Epic Weather Affects Research too

As friends and family paddle out of Hurricane Harvey's wake and Floridians brace for Irma, researchers are making hard decisions about research facilities, costly instrumentation, samples and model systems in the path of oncoming destruction. 

This article by The Scientist gives a great overview of things to be considered as part of organized emergency preparedness for scientists in the face of approaching threats.

Some of these preparations include backing up data and moving critical specimens, organisms, and animals to distant facilities. It is crazy enough trying to get your family safe during violent weather, but having to secure your life's work adds another layer of complexity to the drill. We're thinking about you. Go Science! 

The Human Touch

Think science isn't very "touchy feely?" Think again. 

Researchers, engineers and students in the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Biomechatronics Lab are building artificial limbs to be more tactile or sensitive to touch.

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the team led by mechanical engineer, Veronica J. Santos, Ph.D. is creating a touch language translatable by computers and humans. The researchers test robotic touch with mechanical pressure sensors that interact with objects of various shapes, sizes and textures. With cutting edge instrumentation, Santos' team is able to translate touch interaction into computer data.

Santos' results will be used to for a formula or algorithm that allows the computer to identify patterns among the items in its library of tested experiences and things it has never felt before. This work will help researchers further develop artificial haptic (sense of touch) skills and provide robots and human prostheses with the "human touch."

Go Science!

Curiosity Detects Methane

News flash! NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has measured a 10X spike in methane, an organic chemical in the atmosphere and detected other organic molecules in a rock sample gathered by the robotic laboratory’s drill.

So since it is probably not coming from belching cows like here on Earth, where is the methane coming from?

"This temporary increase in methane -- sharply up and then back down -- tells us there must be some relatively localized source," said Sushil Atreya of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Curiosity rover science team. "There are many possible sources, biological or non-biological, such as interaction of water and rock."

Organic molecules, often loaded with carbon and hydrogen, are thought of as chemical building blocks of life (but they can exist without the presence of life). Curiosity's findings from atmospheric and rock samples don't tell us whether Mars has living microorganisms (or has ever had them), but the data shows that Mars is chemically active and may have favorable conditions for life.

Go science!