What’s that driver doing? On the Metro a couple of weeks ago. (Taken with instagram)
Sunset (Taken with Instagram at The Yards Park)
The scene (Taken with Instagram at The Yards Park)
Spanish Government Deploys Robotic Fish to Monitor Maritime Pollution
Currently the port relies on divers to monitor water quality, which is a lengthy process costing €100,000 per year. The divers take water samples from hundreds of points in the port, then send them off for analysis, with the results taking weeks to return. By contrast, the SHOAL robots would continuously monitor the water, letting the port respond immediately to the causes of pollution, such as a leaking boat or industrial spillage, and work to mitigate its effects.
The SHOAL fish are one and a half metres long, comparable to the size and shape of a tuna, but their neon-yellow plastic shell means they are unlikely to be mistaken for the real thing. A range of onboard chemical sensors detect lead, copper and other pollutants, along with measuring water salinity.
They are driven by a dual-hinged tail capable of making tight turns that would be impossible with a propeller-driven robot. They are also less noisy, reducing the impact on marine life.
The robots are battery powered and capable of running for 8 hours between charges. At the moment the researchers have to recover them by boat, but their plan is that the fish will return to a charging station by themselves.
Working in a group, the fish can cover a 1 kilometre-square region of water, down to a depth of 30 metres. They communicate with each other and a nearby base-station using very low-frequency sound waves, which can penetrate the water more easily than radio waves. However, this means the fish have a low data transmission rate and can only send short, predefined messages. “It’s a good solution, but it requires thinking carefully about what data to transmit and how to use that data,” says Kristi Morgansen, a roboticist at the University of Washington, who was not involved in the research.
Robotic fish shoal sniffs out pollution in harbours - environment - 22 May 2012 - New Scientist
via joshbyard:
gq:
The Roast of Alan Richman
In honor of a quarter-century writing for GQ, we look back at the best moments in the globe-trotting, gullet-busting, award-winning career of the most esteemed food-and-wine writer of our time, Alan Richman.
DARPA Launches Program to Industrialize Genetic Engineering
DARPA has launched a program called called “Living Foundries,”designed to apply the conventions of manufacturing to living cells, Wired Danger Room reports.
DARPA has awarded seven research grants worth $15.5 million to six different companies and institutions, including the University of Texas at Austin, Cal Tech, and the J. Craig Venter Institute. “Living Foundries” aspires to streamline genetic engineering for “on-demand production” of whatever bio-product suits the military’s immediate needs, starting with a library of “modular genetic parts.”
The agency wants researchers to come up with a set of “parts, regulators, devices and circuits” that can reliably yield various genetic systems. After that, they’ll also need “test platforms” to quickly evaluate new bio-materials to “compress the biological design-build-test cycle by at least 10X in both time and cost,” while also “increasing the complexity of systems that can be designed and executed.”
What could possibly go wrong?
(via DARPA, Venter launch assembly line for genetic engineering | KurzweilAI)
via joshbyard:
LatAmer cities of 200K+ need to increase the number of homes +50% in next 13 yrs. http://t.co/o0o4ZJzm #DIAvivienda — IDBNews (@IDBnews)
“I still can’t believe we got them to say ‘blogosphere’.”
Via XKCD.
(via onaissues)
At a live taping of the @Slate political gabfest. Topics include “Why is Washington so dreadful?” (Taken with instagram)