MIT's Chisel system saves power by allowing computers to make mistakes

Chisel allows small computational errors to be made, in the name of saving power (Image: Shutterstock)

You may have heard the expression, "Work smarter, not harder." When applied to humans, it means (partially) that we should do our best work on the tasks that are the most important, instead of wasting time and effort by going all out on every task. Well, that principle is now also being applied to computers. Using MIT's new Chisel system, computers are saving power by delegating less-critical tasks to less-dependable lower-energy hardware. This means mistakes may be made on those tasks, but that's OK.

Chisel is intended to be used mainly by programmers working on fairly high-end, complex projects.

The software scans programs for individual functions that require a lot of processing power. It then presents these to the programmer, and has them indicate how important it is that each one be executed as accurately as possible. Before they commit, however, users can choose the margin of error that they will tolerate for a given task, plus they can see a preview of how the function will work at that setting.

Tasks that are given a high priority are then processed using the computer's most dependable, energy-gobbling hardware. Not-so-important tasks, however, go to the lower-end circuits. An example of such a "some-mistakes-allowed" task would be the rendering of images, where one or two out-of-place pixels simply wouldn't be that big of a deal.

In simulations, the use of Chisel was found to result in energy savings ranging from 9 to 19 percent. The software is based on a previously-developed programming language known as Rely, in which users enter specific code when writing programs, to manually indicate which tasks are more error-tolerant.

Scientists at Rice University are also exploring the concept of putting up with minor errors in order to save energy, with an "inexact" chip which they claim is at least 15 times more efficient than current technology in terms of speed, energy consumption and size – and that's good enough to get lower-priority jobs done without too many mistakes.

Yale astronomers find exoplanet that simply can't keep time

Yale astronomers discover exoplanet with wildly inconsistent orbital period (Image: Shutterstock)

Yale astronomers have discovered a low-mass, low-density exoplanet orbiting a distant star whose orbit boasts some fascinating and extreme characteristics. The yearly period of the exoplanet, known as PH3c, varies enormously from one orbit to another, and so eclectic are these orbits that it was undetectable by conventional exoplanet hunting techniques that rely on a periodic dip in the light of the parent star.

The exoplanet was discovered by the Planet Hunter program, an initiative that allows more than 300,000 citizen scientists to review data from the Keplar space telescope to scan for patterns that would otherwise be overlooked by computer algorithms. The program is co-ordinated by Yale and the University of Oxford and to date has discovered over 60 exoplanets since its inception in 2010.

"It harnesses the human dimension of science," states Debra Fischer, head of the exoplanets group at Yale and co-author of the paper. "Computers can’t find the unexpected, but people can, when they eyeball the data."

The project's most recent discovery sits 2,300 light years from Earth and owes its unusual orbit to an extreme version of a gravitational quirk that is at work in every solar system, including our own. All planets are affected by the gravitational pull of their immediate celestial neighbors. For our planet the effects are very slight, with bodies such as Mars and Jupiter distorting Earth's orbital period by roughly a second each orbit. However, the gravitational influence of PHC3's neighbors is far more significant, altering the exoplanet's orbital period by roughly 10.5 hours over the course of only 10 orbits.

The discovery of PHC3 also allowed the group to better characterize the celestial bodies on either side of the elusive orb. It was discovered that the outer planet had a mass greater than that of Saturn, while the innermost of the trio had a rocky composition similar to Earth's. Interestingly, the length of the inner planet's year is 1.91 times shorter than that of PHC3's, whilst the length of the outer planet's year was 1.91 times longer.

Joseph Schmitt, Yale grad student and lead author on the paper concludes, "We’re not sure if this is just a coincidence or whether this might tell us something about how the planets were formed."

A paper detailing the team's findings is available in The Astrophysical Journal.

Final assembly of Orion spacecraft completed

The spacecraft’s components have all been assembled, including the launch abort escape tower and the curved Ogive panels that make up the fairing

NASA and Lockheed Martin have announced the completion of the final assembly and testing of the Orion spacecraft, which is designed to carry NASA astronauts on deep space missions. This clears the way for the first test flight in December as NASA prepares to re-enter the manned spaceflight business.

Lockheed, the prime contractor for Orion, says that the spacecraft’s components have all been assembled, including the launch abort escape tower and the curved Ogive panels that make up the fairing designed to protect the Orion capsule from vibrations and noise during lift off. Once assembly was completed, the spacecraft was lifted by crane and rotated into an upright position before being placed on a transport pallet.

The 72-ft (22-m) tall Orion spacecraft is now waiting inside the Launch Abort System Facility (LASF) at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, until the Delta IV Heavy booster is ready to receive it. Orion will then rollout to launch pad 37 before being lifted atop the rocket in November. In the meantime, the preflight crew will continue to carry out tests. After the rocket and spacecraft have been mated the systems will be powered up and given a final going over.

All of this is in preparation for the EFT-1 mission, which launches on December 4 and will be Orion’s first flight into space. During this brief excursion, the capsule will be unmanned as it travels in an orbit that will take it 3,600 mi (5,800 km) from Earth before returning for reentry and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean that same day. The reason for this particular trajectory is to ensure that the spacecraft will hit the atmosphere at 20,000 mph (32,000 km/h), which is the speed of a returning deep space mission and the fastest reentry by a man-rated spacecraft since the Apollo era over forty years ago.

Lockheed says that if Orion returns safely, it will provide critical information on the performance of the largest heat shield ever built, the avionics and software, and parachutes, as well as fairing and launch abort system separations.

"An empty shell of a spacecraft arrived to Kennedy Space Center two years ago, and now we have a fully assembled Orion standing 72 feet tall," says Michael Hawes Lockheed Martin Orion program manager. "We’re ready to launch it into space and test every inch."

The impact of numerology over the names

Whenever an infant is born into a family, it’s a norm to first assess him/her with a name. The name of a person is just not a word to be referred to them but actually is the definition, a description of their personality and the briefing of their traits. It should be made very sure that while naming a person all the necessary measures are taken care of. They say that labeling of a product is done properly to define the quality of that product. The same theory can be applied upon assessing names to the young ones too. The better the name the more illustrative would be the definition.

 

While a lot of people who believe in ancestry, name their children on the basis of their legacy or the family trees, while others who believe in Numerology have different opinions. The people who believe in numerology work and practice a lot with numbers before naming their kids. In numerology each letter of your name is said to have an individual corresponding number. Cornerstone is said to be the first letter in your name while capstone is said to be the last one. Under Numerology the first vowel is also given sheer importance, as it is said to fulfill all your urges and dreams in life. Each and every letter in this section has a meaning of its own and preparing a name with all those combine meaningful letters will eventually make out the best desired result. The sum of the numbers in your birth date and the sum of numbers you make out while naming a person displays a great deal in the character, the future, the strengths and the weakness of an individual. Numerology helps in standing and fighting against all these weaknesses and odds. Believers say that numerology make you achieve whatever you want in life, and not just infants, a lot of people change their names in the later stages of their life too after realizing the problems they are suffering in their lives and in order to fight against them. This concept of Numerology was initially brought up by the Babylonians but gradually everyone started practicing it and eventually it became so popular and effective that now it is practiced across almost all over the world. There might be no scientific proofs about the authenticity of these numerology charts, but people still have faith in ample numbers about the relationship of words and numbers.

 

People also believe that in Numerology the on goings and the redemption is based upon three major factors; the date of birth, the name given to you on your birth and the name you use currently. The third factor can well be managed according to the needs and necessary requirements by the Numerology charts. There are ways to work over your names even if you’re a grown up in order to get over the grey shades you are going through in your personal lives. So everyone needs to go through that Numerology chart while assessing their young ones with new names.

 

Browse through name meaning, rankings, other people's comments, ratings, and other statistics in addition to the name meanings.

 

Laser-propulsion give space rockets a serious boost

Firing lasers up the backsides of rockets could accelerate them faster without requiring extra fuel (Original images: solarseven and Nikonaft via Shutterstock)

Russian scientists have proposed a novel way to accelerate a spaceship while in flight – firing a ground-based laser up its backside. The new technique uses a plasma flow caused by laser ablation to increase the exhaust efficiency of a traditional rocket propulsion system, and could theoretically accelerate an aircraft beyond Mach 10.

In the process called laser ablation, a super high powered, focused laser beam can strike the surface of an object in space, and burn off that surface material, producing a plume of charged plasma particles that generates thrust.

It's a process that has been considered as a way to potentially blast space debris out of Earth orbit, but in this case it's seen as a way to provide extra thrust for a spaceship, without having to carry the primary energy supply on board the ship. Mind you, the ship does need to carry enough extra surface metal to be burned off in the ablation process.

A team of Russian scientists led by Yuri Rezunkov at the Institute of Optoelectronic Instrument Engineering, Russia has found a new way to use laser ablation to provide additional acceleration – by using it to increase the efficiency and thrust of regular gas blasting rockets.

The effectiveness of current laser-propulsion techniques is limited by the instability of supersonic gas flow, caused by shock waves that “choke” the inlet of the nozzle, reducing thrust. Those effects can be reduced with the help of laser ablation, redirecting the plasma plume so that it flows close to the interior walls of a supersonic nozzle and significantly improving the overall thrust (Image credit: Y.Rezunkov/IOIE)

I'm no rocket surgeon, so we'll let the researchers' press release speak to the specifics of the new method:

The researchers show that the effectiveness of current laser-propulsion techniques is limited by factors including the instability of supersonic gases as they flow through the gas nozzle, as well as the production of shock waves that “choke” the inlet of the nozzle, reducing thrust. But those effects can be reduced with the help of a laser-ablation plasma plume that is redirected so that it will flow close to the interior walls of the nozzle. Coupling the ablation jet with supersonic gas flow through the nozzle, they find, significantly improves the overall thrust generated by the nozzle. “Summarizing the data obtained, we can forecast the application of the supersonic laser propulsion techniques not only for launching small satellites to Earth orbits but also for additional acceleration of supersonic aircrafts to achieve Mach 10 and more,” Rezunkov said.

There's one significant potential problem with this – and it's the same thing that has stopped laser ablation from being a great way to blast space junk out of an increasingly cluttered orbital zone around the Earth.

The Earth-bound lasers would need to be incredibly powerful – powerful enough to vaporize metal from hundreds of miles away – and that kind of technology could easily be used to knock satellites off course, or damage pretty much anything that's sitting in orbit. The military applications are obvious, and with so much earthbound technology relying on those satellites, building a machine that could knock them out of the sky would be politically very difficult.

Likely the only way that a big enough laser array could be built without causing international turmoil would be to have it built by an international body that could guarantee it would never be used for military purposes. Good luck with that!

Experts call for risk scores to improve smartphone apps security

Researchers have found a simple risk score could help improve mobile device security (Photo: Shutterstock)

Next time you download or update an app for your smartphone or tablet and blitz through messages asking for permissions approval, you may be unnecessarily exposing your personal information to possible cyber violation. Researchers suggest this issue could potentially be addressed through better consumer education and an easy to understand risk score for each app.

Researchers from Purdue University, working as part of a U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) funded project, took a look at the decision making patterns of smartphone users with regards to apps usage. They disturbingly came away with the conclusion that most users habitually ignore security warnings and consent to app permissions without a second thought as to what they are actually giving acceptance to.

"Although strong security measures are in place for most mobile systems, the area where these systems often fail is the reliance on the user to make decisions that impact the security of a device,” the researchers wrote in a recent report.

Furthermore, besides users paying little attention to what they are clicking through exists the plain fact that often the permissions which seek approval seem written by programmers for programmers. In other words, they aren’t always written in plain English or, at the minimum, require time and considerable effort by average individuals to try and understand.

"The complexity of modern access control mechanisms in smartphones can confuse even security experts," said Jeremy Epstein, lead program director for the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace program in NSF's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. ”Safeguards and protection mechanisms that protect privacy and personal security must be usable by all smartphone users, to avoid the syndrome of just clicking 'yes' to get the job done.”

The Android ecosystem as an example

The scope of the problem, from a pure numbers game, raises big red flags. In the Android ecosystem alone, more than 400 million related devices were activated in 2012. To these devices, as of July 2013, users had downloaded over 50 billion apps from Google’s official online store. Although users are warned that giving permissions to apps from certain categories could allow them to read and modify contact details and calendar events, send emails without the user's knowledge or use settings that control the user's mobile data connection, even this may not be enough to inform average users.

What researchers are proposing instead is a simple risk score system that would inform users of potential risks in a simpler, more transparent way and prompt app developers to create apps that use less personal information. Experiments conducted by the team to test out reactions to a risk score approach found users generally had better attention and more curiosity around security warnings presented in this way.

“This is a classic example of the links between humans and technology," said Heng Xu, program director in the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace program in NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate. "The Android smartphones studied by this group of scientists reveals the great need to understand human perception as it relates to their own privacy and security."

The team's research appears in the journal IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing

HP is looking to blend physical and digital reality with Sprout AIO

HP's new all-in-one Sprout PC

HP has revealed a new all-in-one computer named Sprout which pushes the everything-you-need-in-one-place envelope to both vertical and horizontal workspaces. Users are able to grab an icon or digital object on the computer's touchscreen display and drag it down to a projected second screen on a touch-enabled pad below for precision tweaking with fingers or a stylus. Overhead scanning technology can digitize physical objects too, which the user can manipulate and move between both display areas.

Sitting above Sprout's 23-inch LED backlit touchscreen HD display is a combined four camera sensor system (which includes Intel's RealSense 3D camera and a 14.6 MP camera), a DLP projector and LED desk lamp known as the Illuminator. This unit points down towards a 20-inch, 20-point capacitive touch mat that has the look of a rather large mouse pad and the HP Workspace platform brings the dual display 3D workspace to life, effectively giving users two touchscreens to work with.

The overhead scanning technology can create 3D-like images of objects placed on the mat, which then appear on the vertical display. These digital clones can be flicked down to the mat onto a work area thrown down from above by the projection unit. The scanned image can be cropped, resized, moved around and otherwise interfered with, text can be added using a virtual keyboard and then the whole shebang returned to the main screen for fine tuning, saving or sending on. Collaborative tools allow operators in multiple locations to simultaneously manipulate the same digital content.

Chugging away behind the impressive-looking blended reality user interface is a high end all-in-one Windows 8.1 PC powered by a 4th gen Intel Core i7-4790S processor with integrated HD4600 graphics and Nvidia GeForce DT 745A GPU (with 2 GB of dedicated video memory). 8 GB of 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM can be expanded to 16 GB, and there's 1 TB of SSD/HDD hybrid storage built in. The AIO also features integrated speakers with DTS Sound+, two digital microphones and a 720p webcam out front.

Connectivity comes in the shape of 802.11a/b/g/n/ac dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, Gigabit Ethernet, two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports (including one that's capable of charging mobile devices), HDMI and a mini PCIe expansion slot.

The company has also launched an application store to support the new immersive computing platform called the Sprout Marketplace, which currently includes uniquely-designed Windows-based apps such as the Martha Stewart CraftStudio, DreamWorks Animation Story Producer, Crayola's Draw & Sing and GestureWorks Gameplay as well as HP's own Create, Collaborate and Capture software.

The HP Spout is set for release on November 9, but is up for pre-order now for US$1,900.

You can see potential applications for the technology in the video below, including scanning a real world building block and adding the digitized version to a child's photo, creating a try before you buy remote sales experience by adding virtual trinkets to the image of a customer and making the most of extra screen real estate to produce popping presentations.

Vinge's undulating train station lets the city flow around it

Vinge Train Station, in Denmark, will have an undulating circular design that helps avoid splitting the city in two

Rail infrastructure has a tendency to split cities into two, beyond just its physical route. A station in Denmark, however, will use clever design to negate any such sense of separation. Vinge Train Station will use an undulating concourse that allows the city to flow seamlessly across the tracks.

The train station has been designed by city masterplan project veterans Henning Larsen Architects. The firm explains that the Vinge Train Station development is part of a larger plan for connecting the future city. Vinge is new city that will be built to the north of Copenhagen and will be the largest urban development project in Denmark. The S-train is seen as a key feature of the city, connecting it to the surrounding areas.

The aim of the station is, of course, to facilitate the easy coming-and-going of those moving in and out of the city. Situated in the center of Vinge, it has also been designed with the aim of pulling the city together and allowing for the easy movement of people within the city.

The main facet of the station will be its circular design, which will undulate to provide the necessary thoroughfares. It will appear almost as though a ring has been laid across the top of the station, touching down on either side of the tracks and merging into the ground to create open spaces for movement between the platform edges and the rest of the city. The ring will then rise as it swings around and above the train line, ensuring there is clearance for trains and that people can move freely across the tracks.

This design will give Vinge Train Station the sense of being one large open concourse that is raised in certain places. It will allow freedom of movement, providing people with a more organic means of moving around the area than being siphoned through a single bridge or tunnel.

The station has also been designed in such a way as to reduce the impact of wind on the station, with part-covered platforms to provide shelter from the elements and gutters for rainwater so as to minimize the chance of people slipping on wet surfaces.

Vigne Train Station is expected to be completed by 2017, whilst the construction of Vinge city is expected to run through to 2033.

In a heartbeat: Ambulance Drone designed to cut cardiac arrest response times

The inventor of the Ambulance Drone says it could boost cardiac arrest survival rates from eight to 80 percent

If there's anything we can take from the barrage of delivery drones to emerge recently, its that the technology has the potential to transport objects with unprecedented efficiency. Graduate student Alec Momont from Holland's Delft University of Technology is looking to tap into this ability to reduce emergency response times to cardiac arrest incidents. His Ambulance Drone prototype carries a defibrillator to the scene and promises to dramatically increase the rate of survival.

Receiving treatment quickly can be the difference when it comes to heart attacks, with every passing minute lowering the chances of survival. Although public defibrillators are becoming more common, they aren't everywhere and the public often doesn't know how to use one or hesitates through lack of confidence. Momont says that his solution can transport the necessary equipment to the victim and provide instructions to those in a position to help within a fraction of the time it currently takes emergency services to arrive.

"Some 800,000 people suffer a cardiac arrest in the EU every year, and only 8 percent survive," says Momont. "The main reason for this is the relatively long response time of the emergency services, approx. 10 minutes, while brain death and fatalities occur within four to six minutes. The ambulance drone can get a defibrillator to a patient inside a 12 km sq (4.6 mi sq) zone within one minute. This response speed increases the chance of survival following a cardiac arrest from eight to 80 percent."

In building his prototype Ambulance Drone, Momont developed a new kind of UAV frame that incorporates a toolbox designed to carry medical supplies. He says technological advancements that have enabled devices such as Automated External Defibrillators (AEDS) to become more compact were critical in enabling the design. The drone's carbon composite structure makes it light enough to carry, while rotor arms that fold back allow it to convert into a medical kit weighing 4 kg (8.8 lb), plus up to 4 kg of payload.

Also crucial to Momont's approach is the communications tools built into the drone. As a cardiac arrest occurs and the emergency services are contacted, the drone establishes the location through the phone's signal and GPS. Able to fly at around 100 km/h (62 mph), it promptly makes its way to the scene with defibrillator on board.

An integrated webcam then provides the emergency operators with a live stream of the scene and allowing them to communicate directly with those on the ground and instruct them through the process of applying the defibrillator and treating the patient.

"Currently, only 20 percent of untrained people are able to successfully apply a defibrillator," says Momont. "This rate can be increased to 90 percent if people are provided with instructions at the scene. Moreover, the presence of the emergency operator via the drone's loudspeaker helps to reduce the panic of the situation."

Last year we looked at a similar concept called the Defikopter, which is also a UAV tasked with delivering lifesaving technologies to patients in need. The Ambulance Drone does appear to take things one step further, however, by providing a critical communications link between emergency services and those providing the treatment.

There are still considerable hurdles for Momont to overcome before his Ambulance Drone begins saving lives. First and foremost, it is currently illegal to fly autonomous drones in Holland. The solution is also yet to be tested on real patients and the drone's ability to avoid obstacles mid-flight requires further development. Despite all this, Momont has already piqued the interest of certain folk in the medical sector, and is hopeful that the Ambulance Drone could take flight within five years.

You can see a demonstration in the video below.

HaptoMime lets users "touch" a mid-air display

The HaptoMime uses ultrasound to make users feel like they're touching a display that isn't really there

Touchscreen interfaces may make our lives easier, but the things do tend to get smeared with finger oil and whatnot, plus they're notorious for spreading germs. That's why a team of researchers at the University of Tokyo, led by assistant professor Yasuaki Monnai, have developed the HaptoMime. It's an ATM-like interface that lets the user feel like they're touching a glass screen, when in fact they're touching nothing at all.

Here's how the system works ...

An LCD screen lies face-up on the bottom of the setup, displaying the interface video – this could be a numeric keypad, a menu board of icons, or anything else. Sitting at a 45-degree angle above that screen is an aerial imaging plate (AIP), which is a sort of two-way mirror.

When the user views that plate from the front, they see the LCD screen reflected through it. The illusion, however, is that the screen is hovering parallel to them at the front of the HaptoMime, instead of lying flat on its back at the bottom. It looks like they could reach in and touch the projected display, even though their finger would actually just pass right through to the AIP.

In order to make it seem like they're touching the display, the HaptoMime incorporates a grid of infra-red sensors and an ultrasound phased array transducer. The sensors first detect the location of the user's finger, as it enters the interface area. The transducer then responds by sending a focused beam of ultrasound to that area. As a result, the user's sense of touch is stimulated when their finger appears to reach the screen.

Additionally, by comparing the location of the user's finger to the layout of the interface on the LCD, it's possible for the user to actually ... well, to actually use the interface. As can be seen in the video below, they're able to drag and drop icons, play piano keys, and draw pictures.

Ultimately, it is hoped that the technology could be used to allow people with wet or dirty hands to access computers without messing up the screen, and to limit the spread of disease through interfaces used in public places.

A paper on the research was presented earlier this month at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, in Hawaii.

The Breaker adds a chain tool to cycling multitool/tire lever

The Breaker, with its bits and pouch

Last year we heard about the Nutter, a stainless steel device that combines a multi-bit cycling multitool with a tire lever. Since then, inventor Mark Windsor decided to take that design and make it even more useful. The result is the Breaker, which is essentially a Nutter with an added chain-break tool.

Like the Nutter, the Breaker features a receptacle that can receive an included selection of interchangeable bits. These consist of five sizes of hex tools, a Philips head screwdriver, a flat head screwdriver, a T25 torx bit, and a magnetic tool bit extender.

Both devices also have a built-in spoke wrench, bottle opener and nylon-capped tire lever, and are stowed in a bike-mountable pouch made from leather and recycled inner tubes.

The Breaker adds a chain tool to the mix, allowing users to remove and replace broken or worn-out chains. It uses the existing tool bit extender as its handle, and features a replaceable hardened stainless steel pin. The chain tool does take the place of the Nutter's box wrench, although an optional 8-piece socket set should provide similar functionality.

Windsor and his team are currently raising production funds for the Breaker, on Kickstarter. If they're successful, a pledge of US$55 will get you a basic Breaker, and $75 will get you one with the socket set thrown in.

The whole multitool weighs 100 g (3.5 oz), not including the pouch or sockets. You can see it in use, in the following pitch video.

UK's new £97 million weather supercomputer will give street-by-street forecasts

The UK Met Office has announced a £97 million investment in a new Cray XC40TM supercomputer

The UK's obsession with the weather has just been stepped up a gear. The Met Office has announced that it will begin using a new supercomputer enabling highly detailed forecasts. The Cray XC40TM will cost £97 million (US$156 million) and is aimed at making the UK a world leader in weather and climate science.

The Met Office is the UK's public weather and climate research agency. The data it produces is made available for use by other organizations and has previously been employed for showing temperature records in Google Earth and and by Micasa Lab's indoor cloud-making machine. This most recent investment will help to improve the volume and accuracy of the data produced.

The Cray XC40TM is one of the fastest supercomputers in the world. It has 480,000 cores, 2 million gigabytes of memory and can store up to 17 million gigabytes of data. At its peak, it is able to make 16,000 trillion calculations per second.

The system is a significant upgrade from the current IBM Power 775, which has a memory of 80,000 gigabytes, can store up to 2 million gigabytes and can make 1,200 trillion calculations per second.

The computer will enable hourly forecasting with a much higher level of weather detail for precise geographic areas and the ability to create much higher resolution weather modeling for localized areas. The Met Office says that that it will be possible to create models for areas down to a resolution of 300 m (984 ft), allowing it to effectively predict differences in weather conditions between city blocks or even individual streets. It will also be possible to better predict weather over longer periods, allowing for better preparation against developing climate trends such as flooding, droughts and heatwaves.

According to the Met Office, this could lead to £2 billion of socio-economic benefits to the UK, allowing airports to operate at a greater level of efficiency, properties to be better protected from flooding and winter infrastructure to be better planned. Planning for renewable energy infrastructure and climate change research will also benefit.

The Cray XC40TM will be located partly at the Met Office HQ in Exeter and partly at a purpose-designed building at the nearby Exeter Science Park (pending planning permission). It will become semi-operational in September 2015 and will reach full capacity in 2017.

Cable car planned for world's largest cave

The proposed $212 million cable car system would have three of its seven stations in the 9 kilometer long Son Doong cave (Photo: Doug Knuth via Flickr / CC 2.0)

A Vietnamese resort company has been granted approval to begin surveys to build a 10.6 kilometer (6.6 mi) long cable car in the world’s largest cave, the UNESCO-listed Son Doong in north-central Quang Binh province in Vietnam. If completed it would make it the longest cable car ride in the world, ahead of Tianmen Shan in China.

Vietnam has a fondness for cable cars. They pop up in many tourist spots, from the Ba Na hills in the center of the country to provincial spots popular with domestic tourists such as Nui Ba Den (Black Lady Mountain), south of Saigon. However, the prospect of this cable car, to be built by the large Sun Group (which owns the InterContinental Hotel in Danang and built the Ba Na hills cable car system), has upset environmentalists, the cave’s original discoverers and inspired an online petition.

The proposed $212 million cable car system would travel through Tien Son and Phong Nha caves (the latter was formerly believed to be the largest cave in Vietnam) and then Son Doong cave, with three of its seven stations in the 9 kilometer long Son Doong.

Son Doong was discovered by local Ho Khanh in 1991 and explored by a group from the British Cave Research Association in 2009, led by Howard and Deb Limbert. The UNESCO-listed cave receives under 250 visitors a year who all trek with the one travel company licensed to offer tours, Oxacis Tours. Those doing so have to trek and camp, with porters carrying baggage and food.

Whilst Son Doong still hosts few visitors the other caves, such as Phong Nha, within the Phong Nha-Ke Bang national park are far more touristed. The area has received 2.5 million visitors this year so far and this may rise to three million in 2015, according to Vietnamese news sources. The impacts of mass tourism are already being felt and experts worry that extending that to the pristine Son Doong, which is so large it contains a jungle and could fit skyscrapers within it, would be reckless at best.

Dang Minh Truong, Sun’s CEO, told Saigon-based Tuoi Tre News that the project will involve foreign experts and satisfy UNESCO’s criteria for sustainable development. He also noted that 80 UNESCO-listed sites already have cable car systems (though it should be noted that none of those are in remote cave systems within national parks).

Howard Limbert, who first explored the cave in 2009, has explored hundreds of caves in the area, is one of those staunchly against the idea of a cable car system. "The damage to Son Doong cave would be irreversible, and the cable cars would rob the cave of its pristine charms and the adventure thrills it has to offer," he told Tuoi Tre News. "The construction would also take its toll on the cave’s surrounding areas."

An online petition has been organized against the venture. It states, "This project is suicidal and have an infinite damaging impact on the Son Doong Cave and the ecosystem of the entire region at Phong Nha - Ke Bang National Park."

ISS resupply rocket explodes on lift-off

No personnel were injured in the explosion, however the launch facility itself was damaged (Photo: NASA)

An unmanned resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) has suffered a catastrophic failure six seconds after launch from the Wallops Island launch facility, Virginia. All personnel have been accounted for with zero injuries, however damage was sustained to the launch site.

The liftoff took place at 6.22 pm EST and represented the maiden flight of the upgraded Antares 130 rocket carrying the Cygnus cargo spacecraft, as developed by Orbital Sciences.

The upgraded rocket features the same first stage as its predecessor, but introduces a more powerful second stage, with the module length extended from 3.5 m (12 ft) to 6 m (20 ft). This allows more propellant to be carried, increasing the rocket’s potential payload capacity.

The rocket was originally scheduled to launch Monday, but was delayed when a boat strayed into the restricted waters to the south east of the launch pad. The mission was due to deliver more 5,000 lb (2,268 kg) of science and supplies to the ISS.

Prior to the launch no issues had been tracked with the Antares 130 rocket and weather conditions were declared to be 100 percent favorable. NASA personnel are currently implementing contingency procedures and gathering launch data for further analysis.

NASA and Orbital Sciences are currently in the process of determining when a press conference will be held regarding the incident.

Motorola's Droid Turbo could be the most powerful smartphone yet

The Droid Turbo promises two full days on a single charge of its huge battery

Motorola is on something of a roll in the lead-up to the holiday gadget shopping season and the company that invented the mobile phone decades ago continued its streak of interesting new mobile products today with the introduction of the Droid Turbo, featuring one of the biggest batteries ever put into a smartphone.

The Droid Turbo follows the unveiling of the Moto 360 smartwatch, new Moto X and Moto G and a Motorola-made Nexus 6 that have all been introduced in the past 8 weeks.

The Droid Turbo is something like a supercharged Moto X, with a 3,900 mAh battery designed to last 48 hours on a charge, a quad-core 2.7 GHz Snapdragon 805 processor, 3 GB RAM, a 5.2-in Quad HD display with an insane 565 pixels per inch and 21 megapixel camera that also shoots 4K video. Further boosting its power credentials is the optional turbo charger that adds 8 hours of use with just 15 minutes charging time.

Those are just about the best straight-up hardware specs we've seen in a smartphone so far, but there is a rather big catch: the Droid Turbo, like several other Droid models before it, is only available from Verizon, the largest wireless carrier in the United States.

To hear Motorola's own executives tell it, as I have in conversation with current Motorola Mobility President Rick Osterloh during the company's annual reveal events for the Moto X the past two years, the Droid line has always been about appealing to a more "aggressive," even masculine kind of Android user.

True to form, the Droid Turbo is available in a selection of rugged materials like "ballistic nylon" or "metalized glass fiber" laid overtop of a Kevlar shell.

The Droid Turbo also gets plenty of the software goodies from the Moto X – like the twist gesture that skips straight to the camera app, an active display that pulses on to show you the time and your notifications at a glance, as well as voice control.

The Droid Turbo will be available for US$199 on contract from Verizon starting on October 30.

New power inverter could make EVs more powerful and efficient

A new 20 kW inverter packs a lot of punch in a smaller, lighter package (Photo: ORNL)

A new power inverter developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) marries advances in 3D printing and wide-band semiconductor technology to deliver significantly improved performance in a smaller, lighter package. With further development, it could go a long way toward helping build electric cars that are more powerful and energy-efficient.

Power inverters are an essential part of any electric vehicle, as they take the direct current stored in the battery pack and turn it into AC that feeds the motor. Making them as small and light as possible is an area well worth focusing on. Even Google's in on it, having recently instituted a US$1 million prize for the best inverter designed to take DC from solar arrays and wind turbines and convert it into AC for domestic use. Of course, reducing that footprint becomes even more important when room is at a premium, such as aboard an electric car.

The inverter designed at ORNL achieves a very significant improvement in terms of power density, weight and volume. As lead investigator Dr. Madhu Chinthavali tells us, the 20 kW device that his team designed has a total volume of only around 1,500 cc (91 cubic inches) and weighs around 1.75 kg (3.85 lb). For reference, this is over four times the already aggressive power density requirements for Google's prize.

"20 kW was the highest rating that the inverter was tested up to," Chinthavali tells Gizmag. "This is actually more than a 30 kW inverter by design; we are being conservative because of the voltage levels that the DC-link can boost up to for automotive applications."

This advance was achieved in great part because of the properties of silicon carbide, a so-called "wide-band semiconductor." These are high-grade materials that are very well-suited for high power applications and for working under a wider range of temperatures, which is especially relevant in EVs. As a result, the device is achieving a higher levels of efficiency, to the order of 99 percent, though this number will fluctuate depending on actual operating conditions.

The other major performance driver was the use of 3D printing to build about half of the inverter's parts, which allowed the scientists to reduce weight and be much more flexible in their design. Specifically, the researchers designed a higher-performance heat sink by placing lower-temperature components next to high-temperature ones, and allowing for better heat transfer throughout the device. Another design change was the use of an array of small, interconnected capacitors instead of a few big ones, to reduce cost and further improve cooling.

Chinthavali and colleagues are now working on scaling up the inverter so that it will be half the size of that found in commercially available vehicles (for comparison, Tesla's Model S inverter has a very beefy peak power of 320 kW) and containing an even greater number of 3D-printed parts in order to shave off even more weight.

Based on his results so far, and with a few more design tweaks, Chinthavali thinks it possible to achieve an inverter with four times the power density of their current prototype. "Mass production of the printed technology is not there yet, but things are evolving rapidly," he told us.

How big data is helping farmers save millions

The predictive abilities of big data is being used to improve farming outcomes (Photo: Shutterstock)

Data scientists studying crop growth and weather patterns in Colombia have advised rice farmers not to plant crops, saving them millions of dollars. The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and the Colombian Rice Growers Federation have developed a computer model that can work out what crops work best under specific weather conditions in certain areas.

Farming has always been as much art as science: knowing what to plant and when is often intuitive for many farmers. However the vagaries of shifting weather patterns and climate change make this much more difficult and a crop destroyed by inclement weather or drought may cost small hold farmers and their families their livelihoods. In Colombia, where rice yields are already dropping and free trade agreements threaten local farmers, improving farming conditions by harnessing the predictive abilities of big data is showing signs of being terrifically useful.

According to CIAT: "Joint efforts on multi-environment trials with detailed physiological evaluation, studies on the adaptation of elite lines, historical data analysis, and crop modeling in Colombia provided important inputs for initiating the development of a system to better manage rice under highly variable weather scenarios."

Considering that there are predictions of massive crop yield fall offs in the coming decades thanks to climate change, such predictive computer modelling is going to become increasingly necessary. CIAT has found that climate accounts for 30 - 40 percent of crop production variability in some parts of Colombia.

Colombia’s rice yields have apparently been hit by climate change problems and harvests of the staple food have declined by a tonne per hectare in the past five years, a steep drop. Maize, potato, cassava and beans are also important crops and the modelling tool will eventually take these in also, under the two year agreement between CIAT and Colombia’s ministry of agriculture.

Last year, researchers from CIAT working with Colombian Rice Growers Federation, advised a group of Colombian farmers against planting crops as they predicted a drought would hit. They were right and saved farmers $3.8 million; those who did not take their advice were not as lucky and lost their crops. Their advice was well grounded: they had developed a complex computer model that had ten years’ worth of data from Colombian farms, from farm management and crop yield to the types of crops and the weather conditions that year. From this inferences could be drawn on what works where, and during what kinds of weather conditions. Whilst traditional farming knowledge is already based around such concepts – otherwise how could farmers grow anything? – this refinement seems to have led to greater accuracy if their success so far is any way to tell.

This project won the UN’s Big Data Climate Challenge in September and is already being looked at in other nations, such as Nigeria. The UN project wishes to, "bring forward data-driven evidence of the economic dimensions of climate change," using big data and analytics. The fields of study are diverse, from transportation and smart cities to agriculture and behavioral science.

(Photo: Shutterstock)

MIT "microwalkers" stroll across cell surfaces to seek out target areas

The microwalkers consist of a pair of particles, one of which has magnetic properties and one which sticks to the surface

Ever wonder how a germ knows where to attack the body or how a white blood cell knows where to counter attack? How bacteria find food? Or how cells organize themselves to close a wound? How can something so simple do things so complex? A team of MIT researchers is seeking the answers as they develop "microwalkers" – microscopic machines that can move unguided across the surface of a cell as they seek out particular areas.

Though they may not seem so at first glance, microorganisms are remarkable pieces of engineering. Lacking nervous systems, senses, or any way of understanding the world around them, they can look for and find places in the body or on cell surfaces where they can carry out their functions.

Alfredo Alexander-Katz, the Walter Henry Gale Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and his team at MIT believe that if they can mimic this process, it will provide scientists with a valuable tool for constructing sensors and medical devices that can find their way to specific areas of a cell surface without outside guidance.

The MIT microwalker system is, like that of microorganisms, based on friction. On cell membranes, areas with a concentration of cell receptors tend to be rougher. White blood cells and other microorganisms use these friction gradients to find their destination in a sort of blind man's bluff called "chemotaxis" as they feel their way along. What the MIT team is trying to do is come up with a mechanical way of duplicating this.

The MIT system is based on a pair of linked particles. One particle has magnetic properties, while the other is designed to make contact with the surface. When a magnetic field is applied, the particle pairs are dragged along like magnetic beads in a children's toy – effectively causing them to walk across the surface until they reach their destination.

According to MIT, when the system is perfected, the microwalkers will be equipped with particles that will bind with receptors, giving them the same navigation by friction capabilities as microbes and allowing them to find particular areas without being told where they are.

MIT sees a number of applications for the microwalkers. They could be made to congregate around cells or areas of cells that are of interest to scientists, or could be used to locate and identify pathogens and tumors that would otherwise escape detection. It could also be a means of delivering targeted drugs or microsensors.

Alexander-Katz says that so far the method has been confined to microscope slides, but the team is working on how to make it work on living tissue. Now that the method has been proven to work on flat surfaces, the next step will be to see if it can be adapted to complex three-dimensional structures, such as cells.

The team’s findings were published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Review: Philips 7800 series Ultra-Slim Smart 4K Ultra-HD LED TV

The Philips 55PUS7089 is an ultra-slim smart 4K UHD LED TV with Ambilight technology (Photo: Stu Robarts/Gizmag)

For all this year's noise about the dawn of 4K TV, the consumer market is still very much in it infancy. As such, it can be difficult to know what to look for when considering a purchase. With its flagship 55PUS7089, Philips is hoping factors such as HD upscaling, Ambilight and price will help it to stand out from the crowd.

It's important to contextualize just how embryonic the UHD TV market is. Currently, the only way watch 4K TV content is via Netflix, and even then there are only a handful of shows available. YouTube has a 4K channel, but playing the content requires a powerful computer. It's possible to find bits and pieces of sample content to download, but on the whole it's few and far between.

People who are both selling and buying UHD TVs in this environment, therefore, are working somewhat in the dark. Without a market to sell to, there's a relative dearth of information on which to base your designs or, in turn, your buying decisions. With the 7089, Philips has sought to minimize this risk by having existing technology act as a fallback for any shortcomings of its new technology. This review will look at how well it's achieved this goal, and if indeed there are any shortcomings.

Build

First things first, the 7089 is a stunning-looking piece of kit. The frameless design with aluminum edging gives the TV a sleek, clean-looking design and a real feel of build quality. The picture doesn't quite fill the 55-in screen, with about a 1 cm (0.4-in) black border around the outside when it's switched on, but this is not something that detracts from viewing. The slight bezel running along the bottom of the screen, including the raised mount for the Philips badge, is understated. Even the stand is rather handsomely designed, whilst remaining sturdy.

The rear looks much the same as any other TV, with a variety of inputs and connection sockets. There are four HDMI inputs in total, but none of these support HDMI 2.0 and so there's no way of showing 4K content with a frame-rate of above 30 fps via HDMI. This is one criticism about the 7089 that has been fairly widespread.

Elsewhere, there are three USB ports, a common interface slot and an aerial input amongst other inputs. An ethernet port is available for hardwiring the TV rather than connecting it to a Wi-Fi network. A chunky-looking speaker is also mounted in the rear of the TV, despite its ultra-thin 35-mm (1.4-in) depth, which is remarkable in itself and would have been unthinkable until relatively recently. Up each side of the rear is a strip of Ambilight LEDs, which we'll discuss later.

User experience

Interacting with the 7089 is unequivocally not as slick as the TV's design and build. When switching the TV on, there's a 10-second delay between pressing the power button on the remote, and a channel loading up. That alone wouldn't be too much of a concern, but along with the other quirks of the TV's user experience it becomes quite frustrating.

The 7089 has perhaps the longest lag between pressing buttons on the remote control and anything actually happening on-screen of any TV I've used. I found myself regularly thinking that button-presses hadn't been registered, only to repeat the action and have the TV register both. Thus, channel 1 becomes channel 11, and trying to access any menu results in your coming straight back out of it.

That is, of course, if the button does register that you've pressed it. To confuse matters more, the remote control is not the most responsive. This means that on occasion, you are left waiting for the TV to respond to a request it hasn't received. All this is terribly infuriating – and all the more so because this is an expensive and powerful piece of equipment. A thing so simple as the interaction with it should be barely noticeable. I would be dubious about buying any TV to use on a daily basis with this failing.

The menus themselves are intuitive and easy to use. Menus and the TV guide are clearly laid out and straightforward to navigate. The smart TV menu could perhaps be a little simpler. It presents a host of service logos, such as YouTube and Spotify, with little context about how the services might be used or, indeed, what they are. This is not so much of an issue for YouTube and Spotify, but for lesser-known services users are left to find out what they do by exploring them. One the whole though, most users will find the smart features pretty familiar and understandable.

Philips should be given credit for building a QWERTY keyboard into the rear of the remote control. With TVs increasingly requiring text input, such as for searches or passwords, it's a sensible and helpful addition, albeit one that also suffers from the TV's slow response.

Picture

The 7089 doesn't come with native support for H.265, which is needed in order to play back 4K content on Netflix. Philips explains that its 880 Media Player will provide this support when it's released early next year, but there's no doubt that this is a bad miss. Having paid good money for a 4K TV, users can reasonably feel aggrieved at being asked to shell out for an additional piece of hardware to watch 4K content.

Pleasingly, things pick up dramatically once you actually start watching something on the 7089. The demo 4K content provided by Philips is, of course, designed to show the TV in its best light, but nonetheless the image quality is exceptional. I found the standard picture too dark, but with a bit of trial and error it was possible to find a more agreeable setting. There are six from which to choose, depending on what type of content you're watching.

Colors on-screen are well balanced and are accentuated by Philips' Ambilight technology. Although it isn't new, Ambilight is perhaps one of the more enduring TV innovations of recent times. There's no doubt it makes for a more immersive experience and, coupled with a 4K picture, it is especially effective here.

The provided timelapse footage of landscapes (which seems to be standard for this sort of thing) was actually an oversight in one sense. Philips has been very vocal about the smoothness the 600 Hz screen of the 7089 can achieve with moving images, and timelapse footage isn't the best for this. Watching the same HD movie side-by-side with my Samsung HD TV, however, the smoothness about which Philips boasts was made plain. The Samsung was so jittery in comparison, despite being a great piece of kit itself. Philips can certainly be proud of this.

That comparison was in an effort to see what the upscaling was like for standard HD content. Indeed, there's a marked increased in sharpness and picture quality that's further improved by the motion smoothness. The 7089 actually suffers from a common complaint about HD and UHD TVs, in that they can look "too real" during movies. Fortunately, setting the 7089's picture mode to "movie" was enough to nullify this. Watching an HD nature documentary on the TV, meanwhile, was a revelation. There's no such thing as "too real" where such documentaries are concerned and it looked breathtaking on the 7089.

Audio

As with picture style, there are six audio profile options to choose from, depending on your preference and the type of content you are playing. In addition to standard and personal settings, there are modes for watching news, watching movies, gaming and listening to music. It does feel like more options could be provided, but anyone serious about sound will likely add their own sound-bar or speaker system and the options provided are certainly adequate.

Verdict

The 55PUS7089 shows just what Philips is capable of in terms of UHD TVs. It handles both existing HD and 4K content superbly and for £1,500 (US$2,420) is well-priced for a 55-in UHD screen. For me, the poor user experience would be too irritating to live with on a day-to-day basis and the lack of native H.265 support is the final nail in the coffin. Having said that, the 7089 does point to what Philips is capable of producing and, if you're in no rush to buy a 4K TV, it would be well worth waiting to see what its next models have to offer.

The Philips 55PUS7089 is available to buy now in Europe and Russia.

Surgeons successfully transplant a heart that had stopped beating

Surgeons have successfully transplanted a 'dead' heart into a patient (Photo: Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute)

In a world first, surgeons at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, Australia have successfully transplanted a "dead" heart into a patient. Thanks to the use of a revolutionary preservation solution, developed by the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute and St Vincent’s Hospital, the doctors were able to resuscitate and transplant the donor heart after it had stopped beating for up to 20-30 minutes.

It just so happens that as I'm writing this article a very good friend of mine is waiting on the national emergency transplant list for a heart. It was a huge relief to learn that he would go on the top of the transplant list, before I was to later learn just how difficult it is to find a suitable donor heart. At present (and my friend's case included), transplant units can only accept donor hearts from patients hooked up to life-support machines and are clinically brain dead, eliminating potential donors whose life-support is switched off while they have a limited brain function.

"[With] patients that have only a tiny little bit of brain function left, [...] once life support is turned off and the heart has stopped beating, by Australian law surgeons have to wait five minutes before they can legally take the heart out for transplantation," Professor Bob Graham, Executive Director of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute tells Gizmag. "The heart is gradually deprived of oxygen for up to 20-30 minutes, which causes enormous amounts of damage to the organ. Previously it was thought that this damage was irreversible and so the hearts were unsuitable for transplant. But thanks to the preservation solution and the Organ Care System (better known as the 'beating heart in a box' machine), the heart can now be revived. The heart can be kept warm and beating on the machine for up to 8 hours. The machine is portable so it can be taken to any hospital in Australia."

The new technique is the outcome of a 20 year research effort, which included 12 years to perfect the preservation solution and an another five to six years to combine it with the Organ Care System. The preservation solution consists of three different drugs that are injected into the heart, preserving it for a limited amount of time while it is no longer pumping.

"This cocktail of drugs makes the heart more resistant to the damage that is caused because of the lack of oxygen," says Professor Graham. "It makes the heart more resilient to transplantation. It also reduces the number of heart muscle cells that die. It improves heart function when it is restarted as well."

To date St Vincent’s Hospital has successfully transplanted three hearts using this technique and hopes it will be quickly adopted by other hospitals around the world.

"All three patients that we've transplanted are doing very well," reports Professor Graham. "The first patient is about 3 months post transplant. She has been home for about 2 months and feels better than ever. The second patient is now 2 weeks out and he’s walking around and feeling wonderful. And the third patient is still in the intensive care unit but has had no major problems. Now that the rest of the world knows about it and now that we have reported on these cases, there’s no reason to stop other very experienced transplant units from using this technique tomorrow."

According to the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, the breakthrough could see the amount of successful heart transplants rise by 30 percent, while also allowing countries like China to perform the procedure (currently China does not perform heart transplants, because its definition of death is "heart" death).

Google exec sets new high-altitude skydiving world record

Alan Eustace enjoys the view as he ascends to an altitude of 135,890 ft (Photo: Atomic Entertainment and Paragon Space Development Corporation)

Google exec, Alan Eustace, has broken the 128,100-ft (39,045-m) high-altitude skydive record set by Felix Baumgartner in October, 2012 (with much less fanfare). Jumping from a balloon at 135,890 ft (41,419 m) above Roswell, New Mexico, Eustace also set new world records for vertical speed and freefall distance.

Rather than relying on the sponsorship of an energy drink company, Eustace and the StratEx (Stratospheric Explorer) program team took the self-funded route. With Eustace being Google's Senior Vice President of Knowledge, Google offered to help out, but Eustace declined as he didn't want the attempt to turn into a marketing event.

Also setting itself apart from Baumgartner's record-setting jump was the way Eustace made his way to altitude. Rather than being protected from the environment by a custom-built fiberglass pressurized capsule like Baumgartner, Eustace rose to the stratosphere in a pressure suit dangling from a helium-filled scientific balloon.

The ascent took two hours and seven minutes, with Eustace spending around half an hour enjoying the view before cutting himself free of the balloon at 9:09 MDT on October 24 and arriving back on solid ground 14 minutes and 19 seconds later.

The descent included a freefall assisted by a stabilizing drogue that saw him cover 123,414 ft (37,607 m) in four minutes and 27 seconds and reach a speed of 822 mph (1,323 km/h) before slowing in the thickening atmosphere and deploying his parachute at around 18,000 ft (5,486 m). This gives Eustace the world records for the longest freefall distance with a drogue/stabilizing device and the highest vertical speed.

For the feat, Eustace was wearing the StratEx (Stratospheric Explorer), a fully self-contained spacesuit and recovery system not unlike the spacesuits used on the Apollo missions or the ISS. Eustace, who is responsible for Google's research and development activities and describes himself as an engineer first, worked with Paragon Space Development to design the suit and life support system.

The goal of the StratEx program was to develop a suit that would allow manned exploration of the stratosphere above 100,000 ft (30,480 m), with Paragon believing such technology will find various applications, including the study of the science of the stratosphere, spaceship crew egress, the development of new high altitude aircraft suits, the study of dynamics of bodies at Mach, and opening the way for records to tumble in the areas of space diving, sailplaning and ballooning.

The program was headed by Paragon Space Development Corporation, which provided the suit's life support system, and included the participation of ILC Dover, which was responsible for the design, development and production of the StratEx, and United Parachute Technologies, which was responsible for the design and manufacture of the drogue and parachute, as well as the flight training of Eustace and the safety skydivers. Having set a new record for the highest altitude skydive, the StratEx team hopes the feat will inspire others to push the boundaries of exploration.

Eustace's jump was observed by the US Parachute Association's (USPA) Director of Competition James Hayhurst, which also served as an official observer for Baumgartner's world-record setting jump. Hayhurst has now submitted Eustace's preliminary claims for all three records through the National Aeronautics Administration to international skydiving’s governing body, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Video of Eustace's stratospheric leap can be viewed below.

Test tube milk the latest to hit the engineered food scene

Muufri founders Ryan Pandya and CTO Perumal Gandhi are aiming for a marketable product by summer of 2015

"Got (synthetically bioengineered plant-based) Milk?" may not have the punch of the famous California dairy industry advert, but the founders of a Silicon Valley-based biotech startup are hoping their genetically engineered yeast will produce a dairy alternative as good or better than the cow version. Joining a growing field of recent plant-based alternative meat and dairy startups, Muufri (pronounced “moo free”) was founded in May of 2014 and is taking a somewhat different approach to developing its product.

Soy, almonds and other nuts have long been a popular base for alternative meat and dairy items, but few diners have been fooled into believing their veggie burger or soy milk tastes like the animal version. The recent push by plant-based food startups seeks to produce alternatives in the lab that replicate the taste, texture, mouthfeel, look, flavor and cooking properties of the real thing, so diners will be fooled.

While meat, cheese and egg substitutes have been (or are being) developed by companies such as Hampton Creek Foods, Beyond Meet and Impossible Foods, no one has attempted to replicate one of the most basic and ubiquitous foodstuffs of all: milk.

According to co-founder and CEO Ryan Pandya, it’s one reason he and CTO Perumal Gandhi stepped into the void with Muufri. The converted vegans also cite other industry memes in pursuing the venture, namely, feeding a growing population expected to hit 9 million by 2050, and doing it in a sustainable manner. Besides the often inhumane treatment of cattle on large factory farms, some 3 percent of greenhouse gas emissions each year can be attributed to dairy production, according to the UN.

"There are just such a so many problems with the food industry," says Pandya, who holds a BS in chemical and biological engineering from Tufts University, "and the way to address those problems with inefficiency is to remove animals from the equation as much as we can."

Pandya says milk is ideal for synthesizing, with less than 20 components, starting with around 87 percent water and including proteins, enzymes, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. The company’s bottom-up process, according to their website, will include six key proteins for structure and function, and eight key fatty acids for flavor and richness. But instead of using cashews and almonds to replicate the curdy backbone as some alternative cheese makers do, Muufri is bioengineering yeast to produce authentic milk proteins, which will give it the same taste and nutrition as regular milk.

Muufri’s GMO process starts by adding cow DNA sequences into the yeast cells. After growing the cultures in optimal conditions of temperature and concentration, the resulting milk proteins are ready for harvest. Plant-derived fats will also be put through the biotech process to replicate the flavor and make-up of milk fats, while sugars and minerals like calcium will be added separately. The recipe can also easily be tweaked for greater health benefits, using an alternate sugar to lactose for the lactose-intolerant, or leaving cholesterol out altogether. And other types of milk – goat, buffalo, whole, skim – are also a viable option.

According to Pandya, there are several advantages to using yeast. It’s a common organism in the food industry and a component in bread, beer and wine making, and thus easier for consumers to accept, while several strains have been labeled safe by the FDA. It’s also easy to grow, with a fast throughput time in a wide range of temperatures, and Pandya can more easily equate their milk-making process to brewing beer, including the use of similar looking vats. For consumers concerned about a GMO planet, Muufri has engineered the yeast to die within hours after production.

While the goal is to produce a product as good, if not better, than milk, as well as cheaper, Muufri may initially cost twice the amount of cow milk. But without the typical bacteria found in milk, and thus no need for pasteurization, Muufri should have a very long shelf life. The synthetic milk is still in development, and the company is aiming for a marketable product by summer of 2015.

Expressiv gives your fretting fingers MIDI music-making superpowers

The Expressiv MIDI Guitar system from RORGuitars

Keyboard players, digital drummers and DJs have been dipping into synthesized sonic magic for a long time, but until quite recently, electric guitarists have been left a little wanting. A good example of the progress being made is Fishman's TriplePlay wireless MIDI system. Rather than rely on an externally-mounted hexaphonic pickup of the kind found in TriplePlay, though, Ireland's Rob O'Reilly uses smart fretboard scanning technology for his Expressiv MIDI Guitar System. As well as promising zero latency when in MIDI mode, the instrument also sports "normal" pickups so players can chop and change between analog and digital sounds at the flick of a switch.

The Expressiv system is the fruit of 3 years of research, development and testing. It doesn't just differ from other instruments in the looks department (imagine the offspring of a Vox Teardrop and Phantom coupling, or perhaps even one half of a pair of thick-framed X-ray spex), the 3.25 kg (7 lb) guitar takes a different approach to converting fingerboard action into MIDI too.

"I have tried Roland's GK systems, Fishman's TriplePlay and also the YouRockGuitar," O'Reilly told Gizmag. "Both the Roland and Fishmann MIDI systems track the pitch from the sound of the string. Expressiv uses a smart fretboard scanner to know which notes you are pressing. Pressing a string against a fret creates a switch, much the same as a key in a keyboard. The smart fret scanner decodes which strings are being pressed accurately. The result is similar to how a keyboard is played, except on a guitar fretboard. This is totally different to hex pickups which rely on pitch detection of a ringing note."

The Expressiv system is reported capable of ultra-fast tracking with no latency and no ghost notes, and the note will sustain as long as the player pushes a string against a fret. Would-be Stanley Jordans can tackle the 22-fret fingerboard with both hands or use the non-fretting hand to tweak parameters on the fly using the 4-way joystick and six assignable buttons. The guitar also has two high output Wilkinson single coil pickups, allowing musicians to switch between MIDI output and traditional amp output.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the ROR Expressiv MIDI Guitar is the clear acrylic infinity mirror in the middle of the matte black laminate wood body. In addition to being home to the single coil pickups and Tune-O-Matic bridge, O'Reilly has installed an X/Y touchpad where other guitars might have a pickguard. The player can use this to influence assignable parameters like volume and pitch (in a similar fashion to the panel on the front of the Kitara I reviewed back in 2011) when in MIDI mode.

The instrument is MIDI class compliant, which allows it be used as a controller for external hardware synths, keyboards or other MIDI devices (via USB or 5-pin MIDI). The digital wizardry gets the power it needs to operate via the USB cable plugged into a computer or laptop running favored music creation or recording software – though there is talk of adding a 9 V battery compartment so that the blue, green and red light show will still dazzle when in guitar/amp mode.

"USB has a power supply built in and of course, you never run out of battery in mid performance," said the company's Anthony Lingwood. Given the way technology is going, we presume it will be used more often with the USB cable than the MIDI cable. We are considering having a rechargeable battery onboard which is being recharged while you have it plugged in. However, the only reason that you might need a battery is to use the MIDI cable without a second power supply (which would be very handy). So we may include this feature, we will see."

To take the Expressiv MIDI Guitar System from attention-grabbing prototype to production model, RORGuitars has launched on Kickstarter. Early birders can still get in on the action for a pledge of €449 (about US$570), which represents a saving of €350 on the estimated retail price.

"Right now, players can't play the guitar and MIDI device at the same time, but the project is still in pre-production," said Lingwood. "We hope that even for the Kickstarter guitars, we can solve this problem and release Expressiv with a combined functionality of playing both the MIDI and guitar functionality at the same time. In the future, we will also have an extra pickup which will allow you to pluck a string as normal and that would decide how loud the note would be, or even control a frequency cutoff or any parameter."

If all goes to plan, RORGuitars plans on shipping out the first market-ready instruments in March 2015. Have a look at the pitch video below for a closer look at the Expressiv system.