NASA TRMM: Tropical Storm losing its strength

When TRMM passed over Tropical Storm Karina on August 19, there was an isolated area of heavy rain (red) in the western quadrant where rain was falling at a rate of 2 inches/40 mm per hour. 

Credit: NASA /SSAI, Hal Pierce

Tropical Storm Karina continues to weaken in the Eastern Pacific over open waters, and NASA data shows there's not much punch left in the storm.

NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite can measure the rate of rainfall from its orbit in space and when it passed over Tropical Storm Karina in the Eastern Pacific it saw an isolated area of heavy rain remaining in the storm.

Tropical Storm Karina weakened during the overnight hours and by Tuesday, August 19, maximum sustained winds had decreased to near 60 mph (95 kph).

When TRMM passed overhead at 03:04 UTC (11:04 p.m. EDT, Aug. 18) on August 19, TRMM Precipitation Radar showed that there was an isolated area of heavy rain in the western quadrant where rain was falling at a rate of 2 inches/50 mm per hour.

Cloud heights in the area of the heaviest rainfall were just under 10 kilometers indicating that the uplift in the storm is weakening, as clouds reached greater heights earlier in the week.

Forecaster Berg at NOAA's National Hurricane Center (NHC) noted today "Water vapour imagery suggests that the outflow from Tropical Storm Lowell may be helping to produce southeasterly shear over Karina, and the low-level center is now exposed to the east of a small area of deep convection."

At 5 a.m. EDT on August 19, the center of Tropical Storm Karina was located near latitude 15.7 north and longitude 134.0 west, about 1,415 miles (2,275 km) east of Hilo, Hawaii. Karina is moving toward the west-southwest near 7 mph (11 kph) and is forecast to turn westward and slow down soon. The estimated minimum central pressure is 999 millibars.

Two computer models used by the NHC to forecast tropical cyclones: the Florida State Super ensemble and HWRF models, weaken Karina to a tropical depression in about 72 hours.

'Iron Man' Exoskeleton Could Give Astronauts Superhuman Strength

Astronauts could one day get a power surge from hi-tech robotic suits, like real-life versions of "Iron Man" hero Tony Stark.

That's not to suggest that spaceflyers will soon become superheroes; most of Iron Man's abilities will long remain in the realm of science fiction. 

But the X1 Robotic Exoskeleton, which NASA is co-developing along with several partners, could give superhuman strength to people on long-duration space missions to an asteroid or Mars, or act as a "resistive device" for exercising, agency officials say.

The 57-pound (26 kilograms) X1 fits over an astronaut's legs, with a harness that goes across the back and shoulders. 

The exoskeleton has motorized joints at the knees and hips, as well as six passive joints that allow the person wearing it to turn, flex and sidestep as needed.

NASA project engineer Roger Rovekamp demonstrating the X1 Robotic Exoskeleton.

Credit: Robert Markowitz

In the short term, astronauts could use the device to add resistive force in microgravity to improve exercising on the International Space Station, NASA officials say.

X1 can record information on each session and stream the data back to Earth, where doctors can monitor an astronaut's progress.

But NASA aims to send astronauts farther afield — to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, then on to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s — and X1 could really shine in deep space.

The suit "could provide a robotic power boost to astronauts as they work on the surface of distant planetary bodies," NASA officials wrote in a description of the technology earlier this month.

"Coupled with a spacesuit, X1 could provide additional force when needed during surface exploration, improving the ability to walk in a reduced gravity environment, providing even more bang for its small bulk."

While the device has otherworldly applications, X1 could also be used closer to home, officials said.

The exoskeleton shows promise as an assistive walking device, so it may eventually provide a valuable service to people who have trouble getting around here on Earth.

OxFord University: Flesh-eating bacteria inspire superglue

A bio-inspired superglue has been developed by Oxford University researchers that can’t be matched for sticking molecules together and not letting go.

It could prove to be a very useful addition to any toolbox for biotechnology or nanotechnology. You could use the glue to grab hold of proteins or stick them immovably to surfaces. You could even use it to assemble proteins and enzymes to build new structures on the nanometre scale.

‘We’re very interested in creating protein assemblies. We want to be able to treat proteins like Lego,’ explains Dr Mark Howarth, who with his graduate student Bijan Zakeri at the Department of Biochemistry developed the superglue. ‘But previously we’ve been limited to ill-controlled processes or have had to build using weak biological interactions.’

The Oxford biochemists came up with their new super-strength molecular glue by engineering an unusual protein from a type of bacteria that can cause life-threatening disease.

While many people carry Streptococcus pyogenes in their throat without any problems, the bacteria can cause infections. Some are mild, like impetigo in infants or a sore throat, but some can kill, like toxic shock syndrome or flesh-eating disease.

What attracted the biochemists’ interest was a specific protein which the bacteria use to bind and invade human cells.

‘The protein is special because it naturally reacts with itself and forms a lock,’ says Mark.

All proteins consist of amino acids linked together into long chains by strong covalent bonds. The long chains are folded and looped up into three-dimensional structures held together by weaker links and associations.

The protein FbaB from S. pyogenes has a 3D structure that is stabilised by another covalent bond. This strong chemical bond forms in an instant and binds the loops of the amino acid chain together with exceptional strength.

Mark and his colleagues reckoned with a bit of engineering they could split the protein around this extra covalent bond. Then, when the two parts were brought together again, they might dock and form this strong bond once more.

The two parts would be locked together immovably – stapling together anything else attached to their tails.That is what the researchers have now demonstrated in this week’s PNAS.

They’ve nicknamed the larger fragment which formed the bulk of the original protein ‘SpyCatcher’. Once SpyCatcher gets hold of the shorter protein segment, ‘SpyTag’, it never lets go.

At least, the researchers with their collaborators at the University of Miami tried to measure the force needed to pull apart SpyTag from SpyCatcher using an atomic force microscope.

But when they pulled on each end, the chemical links holding the proteins to the apparatus broke first. Boiling in detergent won’t separate the protein fragments either.

‘Our system forms rapid covalent bonds with high efficiency and high stability,’ says Mark.

When SpyCatcher and SpyTag are brought together, they bond in minutes with high yield. It doesn’t matter whether it is in acidic or neutral conditions, or whether it is 4°C or 37°C.

They will stick together in test tube reactions or inside cells. And importantly, they don’t stick to other things – there’s no equivalent of getting your fingers stuck to the Airfix model you’re building.

Mark explains that there isn’t really any equivalent way to bind biomolecules together. There are chemical reactions that can join two proteins together covalently but often only small proportions react, they take a long time, or they require UV light, toxic catalysts or reaction conditions that could damage living cells.

The ability to attach SpyCatcher and SpyTag onto other molecules you want to glue together could have many applications. For example, sticking all the enzymes involved in a chemical process into a small factory could speed reactions and increase yields.

Or you might want to bring all the elements together that plants use to turn sunlight into energy with only water as a waste product. Scientists have long wanted to come up with ways of achieving photosynthesis artificially for useable green energy.

But the first uses of the molecular superglue may well be in the research lab, grabbing hold of structures within biological cells. That way you could resist the forces generated by important motors, machines and transporters inside the cell.

Mark and his team are now working on developing the molecular superglue technology through Isis Innovation, the University of Oxford’s technology transfer company.

HyQ - IIT's Hydraulic Quadruped Robot - YouTube

This video shows HyQ in some serious action.

It's not quite an invasion, but in recent years we've seen a small parade of quadruped robots strutting out of labs around the world.

In the United States, Boston Dynamics has introduced its now-famous BigDog and, more recently, a bigger bot named AlphaDog.

Early this year, we wrote about FROG, a prototype built in China, and just a few weeks ago we described the SQ1 robot, a South Korean project.

Now it's time to unveil the latest addition to this pack: HyQ is a robot developed at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), in Genoa.

The machine, built by a team led by Professor Darwin Caldwell, is a hydraulic quadruped (Hence, hy-q) designed to perform highly dynamic tasks such as running and jumping.

Legged locomotion remains one of the biggest challenges in robotics, and the Italian team hopes that their robot can become a platform for research and collaboration among different groups a kind of open source BigDog.

Technics
HyQ's trunk is made of stainless steel and a folded, 3mm thick sheet of aluminum alloy. The 1 m (3.28 feet) long, 50 cm (1.64 feet) wide and 98 cm (3.21 feet) tall robot weighs 90 kg with the hydraulic power supply on board, and 70 kg with external hydraulics.

Hydraulic actuation offers high power density, high torque output and velocity. It also allows for high bandwidth torque control.

The downside is that the components are still rather bulky and not very energy efficient, but that is something the researchers at IIT's Department of Advanced Robotics intend to change.

They also want to make HyQ power-autonomous, endow it with a head with a built in stereo camera and a laser range finder and give it an arm with a gripper.

One box of Girl Scout cookies worth $15 billion - YouTube

In a paper published in the journal ACS Nano, scientists  described how graphene, a single-atom-thick sheet of carbon, can be made from just about any carbon source, including food, insects, and waste.

Read the original study: DOI: 10.1021/nn202625c

“I said we could grow it from any carbon source, for example, a Girl Scout cookie, because Girl Scout cookies were being served at the time,” says James Tour, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science at Rice University. “So one of the people in the room said, ‘Yes, please do it. … Let’s see that happen.’”

A sheet of graphene is so thin that one sheet made from one box of shortbread cookies would cover nearly three football fields.

The scientists say the experiment is a whimsical way to make a serious point: that graphene, touted as a miracle material for its toughness and conductivity since its discovery in 2004, can be drawn from many sources.

Tour and graduate students Gedeng Ruan, lead author of the paper, and Zhengzong Sun, also tested other materials, including chocolate, grass, polystyrene plastic, insects (a cockroach leg) and even dog faeces.

In every case, the researchers were able to make high-quality graphene via carbon deposition on copper foil.

In this process, the graphene forms on the opposite side of the foil as solid carbon sources decompose; the other residues are left on the original side. Typically, this happens in about 15 minutes in a furnace flowing with argon and hydrogen gas and turned up to 1,050 degrees Celsius.

Tour expects the cost of graphene to drop quickly as commercial interests develop methods to manufacture it in bulk. In earlier research, Tour  described a long-sought way to make graphene-based transparent electrodes by combining graphene with a fine aluminum mesh.

The material could possibly replace expensive indium tin oxide as a basic element in flat-panel and touch-screen displays, solar cells, and LED lighting.

The new findings have “a lot to do with current research topics in academia and in industry,” Tour says. “Carbon—or any element—in one form can be inexpensive and in another form can be very expensive.”

Diamonds are a good example., he says. “You could probably get a very large diamond out of a box of Girl Scout cookies.”

Sandia National Laboratory, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Office of Naval Research MURI program funded the research.

More news from Rice University: www.media.rice.edu/media/

Japanese man takes Robo-suit ride up Mont-Saint-Michel

Seiji Uchida (up), 49, a Japanese man paralysed from the waist down, is carried by Tsukuba University student Ekuni using a Hybrid Assisted Limb (HAL) robo-suit on July 5 , 2011 as they climb the stairs of the Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy, north-western France.

The HAL suit, allowing the wearer to carry a heavy load, works by detecting faint bioelectrical signals using pads placed on specific areas of the body.

The pads move the HAL suit accordingly.

Image by: AFP PHOTO KENZO TRIBOUILLARD

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