Scientists Have Created Heat-Sensing “Skin” for Robots.

Scientists Have Created Heat-Sensing “Skin” for Robots.Drawing inspiration from nature, scientists have created a heat-sensing film that would allow robots to detect temperature changes in their environment. Developed by the team from ETH Zurich in Switzerland, the material mimics how the natural membrane of a snake works to help the animal identify nearby prey. Surprisingly, the researchers were able to achieve this using pectin — a low-cost substance that’s primarily used to thicken jam. To make the film, a pectin solution was mixed with calcium chloride and then dehydrated to create a transparent, flexible material. Unlike traditional electronics, which detect temperature changes via currents of electrons, this film senses temperature variations through ion currents, which is the process used by snakes. Any change in the nearby temperature would affect the film’s resistance, which the researchers could measure via electrodes along the film’s edges. To test the film, the team microwaved a teddy bear to 37° C (98.6° F) and measured how it affected the film from various distances. Results showed that the membrane was able to recognize the warmed bear from as far away as one meter. It could also detect temperature changes as small as 10 millikelvin — that’s twice as sensitive as human skin. Pectin films are ultra-low cost and scalable, insensitive to pressure and bending, and can be used to augment temperature sensing when integrated in synthetic skin platforms. This could be particularly useful in creating artificially intelligent (AI) robots, as covering a robot’s entire body with this film would essentially give it a layer of “skin” capable of 360-degree thermal sensing. source

New Study Supports the Link Between Autism and Gut Microbes

New Study Supports the Link Between Autism and Gut Microbes. The study in which autistic children were given daily fecal microbial transplants yielded improvements in gastrointestinal symptoms by 80% and behavioral symptoms by 20-25%. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a group of developmental disorders categorized by a range of symptoms and behaviors. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimate that 1 in 68 children fall on this spectrum. That number continues to rise as awareness of the condition grows. A new method of treating ASD is being investigated by researchers from Arizona State University, Ohio State University, and the University of Minnesota. Using past research that concluded that there were ties between ASD and gut microbe diversity as a foundation, the team attempted to make the gut microbiome of children with autism more closely resemble that of non-ASD children. The researchers hoped that by performing fecal microbial transplants, which are typically used to treat recurrent C. difficile colitis, a condition that can cause serious digestive problems, the composition of the treated children’s microbiome would be changed and symptoms of the disorder would be mitigated. The study involved 18 children between the ages of seven and 16 with autism. Each child took part in a 10-week course of treatment involving antibiotics, a bowel cleanse, and daily fecal microbial transplants. The testing produced some promising results, including an 80 percent improvement of gastrointestinal symptoms and 20 - 25% improvement in autism-related behaviors such as social skills and sleeping habits. source

Wound healing in horses using protein from the orf virus.

A recent study has shown that specific proteins from the orf virus can assist in wound healing in the horse. Researchers from Canada and New Zealand recently showed the healing potential in a specific proteins from the orf virus, a parapoxvirus that causes a highly contagious skin disease in ungulates and humans. The concept is perfectly safe and very promising, as the virus was not smeared on the wound,and wound was irrigated and kept clean. Previous studies had shown that recombinant proteins (IL-10 and VEGF-E), derived from the virus worked well in the skin cells and wounds of mice, so the researchers tested the proteins’ effects in equine skin cells in a laboratory. The results, was satisfactory.

Raising cattle on a candy diet.

Cattle rearing is a very lucrative business,but the high cost of feed has pushed many farmers to the extreme to look for an alternate source to break even. Cattle are ruminants and thus tend to thrive on forage,cereals amongst other supplements but to strike a balance the ration must be complete with representatives of all classes of food and water. 

 Water is very vital to growth and development of the cattle as well as support all the metabolic activities in the body. Cattle must be given cool,fresh water everyday which must be clean,odorless and colorless. The alternate options to cattle feed are candies,orange peels,potatoes,dried fruits,rice products amongst others.

 According to CNN,farmers tapped into the candy factory to augment the feed of cattle when corn prices soared,now prices have skyrocked and farmers are at the candy station. The sugar in the candy is source the farmers want for the cows,as they gain weight and even increases milk production. 

 The candy is mixed with other forms of cattle feed, but at a percentage of 3%. This is how a farmer uses the candy; a dairy farmer in Middlebury, Ind. feeds his 400 cows bits of candy, hot chocolate mix, crumbled cookies, breakfast cereal, trail mix, dried cranberries, orange peelings and ice cream sprinkles, which are blended into more traditional forms of feed, like hay.

 The farmer said that he goes over the feed menu every couple of weeks with a livestock nutritionist who advised him to cap the candy at 3% of a cow's diet. He said that the sugar in ice cream sprinkles increase milk production by three pounds per cow per day. Sugar also helps to fatten up beef cattle, according to livestock nutritionist Chuck Hurst, owner of Nutritech, Inc., in Carmen, Idaho, without any ill effects to the cow, or to the person consuming its meat or milk. He said that it's the sugar in the candy that's important, and that it provides "the same kind of energy as corn." source

The satellite and the chimpanzee.

The satellite and the chimpanzee,this is how satellite data changed chimpanzee conservation efforts.Chimpanzees are an endangered species and scientists and conservationists are turning to the NASA-US Geological Survey Landsat satellites to help bolster their efforts to preserve their forest homes. Approximately 345,000 or fewer chimpanzees remain in the wild, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, a substantial decline from the more than two million that existed a hundred years ago. Humans' closest genetic cousins, chimpanzees are an endangered species and scientists and conservationists are turning to the NASA-U.S. Geological Survey Landsat satellites to help bolster their efforts to preserve their forest homes. A joint mission of NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey or USGS, the Landsat series of satellites has provided a continuous record of Earth's land use for 44 years. Images are available cost-free to the public. NASA satellite data gives an understanding of what it means to be a chimp by overlaying distribution of the habitat with the chimpanzee behavior and ranging data. Unlike maps that don't show the chimpanzees' habitat side-by-side with human activities, in Landsat imagery, both scientists and the villagers could see the direct result of various land uses -- farming and logging for example -- and how they shaped the surrounding terrain and forests. When deforestation happens, important ecological functions and services are lost which impacts both chimps and people, the chimpanzees lose feeding and nesting grounds, and it is very difficult for the territorial animals to shift their home range to another location. People lose local forest resources like honey or specific valuable tree species, as well as suffer alterations of the local water cycle that make erosion and flash flooding new problems. The satellite images were a game changer for improving local conservation efforts by using science and data to plan and monitor .

Fungus-infecting virus could help track spread of white-nose syndrome in bats.

A newly discovered virus infecting the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome in bats could help scientists and wildlife agencies track the spread of the disease that is decimating bat populations in the United States, according to a new study. The study published online in PLOS Pathogens, the researchers were able to eliminate the virus from one fungal isolate, which provided a virus-free isolate that they could compare to wild isolates that harbor the virus to look for biochemical changes. White-nose syndrome is a particularly lethal wildlife disease, killing an estimated 6 million bats in North America since it was identified in 2006. The disease, caused by the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans, first was found in New York and now has spread to 29 states and four Canadian provinces. Although several species of bats have been affected, some of the most prevalent species in the Northeast -- such as little brown bats -- have suffered estimated mortality as high as 99 percent. These losses have serious ecological implications. For instance, bats have a voracious appetite for insects and are credited with helping to control populations of mosquitoes and some agricultural pests. P. destructans is clonal, meaning it is essentially identical everywhere it has been found in North America, making it difficult to determine how it is moving, but the virus it harbors has quite a bit of variation. All the fungal isolates from Pennsylvania that were analyzed all had the viruses that were similar,but those viruses differ from the ones found in isolates from Canada, New York and so. forth. The differences in the viruses reflect the movement of the fungus, and this viral variability would give a clearer picture of how the disease is spreading.

Fly growth mimics cancer cells.

A study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows how the extreme growth experienced by fruit flies in their earliest stage of life shares biochemical similarities with the growth of cancer cells. Scientists who study a molecule known to play a role in certain types of cancers and neurodegenerative disorders have a powerful new tool to study this compound due to research conducted at Indiana University,they found that the same molecule implicated in human cancers is also produced by fruit flies during their larval stage. This discovery is important because it provides the first animal model to understand how these molecules function in healthy cells, if they can understand the function of this molecule in normal cells, then can better understand how it causes human disease and subsequently proffer a solution. The study is the first to find that fruit flies produce L-2-hydroxyglutarate, or L-2HG, a molecule commonly regarded as an "oncometabolite," which can promote tumor formation and growth.