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RAWALPINDI: Pakistan on Monday conducted a successful flight test of the indigenously developed Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM) “Ra’ad”, said an Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) press release.

The Ra’ad missile, with a range of 350 km, enables Pakistan to achieve 'strategic standoff capability' on land and at sea.

“Cruise Technology” is extremely complex and has been developed by only a few countries in the world. The state of the art Ra’ad Cruise Missile with stealth capabilities is a low altitude, terrain hugging missile with high maneuverability; can deliver nuclear and conventional warheads with pin point accuracy.

 

Director General Strategic Plans Division, Lieutenant General Zubair Mahmood Hayat, while congratulating the scientists and engineers on achieving yet another milestone of historic significance, termed it a major step towards strengthening Pakistan’s full spectrum credible minimum deterrence capability. Pakistan’s strategic pursuits are aimed at achieving strategic stability in the region, he said.

He appreciated the technical prowess, dedication and commitment of scientists who contributed whole heartedly to make this launch a success.

He showed his full confidence over operational preparedness of strategic forces including employment and deployment concepts, refinement and training of all ranks in operational and technical domains.

The successful launch has been commended by President Mamnoon Hussain and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who have congratulated the scientists and engineers on their outstanding achievement.

 

Courtesy: http://www.dawn.com/news/1161034/

A senior Japanese stem cell scientist has died in an apparent suicide.

Yoshiki Sasai, who recently co-authored two controversial papers on stem cells, was found dead at his laboratory, the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan.

Riken's deputy director, Sasai was renowned for his ability to coax stem cells into becoming other types of cells. This year, however, his career has been under the spotlight. Sasai was a co-author on two research papers that claimed to produce embryonic stem cells called STAP from adult cells using acid. The papers were retracted from the journal Nature in July due to multiple errors.

Sasai, 52, was cleared of any direct involvement by a Riken investigation, but criticised for his failure to correctly edit the papers and for his supervision of lead author, Haruko Obokata, who was found guilty of misconduct in April.

In a letter published on 2 July, Sasai spoke of his deep regret that he was not able to identify the errors in the papers before publication. "Considering the discrepancies that have been pointed out recently... it has become increasingly difficult to call the STAP phenomenon even a promising hypothesis," he said. Experiments to clarify whether or not STAP cells do exist continue at Harvard and Riken.

Nature reports that a bag found at the scene contained three letters addressed to Riken management, Sasai's laboratory members and Obokata.

Philip Campbell, editor-in-chief of Nature said in a statement that Sasai's death is a true tragedy for science and an immense loss to the research community. "Yoshiki Sasai was an exceptional scientist and he has left an extraordinary legacy of pioneering work across many fields within stem cell and developmental biology. Our thoughts are with his family, friends and colleagues at this time."

 

Courtesy: http://www.newscientist.com/

 

The chip would need replacing every 16 years (chip pictured is not the one described in the article)

A contraceptive computer chip that can be controlled by remote control has been developed in Massachusetts.

The chip is implanted under a woman's skin, releasing a small dose of levonorgestrel, a hormone.

This will happen every day for 16 years, but can be stopped at any time by using a wireless remote control.

The project has been backed by Bill Gates, and will be submitted for pre-clinical testing in the US next year - and possibly go on sale by 2018.

The device measures 20mm x 20mm x 7mm and will be "competitively priced", its creators said.

Convenience factor

Tiny reservoirs of the hormone are stored on a 1.5cm-wide microchip within the device.

A small electric charge melts an ultra-thin seal around the levonorgestrel, releasing the 30 microgram dose into the body.

There are other types of contraceptive implant available, the researchers noted, but all require a trip to a clinic and an outpatient procedure in order to be deactivated.

Someone across the room cannot re-programme your implant” - Dr Robert Farra

"The ability to turn the device on and off provides a certain convenience factor for those who are planning their family," said Dr Robert Farra from MIT.

The next challenge for the team is to ensure the absolute security of the device to prevent activation or deactivation by another person without the woman's knowledge.

"Communication with the implant has to occur at skin contact level distance," said Dr Farra.

"Someone across the room cannot re-programme your implant.

"Then we have secure encryption. That prevents someone from trying to interpret or intervene between the communications."

Huge range

The same technology could be used to administer other drugs.

Simon Karger, head of the surgical and interventional business at Cambridge Consultants, said that implanted technology like this faces a range of challenges and risks.

But he added that overall "the value to the patient of these types of implant can be huge and we foresee a future in which a huge range of conditions are treated through smart implanted systems".

Implanted devices could help people who forget to take medication at the correct time

The innovation comes at a time when governments and organisations around the world have agreed to try to bring family planning to around 120 million more women by 2020.

This challenge opens the door to this kind of implant technology being used in areas where access to traditional contraceptives is limited - a bigger priority, argued Gavin Corley, a biomedical engineer.

 

Courtesy : By Dave LeeTechnology reporter, BBC News

Courtesy : http://www.iflscience.com/

British soldiers have been using the diminutive Black Hornet Nano mini-copter for surveillance in Afghanistan since 2012.
By KATE STANTON, UPI.com (Ministry of Defense) 

It's tiny, but it's not a toy.

British troops in Afghanistan have been testing out tiny unmanned aerial vehicles -- a.k.a. drones -- that are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. At four inches long and 16 grams, the Norweigian-made "Black Hornet Nanos" look just like the tiny play-helicopters you might see at the toy store, but they carry tiny cameras that capture both still images and video.

According to the BBC, about 160 of these little flyers are darting around Afghanistan on surveillance missions for soldiers.

"We used it to look for insurgent firing points and check out exposed areas of the ground before crossing, which is a real asset," Sgt. Christopher Petherbridge said in an announcement Monday. "It is very easy to operate and offers amazing capability to the guys on the ground."

The Hornets travel at a top speed of 22 mph and can remain in the air for about 30 minutes.

"Soldiers are using it to peer around corners or over walls and other obstacles to identify any hidden dangers and the images are displayed on a handheld terminal," the MoD announcement said.

 

Source: http://www.upi.com/blog/2013/02/04/British-army-unveils-toy-sized-Black-Hornet-drones/7671360008879/?spt=fsb&or=ros

To improve the next generation of insect-size flying machines, Johns Hopkins engineers have been aiming high-speed video cameras at some of the prettiest bugs on the planet. By figuring out how butterflies flutter among flowers with amazing grace and agility, the researchers hope to help small airborne robots mimic these maneuvers.

U.S. defense agencies, which have funded this research, are supporting the development of bug-size flyers to carry out reconnaissance, search-and-rescue and environmental monitoring missions without risking human lives. These devices are commonly called micro aerial vehicles or MAVs.

"For military missions in particular, these MAVs must be able to fly successfully through complex urban environments, where there can be tight spaces and turbulent gusts of wind," said Tiras Lin, a Whiting School of Engineering undergraduate who has been conducting the high-speed video research. "These flying robots will need to be able to turn quickly. But one area in which MAVs are lacking is maneuverability."

 

To address that shortcoming, Lin has been studying butterflies. "Flying insects are capable of performing a dazzling variety of flight maneuvers," he said. "In designing MAVs, we can learn a lot from flying insects."

Lin's research has been supervised by Rajat Mittal, a professor of mechanical engineering. "This research is important because it attempts to not only address issues related to bio-inspired design of MAVs, but it also explores fundamental questions in biology related to the limits and capabilities of flying insects," Mittal said.

 

To conduct this study, Lin has been using high-speed video to look at how changes in mass distribution associated with the wing flapping and body deformation of a flying insect help it engage in rapid aerial twists and turns. Lin, a junior mechanical engineering major from San Rafael, Calif., recently presented some of his findings at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics. The student also won second-prize for his presentation of this research at a regional meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

"Ice skaters who want to spin faster bring their arms in close to their bodies and extend their arms out when they want to slow down," Lin said. "These positions change the spatial distribution of a skater's mass and modify their moment of inertia; this in turn affects the rotation of the skater's body. An insect may be able to do the same thing with its body and wings."

 

Butterflies move too quickly for someone to see these wing tactics clearly with the naked eye, so Lin, working with graduate student Lingxiao Zheng, used high-speed, high-resolution videogrammetry to mathematically document the trajectory and body conformation of painted lady butterflies. They accomplished this with three video cameras capable of recording 3,000 one-megapixel images per second. (By comparison, a standard video camera shoots 24, 30 or 60 frames per second.)

The Johns Hopkins researchers anchored their cameras in fixed positions and focused them on a small region within a dry transparent aquarium tank. For each analysis, several butterflies were released inside the tank. When a butterfly veered into the focal area, Lin switched on the cameras for about two seconds, collecting approximately 6,000 three-dimensional views of the insect's flight maneuvers. From these frames, the student typically homed in on roughly one-fifth of a second of flight, captured in 600 frames. "Butterflies flap their wings about 25 times per second," Lin said. "That's why we had to take so many pictures."

The arrangement of the three cameras allowed the researchers to capture three-dimensional data and analyze the movement of the insects' wings and bodies in minute detail. That led to a key discovery.

Source : http://phys.org/

 

Detailed Information links about this project :

http://cleantechnica.com/2012/02/07/johns-hopkins-researchers-develop-mav-the-size-of-a-bug/

http://phys.org/news/2012-02-butterfly-flight-bug-size-robots.html

http://www.robaid.com/robotics/analyzing-butterfly-flight-for-better-mav-maneuverability.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120202151608.htm

ScienceDaily (Feb. 2, 2012) — To improve the next generation of insect-size flying machines, Johns Hopkins engineers have been aiming high-speed video cameras at some of the prettiest bugs on the planet. By figuring out how butterflies flutter among flowers with amazing grace and agility, the researchers hope to help small airborne robots mimic these maneuvers.

U.S. defense agencies, which have funded this research, are supporting the development of bug-size flyers to carry out reconnaissance, search-and-rescue and environmental monitoring missions without risking human lives. These devices are commonly called micro aerial vehicles or MAVs.

"For military missions in particular, these MAVs must be able to fly successfully through complex urban environments, where there can be tight spaces and turbulent gusts of wind," said Tiras Lin, a Whiting School of Engineering undergraduate who has been conducting the high-speed video research. "These flying robots will need to be able to turn quickly. But one area in which MAVs are lacking is maneuverability."

To address that shortcoming, Lin has been studying butterflies. "Flying insects are capable of performing a dazzling variety of flight maneuvers," he said. "In designing MAVs, we can learn a lot from flying insects."

Lin's research has been supervised by Rajat Mittal, a professor of mechanical engineering. "This research is important because it attempts to not only address issues related to bio-inspired design of MAVs, but it also explores fundamental questions in biology related to the limits and capabilities of flying insects," Mittal said.

To conduct this study, Lin has been using high-speed video to look at how changes in mass distribution associated with the wing flapping and body deformation of a flying insect help it engage in rapid aerial twists and turns. Lin, a junior mechanical engineering major from San Rafael, Calif., recently presented some of his findings at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics. The student also won second-prize for his presentation of this research at a regional meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

"Ice skaters who want to spin faster bring their arms in close to their bodies and extend their arms out when they want to slow down," Lin said. "These positions change the spatial distribution of a skater's mass and modify their moment of inertia; this in turn affects the rotation of the skater's body. An insect may be able to do the same thing with its body and wings."

Butterflies move too quickly for someone to see these wing tactics clearly with the naked eye, so Lin, working with graduate student Lingxiao Zheng, used high-speed, high-resolution videogrammetry to mathematically document the trajectory and body conformation of painted lady butterflies. They accomplished this with three video cameras capable of recording 3,000 one-megapixel images per second. (By comparison, a standard video camera shoots 24, 30 or 60 frames per second.)

The Johns Hopkins researchers anchored their cameras in fixed positions and focused them on a small region within a dry transparent aquarium tank. For each analysis, several butterflies were released inside the tank. When a butterfly veered into the focal area, Lin switched on the cameras for about two seconds, collecting approximately 6,000 three-dimensional views of the insect's flight maneuvers. From these frames, the student typically homed in on roughly one-fifth of a second of flight, captured in 600 frames. "Butterflies flap their wings about 25 times per second," Lin said. "That's why we had to take so many pictures."

The arrangement of the three cameras allowed the researchers to capture three-dimensional data and analyze the movement of the insects' wings and bodies in minute detail. That led to a key discovery.

Earlier published research pointed out that an insect's delicate wings possess very little mass compared to the bug's body. As a result, those scholars concluded that changes in spatial distribution of mass associated with wing flapping did not need to be considered in analyzing an insect's flight maneuverability and stability. "We found out that this commonly accepted assumption was not valid, at least for insects such as butterflies," Lin said. "We learned that changes in moment of inertia, which is a property associated with mass distribution, plays an important role in insect flight, just as arm and leg motion does for ice skaters and divers."

He said this discovery should be considered by MAV designers and may be useful to biologists who study insect flight dynamics.

Lin's newest project involves even smaller bugs. With support from a Johns Hopkins Provost's Undergraduate Research Award, he has begun aiming his video cameras at fruit flies, hoping to solve the mystery of how these insects manage to land upside down on perches.

The insect flight dynamics research was funded by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation.

 

Source : http://www.sciencedaily.com