The Quadrofoil: Electric aquatic sports car - Video

A company has created a futuristic electric speedboat that allows passengers to fly across water. 

The Quadrofoil is like an aquatic sports car, with its C-shaped hydrofoils lifting the craft above the water, giving passengers a flying sensation. 

The electric vehicle features a top speed of 25mph and allows users to travel up to 62 miles on a single charge. 

Simon Pivec, director of research and development at Quadrofoil, said the focus was to create an interesting, eco-friendly electric boat.

Picture: QUADROFOIL / CATERS NEWS

Toyota i-Road and Grenoble set stage for test in electric ride-sharing

Toyota is testing ride-sharing. As simple as that may sound, the experiment indicates an innovative model for the future of urban transportation.

The Grenoble metro area could turn out to be the trial stage for a new city system in mobility.

The model, which gets under way next month, calls for electric vehicles connected to a public transport system; the result is a weave of route planning, reservations and drop-offs.

Five partners are sharing the vision: the City of Grenoble, the Metro Area, French electricity company EDF, Toyota, and local car-sharing operator, Cité lib.

How it will work: 70 Toyota cars with 27 charging stations will be available for city trips. The stations will be operated by Sodetrel, an affiliate of EDF.

Grenoble riders will be under a pricing plan called "3, 2, 1 euros."

Toyota i-ROAD

Users can pick-up one of the 70 vehicles and drop it off at any station near their destination without having to return it to the original pickup point. They will only be charged for the ride.

The 27 charging stations are in Grenoble, Fontaine, Gières, St Martin D'Hères, Seyssinet-Pariset, et La Tronche, close to tram, bus or train stops.

A smartphone, tablet or PC app shows users the location of cars in the city that have enough charge to be used.

Once a user returns the car to any station and plugs it back in, the vehicle's battery starts charging and the use charge ends.

As for the Toyota cars, 35 of the 70 will be the Toyota i-ROAD, a three-wheel personal mobility vehicle and the other 35 will be the Toyota four-wheel vehicle, Toyota Auto Body COMS.

Supporters say the implications for such a model stretch wider than rider convenience and even "clean" transport, reducing CO2 emissions and improving air quality, and will affect city planning.

The service will eliminate the need for riders to search for a parking place and the compact size of the cars will affect planning for a future parking infrastructure.

How much will all this cost users? "Once the administrative and badging cost of 25 euros is paid, plug-in vehicle users will be able to use the charging service for free until 31 December 2014."

"From January 2015, a pricing schedule will be offered with costs varying between 2 and 5 euros for an hour of charge, depending on charging speed (normal or fast)."

"Charging time will be limited, especially during daytime hours, in order to discourage prolonged parking and allow maximum access to these parking spots," said the Toyota news release on Friday.

Perhaps the most important question of all is, Will this work? Starting October 1, the world will know; the trial entails a three-year period. During this time, project partners will collect data on technical aspects and user behaviour.

Harley-Davidson, Project Livewire: First electric motorbike revealed

There are plenty of small and innovative startups working on producing the perfect electric motorcycle, but now one of the biggest companies in the world has got involved in the technology.

Harley-Davidson this week unveiled Project Livewire, in which the firm's first electric-powered bike will be touring the States along the historic Route 66.

The idea behind the tour is to give bikers a chance to test out Livewire and give feedback on its development.

The prototypes that Harley-Davidson has worked on will be modified and refined based on suggestions from the public, if there's enough interest in the vehicle, then a production model may not be too far away.

While Harley-Davidson is better known for rumbling engines and bulky designs, the new creation is surprisingly light and slim.

It can reach 60mph in less than four seconds, has a top speed of 92mph and boasts 74 horsepower and 52 foot-pounds of torque.

Harley-Davidson executives are reluctant to talk specifications right now, though, and would prefer riders to give Livewire a test drive rather than compare it against existing bikes.

The tour, which involves around a dozen prototypes, starts in New York and will also hit Europe sometime during 2015.

'Any business has always got to look ahead to see where customers are interested in going, and see where society might be going,' chief marketing officer Mark-Hans Richer told reporters.

At the moment we don't know much about the internal components of the Livewire, but Harley-Davidson is claiming the bike has a range of 53 miles and a battery that charges in 3.5 hours.

That would put the power pack somewhere in the 113kg (or 250lbs) range, so the bike's designers will have had to work hard to cut down on the size and the weight of other sections.

If you check out the teaser trailer released by Harley-Davidson you'll notice there's not quite the same trademark roar from the engines, the Livewire has been built to work very quietly and efficiently, even if it's not quite as powerful as the rest of the company's current line-up.

The full promotional video provides a look at a Livewire being taken through its paces by a test driver on a closed circuit.

Personal Transport: The electric scooter

The electric Zero Scooter is hand-built in Spain by design studio Bel & Bel — on a full charge, it can get as far as 22 miles and it has a top speed of 12.4mph, similar to the Commute-Case.

The bike can tackle slopes up to a 30 degree angle and thanks to its Segway-style design it can turn around on the spot (handy for those congested city streets).

You can specify your own paint colour and custom graphics for the Zero Scooter, and it will set you back €3,000 — that comes out at around £2,483.

Bel & Bel knows what it's doing though, as the company specialises in converting old Vespa parts into furniture, art and other prototypes.

These scooters are available in limited numbers, so get in quick if you find them appealing.

Sunday humour about space travel and technology: Scott Adams, Dilbert

A little Sunday humour about space travel and technology. Credit: Scott Adams, Dilbert 

ARCA: Air Strato Electric UAV completes rough landing tests

On February 13, 2014, Air Strato, electrical powered unmanned aerial vehicle performed the first take-off from rough, frozen ground.

The aircraft performed a short flight at 25 m altitude and then landed.

Air Strato was powered by four electrical engines. Two supplementary electric motors (engines) were added to boost power and shorten the take-off distance.

Additional suspension strengthening was installed on the wings and forward landing gear.

Despite this addition, the right landing gear suspension sustained some damage at touch down.

"The aircraft had only 10 percent of the batteries intended for the commercial version so we had to add ballast to simulate take-off weight."

"We also added two more electrical motors to increase thrust, needed on the rough ground to decrease take-off distance that, combined with the landing gear suspension, provided for a smooth taxi and take-off on rough terrain."

"It took less than 30 m to lift into the air at maximum thrust. Also we were impressed by the aircraft's rate of climb." - Teodor Diaconu, ARCA flight dynamics engineer.

Air Strato is a high altitude electrical powered unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). It can reach altitudes of above 18 km and has an autonomy of 7 hours on internal batteries and 3 days using solar panels.

It can carry a variable payload up to 30 kg consisting of surveillance equipment or other scientific instruments.

Amazon Electric Ghost Knifefish inspire underwater robotics research

Northwestern has developed a number of robotic prototypes based on the Ghost Knifefish.

Electric Ghost Knifefish from South America are opening up new ideas in robotics.

Knifefish put a small current through the water to sense their environment, and undulate a long fin to move around.

Scientists at the Neuroscience and Robotics Lab in Northwestern University, US, believe both features could be harnessed in a new class of autonomous underwater vehicles.

They are developing robots that will be able to swim around debris in total darkness, such as inside a sunken ship.


"Today, we don't really have underwater robots that work well in really cluttered conditions or in conditions where vision isn't useful," said Prof Malcolm MacIver.

"Just consider the sunken cruise ship. It is very dangerous to send divers into such situations where the water can be very cloudy.

"But we can learn from the electric fish. They don't use vision to hunt at night in the rivers of the Amazon basin, and their movement through the cluttered root masses and flooded forests requires incredible precision. They fit a big hole in terms of our capabilities in underwater robots."

Prof MacIver was explaining his work here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

He has studied knifefish for years, deciphering their sensory and locomotion systems.

The animals generate an electric field from modified neurons running along their spinal cord. When prey, such as aquatic insects, enter this field the fish measure a tiny change in voltage at the surface of their skin.

The perturbation is only one-tenth to one-hundredth of a millionth of a volt, but sufficient for the receptors to detect it.

Knifefish hunt in darkess

"The fish have evolved an amazing system," said Prof MacIver.

"Imagine your retina stretched over your entire body and what that would be like. That's the situation that knifefish find themselves in.

"They perceive in all directions. They emit a kind of radar, but it's an electric field; and the sensory receptors scattered over their entire body surface mean they can detect things coming from all directions."

The technology in Prof MacIver's lab is now simulating this enabling a robot in a tank to react to what is around it and move accordingly.

But it is the special propulsion technique employed by knifefish that the Northwestern researcher also wants to copy.


"The knifefish inspired GhostBot. We've built one of the most advanced fish robots in the world, with 34 degrees of freedom (the humanoid robot ASIMO has 26; the Roomba floor vacuum robot has 2), to better understand knifefish mechanics and sensorimotor coupling. "

"The video is the first where we discovered that inward counter-propagating waves generate a strong downward jet, producing vertical thrust. "

"This is a key element of knifefish maneuverability. The water is seeded with reflective particles for subsequent particle imaging velocimetry. "

You will see that the ripples sent through the long fin on the belly undulate one way, and the fish will move forward; undulate the other way, and the direction of travel is reversed.

Use counter-propagating waves that meet in the middle, and the fish will move up.

"From all our simulations, we now have mathematical relationships between things like the frequency and amplitude of the travelling wave and how much propulsion you get," said Prof MacIver.

"So now we can put that into technology and get it to work properly."

Currently, the Northwestern lab is demonstrating artificial sensory and locomotion capabilities on two separate robotic platforms. The aim now is to bring them together into a single working device.

Ion Tiger sets New Endurance Record for Small Electric Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Fueled by liquid hydrogen (LH2), the Ion Tiger unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) completes a record flight time of 48 hours and 1 minute. 

The electric fuel cell propulsion system onboard the Ion Tiger has the low noise and signature of a battery-powered UAV, while taking advantage of high-energy hydrogen fuel and the high electric efficiency of fuel cells. 

Credit: Image courtesy of Naval Research Laboratory (NRL)

Researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory flew their fuel cell powered Ion Tiger UAV for 48 hours and 1 minute on April 16-18 by using liquid hydrogen fuel in a new, NRL-developed, cryogenic fuel storage tank and delivery system.

This flight shatters their previous record of 26 hours and 2 minutes set in 2009 using the same vehicle, but with gaseous hydrogen stored at 5000 psi.

Liquid hydrogen is three times denser than 5000-psi compressed hydrogen. The cryogenic liquid is stored in a lightweight tank, allowing more hydrogen to be carried onboard to increase flight endurance.

Success in flight requires developing a high quality, lightweight insulated flight dewar for the cryogenic fuel, plus matching the boil off of the cryogenic hydrogen to the vehicle fuel consumption.

"Liquid hydrogen coupled with fuel-cell technology has the potential to expand the utility of small unmanned systems by greatly increasing endurance while still affording all the benefits of electric propulsion," said Dr. Karen Swider-Lyons, NRL principal investigator.

Although long endurance is possible with conventional, hydrocarbon-fueled systems, these are usually loud, inefficient, and unreliable in this aircraft class.

Similarly, small, electric, battery-powered systems are limited to endurances of only several hours.

To address the logistics of in-theater supply of liquid or gaseous hydrogen, NRL proposes in-situ manufacture of LH2 for use as fuel.

An electrolyzer-based system would require only water for feedstock, and electricity, possibly from solar or wind, to electrolyze, compress, and refrigerate the fuel.

The NRL LH2 flight capability is being developed by NRL's Tactical Electronic Warfare and Chemistry Divisions, and is sponsored by the Office of Naval Research.

The Volitude VI Electric Folding Bicycle

The Volitude fold-up pedal-assist electric bicycle (or pedelec) from Swiss company Volitude SA that first got our attention in concept form early last year has now entered production.

The body of the bike, which is now known as the Volitude V1, has received a slight redesign in shape but the bike still features the unique EasyFold mechanism that allows it to be folded or unfolded in just a second and has seen it dubbed the “Swiss Army Bike.”

The bike is powered by a 250 W electric motor with an integrated torque sensor that provides motor assistance up to an electronically-limited 25 km/h (16 mph) in keeping with EU regulations.

Volitude is selling the V1 for CHF4,990 (approx. US$5,465), with shipping expected to kick off at the end of March, 2013. Check out the pricing and online shop here.

The 11.6 Ah, 36 V lithium-ion battery should be good for a range of around 40 km (25 miles), depending on the terrain and amount of effort the rider is willing to exert.

The included 110/240 V external charger, which the Swiss company says is similar to a laptop charger, will recharge the battery to 80 percent capacity in four hours, with a full recharge taking six hours.

Electric Moon Jolts the Solar Wind

With the moon as the most prominent object in the night sky and a major source of an invisible pull that creates ocean tides, many ancient cultures thought it could also affect our health or state of mind – the word “lunacy” has its origin in this belief.

Now, a powerful combination of spacecraft and computer simulations is revealing that the moon does indeed have a far-reaching, invisible influence – not on us, but on the Sun, or more specifically, the solar wind.

The solar wind is a thin stream of electrically conducting gas called plasma that’s constantly blown off the surface of the Sun in all directions at around a million miles per hour.

When a particularly fast, dense or turbulent solar wind strikes Earth’s magnetic field, it can generate magnetic and radiation storms that are capable of disrupting satellites, power grids, and communication systems.

The magnetic “bubble” surrounding Earth also pushes back on the solar wind, creating a bow shock tens of thousands of miles across over the day side of Earth where the solar wind slams into the magnetic field and abruptly slows from supersonic to subsonic speed.

Unlike Earth, the moon is not surrounded by a global magnetic field. “It was thought that the solar wind crashes into the lunar surface without any warning or ‘push back’ on the solar wind,” says Dr. Andrew Poppe of the University of California, Berkeley.

Recently, however, an international fleet of lunar-orbiting spacecraft has detected signs of the moon’s presence “upstream” in the solar wind. “We’ve seen electron beams and ion fountains over the moon’s day side,” says Dr. Jasper Halekas, also of the University of California, Berkeley.

These phenomena have been seen as far as 10,000 kilometers (6,214 miles) above the moon and generate a kind of turbulence in the solar wind ahead of the moon, causing subtle changes in the solar wind’s direction and density.

The electron beams were first seen by NASA’s Lunar Prospector mission, while the Japanese Kaguya mission, the Chinese Chang’e mission, and the Indian Chandrayaan mission all saw ion plumes at low altitudes.

NASA’s ARTEMIS mission has now also seen both the electron beams and the ion plumes, plus newly identified electromagnetic and electrostatic waves in the plasma ahead of the moon, at much greater distances from the moon.

“With ARTEMIS, we can see the plasma ring and wiggle a bit, surprisingly far away from the moon,” says Halekas. ARTEMIS stands for “Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon’s Interaction with the Sun”.

“An upstream turbulent region called the ‘foreshock’ has long been known to exist ahead of the Earth’s bow shock, but the discovery of a similar turbulent layer at the moon is a surprise,” said Dr. William Farrell of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Farrell is lead of the NASA Lunar Science Institute’s Dynamic Response of the Environment At the Moon (DREAM) lunar science center, which contributed to the research.

Computer simulations help explain these observations by showing that a complex electric field near the lunar surface is generated by sunlight and the flow of the solar wind.

The simulation reveals this electric field can generate electron beams by accelerating electrons blasted from surface material by solar ultraviolet light.

Also, related simulations show that when ions in the solar wind collide with ancient, “fossil” magnetic fields in certain areas on the lunar surface, they are reflected back into space in a diffuse, fountain-shaped pattern.

These ions are mostly the positively charged ions (protons) of hydrogen atoms, the most common element in the solar wind.

Audi’s new futuristic electric bike was designed for fun

Audi, known globally for performance oriented cars and chic designs, revealed a two wheel model at the Worthersee Autonews 2012 show, a meet-up of Audi, Volkswagen, Seat and Skoda (and their fans) in Carinthia, Austria.

The new bike, called the Audi e-bike Worthersee, is a lithium-ion-battery powered e-bike that according to Audi, explores technological limits on the basis of Audi’s core competences: design, connect, ultra, and e-tron to make a unique and innovative sport bike.

Neither a straight electric nor a normal bicycle, the company describes the prototype as “high-end pedelec” that’s made specifically for “sport, fun and tricks.”

The design is super-futuristic, probably for the reason of steering away from other bike concepts. Audi wants us to know that this bike, like their cars, is performance, speed and flash-driven.

Audi’s new futuristic electric bike was designed for fun

SUGAR Volt: Boeing's Hybrid Electric Aircraft - YouTube

NASA asked a Boeing-led team to explore the possibilities of a hybrid electric aircraft. Marty Bradley, Boeing Research and Technology, explains how the SUGAR Volt concept is defining the future of flight.

Personalised Tron Lightcycle up for auction

If you are impressed with the All-Electric Lightcycle, you now have the chance to get one in their garage, and help the environment.

The opportunity comes courtesy of Charitybuzz, which is auctioning off a replica Lightcycle, otherwise known as a Xenon Light Motor Bike.

The vehicle on offer was designed by Parker Brother Choppers and donated by Evolve Motorcycles, which created a custom lithium ion battery system to power the bike's electric motor. The bike features a handcrafted fiberglass frame and 32-inch hub-less wheels offset by OLED light tape.

Although the auction listing cites a range of 100 miles and a top speed of 50 mph (80 km/h) for the bike, it also says the winning bidder will be able to choose the bike's battery and motor type.

The personalization options will also extend to the bike's light tape colour.

Evolve sells the bike for US$55,000 and as of publication the bidding stands at $24,000, so you might just be able to nab a bargain. The auction closes on March 14, 2012 with all proceeds benefiting Global Green USA.

Source: Charitybuzz

Boeing begins NASA solar electric propulsion study

Boeing has begun work on a four-month NASA contract to develop a mission concept study for solar electric propulsion technologies.

Under the $600,000 firm, fixed-price contract, Boeing will evaluate concepts that combine high-power solar arrays with advanced electric thrusters to power spacecraft and payloads to high Earth orbit and deep space destinations.

"Boeing pioneered the use of electric propulsion, and has developed an approach to integrate compact, lightweight, and highly efficient solar arrays with next-generation electric thrusters in future spacecraft," said Steve Johnston, director of Boeing Phantom Works' Advanced Space Exploration division.

"This technology offers weight and cost advantages while enabling increased on-orbit maneuverability for satellites in Earth orbit, and efficient deep space transportation for human exploration and robotic science missions."

Boeing is one of five contractors selected to develop a mission concept to demonstrate solar electric propulsion technologies, capabilities and the infrastructure required to affordably sustain a human presence in space.

Phantom Works will conduct the study in Huntington Beach with support from Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems electric power and propulsion experts in El Segundo, Calif.

Self-Balancing Electric Unicycle - YouTube

Stephan Boyer, a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has created the world's first self-balancing electric unicycle. Designed like a mini Segway, it is fondly named "Bullet" by its inventor.

The cyclist has to adjust his position to avoid falling; needing to lean forward to accelerate and backward to slow down. However, Boyer has admitted it isn't quite so easy to ride the cycle, adding that even his unicycling friends struggled to come to grips with it. The principal problem seems to be that the unicycle veers to the right, at the slightest inclination.

Boyer stated, on his blog, it took him several hours to learn to ride in a straight line and several more to control his turns. Although the bike takes some getting used to, it does offer a top speed of 15 mph and can travel up to five miles on a single charge.

The unicycle also includes a panic button, designed to turn off the electric motor in case of an emergency.

Whill: Making Wheelchairs Electric

Add electric drive to any ordinary, manual wheelchair with the WHILL add-on. The amped up wheelchairs can reach top speeds of over 12 mph.

The aftermarket augmentation device (pictured), made by Japanese company WHILL, looks something like a giant set of headphones – the 2 circular hubs that fit over the outside of the wheelchair’s wheels are connected by a curved bar.

After locking the hubs onto the wheels, the user steers the chair by leaning in the direction they want to travel, pushing against the central bar the bridges over the user’s waist. (It works kind of like a Segway). The speed and rotation speed of the wheels can also be adjusted.

Watch a video of WHILL go.


p_WHILL from campfirejp on Vimeo.

Each hub has a 24-volt motor powered by a lithium-ion battery, which helps the wheels turn and move. It’s good for about 19 hours before needing a 2-hour charge.

The developers are seeking wheelchair users to help test the prototype in the field so they can design a product suitable for commercial production.

The tech was on view at the 2011 Tokyo Motor Show earlier this month.

NASA ARES: Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey Aircraft proposed for MARS

The Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey (ARES) was a proposal by NASA's Langley Research Center to build a powered aircraft that would fly on Mars.

The ARES team sought to be selected and funded as a NASA Mars Scout Mission for a 2011 or 2013 launch window. However, the MAVEN mission was chosen instead.




ARES would have travelled to Mars compactly folded into a protective aeroshell; upon entry in the thin atmosphere, the capsule would have deployed a parachute to decelerate, followed by ARES release at altitude.

Among other things, the aircraft would have investigated the atmosphere and weak magnetic field.

Propulsion
Propulsion remained undetermined. The two main criteria used to evaluate the propulsion system were flight range and implementation risk.

Possible propulsion technologies were electrical motors, internal combustion and rocket systems. The aircraft was intended to fly for about one hour.

See also
Mars Scout Program

Volta BCN: 2011 Milan EICMA debut - YouTube

Spain's Volta Motorbikes is at the International Motorcycle Exhibition in Milan this week, to debut two varieties of its new Volta electric motorcycle. The Volta BCN is the company's first two-wheeler and the first to be designed in the Catalan capital of Barcelona, after which it is named.

It's essentially one model offered in two different styles and finishes - the Sport has been designed as an urban motorbike, while the City is headed for the downtown core. These stylish sustainable mobility solutions offer a top speed of 74.5 mph (120 km/h) and a range of 43.4 miles (70 km), and will be released in Europe in Q2 of next year.

The BCN has a 33 bhp/25Kw DC electric motor that powers a maintenance-free, direct-drive belt transmission and makes 67Nm of torque - said to be roughly equivalent to a 250-to-400-cm³ fuel-driven motorbike.

Its 74V/3.1 kWh Lithium Polymer battery pack can be recharged from any 220V outlet or public charging point via an onboard charger and supplied 2-meter (6.56-foot) charging cable with a schuko plug.

Full recharge time is given as two hours, but partial top-ups are also possible. Volta says that after around five years of daily charging, the battery should still have 80 percent of its initial capacity.


The BCN's quoted top speed and range falls not a stone's throw from the current Zero S electric motorcycles, but is not quite up to the 2012 upgrades which will boast top speeds of up to 88 mph (142 km/h) and over 100 mile (160 km) range.

Volta Motorcycles is currently in the process of building a distribution network ahead of Q2 2012 availability.

The company will initially release the BCNs in Spain, before breaking out into the international market.

Both the Sport and the City carry an estimated price of EUR 7,000 (about US$9,500).

To read more of this article visit the website here

Axolotl: Most vertebrates descended from ancestor with sixth sense

Using the Mexican axolotl as a model to represent the evolutionary lineage leading to land animals, and paddlefish as a model for the branch leading to ray-finned fishes, the researchers found that electrosensors develop in precisely the same pattern from the same embryonic tissue in the developing skin, confirming that this is an ancient sensory system.

People experience the world through five senses but sharks, paddlefishes and certain other aquatic vertebrates have a sixth sense: They can detect weak electrical fields in the water and use this information to detect prey, communicate and orient themselves.

A study in Nature Communications that caps more than 25 years of work finds that the vast majority of vertebrates - some 30,000 species of land animals (including humans) and a roughly equal number of ray-finned fishes - descended from a common ancestor that had a well-developed electroreceptive system.

This ancestor was probably a predatory marine fish with good eyesight, jaws and teeth and a lateral line system for detecting water movements, visible as a stripe along the flank of most fishes. It lived around 500 million years ago. The vast majority of the approximately 65,000 living vertebrate species are its descendants.

"This study caps questions in developmental and evolutionary biology, popularly called 'evo-devo,' that I've been interested in for 35 years," said Willy Bemis, Cornell professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and a senior author of the paper. Melinda Modrell, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge who did the molecular analysis, is the paper's lead author.

Hundreds of millions of years ago, there was a major split in the evolutionary tree of vertebrates. One lineage led to the ray-finned fishes, or actinopterygians, and the other to lobe-finned fishes, or sarcopterygians; the latter gave rise to land vertebrates, Bemis explained.

Some land vertebrates, including such salamanders as the Mexican axolotl, have electroreception and, until now, offered the best-studied model for early development of this sensory system. As part of changes related to terrestrial life, the lineage leading to reptiles, birds and mammals lost electrosense as well as the lateral line.

Some ray-finned fishes - including paddlefishes and sturgeons - retained these receptors in the skin of their heads. With as many as 70,000 electroreceptors in its paddle-shaped snout and skin of the head, the North American paddlefish has the most extensive electrosensory array of any living animal, Bemis said.

Until now, it was unclear whether these organs in different groups were evolutionarily and developmentally the same.

Using the Mexican axolotl as a model to represent the evolutionary lineage leading to land animals, and paddlefish as a model for the branch leading to ray-finned fishes, the researchers found that electrosensors develop in precisely the same pattern from the same embryonic tissue in the developing skin, confirming that this is an ancient sensory system.

The researchers also found that the electrosensory organs develop immediately adjacent to the lateral line, providing compelling evidence "that these two sensory systems share a common evolutionary heritage," said Bemis.

Researchers can now build a picture of what the common ancestor of these two lineages looked like and better link the sensory worlds of living and fossil animals, Bemis said.

Brammo: Electric motorcycle maker raises $28 million

US based electric motorcycle manufacturer Brammo announced on Wednesday that it has raised $28 million from investors to boost development of electric powertrain technology.

Leading the charge was investor Polaris Industries, a powersports giant that makes all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles, motorcycles and road-legal electric vehicles.

This company's innovations are under development, including military vehicles that can shrug off small arms fire and his company’s entry into sustainability, from supply chain simplification to the company’s first electric vehicles, launched in 2009.

“We’re not going to buy something to get bigger; we’re going to buy something to get better, faster,” he said when asked about future acquisitions.

It would appear that time is now.

The deal extends Brammo’s powertrain technology to different vehicle types much in the way that Tesla supplies Toyota with its all-electric powertrain.

It gives Polaris, inventor of the first snowmobile and the market leader for its various segments, a leg up on EV technology that it knows will replace the Swiss-developed four-stroke engines it traditionally uses.

It also gives Brammo more places to reap revenues for its R&D efforts. The company has dabbled in off-road vehicles before, with its Encite motorcycle, but cooperation with Polaris opens the door for more applications.