Pathology typically involves cutting tissue samples by hand, placing each sample between two pieces of glass, and studying it under a microscope. While microscopes have improved with time, the method has remained largely unchanged for more than 150 years. A human can typically process about 12 sample slices per hour.
3Scan speeds this process up considerably. Its KESM tool uses an automated diamond knife to cut samples at 1,000 slices per hour while simultaneously scanning an image of each slice. Those scans are layered to create a 3D tissue model with micron-scale resolution.
3Scan’s platform has the potential to illuminate the mechanisms by which biological processes become abnormal, which could improve diagnostics, Daniel says: “There’s only so much tissue one person can see in their lifetime, and if we can build something that looks at pathology across many different demographics, across many different cases and diseases, we can get better insights.
There are also reports that show that pathologists achieve consensus on a case 80% of the time. That’s a pretty high success rate—unless it’s your diagnosis, in which case it’s very scary.” Once 3Scan’s tools do the imaging and initial analytics, the data is sent back to pathologists, who explore and translate the findings. “We like to imagine the pathologist as the conductor of an orchestra of robots that can go out there and image vast fields of biology,” Daniel, one of the inventors says. “The pathologist plays a crucial role in being the informed human perspective, differentiating what is pathologic versus normal within that biology.”
The research ship Okeanos Explorer is sending an ROV into the depths of the Pacific Ocean, seeking out exotic sea animals and other curiosities. And, you can watch it live online.
Armchair oceanographers, take note: This week, the research ship Okeanos Explorer will send a remotely operated vehicle into the depths of the Pacific Ocean, seeking out exotic sea animals like the "walking" fish called a sea toad and other curiosities. And, you can have a front-row seat.
The ROV, called Deep Discoverer, will reach depths of 3.7 miles (6,000 meters) beneath the sea's surface. Its trip is scheduled to begin Thursday (Feb. 16), and you can watch it unfold online.
This expedition, which will run through September, is part of NOAA's CAPSTONE, or Campaign to Address Pacific monument Science, Technology, and Ocean Needs.
The project, in its third and final year, is aimed at collecting data from the deep ocean within marine-protected areas in the central and western Pacific Ocean, according to NOAA. The information will not only shed light on largely unexplored areas; it will also help others to make informed decisions regarding management of the protected areas and on the issue of deep-sea mining.
Several years ago, a group of American cockroaches discovered four strangers in their midst. A brief investigation revealed that the interlopers smelled like cockroaches, and so they were welcomed into the cockroach community. The newcomers weren’t content to just sit on the sidelines, however. Instead, they began to actively shape the group’s behavior. Nocturnal creatures, cockroaches normally avoid light. But when the intruders headed for a brighter shelter, the rest of the roaches followed.
What the cockroaches didn’t seem to realize was that their new, light-loving leaders weren’t fellow insects at all. They were tiny mobile robots, doused in cockroach pheromones and programmed to trick the living critters into following their lead. The demonstration, dubbed the LEURRE project and conducted by a team of European researchers, validated a radical idea—that robots and animals could be merged into a “biohybrid” society, with biological and technological organisms forming a cohesive unit.
A handful of scientists have now built robots that can socially integrate into animal communities. Their goal is to create machines that not only infiltrate animal groups but also influence them, changing how fish swim, birds fly, and bees care for their young. If the research reaches the real world, we may one day use robots to manage livestock, control pests, and protect and preserve wildlife. So, dear furry and feathered friends, creepy and crawly creatures of the world: Prepare for a robo-takeover.
A BBC documentary team unleashed 50 spycams into penguin colonies, including cameras that served as eyes for robotic penguins, to capture stunning close-up footage of the unusual birds.
“Penguins: Spy in the Huddle” documents nearly a year hanging out with penguins through the surrogate eyes of 50 different spycams. Some of the spycams were disguised as chunks of snow or small boulders, but the most adorable cameras were those in the guise of robotic penguins.
All these robot spy cameras helped the documentary crew get right into the midst of the penguin colonies without disturbing them or altering their normal behavior. The team was able to capture stunning footage, including that of an Emperor penguin laying an egg, a moment they say was filmed for the very first time.
Many robotic designs take nature as their muse: sticking to walls like geckos, swimming through water like tuna, sprinting across terrain like cheetahs. Such designs borrow properties from nature, using engineered materials and hardware to mimic animals’ behavior.
Scientists at MIT and the University of Pennsylvania have genetically engineered muscle cells to flex in response to light, and are using the light-sensitive tissue to build highly articulated robots. This “bio-integrated” approach, as they call it, may one day enable robotic animals that move with the strength and flexibility of their living counterparts.
The group’s design effectively blurs the boundary between nature and machines, says Harry Asada, the Ford Professor of Engineering in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering.
“With bio-inspired designs, biology is a metaphor, and robotics is the tool to make it happen,” says Asada, who is a co-author on the paper. “With bio-integrated designs, biology provides the materials, not just the metaphor. This is a new direction we’re pushing in biorobotics.”
Once said to possess magic powers, narwhal tusks were sold as unicorn horns centuries ago, and still today some mystique surrounds the overgrown tooth protruding from this unique whale's head. Scientists have never been able to pin down the exact purpose it serves, but have now captured the first-ever video evidence of it being used as a hunting tool, helping to unravel some of the mystery.
All kinds of theories have emerged regarding the use of the narwhal's tusk. The whales, which feed on squid, cod and shrimp in the Arctic, grow tusks up to 10 ft long (3 m) with up to 10 million nerve endings inside. But why? To bash through ice? Transmit sounds? To spear fish?
If you came here looking for dramatic footage of a whale impaling a fish and bursting triumphantly through the water's surface to show off its catch, you may be a little disappointed. Using drones to study narwhal behavior in far northern Canada, scientists have, however, seen narwhals using their tusks to capture their prey, though it is more of a subtle swipe, intended to stun the fish before scooping it up in their mouths.
The evidence, gathered by various research groups including the World Wildlife Fund Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, is important all the same. The scientists say learning more about narwhals in the face of changing Arctic conditions will help conservation efforts moving forward.
Take the connectome of a worm and transplant it as software in a Lego Mindstorms EV3 robot - what happens next? It is a deep and long standing philosophical question. Are we just the sum of our neural networks. Of course, if you work in AI you take the answer mostly for granted, but until someone builds a human brain and switches it on we really don't have a concrete example of the principle in action.
The nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) is tiny and only has 302 neurons. These have been completely mapped and the OpenWorm project is working to build a complete simulation of the worm in software. One of the founders of the OpenWorm project, Timothy Busbice, has taken the connectome and implemented an object oriented neuron program.
The model is accurate in its connections and makes use of UDP packets to fire neurons. If two neurons have three synaptic connections then when the first neuron fires a UDP packet is sent to the second neuron with the payload "3". The neurons are addressed by IP and port number. The system uses an integrate and fire algorithm. Each neuron sums the weights and fires if it exceeds a threshold. The accumulator is zeroed if no message arrives in a 200ms window or if the neuron fires. This is similar to what happens in the real neural network, but not exact.
The software works with sensors and effectors provided by a simple LEGO robot. The sensors are sampled every 100ms. For example, the sonar sensor on the robot is wired as the worm's nose. If anything comes within 20cm of the "nose" then UDP packets are sent to the sensory neurons in the network.
The same idea is applied to the 95 motor neurons but these are mapped from the two rows of muscles on the left and right to the left and right motors on the robot. The motor signals are accumulated and applied to control the speed of each motor. The motor neurons can be excitatory or inhibitory and positive and negative weights are used.
And the result? It is claimed that the robot behaved in ways that are similar to observed C. elegans. Stimulation of the nose stopped forward motion. Touching the anterior and posterior touch sensors made the robot move forward and back accordingly. Stimulating the food sensor made the robot move forward.
Researchers have identified some of the physics that may explain how insects can so quickly recover from a midflight stall -- unlike conventional fixed wing aircraft, where stalls often lead to crash landings.
The analysis, in which the researchers studied the flow around a rotating model wing, improves the understanding of how insects fly and informs the design of small flying robots built for intelligence gathering, surveillance, search-and-rescue, and other purposes.
An insect such as a fruit fly hovers in the air by flapping its wings -- a complex motion akin to the freestyle stroke in swimming. The wing rotates in a single plane, and by varying the angle between the plane and its body, the insect can fly forward from a hovering position.
To simulate the basics of this action, Matthew Bross and colleagues at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA, studied how water flows around a rotating model wing consisting of a rectangular piece of acrylic that is twice as long as it is wide. The rotation axis is off to the side of the wing and parallel to its width, so that it rotates like half of an airplane propeller. To simulate forward motion -- a scenario in which the insect is accelerating or climbing -- the researchers pumped water in the direction perpendicular to the plane of rotation.
"We were able to identify the development of flow structure over an insect-scaled wing over a range of forward flight velocities," Bross explained. The researchers made detailed three-dimensional computer visualizations of the flow around the wing, finding that a leading-edge vortex -- a feature crucial for providing lift -- almost immediately appears once the wing starts to rotate after a stalled state.
The article, "Flow structure on a rotating wing: effect of steady incident flow," by Matthew Bross, Cem Alper Ozen and Donald Rockwell appears in the journal Physics of Fluids. See: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4816632
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a technique that uses an electronic interface to remotely control, or steer, cockroaches.
The new technique developed by Bozkurt's team works by embedding a low-cost, light-weight, commercially-available chip with a wireless receiver and transmitter onto each roach (they used Madagascar hissing cockroaches). Weighing 0.7 grams, the cockroach backpack also contains a microcontroller that monitors the interface between the implanted electrodes and the tissue to avoid potential neural damage. The microcontroller is wired to the roach's antennae and cerci. The cerci are sensory organs on the roach's abdomen, which are normally used to detect movement in the air that could indicate a predator is approaching – causing the roach to scurry away. But the researchers use the wires attached to the cerci to spur the roach into motion. The roach thinks something is sneaking up behind it and moves forward. The wires attached to the antennae serve as electronic reins, injecting small charges into the roach's neural tissue. The charges trick the roach into thinking that the antennae are in contact with a physical barrier, which effectively steers them in the opposite direction.
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