Breathing Silk leaf maker claims material will aid space journeys - Video

Julian Melchiorri, a graduate of the Royal College of Art has developed a synthetic biological leaf.

Potential applications range from the material being used on buildings' facades, or even for support on space journeys for oxygen.

Julian Melchiorri said Silk Leaf, a man-made, biological leaf involves a material extracted directly from the fibers of silk.

Julian Melchiorri

Melchiorri said the synthetic biological leaf he developed, which absorbs water and carbon dioxide to produce oxygen, is like a real leaf, and could enable long-distance space travel, according to a report in Dezeen.

This material, he said, has an amazing property.

Choloroplast

"I extracted choloroplasts from plant cells, and placed them inside this silk material."

The material work and breathes as a leaf does. "It's very light…low energy-consuming." He also said, "My idea was to use the efficiency of nature in a man-made environment."

The synthetic leaf could, among other applications, be used to make long-distance space travel that much more imaginable.

The Dezeen report includes pictures of the leaf transformed into lighting and building applications.

He said he thought about applications on smaller and larger scales.

He imagined its being used as a free surface in interior design, or for outdoor applications.

"So facades, ventilation programs…You can soak up air from outdoors, pass it by way of these biological filters and then carry oxygenated air inside."

Artist Impression of Silk Leaf City

He also noted the leaf material may be applicable to space travel.

"NASA is researching different ways to produce oxygen for long-distance space journeys to let us live in space," he said.

"This material could allow us to explore space much further than we can now."

A CNET article called it "an oxygen factory for space travel."

Writing in CNET, Eric Mack brought the significance of the NASA idea to light in asking, "what if we could take those biological oxygen factories into space with us, but without all the land, sun, water, soil, and gravity that forests tend to require?"

The Silk Leaf project was developed by Melchiorri as part of the Royal College of Art's Innovation Design Engineering course in collaboration with Tufts University silk lab.

Child's heart printed in 3D to aid complex surgery

Louisville Kentucky cardiothoracic surgeon Erle Austin has performed successful heart repair surgery on a 14 month old infant named Roland Lian Cung Bawi, heart surgery on such a young patient is not unheard of, of course, what's new is that Austin was able to map out his surgical approach using a nearly exact model of the patients heart, it had been printed on a 3D printer.

Erle Austin

Young Roland had been born with four congenital heart defects—doctors had known since before he was born that his heart had problems.

Fixing them all would prove to be a challenge. When it came time to plan the surgery, Austin consulted with other surgeons and found each of them had different ideas on the best way to fix the heart.

The ideal approach would involve the least amount of cutting and suturing—but that can be hard to plan using only conventional scanning techniques.

Looking for more precision, Austin turned to the engineering school at the University of Louisville, they'd been researching different kinds of 3D printing technology.

Researchers at the University worked with radiologists at Kosair Children's Hospital to create a means for converting data from a CT scan of Roland's heart to data that could be used with a 3D printer.

The two seemed a perfect match as CT scanning uses the same basic idea as 3D printing, it takes pictures of slices and puts them together on a computer screen to form a whole, and 3D printing is achieved by laying down one layer or "slice" of material at a time.

The 3D printing team used a MakerBot Replicator 2X, to print the heart (in three pieces) at twice its normal size, they also used a flexible type of plastic filament known as "Ninja Flex" instead of ABS.

Ninja Flex allowed the surgeon to bend the finished heart in ways that resembled a real human heart.

Printing the heart took approximately 20 hours at a cost of roughly $600.

Austin told local news reporters that the printed heart let him plan the surgery in ways he'd never experienced before, it allowed for a single surgery (this past February 10) and greatly reduced cutting and suturing, which ultimately led to a much quicker recovery for Roland, who by all accounts is now doing just fine.

NASA Odyssey: Longest-serving Mars spacecraft relocated to aid new observations

No NASA Mars orbiter has been in a position to observe morning daylight on Mars since the twin Viking orbiters of the 1970s. 

Credit: NASA/JPL

NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has tweaked its orbit to help scientists make the first systematic observations of how morning fogs, clouds and surface frost develop in different seasons on the Red Planet.

The maneuver took place Tuesday, Feb. 11. Odyssey team engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver, designed the gentle move to accelerate Odyssey's drift toward a morning-daylight orbit.

The desired change will occur gradually until the intended orbit geometry is reached in November 2015 and another maneuver halts the drift.

The change will enable observation of changing ground temperatures after sunrise and after sunset in thousands of places on Mars.

Those observations could yield insight about the composition of the ground and about temperature-driven processes, such as warm-season flows observed on some slopes, and geysers fed by spring thawing of carbon-dioxide ice near Mars' poles.

Jeffrey Plaut

"We're teaching an old spacecraft new tricks," said Odyssey Project Scientist Jeffrey Plaut of JPL.

"Odyssey will be in position to see Mars in a more different light from ever before."

Neither Odyssey, nor any other NASA Mars orbiter since the 1970s, has flown an orbital pattern with a view of the ground in morning daylight.

Earlier NASA orbiters and the European Space Agency's (ESA) Mars Express orbiter have provided some tantalizing views of morning mists on Mars, but have concentrated on afternoon observation times when views of the surface are less hazy.

Odyssey was launched in 2001 and began its science mission 12 years ago this month. It is the longest-working spacecraft ever sent to Mars.

NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft passes above Mars' south pole in this artist's concept. The spacecraft has been orbiting Mars since October 24, 2001. Credit: NASA/JPL

Odyssey completed Tuesday's maneuver at 12:03 p.m. PST (3:03 p.m. EST).

It used four thrusters, each providing about 5 pounds (22 newtons) of force for a 29-second burn.

David Lehman

"This veteran spacecraft performed exactly as planned," said Odyssey Project Manager David Lehman of JPL.

Odyssey flies in an orbit nearly over the poles and synchronized with the sun.

The south-to-north leg of the orbit provided an advantage for the orbiter's Gamma Ray Spectrometer (GRS) to have its cooling equipment pointed away from the sun.

The spectrometer checked for evidence of water near the Martian surface.

It has made important discoveries of how widely water ice—detected as hydrogen— and other elements are distributed on Mars.

Student Contest Launches to Aid Private Manned Mission to Mars

An artist's illustration of the Inspiration Mars Foundation's spacecraft for a 2018 mission to Mars by a two-person crew. 

The private Mars mission would be a flyby trip around the Red Planet.

Credit: Inspiration Mars Foundation

A private manned Mars mission may get some help from students on its way to the launch pad in 2018.

A newly announced contest asks students to propose design concepts for the Inspiration Mars mission, a private effort that aims to launch two astronauts on a flyby of the Red Planet in January 2018.

"Inspiration Mars is looking for the most creative ideas from engineers all over the world," Dennis Tito, executive director of the nonprofit Inspiration Mars Foundation, said in a statement Friday (Aug. 16).

"Furthermore, we want to engage the explorers of tomorrow with a real and exciting mission, and demonstrate what a powerful force space exploration can be in inspiring young people to develop their talent," added Tito, a multimillionaire who in 2001 became the first space tourist when he paid his own way to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

"This contest will accomplish both of those objectives."



The competition, which is organized by the nonprofit Mars Society, challenges teams of university students from around the world to design a two-person 2018 Mars flyby mission as cheaply and safely as possible.

3D Printing Could Aid Deep-Space Exploration

Technological advances are bringing down the cost of space research and exploration, with 3D printing poised to provide a transformative leap, NASA chief Charles Bolden says.

During a tour of the space agency's Ames Research Center here Friday (May 24), Bolden lauded the scientific potential of PhoneSats, tiny and inexpensive spacecraft based on off-the-shelf smartphones and he singled out 3D printing as a promising key enabler of humanity's push out into the solar system.

"As NASA ventures further into space, whether redirecting an asteroid or sending humans to Mars, we'll need transformative technology to reduce cargo weight and volume," Bolden said.

"In the future, perhaps astronauts will be able to print the tools or components they need while in space."

Scientist unveils mind-controlled robot for paraplegics

A professor at a Swiss university on Tuesday unveiled a robot that can be controlled by the brainwaves of a paraplegic person wearing an electrode-fitted cap, news agency ATS reported.

A paralysed man at a hospital in the town of Sion demonstrated the device, sending a mental command to a computer in his room, which transmitted it to another computer that moved a small robot 60 kilometres (37 miles) away in Lausanne.

The system was developed by Jose Millan, a professor at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne who specialises in non-invasive interfaces between machines and the brain.

The same technology can be used to drive a wheelchair, Millan said.

"Once the movement has begun, the brain can relax, otherwise the person would soon be exhausted," he said.

But the technology has its limits, he added. The brain signals can be scrambled if too many people are gathered around a wheelchair, for example.

Besides making paraplegics mobile, neuroprosthetics could be used to help patients recover lost senses, researchers said.

Professor Stephanie Lacour and her team are working on an "electric skin" for amputees, a glove fitted with tiny sensors that would send information directly to the user's nervous system.

Eventually, researchers say they hope to create mechanised prosthetics that are as mobile and sensitive as a natural hand, Lacour said.

Other researchers at Lausanne are working on enabling paraplegics to walk again with electrodes implanted in their spinal cords.

"The goal is that after a year of training with a robotic aide, the patient will be able to walk without a robot. The electrodes would stay implanted for life," said Professor Gregoire Courtine.

He said he is currently setting up clinical trials and hopes to run tests at Zurich's university hospital within a year.

Driving a vehicle with one hand

During the 13th EAEC European Automotive Congress, the Institute of Biomechanics of Valencia (IBV) has presented a prototype vehicle driving control that eliminates the traditional concept of a steering wheel and replaces it with an easy-to-use device for a great number of people.

The prototype allows the driver to control and guide a vehicle, accelerate, change gears and brake with one hand and arm. To reach this design, researchers at the IBV, led by José Solaz, discussed the needs of people with reduced mobility or certain muscle weakness that prevents them from managing a traditional steering wheel.

Also according Solaz, 'when designing a new system we wanted to eliminate from our concept mechanical technology and apply technology based on electronics because it offers more versatile solutions.' After analysing all the available options on the market such as 'concept cars' or electric vehicles, the design finally submitted by the IBV is an ergonomic device, handy for a large number of drivers and has been improved by adding motors that provide the driver the same sensations as those of a traditional wheel.

José Solaz highlighted 'the ergonomics of the prototype and the fact that it takes into account the thresholds of strength and coordination capacity of users.' To Solaz 'these aspects are essential for an innovative concept that has to be perceived as convenient, easy to use and as safe as traditional controls.'

Another feature of the new device is that a system has been added to mimic the traditional perceptions of driving so that drivers can obtain the same information that the mechanical transmission of a vehicle provides. And besides, this is an inclusive design 'as the control is intended to be a future vehicle control device for a wide range of ages. People with lower limb disabilities are one of the most benefited groups, but the design of this prototype is suitable for all types of people.'

Blind Boy Using Echo Location to Aid his Senses

Blind seven-year-old Lucas Murray is making the headlines today with his supposed ability to "see" using his ears. He is in fact using sound as a location aid.

Lucas, who has become one of the first in the UK to learn the technique and of course, he has been nicknamed 'batboy', by the Press, after learning how to use echoes to picture the world around him.

He clicks his tongue on the roof of his mouth and the sound that comes back tells him the distance, shape, density and position of objects.

Lucas, from Poole in Dorset, who was born blind, can even shoot basketball hoops, rock climb and run around the playground with the technique which is similar to that used by other sound sensitive mammals; bats, dolphins, etc.

He tells distance by timing how long the echo takes to return, the ear the sound reaches first tells him location and he picks up the density and shape of an object by the intensity of the sound bouncing back. An object moving away creates a lower pitch and vice versa.

Lucas was taught by Californian Daniel Kish, 43, who is himself blind and in his efforts to improve the lives of other blind people, he has founded the World Access for the Blind charity.