The World's First Airport Dedicated Strictly to Unmanned Drones Will Open in Wales

By Clay Dillow

The British Army's Watchkeeper Drone The Watchkeeper is just one of many military drones the UK government will host at its new Wales-based airport for unmanned aerial systems. Bthebest viaWikimedia

At AUVSI’s unmanned systems conference a couple of weeks ago, the FAA paid a good deal of lip service to the idea of integrating robotic, unmanned aircraft into the national airspace. Then they basically told those of us in the crowd that they would have the regulations ready by 2025 (notably, the speakers didn’t pause for applause at this time). But not every government is being so patient. The world’s first airport designed specifically for unmanned aircraft--boasting a 4,100-foot runway, is opening in Wales, UK, as a first step in getting UAVs and manned aircraft working together in the same airspace.

The UK’s Civilian Aviation Authority is wasting no time dedicating some airspace to unmanned aircraft, designating a 500-square-mile swath of rural Wales and the Irish Sea to the development and flight of unmanned systems. The site is not restricted; general aviation and military flights will still proceed through the airspace as normal, giving the UK--and any companies that care to involve themselves in the future of flight--a space to work on their systems in real general aviation airspace.

That’s huge for both makers of unmanned systems and the UK. The U.S. is slowly coming around to the idea that un-piloted commercial and civilian aircraft are the future of our skies, but thus far there exists no place where they can be developed in an integrated way. A few states like Oklahoma and Oregon have designated some airspace for UAV development, but flights have to be cleared with the FAA weeks in advance. Otherwise, drone aircraft have to be flown under 400 feet and within the operator’s line of sight.

In other words, advanced unmanned commercial and military systems might as well have nowhere to fly at all. In the meantime, by not dragging its feet for another fifteen years, the UK will draw unmanned systems developers that are serious about integrating their robotic systems into a national airspace to its shores for development and testing. Bravo, FAA, bravo.

Chinese Scientists Plan to Pull an Asteroid into Orbit Around Earth

By Clay Dillow

Pictured: Humans Tempting God to Smite Them Hexi Baoyin, Yang Chen, Junfeng Li via arXiv

Last week Chinese scientists wanted to divert an asteroid away from Earth. This week, they want to pull one into orbit around the Earth. What’s possible objections could anyone have to this idea?

The notion stems from a phenomenon the researchers from Tsinghua University in Beijing noticed from time to time with Jupiter. Every now and then our solar systems biggest planet pulls in an object from space, which orbits the planet for a time before jetting off into interplanetary space again.

We could do something similar with a number of near earth objects (NEOs) that will pass near Earth in the coming years and decades. None of these objects will pass close enough to be naturally captured by Earth’s gravity, but a few will come so close that a small nudge in the right direction would put them in orbit--likely a temporary orbit--around Earth.

The idea isn’t simply to flirt with cataclysmic danger, but to bring a small object (they suggest a 10-meter object called 2008EA9 that will pass nearby in 2049) into a loop around the Earth so we can study it closely for a few years. If we can get the art of capturing asteroids orbitally down to a science, we could use it to temporarily make asteroids into Earth-bound satellites (orbiting at about twice the distance of the moon), mine them for minerals, and then send them on their ways.

Read the paper at arXiv.

Researchers Use Brain Scans to Translate Thoughts Into Words

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, how many words make up a thought?

By Rebecca Boyle

Word Associations Color-coded figures illustrate the probability of words within a Wikipedia article about the object actually being associated with the object. The more red a word is, the more likely a person is to associate it, in this case, with "cow." On the other hand, bright blue suggests a strong correlation with "carrot." Black and grey "neutral" words had no specific association or were not considered at all.Francisco Pereira/via Princeton University

A new study that matches words with brain activity patterns could help neuroscientists understand how people think about abstract, complex concepts, researchers say. It lends aphysiological definition to the concept of higher thinking, using functional magnetic resonance imaging and a computer program that condensed 3,500 Wikipedia articles.

Researchers at Princeton University looked at fMRI scans to identify brain regions that were activated when participants thought about certain objects, like a carrot or a house. Then the team generated a list of topics that were also associated with those words. They looked at the same fMRI scans to determine the brain activity that was shared by the words within each topic, as aPrinceton news release puts it. For instance, thoughts about the idea of “furniture” shared similar patterns with words like “table,” “desk” and “chair.”

Once they could tell the fMRI activity that would be sparked by a particular topic, the researchers were able to look at the brain activity alone and extrapolate what the person was thinking about. If a scientist studying brain scans spotted the neural patterns corresponding to “chair,” he could tell that the person was thinking about furniture.

“Whatever subject matter is on someone's mind — not just topics or concepts, but also emotions, plans or socially oriented thoughts — is ultimately reflected in the pattern of activity across all areas of his or her brain," said the team’s senior researcher, Matthew Botvinick, an associate professor in Princeton's Department of Psychology and in the Princeton Neuroscience Institute.

The researchers started out with brain scans from a 2008 word association study, in which participants were shown a picture and a word of five objects in 12 categories. The participants had been asked to visualize the object for three seconds, and the fMRI recorded their neural activity. Then the Princeton researchers came up with a list of their own topics with which to characterize this fMRI data. They used a computer program to condense 3,500 Wikipedia articles about objects — like an airplane, heroin, birds and manual transmission. The program came up with 40 topics to which these things could relate — i.e. aviation, drugs, animals or machinery. (Their full paper is available online for those interested in the specific methods.)

They arranged the fMRI scans by subject matter, and were ultimately able to tell the general topic on a person’s mind. It was harder to pick out an individual object, however, the Princeton news office explains. The eventual goal is to translate brain activity patterns into the correct words to fully describe thoughts, the researchers say.

This could have applications for helping people with disabilities, for whom brain scans might be able to elucidate their thinking more effectively than pictures. The research appears in the journalFrontiers in Human Neuroscience.

New 'Goldilocks' Exoplanet Could be the Most Earth-Like We've Yet Seen

Just a question of cloud cover

By Clay Dillow

Needs More Clouds A rendering of what an alien habitable planet might look like if we could ever get close enough to see it. Illustration courtesy L. Calçada, ESO

Scientists have tracked down another goldilocks planet 31 light-years from Earth, and according to astronomers it has some strong points in its favor when it comes to the possibility of harboring the ingredients for life. HD85512b orbits an orange dwarf in the constellation Vela, and it’s just the right distance from the sun--and just the right mass--to rank among the most Earth-like planets ever discovered.

And by “among,” we mean really one of just two (or three, depending on how you feel aboutGliese 581g). Of the hundreds of exoplanets astronomers have recently discovered orbiting distant stars, only one--Gliese 581d--has been of the proper mass and distance from its star to be considered a strong candidate for habitability. Nearby Gliese 581g was once thought to be even more Earth-like than 581d, until some scientists asserted that 581g doesn’t even exist--a point that is still under debate.

HD85512b was discovered by the ESO’s High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher, or HARPS, in Chile (it’s the same instrument that found Gliese 581d. The data show that HD85512b is roughly three-and-a-half times the mass of Earth and rings its planet on the inner fringe of the so-called “goldilocks zone” that is not to distant and not too close to harbor liquid water. It’s size is also indicative of an Earth-like atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen rather than the hydrogen and helium that dominate the atmospheres of larger worlds.

That alone makes it a potential candidate for life, but HD85512b has a couple of other characteristics working for it. For one, its orbit is almost perfectly circular and stable, so any climate on the planet wouldn’t swing wildly as it orbits. The planetary system is older than our own--a full one billion years older--so clearly it’s had enough time for life to potentially have developed there. in the same vein, its star is also more mature than our sun so it is less prone to violent solar activity that could destabilize the planet’s atmosphere.

Of course, there’s no way to tell if it actually has an atmosphere with modern instruments, and atmosphere is a critical ingredient here. Since HD85512b is orbiting on the inner portion of the goldilocks zone, it is more akin to Venus than to Earth in the amount of solar energy it’s taking on. But scientists speculate that cloud cover of fifty percent or more could offset that proximity enough to allow life to thrive--albeit a kind of life more suited to a balmy, hot environment (relative to Earth’s).

On average, Earth boasts 60 percent cloud cover so the idea of HD85512b having 50 percent isn’t so far-fetched. In fact, it’s probably more likely than the idea of humans building a light-speed spacecraft and then making the 31-year journey to go in for a closer look at the weather. But it’s fun to think about.

Samsung Note, Half-phone Half-tablet, Debuts in Berlin

Can a bold tablet-smartphone merger pay off?

By Corinne Iozzio

Samsung Galaxy Note Samsung

Taking a unique approach to device convergence, Samsung has chosen not to incorporate a phone into a tablet, or even a phone that clips into a computer. The Korean electronics company today announced a device that guides the smartphone and tablet together, meeting in the middle. The 5.3-inch Samsung Galaxy Note may at first glance appear to be a bloated Galaxy smartphone, but with the inclusion of a stylus and a totally new type of screen, Samsung claims the Note will take its place as the only device you'll ever need.

Running on Android Gingerbread 2.3, the latest iteration of Google's smartphone OS, the 6.3-ounce Note (comparison: the iPad 2 is 21.28 ounces, the iPhone 4 is 4.8 ounces) tilts more towards its cellphone brethren than its Galaxy Tab cousins--at least the newer, better Galaxy Tabs, which run Android Honeycomb. Granted, the device essentially has to run Gingerbread (designed for phones) over Honeycomb (designed for tablets), given the fact that Honeycomb doesn't have a native phone app. But beyond that, Samsung has taken pains to give the Note the multi-pane feel of a larger-screen tablet. Within its upgraded version of TouchWix UX--TouchWiz is Samsung's custom-made Android skin--users can split the screen into multiple panes from different apps, including the native TouchWiz IM, email and music apps. That means you can actually view, though not interact with, multiple apps at once--a tablet-like ability, and a unique one at that. Still, an eight-megapixel rear-facing and two-megapixel front-facing camera also smack significantly of a top-tier handset.

But what does the most to set the Note apart from being just an overblown smartphone is its stylus input. (We've seen styli before, even one we quite liked, but it never feels quite natural--perhaps it'll feel better on the Note, since it's been designed from the ground up for stylus use.) The approximately five-inch-long pen slips neatly into the posterior of the handset. While the 5.3-inch AMOLED touchscreen is by nature a touch-sensitive touch panel, once the stylus nears the screen, it triggers a magnetic current that switches the screen to a resistive panel. That switch allows the Note's stylus-based input to respond not only to touch, but pressure. None of Samsung's launch apps wil respond to such pressure, but the company says that third-party developers are already working with the stylus SDK to code pressure-responsive doodle and note-taking apps. Like a return to the Palm Pilot days of yore (note: RIP Palm/WebOS), the Note translates scrawled notes to editable text, it captures doodles, and it allows you to annotate and embellish existing files. It's also a quicker and easier way to cut and paste text and images on-screen. There's a concern with resistive screens that the layer of film required for resistive input can impair the clarity of the screen--it remains to be seen if that's true for this screen in particular.

A bigger question, though, is if a half-tablet can succeed as a phone, and if a half-phone can succeed as a tablet. Holding the nearly six-inch slab up to my smallish face was, to say the least, odd-feeling. The microphone landed well below my chin, in a place sure to be muffled and obstructed by even the least-animated of conversations. For those with smaller pockets, the phablet (tablone?) may not be pocketable at all, which could be a deal-breaker for some.

On the more tablet-centric side, the Note is equipped with a 1.4-gigahertz dual-core processor and compatibility with both LTE and HSPA+ networks, meaning it could land on Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile. We all know what that means: plenty of power and bandwidth to stream high-def web video -- that is, should Netflix ever roll out to the entire Android community (ahem, ahem). And the screen, while it's not exactly as substantive as the much-lauded 10.1 Galaxy Tab, nor the also-just-announced 7.7-incher, is just enough of a step up from a Galaxy smartphone to make a noticeable difference in the viewing experience.

There's currently no word on which U.S. carrier will release the Note, so naturally there's also nary a clue as to how much it will cost. An educated guess would land a device like this somewhere around the $500 range; but again, that's just one gal's guess. We'll keep you updated on the Note as we learn more.

Sri Vinayagar Song - நாயகனை பாட நான் என்ன தவம்

Noise pollution

There Is Too Much Noise In The Modern World One of the great plagues of modern life is barely talked about at all. People tend to think they’re the only ones bothered by it and to raise a fuss would be to act like some cantankerous crazy person. They also tend to dismiss it as nothing more than a harmless and occasional irritant. In fact, it is a serious issue which can have damaging effects on our physical and intellectual health and our general sense of well-being. It is, paradoxically, a silent killer : Noise.

If you enjoy listening to music, you will tend to find your enjoyment of it constantly disrupted by external noise sources. Perhaps if you listen to intense, wall-of-sound music, such as heavy metal, at high volumes, you can successfully screen the world out, but not all music is of this nature. Many serious musicians and musicologists agree that the finest music ever written is Beethoven’s late string quartets. Subtle and spiritual, punctuated with pauses and quiet passages, it would be today almost impossible to get through a listening of it from beginning to end without enduring an interruption of some sort. Whether it’s an ice cream van playing its cacophonous chimes, an aircraft flying overhead, a noisy neighbour with a gardening machine, a car alarm going off or just traffic rumbling along outside, you can be certain that something will turn up to disrupt your enjoyment. In summer, when the sun is out, you can be sure that neighbours with noisy gardening machines are going to be out too. Thanks to them, the average afternoon spent sunbathing in the garden is going to sound much like it would if you were sunbathing in the middle of a car factory instead. Was this changeover to electrified gardening equipment really necessary? Did all the many generations of human beings before us not manage to tend their crops and gardens perfectly well without it? Curiously, some of this invasive noise even has statutory protection. I find it amazing, for example, that the clangourous music of ice cream vans is specifically sanctioned by law. If a greedy hawker of wares decided to stand outside your house with a loudspeaker and read out a list of what he was selling, there is no doubt that he would contravening some local ordinance and the police would soon put a stop to it. Make it music instead of speech and put it in a van, however, and suddenly he enjoys legal protections. In recent decades the popularity of fireworks has dramatically increased in Britain. Once reserved for special occasions such as the celebration of the judicial murder of freedom fighter Guy Fawkes on November 5th, they now seem to be used for weeks if not months stretching both before and after this hallowed date. The evenings of autumnal Britain are now regularly punctuated by the sighs, shrieks and pops of fireworks exploding. Dogs run around frightened in the home, trembling with fear as they move from room to room in a vain attempt to escape the sounds that haunt them. Do you ever hear birds singing at night where you live? Ever wondered why they do this? Researchers found that birds had started singing at night because it was the only time they could find enough peace and quiet to facilitate this mode of communication. Competition from noise pollution during the day was so great that they thought it wasn’t worth bothering then. We tend to think of noise as no more than an irritant. But this is to underestimate its effects. Studies have shown that the presence of noise can induce or aggravate serious health problems. For example, numerous studies have found that those regularly subjected to the noise of overflying aircraft suffer from high blood pressure to a much greater extent than those living elsewhere. Even noise of which we are not consciously aware, because it occurs at night and we are asleep, can have a damaging effect on our health. In fact, research as shown that noise can bother us and adversely affect our health before we are even born! Babies in the womb can react to noise and studies have found that women living in the presence of environmental noise are more likely to suffer complications during childbirth or give birth to children with birth defects. Exposure to noise releases stress hormones such as adrenaline, cortisol and noradrenalin into our bloodstream. The presence of these hormones is linked to death through heart-related illness. The World Health Organisation (WHO) studied the issue of noise-related illness in Europe and concluded that approximately 3% of all deaths through heart complications could be attributed to noise. In Britain, this means that between 3000 and 4000 people are dying each year because of noise, far more than have ever died, or are ever likely to die, through terrorism. It’s a silent September 11th occurring each year. Yet no one cares about it. No one is proposing to overhaul our societies, do away with our civil liberties or reshape world politics in response to the problem of noise pollution. The European Commission considers that living close to an airport is a significant risk factor for heart-related health problems. Moreover, it found that 20% of the European Union’s entire population fell into this category. Noise also disrupts our concentration. A study of pupils at a school in Munich examined the effects of aircraft noise on pupils’ learning. The school was in the flight path of Munich’s old airport. But because a new airport was being constructed in a different location, and the school would be outwith the flight path of the new airport, a comparison could be conducted. It found that the test results of the children improved dramatically once the noise was gone. This chimes perfectly with an international study which looked at the reading abilities of different groups of children who had varying levels of exposure to environmental noise, principally from overflying aircraft. It found that those subjected to the noise had a markedly lower reading age than the control groups. For a long time, the issue of noise was simply not on the public radar screen. There were no organisations dedicated to campaigning about it. It was not considered a serious issue. Thankfully, that is now beginning to change. In Britain, for example, there is now the Noise Association which campaigns on noise-related issues. Thanks to them, a Noise Action Week will take place between May 19-23. It is time that both we and the politicians who represent us began to take the problem of noise seriously. Laws and regulations designed to limit the impact of noise, and the mental and physical health problems which flow from it, should be introduced and enforced. And we should all begin to think about whether we are contributing to the problem, or to its solution.

What is Noise Pollution?

   

Noise pollution is a type of energy pollution in which distracting, irritating, or damaging sounds are freely audible. As with other forms of energy pollution (such as heat and lightpollution), noise pollution contaminants are not physical particles, but rather waves that interfere with naturally-occurring waves of a similar type in the same environment. Thus, the definition of noise pollution is open to debate, and there is no clear border as to which sounds may constitute noise pollution. In the most narrow sense, sounds are considered noise pollution if they adversely affect wildlife, human activity, or are capable of damaging physical structures on a regular, repeating basis. In the broadest sense of the term, a sound may be considered noise pollution if it disturbs any natural process or causes human harm, even if the sound does not occur on a regular basis.

The prevailing source of artificial noise pollution is from transportation. In rural areas, trainand airplane noise can disturb wildlife habits, thereby affecting the manner in which animals in areas around train tracks and airports hunt and mate. In urban areas, automobile, motorcycle, and even entertainment noise can cause sleep disruption in humans and animals, hearing loss, heart disease (as a result of stress), and in severe cases even mental instability. A notable exception to the rule is the electric, or hybrid-electric, automobile. Hybrid vehicles are so quite, in fact, that legislation is pending to actually make them louder. This is in response to numerous injuries in which pedestrians, unaware of a hybrid vehicle's presence, have been struck by such vehicles in parking lots and pedestrian crosswalks.

Although most developed nations have government agencies responsible for the protection of the environment, no nation has a single body that regulates noise pollution. In the United States, regulation of noise pollution was stripped from the federal Environmental Protection Agency and passed on the the individual states in the early 1980's. Although two noise-control bills passed by the EPA are still in effect, the agency can no longer form relevant legislation. In the United States, Canada, Europe, and most other developed parts of the world, different types of noise are managed by agencies responsible for the source of the noise. Transportation noise is usually regulated by the relevant transportation ministry, health-related work noise is often regulated by health ministries and worker's unions, and entertainment noise such as loud music is a criminal offense in many areas. As the bodies responsible for noise pollution reduction usually view noise as an annoyance rather than a problem, and reducing that noise often hurts the industry financially, little is currently being done to reduce noise pollution in developed countries.

Reducing Noise Pollution

 Author: Gayan Virajith

Everywhere we go these days, there is NOISE. Barking dogs, loud stereos, noisy exhausts, shop adverts: noise is everywhere

Sources of noise: All modes of transport create noise pollution. Some production factories make noise; they experience noise pollution and its adverse effects. Besides transportation noise, noise can come from factory appliances, power tools and audio entertainment systems.

Measures of noise: Noise pollution is measured in decibels. When noise is at 45 decibels, no human being can sleep, and at 120 decibels the ear will be in pain and hearing begins to be damaged at 85 decibels.

Effects of Noise pollution

Human health: Noise pollution will affect our health and behavior in a number of ways including deafness causing lack of sleep, heartburn, high blood pressure, and heart disease.
Speech interference: Noise more than 50dB can be very difficult to hear and interpret and cause problems such as partial deafness.
Sleep interference: Very high levels of noise can wake people from their sleep with a jerk and keep them awake or disturb their sleep pattern. This could make them irritable and tired the next day.
Decreased work performance: Increased noise levels gives rise to a lack of concentration and accuracy at work, and reduce one’s productivity and performance.
How to avoid sources of noise pollution
Traffic: Please don’t live or work near major intersections or roads, shopping centers and sporting facilities. Valleys and falls are noisier than flat roads.
Barking dogs: As a dog owner, you should make sure that your dog doesn’t annoy the neighbors with its barking and yowling.
Aircraft: Before buying a home, see how far it is from the local airport.
Neighbors: Be a good neighbor by not annoying those who live next door with your music or lawn mowing.
Solving noise problems: Many noise problems can be prevented by considering others and talking to overcome problems. Be a good and concerned neighbor by discussing a common problem calmly and in a collaborative spirit to find a common solution.