A man from Aurora, Texas, has built a revolutionary vehicle that allows him to take off into the sky and cruise over miles of traffic jams. The motor-tricycle - called the super sky cycle - has a 582cc engine and a three-blade 68-inch propeller, the Daily Mail reported. The vehicle can fly at 35mph, land in 20ft of space and has a top land speed of 65 mph. It has a 5 hour flight time without refueling and requires a pilot's license to fly. Larry Neal, of The Butterfly Aircraft LLC, has just been awarded a US Patent to build the vehicle on a large scale and sell it to the general public. The project has been in development for many years but hit a stumbling block as Neal could not figure out what to do with the propellers once the vehicle landed, the report said. However, Neal overcame the problem by making them foldable - allowing the vehicle to be driven on regular roads, it added. (ANI), Source: News Track India
Now, flying tricycle to soar above rush-hour traffic
A Tool To Decode Baby Talk
Credit: Lancaster University
First ever UK based language tool to decode baby talk A tool which could radically improve the diagnosis of language delays in infants in the UK is being developed by psychologists. A £358,000 grant to develop the first standardized UK speech and language development tool means that for the first time, researchers will be able to establish language development norms for UK children aged eight months to 18 months. The tool will plug an important gap which has left UK researchers, education and health professionals at a disadvantage. Until now, UK language experts have been forced to rely upon more complicated methods of testing child language development, or on methods designed for American English speakers which can lead to UK babies being misdiagnosed as being delayed in language development. The two-and-a-half year project funded by the ESRC will also look into the impact of family income and education on UK children’s language development, as well as examining differences between children learning UK English, and other languages and English dialects. The project is expected to make a major contribution to language development research as well as to the effectiveness of speech and language therapy and improved policy making. Researchers are keen to hear from parents with children under 18 months to take part in the study. They are also particularly interested in hearing from English dialect speakers such as families from Scotland and Northern Ireland, and from parents who left school early. The research team
Credit: Lancaster University
is led by Dr Katie Alcock of Lancaster University’s Centre for Research in Human Development and Learning, who will be working alongside fellow language development specialists Professor Caroline Rowland of the University of Liverpool and Dr Kerstin Meints of the University of Lincoln. They will develop a UK Communicative Development Inventory (UK-CDI) which will consist of a checklist of a wide variety of children’s communication abilities in using and understanding speech and gesture, which can be quickly and easily filled in by parents. Once the tool is developed researchers will use it to carry out large scale studies of babies and toddlers in the UK. This wealth of new UK-specific data will enable parents and professionals to pick up on problems more easily by comparing a child’s progress against national averages. Dr Alcock said: “When we study children’s language development, it is crucial to know what a ‘typical’ child can do, in order to ensure that teachers, doctors, speech and language therapists, and policy makers are properly informed. “Parents are the very best people to tell us what their child can do and say – they know the most about their child. “Most language milestones occur in the first few years of life, so it is vital that we find out what these typical levels are for very young children. However, this is extremely difficult because most language tests cannot be used with very young children. “Effective tools have been developed abroad but they are not appropriate for UK English speakers. Tools developed in the US, for example, have been shown to give inaccurate results for UK children. One research group for example found that using US scores with UK children would lead to high numbers of UK children being misdiagnosed as language delayed”. “When complete, this new research will directly improve the UK research on child speech and language development and make a substantial contribution to the wellbeing of children and families in the UK.” Contacts and sources: Lancaster University, Source: Nano Patents And Innovations
Microsoft blurs lines between screens and walls with Illumi-Room
Microsoft Research plans to blur the boundaries between on-screen content and a viewer's local environment using a Kinect unit and a projector. The concept system, called IllumiRoom, is designed for gaming applications and is the first confirmation that the company is developing a patent application that InAVate uncovered in September last year.
The system first uses a Kinect for Windows camera to map the geometry of the room and projected content extends visuals across a room to create a fully immersive experience. Whilst Microsoft has
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gaming applications in its sights, the developments could pave the way for cheaper, more flexible immersive video systems for projects with lower specifications. Microsoft Research intends to present a paper detailing more information on the system at the 2013 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Paris, April 27 to May 2. Source: InAVate
Chinese Medicine Yields Secrets Of Chang Shan Herb
Credit: Image courtesy of the Schimmel lab.
Atomic mechanism of 2-headed molecule derived from Chang Shan, a traditional Chinese herb, is shown in unprecedented detail 
The mysterious inner workings of Chang Shan—a Chinese herbal medicine used for thousands of years to treat fevers associated with malaria—have been uncovered thanks to a high-resolution structure solved at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI). Described in the journal Nature this week, the structure shows in atomic detail how a two-headed compound derived from the active ingredient in Chang Shan works. Scientists have known that this compound, called halofuginone (a derivative of the febrifugine), can suppress parts of the immune system—but nobody knew exactly how. Scripps Research Institute scientists have determined a molecular structure that helps explain how the Chinese herbal medicine Chang Shan works. The new structure shows that, like a wrench in the works, halofuginone jams the gears of a molecular machine that carries out "aminoacylation," a crucial biological process that allows organisms to synthesize the proteins they need to live. Chang Shan, also known as Dichroa febrifuga Lour, probably helps with malarial fevers because traces of a halofuginone-like chemical in the herb interfere with this same process in malaria parasites, killing them in an infected person's bloodstream. "Our new results solved a mystery that has puzzled people about the mechanism of action of a medicine that has been used to treat fever from a malaria infection going back probably 2,000 years or more," said Paul Schimmel, PhD, the Ernest and Jean Hahn Professor and Chair of Molecular Biology and Chemistry and member of The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at TSRI. Schimmel led the research with TSRI postdoctoral fellow Huihao Zhou, PhD. Halofuginone has been in clinical trials for cancer, but the high-resolution picture of the molecule suggests it has a modularity that would make it useful as a template to create new drugs for numerous other diseases. The Process of Aminoacylation and its Importance to Life Aminoacylation is a crucial step in the synthesis of proteins, the end products of gene expression. When genes are expressed, their DNA sequence is first read and transcribed into RNA, a similar molecule. The RNA is then translated into proteins, which are chemically very different from DNA and RNA but are composed of chains of amino acid molecules strung together in the order called for in the DNA. Necessary for this translation process are a set of molecules known as transfer RNAs (tRNAs), which shuttle amino acids to the growing protein chain where they are added like pearls on a string. But before the tRNAs can move the pearls in place, they must first grab hold of them. Aminoacylation is the biological process whereby the amino acid's pearls are attached to these tRNA shuttles. A class of enzymes known as aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases is responsible for attaching the amino acids to the tRNAs, and Schimmel and his colleagues have been examining the molecular details of this process for years. Their work has given scientists insight into everything from early evolution to possible targets for future drug development. Over time what has emerged as the picture of this process basically involves three molecular players: a tRNA, an amino acid and the aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase enzyme that brings them together. A fourth molecule called ATP is a microscopic form of fuel that gets consumed in the process. The new work shows that halofuginone gets its potency by interfering with the tRNA synthetase enzyme that attaches the amino acid proline to the appropriate tRNA. It does this by blocking the active site of the enzyme where both the tRNA and the amino acid come together, with each half of the halofuginone blocking one side or the other. Interestingly, said Schimmel, ATP is also needed for the halofuginone to bind. Nothing like that has ever been seen in biochemistry before. "This is a remarkable example where a substrate of an enzyme (ATP) captures an inhibitor of the same enzyme, so that you have an enzyme-substrate-inhibitor complex," said Schimmel. The article, "ATP-Directed Capture of Bioactive Herbal-Based Medicine on Human tRNA Synthetase," by Huihao Zhou, Litao Sun, Xiang-Lei Yang and Paul Schimmel was published in the journal Nature on December 23, 2012 This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health through grants #GM15539, #23562 and #88278 and by a fellowship from the National Foundation for Cancer Research. Contacts and sources: Mika Ono, Scripps Research Institute, Source: Nano Patents And Innovations
The mysterious inner workings of Chang Shan—a Chinese herbal medicine used for thousands of years to treat fevers associated with malaria—have been uncovered thanks to a high-resolution structure solved at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI). Described in the journal Nature this week, the structure shows in atomic detail how a two-headed compound derived from the active ingredient in Chang Shan works. Scientists have known that this compound, called halofuginone (a derivative of the febrifugine), can suppress parts of the immune system—but nobody knew exactly how. Scripps Research Institute scientists have determined a molecular structure that helps explain how the Chinese herbal medicine Chang Shan works. The new structure shows that, like a wrench in the works, halofuginone jams the gears of a molecular machine that carries out "aminoacylation," a crucial biological process that allows organisms to synthesize the proteins they need to live. Chang Shan, also known as Dichroa febrifuga Lour, probably helps with malarial fevers because traces of a halofuginone-like chemical in the herb interfere with this same process in malaria parasites, killing them in an infected person's bloodstream. "Our new results solved a mystery that has puzzled people about the mechanism of action of a medicine that has been used to treat fever from a malaria infection going back probably 2,000 years or more," said Paul Schimmel, PhD, the Ernest and Jean Hahn Professor and Chair of Molecular Biology and Chemistry and member of The Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at TSRI. Schimmel led the research with TSRI postdoctoral fellow Huihao Zhou, PhD. Halofuginone has been in clinical trials for cancer, but the high-resolution picture of the molecule suggests it has a modularity that would make it useful as a template to create new drugs for numerous other diseases. The Process of Aminoacylation and its Importance to Life Aminoacylation is a crucial step in the synthesis of proteins, the end products of gene expression. When genes are expressed, their DNA sequence is first read and transcribed into RNA, a similar molecule. The RNA is then translated into proteins, which are chemically very different from DNA and RNA but are composed of chains of amino acid molecules strung together in the order called for in the DNA. Necessary for this translation process are a set of molecules known as transfer RNAs (tRNAs), which shuttle amino acids to the growing protein chain where they are added like pearls on a string. But before the tRNAs can move the pearls in place, they must first grab hold of them. Aminoacylation is the biological process whereby the amino acid's pearls are attached to these tRNA shuttles. A class of enzymes known as aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases is responsible for attaching the amino acids to the tRNAs, and Schimmel and his colleagues have been examining the molecular details of this process for years. Their work has given scientists insight into everything from early evolution to possible targets for future drug development. Over time what has emerged as the picture of this process basically involves three molecular players: a tRNA, an amino acid and the aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase enzyme that brings them together. A fourth molecule called ATP is a microscopic form of fuel that gets consumed in the process. The new work shows that halofuginone gets its potency by interfering with the tRNA synthetase enzyme that attaches the amino acid proline to the appropriate tRNA. It does this by blocking the active site of the enzyme where both the tRNA and the amino acid come together, with each half of the halofuginone blocking one side or the other. Interestingly, said Schimmel, ATP is also needed for the halofuginone to bind. Nothing like that has ever been seen in biochemistry before. "This is a remarkable example where a substrate of an enzyme (ATP) captures an inhibitor of the same enzyme, so that you have an enzyme-substrate-inhibitor complex," said Schimmel. The article, "ATP-Directed Capture of Bioactive Herbal-Based Medicine on Human tRNA Synthetase," by Huihao Zhou, Litao Sun, Xiang-Lei Yang and Paul Schimmel was published in the journal Nature on December 23, 2012 This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health through grants #GM15539, #23562 and #88278 and by a fellowship from the National Foundation for Cancer Research. Contacts and sources: Mika Ono, Scripps Research Institute, Source: Nano Patents And InnovationsUnderwater bicycle
Experts at the State Marine Technology University in St. Petersburg have invented an “underwater bicycle” or Blue Space that is pedal-powered. Most likely, this will pave the way for studying the underwater world easier in the future like bicycle riding. Experts insist that the muscle power of human legs is quite sufficient for an underwater tour. At present, almost all tourist submarines are equipped with propeller engines driven by high capacity accumulators to sail at a speed of 2-3 knots or 4-6 kilometers an hour. The price of such a vehicle often exceeds 100,000 U.S. dollars. In short, only rich citizens and professional researchers have access to them. Is their any possibility of developing a vehicle without using expensive and heavy accumulators? The head of the Blue Space project Vladimir Taradonov says that attempts to develop an underwater bicycle have been made many times, but all ended in failure. Even the efforts of two people proved to be insufficient to make the vehicle to sail underwater. “An ordinary person uses up 300-400 watts riding a bicycle in a forest or a on the road. This means two people use up 600-800 watts but they cannot sail underwater with such a capacity because the density of water is 1,000 times higher than that of the atmosphere. This is the reason why neither Americans, nor South Koreans, Japanese or Australians could develop an underwater bicycle using the traditional methods,” Vladimir Taradonov said. The Russian inventors rejected the traditional propeller engine and used a rotor-fluidic engine. Owing to the work of rotor engines water is sucked through the fore holes and forced to flow away from the nozzles. In short, the Russian experts have used Coanda effect owing to which low pressure is generated before the vehicle. As a result the underwater vehicle sails forward towards low pressure, as if it is pushing itself. According to Vladimir Taradonov, in the past years, scientists have formulated a solid theory of underwater vehicles and conducted a large number of experiments while working on the project. They patented 5 inventions during the development of the Blue Space underwater vehicle. The price of an underwater vehicle is no more than the price of a medium-sized car. The English-language website of the Blue Space has been receiving a large number of letters from all over the world. Foreign investors have offered to buy the project and start production abroad. All are impatiently waiting for the display of the underwater bicycle. “At present, we are perfecting the vehicle. An experimental vehicle is ready by 80 percent. It is being built at the “Admiralteiskie Verfi” shipyard which is cooperating with our university. The vehicle is 3.5 meters long, 2 meters wide and 1.2 meters high. It reminds of a car cabin. We are making a vehicle for two persons, but there is a modification that can carry up to 8 people,” Vladimir Taradonov added. The vehicle carrying two persons will be tested in the summer. If this is successful, the first underwater bicycles will be supplied to marine resorts. Source: Voice of Russia
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