NASA and GM to build robotic astronauts

Bangalore: NASA and General Motors are working together to develop and build humanoid robots that can work side-by-side with humans. The aim is to build robots that can help astronauts during dangerous mission and help GM build cars and automotive plants, reports Computer World.

"This cutting-edge robotics technology holds great promise, not only for NASA, but also for the nation," said Doug Cooke, Associate Administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. "I'm very excited about the new opportunities for human and robotic exploration these versatile robots provide across a wide range of applications."

Earlier this week NASA had announced that the White House's proposed budget for the agency includes $3 billion for developing robotics, with a focus on preparing for robotic precursor missions. NASA is planning to land robots on the moon, for example, so they can gather information and send back data and video in advance of future human space missions.

Now, NASA and GM are working with engineers from Oceaneering Space Systems of Houston to create what they're calling the Robonaut. If the project comes to fruition, it would be NASA's second Robonaut.

"Our challenge today is to build machines that can help humans work and explore in space," said Mike Coats, a Director at Johnson Space Center. "Working side-by-side with humans, or going where the risks are too great for people, machines like Robonaut will expand our capability for construction and discovery."

Abu Dhabi to plug in solar air conditioner

Abu Dhabi to plug in solar air conditioner 
Start-up Chromasun plans to install a solar-driven air conditioner--a technology with the potential to cut peak-time electricity use--at a commercial building in Abu Dhabi this year.

The company is showcasing the Chromasun solar collector, which concentrates sunlight 25 times, at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi this week, CEO Peter Le Lievre said Thursday.

Chromasun's collectors use a Fresnel lens made from aluminum to concentrate light and then heat a liquid used in an absorption chiller, an air conditioning system used in some commercial buildings. It's the same basic concentrating-solar technology used by solar thermal company Ausra, of which Le Lievre was a co-founder. But the "micro-concentrator" is designed specifically for existing air conditioners.

A micro-concentrator will not be sufficient to cool an entire building, but its maximum output coincides with the hottest times of the day when air conditioning systems are maxed out. The installation in Abu Dhabi, which is being demonstrated at the Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority's stand at the energy summit, can significantly reduce peak-time demand and help stabilize the grid during hot days, Le Lievre said.

In Abu Dhabi, temperatures can break 100 degrees on a daily basis for five months out of each year.

Molecular Venus flytrap could munch nuclear waste

THE molecular equivalent of a Venus flytrap could capture water-borne nuclear waste.

So say Mercouri Kanatzidis and Nan Ding from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. They have synthesised a sulphide-containing material with a flexible structure that mimics the flytrap's jaws.

The structure has "windows" measuring 0.8 nanometres by 0.3 nanometres - just large enough for caesium ions to squeeze through. Once inside, the caesium bonds with sulphide ions, and this changes the material's structure in a way that closes the windows and traps the caesium.

"The trigger for closing the trap comes from the caesium-sulphide interactions in the material," says Kanatzidis. Even if other ions such as sodium are present, they bond so strongly to water molecules that they can't react with the sulphide, he says (Nature Chemistry, DOI: 10.1038/nchem.519).

Kanatzidis thinks the flytrap could be used to trap radioactive caesium at nuclear disposal sites.

It's elegant chemistry, says Alan Dyer at the University of Salford, UK, but it's unclear if it could perform as well as existing mate.

Endeavour cleared for Feb. 7 launch

NASA managers Wednesday cleared the shuttle Endeavour for a predawn launch February 7, the first of a final five space station assembly flights before the shuttle fleet is retired later this year.

The countdown is scheduled to begin at 2 a.m. EST on February 4, setting up a launch attempt at 4:39 a.m. February 7 from launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. It is the last planned night launch on the shuttle schedule.

"We reviewed all aspects of the shuttle and the space station," Bill Gerstenmaier, chief of space flight operations, said after an executive-level flight readiness review. "It was an extremely thorough review. We set the launch date for February 7 at 4:39 and so far, things look pretty good."

Launch Director Mike Leinbach said Endeavour's processing was going smoothly and "we're in outstanding shape."

"We're not looking at any problems," he told reporters. "We have a good, low constraints count now in the firing room, so really in great shape there."

Assuming an on-time launch, commander George Zamka, pilot Terry Virts, Kathryn Hire, flight engineer Stephen Robinson, and spacewalkers Robert Behnken and Nicholas Patrick plan to dock with the International Space Station two days later, at around 1:23 a.m. February 9.

The primary goal of the flight is to attach the new Tranquility module, or node 3, to the left side of the lab complex to house life support gear, exercise equipment and a robotics work station. Three spacewalks by Behnken and Patrick are planned before undocking February 17 and landing back at the Kennedy Space Center around 11:16 p.m. on February 19.

"We're embarking on probably the last of the assembly flights to install a complicated module on the ISS," said station Program Manager Mike Suffredini. "There are still other assembly flights ahead of us, but node 3 is probably the last of the very complicated modules that'll have its own cooling system and be the home of all the regenerative (environmental control and life support) systems as well as some other critical systems that support the crew on orbit."

The astronauts will attach Tranquility to the left port of the central Unity module. Electrical and data lines will be connected, along with hoses that will tie the new module into the station's two independent ammonia coolant loops.

NASA originally planned to attach Tranquility to Unity's Earth-facing port, but engineers decided to move it to the left side of the module to improve options for docking future commercial cargo ships and NASA's planned Orion crew transfer vehicle.

But connectors needed to circulate ammonia coolant to and from Tranquility were not correctly positioned, or "clocked," for Tranquility to be attached to Unity's left-side port. Long extension hoses were ordered, but problems during recent pressure tests forced NASA to develop an alternative approach.

NASA managers ultimately decided to connect shorter flight-qualified hoses to solve the problem while improvements were ordered to bring the longer hoses up to flight standards as a backup. Suffredini said the modified shorter hoses were ready for shipment to the Kennedy Space Center.

"All of that allows us to activate the node and begin the process of installing the (life support system) racks into node 3," he said.

But first, engineers want to get run time on a new urine processor system distillation assembly being ferried up aboard Endeavour.

The station's urine processing system, which converts urine into ultra-pure water for drinking, crew hygiene, and oxygen generation, has been shut down in recent weeks because of problems with a critical distillation assembly. More recently, blockage in a line knocked out the part of the system that converts condensate into clean water.

"We brought home the other failed distillation assembly on the last shuttle flight," Suffredini said. "Through a failure investigation, we found calcium deposits inside the distillation assembly and we're doing quite a bit of investigation to determine how to prevent that in the future.

"One way is to not process to as high a concentration of brine inside the system, meaning we empty the tank that carries the ultimate waste from the urine processor, we empty it a little more often. So we want to run the processor with the new distillation assembly inside long enough to fill the tank up to the new level we plan to operate at, remove that tank, and bring it home.

"That will take us almost the entire mission, from the time we're able to install the spare until the time the crew has to depart," Suffredini said. "That's what's driving us not to do the rest of the rack moves until the urine processor can move."

As for the presumed line blockage problem with the water processing system that is preventing conversion of condensate, a filter will be carried up aboard Endeavour that should resolve the issue.

"The plan is, as early as we can, to install those new components, before the shuttle arrives, and when the shuttle arrives we'll install the filter and then we'll activate the water processor along with the urine processor and recover our regenerative (environmental control and life support) system by the end of the mission," Suffredini said.

In the meantime, he said the station had plenty of stockpiled water for extended operations while work to fix the current problems is carried out. Depending on how that work goes, some of the life support system racks bound for Tranquility may not be moved into the new module before Endeavour departs.

4 countries clear hurdle for non-Latin Web names

NEW YORK – Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the first countries to win preliminary approval for Internet addresses written entirely in their native scripts.

Since their creation in the 1980s, Internet domain names have been limited to the 26 characters in the Latin alphabet used in English, as well as 10 numerals and the hyphen. Technical tricks have been used to allow portions of the Internet address to use other scripts, but until now, the suffix had to use those 37 characters.

An announcement Thursday by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, known as ICANN, paves the way for an entire domain name to appear in Cyrillic or Arabic by the middle of this year. Applications for strings in other languages are pending.

That means Internet users with little or no knowledge of English would no longer have to type Latin characters to access Web pages targeting Russian or Arabic speakers. Although search engines can sometimes help users reach those sites, companies still need to include Latin characters on advertisements.

Users may still need Latin characters for e-mail addresses, though, as Internet technicians finalize standards for e-mail applications that can understand domain names entirely in Cyrillic or Arabic.

ICANN granted preliminary approval to the four countries after years of debate and testing of non-Latin names. Demand for them has been increasing around the world as Internet usage expands among people of different tongues.

Some countries have been issuing domain names partially in non-Latin scripts — with only the suffix using Latin characters. But Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have not, said Tina Dam, senior director for ICANN's Internationalized Domain Names program.

For the three Arabic-speaking countries, there would have been too much confusion because their language is written right to left, while the Latin portion would be left to right. For Russian, the concern was that Cyrillic and Latin characters looked too similar and would create confusion if mixed in a single Internet address.

These four countries now have to formally request the suffixes, and ICANN's board has to sign off. That's expected now that the ICANN staff has cleared the proposed suffixes to make sure they won't cause technical problems or confusion with existing Latin domain names.

Those suffixes are:

• The equivalent of "Egypt" in Arabic.

• "RF" for the Russian Federation, written in Cyrillic.

• The Arabic equivalent of "AlSaudiah," short for Saudi Arabia.

• "Emirates" written in Arabic for the UAE.

All four countries would keep their current two-character Latin suffix — ".eg" for Egypt, ".ru" for Russia, ".sa" for Saudi Arabia and ".ae" for the Emirates.

ICANN has received applications from 16 countries in eight languages since mid-November. Officials would not release details on the ones still under review.

Google's 4Q profit soars on rising online ad sales

SAN FRANCISCO – Google Inc. reeled in more Internet advertising during the holiday shopping season and approached $2 billion in quarterly profit for the first time, providing the strongest sign yet that the online search leader has shaken off the recession's doldrums.

The fourth-quarter earnings announced Thursday topped analyst estimates, but revenue only matched forecasts.

Investors initially reacted with disappointment, but seemed to reconsider as they had more time to digest the results. By late Thursday, the company's shares were only 40 cents below their closing price of $582.98 after initially sagging by as much as $33.98, or nearly 6 percent, in extended trading.

Google made $1.97 billion, or $6.13 per share, in the final three months of 2009. That was up dramatically from income of $382 million at the same time in 2008, when Google's earnings were deflated by charges to reflect the eroding value of some investments.

Fourth-quarter revenue totaled $6.7 billion, a 17 percent increase. The revenue was also up by more than 10 percent from the previous quarter, the first time Google's sequential growth has climbed by double digits since the U.S. recession began in December 2007.

"Given that the global economy is still in the early days of recovery, this was an extraordinary end to the year," said Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive.

The quickening growth pace indicates Google is regaining the pre-recession stride that enabled the company to consistently increase its quarterly revenue by at least 30 percent. Google is so large now that it will be difficult to get back to that level, but analysts still think revenue could rise by nearly 20 percent this year — up from 9 percent for all of 2009.

The brightening outlook has encouraged Google to loosen its pursestrings to hire more employees, make more acquisitions and mine new business opportunities such as mobile phones. Investors aren't thrilled with that commitment because Google won't say how much it's prepared to spend, raising worries that its profit margins might not expand as much as its revenue this year.

Google added 170 workers in the fourth quarter, bringing its payroll to 19,835 employees. If it can find enough qualified candidates, Google would like to hire about 2,000 workers this year, with an emphasis on engineering and ad sales, said Patrick Pichette, the company's chief financial officer.

Schmidt also told investors in the conference call that the company will likely make at least one acquisition per month, "some big, more small." The company's biggest pending acquisition is a proposed deal to buy AdMob, a mobile advertising service, for $750 million.

Google's recent decision to sell a mobile phone, called Nexus One, has been particularly vexing for investors because the costs to promote and support the device could be greater than the revenue it brings in, said Signal Hill Group analyst Todd Greenwald.

If nothing else, the fourth-quarter performance is likely to give people something to talk about other than Google's threat to shut down its China-based search engine and perhaps pull out of the world's most populous country in a dispute over censorship and computer security.

Schmidt didn't say anything new about Google's uncertain future in China during a conference call with analysts. He reiterated Google's hope to find a way to maintain a presence in China while emphasizing the company intends to stop censoring search results in the country within "a reasonably short time." That plan conflicts with China's restrictions against showing content that the government deems subversive or pornographic.

Google's fourth quarter could indicate the overall online advertising market is regaining vigor after losing steam through most of 2009. But Google could prove to be an anomaly because its dominance of online search has put it so far ahead of the pack. One of those rivals, Yahoo Inc., is expected to report a drop in fourth-quarter revenue when it releases its results Tuesday.

For the full year, Google earned $6.5 billion, or $20.41 per share, on revenue of $23.65 billion. In 2008, Google earned $4.2 billion, or $13.31 per share, on revenue of $21.8 billion.

Brain asymmetry eases hypnotic trance

IF HYPNOSIS leaves you unmoved, blame the wiring in your brain. It seems those who find it easier to fall into a trance are more likely to have an imbalance in the efficiency of their brain's two hemispheres. The finding backs hotly disputed claims of a biological basis for hypnosis.

Around 15 per cent of people are thought to be extremely susceptibleMovie Camera to hypnosis, while another 10 per cent are almost impossible to hypnotise. The rest of us fall somewhere in between.

Sceptics argue that rather than being in a genuine trance, some of us are simply more suggestible and therefore more likely to act the part. However, recent studies have hinted that during hypnosis, there is less connectivity between different regions, and less activity in the rational, left side of the brain, and more in the artistic right side. Such findings suggest hypnosis is more than acting.

To see if there are also differences between the brains of susceptible and unresponsive volunteers when they were awake, Peter Naish of the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, used a standard test of hypnotic susceptibility, that combines motor and cognitive tasks, to identify 10 volunteers of each type. He then gave each volunteer a pair of spectacles with an LED mounted on the left and right side of the frame. The two LEDs flashed in quick succession, and the volunteers had to say which flashed first. Naish repeated the task until the gap between the flashes was so short that the volunteers could no longer judge the correct order.

Naish found that hypnotically susceptible volunteers were better at perceiving when the right LED flashed first than when the left one did. This suggested that the left hemisphere of their brain was working more efficiently (visual pathways cross over in the brain, so left controls right and vice versa). In contrast, the non-susceptible people were just as likely to perceive the right LED flashing first as the one on the left.

These differences in the balance of brain efficiency persisted when Naish tried to hypnotise both groups. During hypnosis, the brains of those in the susceptible group seemed to switch "states", becoming faster at spotting when the left LED flashed first. Meanwhile, the efficiency of the hemispheres remained relatively even in the non-susceptible people. They didn't fall into a trance, but their performance on the task started to deteriorate (Consciousness and Cognition, DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2009.10.003).

Naish suggests that successful hypnosis requires temporary domination by the brain's right side, a state that might be much easier to bring about in people who tend to have an imbalance in the efficiency of their two hemispheres, even when awake.

Hypnosis requires right side domination. People with asymmetric brains are more susceptible

"It fits in with a theory that hypnosis involves a transition from left to right hemispheric dominance," says Zoltan Dienes of the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. He has used transcranial magnetic stimulation to temporarily reduce activity in the left hemisphere and found that this increases responsiveness to hypnosis. "It is as if people who don't have the natural ability to become right hemisphere dominant are being given a helping hand by reducing activity in their left hemisphere," says Naish.

Smart mud could be the new plastic

Could a mixture of water and clay replace plastics? The desire to wean the world off oil has sparked all manner of research into novel transportation fuels, but manufacturing plastics uses large amounts of oil too. Researchers at the University of Tokyo, Japan, think their material could be up to the task.

Takuzo Aida and his team mixed a few grams of clay with 100 grams of water in the presence of tiny quantities of a thickening agent called sodium polyacrylate and an organic "molecular glue". The thickening agent teases apart the clay into thin sheets, increasing its surface area and allowing the glue to get a better hold on it.

This means that, while the mixture is almost 98 per cent water, it forms a transparent and elastic hydrogel with sufficient mechanical strength to make a 3.5-centimetre-wide self-standing bridge.

Self-repairing hydrogel

The strength of the material depends on the sum of the forces acting between the molecules in the clay nanosheets and the glue, says Aida. These so-called supramolecular forces, such as hydrogen bonds, also help to trap water molecules between the clay sheets.

Some other hydrogels rely on covalent chemical bonds rather than supramolecular forces for their strength. One disadvantage of this is that when the covalent bonds break, the material irreversibly loses its strength, says Aida. Supramolecular forces, on the other hand, can easily reform, so if the material fails under stress it can quickly regain its strength.

The gel takes just 3 minutes to form, and making it requires no understanding of the chemical process involved, Aida says, – a fact that impresses Craig Hawker at the University of California in Santa Barbara, who was not involved with the study. "One of the primary breakthroughs is the overall simplicity of the procedure coupled with the exceptional physical properties of the final assemblies," he says.

New class of materials

"Toughness, self-healing and robustness are just some of the initial physical properties that will be found for this new class of materials," Hawker says. "I predict that this approach will lead to the design of even more impressive materials in the near future."

Polymer scientist Jian Ping Gong at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan, says the work is "beautiful" but points out that the material's mechanical strength falls short of what is possible for plastics and chemically cross-linked gels.

Aida says that strengthening the material is as simple as increasing the quantities of clay, sodium polyacrylate and glue, provided transparency is not important.