China, Taiwan brace for super typhoon after dozens killed in flooding..

China was bracing for a super typhoon on Thursday after weeks of heavy rain killed dozens and submerged huge swathes of the country in floods. Typhoon Nepartak, which is barrelling towards Taiwan after packing winds of up to 163 mph on Wednesday, is expected to make landfall on the island early on Friday before heading towards China later in the day. The super typhoon is set to add more misery to “an already perilous local flood situation” in China, Xinhua news agency said, as the country grapples with its worst flooding since 1998. A total of 186 people have been killed since last Friday, the China Daily newspaper said, citing authorities. China's Ministry of Civil Affairs said 41 people are missing, almost 50,000 houses collapsed and more than 1.6 million people have been relocated. Taiwan’s defence ministry said they had put 35,000 soldiers on standby for the typhoon, while flights have been cancelled and schools and offices shut. Meanwhile, authorities in the eastern provinces of China were bracing for heavy rain and strong winds, cancelling ferry and train services while fishing boats were being ordered to return to port. The central city of Wuhan has reportedly experienced its heaviest rainfall on record and has been put on red alert by authorities, the highest of China’s four tier weather warning system. Large parts of the city of 10 million people have been cut off and some residents are trapped in their homes. Li Keqiang, China’s Premier, visited Wuhan on Wednesday and called on soldiers to ensure that embankments along the Yangtze River were secured. Neighbourhoods along the 3,900 mile river have been threatened after water levels rose alarmingly. The China Daily said Mr Li, who was wearing a military-style camouflaged raincoat, had told soldiers “the lives of millions of people would be in peril” if the embankments were breached. The flooding had led to alligators escaping from the Crocodile Lake Ecological Resort in Wuhu, Anhui province, on Wednesday. "More than 90 escaped and I don’t know many have been recaptured - but I can’t say all of them,” said an employee, who was surnamed Zuo, on Thursday. “But they are Yangtze alligators, which have a good temper,” he told The Telegraph. “They won’t attack people, intentionally." Contributed by the Telegraph .

Rescue operation to save 6,000 pigs from flooding in China .

A rescue mission to save 6,000 pigs from severe flooding district. Two farmers in Anhui province were photographed breaking down as they looked at their pigs struggling, up to their snouts in water. Their farm lies near the banks of the Yangtze River, which has overflowed after days of heavy rainfall. It appeared that the pigs would become victims of the floods, which have killed more than 100 people and caused severe property damage in communities along the river. According to local media, though, the public outcry led to the pigs being rescued. A local organisation visited the farm and managed to save the pigs, according to Anhui News. Flooding in the river basin has left 112 people dead or missing in recent days, state media said on Tuesday, with more damage feared from a typhoon expected to make landfall within days. Some 16 million people have been affected by heavy rains that have left vast areas under water near the Yangtze, China's longest river, the Beijing News cited the civil affairs ministry as saying. Water levels in Taihu Lake, close to Shanghai, are at their highest level since 1954, it said, adding the area faced a "serious" risk of flooding if a typhoon hit nearby on Friday. Flooding is common during the summer monsoon season in southern China, but rainfall has been particularly heavy this year and many areas have been lashed by torrential rains this week. China's national observatory issued an orange alert for storms across the country's south and east last week - the second highest warning in a four-tiered system. Whole villages were levelled and at least 98 killed in the eastern province of Jiangsu last month after the region was hit by a storm with hurricane-force winds and the worst tornado in half a century. Floods have also hit South Asia this week, with 33 killed in Pakistan and 25 left dead in India after unusually heavy rains. Contributed by the Telegraph

Farms and animals decimated in China flooding.

Severe flooding has decimated a region west of Shanghai, killing as many as 130 people and millions of animals while damaging $5.7 billion worth of crops, Reuters reported. The rain over the past week forced 1.3 million from their homes in Anhui. Aside from the loss of crops, the flooding reportedly killed 7,100 hogs, 215 bulls and 5.14 million fowl, according to the China News Service. The reported death toll varied. The BBC reported more than 180 dead and at least 45 missing. Dozens reportedly died in a mudslide in Guizhou Province. "Our country’s flood control work has entered a critical stage. For the next step, the state authorities will make plans based on the most adverse situation,” the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters said in a statement on its website. China's State Television showed images of rescue efforts, damaged areas, and urban areas swamped by water. According to China's Ministry of Civil Affairs, rainfall since late-June has destroyed 22,000 houses and forced 726,000 to relocate in provinces including Jiangsu, Hubei, Henan and Sichuan. Water in 43 rivers has exceeded warning levels and authorities have sent workers to patrol the river dykes, said Chen Guiya, an official with the Yangtze River Water Resources Commission. China's meteorological authority renewed its orange alert for heavy rain in the south and southwest of the country on Monday. China has a four-tier color-coded system for severe weather, with red being the most serious, followed by orange, yellow and blue. Contributed by Foxnews and Associated press

Precision agriculture and unmanned tractors.

Cory Anstey always wanted to be a farmer. It was the joy of riding in the tractor, "the smell of the dirt in the spring" that drew him to the fields. Anstey, 44, is also a bit of a techie. Luckily for him, modern agriculture lets him embrace both of his passions. Anstey started using GPS technology in his machinery about 15 years ago and now even lets his tractor steer itself across his fields. "It's very addictive, once you've had it," he tells me while taking a break at the 21st Century Cooperative, a mechanic shop/gas station/grain elevator in Cumberland, Iowa. Known simply as "the Co-op," the dusty office with grimy floors is the most popular hangout in this town of 250 people. It's here where farmers, many clad in overalls and boots, gather to drink pop (soda, for those not in the Midwest), snack on popcorn and gossip -- which includes chatter about the latest machines. As farmers work more acres with the same -- or even less -- manpower and bigger, more unwieldy machines, they're increasingly turning to technology for help. But it's not the usual tech suspects like Google or Apple inventing a better pitchfork; instead, traditional agriculture machinery manufacturers like John Deere and New Holland keep stepping up their innovation. Self-driving tractors are commonplace (the farmer still sits behind the wheel). Sensors can detect everything from what the machine's doing to what the crop conditions are. Farmers can monitor the progress of planting and harvesting from their iPads, and tractors serve as their own mobile hotspots. It's a skewed reflection of our own increasingly connected world, except farmers have used many of those technologies, like auto-steering and GPS mapping, since the '90s. It used to take years for farmers to figure out the condition of their land. Today, a farmer doesn't need much institutional knowledge about the field he's working -- his tractor knows all, thanks to GPS mapping. Location tech manages three quarters of the acres farmed in Iowa, Darr said. Mapping technology talks to sensors in the machines, letting farmers track what's going on at each location, like yield and moisture level. You can see the info on a display built into the tractor, like a big GPS display. The data gets saved in the cloud and can be accessed on computers and tablets. Many farmers even mount iPads in their tractors as second monitors. The saying about real estate is location, location, location," said Ron Zink, John Deere's director of onboard applications. "It's the same with precision ag. You need to know exactly where you are." Planters have auto-shutoff technology that uses GPS to make sure a farmer doesn't accidentally plant an area twice, saving seeds, fuel and time. They can be nearly perfect in spacing seeds apart from each other, compared with only about 60 percent accuracy with planters from 10 years ago, according to Darr. Farmers can follow their yield in real time as they harvest their fields or go back to the data later. And the machines themselves collect information like the temperature of the engine, the amount of fuel used and the location of that machine, letting farmers repair and maintain equipment. contribution by cnet.com

German Patient Walks Again with Patient-Specific 3D-Printed Hip Implant.

German patient Inge W. had been afflicted with a hip malformation since her birth. Due to an extensive number of intense surgeries and revisions throughout her life, there was very little bone left in her pelvic region, leaving a large hole in the bone and making it very difficult to attach a standard hip implant. As her condition grew worse, it seemed that Inge had no other choice but to be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Fortunately, she was able to walk again with the help of a patient-specific 3D-printed hip implant. She approached the Helios ENDO-Klinik in Hamburg, Germany, Europe’s leading hospital in hip and knee surgery, to see if they could offer an alternative. After visiting with Dr. Thorsten Gehrke, the Medical Director of the clinic, it was clear that there was only one solution: a patient-specific hip implant, made-to-measure so it could fit the remaining bone perfectly. Dr. Gehrke turned to the 3D Printing expertise of Materialise for help with the case. First of all, a 3D model of Inge’s pelvis was digitally reconstructed, and then printed out. It helped to make the surgical procedure clear to Inge, and calm her fears – fears which were understandable, given that this was the tenth operation she would undergo on her hip! The 3D-printed model of her hip also played an even more important role in helping the surgeons at Helios ENDO-Klinik to plan the surgery and visualize the steps they needed to take to introduce the implant as accurately as possible. And finally, the implant itself was also constructed with 3D Printing using the Materialise aMace Integrated System; 3D-printed in titanium, the implant is completely adapted to the patient’s anatomy, ensuring a perfect fit and a much smaller risk of dislocation and impingement. During the operation, the surgeons were also able to place the aMace acetabular revision system and insert the screws as accurately as possible due to the implant trial and bone model we provided along with the 3D-printed hip implant. Furthermore, the 3D-printed drill guides enabled them to drill exactly where the screws needed to fix the implant in place. Therefore, it assured optimal mechanical stability and prevented the accelerated wear and early failure of the implant. Five months after Inge’s pelvic reconstruction, she is making a great recovery and can now walk completely unaided. We hope she continues to enjoy the use of her hip for many years! Contributed by medical 3Dprinting by materialise

Epidemic viruses often contaminate mobile phones used by healthcare workers.

Thirty-nine percent of mobile phones held by health care workers at a French hospital were contaminated with epidemic viruses, according to recent findings published in Clinical Microbiology and Infection. “Nowadays, mobile phones are frequently used by health care workers [HCWs] during care,” Elisabeth Botelho-Nevers, MD, PhD, in the department of infectious diseases at the University of Lyon in France, told Infectious Disease News. “We demonstrated for the first time that RNA of epidemic viruses are present on mobile phones used by HCWs.” In previous studies, up to 25% of mobile phones were found to be contaminated with bacteria, the researchers wrote. In addition, more than 50% of HCWs admitted to using mobile phones in their clinical environment during contact with patients. At the University Hospital of Saint-Étienne, Botelho-Nevers and colleagues examined common mobile phone practices and assessed the presence of viral RNA on the devices from metapneumovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, influenza, rotavirus and norovirus. They surveyed 114 HCWs working in either an adult (n = 58) or pediatric (n = 56) department. Surveyed HCWs included senior physicians (n = 25), residents (n = 30), nurses (n = 32) and nurses’ assistants (n = 27). Both personal and work phones were sampled, and viral RNA was extracted using real-time quantitative PCR. The researchers found that senior physicians and residents more frequently used their personal mobile phones compared with nurses and nurses’ assistants (33/55 vs. 10/59; P < .001). Mobile phones were more often used in adult wards than in pediatric wards (46/58 vs. 27/56; P < .001), and cordless hospital phones were disinfected less frequently in pediatric wards. Viral RNA was found on 38.5% of mobile phones, with rotavirus detected on 39 of 109 devices, respiratory syncytial virus on three and metapneumovirus on one. No viral RNA from norovirus or influenza was detected. These results indicate that mobile phones must be disinfected in clinical settings, the researchers noted. “This work does not support the ban of the use of mobile phones in hospitals,” Botelho-Nevers said. “We just want to make HCWs aware that mobile phones, which are part of our daily practice, can be contaminated by pathogens and notably viruses. “The use of disinfection wipes to clean phones and adherence to hand hygiene are crucial to prevent cross-transmission of pathogens. Contributed by healio.com

UK Defense Firm BAE Systems Wants to “Grow” Drones in Vats with Chemical 3D Printing.

As UK defense and aerospace company BAE Systems prepares themselves for the upcoming Farnborough International Airshow, some of their scientists and engineers were asked to outline their current ides for the future of designing and manufacturing military aircraft. They envision the 3D printers of the future to be a lot more efficient, and a lot different than what we have available to us today. The BAE scientists believe that within this century they will be capable of growing Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) using advanced chemistry and large chemical baths. The process would be capable of creating functional, near fully assembled drones for specific military operations within a matter of weeks. The ideas and concepts or these lab-grown aircraft were developed as part of their collaborative approach to sharing technology and scientific ideas with other established companies, new tech startups and researchers in academia. The process would require a cutting-edge chemical 3D printer and computer called a “Chemputer” that would grow the customized aircraft and some of their electronic systems at the molecular level. The drones would take shape by introducing raw materials into the chemical baths and apply centrifugal force. This would encourage the aircraft to form into their final shapes, and the process could even be used for larger aircraft components that could later be assembled. “This is a very exciting time in the development of chemistry. We have been developing routes to digitize synthetic and materials chemistry and at some point in the future hope to assemble complex objects in a machine from the bottom up, or with minimal human assistance. Creating small aircraft would be very challenging but I’m confident that creative thinking and convergent digital technologies will eventually lead to the digital programming of complex chemical and material systems,” explained Regius Professor at the University of Glasgow Lee Cronin, who is also the Founding Scientific Director at Cronin Group PLC, the company that is helping to develop the Chemputer. While BAE Systems and their corporate partners seem to be focused on the potential military and aerospace applications, the same process could also revolutionize civilian industry and technology. Similar chemical 3D printers could be used to manufacture anything from cars and other vehicles, personal electronics and even furnishings. Welcome to a world of possibilities!!! 3D PRINTING WORLD Contributed by 3dprint.com