Paraplegic Woman walks again with aid of Exoskeleton

It’s been almost twenty years since Amanda Boxtel stood on her own two feet due to a freak skiing accident in Colorado, but today she’s up and walking again thanks to an exoskeleton from Ekso Bionics.

As Boxtel notes, this is only the first step in exoskeleton technology and someday, she hopes to dance again, cheek-to-cheek.

The Black Death: DNA extracts of the plague bug Yersinia pestis

These are skeletons of victims of the Black Death from East Smithfield, London.

Scientists have extracted fragments of bubonic plague DNA from their teeth.

Fragments of 700-year-old DNA from the bug responsible for the Black Death have been pulled from the teeth of four plague victims buried in east London.

Scientists used the degraded strands to reconstruct the entire genetic code of the deadly bacterium. It is the first time experts have succeeded in drafting the genome of an ancient pathogen, or disease-causing agent.

The researchers found that a specific strain of the plague bug Yersinia pestis caused the pandemic that killed 100 million Europeans - between 30% and 50% of the total population - in just five years between 1347 and 1351.

Picture: Museum of London Archaeology /PA

"This is the first time a human pathogen more than a century old has ever been fully sequenced," says Johannes Krause at the University of Tübingen, Germany. 

The teams used DNA from modern Yersinia in an array that bound to similar DNA in victims' teeth. That DNA carried telltale chemical changes showing it was indeed ancient plague. Differences reported earlier between it and modern Yersinia were not confirmed.

The sequence also shows the ancient bacteria started infecting humans at the right time, between 1240 and 1340, just before the disease exploded (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature10549).

Yersinia has for some time been the prime suspect because some of its symptoms are similar to the Black Death. But questions were raised because modern Yersinia is a slow-spreading, rat-borne disease that is very different from the Black Death. 

Its DNA doesn't explain why. "There are almost no genetic differences between the ancient and modern Yersinia," says Krause.

He speculates that the Black Death behaved differently from modern Yersinia infection due to Europeans' total lack of previous exposure. 

Another possibility is co-infection with other pathogens, a so-called syndemic. The team hopes to learn more about the evolution of human disease by probing plague pits and other ancient samples for different pathogens.

Amazon River: X-rays expose new species of Stingrays

Biologists recently fished out two new species of freshwater stingray from a river in the Amazon rainforest near Iquitos, Peru.

The animals have been put into a new genus - the first time this has been done for stingrays since 1987.

At first glance the creatures look like nothing so much as freckled pancakes with feeble tails. But X-rays revealed an elaborate skeleton in which hundreds of slivers of cartilage fan out radially to support the fish's floppy disc-shaped body.

Biologist Nathan Lovejoy of the University of Toronto, Canada, and his colleagues dubbed the new stingrays Heliotrygon gomesi and Heliotrygon rosai. The creatures, which can grow up to half a metre long, have beady eyes, suggesting that they inhabit the murky depths.

Unusually, the stingrays lack barbed tails - they are stingless - possibly because they do not have to contend with any serious predators. Like other freshwater stingrays, the new species likely hide on the bottom of the river, waiting to pounce on any prey that swims to close and swallow their meal with vacuum-like jaws.

Giant Rabbit Skeleton (Nuralagus rex) found on the Spanish island of Minorca

Unfrotunately, Nuralagus rex, also known as the Menorcan King of the Rabbits was too big to hop.

Due to his short stiff spine he would have been forced to clumsily haul himself along like a beaver getting out of water, researchers have said.

A creature initially mistaken for an extinct tortoise has turned out to be a giant bunny that had tiny ears and couldn't hop.

The 5-million-year-old remains of Nuralagus rex were found on the Spanish island of Minorca by independent researcher Josep Quintana. 

At an estimated 12 kilograms, it was around 10 times the weight of wild Spanish rabbits today.

Quintana came across the first fossil in the early 1990s when he was 19. He initially thought it was part of an extinct Minorcan tortoise. Later, Meike Köhler and Salvador Moya-Sola of the Autonomous University of Barcelona's Catalan Institute of Paleontology identified it as a giant rabbit.

Now the three have uncovered enough fossils to reconstruct the entire animal and name it. They say its closest relative was Alilepus, a now-extinct genus whose members were about a tenth the size of N. rex and lived in Eurasia and North America at the time.

Land bridge

Quintana says the ancestors of N. rex colonised Minorca 5.3 million years ago when sea levels in the Mediterranean dropped by about 1.5 kilometres, connecting the Balearic Islands to the mainland.

As sea levels rose again and cut Minorca off, N. rex evolved separately from Alilepus. It shared the island with tortoises, bats and a large dormouse species, and in the absence of predators chose life in the slow lane. 

"If you don't have natural enemies, why run?" asks Quintana. Gradually, its legs grew shorter, its ears shrank and its spine lost the curvature that helps rabbits hop.

Journal reference: Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, vol 31, p 231

Life-Altering Exoskeleton

Life-Altering Exoskeleton: Paraplegic Amanda Boxtel takes her first steps in 18 years thanks to Berkeley Bionics’ eLEGS — an innovative exoskeleton that “allows people with total spinal cord injuries to stand and walk.”

Robot with Human Skeletal Structures

YOU may have more in common with this robot than any other - it was designed using your anatomy as a blueprint.

Conventional humanoid robots may look human, but the workings under their synthetic skins are radically different from our anatomy. A team with members across five European countries says this makes it difficult to build robots able to move like we do.

Their project, the Eccerobot, has been designed to duplicate the way human bones, muscles and tendons work and are linked together. The plastic bones copy biological shapes and are moved by kite-line that is tough like tendons, while elastic cords mimic the bounce of muscle.

The history of the spacesuit

Is this an early example of the evolution of the mobile phone. It certainly reminds me of some of the Motorola models that I used to sport as a keen young executive about town. No, its some early and cumbersome, spacesuit models. These have certainly developed and improved over the years, thankfully for the astronauts. Here we show you the evolution and history of the spacesuit.


Astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, is shown here in NASA's first spacesuit, designed for the Mercury programme (1958-1963).

The suits were adapted from US Navy pressure suits for high-altitude flights and not designed to be worn on spacewalks. That's because the suits folded in on themselves at the joints, decreasing the volume in the suit. That increased the pressure in the rest of the suit, making it hard for astronauts to bend their legs or arms. As a result, the suits were used only as protection against emergency losses of pressure. (Image: NASA Headquarters)


Spacesuit design took a step forward during NASA's Gemini programme, which featured the agency's first spacewalk on 3 June 1965. To insulate astronauts from the low pressures and temperature extremes of space, Gemini suits boasted extra layers and balloon-like "bladders" filled with gas to maintain pressure, while also maintaining flexibility.

Gus Grissom (left) and John Young, the crew of the first manned Gemini mission, a five-hour orbital flight on 23 March 1965, are shown here in the suits, which are attached to portable air conditioners to keep the astronauts cool. (Image: NASA Johnson Space Center)

The acid test for the Gemini spacesuit came on 3 June 1965, when astronaut Edward White ventured from the capsule for a 23-minute spacewalk - the first such foray for a US astronaut.

White used a gas-powered gun to manoeuvre in space. Oxygen was provided through an 8-metre 'umbilical' cord connected to the Gemini 4 spacecraft. (Image: NASA Johnson Space Center)


To allow lunar explorers greater flexibility, the Apollo suits were built with bellow-like rubber joints at the shoulders, hips, elbows and knees.

Here engineer Bill Peterson fits test pilot Bob Smyth in an early incarnation of the Apollo suit in 1964. The dark straps are part of a restraint harness for the Lunar Excursion Module. (Image: NASA Johnson Space Center)


By the time of the first Moon landing in 1969, the Apollo suits boasted a backpack that provided enough oxygen for breathing, ventilation and suit pressure for 7 hours of Moon walking. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin is pictured here exploring the lunar surface during the Apollo 11 mission. Although the suits performed well in the six missions to land on the Moon, lunar dust became a worry. Astronauts reported that sharp, abrasive lunar dust damaged the suits, wearing through layers and infiltrating seals.

The Apollo suit had to be relatively light so that astronauts could move around in the Moon's gravity and weighed about 82 kg (180 pounds), including its backpack. Later space shuttle suits, by comparison, were more than 1.5 times as heavy - but they were worn in the weightless environment of low-Earth orbit. (Image: NASA Kennedy Space Center)

NASA astronauts now use a two-piece spacesuit for spacewalks called the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU). Unlike the Apollo suits, which were custom-made to fit each astronaut, the EMU has interchangeable parts that can be used to accommodate a range of body sizes.

The EMU is pressurised at about a third of atmospheric pressure, so astronauts must camp out in a relatively low-pressure airlock before spacewalks to remove nitrogen dissolved in the blood and tissues. Moving too quickly to lower pressures can cause that nitrogen gas to create bubbles and obstruct blood flow, which can sometimes be fatal. The suit can weigh about 180 kg (400 lb) and operate for about 8 hours in space. It has a lifetime of 30 years. (Image: NASA Johnson Space Center)

NASA's EMU suits are not the only gear used for spacewalks. Here, astronaut Mike Fincke wears a Russian Orlan suit while performing work outside the International Space Station during the six-month Expedition 9 mission in 2004. (He and cosmonaut Gennady Padalka were originally going to use US suits but discovered problems with the suits, including a failed cooling unit.)

Unlike NASA's EMU suits, which have separate pants and torso sections, Orlan suits are entered through a hatch at the back. That allows astronauts to get into and out of them quickly without assistance. The suit weighs nearly 110 kg (240 pounds), can spend 7 hours in space and is designed to last for 12 spacewalks. (Image: NASA)

China's Feitan suit had a public debut in September 2008, when one of the astronauts aboard the Shenzhou 7 performed the country's first spacewalk.

The spacesuit is reportedly modelled after Russia's Orlan suit. Here one of the Shenzhou 7 crew members emerges from the spacecraft after landing in north China. (Image: China National Space Administration)

Gloves are possibly the most important part of the spacesuit from an astronaut's perspective. In addition to cranking levers and handling power drills, astronauts use their hands - rather than their feet - as their primary mode of "walking" around their spacecraft during spacewalks. The gloves are pressurised, making it difficult for astronauts to move their fingers.

The Apollo spacesuits used two sets of gloves - an inner layer (left) consisting of cloth-covered pressure bladders, and an outer layer made of cloth, Mylar and a metallic mesh. The outer gloves were used on spacewalks to protect against micrometeorites, scratches and heat. (Image: NASA-JSC)

In May 2007, engineer Peter Homer of Southwest Harbor, Maine, won $200,000 when his design for a spacesuit glove beat NASA's in an agency-sponsored competition. His company, Flagsuit LLC, is building on that design and is working with the firm Orbital Outfitters on spacesuits for suborbital tourist trips.

Homer says that unlike current gloves, which are pleated in a way that causes the fingers to curve like a banana, his gloves bend at the same points where our fingers do. That makes it easier for astronauts to move their fingers - important since spacewalks are so labour-intensive that they often leave astronauts' hands bruised and their fingernails bent backwards. (Image: Flagsuit.com)

For decades, NASA has been working intermittently on a next-generation spacesuit that will offer more flexibility and could be used at higher pressures, to eliminate the need for camping out before spacewalks, or breathing in pure oxygen to avoid decompression sickness, or the bends. The Mark III suit (left), one prototype that began development in the late 1980s, boasts a rear-entry system and bearings at the joints to allow astronauts the ability to kneel and perform other tasks.

In the push to return to the Moon, NASA signed a contract in February 2009 with the firm Oceaneering International, Inc, to develop suits for the crew of the shuttle's replacement, the Orion capsule, which is set to fly as early as 2015. Long-time spacesuit developer Hamilton Sundstrand contested the award, but the two firms now plan to work together on the suits, which are intended to share components with a future suit to be designed for the Moon (right). (Image and illustration: NASA)

So far, suits for spacewalks and moonwalks have had to rely on air to maintain pressure around an astronaut's body. But space farers might be able to wear a slimmer design in the future that could allow them to move more freely. This "Biosuit", developed by MIT engineer Dava Newman and colleagues, uses tight layers of material to maintain pressure.

The suit is patterned with stiff lines that do not extend when an astronaut moves a part of their body. These "lines of non-extension" provide a stiff skeleton but do not restrict an astronaut's movement. The team expects it will take several more years of development before the suits can be used in space. Other researchers are developing high-tech spacesuit materials that could one day heal themselves, generate electricity and kill germs. (Image: Donna Coveney)