher.
In the study, published this month in the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, researchers found that supine sleep increased the risk of low birth weight by a factor of 5 and that it was the low birth weight that explained the high risk for stillbirth in these women.
The study's senior author, Louise O'Brien, Ph.D., M.S., associate professor in U-M's Sleep Disorders Center, says that although this study was conducted in a maternity hospital in Ghana -- a country that has high perinatal mortality -- a recent case-control study from New Zealand also found a link between maternal supine sleep and stillbirth.
Stillbirth is a traumatic event that occurs in about 2-5 babies out of every 1,000 babies born in high-income countries. In low income countries, such as those in Africa, about 20-50 babies out of every 1,000 babies are stillborn.
"But if maternal sleep position does play a role in stillbirth, encouraging pregnant women everywhere not to sleep on their back is a simple approach that may improve pregnancy outcomes," says O'Brien.
Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate of stillbirth in the world and little progress has been made in reducing those deaths.
"In Ghana, inexpensive interventions are urgently needed to improve pregnancy outcomes. This is a behavior that can be modified: encouraging women to avoid sleeping on their back would be a low-cost method to reduce stillbirths in Ghana and other low-income countries," says O'Brien.
Jocelynn Owusu, M.P.H., of the Department of Health Behavior and Education in the U-M School of Public Health, the study's first author, interviewed women soon after delivery at Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra Ghana.
O'Brien says that the possibility that supine sleep has a part in low birth weight and subsequently stillbirth is plausible because of uterine compression on the inferior vena cava, resulting in reduced venous filling and cardiac output.
"The data in this study suggests that more than one-quarter of stillbirths might be avoided by altering maternal sleep position," O'Brien says. "This supports the need to develop simple intervention trials."
###
Additional authors: From the University of Michigan School of Public Health: Frank J. Anderson, clinical associate professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education; Of Korle Bu Teaching Hospital in Ghana: Jerry Coleman, Samuel Oppong, Joseph D. Seffah and Alfred Aikins.
Journal reference: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijgo.2013.01.013
University of Michigan's Program for Sexual Rights and Reproductive Justice: Join us May 29-31, 2013 for an innovative meeting to advance reproductive justice by exploring the intersections of activism, advocacy, and academia. To date, advocacy groups have advanced reproductive justice agendas around the country and the world. We believe it is time for academic institutions to step up to support their work by providing a forum for meaningful dialogue and the development of research agendas and applied projects. This meeting will allow advocates, activists and academics to collectively explore how we can design research informed by advocacy and generate useful and reliable data and findings that promote reproductive justice. More info and registration: https://sites.google.com/site/a3ina2/
About the U-M Sleep Disorders Center: The Sleep Disorders Center diagnoses and treats patients who have problems with their sleep or level of alertness. The Center is among the largest academic facilities of its kind in the country and includes several parts: a number of general and more specialized Sleep Disorders Clinics; the Michael S. Aldrich Sleep Disorders Laboratory; the University of Michigan Sleep Disorders Laboratory South State Street; active training programs; and productive research projects.
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/uomh-gpw032513.php
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Rove sees potential support for gay marriage
WASHINGTON (AP) ? GOP strategist Karl Rove says he can imagine a Republican candidate in the next presidential campaign supporting gay marriage.
The statement from the former adviser to President George W. Bush appears to acknowledge that opposition to gay marriage has waned in some conservative circles.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, announced last week that he now supports gay marriage after learning one of his sons was gay.
Rove's comment was part of a panel discussion on ABC's "This Week." He did not elaborate.
The Supreme Court is taking up two cases this week involving same-sex marriage. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, told CBS' "Face the Nation" that most Republicans still oppose gay marriage and noted that 30 states have defined marriage between a man and a woman.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rove-sees-potential-support-gay-marriage-192602808--election.html
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Nuclear life of actin uncovered: Protein with key job in muscle function moonlights in nucleus to help regulate genes
Mar. 24, 2013 ? A key building block of life, actin is one of the most abundant and highly conserved proteins in eukaryotic cells.
First discovered in muscle cells more than 70 years ago, actin has a well-established identity as a cytoplasmic protein that works by linking itself in chains to form filaments. Fibers formed by these actin polymers are crucial to muscle contraction.
So it came as a surprise when scientists discovered actin in the nucleus. Labs have been working for the past few decades to figure out exactly what it's doing there.
A new study published this week in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology reveals that actin has a new and fundamental nuclear function, and that surprisingly, it accomplishes this task in its single-molecule (monomeric) form -- not through polymerization.
Senior author of the study Xuetong "Snow" Shen, Ph.D., associate professor in The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Department of Molecular Carcinogenesis, has been fascinated by the mystery of nuclear actin. In collaboration with researchers from Colorado State University, his lab developed a unique model system to nail down actin's function in the nucleus by studying the actin-containing INO80 chromatin remodeling complex.
In 2000, as a postdoc at NIH in Carl Wu's lab, Shen identified actin as a component of the INO80 complex, adding to the growing list of evidence that actin indeed has a life in the nucleus. However, how actin actually works in the nucleus remains fuzzy due to lack of clear experimental systems.
"Our model system opened up a new opportunity to look in depth at the function of nuclear actin as it relates to gene regulation, genome stability, and ultimately cancer," Snow said.
A nuclear role for monomeric actin
Because yeast have only a single actin gene, the authors reasoned that studying INO80 in yeast cells would allow a direct assessment of the protein's nuclear function. In contrast, mammals have at least six forms of actin coded by separate genes, making their study more difficult.
The researchers used both genetic and biochemical methods to dissect actin's role in the INO80 complex. The INO80 complex normally functions in the nucleus to rearrange chromatin ?- the intertwined proteins and DNA that are packaged into chromosomes -- regulating the expression of many different genes.
The authors found that a mutant form of actin impairs the ability of INO80 to function correctly, implicating actin in the process of chromatin remodeling -- an exploding field of research with applications in cancer diagnosis and treatment.
In the cytoplasm, actin functions primarily as a polymer. Cytoplasmic actin is a component of the cytoskeleton and the muscle contractile machinery, and is essential for cell mobility, including cancer metastasis. Actin inside the INO80 complex is arranged in a clever way such that it cannot polymerize; instead, actin's monomeric form appears to interact with chromatin.
"Our study challenges the dogma that actin functions through polymerization, revealing a novel and likely a fundamental mechanism for monomeric nuclear actin," Shen said.
New findings for an ancient complex
Because actin and several of the other INO80 components are so highly conserved, even in human cells, this mechanism likely represents an ancient, fundamental role of actin, which has been preserved through evolution.
Shen's group is now teasing out the exact mechanism by which nuclear actin interacts with chromatin. They also hope to extend the results to human cells and to identify potential ways by which nuclear actin could be involved in cancer.
Chromatin is critical for maintaining the delicate balance between gene activation and repression, Shen said. "Disrupting this regulation can lead to cancer, and it remains to be seen whether nuclear actin has a role in this process."
Lead authors of the study are Prabodh Kapoor, Ph.D., and Mingming Chen, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellows in Shen's lab. Co-authors are Duane David Winkler, Ph.D., and Karolin Luger, Ph.D., of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Colorado State University. Shen, senior author, also is a member of the Center for Cancer Epigenetics at MD Anderson.
The research was funded by grants from the National Cancer Institute (K22CA100017) and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (RO1GM093104), both of the National Institutes of Health, the Center for Cancer Epigenetics, the Theodore N. Law Endowment for Scientific Achievement at MD Anderson and by MD Anderson's Odyssey postdoctoral program to Kapoor.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Prabodh Kapoor, Mingming Chen, Duane David Winkler, Karolin Luger, Xuetong Shen. Evidence for monomeric actin function in INO80 chromatin remodeling. Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.2529
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/VtHY7ciDy4Q/130324152310.htm
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Music HUD Adds Useful Info to Your iPhone's Volume Display
iOS (Jailbroken): The volume HUD that pops up in iOS isn't especially useful, and if you're curious about what song is playing you need to pop into the Music app and look. Music HUD is a tweak that adds the currently playing album's image to the volume overlay, as well a few other pieces of useful information.
In Music HUD's settings you can customize how it works. At first, it just shows you the currently playing album when you hit the volume knob, but you can also add the album title, a subtitle, and a couple gestures to instantly mute or open up the Music app.
Music HUD (free) | Big Boss Repository via Modmyi
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Sunday, March 24, 2013
Self Storage Real Estate Investment Trust Public Storage Buys ...
Public Storage Inc., a self-storage real estate investment trust, has purchased a facility from Vault Storage LLC in Surprise, Ariz., for $7.2 million. The deal for the 76,125-square-foot facility was brokered by Norman Herd of Empire Commercial Real Estate.
The storage property at 13360 W. Willow Ave. features 702 air-conditioned units on 2.83 acres. It also features a rooftop solar-power system that supplies all of the facility?s energy needs, and a reclaimed-water system for onsite irrigation. Since their installation, the two systems have reduced facility operating expenses by more than $20,000 per year, Herd said.
The acquisition also includes two adjacent, 1-acre out-parcels for future development.
Based in Glendale, Calif., Public Storage has interests in 2,068 self-storage facilities in 38 states with approximately 132 million net rentable square feet. Operating under the Shurgard brand name, the company also has 189 facilities in western Europe with approximately 10 million net rentable square feet.
Empire Commercial Real Estate focuses on single-use properties, including self-storage investments, mobile home parks, hotels and apartment real estate.
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Dropped your iPhone? With new Apple tech, it's no problem.
Apple has patented drop protection technology for its handheld devices, including the Apple iPhone.?
A man talks on his iPhone as he takes the escalator out of a subway station in downtown Shanghai, March 13, 2013. Apple has established a patent on technology that senses when an iPhone has been dropped, and adjusts the angle of the phone accordingly.
Reuters
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No ones likes the cracked screens, or the broken glass, or the battered edges. No one likes marching to the Apple store and forking over $200 for a replacement unit. But take solace, iPhone users! Apple may have a solution in the works. According to Apple Insider, Apple recently patented something called a "Protective Mechanism for an Electronic Device," which senses the angle of the falling iPhone to the floor, and adjusts course accordingly.?
In other words, let's say you were snacking on a sandwich, and you knocked your iPhone off the table with your elbow. The sensors would kick in ? keep in mind the iPhone has long been equipped with a gyroscope and an accelerometer? ? and make sure the iPhone landed on an edge, as opposed to the display. Pretty handy for users who are all thumbs when it comes to their smartphones.?
The patent defines?the technology, in part, like this (dense, technical language warning):?
A method of protecting a vulnerable area of an electronic device during free[fall] comprising the steps of: detecting by a sensor a freefall of the device; determining by the sensor an orientation of the device; estimating by a processor an impact area of the device; and selectively changing the orientation of the device via a protective mechanism depending on the estimated impact area of the device.?
Of course, as Apple Insider is quick to note, it's unlikely this technology will be arriving in the next iPhone. It's simply too bulky, and Apple has put a premium on slimming down the build of its smartphone in recent years. Still, it's nice to dream.?
Speaking of new iPhones, back in December, a?French tech site published photos of a device it claimed was the iPhone 5S. The phone looked similar to the iPhone 5, which makes sense ? Apple typically overhauls its phones not annually, but every other year.?
Strategy Analytics recently reported (hat tip BGR) that in the US alone, Apple shipped a whopping 17.7 million smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2012. That was good enough to make Apple the top smart-phone vendor in the country.?
For?more tech news, follow us on?Twitter @venturenaut.
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What you eat before surgery may affect your recovery
Friday, March 22, 2013
According to a new study, the last few meals before surgery might make a difference in recovery after surgery. Fat tissue is one of the most dominant components that make up the body, and fat tissue is always traumatized during major surgery.
Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) found that this direct trauma greatly impacts the chemical balance of fat tissue?chemicals that are known to communicate with nearby and distant organs. In the study, mice that consumed a typical Western, high-fat diet showed an exaggerated imbalanced response. Importantly, restricting food intake to a lower-fat diet just a few weeks before surgery reduced the imbalance back toward a more normal response.
The study is published in the April 2013 issue of Surgery.
Senior study author C. Keith Ozaki, MD, Director of BWH Vascular Surgery Research, and colleagues measured how fat responds to surgery and whether restricting calorie intake before surgery changed how the fat tissue responded to typical trauma that usually occurs during an operation.
"Surgeons have learned that generally minimizing trauma accelerates patient recovery from surgery," noted Ozaki. "While we do this well for specific organs such as the heart, blood vessels, liver, and so forth, we historically have paid little attention to the fat that we cut through to expose these organs. Our findings challenge us all to learn more about how fat responds to trauma, what factors impact this response, and how fat's response is linked to the outcome of individual patients."
Researchers fed one group of mice a high-fat diet (containing 60 percent calories from fat), while a control group was given a more normal diet (containing 10 percent calories from fat).
Three weeks before surgery, researchers switched some of the high-fat diet mice to the normal diet. During surgery, the researchers performed procedures that would occur during a typical operation and observed that such surgical trauma rapidly affected the fat tissues located both near and away from the trauma site. This resulted in increased inflammation and decreased specialized fat hormone synthesis, especially in the young adult mice and those that had a simulated wound infection.
However, reducing food intake before surgery tended to reverse these activities for all mice age groups, even in the setting of the simulated infection. The results suggest that while fat is a very dominant tissue in the human body, its ability to rapidly change might be leveraged to lessen complications in humans during stressful situations such as surgery.
In an accompanying review article composed with key collaborator James Mitchell, PhD, assistant professor of Genetics and Complex Diseases, Harvard School of Public Health, the researchers suggest that restricting diet in humans before surgery provides a unique opportunity to test whether this method will decrease the incidence and severity of surgical complications brought on by over-exuberant inflammation and other stressors.
Simply cutting out certain dietary elements (without malnutrition) may be a feasible, inexpensive and effective way of protecting the body against stress from an operation. In the review article, the researchers specifically point to further studying this method in patients undergoing vascular surgery, a population that faces increased risks of surgical complications such as wound-healing problems, heart attack and stroke.
"The relationship between surgical outcomes and obesity has always been complex," said Ozaki. "Our results and those of others highlight that the quality of your fat tissues appears to be important, along with the total amount of body fat when it comes to the body's response to an operation."
###
Brigham and Women's Hospital: http://www.brighamandwomens.org
Thanks to Brigham and Women's Hospital for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127408/What_you_eat_before_surgery_may_affect_your_recovery
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You're Probably Not Invited to Mitt Romney's Summer Mixer
Mitt Romney is hosting a mixer in Park City, Utah this summer to unite "political, business and other thought leaders," according to the Chicago Tribune, but you probably aren't invited unless you're a future Republican contender for President or a deep-pocketed donor.?
RELATED: The Palin Potential in Romney's 'No More Palins' Veepstakes
The Tribune got their hands on an invitation for Romney's big summer party, though they aren't necessarily on the guest list. It's being hosted by?Solamere Capital, the private equity firm founded and run by Mitt's son Tagg Romney, where elder Romney now works and eats cupcakes.
RELATED: The Media Career Potential of the Offspring of the Potential Romney Veeps
To get on the guest list, you have to be someone important with a bright political future like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, or Romney's former running mate Paul Ryan. As the Tribune explains, the party is an excuse for Christie and Ryan to shake hands with the kind of zillionaires that write checks for political campaigns:?
An advantage for any potential 2016 candidates will be the other guests at the event. If, as expected, the upcoming event draws former Romney donors, it would offer the future contenders a chance to forge relationships with some of those who contributed to Romney?s powerful fundraising operation.
So, Romney's new role in the Republican party is being a money man, or at least the guy who knows the money men and women. He's a financier. Which makes enough sense considering he usually gets around with some of the most ridiculously, out of touch rich people in the world.
RELATED: Who Is Speaking When at the Republican National Convention?
This summer retreat is drawing comparisons to a weekend getaway Romney organized for his campaign supporters last summer. That party earned rave reviews from attendees, and featured a very serious foreign policy speech from?Condoleezza?Rice and a comedy set from Karl Rove. Among the guests: Arizona Sen. John McCain, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, and Jeb Bush.?
RELATED: Chris Christie Can't Wait to Tell You How Excited He Is for the Debates
It was hosted in hotel along the Utah mountains, just like this year's party, a reference to the time he spent organizing the Winter olympics there. Romney's showmanship was the real takeaway of that weekend. At the end of one of Romney's speeches, he had Olympic skiers do backflips off ski jumps into the hotel pools to entertain his guests.?
RELATED: Which Potential Romney Running Mate Would Bring the Most Money?
So that's what he has to top this year. Could we suggest Olympic skiers doing back flips off ski jumps through flaming hoops into hotel pools while carrying a pair of puppies each?
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/youre-probably-not-invited-mitt-romneys-summer-mixer-162547175.html
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Obama warns of 'enclave for extremism' in Syria
AMMAN, Jordan (AP) ? President Barack Obama warned Friday that an "enclave for extremism" could fill a leadership void in war-torn Syria, a chilling scenario for an already tumultuous region, especially for Jordan, Syria's neighbor and a nation at the crossroads of the struggle for stability in the Middle East.
In a significant step toward easing regional tensions, Obama also brokered a phone call between leaders from Israel and Turkey that resulted in an extraordinary apology from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a deadly 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound Turkish flotilla. The call marked a diplomatic victory for the president and a crucial realignment in the region, given Israel's and Turkey's shared interests, in particular the fear that Syria's civil war could spill over their respective borders.
Obama said he remains confident that embattled Syrian leader Bashar Assad's government will ultimately collapse. But he warned that when that happens, Syria would not be "put back together perfectly," and he said he fears the nation could become a hotbed for extremists.
"I am very concerned about Syria becoming an enclave for extremism, because extremists thrive in chaos," Obama said during a joint news conference with Jordan's King Abdullah II. "They thrive in failed states, they thrive in power vacuums."
More than 70,000 people have been killed during the two-year conflict in Syria, making it by far the deadliest of the Arab Spring uprisings that have roiled the region since 2011. Longtime autocrats in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Libya have been ousted, ushering in new governments that are sometimes at odds with the Obama administration and its Mideast allies.
Obama's 24-hour stop in Jordan marked his first visit to an Arab nation since the 2011 Mideast protests began. Jordan's monarchy has clung to power in part by enacting political reforms, including parliamentary elections and significant revisions to the country's 60-year-old constitution. Still, tensions continue to simmer, with the restive population questioning the speed and seriousness of the changes.
Protecting Abdullah is paramount to U.S. interests. The 51-year-old king is perhaps Obama's strongest Arab ally and a key player in efforts to jumpstart peace talks between Palestinians and Israel. Jordan has a peace treaty with Israel, and that agreement has become even more significant given the rise of Islamist leaders in Egypt, which was the first Arab country to ink a treaty with the Jewish state, in the 1970s.
Egypt's new leaders have so far pledged to uphold the treaty, though there are strong concerns in Israel and the U.S. about whether that will hold.
By virtue of geography, Jordan's future is particularly vulnerable to the turmoil in the Middle East. It shares borders with Iraq, Israel and the West Bank, in addition to Syria. More than 460,000 Syrians have flowed across the Jordanian border seeking refuge since the civil war began, seeking an escape from the violence.
The flood of refugees has overwhelmed the country of 6 million people, straining Jordan's resources, including health care and education, and pushing the budget deficit to a record high $3 billion last year. Abdullah also fears the half-million refugees could create a regional base for extremists and terrorists, saying recently that such elements were already "establishing firm footholds in some areas."
Obama announced that his administration planned to work with Congress to allocate $200 million to Jordan to help ease the financial burden.
Despite the influx, Abdullah firmly declared Jordan would not close its borders to the refugees, many women and children.
"This is something that we just can't do," he said. "It's not the Jordanian way. We have historically opened our arms to many of our neighbors through many decades of Jordan's history."
Obama had come to Jordan from Israel, where he spent three days coaxing Netanyahu to apologize to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for Israel's role in the deaths of nine Turkish activists during a naval raid on a Gaza-bound international flotilla. The 20-minute phone call took place just before Obama departed, in a trailer on the airport tarmac near a waiting Air Force One, and resulted in the restoration of normal diplomatic relations between the two countries.
"The timing was good for that conversation to take place," Obama said, adding that the phone call was the first step in rebuilding trust between Israel and Turkey.
The president opened the last full day of his Mideast trip with a series of stops around Jerusalem and Bethlehem, all steeped in political and religious symbolism.
Accompanied by Netanyahu and Israeli President Shimon Peres, Obama laid wreaths at the graves of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism who died in 1904 before realizing his dream of a Jewish homeland, and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995.
Obama and his hosts arrived at the Herzl grave site under cloudless skies. Obama approached Herzl's resting place alone and bowed his head in silence. He turned briefly to ask Netanyahu where to place a small stone in the Jewish custom, then laid the stone atop the grave.
"It is humbling and inspiring to visit and remember the visionary who began the remarkable establishment of the State of Israel," Obama wrote in a guestbook. "May our two countries possess the same vision and will to secure peace and prosperity for future generations."
At Rabin's grave a short walk away, Obama was greeted by members of the late leader's family. He initially placed a stone on Rabin's wife's side of the grave, then returned to place one atop Rabin's side. In a gesture linking the U.S. and Israel, the stone placed on Rabin's grave was from the grounds of the Martin Luther King memorial in Washington, the White House said.
Friday's stop at Herzl's grave, together with Obama's earlier viewing of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the ancient Hebrew texts, were an attempt by the president to emphasize his view that the rationale for Israel's existence rests with its historical ties to the region and with a vision that predated the Holocaust. Obama was criticized in Israel for his 2009 Cairo speech in which he gave only the example of the Holocaust as reason justifying Israel's existence.
Obama was to make a stop Saturday at Petra, Jordan's fabled ancient city, before flying back to Washington.
___
Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Jamal Halaby contributed to this report.
___
Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-warns-enclave-extremism-syria-214942384.html
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Crowdfunding hope for human-powered helicopter project
Last September, the Gamera II team from the A. James Clark School of Engineering got so close to claiming the Sikorsky Prize of US$250,000 for human-powered helicopter flight that the American Helicopter Society must surely have been preparing to pull the dust covers off the safe and hand over the cash. Gamera II features a huge cross-shaped frame with enormous rotors at each of its four points, which are powered by sustained hand and foot pumping from a pilot at the center. It's a design that's been used by many of those attempting to nab the elusive prize (including AeroVelo's Atlas), but Georgia's Kenneth Huff has a rather more compact vision for success.
The project began in the spring of 2010, when Huff stumbled across some information about the Sikorsky competition while researching the building of an engine-powered single-seat helicopter that he was hoping to build after graduating from Middle Georgia State College.
"I am not sure how most people react to the question of human-powered helicopters, but I thought that it would be easy after reading about the competition," Huff told Gizmag. "I really didn't know what I was in for and after looking at Da Vinci III and Yuri I, I began to understand the nature of challenge."
A year later, he enlisted the help of two friends/fellow classmates (Neal Fischer, William Edwards) and requested a US$5,000 development grant from the College to work on a prototype and test the feasibility of building a human-powered helicopter that was much smaller than either Da Vinci III or Yuri I. At this point, the team had not come across the efforts of the University of Maryland's Gamera team, and AeroVelo hadn't yet embarked on its Atlas project.
Happily, the research proposal was accepted and work began on the first prototype. The aim was to develop a small coaxial human-powered helicopter that had the potential for reliable and practical recreational use, something that certainly can't be claimed for Gamera or Atlas. Banking on improvements in rotor efficiency allowing for a substantial reduction in the size of both frames and blades needed for lift, an additional grant in the spring of 2012 (along with a personal cash injection from Huff himself) allowed important design modifications to be made, along with the construction and testing of a new set of rotors.
The specs for the current prototype (and the next model) include a frame made of 6061 T6 aluminum, a 1:1 gearing ratio, and stacked rotors sporting a carbon fiber spar and S1223 airfoil with a weight of 15 pounds (6.8 kg) and total length of 12 feet (3.6 m). The total empty weight of the craft is 110 pounds (49.8 kg).
"The basic premise behind this design is that when the speed of an airfoil doubles, the lift quadruples," explained Huff. "We knew that we could reduce the area of the rotors by 75 percent when we doubled the speed. Take Yuri I for example, which had eight rotors all rotating at approximately 20 RPMs. If they had been able to double the RPMs to 40, then they could have eliminated six rotors or 75 percent of their rotor area."
"However, any aerodynamicist will inform you that drag also quadruples when the speed of airfoil doubles so there would be much more drag, which is completely true," he continued. "So we knew that our primary focus had to be to reduce the drag of the rotors (other teams are focused on reducing the power required by increasing the span of the rotor, which allows them to reduce the speed of the rotor needed to lift off of the ground). By using smaller rotors rotating at 60+ RPMs we knew that our rotors had to be as efficient as possible. So our efforts over the past two years have been to design the most efficient rotors that we possibly could without relying on previous designs or foregone conclusions about how a rotor should be designed."
Huff and the team now feel that they have developed one of the most efficient rotors ever designed, but have not been able to fully test it due to a lack of funds. They have another grant request in with the College, but impatience has got the better of them and they've headed to Kickstarter to both generate interest in the project and hopefully provide the cash injection needed to get their human-powered helicopter off the ground.
Though rotor testing has produced positive results, the simple aluminum frame topped by a pair of two-bladed rotors has yet to make it into the air. The maximum lift generated so far is 80 pounds (36 kg), while the minimum lift needed to get the craft to fly has been calculated at 240 pounds (109 kg).
"There is much more uncertainty about the feasibility our rotor design because it runs contrary to the design of all other successful human-powered helicopters," said Huff. "This uncertainty is compounded when coupled with the fact that we have been working on it for two years and have yet to have a successful flight. Furthermore, some aerodynamicists and human-powered helicopter enthusiasts may swear to the impossibility of our design but we believe that there is always room for improvement in any design and truly believe that practical human-powered vertical flight is possible and has the potential to one day be a recreational activity similar to hang-gliding, and we hope to prove it."
The developers are convinced that, with funding, the helicopter will be capable of lifting 300 pounds (136 kg) using 300 watts or less of power ? a fraction of that needed by other Sikorsky contenders. Direction of the current model will be controlled by shifting the weight of pilot, but plans are afoot for a cyclic control system that should offer more precision.
Kickstarter backers can pledge support for the project in return for various rewards (including framed posters, a 48-page book or a brass S1223 airfoil cutout), or can take a giant leap of faith and promise $10,000 or more, which will secure a fully functional, full-scale replica of the finished helicopter.
In the event of another team beating Huff and friends to the elusive Sikorsky Prize ? which requires a craft to stay in the air for 60 seconds, stay within a 10 meter (32.8 ft) square and rise to three meters (9.8 ft) at some point during the strictly human-powered flight ? development on the project will continue.
The Kickstarter pitch video is below.
Source: Kickstarter
Source: http://www.gizmag.com/kenneth-huff-human-powered-helicopter/26778/
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