Mercedes-Benz laat S500 Intelligent Drive 100km autonoom rijden

Mercedes-Benz heeft een nieuwe Mercedes in de S-klasse een autonome rit tussen twee Duitse steden laten maken, een afstand van 100km. De S500 kan al autonoom rijden in files en Mercedes-Benz verwacht dat zijn auto's rond 2020 geheel autonoom kunnen rijden.

 Volgens de autofabrikant is de r&d-afdeling erin geslaagd om de S500 zonder tussenkomst van een chauffeur van Mannheim naar Pforzheim te laten rijden: een afstand van 100km.

Volgens Mercedes-Benz kan de S500 Intelligent Drive autonoom in files rijden en zijn de systemen die nodig zijn om ook op hogere snelheden het voertuig geheel zelfstandig te laten rijden vrijwel klaar voor productie. De autobouwer durft verder de stelling aan rond 2020 geheel autonoom rijdende voertuigen op de markt te kunnen brengen, een schatting die ook door bijvoorbeeld Nissan is uitgesproken. Naast de nodige technische hindernissen moeten ook nog juridische hobbels worden overwonnen.

Source: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/91218/mercedes-benz-laat-s500-intelligent-drive-100km-autonoom-rijden.html

NYC was chosen for the Driverless City group project

Discussion on Reddit on a driverless city.

Background
Idea | Plan/Outline. We have chosen New York City as the target for our project. Our next step is to plan the content that will comprise our final products, which include:
Full written report
Financial analysis
Slideshow
Maps and photos

Parameters
NYC has completely and successfully adopted driverless car technology in the last 10 years. Regular cars have been banned and a consolidated industry of subscription public/private fleets has emerged with no major problems. NYC is the only city in the region that has fully adopted such a system. Cities just outside of NYC use a mix of driverless and normal cars.

Questions
Please post your own thoughts on what we should include in our content!

View on the future from Audi: http://www.big.dk/#projects-audi

Blog on robocars: http://ideas.4brad.com/topic/robocars and http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/Driverless/comments/1lgb0d/nyc_was_chosen_for_the_driverless_city_group/

World’s Smallest Drone Autopilot System Goes Open Source

The Lisa/S chip, perched on the front of an aerial drone. Photo: 1bitsquared

The Lisa/S chip is 4 square-centimeters — about the same size as a Euro coin. But this 1.9-gram sliver of silicon includes everything you need to autopilot an aerial drone.

It’s the world’s smallest drone autopilot system — over 30 grams lighter than its predecessor — according to the chip’s designers at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. And best of all, both the hardware and the software is open source, meaning anyone can copy and use it — for free.

“The main reason we chose open source is that we want to make it available for society,” says the project’s leader, Bart Remes. “My vision is that within a few years, every fireman [will have] a drone in his pocket.”

The Lisa/S is the MAV Laboratory’s latest project. The chip’s software is based on Paparazzi, an open source drone autopilot system.

The chip was designed with the help of a U.S.-based electronics company called 1Bitsquared, which will sell Lisa/S chips starting in January 2014. But since both the hardware and software is open source, Remes says any company will be able to sell chips based on the technology.

Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/08/drone-autopilot/

Miniature 'human brain' grown in lab

Miniature "human brains" have been grown in a lab in a feat scientists hope will transform the understanding of neurological disorders.

The pea-sized structures reached the same level of development as in a nine-week-old foetus, but are incapable of thought.

The study, published in the journal Nature, has already been used to gain insight into rare diseases.

Scientists at Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences have now reproduced some of the earliest stages of the organ's development in the laboratory.

One of the researchers, Dr Juergen Knoblich, said: "What our organoids are good for is to model development of the brain and to study anything that causes a defect in development.

"Ultimately we would like to move towards more common disorders like schizophrenia or autism. They typically manifest themselves only in adults, but it has been shown that the underlying defects occur during the development of the brain."

Prof Paul Matthews, from Imperial College London, told the BBC: "I think it's just mindboggling. The idea that we can take a cell from a skin and turn it into, even though it's only the size of a pea, is starting to look like a brain and starting to show some of the behaviours of a tiny brain, I think is just extraordinary.

"It's a long way from conscience or awareness or responding to the outside world. There's always the spectre of what the future might hold, but this is primitive territory” according to Dr Zameel Cader.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23863544

Nissan Promises to Deliver Autonomous Car by 2020

Nissan just got serious about autonomous cars. The automaker is promising to deliver the first “commercially-viable” self-driving system by 2020, and it won’t just be limited to a single model — Nissan says several vehicles will come equipped with its Autonomous Drive technology.

Nissan has begun working with dozens of research and educational institutions to make autonomous vehicles a reality, including MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Oxford, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Virginia Tech, and nearly every major university in Japan.

“In 2007 I pledged that – by 2010 – Nissan would mass market a zero-emission vehicle,” Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn said in the announcement. “Today, the Nissan LEAF is the best-selling electric vehicle in history. Now I am committing to be ready to introduce a new ground-breaking technology, Autonomous Drive, by 2020, and we are on track to realize it.”

“Nissan’s autonomous driving will be achieved at realistic prices for consumers,” the automaker stated in its release. “The goal is availability across the model range within two vehicle generations.” That’s ambitious. But it’s best not to bet against Ghosn and Co.

Source: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/08/nissan-autonomous-drive/

3D graphene could replace expensive platinum in solar cells

One of the most promising types of solar cells has a few drawbacks. A scientist at Michigan Technological University may have overcome one of them.

Dye-sensitized solar cells are thin, flexible, easy to make and very good at turning sunshine into electricity. However, a key ingredient is one of the most expensive metals on the planet: platinum. While only small amounts are needed, at $1,500 an ounce, the cost of the silvery metal is still significant.

Yun Hang Hu, the Charles and Carroll McArthur Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, has developed a new, inexpensive material that could replace the platinum in solar cells without degrading their efficiency: 3D graphene.

The researchers determined that the 3D honeycomb graphene had excellent conductivity and high catalytic activity, raising the possibility that it could be used for energy storage and conversion.

The cell with the 3D graphene counter electrode converted 7.8 percent of the sun’s energy into electricity, nearly as much as the conventional solar cell using costly platinum (8 percent).

Source:
http://www.mtu.edu/news/stories/2013/august/story94626.html
http://www.kurzweilai.net/3d-graphene-could-replace-expensive-platinum-in-solar-cells

Nanoparticles reprogram immune cells to fight cancer

Researchers at the University of Georgia are developing a new treatment technique that uses nanoparticles to reprogram immune cells so they are able to recognize and attack cancer.

“What we are working on is specifically geared toward breast cancer,” said Shanta Dhar, the study’s co-author and an assistant professor of chemistry in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.

Effective immune stimulation

“Our paper reports for the first time that we can stimulate the immune system against breast cancer cells using mitochondria-targeted nanoparticles and light using a novel pathway.”

A new cancer vaccine

She cautions that the results are preliminary, and the approach works only with certain forms of breast cancer. But if researchers can refine the process, this technology may one day serve as the foundation for a new cancer vaccine used to both prevent and treat disease.

“We particularly hope this technique could help patients with advanced metastatic disease that has spread to other parts of the body,” said Dhar, who also is a member of the UGA Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center, Cancer Center and Center for Drug Discovery.

Source: http://www.kurzweilai.net/nanoparticles-reprogram-immune-cells-to-fight-cancer

New rechargeable flow battery enables cheaper, large-scale energy storage

MIT researchers have engineered a new rechargeable flow battery that doesn’t rely on expensive membranes to generate and store electricity. The device, they say, may one day enable cheaper, large-scale energy storage.

“This technology has as much promise as anything else being explored for storage, if not more,” says Cullen Buie, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. “Contrary to previous opinions that membraneless systems are purely academic, this system could potentially have a large practical impact.”

Buie, along with Martin Bazant, a professor of chemical engineering, and William Braff, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, have published their results this week in Nature Communications.

“Here, we have a system where performance is just as good as previous systems, and now we don’t have to worry about issues of the membrane,” Bazant says. “This is something that can be a quantum leap in energy-storage technology.”

Possible boost for solar and wind energy 

Low-cost energy storage has the potential to foster widespread use of renewable energy, such as solar and wind power. To date, such energy sources have been unreliable: Winds can be capricious, and cloudless days are never guaranteed. With cheap energy-storage technologies, renewable energy might be stored and then distributed via the electric grid at times of peak power demand.

According to preliminary projections, Braff and his colleagues estimate that the membraneless flow battery may produce energy costing as little as $100 per kilowatt-hour — a goal that the U.S. Department of Energy has estimated would be economically attractive to utility companies.

Source: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/rechargeable-flow-battery-enables-cheaper-large-scale-energy-storage-0816.html

Researchers have identified key signaling molecules that are part of the advance teams that tumors form to ready the lung for cancer spread

Cancer metastasis requires tumor cells to acquire properties that allow them to escape from the primary tumor site, travel to a distant place in the body, and form secondary tumors.

Now, researchers in Japan and the United States have discovered that the signaling protein calcineurin upregulates another molecule, Ang-2 that promotes angiogenesis.
In their study, published in Cell Reports, the researchers found that hyperactivation of calcineurin in genetically altered mice led to increased lung metastases. Inhibition of calcineurin or Ang-2, however, blocked metastases in lung cells of the mice.

The researchers will now investigate whether calcineurin is important for metastases in other organs or whether this pathway is specific for lung metastases.

The article can be found at: Minami et al. (2013) The Calcineurin-NFAT-Angiopoietin-2 Signaling Axis In Lung Endothelium Is Critical For The Establishment Of Lung Metastases.

Bron: http://www.asianscientist.com/in-the-lab/tumors-advance-teams-ready-lungs-spread-cancer-2013/

Grow your own meat

Building a $325,000 Burger

MAASTRICHT, the Netherlands — As a gastronomic delicacy, the five-ounce hamburger that Mark Post has painstakingly created here surely will not turn any heads. But Dr. Post is hoping that it
 will change some minds.
The hamburger, assembled from tiny bits of beef muscle tissue grown in a laboratory and to be cooked and eaten at an event in London, perhaps in a few weeks, is meant to show the world — including potential sources of research funds — that so-called in vitro meat, or cultured meat, is a reality.

“Let’s make a proof of concept, and change the discussion from ‘this is never going to work’ to, ‘well, we actually showed that it works, but now we need to get funding and work on it,’ “ Dr. Post said in an interview last fall in his office at Maastricht University.

Given the difficulties, Modern Meadow is first focusing on creating cultured leather. Its process does not use stem cells but rather skin fibroblasts, specialized cells that produce collagen. “There are a lot of parallels to cultured meat, except that it is a lot less controversial because you’re not going to eat it,” Dr. Forgacs said. “But if we can convince the universe that we can build leather, it will be much easier to convince the universe that we can build meat.”

In his work on cultured meat, Dr. Post uses a type of stem cell called a myosatellite cell, which the body itself uses to repair injured muscle tissue. The cells, which are found in a certain part of muscle tissue, are removed from the cow neck and put in containers with the growth medium. Through much trial and error, the researchers have learned how best to get the cells to grow and divide, doubling repeatedly over about three weeks.

“But we need billions,” said Anon van Essen, the technician in Dr. Post’s lab.

Other researchers are studying different kinds of stem cells that, unlike myosatellite cells, can reproduce indefinitely, ensuring a “livestock-autonomous” supply of cells to make cultured meat. Dutch researchers at Utrecht University are trying to isolate embryonic stem cells from pigs and cows. And Nicholas Genovese of the University of Missouri is trying to develop a type of stem cell that is “induced” from a regular adult cell. So a skin cell from a pig, perhaps, could be turned into a stem cell that could reproduce indefinitely and differentiate into muscle tissue to create cultured pork.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/science/engineering-the-325000-in-vitro-burger.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

Datum: 20-Feb-2012

Lab-grown meat is first step to artificial hamburger


Lab-grown meat is first step to artificial hamburger

Dutch scientists have used stem cells to create strips of muscle tissue with the aim of producing the first lab-grown hamburger later this year. At a major science meeting in Canada, Prof Mark Post said synthetic meat could reduce the environmental footprint of meat by up to 60%.

"We would gain a tremendous amount in terms of resources," he said.

Professor Post's group at Maastricht University in the Netherlands has grown small pieces of muscle about 2cm long, 1cm wide and about a mm thick.

Lab-grown meat could eventually become more efficient than producing meat the old fashioned way, according to Prof Post. Currently, 100g of vegetable protein has to be fed to pigs or cows to produce 15g of animal protein, an efficiency of 15%. He believes that synthetic meat could be produced with an equivalent energy efficiency of 50%.

Dr Steele, who is also a molecular biologist, said he was also concerned that unhealthily high levels of antibiotics and antifungal chemicals would be needed to stop the synthetic meat from rotting.

Bron: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16972761

Datum: 13-Jan-2012

Grow your own meat

Grow your own meat

Instead of getting meat from animals raised in pastures, he wants to grow steaks in lab conditions, directly from muscle stem cells. If successful, the technology will transform the way we produce food. "We want to turn meat production from a farming process to a factory process," he explained.
Prof Post is not the first to dream this dream. In the mid 20th Century, Dutchman Willem van Eelen - back then a budding medical student - dreamt of creating meat without killing animals, by using stem cells.

Bron BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15402552

Proton Therapy radiation treatment for cancerous tumors

The National Association for Proton Therapy (NAPT) is a non-profit organization supported by proton center members and is the Voice of the Proton Community. The NAPT promotes education and public awareness for the clinical benefits of proton beam radiation therapy. Founded in 1990, NAPT is an advocate for the advancement of proton therapy. It serves as a resource center for patients, physicians and health care providers, universities, academic medical centers, hospitals, cancer centers, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and other health care agencies, the U.S. Congress and staff, and the news media.

We are strong advocates for patient access to proton therapy as a superior form of radiation treatment for cancerous tumors that can result in less morbidity and minimum to no side effects.

Sources:
http://www.proton-therapy.org/
http://www.nu.nl/binnenland/3539951/vier-umcs-mogen-protonentherapie-aanbieden.html

The teenage scientist revolutionising cancer detection

Pancreatic cancer 's high death rate is partly blamed on the difficulty of early detection. Teenage scientist Jack Andraka has come up with a cheap and simple way to test for it.

Pancreatic cancer is a killer – and one that is very hard to detect. One of the reasons its survival rate is so poor that it has few symptoms in the early stages.

Partly spurred by the death of his uncle, 16-year-old scientist and researcher Jack Andraka vowed to find a quick and cheap way to test for signs of the disease.

Andraka's research – incuding writing to 200 science professors – led to him developing  a dipstick diagnostic test which searches for a biomarker for pancreatic cancer. It can also be used to test for lung and ovarian cancer.

He tells BBC Future about his quest.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130701-perfecting-early-cancer-detection

William Li: Can we eat to starve cancer

http://www.ted.com/talks/william_li.html?utm_source=twitter&source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ios-share

Better diagnosis and treatment of cancer

Novel quantum dot-based technique sees 100 different molecules in a single cell.

Better diagnosis and treatment of cancer could hinge on the ability to rapidly map out networks of dozens of molecules in individual tumor cells.

New research from the University of Washington offers a more comprehensive way of analyzing a single cell’s unique behavior and could reveal patterns that indicate why a cell will or will not become malignant.

Xiaohu Gua and graduate student Pavel Zrazhevskiy have used an array of distinctly colored quantum dots to illuminate 100 biomarkers, a ten-fold increase from the current research standard, to help analyze individual cells from cultures or tissue biopsies.

Other approaches have measured multiple biomarkers in a single cell, but what makes this technique promising is that it reuses the same precious tissue sample in a cyclical process to measure 100 biomolecules in groups of ten.

The investigators then inject a solution of ten of these antibody-quantum dot pairs onto a tissue sample and use a fluorescence microscope to quantify which of the constructs bind at the single cell level.

Once the measurement is complete, they then wash the tissue sample with a fluid of detergents at low pH to get rid of the antibodies and quantum dots without degrading the tissue sample, and repeat the staining step for different target molecules
The two investigators have shown that they can repeat this process at least ten times without producing any signs of tissue damage.

The researchers note that because this methodology uses commercially available enzymes and standard fluorescence microscopes, it is relatively low cost. They also plan to automate the procedure using microfluidics and automated image processing technologies.

This work, which was supported in part by the National Cancer Institute, is detailed in an open access paper in Nature Communications.

Pavel Zrazhevskiy, Xiaohu Gao, Quantum dot imaging platform for single-cell molecular profiling, Nature Communications, 2013, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2635 (open access)

Source: http://www.kurzweilai.net/novel-quantum-dot-based-technique-sees-100-different-molecules-in-a-single-cell

New theory uncovers cancer’s deep evolutionary roots

Authors predict that if cancer cells are saturated with oxygen but deprived of sugar, it will slow them down or even even kill them.

A new way to look at cancer — by tracing its deep evolutionary roots to the dawn of multicellularity more than a billion years ago — has been proposed by Paul Davies of Arizona State University’s Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science in collaboration with Charles Lineweaver of the Australian National University.

Their view of cancer is outlined in the article “Exposing cancer’s deep evolutionary roots,” written by Davies (available free with registration). It appears in a special July issue of Physics World devoted to the physics of cancer.

The new theory predicts that as cancer progresses through more and more malignant stages, it will express genes that are more deeply conserved among multicellular organisms, and so are in some sense more ancient. Davies and Lineweaver are currently testing this prediction by comparing gene expression data from cancer biopsies with phylogenetic trees going back 1.6 billion years, with the help of Luis Cisneros, a postdoctoral researcher with ASU’s Beyond Center.

“It is clear that some radically new thinking is needed,” Davies states. “Like aging, cancer seems to be a deeply embedded part of the life process. Also like aging, cancer generally cannot be cured but its effects can certainly be mitigated, for example, by delaying onset and extending periods of dormancy. But we will learn to do this effectively only when we better understand cancer, including its place in the great sweep of evolutionary history.”

Paul Davies, Exposing cancer's deep evolutionary roots, Physics World, 2013 (requires free registration)

Source: http://www.kurzweilai.net/new-theory-uncovers-cancers-deep-evolutionary-roots

Scientists Tailor Make Anti-Cancer Agent

Scientists at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Australia and their collaborators have tailor-made a new chemical compound that blocks a key cancer protein. The development of the compound, called WEHI-539, is an important step towards the design of a potential new anti-cancer agent.

The researchers designed the compound WEHI-539 to bind and block the function of a protein called BCL-XL that normally prevents cells from dying. BCL-XL has been linked to poor responses to treatment in cancer patients.

The death and elimination of abnormal cells in the body is an important safeguard against cancer development. But cancer cells often acquire genetic changes that allow them to escape cell death, which also reduces the effectiveness of anti-cancer treatments such as chemotherapy.

Cancer cells can become long-lived by producing high levels of BCL-XL protein, and high levels of BCL-XL are also associated with poorer outcomes for patients with lung, stomach, colon and pancreatic cancer.

Dr. Guillaume Lessene, who led the research team in collaboration with Genentech, said the development of WEHI-539 was an important milestone on the way to creating potential anti-cancer agents that act to restore cell death by inhibiting BCL-XL.

Publishing in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, Dr. Lessene said WEHI-539 was the product of a sustained research program. Article link: Lessene et al. (2013) Structure-guided design of a selective BCL-XL inhibitor

Source: http://www.asianscientist.com/health-medicine/scientists-tailor-anti-cancer-agent-2013/

High-molecular-mass hyaluronan mediates the cancer resistance of thenaked mole rat

Xiao Tian Jorge Azpurua Christopher HineAmita Vaidya Max Myakishev-Rempel Julia Ablaeva Zhiyong Mao Eviatar Nevo Vera Gorbunova Andrei Seluanov

The naked mole rat (Heterocephalus glaber) displays exceptional longevity, with a maximum lifespan exceeding 30 years^1, 2, 3. This is the longest reported lifespan for a rodent species and is especially striking considering the small body mass of the naked mole rat. In comparison, a similarly sized house mouse has a maximum lifespan of 4 years^4, 5. In addition to their longevity, naked mole rats show an unusual resistance to cancer.

We speculate that naked mole rats have evolved a higher concentration of HA in the skin to provide skin elasticity needed for life in underground tunnels. This trait may have then been co-opted to provide cancer resistance and longevity to this species.

Source: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12234.html#auth-1

Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) system

Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) describes a system in which plug-in electric vehicles, such as electric cars (BEVs) and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), communicate with the power grid to sell demand response services by either delivering electricity into the grid or by throttling their charging rate.[1][2]

Vehicle-to-grid can be used with such gridable vehicles, that is, plug-in electric vehicles (BEVs and PHEVs), with grid capacity. Since most vehicles are parked an average of 95 percent of the time, their batteries could be used to let electricity flow from the car to the power lines and back, with a value to the utilities of up to $4,000 per year per car.
BMW, Continental, Daimler, Fraunhofer, RWE, Siemens, TU Dortmund and VW – the partners in the new research project “eNterop” belong to the German industrial and research scene’s elite. They are now working with domestic proponents of international standardization of “vehicle-to-grid communication” (V2G) for electric vehicle networks on the next stage: an open test platform for the interface between electric vehicles and charging infrastructures. Their goal is the rapid establishment of standards for supply and communications systems between vehicles and electric power grids.

Electric vehicles will have to be able to communicate with grids reliably and charge or supply electricity at charging stations regardless of their make.

Sources:
http://www.iff.fraunhofer.de/en/press/press-releases/2013/electric-vehicles-network-standard.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid

Can we detect cancer earlier?

Silicon Valley research lab found a way to identify cancer cells in a drop of blood.

Source: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/05/19/what-the-future-looks-like-inside-the-lab-that-brought-us-siri-the-mouse-and-the-internet-itself/

Related links: http://www.kurzweilai.net/how-to-detect-microvesicles-in-the-bloodstream-to-diagnose-and-monitor-brain-cancer

Cancer cell enzymes shown to act as 'good cops'

Enzymes released by cancerous cells have a protective function and are not one of the "bad guys", say researchers from the University of East Anglia.

Their study found the MMP-8 enzyme sent a signal to the immune system to attack the tumour.

Scientists from UEA worked with clinicians at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital to look in detail at the patterns of MMPs in breast tumours from patients.

Their study, published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, reveals that the matrix metalloproteinase-8 enzyme (MMP-8) could be acting as the 'good guy' by alerting the immune system to the location of the tumour.

"They were once thought to act like 'molecular scissors' to snip away at the scaffolding structures outside cells and clear a path for the cancer cells to invade and spread to other organs.

"However, breast tumour cells that over-produce MMP-8 don't survive long-term - the enzyme stops them growing," he said.

"We now think that in tumours, MMP-8 acts as a sort of 'find me' signal to the immune system, which then becomes activated to attack the tumour, which may help to explain its protective function."

Dr Emma Smith, senior science information officer at Cancer Research UK, said: "This study provides very early clues as to how the MMP-8 protein might actually play the role of a 'good cop' and recruit immune cells to fight breast cancer.

"But these are early findings from cells grown in a lab, and more research is needed to see if the molecules found by the scientists alert immune cells to cancers in women."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22645780#