Kojiro – Advanced Musculoskeletal Humanoid
Check out University of Tokyo’s JSK Robotics Laboratory musculoskeletal humanoid, Kojiro. It is a robotic system that mimics human body movements.
Other research groups are also exploring the idea of anthropomimetic humanoids. But I don’t think many of them have a flexible spine, which is one of Kojiro’s main innovations. Like the human spine, Kojiro’s can bend in different directions to let the robot arch and twist its torso. It can’t quite dance the Macarena yet, but it shows some promising hip moves.
Source: Kojiro Humanoid Robot Mimics Your Musculoskeletal System
Space Shuttle Endeavour Blasts Off
US Space shuttle Endeavour blast off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida and it is rocketing toward the space station on one of the shuttle program’s last scheduled missions.
Endeavour will go on a 13-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS) carrying six astronauts. The crew will conduct three spacewalks to install the a 23-foot-long, 15-foot-wide Tranquility module.
Source: Shuttle Endeavour blasts off for space station
Pluto’s Surface Changes Dynamically
The latest photos from Hubble Space Telescope reveals planet Pluto’s surface changes surface color and brightness dynamically through seasonal change.
Scientist says [With Pluto] you are looking at the surface in the Solar System that has the biggest changes of anything we’ve ever seen.
Source: Pluto’s dynamic surface revealed by Hubble images
Dinosaur True Colors Revealed
Chinese and British scientists have now revealed that the bristles of this 125 million-year-old Sinosauropteryx dinosaur has ginger coloured feathers.
Lawrence M. Witmer, a paleontologist at Ohio University said, We might be able to start painting a picture in color of what these things looked like.
Source: Study Offers Insight Into the Color of Dinosaurs
Pigs Buried Alive For Avalanche Research
Animal rights activists have put a stop to Austrian scientists using pigs in avalanche research. The tests involved burying pigs in snow and monitoring their deaths.
Peter Paal, one of the scientists said, The outcry is understandable but also naive; animal experiments take place every day in different places.
Source: Austrian avalanche experiment with pigs called off: police
Texting Drivers 6 Times More Likely to Crash
A new survey research has found that drivers that are texting are six times more likely to be involved in a car accident. Drivers tended to decrease their minimum following distance when texting and also experienced delayed reaction times during DWT (Drive While Texting).
Source: Study: Drivers who text are 6 times more likely to crash
Chinese Dinosaur Bird Uses Venom To Kill Prey
Sinornithosaurus, a carnivorous Chinese bird lizard dinosaur uses their venom fang to kill or immobilise their prey.
Vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum, David Burnham said, You wouldn’t have seen it coming. It would have swooped down behind you from a low-hanging tree branch and attacked from the back. ‘It wanted to get its jaws around you. Once the teeth were embedded in your skin the venom could seep into the wound. The prey would rapidly go into shock, but it would still be living, and it might have seen itself being slowly devoured by this raptor..
Astronomers Found Water World
Astronomers said they had discovered a planet GJ 1214b composed mostly of water and it is the most Earth-like planet ever found outside our solar system.
David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said, It’s basically one big ocean. This is a next-door neighbor. For perspective, our own TV signals have already passed beyond the distance of this star.
Source: Nearby “Super Earth” May Have Oceans, Thick Atmosphere
NASA Launches Comet Hunting Spacecraft
NASA has launched The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, space camera to map stars, brown dwarfs, galaxies, asteroids and comets. The spacecraft will orbit Earth and scan the sky for 9.5 months. WISE is designed to give information about the size, composition, and texture of comets and asteroids.
Ned Wright, WISE principal investigator from UCLA said, Infrared technology has come a long way since then. The old all-sky infrared pictures were like impressionist paintings … now, we’ll have images that look like actual photographs.
Dinosaur Originated From South America
The fossile of early relative of T.rex and Velociraptor, is 2m long, named Tawa hallae was found on the Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, US. The discovery reveals where dinosaur originally comes from.
Lead researcher Sterling Nesbitt of the University of Texas at Austin said, …the find may reinforce the idea that dinosaurs originated in what is now South America and then moved on to other regions.
Source: New fossils shed light on evolution of dinosaurs
