Casa Sperimentale’ Ruins

New Evidence Found which Matches Legendary Founding of the First Dynasty of China

A archaeological team from Beijing University have found new evidence that surprisingly fits the ancient Chinese histories’ accounts of the founding of the Xia Dynasty. Previously, historians had dismissed all accounts of the first, second, and third dynasties as fabrications. They were written to glorify the dynasties which came later, not to document what had really happened. But archaeological findings over the last century provided evidence that the second and third dynasties had really existed. The Shang Dynasty you likely heard about in schools. Yup, we had once thought it was a myth. Now science and archaeology may be confirming the earliest dynasty written about existed as well. Read more

The 10 oldest cities in the world

"There’s a certain aesthetic attached to the oldest cities in the world: bustling souks beneath a bright blue sky, flowing garments made of whispery white cotton, stone masonry painted yellow by the sun."

"There’s a certain aesthetic attached to the oldest cities in the world: bustling souks beneath a bright blue sky, flowing garments made of whispery white cotton, stone masonry painted yellow by the sun."

It’s amazing how crafty humans are! [Via @veritablehokum]

Mission Possible: Redirecting an Asteroid

As part of our Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), we plan to send a robotic spacecraft to an asteroid tens of millions of miles away from Earth, capture a multi-ton boulder and bring it to an orbit near the moon for future crew exploration.

This mission to visit a large near-Earth asteroid is part of our plan to advance the new technologies and spaceflight experience needed for a human mission to the Martian system in the 2030s.

How exactly will it work?

The robotic spacecraft, powered by the most advanced solar electric propulsion system, will travel for about 18 months to the target asteroid.

After the spacecraft arrives and the multi-ton boulder is collected from the surface, the spacecraft will hover near the asteroid to create a gravitational attraction that will slightly change the asteroid’s trajectory.

After the enhanced gravity tractor demonstration is compete, the robotic vehicle will deliver the boulder into a stable orbit near the moon. During the transit, the boulder will be further imaged and studied by the spacecraft.

Astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft will launch on the Space Launch System rocket to explore the returned boulder.

Orion will dock with the robotic vehicle that still has the boulder in its grasp. 

While docked, two crew members on spacewalks will explore the boulder and collect samples to bring back to Earth for further study.

The astronauts and collected samples will return to Earth in the Orion spacecraft.

How will ARM help us send humans to Mars in the 2030s?

This mission will demonstrate future Mars-level exploration missions closer to home and will fly a mission with technologies and real life operational constraints that we’ll encounter on the way to the Red Planet. A few of the capabilities it will help us test include: 

Solar Electric Propulsion – Using advanced Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) technologies is an important part of future missions to send larger payloads into deep space and to the Mars system. Unlike chemical propulsion, which uses combustion and a nozzle to generate thrust, SEP uses electricity from solar arrays to create electromagnetic fields to accelerate and expel charged atoms (ions) to create a very low thrust with a very efficient use of propellant.

Trajectory and Navigation – When we move the massive asteroid boulder using low-thrust propulsion and leveraging the gravity fields of Earth and the moon, we’ll validate critical technologies for the future Mars missions. 

Advances in Spacesuits – Spacesuits designed to operate in deep space and for the Mars surface will require upgrades to the portable life support system (PLSS). We are working on advanced PLSS that will protect astronauts on Mars or in deep space by improving carbon dioxide removal, humidity control and oxygen regulation. We are also improving mobility by evaluating advances in gloves to improve thermal capacity and dexterity. 

Sample Collection and Containment Techniques – This experience will help us prepare to return samples from Mars through the development of new techniques for safe sample collection and containment. These techniques will ensure that humans do not contaminate the samples with microbes from Earth, while protecting our planet from any potential hazards in the samples that are returned. 

Rendezvous and Docking Capabilities – Future human missions to Mars will require new capabilities to rendezvous and dock spacecraft in deep space. We will advance the current system we’ve developed with the international partners aboard the International Space Station. 

Moving from spaceflight a couple hundred miles off Earth to the proving ground environment (40,000 miles beyond the moon) will allow us to start accumulating experience farther than humans have ever traveled in space.

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And the dancer notes the ballroom

$1,200,000/11 br

Weatherford, TX

Less pollution and lighter, more efficient bricks? Yes, please

Living and Working Aboard Station

 Join us on Facebook Live for a conversation with astronaut Kate Rubins and the director of the National Institutes for Health on Tuesday, October 18 at 11:15 a.m. ET.

Astronaut Kate Rubins has conducted out of this world research aboard Earth’s only orbiting laboratory. During her time aboard the International Space Station, she became the first person to sequence DNA in space. On Tuesday, she’ll be live on Facebook with National Institute of Health director Francis Collins, who led the effort to map the human genome. You can submit questions for Kate using the hashtag #SpaceChat on Twitter, or during the live event. Here’s a primer on the science this PhD astronaut has been conducting to help inspire your questions: 

Kate has a background in genomics (a branch of molecular genetics that deals with the study of genomes,specifically the identification and sequencing of their constituent genes and the application of this knowledge in medicine, pharmacy,agriculture, and other fields). When she began her tenure on the station, zero base pairs of DNA had been sequenced in space. Within just a few weeks, she and the Biomolecule Sequencer team had sequenced their one billionth base of DNA aboard the orbital platform.

“I [have a] genomics background, [so] I get really excited about that kind of stuff,” Rubins said in a downlink shortly after reaching the one billion base pairs sequenced goal.

Learn more about this achievement:

+First DNA Sequencing in Space a Game Changer

+Science in Short: One Billion Base Pairs Sequenced

Why is DNA Sequencing in Space a Big Deal?

A space-based DNA sequencer could identify microbes, diagnose diseases and understand crew member health, and potentially help detect DNA-based life elsewhere in the solar system.

+Why Sequencing DNA in Space is a Big Deal

https://youtu.be/1N0qm8HcFRI 

Miss the Reddit AMA on the subject? Here’s a transcript:

+NASA AMA: We just sequenced DNA in space for the first time. Ask us anything! 

NASA and Its Partnerships

We’re not doing this alone. Just like the DNA sequencing was a collaborative project with industry, so is the Eli Lilly Hard to Wet Surfaces investigation, which is a partnership between CASIS and Eli Lilly Co. In this experiment aboard the station, astronauts will study how certain materials used in the pharmaceutical industry dissolve in water while in microgravity. Results from this investigation could help improve the design of tablets that dissolve in the body to deliver drugs, thereby improving drug design for medicines used in space and on Earth. Learn more about what we and our partners are doing:

+Eli Lilly Hard to Wet Surfaces – been happening the last week and a half or so

Researchers to Test How Solids Dissolve in Space to Design Better Tablets and Pills on Earth

With our colleagues at the Stanford University School of Medicine, we’re also investigating the effects of spaceflight on stem cell-derived heart cells, specifically how heart muscle tissue, contracts, grows and changes  in microgravity and how those changes vary between subjects. Understanding how heart muscle cells change in space improves efforts for studying disease, screening drugs and conducting cell replacement therapy for future space missions. Learn more:

+Heart Cells

+Weekly Recap From the Expedition Lead Scientist for Aug. 18, 2016 

It’s Not Just Medicine

Kate and her crew mates have also worked on the combustion experiments.

Kate has also worked on the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), an experimental expandable capsule that docks with the station. As we work on our Journey to Mars, future space habitats  are a necessity. BEAM, designed for Mars or other destinations, is a lightweight and relatively simple to construct solution. Kate has recently examined BEAM, currently attached to the station, to take measurements and install sensors.

Kate recently performed a harvest of the Plant RNA Regulation experiment, by removing seed cassettes and stowing them in cold stowage.

The Plant RNA Regulation investigation studies the first steps of gene expression involved in development of roots and shoots. Scientists expect to find new molecules that play a role in how plants adapt and respond to the microgravity environment of space, which provides new insight into growing plants for food and oxygen supplies on long-duration missions. Read more about the experiment:

+Plant RNA Harvest

NASA Astronaut Kate Rubins is participating in several investigations examining changes in her body as a result of living in space. Some of these changes are similar to issues experienced by our elderly on Earth; for example, bone loss (osteoporosis), cardiovascular deconditioning, immune dysfunction, and muscle atrophy. Understanding these changes and how to prevent them in astronauts off the Earth may help improve health for all of us on the Earth. In additional, the crew aboard station is also working on more generalized studies of aging.

+ Study of the effects of aging on C. elegans, a model organism for a range of biological studies.

Dolce Far Niente in Dance Sport - Dance Comp Review

New Post has been published on http://dancecompreview.com/dolce-far-niente-dance-sport/

Dolce Far Niente in Dance Sport

It wasn’t that long ago, when I set up a new training schedule for my partner and I: a plan with all the goals, the training sessions and the topics we wanted to improve. To be honest, I was proud of what I created, because it was so thought through along with a lot of things finally falling into place. Well, at least these were my thoughts – until I brought the plan for discussion to a private lesson with our coach…

I am so glad that I had a professional eye to look over this! When he saw the schedule, he nodded and then said: “Good work so far, but there is one crucial thing missing.” It was like a wakeup call when he told me: “I see everything in this plan, except for the time when you do nothing at all”. That was it! I totally forgot to plan the time for regeneration: one of the key components when it comes to successful training.

In a (dance)-society that is (mostly) driven by the words higher, faster, stronger, we all tend to forget that we only get better in the time we leave our bodies to regenerate. This doesn’t mean of course that we will get better by doing nothing at all. It’s all about doing nothing AFTER we have been working hard. For instance, if we want to make our muscles more powerful, they first have to be exhausted and then they need time to rebuild to an even stronger version. But also our brain needs downtime to process new information. If we learn something new, it’s first saved in the short-term memory and then by processing the information, it will probably be stored in the long-term memory. And as we all know, in sleep our brain consolidates memories best.

Active work demands for active recovery from the physical and mental demands, in order to improve what we are doing. This goes for nearly all aspects in life and also perfectly for dancing. What do I mean by “active recovery”? Here is a quick and personal list:

Giphy

Low Impact Activities

It’s always great to go on a short, easy 15-minute-walk. You can also do a really low impact Yoga session or stretch a little bit. Everything that makes you feel calm, relaxed and refueled. But don’t overdo it! Really give your body a rest!

Giphy

Nutrition

Of course and as always, what you put into your body is crucial. A balanced nutrition is key to your healthy body as well as active recovery. Try to really control the amounts and also the quality of food you are taking in, and your exhausted muscles will thank you. Not to mention, your concentration on the next lesson will be so much better. One really important tip to keep in mind is, that starving your body (in case you are trying to lose weight or you’ve been telling yourself that “you don’t have time to eat”) is not good for your recovery at all. It will stress your system even more and will not let your body improve.

Giphy

Sleep

According to the National Sleep Foundation, Serena Williams, a really successful tennis player, enjoys to go to bed at 7pm in order to get enough sleep. I am not telling you, that this would also work for you, but it is worth giving a thought. I used her example to really emphasize on how important sleeping is, even more for people who are physically active. It doesn’t matter if you consider yourself as a serious athlete/artist, or if you are just in it for fun, but getting the right amount of sleep is decisive to your performance and also to your improvement. Adults between the age 18 and 64 need between 6 and 11 hours, while 7-9 hours of sleep are recommended. I understand that this is a lot of time, but, in my opinion, sleeping is not enough of a priority anymore. Find yourself a sleeping schedule and also keep it on the weekends. Turn off electronics, find your ideal light, sound and temperatures in your bedroom and give your system a chance to reboot.

Giphy

Let go of the “Coulda Woulda Shoulda”

If you now come to the conclusion that some downtime for yourself is what you need, you also have to let go of all the Rumba Walks you could have practiced in that time. Really! Focus on relaxing, recovering and refueling your energy! And, stop overthinking all the things you could’ve, should’ve or would’ve been able to do then. Just enjoy the famous Dolce Far Niente. And, afterwards – Dance on, even better than before!

Author: Sophia Wedel Photography: Maggiore Fotografico Exclusively for Dance Comp Review

Massive shout-out to the one woman team

Sample Return Robot Challenge

It’s been a long, technical journey for the seven teams competing this week in Level 2 of our Sample Return Robot Challenge. Over the past five years, more than 50 teams have attempted the $1.5 million competition, which is looking to develop autonomous capabilities in robotics. Basically, we want robots that can think and act on their own, so they can travel to far off places – like Mars – and we can rely on them to work on their own when a time delay or unknown conditions could be factors.

This challenge has two levels, both requiring robots to navigate without human control and Earth-based tools (like GPS or magnetic compassing). The robot has to find samples, pick them up and deliver them to home base. Each of the final seven teams succeeded at Level 1, where they had to find one sample, during previous competition years. Now, they have a shot at the much more difficult Level 2, where they have a two-hour window to locate up to 10 samples of varying point values, but they don’t know where to look or what exactly they’re looking for.

Get to know the final seven, and be sure to cheer them on as we live-stream the competition all day Sept. 4 and 5.

West Virginia University Mountaineers Hailing from: Morgantown, West Virginia # of Team Members:  12

Behind the Name: In West Virginia, we call ourselves mountaineers. We like to explore unknown places and be inspired by nature.

Motivation: To challenge ourselves. Through this venture, we are also hoping to create research and career opportunities for everyone on the team.

Strategy: Keeping things simple. Through participating in SRR challenge during the last three years, we have gone a long way in streamlining our system.

Obstacles: One of the biggest challenges was finding and nurturing the talent of individual team members and coordinating the team in making real progress on time.

Prize Plans: We donated 50 percent of our 2015 Level 2 prize money to create an undergraduate “Robotics Achievement Fellowship” at WVU. The rest of the funding was allocated to support team member professional development, such as traveling to conferences. A similar model will be used if we win in 2016.

Extra Credit:  We did an Easter egg hunt with our robot, Cataglyphis (named after a desert ant with extraordinary navigation capabilities), last year.

Survey Hailing from: Los Angeles, California # of Team Members: Jascha Little

Behind the Name: It’s short, simple, and what the robot spends a lot of its time doing.

Team History: We work together, and we all thought the challenge sounded like an excellent way to solve the problem of what to do with all our free time.

Motivation: We are all engineers and software developers that already work on robotics projects. Reading too much sci-fi when we were kids probably got us to this point.

Strategy: We are trying to solve the search-and-return problem primarily with computer vision. This is mostly to reduce cost. Our budget can’t handle high quality IMUs or LIDAR.

Prize Plans: Probably build more robots.

Extra Credit: Favorite pop culture robot is Bender (Futurama). Alcoholic robots are the best.

Alabama Astrobotics (The University of Alabama) Hailing from: Tuscaloosa, Alabama # of Team Members: 33

Behind the Name: “Alabama Astrobotics” was chosen to reflect our school affiliation and our mission to design robotics for various space applications.

Team History: Alabama Astrobotics has been involved with other NASA robotics competitions in the past.  So, the team is accustomed to the competition environment.  

Motivation: We are pleased to have advanced to Level 2 in our first year in the competition (the first team to do so), but we are also not satisfied with just advancing.  Our goal is to try to solve Level 2.

Strategy: Our strategy is similar to that used in Level 1.  Our Level 1 approach was chosen so that it would translate to Level 2 as well, thus requiring fewer customizations from Level 1 to Level 2.

Obstacles: As a university team, the biggest challenge was not having all our team members available to work on the robot during the time since Level 1 completed in June. Most of my team members have either graduated or have summer internships, which took them away from campus after Level 1.  Thus, we didn’t have the manpower to address the additional Level 2 technical challenges.

Prize Plans: Any prize money would be donated to the University of Alabama College of Engineering.

Extra Credit: Alabama Astrobotics also competes in the annual NASA Robotic Mining Competition held at the Kennedy Space Center each May.  We have been fortunate enough to win that competition three times in its seven year history, and we are the only team to win it more than once.

MAXed-Out Hailing From: Santa Clara, California # of Team Members: 4

Behind the Name: Several reasons: Team leader is Greg Maxwell, and his school nick name was Max. Our robot’s name is Max, which is one of the most common name for a dog, and it is a retriever. Our efforts on this has been too the max…. i.e. MAXed-Out. Our technology requirements have been pushed to their limits - Maxed-Out.

Team History: Greg Maxwell started a Meet-up “Silicon-Valley Robot Operating System” SV-ROS that was to help teach hobbyists how to use ROS on their robots. We needed a project to help implement and make real what we were teaching. This is the third contest we have participated in.

Motivation: There is still such a long way to go to make robots practical. Every little bit we can contribute makes them a little bit better and smarter. Strategy: Level 1 was a test, as a minimum viable product to prove the tech worked. For Level 2, we had to test and add obstacle avoidance to be able to cover the larger area with trees and slopes, plus add internal guidance to allow for Max to be out of the home base camera tracking system.

Obstacles: Lack of a cost effective robot platform that met all the requirements; we had to build our own. Also time and money. The two months (between Level 1 and 2) went really fast, and we had to abandon lots of cool ideas and focus on the basics.

Prize Plans: Not sure, but pay off the credit cards comes to mind. We might open-source the platform since it works pretty well. Or we will see if it works as expected. We may also take a break / vacation away from robots for a while.

Extra Credit: My nephew, Max Hieges, did our logo, based on the 1960-era Rat Fink sticker.

Mind & Iron Hailing From: Seattle, Washington # of Team Members: 5

Behind the Name: It was the original title for Isaac Asimov’s “I Robot,” and we thought it was a good combination of what a robot actually is – mechanical and brains.

Team History: Three of us were WPI undergrads and met at school; two of us did our master’s degrees at the University of Washington, where we met another member, and then another of us brought on a family member.

Motivation: We saw that there was an opportunity to compete in a challenge that seemed like there was a reasonable solution that we could tackle with a limited budget. We saw three years of competition and thought that we had some better ideas and a pretty good shot at it. Strategy: The samples and the terrain are much more complex in Level 2, and we have to be more careful about our navigation. We are using the same tools, just expanding their capability and scope.

Obstacles: The team being spread over three different time zones has been the biggest challenge. We are all doing this in our free time after work. The internet has been really handy to get things done.

Prize Plans: Probably invest in more robot stuff! And look for other cool projects we can work on, whether it’s another NASA challenge or other projects.

Extra Credit: We are hoping to collaborate with NASA on the professional side with surgical robots to exoskeletons. Challenge-related, our robot is mostly made of plywood – it is a composite fiber material that works well for fast development using cheap materials.

Sirius Hailing From: South Hadley, Massachusetts # of Team Members: 4

Team History: We are a family. Our kids are both robot builders who work for Boston Dynamics, and they have a lot of robot expertise. Both of our kids are robotics engineers, and my wife is intrinsically brilliant, so the combination of that makes for a good team.

Motivation: Because it’s a really hard challenge. It’s one thing to drive a robot with a remote control; it’s another to do the whole thing autonomously. If you make a single change in a robot, it could throw everything off. You have to think through every step for the robot. On a basic level, to learn more about robotics and to win the prize. Strategy: Very similar to Level 1. We approached Level 1 knowing Level 2 was there, so our strategy was no different.

Obstacles: It is very difficult to do object recognition under unpredictable conditions – sun, clouds, weather, sample location. The biggest challenge was trying to recognize known and unknown objects under such a wide variety of environmental possibilities. And the terrain is very different – you don’t know what you’re going to find out there.

Prize Plans: We haven’t really thought about it, but we will give some away, and we’ll invest the rest in our robotics company.

Extra Credit: The first robot we had was called Robo-Dad. Dan was training to be an astronaut in the 1990s, so we built a toy remote-controlled truck that Dan - in Texas - could control via the internet in the house. Robo-Dad had a camera that Dan could see the house with. It had two-way communication; it was a little before it’s time – the internet was very slow.

Team AL Hailing From: Ontario, Canada # of Team Members: 1

Team History: I was looking for competitions that were open, and my dad had followed the Centennial Challenges for a while, so he alerted me to this one. I was already doing rover projects, and it was appropriate and awesome and interesting. I felt like I could do it as a team of one.

Motivation: Difficult challenges. I’m definitely inspired seeing really cool robots that other people are building. New emerging tech really motives me to create new things.

Strategy: I showed up with another robot to Level 2. I built three, but ran with only two. It did make it more complicated, but the strategy was to send them to different areas and have them be able to communicate with each other. Everything physically was the same from Level 1.  The idea is that they would all go out with different missions and I would maximize field coverage.

Obstacles: Time. More time would always be nice. Being able to make something like this happen under a timeline is really difficult. I feel like I accomplished a lot for a year. Also, manpower – being a team of 1, I have to do all of the paperwork and other related stuff, but also carry the hardware and do the programming. You have to multitask a lot.

Prize Plans: I’d like to start a robotics company, and be able to expand some of the things I’ve been working on associated with technology and maker education.

Extra Credit: My story is not linear. A lot of people are surprised to hear that my background is in molecular biology and  research. I once lived in a tent in Madagascar for a few months to do a biodiversity study, and I have multiple publications from that side of my life. I am in a whole different place now.

The competition is one of many run by our Centennial Challenges program, which looks to the public – citizen inventors, academics, makers, artists, YOU – to help us advance technology and bring a different perspective to obstacles that gets us outside of our traditional solving community. See what else we’re working on here.

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