Humanoid Droids dance, dogs nuzzle, speak at Madrid robot museum

Humanoid robots dance at "The Robot Museum" in Madrid on November 28, 2013.

A white robotic beagle sits wagging its tail and nuzzling anyone who pets it, while six pint-sized robots, flashing blue, pump their fists as they dance to the pop hit "Gangnam Style".

They are the stars of a new museum launched in Madrid this month, showcasing what its owners say is one of the world's top collections of robot dogs and other pet automatons.

"As far as we know this is the biggest collection of robots in Europe, and in particular of Aibo robotic dogs," sold by Sony from 1999 to 2006, said the Robot Museum's manager Daniel Bayon, 39.

"They are a very important part of the museum. They are the most advanced robot dogs that have ever existed," he told reporters.

This pack of Aibos is the biggest in the world outside their native Japan, he added.

The museum houses some 140 exhibits dating from the 1980s to the present.

Among them is Nao, a walking, talking miniature humanoid developed by the French robotics company Aldebaran as an educational aid.

"I am a very special robot. I can simulate real-life behaviour," it said, in a high-pitched mechanical voice, during a recent demonstration.

"If you'll excuse me, I'll make myself a bit more comfortable," it added, sitting down on its bottom.

A child pets a robotic dog at "The Robot Museum" in Madrid on November 28, 2013.

Nearby stood a model of R2-D2, the classic bleeping droid first seen on movie screens in "Star Wars" in 1977.

Since opening nearly two weeks ago, tickets for guided visits to the small museum underneath the Juegetronica games store in central Madrid have sold out several times, Bayon said.

The owner of the collection, local technology enthusiast Pablo Medrano, said most of the models on display are no longer for sale in shops.

A picture taken on November 28, 2013 shows "NAO" a programmable humanoid robot developed by French robotics company Aldebaran Robotics at "The Robot Museum" in Madrid.

The museum is "perhaps the only dedicated robot museum in Europe outside of universities and training centres where we can see this technology of the future," Medrano, 39, told reporters.

"I want robots to be able to help us, just as household appliances and computers are helping us, which years ago was unthinkable. I hope that in a few years robots will meet our daily needs, particularly those of old people."

Animal Computer Interaction: Technology to help dogs assist humans in the home

Dr Clara Mancini at The Open University talks about the Animal-Computer Interaction team and their collaboration with the charity Dogs for the Disabled to design dog-friendly technologies which will make it easier for dogs to assist their humans in the home.

Dr Clara Mancini

Assistance dogs perform a range of daily tasks, such as operating light switches and door handles, but domestic technology is designed for humans rather than animals, making life harder for the dogs and their owners. So, a new animal-centered design perspective is needed.

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DARPA Unleashes the Robo-Dog

Let slip the robo dogs of war. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA showcased a robotic mule that is capable of carrying 100 pounds of gear in its first outdoor test.

Boston Dynamics' LS3 robot which looks like a giant robot dog is designed to act as robotic porter of soldiers and marines. The LS3 is designed to carry up to 400 pounds of gear and enough fuel for missions to last for a 20 mile hike for 24 hours. The LS3 robot will automatically follow a soldier using its computer vision or travel to designated locations using GPS.

"If successful, this could provide real value to a squad while addressing the military's concern for unburdening troops," said Army Lt. Col. Joe Hitt, program manager for DARPA. "LS3 seeks to have the responsiveness of a trained animal and the carrying capacity of a mule."

The LS3 can also act like a mobile charging station for soldiers to recharge batteries for their electronic devices like radios, tablets or laptops. DARPA is also planning to add hearing technology that will allow human squad members to directly interact with the LS3. The robot will follow simple spoken commands like "stop," "sit" or "come here." If testing goes well the LS3 will act like a well-trained pack mule that can follow orders and doesn't poop.

The LS3 will still face 18 months of tests starting this summer. The tests will culminated with the robot going out on field exercises with Marine and Army involvement.

Soyuz: Space Propaganda Postcard 1961. Laika Dogs "Sputnik 5"

Soyuz: Space Propaganda Postcard 1961. Laika Dogs "Sputnik 5"

Your faeces, my friend, are blowin' in the wind

GO FOR a bracing winter stroll in a major US city and you will be inhaling more than vehicle fumes. 

A new study has demonstrated for the first time that during winter most of the airborne bacteria in three large Midwestern cities come from dog faeces.

Noah Fierer at the University of Colorado, Boulder, found the high proportions of airborne dog faecal bacteria after analysing samples of winter air from Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago. 

His team checked the DNA in their samples against reference banks which "barcode" organisms according to their genes.

They discovered that most of the bacteria they found came from dog faeces by checking the bacterial profiles against reference samples of bugs typically present in soils, leaves and faeces from humans, cows and dogs.

In summer, the proportions of bacteria in the air come almost equally from soils, dog faeces and the leaves of trees. But come winter, the trees have shed all their leaves and aerosols from soils are limited by overlying snow or ice, reducing absolute counts of airborne bacteria by about 50 per cent. 

This means that dog faeces becomes the dominant remaining source.

Fierer says that at the relatively low concentrations found - 10,000 bacteria per cubic metre of air sampled - the bugs are unlikely to cause disease (Applied and Environmental Microbiology, DOI: 10.1128/aem.05498-11).

The Thylacine enigma: A Marsupial Wolf or a Tasmanian Tiger?

A study of the bones of the now extinct thylacine, called both a marsupial wolf and a Tasmanian tiger, has determined that the solitary, ambush-style predator was more cat than dog but also clearly a marsupial.

“We provide quantitative support to the suspicions of earlier researchers that the thylacine was not a pursuit predator,” says Borja Figueirido, a postdoctoral researcher at Brown University and the paper’s lead author.

The research is reported in the journal Biology Letters.

“Although there is no doubt that the thylacine diet was similar to that of living wolves, we find no compelling evidence that they hunted similarly.”

For millions of years, Thylacinus cynocephalus roamed mainland Australia. Its numbers declined as humans settled throughout the continent, beginning some 40,000 years ago and as the dingo, a small, dog-like animal, was introduced, about 4,000 years ago.

Thylacines’ last remaining outpost was in dingo-free Tasmania, but a concerted eradication effort wiped out the species. The last known thylacine died at a zoo in 1936.

It’s unclear why the animal fared so poorly with the arrival of humans and dingoes, but speculation is that human activity disrupted the thylacine habitat and perhaps its food sources.

The role dingoes had on the thylacine demise is less clear. Speculationis that because dingoes were the placental spitting image of the marsupial thylacines, evolved in isolated settings, called evolutionary convergence. When dingoes arrived in Australia, they helped push the thylacines out.

But Figueirido and Christine Janis, professor of biology and a co-author on the paper, say there’s more to the story.

The researchers compared the thylacine’s skeleton with pumas, panthers, jackals, wolves, hyenas, and Tasmanian devils, that are the largest living carnivorous marsupials.

Previous research had discovered the elbow joint is a clue to predator habits, because it shows whether the animal is built for flexibility and dexterity in handling prey or for chase and speed in tracking down the next meal.

Figueirido and Janis found that the thylacine’s humerus, or upper arm bone, was oval and elongated at the end closest to the elbow, implying that the animal’s forearm bones, the radius and ulna, were separate.

That means the Tasmanian tiger would have been able to rotate its arm so that the palm faced upwards, like a cat. The distal humerus on dog-like animals, such as dingoes and wolves, is more squared-up and shorter.

This indicates the radius and ulna were closer together in these species, reflecting that these animals’ hands are more fixed in the palm-down position.

In terms of hunting, the increased arm and hand movement would have given the thylacine a greater capability of subduing its quarry after a surprise attack. Since dingoes and other dog-like creatures have less latitude in arm-hand movement, that helps explain why these animals hunt by pursuit and in packs, rather than in an ambush setting.

“It’s a very subtle thing,” says Janis. “You never would think that the shape of just one bone would mean so much.”

Some cats, like cheetahs, use speed to catch their quarry, while some canid species, like foxes, rely more on the guile of the ambush. Janis says the thylacine’s hunting tactics appear to be a unique mix. “I don’t think there’s anything like it around today. It’s sort of like a cat-like fox.”

What that means for the dingo’s role in the thylacine’s disappearance from continental Australia is not clear, but it does show the animals, while similar in many respects, likely hunted differently, Janis says.

“Dingoes were more like the final straw (to the Tasmanian tigers’ demise in continental Australia), because they weren’t in the same niche. It’s not just that a dingo was a placental version of a thylacine.”

The research was funded in part by the Bushnell Foundation.

More news from Brown University: http://news.brown.edu

The Science of a Dog Shaking itself dry

Behold the basic physics of the wet dog shake, as explored by Andrew Dickerson, Grant Mills, Jay Bauman, Young-Hui Chang, David Hu of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Their (skimpy, introductory) paper is available on arxiv — it’s really an introduction to this entrancing video

Personality Types - Longevity and the nature of the beast

A team led by Vincent Careau, a PhD student at University of Sherbrooke, gathered data on many aspects of dog biology published in disparate fields of study such as psychology, longevity, and veterinary research.

The information was well known in the respective research domains, yet they were never collated or put together. By doing so, the authors show that obedient breeds - on average - live longer than disobedient breeds. They also show that aggressive breeds have higher energy expenditure.

The late Don Thomas said, "It is hard to imagine how an aggressive personality could be adaptive if it lacked the energetic and metabolic machinery to back up the threats. Simply put, 100 pound weaklings don't kick sand in weight-lifters' faces and survive in nature."

This study contributes to the growing body of research revealing that personality is related to many crucial aspects of an animal's life - such as its energy needs, growth rate, age of first reproduction, and lifespan - and takes us a step closer to understanding the evolutionary causes and consequences of different personality types.

This study hints at the existence of underlying genetic linkages between personality, metabolism, and longevity -- meaning that selection for personality traits also invokes unintentional results on energetic and life history traits.

Link: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu

Pet Pollution: The devastating impact of man's best friend

Man's best friend could be one of the environment's worst enemies, according to a new study which says the carbon pawprint of a pet dog is more than double that of a gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle.

But the revelation in the book "Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living" by New Zealanders Robert and Brenda Vale has angered pet owners who feel they are being singled out as troublemakers.

The Vales, specialists in sustainable living at Victoria University of Wellington, analysed popular brands of pet food and calculated that a medium-sized dog eats around 164 kilos (360 pounds) of meat and 95 kilos of cereal a year.

Combine the land required to generate its food and a "medium" sized dog has an annual footprint of 0.84 hectares (2.07 acres) -- around twice the 0.41 hectares required by a 4x4 driving 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles) a year, including energy to build the car.

To confirm the results, the New Scientist magazine asked John Barrett at the Stockholm Environment Institute in York, Britain, to calculate eco-pawprints based on his own data. The results were essentially the same.

"Owning a dog really is quite an extravagance, mainly because of the carbon footprint of meat," Barrett said.

Other animals aren't much better for the environment, the Vales say.

Cats have an eco-footprint of about 0.15 hectares, slightly less than driving a Volkswagen Golf for a year, while two hamsters equates to a plasma television and even the humble goldfish burns energy equivalent to two mobile telephones.

But Reha Huttin, president of France's 30 Million Friends animal rights foundation says the human impact of eliminating pets would be equally devastating.

"Pets are anti-depressants, they help us cope with stress, they are good for the elderly," Huttin told AFP.

"Everyone should work out their own environmental impact. I should be allowed to say that I walk instead of using my car and that I don't eat meat, so why shouldn't I be allowed to have a little cat to alleviate my loneliness?"

-- 'Rabbits are good, provided you eat them' -- Which brings us back to the French!

CHINA: Panda genome resembles dog

A detailed genome map of the giant panda completed by Chinese scientists has shown that the notoriously shy animal is genetically similar to the dog, state media reported Sunday.

Scientists from the Beijing Genomics Institute finished sequencing the giant panda genome in October last year but a detailed genome map was only recently completed, Xinhua news agency said.

"The research found there is a high genomic similarity between giant panda and dog," the report said, but added that the research also supported the view of most scientists that the giant panda may be a subspecies of the bear family.

The detailed mapping showed that the giant panda has 21 pairs of chromosomes and more than 20,000 genes, Xinhua said.

The research is expected to provide scientific support for the conservation, disease prevention and artificial propagation of the endangered giant panda, researchers have said.

"We hope the genome map could help genetically explain why giant pandas have little reproductive capability so that scientists can help them deliver more cubs," Wang Jun, a scientist with the institute, was quoted in the state press as saying earlier.

Chinese experts say there are only about 1,600 wild pandas in China, mainly in the southwest, with another 200 or so raised in captivity in Chinese breeding centres.

The animals' notoriously low libidos have frustrated efforts to boost their numbers.

Breeders have resorted to tactics such as showing them "panda porn" videos of other pandas mating, and putting males through "sexercises" aimed at training up their pelvic and leg muscles for the rigours of copulation.

Scientists hope also to eventually gain a better understanding of why pandas subsist almost solely on bamboo, another factor viewed as inhibiting the species' range and adaptability.

H1N1: Dogs diagnosed with swine flu in China

Beijing (AFP) Nov 29, 2009 - Two dogs in Beijing have tested positive for swine flu in the second case of animals catching the disease in China along with pigs in the northeast, Chinese media said Sunday. The A(H1N1) virus detected in the dogs was 99 percent identical to the one circulating in humans, the state-run Beijing Times reported, quoting China's agriculture ministry.

The news comes 10 days after four pigs in China's Heilongjiang province were diagnosed with the virus, which specialists said might have been caught from humans, the report said. Countries including the United States, Canada and Chile have already reported cases of animals being infected with the A(H1N1) virus.

A cat in the US state of Iowa was diagnosed with swine flu at the beginning of the month in the first known case in the world of the new pandemic strain spreading to the feline population. The World Health Organisation has called for closer monitoring of farm workers and animals for influenza A viruses following the reported cases.

Citing an official at the Beijing municipal agriculture bureau, the report said the dogs probably contracted the virus from human sufferers who were in close contact with the canines. "Dogs can infect nearby dogs after they catch A(H1N1) flu," the unidentified official was quoted as saying. The agriculture ministry and the Beijing agriculture bureau were not immediately available for comment.