SoylentNews

fliptop writes:

MIT engineers have produced the world's longest flexible fiber battery. The rechargeable battery can be woven and washed, and could provide power for fiber-based electronic devices and sensors:

The researchers envision new possibilities for self-powered communications, sensing, and computational devices that could be worn like ordinary clothing, as well as devices whose batteries could also double as structural parts.

In a proof of concept, the team behind the new battery technology has produced the world's longest flexible fiber battery, 140 meters long, to demonstrate that the material can be manufactured to arbitrarily long lengths.

[...] The new fiber battery is manufactured using novel battery gels and a standard fiber-drawing system that starts with a larger cylinder containing all the components and then heats it to just below its melting point. The material is drawn through a narrow opening to compress all the parts to a fraction of their original diameter, while maintaining all the original arrangement of parts.

[...] The fact that they were able to make a 140-meter fiber battery shows that "there's no obvious upper limit to the length. We could definitely do a kilometer-scale length," [MIT postdoc Tural Khudiyev] says. A demonstration device using the new fiber battery incorporated a "Li-Fi" communications system — one in which pulses of light are used to transmit data, and included a microphone, pre-amp, transistor, and diodes to establish an optical data link between two woven fabric devices.

Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

New study challenges popular explanation for London's infamous "Wobbly Bridge":

London's Millennium Bridge is notorious for its "wobble" when it first opened in June 2000, as thousands of pedestrians streamed across. Londoners nicknamed it "Wobbly Bridge." The accepted explanation has been that the swaying was due to a weird synchronicity between the bridge's lateral (sideways) sway and pedestrians' gaits—an example of emergent collective phenomena.

But that explanation turns out to be a bit more complicated, according to a recent paper published in the journal Nature Communications. "This [old] explanation was so popular, it has been part of the scientific zeitgeist," said co-author Igor Belykh, a mathematician at Georgia State University. "Our work shows that very tiny vibrations from each person walking can get amplified significantly." People adjust their footsteps to keep their balance in response to the wobble, which only makes things worse. Eventually the bridge becomes unstable.

[...] But that original explanation was incomplete. "The initial impulse a lot of researchers had when looking at this problem was that it was about collective behavior," Varun Joshi, a biomechanical engineer at the University of Michigan, told Ars. "This was based on the presence of multiple pedestrians and the apparent synchronization between them, as observed in videos. However, data collected from actual bridges showed a lack of synchronization in many cases. This led to a lot of experimental work studying individual human response to shaken treadmills, looking for a 'negative damping effect' from individuals. The hope was that the scaled effect of negative damping (even without any adaptation to the presence of other people) would explain the phenomenon."

upstart writes:

Earth's first giant:

While dinosaurs ruled the land, ichthyosaurs and other aquatic reptiles (that were emphatically not dinosaurs) ruled the waves, reaching similarly gargantuan sizes and species diversity. Evolving fins and hydrodynamic body-shapes seen in both fish and whales, ichthyosaurs swam the ancient oceans for nearly the entirety of the Age of Dinosaurs.

"Ichthyosaurs derive from an as yet unknown group of land-living reptiles and were air-breathing themselves," says lead author Dr. Martin Sander, paleontologist at the University of Bonn and Research Associate with the Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM). "From the first skeleton discoveries in southern England and Germany over 250 years ago, these 'fish-saurians' were among the first large fossil reptiles known to science, long before the dinosaurs, and they have captured the popular imagination ever since."

Excavated from a rock unit called the Fossil Hill Member in the Augusta Mountains of Nevada, the well-preserved skull, along with part of the backbone, shoulder, and forefin, date back to the Middle Triassic (247.2-237 million years ago), representing the earliest case of an ichthyosaur reaching epic proportions. As big as a large sperm whale at more than 17 meters (55.78 feet) long, the newly named Cymbospondylus youngorum is the largest animal yet discovered from that time period, on land or in the sea. In fact, it was the first giant creature to ever inhabit the Earth that we know of.

"The importance of the find was not immediately apparent," notes Dr. Sander, "because only a few vertebrae were exposed on the side of the canyon. However, the anatomy of the vertebrae suggested that the front end of the animal might still be hidden in the rocks. Then, one cold September day in 2011, the crew needed a warm-up and tested this suggestion by excavation, finding the skull, forelimbs, and chest region."

The new name for the species, C. youngorum, honors a happy coincidence, the sponsoring of the fieldwork by Great Basin Brewery of Reno, owned and operated by Tom and Bonda Young, the inventors of the locally famous Icky beer which features an ichthyosaur on its label.

Journal Reference:
P. Martin Sander, Eva Maria Griebeler, Nicole Klein, Jorge Velez Juarbe, Tanja Wintrich, Liam J. Revell, Lars Schmitz. Early giant reveals faster evolution of large body size in ichthyosaurs than in cetaceans, Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.abf5787)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Scientists demonstrate a novel rocket for deep-space exploration:

The growing interest in deep-space exploration has sparked the need for powerful long-lived rocket systems to drive spacecraft through the cosmos. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have now developed a tiny modified version of a plasma-based propulsion system called a Hall thruster that both increases the lifetime of the rocket and produces high power.

[...] The new device helps overcome the problem for wall-less Hall thrusters that allows the plasma propellant to shoot from the rocket at wide angles, contributing little to the rocket's thrust. "In short, wall-less Hall thrusters while promising have an unfocused plume because of the lack of channel walls," Simmonds said. "So we needed to figure out a way to focus the plume to increase the thrust and efficiency and make it a better overall thruster for spacecraft."

[...] These developments increased the density of the thrust by shaping more of it in a reduced volume, a key goal for Hall thrusters. An added benefit of the segmented electrode has been the reduction of plasma instabilities called breathing mode oscillations, "where the amount of plasma increases and decreases periodically as the ionization rate changes with time" Simmonds said. Surprisingly, he added, the segmented electrode caused these oscillations to go away. "Segmented electrodes are very useful for Hall thrusters for these reasons," he said.

The new high-thrust-density rocket can be especially beneficial for tiny cubic satellites, or CubeSats. Masaaki Yamada, Simmonds' co-doctoral adviser who heads the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment (MRX) that studies the process behind solar flares, Northern lights and other space phenomena, proposed the use of a wall-less segmented electrode system to power a CubeSat. Simmonds and his team of undergraduate students working under the guidance of Prof. Daniel Marlow, the Evans Crawford 1911 Professor of Physics at Princeton, took up that proposal to develop a CubeSat and such a rocket -- a project that was halted near completion by the COVID-19 pandemic and that could be resumed in the future.

Journal Reference:
J. Simmonds, Y. Raitses. Mitigation of breathing oscillations and focusing of the plume in a segmented electrode wall-less Hall thruster, Applied Physics Letters (DOI: 10.1063/5.0070307)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Dogs notice when computer animations violate laws of physics:

A pair of researchers at the Medical University of Vienna and University of Vienna has found that dogs notice when objects in the world do not conform to the laws of physics. In their paper published in the journal Biology Letters, Christoph Völter and Ludwig Huber describe experiments they conducted with pet dogs looking at objects depicted on a computer screen.

Prior research has shown that human babies and adult chimpanzees tend to notice if something they are looking at appears to violate the laws of physics—things dropping upwards, instead of down, for example. In this new effort, the researchers have found the same is true for pet dogs.

Journal Reference:
Christoph J. Völter and Ludwig Huber, Dogs' looking times and pupil dilation response reveal expectations about contact causality, Biology Letters (DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2021.0465)

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

While using a stencil should make solder paste application onto PCBs a simple affair, there are a number of “gotchas” that make it more art than science. Luckily, there are tools you can build, like this 3D-printed vacuum-assist stencil jig, that take a little of the finesse out of the process.

[...] In use, the PCB is placed on the center fixed platform, while the stencil sits atop it. Suction pulls the stencil firmly down onto the PCB and holds it there while the solder paste is applied. Releasing the suction causes the outer section of the platform to spring up vertically, resulting in nice, neat solder-covered pads. [Marius] demonstrates the box in the video below, and shows a number of adapters that would make it work with different sized PCBs.

Link to 5m28s YouTube video.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.thedrive.com/news/43636/toyota-reviewing-key-fob-remote-start-subscription-plan-after-massive-blowback

Earlier this month, we broke a story about Toyota locking its key fob remote start function behind a monthly subscription. If owners of certain models aren't actively enrolled in a larger Toyota connected services plan, the proximity remote start function on the fob—that is, when you press the lock button three times to start the car while outside of it—will not work even though it sends the signal directly to the car. Obviously, this sent people into a frenzy whether they own a Toyota or not, because it was seen as a dark harbinger of the perils of fully-connected cars. Automakers now have the ability to nickel and dime people to death by charging ongoing subscription fees for functions that used to be a one-and-done purchase, and it looked like Toyota was hopping on the bandwagon.

At the time, Toyota declined to give us a detailed answer on why it chose to take a feature that doesn't need an internet connection to function and moved it behind a paywall. Today, we've got answers. Toyota now claims it never intended to market the key fob remote start as a real feature, and it also says the subscription requirement was an inadvertent result of a relatively small technical decision related to the way its new vehicles are architectured. Finally, Toyota has heard the outrage over the last week—a spokesperson told us the company was caught off guard by the blowback—and its executive team is currently examining whether it's possible to reverse course and drop the subscription requirement for key fob remote start.

Previously: Toyota Owners Have to Pay $8/Month to Keep Using their Key Fob for Remote Start

Original Submission

upstart writes:

How do our organs know when to stop growing? A multidisciplinary team led by researchers from UNIGE and MPIPKS has solved with a mathematical equation the mystery of how an organ changes its size depending on the size of the animal.

Cells of a developing tissue proliferate and organize themselves under the action of signaling molecules, the morphogens. But how do they know what size is appropriate for the living organism to which they belong? The research groups of Marcos Gonzalez-Gaitan, Professor at the Department of Biochemistry of the Faculty of Science of the UNIGE and Frank Jülicher Director at the MPIPKS in Dresden, have solved this mystery by following a specific morphogen in the cells of tissues of different sizes in the fruit fly Drosophila.

In Drosophila, the morphogen Decapentaplegic (DPP), a molecule required for the formation of the fifteen (deca-penta) appendages (wings, antennae, mandibles...) diffuses from a localized source within the developing tissue and then forms decreasing concentration gradients (or gradual variations) as it moves away from the source. In previous studies, Marcos Gonzalez-Gaitan's group, in collaboration with the German team, has shown that these concentration gradients of DPP extend over a larger or smaller area depending on the size of the developing tissue. Thus, the smaller a tissue, the smaller the spread of the DPP gradient from its diffusion source. On the other hand, the larger a tissue, the larger the spread of the DPP morphogen gradient. However, the question remained as to how this concentration gradient scales to the growing size of the future tissue/organ.

"The original approach of my team, composed of biologists, biochemists, mathematicians, and physicists, is to analyze what happens at the level of each cell, rather than placing our observations at the scale of the tissue," comments Marcos Gonzalez-Gaitan. "The central point is to deal with living matter as if it was just matter, that is to say, studying biology with the principles of physics," says Frank Jülicher. The two teams have developed a battery of sophisticated tools to follow the fate of the DPP molecule in and between cells of a tissue with great precision using quantitative microscopy techniques. "These tools have allowed us to define a multitude of parameters, linked to cellular processes, for this morphogen.

Journal Reference:
Michailidi, Maria Romanova, Hadjivasiliou, Zena, Aguilar-Hidalgo, Daniel, et al. Morphogen gradient scaling by recycling of intracellular Dpp, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04346-w)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

James Webb Space Telescope reaches launch pad for Christmas liftoff

The James Webb Space Telescope is due to launch on Saturday (Dec. 25) during a 32-minute window that opens at 7:20 a.m. EST (1220 GMT). The massive observatory will blast off from Kourou, French Guiana, atop an Ariane 5 rocket operated by European launch provider Arianespace. You can watch launch coverage live at Space.com beginning at 6 a.m. EST (1100 GMT) courtesy of NASA or you can watch directly at the agency's website.

ESA launch kit (PDF).

Previously:

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

Space science: The telescope that ate astronomy
JWST Primary Mirror Starting To Come Together
New Space Telescope's Giant Gold Mirror Unveiled (April 29th)
Telescope That 'Ate Astronomy' Is on Track to Surpass Hubble
James Webb Space Telescope Vibration Testing Completed
Launch of James Webb Space Telescope Delayed to Spring 2019
Launch of James Webb Space Telescope Could be Further Delayed
JWST: Too Big to Fail?
GAO: James Webb Space Telescope Launch Date Likely Will be Delayed (Again)
Launch of James Webb Space Telescope Delayed to May 2020, Could Exceed Budget Cap
NASA Announces JWST Independent Review Board Members
Screws and Washers Have Fallen Off JWST Amid Testing and Independent Review
Launch of James Webb Space Telescope Delayed Again, This Time to March 2021, Cost at $9.66 Billion
NASA Administrator at House Hearing: WFIRST Could be Delayed to Help Pay for JWST
James Webb Passes Critical Mission Review for 2021 Launch, Final Testing Nearing Completion
NASA Ominously Chooses Halloween 2021 to Launch Long-Delayed Space Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope, NASA's Next Great Observatory, Passes Final Ground Tests
The James Webb Telescope has a Launch Date
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope Passes Crucial Launch-Simulation Tests
James Webb Telescope: Preparations Resume for December 22 Launch
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope Fully Fueled for Launch

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Wise old elephants keep the young calm:

The study, in collaboration with Elephants for Africa, examined the behaviour of 281 male elephants in an all-male area in Makgadikgadi Pans National Park, Botswana, over a period of three years.

The elephants were divided into four age groups, adolescents (10-15 and 16-20 years), and adults (21-25 and 26+ years).

The results found that with fewer old bull elephants around, elephants were more likely to be aggressive towards non-elephant targets such as vehicles, livestock and other species.

The adolescent elephants, in particular, were more aggressive and fearful to non-elephant targets when they were alone compared to with other males. This indicates that socially isolated adolescents may also be an increased threat to people.

[...] "Our research draws attention to what is often a rather overlooked area in animal behaviour; that of the complex relationships and connections that occur between males in non-breeding all-male societies," said lead author Connie Allen of Exeter's Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour.

"It appears the presence of more knowledgeable, older elephants in groups may play a key role in keeping the younger, less experienced males calm and lowering their perception of their current threat level, which means there's less risk of aggression towards humans and other species.

Do gray-bearded programmers similarly rein in bright-eyed junior programmers?

Journal Reference:
Connie R. B. Allen, Darren P. Croft, Lauren J. N. Brent. Reduced older male presence linked to increased rates of aggression to non-conspecific targets in male elephants, Proceedings of the Royal Society B (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2021.1374)

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

[...] The flexible gDNP [graphene depth neural probe] devices were chronically implanted in mice with epilepsy. The implanted devices provided outstanding spatial resolution and very rich wide bandwidth recording of epileptic brain signals over weeks. In addition, extensive chronic biocompatibility tests confirmed no significant tissue damage and neuro-inflammation, attributed to the biocompatibility of the used materials, including graphene, and the flexible nature of the gDNP device.

The ability to record and map the full range of brain signals using electrophysiological probes will greatly advance our understanding of brain diseases and aid the clinical management of patients with diverse neurological disorders. Current technologies are limited in their ability to accurately obtain with high spatial fidelity ultraslow brain signals.

Epilepsy is the most common serious brain disorder worldwide, with up to 30% of people unable to control their seizures using traditional anti-epileptic drugs. For drug-refractory patients, epilepsy surgery may be a viable option. Surgical removal of the area of the brain where the seizures first start can result in seizure freedom; however, the success of surgery relies on accurately identifying the seizure onset zone (SOZ).

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Tsunamis' magnetic fields are detectable before sea level change: Magnetic field information could provide earlier disaster warning to at-risk regions, potentially saving lives:

Tsunamis generate magnetic fields as they move conductive seawater through the Earth's magnetic field. Researchers previously predicted that the tsunami's magnetic field would arrive before a change in sea level, but they lacked simultaneous measurements of magnetics and sea level that are necessary to demonstrate the phenomenon.

The new study provides real-world evidence for using tsunamis' magnetic fields to predict the height of tsunami waves using data from two real events -- a 2009 tsunami in Samoa and a 2010 tsunami in Chile -- that have both sets of necessary data. The new study was published in AGU's Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, which focuses on the physics and chemistry of the solid Earth.

The study confirms the magnetic field generated by a tsunami arrives ahead of sea-level change and that its magnitude can be used to estimate the tsunami's wave height. How much earlier the magnetic field arrives depends on water depth, but in their results, the study authors found the early arrival time to be about one minute prior to sea level change over a 4,800-meter deep sea.

Journal Reference:
Zhiheng Lin, Hiroaki Toh, Takuto Minami. Direct Comparison of the Tsunami‐Generated Magnetic Field With Sea Level Change for the 2009 Samoa and 2010 Chile Tsunamis, Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth (DOI: 10.1029/2021JB022760)

Original Submission

[2021-12-24 23:01:40 UTC UPDATE] Yay! mechanicjay heard my plea, and responded! "slash died and left a stale pid behind. Cleaned it up, started slash, all good now." Thank-you! Thank-you! Thank-you! Original post follows.

It has been brought to my attention that the story comment counts have not been updating.

I'm seeing the same symptoms that I did on 2021-12-19 when this last happened. So, I tried to restart things armed with this new information. The system insisted on ignoring my efforts. :(

I've requested help from other, more-knowledgeable staff rather than following the time-honored tradition of not asking for help until everyone else has has a chance to gum up the works!

Summary: New stories ARE going out on schedule. Further, comment AND moderations ARE being accepted (and tallied) as expected. In short, it seems that everything *else* is working as expected (whew!). I apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience while things get sorted out. --martyb/Bytram

P.S. I can assure you that eggnog had no part in the current situation!

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

GEOST, a small company based in Tucson, Arizona, won two U.S. Space Force contracts worth $38 million to develop an optical sensor payload that could be hosted on government or commercial satellites to scan the geostationary belt more than 22,000 miles above Earth.

The contracts awarded to the company — $6 million in November 2020 and $32 million in December 2021 — include the design and development of the sensor, ground infrastructure, technical support and integration with the host platform and launch vehicle. But the actual payload is less than $10 million, a key price point that the Space Force believes would make it possible to deploy these in large numbers, said GEOST vice president and general manager Joshua Hartman.

Hartman said the company’s payload will be ready to launch in 2023. The Space Force has not yet identified a host satellite but the whole idea behind this program is to build sensors that could go on almost any U.S. or allied government, or commercial satellite to provide space domain awareness.

The Space Force wants to proliferate these sensors across geostationary orbit, so the $10 million target price is key to make that a reality, said Hartman. 

The Space Systems Command in an Oct. 21 solicitation said the Space Force is considering buying a large number of “space domain awareness sensors to augment current and planned systems.” Multiple sensors would be needed to get “frequent revisits of significant portions of the GEO belt.”

Original Submission

DannyB writes:

Yes, ANOTHER wonderful item that will "improve" your digital sound!

$2,500 Ethernet Switch Effectively Isolates Audiophiles From Cash:

Ever wondered if you needed an ethernet switch that has built-in power conditioning for the sake of better audio fidelity? You probably haven't, but Synergistic Research has. The company developed a wild ethernet switch that is designed to smooth out electric signals inside the switch in order to gain higher audio quality from audio streaming services, but the price point is dubious, to say the least.

The Ethernet Switch UEF costs a substantial $2,595, which will make it appealing to only the most diehard of audiophiles.

[...] The unit is equipped with Active EM Cell technology which claims to close the gap between digital audio quality and good old-fashioned analog tapes and LPs. To "further improve audio quality," the switch is constructed from a solid billet of aluminum and uses carbon fiber to eliminate chassis vibrations from making their way into the switch (which the company claims could interfere with the digital signal). There's even an optional SR Ground Block that serves as a ground for the switch.

It is important to understand that a bit value zero or one with low distortion conveys better quality information than a zero or one that is somewhat distorted but completely readable.

Previously:
Solid Snake-Oil Storage: This SSD Is Aimed at Audiophiles

Original Submission