Computer Science & Engineering

After record-setting satellite launch, ISRO aims for Venus and Mars; may partner with NASA!

2017-02-15T03:24:00.001-08:00

Gearing up for its mega event of launching a record number of 104 satellites into space in a single space mission on February 15, the Indian Space Research Organisation(ISRO) also has its sights set on a visit to Venus and Mars.

With numerous feats in 2016 itself, ISRO managed to establish the country's position as one of the front-runners in the field of space. Now, by acquiring the first acknowledgement by the government with regard to these two new deep space sojourns, the space agency has managed to add another feather to its hat!

With the February 15 mega launch, India is hoping to better the previous world record by a whopping two-and-a-half times. ISRO, considered the new kid on the block in the multi-billion dollar world launcher market, hopes to set an enviable benchmark for the space-fairing nations.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley gave the department of space a 23% increase in its budget. Under the space sciences section, the budget mentions provisions “for Mars Orbiter Mission II and Mission to Venus”.

The second mission to Mars is planned for in 2021-2022 timeframe and as per existing plans it may well involve putting a robot on the surface of the Red Planet.

While the first mission to Mars in 2013 was a purely Indian project, the French space agency wants to collaborate in making the Mars rover.

In fact on a visit to India this month, Michael M Watkins, director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA, said they would be keen to at least put a telematics module so NASA’s rovers and the Indian satellites are able to talk to each other.

The second Indian mission to Mars is likely to be all about good science since the first one had a nationalistic streak on it in trying to beat China to the orbit of Mars which the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) did magnificently.

India’s maiden mission to Venus, the second planet of the solar system, is in all probability going to be a modest orbiter mission.

Watkins said a mission to Venus is very-very worthwhile as so little is understood about that planet and NASA would definitely be willing to partner in India’s maiden voyage to Venus.

Towards that, NASA and ISRO have already initiated talks this month on trying to jointly undertake studies on using electrical propulsion for powering this mission.

Former ISRO chairman says, “India should be part of this global adventure and exploring Venus and Mars is very worthwhile since humans definitely need another habitation beyond Earth.”

ISRO's record satellites' launch: 10 top facts

2017-02-15T03:19:00.001-08:00

1. Of the 104 satellites ISRO launched today, three are Indian and 101 are foreign and smaller satellites.

2. The space agency used the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) for the launch. It carried a 714 kilogram main satellite for earth observation and 103 smaller "nano satellites" which weighed a combined 664 kilograms.

3. Most of the nano satellites are from other countries, including from Israel, Kazakhstan, The Netherlands, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates and the US, said the state-run ISRO. A whopping 96 satellites are from the US alone.

4. ISRO today beat the record held by Russia, which in 2014 catapulted 37 satellites in a single launch, using a modified inter-continental ballistic missile.

5. Last June, India set a national record after it successfully launched a rocket carrying 20 satellites, including 13 from the US.

6. The famously frugal ISRO hopes to set an enviable benchmark for the space fairing nations. In fact, in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi quipped that an Indian rocket that launched four foreign satellites into orbit cost less to make than the Hollywood film "Gravity".

7. Putting commercial satellites into space for a fee is a growing business sector. That's because phone, Internet and other companies, as well as countries, are seeking greater and more high-tech communications.

8. ISRO sent an unmanned rocket to orbit Mars in 2013 at a cost of just $73 million, compared with NASA's Maven Mars mission which had a $671 million price tag.

9. ISRO is also mulling the idea of missions to Jupiter and Venus. The second mission to Mars is tentatively slated for in 2021-2022 timeframe and as per existing plans it may well involve putting a robot on the surface of the Red Planet.

10. The government is pleased with ISRO's progress and in the recently announced annual budget it gave the space agency a 23 per cent increase in its budget.

Robo-Bees Could Aid Insects with Pollination Duties

2017-02-11T05:20:00.001-08:00

Mini drones sporting horsehair coated in a sticky gel could one day take the pressure off beleaguered bee populations by transporting pollen from plant to plant, researchers said.

Roughly three-quarters of the world’s flowering plants and about 35 percent of the world's food crops depend on animals to pollinate them, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Some of nature's most prolific pollinators are bees, but bee populations are declining around the world, and last month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed a native species as endangered for the first time.

Now, researchers from Japan said they've taken the first steps toward creating robots that could help pick up the slack from insect pollinators. The scientists created a sticky gel that lets a $100 matchbox-size drone pick up pollen from one flower and deposit it onto another to help the plants reproduce.

"This is a proof of concept — there's nothing compared to this. It's a totally first-time demonstration," said study leader Eijiro Miyako, a chemist at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science in Tsukuba, Japan. "Some robots are expected to be used for experiments in pollination, but no one has tried yet."

A happy accident

The key innovation of the new study, published today (Feb. 9) in the journal Chem, is the so-called ionic liquid gel, but according to Miyako it was more down to luck than design. The gel was actually the result of a failed attempt to create electrically conducting liquids and had sat forgotten in a desk drawer for nearly a decade.

But after eight years, it still hadn't dried out, which most other gels would have done, and was still very sticky, Miyako said. Fortunately, this discovery coincided with Miyako watching a documentary that detailed concerns about insect pollinators.

"I actually dropped the gel on the floor and I noticed it absorbed a lot of dust, and everything linked together in my mind," he told Live Science.

The gel has just the right stickiness, meaning it can pick up pollen but is not so adhesive that it won't let the grains go.

The scientists next tested how effectively the gel could be used to transport pollen among flowers. To do so, the researchers put droplets of the material on the back of ants and left the insects overnight in a box full of tulips. The next day, the scientists found that the ants with the gel had picked up far more pollen grains than those insects that lacked the sticky substance.

In a side experiment, the researchers found that it was possible to integrate photochromic compounds, which change color when exposed to UV or white light, into the gel. Scientists stuck this material onto living flies, giving the bugs color-changing capabilities. This, Miyako said, could ultimately act as some kind of adaptive camouflage to protect pollinators from predators.

Real solutions?

But while improving the ability of other insects to pollinate flowers is a potential solution to falling bee numbers, Miyako said he was not convinced, and so began to look elsewhere. "It's very difficult using living organisms for real practical realizations, so I decided to change my approach and use robots," he said.

The hairs that make insects like bees fuzzy are important for their role as pollinators, because the hairs increase the surface area of the bees' bodies, giving pollen more material to stick to. In order to give the smooth, plastic drone similar capabilities, the scientists added a patch of horsehair to the robot's underside, which was then coated with the gel.

The researchers then flew the drones to collect pollen from the flowers of Japanese lilies and transport this pollen to other flowers. In each experiment, the researchers made 100 attempts at pollinating the flower, achieving an overall success rate of 37 percent. Drones without the patch of hair, or with uncoated hair, failed to pollinate the plants.

Miyako said there are currently limitations to the technology, because it is difficult to manually pilot the drone. However, he added that he thinks GPS and artificial intelligence could one day be used to automatically guide robotic pollinators.

Before these robo-bees become a reality, though, the cost of the drone will have to come down drastically and it's 3-minute battery life will need to improve significantly, Miyako said. But he added that he is confident this will happen eventually.

Dave Goulson, a professor at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, said he sees the intellectual interest in trying to create robot bees, but he's skeptical about how practical they are and worries about distracting from more vital pollinator conservation work.Goulson specializes in the conservation of bumblebees but was not involved with the new research.

In a blog post, he wrote that there are roughly 3.2 trillion bees on the planet. Even if the robo-bees cost 1 cent per unit and lasted a year, which he said is a highly optimistic estimate, it would cost $32 billion a year to maintain the population and would litter the countryside with tiny robots.

"Real bees avoid all of these issues; they are self-replicating, self-powering and essentially carbon-neutral," Goulson wrote in the post. "We have wonderfully efficient pollinators already. Let's look after them, not plan for their demise."

Device Turns Air Pollution Into Printing Ink

2017-02-09T02:42:00.001-08:00

An MIT spinoff company in India is proposing a novel solution to air pollution problems in Asia — turning vehicle exhaust into ink.

It involves attaching a device, called a Kaalink, to the business end of a standard automobile exhaust pipe. The Kaalink filters and captures unburned carbon emitted by incomplete engine combustion. The technical details of the process are secret, but officials at Gravinky Labs, a spinoff company from MIT Media Lab, said the process is largely mechanical and relatively straightforward.

"Our device is designed as a clever fusion of electronic sensors, mechanical actuators and a collection system," company co-founder Anirudh Sharma told Seeker in an email exchange from India. "It is retrofitted to the exhaust pipe of vehicles and mounts through a triangulated screw/clamp-set."

According to tests at Graviky Labs, the Kaalink device can capture up to 93 percent of the emitted pollution from standard internal combustion engines. It takes about 45 minutes of exhaust filtering to produce an ounce of ink.

But how does the captured carbon get turned into ink? Well, that's under wraps too, but Sharma said the captured carbon comes out the other end of the process as a high-quality printing ink that can be sold in both the consumer and industrial markets. The company has a new crowdfunding campaign to refine its development.

Right now, Kaalink devices have to be individually and manually installed by drivers. When the collection apparatus is full, the device can be traded in at Graviky Labs facility in India. Sharma said each unit typically collects carbon for about two weeks of city driving before it needs to be swapped out.

From 'CRISPR' to 'EpiPen': Dictionary Adds Slew of Scientific Words

2017-02-09T02:02:00.001-08:00

Times change, and so do languages. And in order to be useful, dictionaries must also be tweaked every now and then. The lexicographers at Merriam-Webster announced today (Feb. 7) that they have added more than 1,000 new words to the dictionary, including many that are related to science, technology and medicine.

"These are words that have demonstrated frequent and increasing use in a variety of sources, and are therefore likely to be encountered by a reader — and should be in the dictionary," the dictionary-makers said in a statement.

The science-related additions include:

CRISPR: A gene-editing technique that has been widely adopted in just the last few years. The acronym is short for "clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats."

The CRISPR system can be used to effectively cut and paste parts of a genome. CRISPR enables scientists to edit DNA with less expense and time, including for controversial applications such as modifying the genes of human embryos.

EpiPen: A brand name of an epinephrine autoinjector, which is used to treat severe allergic reactions.

microbiome: A collection of microorganisms, such as those living in the human gut, or their genomes.

pareidolia: The natural tendency to see faces in objects or patterns.

phytoremediation: The use of plants to clean an environment that's contaminated by waste or pollutants.

prosopagnosia: An inability to recognize familiar faces, sometimes called face blindness.

The inclusion of these words in a general-reference resource is one sign that the technical and scientific concepts are making their way to the general public. In some cases, the Merriam-Webster entry is part of a rising tide of recognition by lexicographers. For example, Oxford Dictionaries added an entry for CRISPR last year.

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2017-02-08T03:38:00.000-08:00

Smartphones are more common in Europe, U.S., less so in developing countries

2017-02-07T22:51:00.002-08:00

Two-thirds worldwide use the internet, but fewer do in Africa and South Asia

2017-02-07T22:50:00.002-08:00

Internet users in emerging world are more frequent users of social networks compared with U.S. and Europe

2017-02-07T22:49:00.002-08:00

Technology Becomes Us: The Age of Human-Computer Interaction

2017-02-07T22:44:00.001-08:00

Online social networks. Internet of Things. Augmented Reality. Artificial Intelligence. Technology is becoming more of our life and work than ever. We depend on it to communicate, make friends and stay in touch, do our work and even shop. With the IoT, we are even letting technology control our cars and homes.

Now, technology is becoming us and we are becoming technology in this age of human-computer interaction (HCI). However, despite all the technological advancements, many people still think that what has been created in terms of computers and devices are still not as user-friendly as they should be, highlighting the need for a deeper understanding of human cognitive capabilities in relation to machines like computers.

This interaction has been studied and exploited since the 1980s when personal computers started to emerge. Now, this segment of computer science is being delved into through university research centers like Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute. Even companies like IBM are puttingsignificant investments into HCI to see how it can enhance work in other areas like visualization, cognitive and user modeling, usable mobile security, mobile collaboration and learning, and smarter cities.

The Evolution of HCI

The concept has gone from studying the concept of usability in which technology and computers were studied for their ability to offer useful ways for people to work and, now more recently, to live. As understanding has progressed, HCI has expanded as a science that now integrates and draws on a number of areas, including “psychology, design, communication studies, cognitive science, information science, science and technology studies, geographical sciences, management information systems, and industrial, manufacturing, and systems engineering.”

The study of HCI has been progressing along with the disruptive changes occurring within society in terms of the impact that the Internet has had on societies. The changes have incorporated people using computers to interact with others beyond just interacting with the computer. Now, with the Internet of Things, computing has integrated into human habits associated with their homes, shopping patterns, vehicles, appliances, moving beyond computers and into other types of devices like the smartphone and tablet.

The science and application of HCI continues to evolve with more practitioners, scientists, researchers and developers seek to further what it means to human society and how it can be leveraged to address social and economic issues as well as to determine how people can think and work smarter. It’s become such a relevant area of study that university programs and degrees are now available for HCI as a way of furthering the understanding and application for this segment of computer science. At the same time, new jobs are emerging to use these degrees related to furthering areas like those being studied by IBM or as new companies develop applications for artificial intelligence and connected devices that bring us further into the world of computers.

Upcoming HCI Industry Conference

To further the understanding of HCI, a number of conferences and seminars have been developed. If you are interested in learning more about HCI, check out ACM CHI 2016. It’s a conference on Human-Computer Interaction that will be held May 7-12 in San Jose, California at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center located at 150 W San Carlos Street. The conference will bring together some of the best minds working in HCI to exchange ideas and share new insights through ongoing research.

Bottom Line

Now that we rely so heavily on technology, it’s clear that HCI is here to stay and will only become a larger part of our work, life, and social networks. We can all add to the body of knowledge by participating in research studies or working towards a degree or within an industry related to HCI, helping shape how we let technology interact with us.

Brian Hughes CEO, Founder, Digital Marketing Expert at Integrity Marketing & Consulting

3 Signs Online Learning Isn't Right for You

2017-02-07T21:50:00.001-08:00

When I first decided to enroll in an online bachelor's degree program three years ago, almost every person I told had a different reaction. These ranged from "Good for you!" to "Are you sure you can handle that while working full time?" and the ever-present "I could never do that."

Now, as I approach the completion of my program, every time this topic comes up in conversation it seems like many friends, family and co-workers who are already living busy lives feel that online learning is something that might work well for others but not for them personally.

This reaction always seemed odd to me. In my experience, the online learning environment has allowed me to thrive in ways I was never able to in a traditional classroom. I will concede, however, that online learning is definitely quite a departure from the educational experience most students are used to.

From my experience and the conversations I've had with others, here are three signs that online education might not be right for you.

1. You aren't self-disciplined. For me, the flexibility that online education offers has been a huge factor in my success, but it also requires greater self-motivation. There isn't a professor at the front of the class to keep you enthused about what you're learning.

[Learn why to develop self-motivation skills before starting an online course.]

Balancing a full-time job with an education, I wouldn't have been able to stick to a strict schedule of showing up at a lecture hall multiple times each week. Online education forces you to decide on your own when and where you do your work, within the general structure of the course. For some, this lack of a regimented schedule could be a negative, but it allowed me to thrive given my other obligations.

2. Time management isn't your strength. Most of the online courses I've enrolled in have very clear and strict schedules provided the first week of the course, but these usually just outline due dates for assignments. To be successful on a weekly basis, you have to carve out time to complete assignments and stick to your plan.

Every Sunday night, I would look at the assignments due for the upcoming week in each of my online classes. The sheer volume of work can be intimidating, especially as discussion boards and other assignments might replace participation credits you would receive for simply showing up to a traditional course. The only way to manage this effectively is with strong time management.

3. Face-to-face time with instructors is crucial to your learning. In online courses, most of your learning will come from textbooks, articles, videos and online labs, among other materials that have been curated by an instructor but are self-directed.

For me, this meant that if I didn't understand a concept, I would either have to start a back-and-forth email chain with my instructor or, more often, extend my search to the internet. These methods are definitely a departure from the immediate responses and face-to-face conversations afforded by on-campus education. If you’re not able to be self-directed at least some of the time, and you consistently need a professor’s direct guidance in person, online learning may not be the right path.

The takeaway: Online learning places a tremendous amount of responsibility on a student. If you thrive in an environment of personal responsibility, can stay organized and can juggle multiple assignments at once, then online learning might be a great fit.

Goodbye Apollo: The geeky, charming Richard Hatch I knew

2017-02-07T21:10:00.001-08:00

When I heard the sad news Tuesday that actor Richard Hatch died, my heart sank.

As Captain Apollo on the 1978 TV series "Battlestar Galactica," he wasn't just my first space crush (sorry Han Solo). The pilot he brought to life embodied the kind of passion and stubbornness that made the popular sci-fi series more than what some critics called a "Star Wars wannabe."

Apollo was a stand-out character to many of us space geeks who loved the short-lived '70s original series. But Hatch wasn't just Apollo. He returned to the "Galactica" franchise during its wildly successful 2004 reboot, playingTom Zarek, a terrorist who becomes a politician.

He also had roles in "All My Children," "The Streets of San Francisco," "Hotel," "The Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island," and in one of my favorite guest appearances: He played a dubious boyfriend and possible suspect in "Murder, She Wrote."

I didn't get to know Hatch personally until we both appeared in "The Guild" -- actress Felicia Day's webseries about video gamers and their awkward adventures.Season 5 was all about the sudden pitfalls of internet fame and how to survive being a hard-core fan at a comic book convention.

Hatch plays himself as an actor looking for social media tips at a comic book convention. He also invites one of the main characters to a celeb-infested after-party. I was cast as a friend of "Agents of SHIELD" actress Dichen Lachman, and we're attending the party Hatch mentions.

It wasn't much later that I ran into Hatch at the first annual "The Geekie Awards Show" and we finally got to chat about having fun on "The Guild." It was then I realized Hatch was just as big a fan of all things geeky as the rest of us.

He not only loved sci-fi, but even wrote his own space opera and comic book series called "The Great War of Magellan."

Hatch enjoyed his cameo on "The Guild" so much he later starred in the webseries "The Silicon Assassin Project" and played the Klingon Commander Kharn in the Star Trek fan film "Prelude To Axanar."

I loved how Hatch enjoyed chatting with "Battlestar Galactica," fans but also became part of the Star Trek and The Guild fan communities. Whenever I later ran into Hatch at comic book conventions and parties, he always looked like he was having fun among his fellow geeks.

That's what I remember most -- not just Hatch's iconic role as Apollo, but his big smile whenever he was around fans who wanted to know more about his next big sci-fi project. Hatch's positive energy will be missed. So say we all.

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2017-02-07T20:41:00.001-08:00

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2017-02-07T07:52:00.002-08:00

US tech leads nearly 100 companies in legal brief against Trump travel ban

2017-02-07T07:26:00.001-08:00

The companies - including Apple, Google, Microsoft - banded together to file a "friend-of-the-court" brief with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that the ban "inflicts significant harm on American business."

Nearly 100 companies, including some of high-tech’s biggest names, joined a legal brief opposing President Donald Trump’s temporary travel ban, arguing that it would give companies incentives to move jobs outside the United States.

The companies – including Apple Inc, Google Inc and Microsoft Corp – banded together late on Sunday to file a “friend-of-the-court” brief with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco arguing that the ban “inflicts significant harm on American business.”

Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order temporarily barred entry into the United States of people from seven Muslim-majority nations as well as suspending the U.S. refugee program, sparking protests and chaos at U.S. and overseas airports. On Friday, a federal judge in Seattle temporarily blocked the order. The Trump administration had a deadline on Monday to justify its action at the appeals court.

Pending the next ruling in the case, the travel ban remained suspended, and people with valid visas who had been blocked from travel were being allowed to board planes. Refugee resettlement also resumed. The companies, backing a lawsuit brought against the ban by Washington state, argued that Trump’s order created uncertainty for companies depending on talent from overseas and global business travel to innovate and create jobs in the United States.

“Highly skilled immigrants will be more interested in working abroad, in places where they and their colleagues can travel freely and with assurance that their immigration status will not suddenly be revoked,” the brief said. “Multinational companies will have strong incentives … to base operations outside the United States or to move or hire employees and make investments abroad.” “Ultimately, American workers and the economy will suffer as a result,” the companies argued.

A major theme of the new Republican president’s 2016 presidential campaign was bringing back jobs he said had been moved to other countries. Facebook Inc, Twitter Inc, Intel Corp , eBay Inc, Netflix Inc and Uber Technologies Inc joined the brief, as well as non-tech companies such as Levi Strauss & Co and Chobani Llc.

Uber’s chief executive, Travis Kalanick, quit Trump’s business advisory group on Thursday amid mounting pressure from activists and employees who oppose administration immigration policies. No other companies on the council, assembled during the transition leading up to Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, signed on to the “friend-of-the-court” brief.

The tech companies, which employ many foreign-born nationals, have been among the most vocal groups speaking out against the travel order, which Trump has defended as necessary to ensure tougher vetting of people coming into the country and better protect the nation from the threat of terror attacks. In its response to the lawsuit, the government argued in legal filings that the president was exercising his constitutional authority to control U.S. borders and that the law allows him to suspend the entry of any class of foreigners who “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” The Department of Justice declined to comment beyond the filed court papers.

The government had until 3 p.m. PST (2300 GMT) on Monday to submit additional legal briefs to the appeals court in support of the executive order. Following that, the court was expected to act quickly. A decision either way may ultimately result in the case reaching the U.S. Supreme Court.

The brief filed by the companies hailed the contributions inclusive immigration policies have made to the American economy. It claimed that immigrants or their children have founded more than 200 of the companies on the Fortune 500 list. In addition to some of the companies filing the brief, the attorneys pointed to companies such as Kraft Inc, Ford Motor Co, General Electric Co, AT&T Inc, McDonald’s Corp, Boeing Co, and Walt Disney Co .

“Collectively, these companies generate annual revenue of $4.2 trillion, and employ millions of Americans,” the brief said. Susan Cohen an attorney at Mintz Levin in Boston who represents big companies in immigration matters, including global information company and Reuters parent Thomson Reuters, said lawyers were advising clients to get to the United States as quickly as possible because the current situation allowing travel could change.

She said that businesses were going out of their way to provide the most up-to-date information to their employees as the fast-moving court battle developed. “Many businesses are extremely upset and confused,” Cohen said. “They don’t know if meetings will be able to go forward or they will be able to bring people in for work. They can’t plan.”

Will Sci-Fi Bots Write the Next Great Dystopian Novel?

2017-02-05T23:41:00.002-08:00

OAKLAND, Calif. — William Faulkner kept the words flowing with a steady drip of whiskey. Laurence Sterne conquered writer's block by shaving his beard. Ernest Hemingway stopped writing just when the story got good, so he'd always know where to pick up the next day.

But perhaps the next generation of writers may get a boost from robots that do the hard work for them. An idea, put forth by an American author, is to use artificial intelligence to fill in parts of a story, an email or other document when a writer is searching for the best way to express him or herself. Programs that use neural networks (machines modeled after the brain) or so-called deep learning may be especially useful, Robin Sloan, the author of "Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), said here at the Real Future Fair yesterday (Nov. 15). [Super-Intelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures]

"It turns out you can train a neural network on a big body of text," Sloan said. "It can be Wikipedia; it can be all the works of Charles Dickens; it could be all of the Internet."

Though these A.I. programs may not be able to craft a masterpiece like "A Tale of Two Cities" just yet, they could get a feel for how certain types of writing sound; "they can use grammar and put words together in interesting and convincing ways — and I think unexpected and beautiful ways," Sloan said.

Destroying all the high families

Sloan created a writing bot and had it read all of his old science-fiction magazines from the 1960s and 1970s. The program reads and learns the styles of those old-school stories, then, like a robotic Mad-lib, suggests ways to finish off those sentences and paragraphs.

At the fair, Sloan worked with the audience to generate the beginning of a story:

"A long, long time from now in Oakland there was a robot designed to destroy all the high families. The high families were the ones of course who owned the seasons. When they said so it was summer. When they decreed — winter fell."

Let's be honest. This is no Ray Bradbury — or even Spock fan-fiction. But something very similar to this writing bot could be a useful tool for gaining inspiration, Sloan said.

"I am 100 percent sure, in some number of years, that text editors will have some version of this," Sloan said.

For instance, auto-complete programs could read an entire archive of corporate email, so that a person who is trying to get a point across will have suggestions that are in keeping with the corporate style, Sloan said. Or perhaps the next big movie hit will be written by screenplay writers who are locked in a hotel room, bouncing ideas off each other and a writing bot, Sloan said.

This isn't the first time people have tried to leverage A.I in the service of creativity. In 2008, a computer wrote a Russian novel called "True Love," meant to have the plot line of Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" with the writing style of Haruki Murakami, The St. Petersburg Times Reported. Earlier this year, a computer program composed and then painted a new Rembrandt in the style of the Dutch master. In May, a cadre of robot painters took their best shot at creating art in a wide array of styles. And in May, Microsoft had to kill off an A.I. named Tay that was supposed to learn its conversational style from the Internet, after it rapidly learned to be racist.

Watch This Squishy, See-Through Robot Grab a Live Goldfish

2017-02-05T23:38:00.002-08:00

Squishy, nearly transparent robots that flap, squeeze and kick when pumped with water could be the next underwater spies, at least when it comes to sneaking up on aquatic life.

In a robotic test, one of these jelly-like machines was quick enough to grab and release a goldfish, a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found.

The researchers, led by engineer Xuanhe Zhao and graduate student Hyunwoo Yuk, created a series of the transparent robots from a rubbery material called hydrogel, including a fin-like bot that can flap back and forth, a "limb" that can kick, and a hand-shaped structure that can squeeze and let go.

Because the material is composed mostly of water, the resulting robots could also have biomedical applications, the researchers said.

"Hydrogels are soft, wet, biocompatible and can form more friendly interfaces with human organs," Zhao, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and civil and environmental engineering, said in a statement. He added that the group is collaborating with medical scientists to create soft "hands," which could aid in delicately manipulating tissues and organs during surgeries.

Hydrogel recipes

For five years, Zhao's team worked to whip up various hydrogel mixes, made from polymers and water, to find one that was tough and stretchable. They also developed processes to attach, or glue, the hydrogels to an array of surfaces, such as glass, metal and rubber.

Zhao noted that others have tried to craft soft robotics from hydrogels, but their materials were brittle and not very flexible, resulting in cracks after repeated use.

When brainstorming ways to create soft robots from their hydrogels, the researchers looked to nature, particularly at glass eels; these tiny, transparent larvae are soft like hydrogels and manage to migrate unscathed over long distances to their riverine habitats. [Photos: Amazing Tech Inspired by the Octopus]

"It is extremely long travel, and there is no means of protection," Yuk said in the statement. "It seems they tried to evolve into a transparent form as an efficient camouflage tactic. And we wanted to achieve a similar level of transparency, force and speed."

So the team got to work. They used 3D printing and laser-cutting techniques to create hollow components of robots. Then, they attached these units to small, rubbery tubes connected to pumps.

Depending on the overall shape of each robot, when water was pumped in, it would quickly produce forceful motions, such as curling up or stretching out.

In one test, Zhao's team pumped water into and out of the "fingers" of a hand-like robot while submerging it in a goldfish tank. The grasper closed delicately around the fish, the researchers said.

"[The robot] is almost transparent, very hard to see," Zhao said in the statement. "When you release the fish, it's quite happy because [the robot] is soft and doesn't damage the fish. Imagine a hard robotic hand would probably squash the fish."

Physicists 'See' Location of 23,000 Single Atoms for First Time

2017-02-04T05:05:00.002-08:00

For the first time, scientists have seen the exact locations of more than 23,000 atoms in a particle that's small enough to fit inside the wall of a single cell.

A team led by Peter Ercius of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Jianwei Miao of UCLA used a scanning electron microscope to examine a particle that was made of iron (Fe) and platinum (Pt) that was only 8.4 nanometers across, they reported yesterday (Feb. 1) in the journal Nature. (A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, or 3.9 one-hundred-millionths of an inch.)

Why would anyone care about the location of each little atom? "At the nanoscale, every atom counts," Michael Farle, a physicist at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, wrote in an accompanying News and Views article in Nature. "For example, changing the relative positions of a few Fe and Pt atoms in a FePt nanoparticle dramatically alters the particle's properties, such as its response to a magnetic field."

Electron beams

Using a scanning electron microscope, a beam of electrons is passed over the surface of an object to create an image. That allows researchers to see even small details of tiny bits of material like crystals and protein molecules. "There are very powerful techniques for figuring out the structure of crystals," he said. "But those have to be perfect crystals."

Ordinarily, when this kind of electron microscope is used to look at a crystal or other large molecule, the electrons are beamed at the sample and they scatter as they hit it, rather like a stream of bullets fired from a machine gun would scatter off Superman's chest. After they bounce off the atoms, the electrons hit a detector, and from there, the researcher can look at where the electrons land to get a look at the arrangement of the atoms in the crystal or molecule.

The problem, Ercius said, is that the image is built from an average that's obtained using many atoms or molecules. That is, the researchers will see a pattern, but it can only tell that person what the bulk arrangement of the atoms is, not where each one is actually located. [Image Gallery: Stunning Peek Inside Molecules]

The iron-platinum nanoparticles are a kind of irregular crystal. But the ordinary scanning method wouldn't work as well for them, because the atoms are arranged in unique and slightly irregular ways, the researchers said. So they had to find a new way to use the electron microscope: They decided to look at the sample iron-platinum particle from many different sides.

Locating single atoms

To do that, they altered the way the sample was prepared. Instead of leaving it in place, they put it on a special base that let them rotate and tilt their particle of iron and platinum, changing its orientation slightly after each "snapshot" with the electron beam. Otherwise, the process the researchers used was the same as usual.

That simple change was powerful: The varying orientations produced different patterns of scattering. The different patterns, which were picked up on a detector that's similar to the ones in digital cameras, could be used to calculate the exact positions of the 6,569 iron and 16,627 platinum atoms in the nanoparticle. It's not unlike making a 3D model of an object by taking pictures from many angles, which animators do routinely. Their results for the atoms' locations reached a resolution of about one-tenth the diameter of a single atom, according to Farle.

In the future, getting such an accurate picture could aid materials scientists in creating nanometer-size structures for applications such as hard drives. Makers of hard drives want to fabricate tiny, near-perfect crystals so that they can be easily magnetized and will hold a magnetic field for a long time, Ercius noted.

"All crystals have defects," Ercius said. "The problem is when they get nanoparticles that have these weird defects in them. This means they can look at those and how they affect how things work."

Knowing each atom's exact location would also allow scientists to predict how a crystal might grow. Ercius noted that right now, when materials scientists run simulations, they have to assume that a crystal grows in a certain way, and those assumptions guide their predictions for the future. If they could see exactly where the atoms are, they could make more accurate predictions of what the crystal will look like when it has grown to full size.

"What's so good about this is it measures disorder," Ercius said. "It lets you see unique objects."

RoboDragonfly: Tiny Backpack Turns Insect into a Cyborg

2017-02-04T05:00:00.003-08:00

Scientists look to flying animals — birds, bats and insects — for inspiration when they design airborne drones. But researchers are also investigating how to use technology to interact with, and even guide, animals as they fly, enhancing the unique adaptations that allow them to take to the air.

To that end, engineers have fitted dragonflies with tiny, backpack-mounted controllers that issue commands directly to the neurons controlling the insects' flight.

This project, known as Dragonfly, uses optogenetics, a technique that employs light to transmit signals to neurons. And researchers have genetically modified dragonfly neurons to make them more light-sensitive, and thereby easier to control through measured light pulses.

Dragonflies have large heads, long bodies and two pairs of wings that don't always flap in sync, according to a 2007 study published in the journal Physical Review Letters. The study authors found that dragonflies maximize their lift when they flap both sets of wings together, and they hover by flapping their wing pairs out of synch, though at the same rate.

Meanwhile, separate muscles controlling each of their four wings allow dragonflies to dart, hover and turn on a dime with exceptional precision, scientists found in 2014. Researchers used high-speed video footage to track dragonfly flight and build computer models to better understand the insects' complex maneuvers, presenting their findings at the 67th Annual Division of Fluid Dynamics meeting, according to a statement released by the American Physical Society in November 2014.

Dragonfly sees these tiny flight masters as potentially controllable flyers that would be "smaller, lighter and stealthier than anything else that's manmade," Jesse Wheeler, a biomedical engineer at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory (CSDL) in Massachusetts and principal investigator on the DragonflEye program, said in a statement.

A close-up of the backpack board and components before being folded and fitted to the dragonfly.

Credit: Charles Stark Draper Laboratory

The project is a collaboration between the CSDL, which has been developing the backpack that controls the dragonfly, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), where experts are identifying and enhancing "steering" neurons located in the dragonfly's nerve cord, inserting genes that make it more responsive to light.

"This system pushes the boundaries of energy harvesting, motion sensing, algorithms, miniaturization and optogenetics, all in a system small enough for an insect to wear," Wheeler said.

Even smaller than the dragonfly backpack are components created by CSDL called optrodes — optical fibers supple enough to wrap around the dragonfly's nerve cord, so that engineers can target only the neurons related to flight, CSDL representatives explained in a statement.

And in addition to controlling insect flight, the tiny, flexible optrodes could have applications in human medicine, Wheeler added.

"Someday these same tools could advance medical treatments in humans, resulting in more effective therapies with fewer side effects," Wheeler said. "Our flexible optrode technology provides a new solution to enable miniaturized diagnostics, safely access smaller neural targets and deliver higher precision therapies."

New Quantum-Computer Design Could Lead to Practical Hardware

2017-02-01T22:04:00.001-08:00

Quantum computers promise the ability to tackle complex problems, such as decoding encrypted communications and developing new pharmaceutical drugs, much faster than conventional machines can. But to date, quantum computers have only been used to tackle specific problems, mostly to demonstrate how they work.

Now, scientists have proposed a new way to build a quantum computer using microwaves to control individual atoms, and they say the new method offers a blueprint for a more useful computing machine.

"We're using some new concepts that tremendously simplify how to build a quantum computer," said Winfried Hensinger, director of the Ion Quantum Technology Group at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. Hensinger led the new study that outlines the design.

The quantum computer would be made up of junctions that control the movement of charged atoms, called ions. As many as 1,296 junctions could be fit onto a conventional 3.5-inch (9 centimeters) silicon wafer, and the wafers could be linked, allowing for a computer with as many quantum bits as needed. By contrast, current quantum computers have, at most, a dozen bits.

Quantum computers don't work the same way ordinary machines do. In a typical computer, the bits are encoded in millions of tiny circuits and have a value of 1 or 0. In a quantum computer, the bits, called qubits, are encoded by the quantum state of excited atoms, and can be 1, 0 or any value in between.

Qubits can do this because quantum mechanics allows superposition of states; a particle is never really in one state or another until it is observed, meaning that it has to interact in a measurable way with the outside world. Superposition does not mean that the state is simply unseen; it really can exist as both at once. Because the qubits are in more than one state at once, a quantum computer could effectively tackle many calculations simultaneously.

Superposition, though, is also why quantum computers are hard to build. The ions in their superposed states can't ever touch anything from the outside. Even stray heat can make the ion "collapse" into one state, which takes away the qubits' ability to do all of those calculations, according to the researchers.

New design

In the new architecture, each junction consists of four electrodes that meet like a crossroads. Underneath the electrodes are wires that carry current and create a magnetic field. The magnetic field controls the movement of the "data" ions, which go from the "loading" zone on one electrode to meet another ion in the "entanglement" zone on the opposite electrode, Hensinger said.

Microwaves are beamed at the two ions as they meet, and they are entangled. That means that whatever happens to one ion will be reflected instantly in the second. This is where the 1 or 0 value is encoded, but the value is unknown. Altering the magnetic fields again moves the data ion back to the "crossroads," where it turns to go to a third electrode, called the detection zone. At that point, a laser hits the ion and reveals its state — 1 or 0.

With thousands of these junctions attached to one another, scientists could build a true quantum computer, according to the study. Hensinger and his colleagues envision modules of 2.2 million junctions, about 14 feet (4.3 meters) on a side, attached to one another. A thousand such modules would be the size of a football field and have 2 billion ions, representing about as many qubits, the researchers said.

It's the use of the microwaves and magnetic fields that makes the design easier to scale up, Hensinger told Live Science.

"Traditionally, you use lasers to execute quantum gates," he said. "But to make a computer with lots of qubits, you need a billion laser beams." This was not practical, so his team sought another way.

Other quantum-computer designs trap ions at temperatures close to absolute zero, the coldest temperature theoretically possible (minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit or minus 273.15 degrees Celsius). Hensinger said the machine can operate at much higher temperatures, about minus 351 degrees F (minus 213 degrees C), using liquid nitrogen as a coolant.

This type a quantum computer could factor a 617-digit number in 110 days, according to the study. Such large numbers are used in encryption for a lot of communications on the web. (Contrary to popular myth, the quantum computer would not try every single factor; rather, it would find a shortcut that allows an ordinary computer to more easily calculate the factors you want to produce your large number.)

DigiCert, a U.S.-based company that provides digital certificates for common secure communications, says on its website that even 1,000 desktop computers working together would take longer than the age of the universe to match that feat.

Making progress

Christopher Monroe, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland's Joint Quantum Institute, who has worked on quantum-computing designs, said he likes the ideas laid out for this quantum computer because the modules don't rely on exotic technologies — everything in the paper could be built today. On the other hand, actually building the quantum computer would be a real challenge, he added.

One issue is the sheer size of the machine; the study notes that it would measure more than 300 feet (91 m) on a side if it were to have 2 billion bits.

Even so, Monroe said this study takes a stab at addressing problems that earlier research did not. For example, Hensinger and his team studied the problem of keeping the computer cold enough to operate reliably, because heat can spoil the qubits.

"Lasers and wires carrying current to make magnetic fields are real heat hogs," Monroe said, and incorporating a cooling system was a good idea.

Designs like this one are a move toward real engineering, said Bill Munro, who heads the Theoretical Quantum Physics Research Group at Japanese telecommunications company NTT. Still, some challenges will remain, he said.

"There's a big difference between theory and design and actually building," Munro said. Yet, the simplicity of the design makes it plausible, he added. "The key is not doing a billion [qubits]. You produce one, then 10, or 100. It's kind of something we've been missing."

The new study was published online today (Feb. 1) in the journal Science Advances.

All In: Artificial Intelligence Beats the World's Best Poker Players

2017-02-01T21:59:00.003-08:00

The world's best artificial intelligence poker player seems to know exactly when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em.

An artificial-intelligence program known as Libratus has beat the world's absolute best human poker players in a 20-day No-Limit Texas Hold'em tournament, defeating four opponents by about $1.77 million in poker chips, according to Pittsburgh's Rivers Casino, where the "Brains vs. Artificial Intelligence" poker tournament was held.

At the end of each day, at least one of the human players was beating the AI program. But in the end, it was not enough.

"We appreciate their hard work, but unfortunately, the computer won," said Craig Clark, general manager of Rivers Casino.

Computer scientists can now add Texas Hold'em to a growing list of games — including chess, Go and "Jeopardy!" — in which AI can beat the best human competitor in the world. [Super-Intelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures]

Artificial-intelligence strides

Since IBM's Deep Blue bested chess player Garry Kasparov in 1997, the robots have been gaining on humans. Last year, AI shocked the world by trouncing the world's best Go player in a set of matches in the strategy game involving black and white stones. The task was so difficult because Go contains more potential moves than atoms in the universe. To tackle that problem, the computer, known as AlphaGo, used a deep-learning strategy, a spookily powerful method that involves computing calculations at one layer and then feeding those up to another layer in the algorithm.

And yet, in many ways, Texas Hold'em is even harder, said Tuomas Sandholm, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University who helped design Libratus and helped organize the tournament. (In Heads-Up Texas Hold'em, two players each hold two cards and then have to make the best hand from the five cards that are eventually placed face-up on the table over several rounds of play. After each card is turned, players can call, or match, another player's bet; raise the bet; or fold their cards, or give up.)

It turns out, cracking this type of play may be even trickier than mastering Go, where each player knows the other's position perfectly. [5 Intriguing Uses for Artificial Intelligence (That Aren't Killer Robots)]

"In incomplete-information games like poker, it's much harder," Sandholm told Live Science.

For instance, imagine you're playing a hand against an opponent. You need to not only think about the ace-ace in your hand but also consider what's on the table, what the other player could be holding, what his bet tells you about his cards and what he is trying to learn with his bets.

So Sandholm and his colleagues relied on a different concept to program Libratus. Known as Nash equilibrium, it is a mathematical way of determining the best game strategy to maximize your own payoffs while minimizing those of your opponent. In any one hand of poker, random chance dictates that the Nash equilibrium play may lose, but over the course of many hands, Nash equilibrium translates to the "unbeatable play" strategy, Sandholm said.

However, "the game has 10 to the power of 160 different situations," meaning it has many, many more computational possibilities than Go. As a result, the program can't calculate the perfect Nash equilibrium solution, but must instead approximate.

In the past, that's been a stumbling block. Libratus was involved in a poker tournament in 2015 and couldn't beat the humans, with the match ending in a statistical tie. However, the souped-up version of Libratus used in the recent tournament has a better end-game solving strategy, Sandholm said.

The tournament

For the "Brains vs. Artificial Intelligence" tournament, four of the world's best poker players faced off one-on-one against Libratus in 120,000 hands of poker. At stake was a $200,000 pot, which the human players received even if they lost.

"They are professionals, so they were fighting to the bitter end, really hard," Sandholm said. "They were studying really hard every night on their computers, trying to find holes in the AI."

In the end, it was no contest: The AI prevailed.

As part of the program, bluffing naturally emerged as a mathematically sound strategy, Sandholm noted.

Its win also involved some surprising moves. For instance, AI was more likely than humans to make huge overbets — meaning that they would bet three, five or even 20 times the amount of chips in the pot. Interestingly, those overbets sometimes made mathematical sense in two very different situations.

"With a very strong hand and with the weakest hands, you want to make those big overbets," Sandholm said.

Libratus was also more likely than the humans to underbet in certain surprising situations, Sandholm said. And every night, it went home and adapted its strategy based on the hands it had played.

"The adaptation was not to learn to exploit the opponent, but rather to determine what holes the opponent had found in the AI strategy and automatically patch those holes," Sandholm said.

Still, there's some hope for the mere mortals. In Heads-Up Texas Hold'em, two players compete. But Libratus would have no idea how to beat players in a poker game with five or six players. There, Nash equilibrium solutions don't work, Sandholm said.

"I would say the top humans in something like that would probably do better than the best AI," Sandholm said.

Be a Space Archaeologist! Explore Sites with Online Platform

2017-01-31T03:14:00.004-08:00

If you find the artifact-hunting adventures of Indiana Jones thrilling but a little too gritty, a new online tool will allow you to remotely analyze images of ancient sites taken from space. You can discover their hidden secrets and even protect them from looting and damage.

Welcome to the 21st-century world of space archaeology, in which culturally important ruins can be spotted and decoded via high-resolution images captured by Earth-orbiting satellites. And a platform called GlobalXplorer puts this experience at any user's fingertips, inviting all who have internet connections to assist archaeologists in finding and protecting sites around the world, some of which are yet to be brought to light.

GlobalXplorer, which launched today (Jan. 30), is stocked with imagery representing 77,220 square miles (200,000 square kilometers) of sites located in Peru, creator and space archaeologist Sarah Parcak announced at a press briefing. By scanning "tiles" of the ground, users can identify and flag telltale signs of looting activity or unusual features that could represent an undiscovered structure. Archaeologists and government agencies can then use this data to preserve sites that are in peril and to launch new excavations in unexplored areas, Parcak told reporters.

The goal was not only to engage people in analyzing archaeological sites, but also to keep these users coming back, Parcak said during a telephone news conference. To that end, the platform includes gaming elements, such as leveling up as users gain proficiency and unlocking "rewards" as experts collect and review users' data. Those rewards can include behind-the-scenes videos and other peeks into thearchaeological process.

Even a GlobalXplorer user with no scientific training can quickly learn to identify shapes in a bird's-eye view of a landscape that send up red flags to archaeologists, Parcak said.

GlobalXplorer users review landscape "tile" images captured in Peru, searching for signs of looting, or features that indicate hidden ruins.

Credit: Designed by Mondo Robot

For example, so-called "looting holes" — pits dug at archaeological sites illegally to remove artifacts for private sale — have a distinct circular appearance, tending to be surrounded by "a shallow donut of earth," Parcak explained. "Where there is one, there are probably dozens to hundreds of them," she said. "Once you've seen what it looks like, it's very easy to recognize."

And variations in plant color, visible through different filters in satellite images, can hint at the health of the vegetation, suggesting if it might be concealing a hidden human-made structure, Parcak said.

Archaeology in general — and projects like GlobalXplorer in particular — can also provide users with some perspective on current global problems, by connecting people to the scope of human history, Parcak added. Ancient civilizations, like modern ones, experienced periods of intense crisis, followed by resilience and recovery. Knowing that cultures from the distant past faced and overcome serious trials can send a message of hope to those who are worried about the challenges faced today, she said.

"It's called 'a platform for humanity' because we're all human beings at the end of the day," Parcak said. "Understanding who we are and where we come from and knowing that we're all the same can connect us in a way that we need right now."

Help Me, Obi-Wan! New Hologram Technology Mimics 'Star Wars'

2017-01-31T03:09:00.004-08:00

Princess Leia's holographic plea in the classic film "Star Wars" inspired researchers to work toward a device that could project real-life sci-fi holograms. Now, the futuristic 3D imaging may be one step closer to reality.

A team of physicists at the Australian National University (ANU) invented a tiny device that creates the highest-quality holographic images ever achieved, the scientists said.

Study lead researcher Lei Wang, a Ph.D. student at the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering, said he first learned about the concept of holographic imaging from the "Star Wars" movies. However, these futuristic-looking 3D images could be used for more practical ends than sending messages from a galaxy far, far away.

"While research in holography plays an important role in the development of futuristic displays and augmented reality devices, today we are working on many other applications, such as ultrathin and lightweight optical devices for cameras and satellites," Wang said in a statement.

Photographs and computer screens display information only in 2D, limiting views to flat images. Holograms, however, allow for the storage and reproduction of all information in 3D, and the technology relies on the ability to accurately manipulate light in three dimensions, the researchers said.

The ANU invention uses a new nanomaterial to create the 3D projections. Millions of tiny silicon pillars, each up to 500 times thinner than a human hair, act as pixel projectors to create the light-based 3D images, said co-lead researcher Sergey Kruk, a professor at the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering.

"This new material is transparent, which means it loses minimal energy from the light, and it also does complex manipulations with light," Kruk said in the statement.

In lab tests, the device created tiny holograms ranging in size from 0.03 inches to 0.2 inches (0.75 millimeters to 5 mm) wide, at a distance of 0.4 inches (10 mm). While the technology is not yet ready to replace computer screens, with further research, the device could lead to new and better holographic technologies, the scientists said.

The device's ability to display the 3D holograms is only part of what makes it innovative, however, Wang said. Due to its miniature size, the invention could replace bulky camera components or help space missions by reducing the size and weight of optical systems, he said.

In 1936 Soviet scientist Lukyanov built an analog water computer.

2017-01-30T04:55:00.003-08:00

In 1936 Vladimir Lukyanov built a water computer that was the world's first computer for solving (partial) differential equations. The operator solved the equations by "playing around" with a series of interconnected tubes filled with water.

According to an article in Wikipedia this type of analog computer called a Water Integrator was built in the Soviet Union as far back as 1928. According to that article the water levels in the various chambers represented stored numbers. The rate of flow between tubes represented mathematical operations. These water computers were used in the USSR for large scale modeling right up into the 1980's when digital computers became more sophisticated.

An article published in the Russian magazine Science and Life in 2000 called the Lukyanov computer one of the monuments of science and technology and claimed that it brought the Soviet Union to the forefront of the development of the analog computer.

Lukyanov's computer was built for the particular purpose of solving the practical problem of cracking in concrete. To solve the cracking problem involved calculating the complex relationships between the material properties of the concrete, the curing process, and environmental conditions. Whereas existing calculation methods did not give quick or accurate solutions, the Lukyanov water computer did. An article here describes the process:You could think of it as a hydraulic computer. Water flows through a series of clear pipes, mimicking the production line of concrete blocks. It lets you see (literally) what would happen if you change the type of cement used or increase the load capacity of the concrete or whatever; just open a valve here or pull a lever there and the machine sloshes away, showing in real time how the water levels rise and fall in various tanks representing material properties, curing time, temperature, and so on.Changes to levels were plotted on graph paper.

These water computers were used successfully in other areas such as geology, metallurgy, thermal physics, and rocket engineering. In the 1970's these computers were still used in 115 manufacturing, research, and educational institutions in the USSR. It was not until the 1980s that digital computers came to surpass the functionality of the "hydraulic integrator" or water computer.

Who Invented the Microwave Oven?

2017-01-30T04:40:00.000-08:00

A microwave oven is a kitchen appliance that is in nearly every U.S. home — 90 percent of households have one, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. With the touch of a couple of buttons, this ubiquitous device can boil water, reheat leftovers, pop popcorn or defrost frozen meats in mere minutes.

The microwave oven was invented at the end of World War II. Yet it took awhile for them to catch on. At first they were too big and expensive, and people didn't trust them because of the radiation they use. Eventually, technology improved and fears faded. By the 2000s, Americans named the microwave oven as the No. 1 technology that made their lives easier, according to J. Carlton Gallawa, author of the Complete Microwave Oven Service Handbook.

And it was all due to a happy accident with some melted chocolate.

Accidental invention

Percy LeBaron Spencer was a self-taught engineer who had never finished grammar school, according to the Southwest Museum of Engineering, Communication and Computation. While at the Raytheon Corp., he worked on magnetrons — vacuum tubes that produce microwave radiation and are used in radar systems. In 1941, he devised a more efficient way to manufacture them. His innovation allowed production to rise from 17 per day to over 2,600 per day.

Spencer was testing a magnetron when he noticed that the chocolate bar in his pocket had melted, according to Raytheon’s company history. Intrigued, Spencer tested other foods, including popcorn kernels, and noticed that they all popped. He put an egg near the magnetron and watched as it started to shake and then explode. Spencer realized that the foods had been exposed to low-density microwave energy, according to Gallawa. He next built a metal box and fed microwave power into it. The energy entered the box but could not escape — microwaves do not pass through metal. Spencer discovered that microwaves could cook food faster than convention ovens that used heat. He filed a patent application in 1945. (Spencer went on to receive 150 patents throughout his career, according to the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He died in 1970.)

The first commercial microwave oven was tested in a Boston restaurant in 1947. Later that year, Raytheon introduced the Radarange 1161. It stood 5.5 feet (1.7 meters) tall, weighed 750 lbs. (340 kilograms) and cost $5,000, according to Gallawa. It had to be hooked up to a water line because the magnetron was water-cooled. It took a few years for the public to overcome their initial reluctance but as technology improved, microwave ovens grew in popularity, particularly in the food industry. Restaurants could keep cooked recipes in the refrigerator and heat them to order reducing waste. Other food industry establishments used microwaves for roasting coffee beans and peanuts, defrosting and precooking meat, and even shucking oysters.

Other industries also found uses for microwave heating. Microwave ovens are also used to dry cork, ceramics, paper, leather, tobacco, textiles, pencils, flowers, wet books and match heads, according to Gallawa.

Tappan, an appliance maker, introduced the first microwave ovens for home use in 1955, but because of their large size — as big as a stove — and high cost — $1,295 — few were sold, according to Gallawa. Raytheon acquired Amana Refrigeration in 1965, and two years later, the Amana Radarange, which could fit on a kitchen counter top, was introduced. It cost just under $500.

Soon after, microwave ovens became more popular than even the dishwasher due to decreasing sizes and costs. In 1975, only 4 percent of U.S. homes had a microwave oven, according to Gallawa; in 1976, the number jumped to 14 percent. Today, approximately 90 percent of households in the United States have a microwave oven, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

How does a microwave work?

Microwave ovens use radio waves set at a specific frequency — 2,450 megahertz with a power ranging from 500 to 1,100 watts, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Food that sits in a microwave oven is bombarded on all sides by the microwaves. Water molecules within the food absorb the microwaves, and the resulting vibrations generate heat and cook the food. Microwaves pass through plastic, glass and ceramic but not metals, which is why it is not recommended to use metal containers or utensils in a microwave oven, according to SciTech.

A magnetron generates the microwaves. According to Engineer Guy, a magnetron is two permanent magnets on either side of a vacuum tube. Microwave radiation is created by the flow of electrons building up magnetic and electric fields, according to Tech-Faq. The microwaves are directed to the oven chamber in order to heat and cook the food.

Microwave safety

Since their initial development, microwave ovens have gotten a bad rap due to their use of microwave radiation. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), microwave ovens are safe when they are used properly and maintained in good condition. While massive amounts of microwave radiation can be harmful, ovens are designed to keep the radiation within the oven and present only when the oven is switched on and the door is shut. A minimal amount of radiation that may leak, primarily through the glass door, is well below international standards.

According to the WHO, several countries and international standards committees have set a product emission limit of 50 watts per square meter at any point 5 centimeters away from the external surfaces of the oven. In practice, microwave emissions are substantially below this limit. Also, exposure decreases rapidly with distance: a person 50 cm from the oven receives about one one-hundredth of the microwave exposure of a person 5 cm away.

The main health concern when it comes to using microwaves is that in general, microwaves heat unevenly and can cause parts of the food to either be under cooked or extremely hot, so caution is needed — as well as a few extra minutes — for the heat to equalize within the food. The primary injury that results from using a microwave oven is a burn resulting from hot food and liquids or the particles of hot food from explosions from foods, such as eggs in their shells, cooking unevenly.

Nutritional value

There are also concerns about the nutritional value of foods after they have been cooked in a microwave oven. According to the WHO, these concerns are based on misconceptions. There is little to no difference in nutritional value of foods cooked in microwave oven versus a conventional oven, nor does cooking food in a microwave oven make the food radioactive.

A 1982 article published in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition reviewed data from several studies on the effects of microwave cooking on the nutritive values of moisture, protein, carbohydrate, lipid, minerals and vitamins. The authors concluded that no significant nutritional differences exist between foods prepared by conventional and microwave methods.

In 2010, a team of researchers from the Universidad Complutense Madrid in Spain cooked a variety of veggies, from artichokes to zucchini, with techniques ranging from boiling to frying to microwaving. Theymeasured the amount of antioxidants present before and after cooking. They found that baking, griddle-cooking and microwaving produced the lowest losses, while boiling and pressure-cooking were the hardest on antioxidants. Frying was somewhere in between.

The future of microwave ovens

Many microwave ovens today contain sensors that stop themselves when the food has completed cooking, according to SciTech. Samsunghas developed a microwave oven that offers a variety of cooking methods. In addition to defrosting meats and reheating leftovers, the oven can fry and bake. It also has a fermentation cycle that can be used in making fresh dough and yogurt.

A microwave oven from NXP Semiconductors uses solid-state RF (radiofrequency) energy to cook. The microwave oven controls where, when and the amount of energy that is transmitted directly into the food. The result is improved consistency, taste and nutrition, according to NXP. The solid-state device allows for controlling large amounts of energy with high efficiency and with real-time feedback.

Other companies such as Wayv are producing portable, solid-state RF microwave ovens that can be charged via a regular plug, in the car, or with solar chargers. This particular model, which resembles a thermos, can be used for approximately 30 minutes per charge to heat up to 17 fluid ounces (0.5 liters) at a time.

Microwave ovens are also gaining features to be able to connect to mobile technologies, such as the line of LG smart appliances. These appliances have the ability to be turned on remotely from anywhere via a smartphone or other device.