Category Science & Technology

On November 29, 1961, Enos, a chimpanzee, flew into space. While the spaceflight made Enos the first chimpanzee to orbit the Earth, it also subjected the animal to terrible equipment malfunction.

It is well established that the Space Age was essentially a two-horse race to begin with, with Soviet Union and the U.S. being the two protagonists. And while Soviet Union did have the early lead, the Americans caught up and achieved the first human landing on the moon, which was at the forefront of both countries’ objectives.

The annals of human spaceflight, however, aren’t occupied only by human beings. For, before we human beings ventured into space, we needed assurance that it was indeed possible. And for that, we turned to animals.

While some of them enjoy celebrity status, some others are merely footnotes in history. Enos, a chimpanzee, was among those that convinced biologists (on the American side in this case) that animals’ bodies and minds could function even while out in space.

Intense training

Brought from the Miami Rare Bird Farm in April 1960, Enos clocked up over 1,250 hours of training, far more intense than that which Ham, another chimpanzee and the first hominid in space, went through. His selection for the Project Mercury flight that he went on to be a part of, however, happened just days before the eventual launch.

Hours before the launch, Enos, weighing 39 pounds (17.69 kg) underwent a physical examination, was connected to sensors while he stood still, allowed himself to be secured onto a couch built for the purpose and rode the transfer van that took him to the launch vehicle area, before being moved inside the spacecraft.

Relaxed despite delay

Enos’ condition was monitored inside the Mercury capsule. Even though the holds during the countdown lasted for hours due to various faults, Enos was largely relaxed, save for an occasion when the hatch was opened and closed to allow a switch to be correctly positioned.

Walter Williams, the mission director, was referred to by his peers as a “master in imparting a need for orderly urgency”. He did just that during the countdown for this mission, driving from his usual position at the mission control centre to the pad to personally express his desire for things to move in an orderly manner.

Despite losing a lot of time, weather, however, remained favourable, meaning that they could go ahead with the launch of Mercury Atlas 5 (MA-5) on November 29, 1961. Minor discrepancies apart, the spacecraft, including the control, tracking and communications systems, performed satisfactorily, putting Enos into orbit.

Enos, the first chimpanzee to orbit the Earth, was more than merely a passenger. His training included avoidance conditioning, which meant that electrical shocks were administered to the feet when the animal responded incorrectly while carrying out tasks.

Enos performed well in a variety of tasks, receiving many a drink of water and banana pellets as rewards. But in what scientists called the oddity problems, where Enos had to pick the odd one out among three options (say if two triangles and a circle are displayed, then the circle is the odd one out), he was also penalised due to faulty equipment.

A lever fails

Apart from receiving shocks when performing mistakes, Enos started getting shocks even when he answered correctly as one of the levers that he used for answering malfunctioned. Enos was shocked and frustrated, but kept pulling the levers and performing the tasks and remained at rest between problems, as he had been trained to.

The spacecraft, meanwhile, experienced trouble while about to complete two of its scheduled three orbits around the Earth. The operations team realised that the attitude control system was erratic and the cooling equipment also gave trouble. While the physicians felt the mission could continue after monitoring Enos’ parameters and finding that they had stabilised, the operations team wasn’t so sure.

This meant that only two orbits were completed before Enos’ spaceflight ended and he landed back on Earth. A little more than three hours after launch, the capsule containing Enos descended without incident and the chimpanzee was retrieved.

Even though the mission was largely successful, the avoidance conditioning tests and the fact that the chimpanzee had to suffer further because a human-made device failed make it rather unpopular. In November 1962, a little less than a year later, Enos died of dysentery, with no symptoms that could be directly attributed to his training or spaceflight.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Today, the kinds of robots that are designed and made available to the public are nothing short of amazing. Listed here are some of the craziest robots made and what they are capable of doing.

Tag-along suitcase bot

Any time you travel, one of the biggest hassles is pulling along or carrying your suitcases and luggage while weaving past crowds without going crazy. You wish you could have your own pet mule, but that’s nearly impossible…or is it? Gita cargo both works the seemingly impossible by being a large suitcase that can lug around your items and follow you along while you walk ahead like a boss. Now that’s a suitcase no one would mind owning!

A friend for everyone

For young kids and old adults without companions, Zenbo might be able to offer the right company Looking like a vacuum cleaner with a digital face capable of displaying emotions, this robot whizzes around taking commands, singing songs, playing games, dance and generally always be cute and at your disposal without a frown.

A cute, furry cure

You’ve probably heard that animals like dogs and cats are ideal as therapy for sick But a dog might bite accidentally or a cat might scratch, and there is that problem with them shedding fur. The solution? In Japan, patients get to pet and interact with a cute, furry robotic seal PARO. With touch-sensitive fur and whiskers, it’ll let you pet and cuddle, without expecting any care from you.

100% winner

What makes rock-paper-scissors fun is the fact that it is a totally random and unpredictable way to pass time! Enter Janken, a robot that takes the game a bit too seriously. So seriously, in fact, that it has a 100 per cent winning rate. How on earth does it do that? Equipped with a high-speed camera and hand shape recognition, it can apparently guess what shape you’re going to make so quickly that you’ll never know. Cheater!

ATLAS to the rescue

ATLAS is among the many humanoid robots in the make that is capable of performing different tasks. Unlike many robots that can move well only on smooth floors, ATLAS can power its 6-foot frame through forest paths or even snow. That’s not all – it can open doors, climb ladders, use tools, turn on or turn off valves and probably other tasks. In the future, be prepared to not be shocked by seeing one or ATLAS humanoids rushing past you to tackle emergencies.

What a help!

Finally, a robot we’d rush to buy if only they became available to the public! FoldiMate Inc. is designed to tackle the most annoying among all household chores and the one that Mom assigns to you most often folding clothes. Think of merely feeding one piece of cloth after another on top of FoldiMate and the good robot dutifully deposits them into a bin, ready for you to use!

A robotic smartphone

One day, our boring old rectangular smartphones will be replaced by miniature robot-shaped phones that will do much more. RoBoHoN is one such robot in the making. How can it be better than your faithful smartphone that you own? For instance, you probably go hunting for your smartphone if you keep it somewhere, but ROBOHON is capable of moving in search of you. How awesome is that?

 

Picture Credit : Google

A solar probe built by the European Space Agency and NASA has delivered the closest photos ever taken of the sun’s surface, revealing a landscape rife with thousands of tiny solar flares that scientists dubbed “campfires” and offering clues about the extreme heat of the outermost part of its atmosphere.

The Solar Orbiter snapped the images using the probe’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager as it orbited nearly 77 million km from the sun’s surface or roughly halfway between the sun and earth,

The “campfires” are believed to be tiny explosions, called nanoflares, and could explain why the sun’s outer shield, the corona, is 300 times hotter than the star’s surface.

Scientists typically have relied upon Earth-based telescopes for close-ups of the sun’s surface. But Earth’s atmosphere limits the amount of visible light needed to glean views as intimate as those obtained by the Solar Orbiter.

 

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Researchers from Pune and Kerala have rediscovered a rare and critically endangered plant species called Globba andersonii from the Sikkim Himalayas after a gap of 135 years. The plant, commonly known as ‘dancing ladies’ or ‘swan flowers’ was thought to have been extinct until its “re-collection for the first time since 1875 when the British botanist, Sir George King, collected it from the Sikkim Himalayas. Globba andersonii are characterised by white flowers and a “yellowish lip”. The species is restricted mainly to the Teesta River Valley region which includes the Sikkim Himalayas and Darjeeling hill ranges. The plant usually grows in a dense colony as a lithophyte (plant growing on a bare rock or stone) on rocky slopes in the outskirts of evergreen forests.

Globba andersonii are characterised by white ?owers, non-appendaged anthers (the part of a stamen that contains the pollen) and a “yellowish lip”. Classified as “critically endangered” and “narrowly endemic”, the species is restricted mainly to Teesta River Valley region which includes the Sikkim Himalays and Darjeeling hill ranges.

“As no live collections were made for the last 136 years, it was considered as presumably extinct in the wild. E?orts made by us for the rediscovery of the taxon for the past several years were in vain. However, Dr. Punekar could locate some specimens during his visit to Sevoke in July 2011, which was used to make a detailed description,” said Mr. Thachat.

 

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Scientists have developed a new way to create “sight” for blind people. The approach bypasses the eyes and delivers a sequence of electrical signals to the brain, creating the perception of a glowing light that traces a shape. The method might one day restore aspects of vision to people with damaged eyes or optic nerves.

The team “drew” letters of the alphabet on blind people’s brains by giving them specific patterns of electrical stimulation. Tiny jolts of electricity to the visual cortex, a span of neural tissue at the back of the brain, can make a person “see” small bursts of light called phosphenes. When electrical stimulation was used to dynamically trace letters directly on patients’ brains, they were able to see the intended letter shapes and could correctly identify different letters. They described seeing glowing spots or lines forming the letters. Researchers said their inspiration for this was the idea of tracing a letter in the palm of someone’s hand.

So far, only simple shapes, such as the letters C, W and U, have been tested. But outlines of common objects, such as faces, houses or cars, could be traced using the same idea, they said.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Google, Apple, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard (HP) and Amazon are names that are synonymous with the word tech giant. But could you ever imagine that these billion-dollar American companies started their journey from a garage?

HP was the first company among the giants to have commenced its journey from a rented garage in Palo Alto, California. In 1938, Bill Hewlett and David Packard began part-time work at a rented garage with their mentor Frederick Terman, a professor at Stanford University. In 1939, they formalised their partnership, and the rest is history.

Google, co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, started its journey from the garage of Susan Wojcicki in Menlo Park, California in September 1998. Susan Wojcicki is currently the Chief Executive Officer of YouTube.

Apple too started out in the garage of co-founder Steve Jobs’ parents in Los Altos, California. Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne worked on the first Apple Computer in the garage in 1976.

Microsoft meanwhile saw its ideas come to life in a garage at Albuquerque, New Mexico. Co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote a version of the BASIC programming while working out of the garage. During their garage stint, the two stayed at a most nearby.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos rented out a house with a garage in Bellevue, Washington and developed the company’s online bookstore website there in 1995.

 

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On November 22, 1927, American Carl J E Eliason received a patent for what he called the motor toboggan. The patent, titled “Vehicle for snow travel”, changed human relationship with winter forever. 

Do you live in a place that has a snowy climate? Or have you made a trip to such a place for a winter holiday? If you answered yes to either of the questions, then chances are that you have played with snow, making your own snowman or throwing snowballs at others. While those activities are inarguably fun, you would also know that travelling by foot in deep snow is no easy task.

If the majority of us with two reliable legs find it hard to tread our way through snow, you can imagine how difficult it would be for those with disabilities to their feet. And yet, it was this disability that prompted American Carl J E Eliason to work on an invention for travelling in the snow.

Difficulties posed by snow

The beginning of the 20th Century saw vast improvements in the way people travelled. Apart from automobiles, which quickly became an important part of people’s lives, airplanes too made their way, shortening distances like never before. But even the best of automobiles were of limited use in places where the winter saw heavy snowfall, making it difficult to get from one point to another.

Eliason, who lived in Sayner, Wisconsin, the U.S., was far too used to these. Raised in such climes, Eliason loved to hunt, fish and trap – just like every other young outdoors men of the locality. But owing to his foot disability, Eliason often found himself lagging behind others, unable to keep up with his friends during the treks through the snow.

This prompted Eliason to try and come up with a vehicle that would enable him, and others, to overcome the challenges of snow travel. He began by working with a Model T Ford – one of the most popular automobiles of the time – and adapting it to skis, but it neither worked in the deep snows and unploughed roads, nor was it easy to handle in the woods.

Two years of tweaking

He began work on what he called the motor toboggan in the winter of 1924 and it took him the better part of two years to realise what he saw as the most practical means of travelling in the snow. Eliason’s invention was made up of a wooden toboggan that was fitted with two skis and steered by ropes. Pushed along by an endless steel-cleated track with slide rails and powered by an outboard motor, the motor toboggan was the precursor to the modern snowmobile.

Eliason applied for a patent for a “Vehicle for snow travel” in March 1927 and received it on November 22 the same year. Even though Eliason wasn’t the first to conceive a motorised vehicle for travelling in snow, his motor toboggan was easily the most reliable from a rider’s perspective and also the first such vehicle that went on to be mass-produced.

Challenge to opportunity

Eliason didn’t stop there as he continued to redesign and improve his machine in the decades that followed. He chose better motors and materials and constantly strove for better performance while personally supervising the assembly of each unit that he sold.

The challenges of winter soon became opportunities as these vehicles enabled travel like never before. The enhanced mobility between certain remote villages and towns, even during severe snowfall, meant that communication too improved manifold. What’s more, travelling this way was so easy and enjoyable that the experience even turned out to be a kind of recreational activity.

Eliason’s motor toboggan remained ahead of its time, so much so that the bulk of the design and fabrication of early snowmobiles replicated many of its features. This, in a roundabout sort of way, implies that most of the current snowmobiles can be traced back to the motor toboggan.

As for Eliason himself, he surely did make the most of his invention. As long as there was snow to go about, he was always ahead of the game. While the rest huffed and puffed on foot, he would ride his motor toboggan and get to the destination in the woods at least an hour before his hunting mates.

 

Picture Credit : Google