'Live' Artificial Jellyfish Made from Rat Cells

Artificial jellyfish life made from rat cells on silicone. Image Source: Discovery.

From the Frankenfuture Files:

A team of scientists has taken the heart cells of a rat, arranged them on a piece of rubbery silicon[e], added a jolt of electricity, and created a “Franken-jelly.” Just like a real jellyfish, the artificial jelly swims around by pumping water in and out of its bell-shaped body. Researchers hope the advance can someday help engineers design better artificial hearts and other muscular organs. ...

Bioengineers John Dabiri from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, and Kevin Kit Parker from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University adopted a motto: Copy nature, but not too much. “Some engineers build things out of concrete, copper and steel—we build things out of cells,” says Parker.

The duo and their colleagues stenciled out the ideal jellyfish shape on silicon[e], a material that would be sturdy but flexible, much like the jellyfish itself. They then coached rat muscle cells to grow in parallel bands on the silicon[e] and encased the cells with a stretchy material called elastomer. To get their artificial jellyfish, or medusoid, swimming, the researchers submerged it in a salty solution and ran an electric current through the water, jump-starting the rat cells. The mimic propelled itself rapidly in the water, swimming as effectively as a real jellyfish, the researchers report online today in Nature Biotechnology.

Will humans, whose organs will be repaired and implanted in this manner, still be fully human? You can see a film of the Franken-jelly-rat thing swimming around below the jump.

One commenter at the foot of the Wired article said: "wow, way to try to drum up a story. Shocker: when you stimulate muscle cells, they contract. Glad to see that great taxpayer money going towards this pointless research."

To this, someone responded: "Yep, slam down the whole thing to zapping cells, just like that frog in the lab you never got into cause your creationist parents didint want you to. Never mind that the issue here is isolated cell growth artificially arranged to perform a function outside its original specs. Gee, what would happen if we learnt how to make heart muscle cells grow around damaged tissue in an orderly way to re enable proper heart functions? God forbid we find out."

Another wrote: "As far as I can tell, this research was funded privately ... Seed funding for the Harvard Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering was provided by the university. In 2009, Harvard received the largest philanthropic gift in its history - $125 million - from Hansjörg Wyss for the above mentioned institute. As far as this research being useless, these quotes from the article might give you a clue as to how this particular project could be useful: 'Researchers hope the advance can someday help engineers design better artificial hearts and other muscular organs." "By studying how jellyfish manipulate liquids with their body, Parker says, scientists may be able to come up with more accurate ways to fix or even replace damaged heart valves.' My wife had to have her aortic valve replaced with an artificial valve due to a birth defect - research of this type is VERY meaningful to some people. Try to do two minutes of research before you write off important work with your politicized BS."

Yet another commenter wrote: "I, for one, welcome our new jelly-rat overlords."

Look Skyward: Shadow Eclipse of the Moon

Le Chemin Des Clones © Layachi Hamidouche. Image Source: The Chess Art Thread.

There will be a barely visible penumbral eclipse of the moon tonight, the second of three lunar eclipses this year.  The moon will just touch the Earth's shadow.  Astrologers take note of this event's symbolic significance. Dark Star Astrology sees this eclipse as a moment when our demons, false faiths, and illusions are exorcised:

The Lunar Eclipse May 25 2013 is at 4º Sagittarius which sits between Acrab and Dschubba both on the forehead of the Scorpion. These stars have a somewhat fiendish reputation. Neptune forms a T-square to the eclipse, god or grand delusion depending on at what vibration you tune into. The geometry of the chart looks like the slicing off of heads by the revolutionary blade of Uranus square Pluto. These “heads” will be false gurus and people at the very top of the churches. Neptune is about devotion, it rules the age of Pisces which is coming to an end. This eclipse could start the process of dissolving those belief systems that have been retarding humanit[y']s spiritual evolution. ... The eclipse asks what is real pure universal love and what is just overpowering sexual infatuation, which many of us mistake for love. Neptune’s promise of a soulmate does not guarantee Happy Ever After. In fact the more one yearns for redemption through love, the more one will find oneself disappointed. The same goes for any religion that promises a savior.

Be that as it may, here is a little Sylvia Plath to contribute to astrologers' promised atmosphere. This is a poem in which the poet finds only desolation in hauntingly beautiful images and symbols, perhaps an apt parallel to Dark Star's prediction of lunar eclipse disillusionment (Hat tip: The Chess Art Thread):

The Moon and the Yew Tree

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black.  The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God,
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility.
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.
The moon is no door.  It is a face in its own right,
White as knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quite
With the O-gape of complete despair.  I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky--
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection.
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.
The yew tree points up.  It has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother.  She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness--
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.
I have fallen a long way.  Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars.
Inside the church, the saints will be all blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this.  She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness--blackness and
   silence.

3D Print Your Future

Image Source: Wired.

3D printing is about to become very big indeed. Yesterday's post covered a report on 3D printed food. Above, a CT scan of an anesthetized rat was sent to a 3D printer to produce a three-dimensional skeleton, with obvious wide applications in medicine and education.

3D Printing Future Food

"Some 3-D printer food made from meal worms." Image Source: TNO Research via Yahoo.

Will this be the diet of the new Millennial underclass?  The FT reports that the Systems and Materials Research Corporation (SMRC) bid for - and won - a contract to use inkjet technology to print food:

In its application for Nasa funding, SMRC said it would use "progressive 3D printing and inkjet technologies” and build a “complete nutritional system for long duration missions beyond low-earth orbit." The printer will combine ingredients such as starch, protein and fat with flavourings, colourings and micronutrients to create edible items in a range of shapes. All the ingredients will be stored in cartridges designed to maximise their shelf-life on long space missions.

Yahoo reports on NASA's research into solving food shortages on the planet and off of it:

NASA has given a six-month grant to a company developing what could be the world’s first 3-D food printer. And the project’s developer, reports Quartz, an online digital news site, believes the invention could be used to end world hunger.

Quartz explains that the printer is the brainchild of mechanical engineer Anjan Contractor. Being developed by Contractor’s company, Systems and Materials Research Corp., it will use proteins, carbohydrates and sugars to create edible food products.

Contractor says one of his primary motivations is a belief that food will become exponentially more expensive in the near future. The average consumer, he told Quartz, will need a more economically viable option.

Some alternative food source options that may be used with the printer include algae, duckweed, grass, lupine seeds, beet leaves and even insects, according to TNO Research, which is working with Contractor on the project.

“I think, and many economists think, that current food systems can’t supply 12 billion people sufficiently,” said Contractor. “So we eventually have to change our perception of what we see as food.”

One of Contractor’s first prototypes will be a 3-D pizza printer, and he hopes to begin building it over the next couple of weeks. Contractor, reports Quartz, explained that it will print "a layer of dough, which is baked at the same time it’s printed, by a heated plate at the bottom of the printer. Then it lays down a tomato base, 'which is also stored in a powdered form, and then mixed with water and oil.'" Lastly comes the "protein layer." ...

“Long distance space travel requires 15-plus years of shelf life,” Contractor said to Quartz. “The way we are working on it is, all the carbs, proteins and macro and micro nutrients are in powder form. We take moisture out, and in that form it will last maybe 30 years.”

"The 3D food printer schematic." Image Source: SMRC via Yahoo. 

A World of Dreams

Balolokong by Chris Wayan (1984). Image Source: World Dream Bank.

If you've ever wondered what other people dream about, check out the World Dream Bank (here). It is a fascinating online diary where people catalogue their dreams and sometimes illustrate them. Documented dreams relating to historic figures are included (like this one). Dreams are organized according to a great variety of topics, including lucid dreams and nightmares about war, aliens,  spirituality, flying, death, sex, heaven, hell and last but not least, San Francisco. See the subject index here.

A Vision of the Apocalypse

Image Source: CNN. 

See the BBC report and other reports on the terrible May 20 Oklahoma tornado below the jump.

 Images Source: Holly Bailey/ Yahoo! News. 

"Lightning strikes over interstate 35 near Moore, Oklahoma May 21, 2013. Thunderstorms and lightning slowed the rescue effort on Tuesday, but 101 people had been pulled from the debris alive, Oklahoma Highway Patrol spokeswoman Betsy Randolph said." Image Source: REUTERS/Gene Blevins via Yahoo.

So Near, And Yet So Far

"The Lady of Shallott [1905] by William Holman Hunt, painted from 1888 to 1902." Tennyson's 1842 poem was a speculation on entrapment inside one's own subjectivity. Image Source: Wiki.

Who would you be, had you taken a different path? The road not taken. The road less traveled by. The one that got away. The grass is always greener. The missed opportunity. Cheat fate. Dodge a bullet.

Most of the world's moral and philosophical systems sit at the crossroads of destiny and contingency. Moral values grow out of the basic question: do we have any control over the passage of time? Perhaps the idea of 'fate' stems from a subliminal awareness that time is self-enclosed, finite, already a 'done deal,' or otherwise complete or looped back upon itself. In other words, perhaps 'god' or 'destiny' relates to our sense that the past and the future are the same, cyclical or related, as if time were a Möbius strip. A recent speculation on how ancient times, myths and sensibilities relate to those of the future - a favourite trope of the new Millennium - can be found here.

A belief in fate, destiny and higher powers can provide some comfort. If your life is predestined and is simply part of the universe's great unknowable, inevitable equation, then the weight of your responsibility to yourself is lifted. In Old English, this idea was called the Wyrd, a force that could not be changed or challenged. Have you ever vowed you would never make the mistakes your parents made, and then, despite everything you did differently, find you are following in their footsteps? That is the Wyrd at work.

In the early modern period, John Calvin developed the notion that followers of his Christian interpretation were members of God's 'Elect' - predestined from creation to be saved at the end of time. To prevent this seductive idea from cultivating arrogance, Calvinists subscribed to a corollary that the Elect could not rest on their laurels. First, you could never be sure you were one of the Elect. Second, if you were really one of the Elect, your predestined status would shine forth through your daily words and deeds.

Conversely, if the universe is random, and you are at the mercy of blind luck, you are similarly off the hook for your own actions. In a chaotic, unordered reality, you might as well live in the moment and take life as it comes. Actions carry no inherent meaning, other than to deliver pain or pleasure. If that is the case, you are no longer responsible in any grand way for what happens to you. However, the quality or depth of your perception at least affords you a degree of awareness or wisdom about what is going on. That said, perception is infinite, meaning there is no objective truth or larger consensus to which we can refer to find the difference between right or wrong. This is the standpoint taken by countless Millennial individualist, solipsistic, videotastic libertines, whose sole source of moral restraint is their own subjectivity - boundless, intersecting egos.

This is the endgame of the "I'm OK, You're OK" 1969 motto. This was the win-win psychological message of mutual self-interest that dovetailed neatly with the Boomers' sexual revolution: anything goes between consenting adults. There is zero sense in these circles that "I'm OK, You're OK" could and did end with: "We are all not OK." In other words, the limitless indulgence of personal freedoms has led to endlessly mirrored personal enslavements, masquerading as liberations - which has had a detrimental effect on the common good. This kind of moral confusion emerges when the sensibility which time grants to a stream of events (an approach toward an objective perspective) is denied in favour of the eternal now of personal choice.

Ego-Enclosed Micro-Societies

Image Source: Time via Flavorwire.

By now, anyone who follows generational issues will have heard about Joel Stein's Time cover article (here) on how the Millennials will save the world. Joel Stein is a Gen Xer, and he should know better than to indulge in the same generational stereotyping that Time magazine used to condemn his own age group. Did his bosses put him up to it? For an overview of how Time cover articles have perpetuated  generational myths, see JenX67's response to Stein here. This is the worst kind of social propaganda and it deserves full condemnation.

If Stein had made broad generalizations about races instead of age groups in his Time article, there would be outcry across the MSM. Even when the message is positive, age stereotyping is no different than racism. Stein's article depends on two Boomer-generated narratives which depend on one another: 'Gen X is the anti-Boomer generation that failed'; 'Gen Y is the generation that will bear the Boomer mantle and save us.' This shows that Boomers, in their quest to build an immortal legacy, made age stereotyping and discrimination socially and professionally acceptable. The fact that Boomers now suffer from age discrimination themselves does not change the origin of the labels and their negative effects.

We need a new language to discuss generational matters and a new way to understand society that bridges age differences. Mr. Stein's unfortunate example aside, Generation X has become known (or rather: not known) for communicating about social experience in non-collective way. As a result, Boomers and Millennials often seem to think that Generation X has not accomplished, and is not accomplishing, anything. Where are Gen Xers, anyway? Why can't you google 'generation X' and come across ten national and international lobby groups and central hubs belching forth Propaganda on the Generation X Self? Where are the trumpeted announcements? Where are the big high profile articles in national magazines? Where are the Gurus and Big Leaders who associate themselves publicly with Gen X? Have you seen a Gen-X-labeled TV show lately? Where are the signposts which point to what Jeff Gordinier called the generational "kitsch" known as 'GENERATION X'? Gen X does not often speak the same language that Boomers and Millennials do. Like the so-called 'Silent Generation,' Gen Xers do not associate their successes with their generational identity. But that does not mean their successes do not exist.

Boomers and Gen Y cannot and will not 'change the world' until they abandon the mass-marketed illusions of ego-enclosed micro-societies and consider the behaviour of the Silent Generation and of Generation X. There are ways of functioning in society other than through self-definition and advancement at the expense of other age groups. The problems we face require consensus, cooperation, mutual respect and humility - and the smashing of generational stereotypes. We must abandon the promotion of the 'ego' as the ultimate source of virtue, power, strength, prosperity and success.

Consider what Millennials would be 'expecting' now, what they would be saying about themselves, and how they would be behaving, if they had been fed a different story from birth, a story that did not involve a grand manifest destiny for their collective Self. What if that story had simply said that they are all different, even though they share some cultural experiences with others their age? What if it had said that they have something to contribute, just as other people of other age groups do. Nor will their contributions constitute the sum total of success or accomplishment of civilization. It will be just another brick in the wall, another drop in the bucket. And yes, they have to defer to those with greater knowledge and experience, usually (but not always) a function of age. Similarly, those who follow them will have to defer to them, because in time, Millennials will know more than their successors.

For decades, youth-oriented marketing has peddled the idea that an explosive, 'fresh outlook' is the silver bullet in every circumstance, that brand new approaches are the best way to solve age-old problems. Usually, technology is mentioned as the game-changer. High tech has transformed age old problems into completely different issues, and Millennial brains are needed to grasp uniquely novel circumstances. It simply is not true.

Millennials who cling to the myths they were sold as children and teens in the 1990s will discover that they have been duped into supporting a very old school power structure. In that structure, the will not only not be leaders, they will be at the bottom of the pile. This Boomer-led establishment will tell Millennials any flattering lie about Gen Y's identity in order to retain power. If members of Gen Y continue to believe mistakenly in the marketing labels they are fed - and even if they believe anti-marketing which is supposed to be more credible but delivers the same myth in different packaging - they will find that their real world circumstances continually and increasingly do not match the world they were told they would find. That discrepancy should be their biggest warning sign to wake up. The last thing in the world they should do is get on that train, and start labeling others and themselves.

Farming for Future Space Colonists

"Future astronauts may grow some of their meals inside greenhouses, such as this Martian growth chamber, where fruits and vegetables could be grown hydroponically, without soil." Image Source: Yahoo.

Yahoo News reports that NASA is exploring ways in which food could be grown on spaceships and on Mars, thus ensuring the survival of astronauts and space colonists:

The first humans to live on Mars might not identify as astronauts, but farmers. To establish a sustainable settlement on Earth's solar system neighbor, space travelers will have to learn how to grow food on Mars — a job that could turn out to be one of the most vital, challenging and labor-intensive tasks at hand, experts say.

"One of the things that every gardener on the planet will know is producing food is hard — it is a non-trivial thing," Penelope Boston, director of the Cave and Karst Studies program at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, said yesterday (May 7) at the Humans 2 Mars Summit here at George Washington University. "Up until several hundred years ago it occupied most of us for most of the time."

Early Mars colonists may have to revert to this mode of life to ensure their own survival, she suggested.

NASA is actively engaged in researching how to farm on Mars and in space, as the agency is targeting its first manned Mars landing in the mid-2030s. And some NASA officials are wondering if that mission ought to be of long duration, rather than a short visit, given the difficulty of getting there and the possible benefits of an extended stay. "Sustained human presence — should that be our goal? I think that's a good discussion," Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, said here Monday (May 6).

Yet growing food on Mars presents several significant challenges. While research on the International Space Station suggests plants can grow in microgravity, scientists don't know how the reduced gravity on Mars might affect different Earth crops. Mars' surface receives about half the sunlight Earth does, and any pressurized greenhouse enclosure will further block the light reaching plants, so supplemental light will be needed. Supplying that light requires a significant amount of power.

"In terms of the systems engineering required, it's not an insignificant challenge," said D. Marshall Porterfield, Life and Physical Sciences division director at NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. NASA has been studying using LED lighting to give plants only the wavelengths of light they need to boost efficiency, he said.

Researchers are also studying whether plants can survive under lower pressures than on Earth, because the more pressure inside a greenhouse, the more massive that greenhouse must be to contain it.

"You don't have to inflate that greenhouse to Earth-normal pressure in order for plants to grow," said Robert Ferl, director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research at the University of Florida. "Maintaining a full atmosphere of pressure is difficult on a planetary surface. You can take plants down to a tenth of an atmosphere and they'll still function."

However, then, the greenhouse must be sealed off from the crew's living quarters.

"Gardening in a pressure suit is going to be a real trick," said Taber MacCallum, chief executive officer of Paragon Space Development Corp.

Radiation danger

Martian farmers must also contend with the issue of radiation. Mars lacks Earth's thick protective atmosphere, so particles from space reach its surface that would be damaging to both people and plants. Thus, some kind of shielding or mitigation will be necessary.

Pyramid Demolished in Belize

"In this image released by Jaime Awe, head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology on Monday May 13, 2013, a backhoe claws away at the sloping sides of the Nohmul complex, one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids on May 10, 2013 in northern Belize. A construction company has essentially destroyed one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids with backhoes and bulldozers to extract crushed rock for a road-building project, authorities announced on Monday. (AP Photo/Jaime Awe)" Image Source: J. Awe via Yahoo.

From Yahoo News, there is a report that a construction company in Belize has destroyed a Mayan pyramid for road fill:

BELIZE CITY (AP) — A construction company has essentially destroyed one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids with backhoes and bulldozers to extract crushed rock for a road-building project, authorities announced on Monday.

The head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, Jaime Awe, said the destruction at the Nohmul complex in northern Belize was detected late last week. The ceremonial center dates back at least 2,300 years and is the most important site in northern Belize, near the border with Mexico.

"It's a feeling of Incredible disbelief because of the ignorance and the insensitivity ... they were using this for road fill," Awe said. "It's like being punched in the stomach, it's just so horrendous."

Nohmul sat in the middle of a privately owned sugar cane field, and lacked the even stone sides frequently seen in reconstructed or better-preserved pyramids. But Awe said the builders could not possibly have mistaken the pyramid mound, which is about 100 feet tall, for a natural hill because the ruins were well-known and the landscape there is naturally flat.

"These guys knew that this was an ancient structure. It's just bloody laziness", Awe said.

Photos from the scene showed backhoes clawing away at the pyramid's sloping sides, leaving an isolated core of limestone cobbles at the center, with what appears to be a narrow Mayan chamber dangling above one clawed-out section.

"Just to realize that the ancient Maya acquired all this building material to erect these buildings, using nothing more than stone tools and quarried the stone, and carried this material on their heads, using tump lines," said Awe. "To think that today we have modern equipment, that you can go and excavate in a quarry anywhere, but that this company would completely disregard that and completely destroyed this building. Why can't these people just go and quarry somewhere that has no cultural significance? It's mind-boggling."

Belizean police said they are conducting an investigation and criminal charges are possible. The Nohmul complex sits on private land, but Belizean law says that any pre-Hispanic ruins are under government protection.

The Belize community-action group Citizens Organized for Liberty Through Action called the destruction of the archaeological site "an obscene example of disrespect for the environment and history."

It is not the first time it's happened in Belize, a country of about 350,000 people that is largely covered in jungle and dotted with hundreds of Mayan ruin sites, though few as large as Nohmul.

Norman Hammond, an emeritus professor of archaeology at Boston University who worked in Belizean research projects in the 1980s, wrote in an email that "bulldozing Maya mounds for road fill is an endemic problem in Belize (the whole of the San Estevan center has gone, both of the major pyramids at Louisville, other structures at Nohmul, many smaller sites), but this sounds like the biggest yet."

"In this image released by Jaime Awe, head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology on Monday May 13, 2013, a looks at the damaged sloping sides of the Nohmul complex, one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids on May 10, 2013 in northern Belize. A construction company has essentially destroyed one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids with backhoes and bulldozers to extract crushed rock for a road-building project, authorities announced on Monday. (AP Photo/Jaime Awe)" Image Source: J. Awe via Yahoo.

Cave Houses: Bridges between Pre-History and the Present

Continuity with the distant past is alive and well in many cave dwellings around the world. I09 has just published a piece on cave houses, some of which have been continuously inhabited for between 2,000 and 9,000 years! They also included the cave houses in the UK which inspired J. R. R. Tolkien's hobbit holes. All of these examples show how different societies carved their civilizations right out of the environment, while living in harmony with it. They also in the most graphic and clearest possible way show the origins of architecture, masonry, and brick-built houses. See more photos, including similar sites in Asia, in the i09 article.

Above: Yunak Evleri Cave Hotel, Urgup, Cappadocia, Turkey: "This hotel is a combination of six cave houses with a total of 39 rooms from the 5th and 6th centuries and a 200-year-old Greek mansion," via Yunak Evleri Press Room.

Above: Cave homes and a chapel in Louresse-Rochemenier, France: via Wikimedia Commons/Pymouss44, Tango7174 and GaMip.

Above: Sassi di Matera, Matera, Italy: "These houses were dug into the rock itself, and it's the only place in the world where people have been continuously inhabiting the sames houses for the last 9,000 years," via  Tango7174.

Plasma Device Could Change Energy Futures

Image Source: redOrbit.

Imagine holding a little sun in the palm of your hand. Plasma, the fourth state of matter, has been harnessed at the University of Missouri, which could revolutionize the generation and storage of energy:

Scientists at the University of Missouri have devised a new way to create and control plasma that could transform American energy generation and storage.

Randy Curry, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Missouri’s College of Engineering, and his team developed a device that launches a ring of plasma at distances of up to two feet. Although the plasma reaches a temperature hotter than the surface of the sun, it doesn’t emit radiation and is completely safe in proximity to humans.

While most of us are familiar with three states of matter – liquid, gas and solid – there is also a fourth state known as plasma, which includes things such as fire and lightning. Life on Earth depends on the energy emitted by plasma produced during fusion reactions within the sun.

The secret to Curry’s success was developing a way to make plasma form its own self-magnetic field, which holds it together as it travels through the air. “Launching plasma in open air is the ‘Holy Grail’ in the field of physics,” said Curry.

“Creating plasma in a vacuum tube surrounded by powerful electromagnets is no big deal; dozens of labs can do that. Our innovation allows the plasma to hold itself together while it travels through regular air without any need for containment.”

The plasma device could also be enlarged to handle much larger amounts of energy, he said.

For the current work, Curry and his team used older technologies to build their prototype of a plasma-generating machine. But a considerably smaller device using newer, miniaturized parts could also be built within three to five years with sufficient funding, Curry said.

See a video about the discovery below the jump.

Future Family Transport

Synergy Illustration:  Nick Kaloterakis. Images Source: PopSci.

PopSci reports on the 2013 Invention Awards; one of the winners was the Family Flier, a family-sized aircraft that will be mainly autopiloted by computer. One commenter on the article complained that the McGinnis plane resembles Charles Ligeti's Stratos, a similar small Australian craft (see here); nevertheless, this looks like an interesting American design:

INVENTOR
John McGinnis
COMPANY
Synergy Aircraft
INVENTION
Synergy
COST TO DEVELOP
Undisclosed

John McGinnis thinks ordinary families would rather skip the airport and fly themselves. So he is trying to reinvent the personal airplane with the help of his father, son, and a rotating crew of about two dozen volunteers. Unlike small aircraft today—which can cost more than a house—McGinnis says Synergy could be cheaper, quieter, and, at more than 40 mpg, three times as fuel-efficient.

McGinnis, a 47-year-old composite manufacturer, flew his first airplane in second grade. Perplexed by the inefficiencies of personal aircraft, he taught himself aeronautical engineering and fluid dynamics over two decades. One day, while perusing scientific studies at a desk in his daughters’ bedroom, he read a NASA researcher’s paper challenging a classic aerodynamic drag equation. McGinnis could see the possibilities. “I came out of the girls’ bedroom ranting like a madman to my wife,” he says. “‘Honey, you’re never going to believe this. I think I just solved a problem I’ve been working on since I was a little kid.’”

Synergy’s wings bend upward and into a box shape for minimum drag and maximum efficiency. The top half of each wing swoops behind the body to function as a tail while providing greater in-flight stability. The double-box tail design also makes gliding easier by counteracting tornado-like vortices at the wings’ tips. And instead of a front-mounted propeller, an impeller placed behind the bullet-shaped body quiets noise while adding thrust.

1) A 200hp turbodiesel engine expels heat below the impeller, adding thrust.

2) Large wings allow slower takeoffs and landings.

3) Box tails create airflow patterns that reduce drag and increase flight stability.

4) An autopilot computer can land Synergy at a nearby runway during an emergency; a ballistic parachute can also be deployed.

McGinnis works on Synergy in his father’s garage, where he uses CNC machines and custom molds to fabricate components and 3-D software to rapidly model new ideas. Family members serve among the core build crew, with McGinnis’s son, Kyle, second-in-command. A quarter-scale prototype made from fiberglass, carbon fiber, and Kevlar suggests that both the team’s manufacturing process and unusual wing configuration work. Using about $80,000 in crowdfunded cash, they hope to finish a full-scale, five-person aircraft this year. “I work on it 90 hours a week, with a few hours of sleep,” McGinnis says. “What drives me to do it is that no one else will.”

Scale Models: The McGinnis family—Pat, John, and Kyle—and pilot John Paul Noyes [front to back] stand in their Kalispell, Montana, workshop.  Photo by Kali McGinnis.

One commenter on the PopSci article remarks that there are non-technological reasons why we do not all have small personal aircraft or flying cars:

[T]he flying car isn't new. There have been many models of flying car and many developers of them. Why, you ask, haven't big companies like Boieng or Lockheed taken up the easy challenge? Because there is no way that your government is going to allow a flying population right now. The system is setup to charge you tax for roads and has spent a great deal of money on traffic lights. They also like to know that you can't just pile in your aircraft and fly to Cuba, Mexico or Canada. If the flying car materialized today, with full ability to hover without propellars, and was completely safe... they would never allow it. The biggest oponenets of this technology would be car companies as well. What happens to their normal car stock once the flying car is here? 100's of millions of four wheeled vehicles now useless.

To prepare for the flying car is nothing short of a transportation overhaul of FAA regulations and laws, state infrastructure on tracking flying vehicles, amd much, much more. Nothing in our lives is pointing to the fact that the government is going to allow us all to have personal flying aircraft or flying cars. Cops would all instantly have to switch to the same flying vehicles as well.

Flying car creators are going to be stuck in their garages, right where theyve been, for years to come. There is a reason that the big car companies and aeronatuics companies aren't developing personal flying vehicles, in spite of the fact that there is a TON of money in them from your average consumers. Deal with the poilitics people. At least acknowledge they exist. Fine line between naivety and paranoia but the laws behind flying, and airspace to fly in, are strictly governed right now and have no intention of making room for the flying car or cheap personal aircraft.

I will say that getting a cheap aircraft into the hands of the masses, will be key if it is ever to move in that direction. Licensing will be a force used to limit such personal aircraft growth, however

[- Commenter's typos left in in the quotation.]

Mauritia: Lost Continent beneath the Indian Ocean

Image Source: i09.

I09 reports that geologists have identified tiny bits of the lost continent of Mauritia, in a grain-by-grain analysis of the sand on Mauritius's beaches:

For ages now, Mauritia has been hiding. The small, precambrian continent once resided between Madagascar and India, before splitting off and disappearing beneath the ocean waves in a multi-million-year breakup spurred by tectonic rifts and a yawning sea-floor. But now, volcanic activity has driven remnants of the long-lost continent right through to the Earth's surface. After millions of years, and some incredible geologic sleuthing, it seems Mauritia has been found.

The news comes from a team of researchers led by University of Oslo geologist Bjørn Jamtveit. In the latest issue of Nature Geoscience Jamtveit and his colleagues present the result of a study that examined the beaches of Mauritius, a volcanic island off the coast of Madagascar ... . The lava sands of Mauritius are laced with very interesting particles called ... "zircon xenocrysts."

The vast majority of Mauritius's volcanic lava sands date to around 9 million years ago. But a grain-by-grain analysis revealed the sparsely distributed xenocrysts to be anywhere from 660 million to 1.97 billion years old. A strange find, to be sure, but Jamtveit and his colleagues have a compelling explanation for the anachronistic crystals.

The zircons, write the researchers, likely originated in fragments of ancient continental crust situated beneath Mauritius, and were in fact pushed up through to the planet's surface through volcanic activity. How far were they pushed? Geologist Trond Torsvik, first author on the paper, told the BBC he thinks pieces of long-lost Mauritia are likely situated 10km beneath the island and a chunk of the Indian Ocean. Analyses of Earth's gravitational field corroborate his claims, revealing several regions of the sea floor where the crust is significantly thicker than normal (around 30 kilometers thick, where it should be closer to 5 or 10). ... [A] 2-billion-year old zircon xenocryst on a beach covered in 9-million-year-old volcanic sands is a hell of a geological riddle, and right now, fragments of an ancient precambrian microcontinent, coaxed surfaceward particle-wise by volcanism, seem a rather compelling explanation. [Nature Geoscience via BBC]

 Image Source: i09 via BBC / T. Torsvik.