Titan Arm: Students' robotic arm can make you stronger

In this Friday, Dec. 6, 2013 photo, Nick McGill wears the Titan Arm as he poses at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. 

The robotic device invented by four University of Pennsylvania engineering students can help its wearer carry an additional 40 pounds. 

The prize-winning prototype builds on existing research in the field of exoskeletons, an area that experts say will grow as the population ages. 

Students say some current exoskeleton models can cost $100,000. They created the award-winning Titan Arm for less than $2,000. 

AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma

Need a hand lifting something? A robotic device invented by University of Pennsylvania engineering students can help its wearer carry an additional 40 pounds (18 kilograms).

Titan Arm looks and sounds like part of a superhero's costume but its creators say it's designed for ordinary people—those who need either physical rehabilitation or a little extra muscle for their job.

In technical terms, the apparatus is an untethered, upper-body exoskeleton; to the layman, it's essentially a battery-powered arm brace attached to a backpack.

Either way, Titan Arm's cost-efficient design has won the team accolades and at least $75,000 in prize money.

"They built something that people can relate to," said Robert Carpick, chairman of Penn's mechanical engineering department.

"And of course it appeals clearly to what we've all seen in so many science-fiction movies of superhuman strength being endowed by an exoskeleton."

The project builds on existing studies of such body equipment, sometimes called "wearable robots."

Research companies have built lower-body exoskeletons that help paralyzed people walk, though current models aren't approved for retail and can cost $50,000 to $100,000.

The Penn students were moved by the power of that concept—restoring mobility to those who have suffered traumas—as well as the idea of preventing injuries in those who perform repetitive heavy-lifting tasks, said team member Nick Parrotta.

"When we started talking to physical therapists and prospective users, or people who have gone through these types of injuries, we just kept on getting more and more motivated," said Parrotta, now in graduate school at the university.

In this Friday, Dec. 6, 2013 photo, Nick McGill, center, wears the Titan Arm, as he poses alongside his student colleagues Elizabeth Beattie, left, and Nick Parrotta at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. 

AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma

ESA Venus Express: Super-hurricane-force winds on Venus are getting stronger

False-colour image of cloud features seen on Venus by the Venus Monitoring Camera (VMC) on Venus Express. 

The image was captured from a distance of 30 000 km on 8 December 2011. 

The VMC was designed and built by a consortium of German institutes lead by the Max-Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau. 

Credit: ESA

As the closest planet to Earth, Venus is a relatively easy object to observe.

However, many mysteries remain, not least the super-rotation of Venus' atmosphere, which enables high altitude winds to circle the planet in only four days.

Now images of cloud features sent back by ESA's Venus Express orbiter have revealed that these remarkably rapid winds are becoming even faster.

Similar in size to Earth, Venus has an extremely dense, carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere and the planet's surface is completely hidden by a blanket of bland, yellowish cloud.

Only at ultraviolet wavelengths (and to a lesser extent in the infrared) do striking cloud streaks and individual cells emerge, due to the presence of some unknown UV absorber in the cloud deck.

By tracking the movements of these distinct cloud features, observers have been able to measure the super-hurricane-force winds that sweep around the planet at the cloud tops, some 70 km above the scorching volcanic plains.

Despite decades of observation from the ground and from spacecraft, a number of mysteries remain.

• What causes the remarkable super-rotation of Venus' atmosphere – so called because the upper winds travel 50 times faster than the planet's rate of rotation? 
• How do the winds vary with latitude and longitude? 
• How much do they change over time?

The answers to some of these questions are being provided by instruments on board Venus Express, such as the Venus Monitoring Camera (VMC), which have been observing the atmosphere for 10 Venus years – equivalent to 6 Earth years.

Venus Monitoring Camera (VMC)

The VMC acquires instantaneous snapshots of Venus at UV and near-infrared wavelengths.

Simultaneous imaging in these wavebands makes it possible to detect and track cloud features, and thus derive wind data, at two different levels - approximately 70 km and 60 km above the surface.

Venus Express follows a 24 hour orbit which approaches to approximately 250 km above the north pole, before moving out to a distance of 66 000 km above the south pole.

This highly elliptical path provides particularly good viewing conditions for the entire southern hemisphere, while enabling higher resolution, small scale images of the northern hemisphere.

These factors combined mean that VMC imagery provides, for the first time, an opportunity to study cloud level winds with high spatial and temporal resolution over a time scale of more than half a decade.

The latest analyses of Venus' cloud motions and wind speeds, based on VMC data, have been made by two independent teams - one led by a Russian group (Khatuntsev et al.) and the other by a Japanese group (Kouyama et al.).

By painstakingly measuring how cloud features in VMC images move between frames, the two groups have been able to reveal new patterns in the planet's circulation.

"We analysed images obtained during 127 orbits with a manual cloud tracking method, and 600 orbits with a digital correlation method," said Igor Khatuntsev from the Space Research Institute in Moscow, lead author of a paper in the journal Icarus.

"Over 45 000 features were tracked by human visual comparisons, and more than 350 000 features were tracked automatically using a computer programme."

The manual method of wind speed measurements consisted of tracking motions of high contrast cloud features in pairs of images taken at different times.

This allowed better recognition of cloud patterns and was more reliable than the digital method in middle to high latitudes, where clouds tend to be streaky, or where contrast was low.

The problem with this method is that it is very time consuming.

On the other hand, the digital tracking technique was capable of streamlining image processing and producing 10 times the number of wind vectors.

Both methods were in good agreement at low latitudes (below 40 degrees), but digital tracking was preferred for studying temporal variations of the mean (average) rate of flow.

The Japanese-Swedish team relied solely upon their own automated cloud tracking method to derive their motion from images taken about one hour apart, at latitudes between 55°S and 70°S.

A specially developed mathematical formula was used to reduce errors in the image analysis. This team's analysis is published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

More information: I. Khatuntsev et al., Cloud level winds from the Venus Express Monitoring Camera imaging, accepted for publication in the Journal Icarus; doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2013.05.018

T. Kouyama et al., Long-term variation in the cloud-tracked zonal velocities at the cloud top of Venus deduced from Venus Express VMC images. In press at Journal of Geophysical Research - Planets; doi:10.1029/2011JE004013.

Consuming Tequila (plants) helps Build Stronger Bones

The plant that gave the world tequila contains a substance that seems ideal for use in a new genre of processed foods -- so-called "functional foods" -- with health benefits over and above serving as a source of nutrients, scientists reported at the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in San Francisco on March 23. Foods spiked with "fructans" from the agave plant may help protect against osteoporosis by boosting the body's absorption of calcium and could have other health benefits, they said.

"Fructans are considered functional food ingredients because they affect body processes in ways that result in better health and reduction in the risk of many diseases," said Mercedes López, Ph.D., who delivered the report. She is with the National Polytechnic Institute, Guanajuato, Mexico. "Experimental studies suggest that fructans may be beneficial in diabetes, obesity, stimulating the immune system of the body, decreasing levels of disease-causing bacteria in the intestine, relieving constipation, and reducing the risk of colon cancer."

Fructans are non-digestible carbohydrates. They consist of molecules of fructose -- the sugar found in honey, grapes, and ripe fruits -- linked together into chains. Rich natural sources include artichokes, Jerusalem artichokes, garlic and onions, and chicory. Fructans do not occur in tequila, however, because they change into alcohol when agave is used to make tequila, López said.

So-called "inulin-type" fructans from chicory find wide use in the United States and other countries in ice cream, breakfast cereals, baked goods, sauces, beverages, and other foods. Small fructans have a sweet taste, while those formed from longer chains of fructose have a neutral taste and give foods a smooth, pleasant texture. Scientific studies have suggested that fructans stimulate the growth of healthful bacteria in the large intestine in a way that increases the body's absorption of minerals, including the calcium and magnesium important for bone growth.

In the new study, López and colleagues set out to determine what effects agave fructans actually have on bone growth. They tested the effects of agave fructans on laboratory mice, used as stand-ins for humans in such research. Mice fed agave fructans absorbed more calcium from food, excreted less calcium in their feces, and showed a 50 percent increase in levels of a protein associated with the build-up of new bone tissue.

"These results suggest that the supplementation of the standard diet with agave fructans prevented bone loss and improved bone formation, indicating the important role of agave fructans on the maintenance of healthy bone," López said. "They can be used in many products for children and infants to help prevent various diseases, and can even be used in ice cream as a sugar substitute."