Korean Researchers Develop Seven-foot Robotic Crab for Deep-Sea Exploration

Korean Researchers Develop Seven-foot Robotic Crab for Deep-Sea Exploration

Unlike ROVs and AUVs, the Crabster is designed to be lowered by crane to around 200 meters (650 feet) below the surface, where it will walk along the sea floor on six legs powered by 30 joints.

Moving on legs will hopefully prove more stable, and won’t stir up as much debris as propellers. And like a crab or a lobster, the robot’s two front legs are equipped with manipulators that can grasp objects that can be stored in a frontal compartment.

The researchers also designed the robot’s shell to deflect strong currents by adjusting its overall posture.

It takes four people to operate the Crabster. The pilot controls the robot’s walking and posture while a co-pilot works its manipulators, cameras, and lights. A navigator plans its movement and keeps track of its position, while a sonar engineer monitors the scanning sonar and other sensors. This is all accomplished from the remote control station…

The Crabster can remain on the sea floor for days at a time if necessary, as it is tethered to an external power source. It’s equipped with a high resolution scanning sonar, acoustic camera, acoustic doppler current profiler (ADCP), and several optical cameras. The goal is to explore submerged ships in currents moving at 1.5 meters per second, which are strong enough to rip the oxygen mask off of a scuba diver’s face.

New App Anonymizes Writing by Identifying, Then Stripping Style Cues

New App Anonymizes Writing by Identifying, Then Stripping Style Cues

A new app from researchers at Drexel University can spot what makes an author’s writing unique and replace it with a more generic style.

Called Anonymouth, the program works by looking for “stylistic markers" like commonly used words, punctuation, and sentence rhythm. The idea behind it is that as Internet privacy becomes more of an issue and technology allows even greater levels of tracking individuals, people will want a way to interact with others online and still retain some level of anonymity…

In a study looking at several hundred anonymous Internet forum users, the app was able to identify 80 percent of the users by simply looking at their posts. In a presentation the researchers gave on their work, they said that the tool even works when looking at writing from completely different contexts: “Function words are very specific to the writer. Even if you are writing a thesis, you’ll probably use the same function words in chat messages.”

Adaptive Morphology: New Multi-Modal Drone Can Use its Wings to Walk

Adaptive Morphology: New Multi-Modal Drone Can Use its Wings to Walk

Most animals are multi-modal: they can walk and swim, or walk and fly… there are clear advantages to being able to do move multi-modally, with capability and efficiency coming out near the top of the list.

The disadvantage is that generally, you need a substantial amount of extra hardware for each mode of locomotion… EPFL has managed to create a UAV that can use its wings to walk.

This robot takes advantage of “adaptive morphology," where you’ve got one structure (the wings, in this case) that can be used for multiple locomotion modes.

In a search and rescue situation, you might use a capability like this to fly around and get a good overview of an area, and then land and crawl around under some bushes if you spot something interesting.

[S]mall UAVs tend to land badly [so] being able to move around (even just a little bit) vastly improves the potential for returning to the air successfully.

It’s probably not possible to design wings that have much structural commonality with particularly efficient legs, but that’s not a problem when you can just invent some wings that change their shape, which looks to be where this research is going next.

Once Extinct in the Wild, Galapagos Giant Tortoises Return to Pinzon Island

Once Extinct in the Wild, Galapagos Giant Tortoises Return to Pinzon Island

by John R. Platt

Now here’s a great conservation success story: After more than 100 years, Galápagos giant tortoise hatchlings finally have a chance to thrive and survive on their native Pinzón Island, after conservationists cleared it of the invasive rats that nearly wiped out the animals.

Like most Galápagos giant tortoises—including the conservation icon Lonesome George, who died last year—the tortuga subspecies that once lived on Pinzón Island were nearly wiped out by the arrival of pirates, fishermen and invasive species in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this case, the greatest threat to the Pinzón Island tortoise subspecies (Chelonoidis nigra duncanensis) came in the form of voracious black rats (Rattus rattus) and Norway rats (R.  norvegicus), which ate both the tortoises’ eggs and their defenseless hatchlings.

Older tortoises can defend themselves against rats but so many young animals were killed by rodents that the subspecies could not replenish its population as older animals died off. By the beginning of the twentieth century, it appeared that no young tortoises on the island were surviving until adulthood…

Britain’s barn owls under threat due to extreme weather

Britain’s barn owls under threat due to extreme weather

Cold, wet springs have led to worst breeding season in three decades, which has devastated the species’ UK population

by Caroline Davies

he barn owl, an icon of the countryside and one of Britain’s most popular farmland birds, has suffered a catastrophic fall in numbers after a series of cold and wet springs and is now in “very serious trouble", conservationists have warned.

The Barn Owl Trust said a run of extreme weather events since 2009 had devastated the species’ UK population and led to the worst barn owl breeding season for more than 30 years. Monitoring of sites has revealed where birds have managed to breed, and the average number of owlets at each site is just two, compared with the four or five needed for population recovery.

The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) recorded a 280% increase in reports of dead birds in March at the start of the breeding season. Many had starved.

David Ramsden, senior conservation officer at the Barn Owl Trust, said: “There has never been mortality on this scale before." Numbers were already low because of the bitterly cold winters and extremely wet summers the UK has experienced since 2009…

New Wearable Medical Device Treats Chronic Wounds With Ultrasound

New Wearable Medical Device Treats Chronic Wounds With Ultrasound

In a small clinical study, researchers administered a new method for treating chronic wounds using a novel ultrasound applicator that can be worn like a Band-Aid.

The applicator delivers low-frequency, low-intensity ultrasound directly to wounds, and was found to significantly accelerate healing in five patients with venous ulcers…

“Most ultrasound transducers require a large apparatus and need to be plugged into the wall. We wanted this to be fully wearable as well as portable, so we needed to make it battery-powered. To achieve that, we had had to design a transducer that could produce medically relevant energy levels using minimum voltage,” says Lewin.

Their resulting ultrasound patch weighs just 100 grams — the equivalent of a king sized candy bar — and is connected to two lithium ion batteries which are fully rechargeable. Lewin says the design gives patients the option of using the transducer in a home environment, while still wearing their compression socks. It also prevents the need for a doctor’s visit, which can be a difficult task for patients with chronic wounds.

butterfly species

Silver-spotted Skipper (Hesperia comma)

… is a butterfly of the ‘skipper’ family  Hesperiidae, found through out northern North America and Eurasia. It is known as the Common Branded Skipper in North America, where the butterfly Epargyreus clarus, a spread-winged skipper, also has the common name of “Silver-spotted Skipper".

Females lay single eggs during August and September on the leaf blades ofSheep’s Fescue, Festuca ovina, the only foodplant, and occasionally on nearby plants. Like other skippers the larvae construct small tent-like structures from leaf blades and silk from which to feed. They enter the pupal stage after 14 to 15 weeks at the base of the foodplant. Pupation takes 10 to 14 days, and as with most butterflies the males emerge first…

Silver-spotted Skippers (Hesperia comma) on thistle with diurnal burnett moth, Val d’Aosta, Italy

Florida declares two butterfly species extinct as pollinator crisis worsens

by Alexander Holmgren

Conservationist’s faced a crushing blow last month as two butterfly species native to Florida were declared extinct. 

“Occasionally, these types of butterflies disappear for long periods of time but are rediscovered in another location," said Larry Williams, U.S. Fish and Wildlife state supervisor for ecological services. We think it’s apparent now these two species are extinct." 

Neither species has been seen in any environment for at least nine years, the latter of the two not being seen since 2000. This calamity is only made worse by the fact that so much could have been done in order to save these creatures. The first species, the Zestos skipper butterfly (Epargyreus zestos oberon), had strong bodies with large black eyes and large wings that were adorned with spots that looked like eyes. While the Zestos skipper was visibly declining in its environment, the subspecies was denied access to the U.S.’s Endangered Species Act (ESA) because of the confusion between it and other skipper species in the Bahamas. In the end, what was thought to be a bountiful reserve in the Bahamas proved to be a completely different species. By the time the mistake was realized it proved too late. 

The Rockland grass skipper butterfly (Hesperia meskei pinocayo), an amber golden insect with club like antenna and black eyes, was similarly thought to be making a comeback as the species that had not been seen since the 80’s was spotted back in 2000. But is now believed extinct…