Sydney space enthusiast Robert Brand and his 9-year-old son Jason recently launched a high-tech weather balloon a quarter of the way to space, retrieving images and flight data to help school children get a better understanding about space.

Mr Brand, of Dulwich Hill, has a history with space – at age 17 he wired up some of the Apollo 11 communications gear in Sydney during his term break from college. He was also stationed at the CSIRO Parkes Observatory in New South Wales at the request of the European Space Agency for spacecraft Giotto’s encounter with Halley’s comet in 1986 and Voyager’s encounter with Uranus and Neptune in 1986 and ’89. Also under his belt is an award from NASA for support of STS-1, the first orbital flight of the Space Shuttle program, presented personally by the commander and moon walker John Young.

So when it came time for Mr Brand to launch his own gear towards space he was well prepared, documenting his do-it-yourself journey on his personal blog wotzup.com for other space enthusiasts to watch and track.

“[The balloon launch] was being done to help science education in the Sydney area and anywhere else in fact because we were publishing [on the internet] all of the information and data that we got from the balloon launch,” said Mr Brand, 59.

Launch day was December 28, 2011 from Rankins Springs near Goolgowi in Central NSW. As the balloon got up to about 85,000 feet (25.9 kilometres) above Earth before it burst, Mr Brand and his son tracked it using amateur radio.

“During the flight we were actually relaying data back to the ground and off to a server and that allowed people from all over the world to actually participate with this flight and track it as it was going,” Mr Brand said. “We were getting back a lot of comments on some of the social media [services] such as Facebook just really helping us understand what they were sort of getting out of the whole project. People were sort of yelling loudly if you could put it that way, on the [wotzup] website claiming ‘Hey, they’ve reached this height and that height’, and so there was a lot of really great audience participation in this.”

The data being sent back from the balloon – which was later recovered about 50 kilometres away from where it was launched – tracked altitude, position, rate of climb, payload temperature, payload voltage and air pressure, Mr Brand said. The balloon also has a camera on board that captured still images. “We could actually see as [the balloon] hit different wind levels in the atmosphere and eventually we got up into a jet stream and actually found that we had two jet streams,” Mr Brand added.

When the balloon finally popped it came hurtling back towards Earth at about 40 metres per second, according to flight data.

“So this thing was falling a bit like a brick would fall at ground level but it slowed down and eventually the parachute dropped it on the ground at about six metres per second,” Mr Brand said.

What’s in the box? Jason shows the weather balloon’s payload. Photo: Supplied 

The balloon was put together with the help of senior students at Sydney Secondary College at Blackwattle Bay, who Brand sought to get involved with the project and tasked them with doing a whole stack of materials testing. They tested the styrofoam and how it reacted in zero atmosphere as well as the glue, ensuring it would hold throughout the flight. “The students were putting these materials in a bell jar and sucking the air out of it . . . and checking all of the materials held together – and to protect some of the electronics from the very cold temperatures of about minus 50 Celsius we simply used bubble wrap. … You’d be surprised to know that bubble wrap doesn’t explode when it gets into pretty much zero atmosphere.”

The photos that came back from maximum altitude look “pretty much like that taken from a space shuttle”, Mr Brand said.

“So very dark skies looking at this very thin blue line around the Earth which is our atmosphere and protective layer. It’s a bit scary when you see that photo and realise how thin the Earth’s atmosphere really is.”

When it came time to recover the balloon it was tracked to landing on a field near the small town of Weethalle in NSW, Mr Brand said. ”There was nothing growing on it. It seemed to have been abandoned.”

After knocking on a farm door to no avail, he and his son entered the field to locate the balloon. After driving “pretty much right on top of it” it was recovered, allowing for the father and son duo to publish the photos it captured that weren’t sent back live but stored on the camera attached to the balloon.

Mr Brand hopes to do more balloon launches and get schools involved.

“I’ll keep doing this each year and trying to get . . . more interest in the school year earlier in the year. I’m very keen to hear from people that might be interested in getting involved.”

This reporter is on Facebook: /bengrubb

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

Inspired by the gecko feet, University of California, Berkeley have created a new kind of tape.

Conventional adhesive tape sticks when pressed on a surface. A new gecko-inspired synthetic adhesive (GSA) does not stick when it is pressed into a surface, but instead sticks when it slides on the surface. A similar directional adhesion effect allows real geckos to run up walls while rapidly attaching and detaching toes. The gecko-inspired adhesive uses hard plastic microfibers. The plastic is not itself sticky, but the millions of microscopic contacts work together to adhere. The number of contacts automatically increases to handle higher loads. A feature of the hard plastic gecko-inspired adhesive is that no residue is left on surfaces as is left by conventional adhesive tapes.

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Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

PALO ALTO, Calif. (UPI) — U.S. mathematicians say they’ve solved the riddle of the minimum number of moves it takes to solve the Rubik’s Cube puzzle, a figure they call “God’s number.”

A team from Palo Alto, Calif., says every possible scrambled arrangement of the puzzle can be solved in no more than 20 moves, NewScientist.com reported Wednesday.

They combined computing power with mathematical insights to check all 43 quintillion possible jumbled positions the cube can take, says Tomas Rokicki, a programmer who has spent 15 years looking for the least number of moves guaranteed to solve any configuration of the Rubik’s cube.

“The primary breakthrough was figuring out a way to solve so many positions, all at once, at such a fast rate,” Rokicki says.

Previous computer methods solved around 4,000 possible cubes a second by attempting a set of starting moves, then determining if the resulting position was closer to the solution. If not, the computer would throw out those moves and start again.

Rokicki’s key insight was to realize these dead-end moves are actually solutions to a different starting position, which led him to a computer algorithm that could try out 1 billion cubes per second.

The team has dubbed the 20-moves solution “God’s number,” the assumption being that even the Almighty couldn’t solve the puzzle faster, NewScientist said.

Copyright 2010 by United Press International

Sourced & published by Henry sapiecha

IRVINE, Calif. (UPI) — Your talents and abilities could someday be revealed through a brain scan, possibly guiding your career choices, U.S. scientists say.

Neuroscientists at the University of California, Irvine, scanned 6,000 volunteers in an effort to build a brain “map” that could match particular areas to particular skills and knowledge, The Daily Telegraph reported Thursday.

While being scanned, volunteers performed cognitive tests to see if there was a connection between brain and aptitude, the newspaper said.

Researchers said the amount of gray matter, areas of the brain used for computations, and white matter, used for communication, and where they were positioned seemed to suggest how good someone would be at a number of tasks including arithmetic, learning and remembering facts and figures.

The results, though preliminary, suggest brain scans could eventually be used to help a person consider a career path, psychologist Professor Richard Haier said.

“A person’s pattern of cognitive strengths and weaknesses is related to their brain structure, so there is a possibility that brain scans could provide unique information that would be helpful for vocational choice,” he said.

Copyright 2010 by United Press International

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

for science photography

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CALL FOR ENTRIES

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The new sceintist $10,000 Eureka  prize for science photography recognizes and rewards outstanding science photography.

The definition of ‘science’, for the purpose of this prize,is a comprehensive one. It includes all asp[ects of science [such as nature, technology, health] as well as work that addresses the social or economical aspects of science.

Entries are invited from both amateur and professional photographers aged 18 years or over.

Enter now and view past entries >

http://www.austmus.gov.au/eureka

Sourced and Published by Henry Sapiecha 23rd May 2009

ZARAGOZA, Spain (UPI) — Spanish university scientists have developed a wheelchair controlled by the power of thought, promising to transform life for people with severe disabilities.

The wheelchair, developed at the University of Zaragoza, has a laser sensor and a screen that displays a real-time, three-dimensional virtual reconstruction of the wheelchair’s surroundings. To steer the chair, a user concentrates on the part of the display where he or she wants to go, and electrodes in a skullcap detect the user’s brain activity and work out the destination, the researchers said.

Sensors on the wheels keep track of the chair’s position as it moves. The laser scanner detects obstacles to avoid collisions, so the chair can be used in unfamiliar surroundings, the researchers said in a paper.

Volunteers took just 45 minutes to learn how to use a prototype chair safely and accurately, said associate professor Javier Minguez, an expert in mobile robotic navigation and brain-computer interfaces who headed the chair-development team.

The prototype can handle only two thought commands a minute and can be used for only about two hours since the wet gel used to fix the electrodes to a user’s head dries and loses its effectiveness.

An improved version that could go into commercial production is being developed, Minguez said.

The wheelchair is not the first to be controlled by brain waves, but is the first to incorporate mind-control in a system of real-time navigation, route planning and collision avoidance, computer science lecturer Palaniappan Ramaswamy of Britain’s University of Essex, told New Scientist magazine.

Copyright 2009 by United Press International

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 4th May 2009

3D Display

Victor Company of Japan Ltd (JVC) will release the “GD-463D10,” a 46-inch three-dimensional (3D) liquid crystal display designed for business use.

The display has a resolution of 1920 x 1080. With the use of polarizing filters, it reproduces 3D images that can be viewed by wearing a pair of dedicated circular polarization glasses. JVC reduced the thickness to 39mm at the thinnest part and 75mm at the thickest part (excluding the stand).

Initially, the product will be targeted for use in production and promotion of 3D movies and various events. But the company plans to expand the sales, targeting scientific, medical and educational applications, as well as simulations.

The GD-463D10 employs the “Xpol polarizing filter method,” which allocates right and left images respectively to the odd- and even-numbered lines and displays the images through polarizing filters that have properties inverse to each other.

To view 3D images, users need to wear a pair of dedicated circular polarization glasses that are lightweight and do not need batteries. The product comes with two pairs of glasses. It can reproduce 3D images with no flicker because it simultaneously displays the right and left images on the screen, JVC said.

The GD-463D10 supports the signal input by both the line-by-line and side-by-side methods. In the former method, video signals for the right and left eyes are alternately arranged in every other line. And, in the latter method, video signals for the right and left eyes are compressed to 1/2 only in the horizontal direction and arranged on the right and left sides.

The display has three HDMI input ports and supports the 1080/24p, 1080/50p, 1080/60p, 1080/50i and 1080/60i video signals. 3D representation at 1080/50i and 1080/60i are only possible by signals compliant with the side-by-side method.

The GD-463D10 is slated for release in early July 2009. There is no manufacturer’s suggested retail price. JVC plans to produce 2,000 units per year throughout the world. The company will exhibit the product at NAB Show 2009, which runs from April 18 to 23, 2009, in Las Vegas.

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 22nd April  2009

World’s Smallest’ Video Camera

The dimensions of the camera, “Mini DV,” are 55 x 20 x 18mm. Its volume is 20cm³ and weight is 50g.

“Only an ultra-small camcorder like this can enable people cycling or skiing, pet animals and radio control toys to shoot video,” AEE said. “We developed this product to have more flexability and to allow people to shoot a wider variety of scenes.”

The company reduced the size by focusing on image recording function. The Mini DV is not equipped with a monitor for checking images, and recorded images can be viewed only after they are transferred to a PC.

The camcorder employs a 2-Mpixel CMOS sensor. It shoots 640 x 480-pixel images at 30fps, compresses the images with the JPEG format and stores them in the AVI format by using a microSD memory card of up to 8 Gbytes.

The interface for PC connection is USB 2.0. When the camcorder is connected to a PC, images can be output to a PC in real time. Its Li-ion secondary battery has a capacity of 260mAh, allowing two hours of continuous shooting.

The Mini DV is equipped with a clip for attaching the camera to clothing or accessories like belts etc..  AEE offers a version including a mount that allows users to attach the camera to a helmet, etc, and is intended for filming while playing sports.

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 22nd April 2009

rural chinese court

People gather to audit a trial held by the mobile court at a village in Dagze County, southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, March 26, 2009. The court of Dagze County has dispatched the mobile court to villages for years to unload the economic burdens of those who entangled in lawsuits and popularize law knowledge among local residents.[Xinhua]

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 30th March 2009