For $10,000, your car can drive itself

This is the first public demo of Cruise, a new technology and business from a Y Combinator startup aptly named Cruise Automation. It’s designed as a computer-controlled driving system that can take over when you’re behind the wheel. Turn it on like typical cruise control and it will keep the car going, but the added smarts will steer, brake, and avoid objects.

Unlike more expensive and complex technologies like the one Google’s shown off recently, Cruise is not a replacement for the driver, nor one that will be capable of getting you from point A to point B on all roads. Instead, it’s been designed to exist somewhere between Google’s fully automated self-driving car and the cruise control you’d find in your car today. This means it’s able to keep within freeway lanes by actually steering, and slow down when it sees obstacles using an array of sensors and radar that are mounted on the top of the car. It just won’t be able to take over while you take a nap in the back seat.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/23/5834604/cruise-trying-to-reinvent-cruise-control-to-steer-brake-and-actually-drive-you

 

Mesmerizing Gif Shows Cell Division

Metaphase is the point in the cell cycle after the chromosomes have condensed and lined up in the middle, just before the cell is divided into two daughter cells. The chromosomes are held into place with kinetochore microtubules to create what is known as the metaphase plate, spanning the equator of the cell.


http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/mesmerizing-gif-shows-cell-division-real-time#IaOFU9fv49P00SyA.99

 

We are a step closer to a smartphone that weighs less than a dime

You may not have heard of them before, but I can tell you that Aerogels are cool. They are ultra-porous materials that are whipped up from silica gel or even aluminum oxide and may weigh just 15% more than air. Because they consist of so many microscopic air pockets, they are incredibly effective insulators.

The end result may remind you of cotton candy from a structural point of view, but it is super stiff and strong and able to carry a load that is 160,000 times heavier than the material itself.

Interestingly, scientists have already been able to create material with aerogel-like properties using a wide variety of substances, including ceramic, metal and polymer. The advantage this new category of materials has over traditional aerogels lies in the fact that it is a 100 times stiffer. One goal is to create a new category of 100 kilometer-wide solar sails by around 2030. 3D printing machines operating in orbit would spin out sails that could reach Oort Cloud in reasonable time frame, powered by the solar wind.

Back on Earth, the prospect of mobile phones weighing slightly more than air would transform the race to shave off a few grams each year. We can now start looking forward to the marketing campaign between a 4-gram iPhone 12 and a 5-gram Galaxy S 11.

http://bgr.com/2014/06/24/aerogels-3d-printing-process/

 

Neuroscientists inhibit muscle contractions by shining light on spinal cord neurons

For the first time, MIT neuroscientists have shown they can control muscle movement by applying optogenetics—a technique that allows scientists to control neurons’ electrical impulses with light—to the spinal cords of animals that are awake and alert.
Led by MIT Institute Professor Emilio Bizzi, the researchers studied mice in which a light-sensitive protein that promotes neural activity was inserted into a subset of spinal neurons. When the researchers shone blue light on the animals’ spinal cords, their hind legs were completely but reversibly immobilized. The findings, described in the June 25 issue of PLoS One, offer a new approach to studying the complex spinal circuits that coordinate movement and sensory processing, the researchers say.

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-06-neuroscientists-inhibit-muscle-spinal-cord.html

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