UV lights in public spaces could kill airborne flu viruses on the spot

Eugenio Marongiu/Getty Images

Could overhead ultraviolet (UV) lights in offices and public spaces be used to stop and kill airborne flu viruses in their tracks? Quite possibly yes, claim researchers at the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

For decades, scientists have known that certain wavelengths of ultraviolet light are able to effectively kill bacteria and viruses by destroying the molecular bonds that hold them together. This type of UV light treatment is widely used to decontaminate surgical equipment. Unfortunately, it can’t be used in public spaces because it is a health hazard which can lead to both skin cancer and cataracts. Fortunately, a way around this problem may have been discovered by Columbia scientists — and it involves a type of UV light called far-ultraviolet C, also known as far-UVC.

“We are using a specific type of ultraviolet light to selectively damage viruses and bacteria while being safe for human exposure,” David Welch, an associate research scientist at Columbia, told Digital Trends. “The physical basis of this lies in the limited penetration depth of far-UVC – it can damage viruses and bacteria which are very small in size, while it is unable to penetrate and cause damage to human cells which are much larger. Far-UVC is distinct from conventional UVC lamps which are dangerous because those wavelengths penetrate much further.”

In a study, the researchers demonstrated that far-UVC light can inactivate aerosolized viruses like the common H1N1 strain of flu using only very small doses of light. The experiment involved releasing H1N1 into a test chamber and exposing it to low doses of far-UVC light, and then comparing it to a chamber that was not exposed to the far-UVC light. The chamber exposed to the light saw the flu viruses deactivated with the same efficiency as conventional germicidal UV lights. What makes this extra exciting is the fact that such far-UVC lamps cost less than $1,000 per lamp — and this cost would undoubtedly be driven down significantly were they to be mass produced. In other words, this technology could be made available to the masses.

“Our next steps are to continue our safety tests,” Welch continued. “Up to this point we have mainly looked at short term endpoints to determine damage, and these have all shown that far-UVC is safe. Future testing will extend this to examine the effects of exposure over a longer time period.”

A paper describing the work was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.

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A.I. is ready to advise us on how to best protect Earth from deadly asteroids

When people talk about using artificial intelligence to solve humanity’s biggest problems, there are few problems bigger than our planet’s survival. That is something a new algorithm called “Deflector Selector” is designed to aid with — by weighing up different possible solutions to deal with the possibility of a deadly asteroid heading in Earth’s direction.

“Our goal was to build a tool that would help us make funding and research decisions for asteroid deflection technologies,” Erika Nesvold, formerly at Carnegie Institution for Science at Washington, D.C, told Digital Trends. “A lot of different technologies have been suggested for deflecting an asteroid on a collision course with the Earth, including the three we describe in our paper: Nuclear explosives, kinetic impactors, and gravity tractors. But none of these technologies has been fully developed and tested in space, and some of them will work better than others.”

Nesvold and team started out by simulating attempted deflections of an asteroid on a collision course with the Earth and calculating the likely success of each method of deflection. As you would expect, this involved some heavy-duty math and computer processing power — since it meant simulating the potential distance of detection for more than 6 million hypothetical objects and the velocity change that would be necessary to change their course. To speed up the process, the team used machine-learning techniques.

“We used this data to train a machine-learning algorithm that could make this determination much faster than our simulations,” Nesvold explained. “So now we can feed in the characteristics of a population of impactors, and the algorithm can tell us which technology or technologies would work best.”

The results? That nuclear weapons can help dispatch around half of the potential objects, while kinetic impactors and gravity tractors score lower. Granted, a 50 percent chance of survival for humanity isn’t great — but the idea is that tools such as this can help decide which technologies we should be focusing our finite research budgets on.

“We’re hoping that the next steps will be to work with other experts in the asteroid deflection field to improve the Deflector Selector model to get more accurate results,” Nesvold said.

You can read a paper on the Deflector Selector project here.

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Want your pet to age gracefully? Study finds tablet games can help

Messerli Research Institute/Vetmeduni Vienna

People will do just about anything for their dogs but spoiling our pets can often do more harm than good. Dogs need stimulation, discipline, and a reasonable amount of mental exercise, even in old age. The problem is as dogs mature, their humans tend to get lax on training and let their pets get away with lounging around and acting all stubborn.

Now, researchers from the Clever Dog Lab at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna are conducting trials on a high-tech way to keep dogs engaged into old age. In a study recently published on the ACM Digital Library, the researchers used tablet games and touchscreen devices as a form of brain training for dogs, which they say can help pets stay more cognitively alert.

“We have been training and testing pet dogs since around 2008,” Lisa Wallis, a researcher and first author of the study, told Digital Trends. “Dogs of all ages … and different breeds and mixed breeds travelled to the lab and were trained by researchers and dog trainers. Over the years we have perfected our training technique and protocol. Due to the fact that we had a project running on senior dogs, we used the touchscreen to look for age differences in cognitive abilities. Many of the dog owners who participated were very skeptical about whether their dogs could learn to use the touchscreen. Indeed, the older dogs took longer to train, but were able to learn the protocol and to complete the tasks we set them.”

Within the Clever Dog Lab, Wallis and her colleagues put pets to the test with tablet-based brain-teasers that challenged the animals to interact with a touchscreen and complete simple digital tasks. For example, selecting an icon with its nose would elicit a treat from the trainer. It may have taken them more time but even older dogs seemed to eventually get the hang of it.

“The fact that the older dogs were able to learn such abstract and sometimes difficult tasks was very encouraging,” she said. “Not only were they able to learn, but many owners remarked how much their dogs enjoyed their touchscreen sessions.”

Wallis said this makes her optimistic that pet-centric tools like Pup Pod and CleverPet may help young dogs mature and mature dogs stay youthful, and she hopes to see more interactive toys enter the market. However, Wallis cautioned that animals are individuals too and what might positively stimulate one dog might frustrate another.

“Therefore for any pet, it is important to monitor their behavior and look for signs of stress when interacting with technology,” she said.

But if your dog seems to enjoy it, let her play! After all, if humans can benefit from technology, why shouldn’t our pets?

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Harvard’s insect-inspired HAMR robot scuttles like a cockroach on meth

For many folks, the word “hammer” summons up distinctly 1990s images of baggy hip-hop pants and rapper-dancers going broke. There is nothing retro about Harvard University’s HAMR robot, however. An acronym derived from “Harvard Ambulatory MicroRobot,” it’s a cutting-edge, insect-inspired robot that can scamper along the ground at an impressive speed of a little under four times its own body lengths every second.

Unlike previous versions of the robot that Harvard has built, its latest iteration — the HAMR-F — no longer has to be tethered to a power source in order to function. While that makes it a little slower than its predecessor, it also opens up new possibilities in terms of freedom of movement.

“The Harvard Ambulatory MicroRobot is a quadrupedal robot that is inspired by cockroaches, having a similar size, mass, and body morphology to them,” Benjamin Goldberg, a researcher on the project, told Digital Trends. “Tethered versions of HAMR have previously been shown to run at speeds exceeding 10 body lengths per second and can perform agile turning and dynamic jumping maneuvers. The most exciting development with HAMR-F is that we are now able to take the robot outside of the lab with an onboard battery an electronics, while still maintaining high speeds and maneuverability.”

The ready-to-run robot weighs just 2.8 grams and is powered by an 8-mAh lithium-polymer battery. Eventually, the hope is that it will be able to move autonomously but, right now, it still has to be controlled via a human operator, although this can be carried out wirelessly.

Harvard University

“The application for HAMR-F that we are most excited about is confined environment exploration,” Goldberg continued. “For example, HAMR-F could be used to search for defects within an engine cavity, within a pipe, or behind a wall. Our current version demonstrates really robust tether-free locomotion capabilities — however, many applications would still require sensors such as a camera or other specialized sensing modalities. HAMR-F has a substantial payload carrying capacity of around 50 percent of its own body weight and the circuit boards are compatible with many of these sensors, so hopefully, these types of applications are not far off.”

Goldberg said that the next step for HAMR’s development is to add more exteroceptive sensors, capable of wirelessly transmitting data back to a host machine. “This is a technology that we are very excited about commercializing because we see great potential for cost reduction and automation of some inspection tasks by opening up new pathways in challenging environments and tight spaces,” Goldberg said.

A paper describing the work has been submitted to the journal IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.

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Love Starman? Sorry, you’ll have to bid a final farewell on Valentine’s Day

SpaceX

If you developed a soft spot for Starman following his spectacular launch aboard SpaceX’s powerful Falcon Heavy rocket a week ago, then Valentine’s Day must seem like just about the worst day possible to bid farewell to your favorite “astronaut.”

But on February 14, the Starman and his Tesla Roadster will finally fade from the view of many telescopes as they drift ever deeper into space.

Don’t have any star-gazing kit of your own? Well, the good news is that thanks to the Virtual Telescope Project, you can still wave Starman off on his adventure, one that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk hopes will last “a billion years,” but which in reality could last hardly any time at all if the car crashes into some space rock or succumbs to radiation.

Starting at 7:15 a.m. ET on Wednesday, the Virtual Telescope Project is planning to live-stream the cherry-red Roadster one final time. Described as “a unique opportunity,” a telescope will show the final moments as Starman drifts into darkness.

The Project, which started in 2006, offers amateur and professional astronomers online access to real, robotic telescopes and offers a range of services for the international community. With the help of Tenagra Observatories in Arizona, it’s been tracking the Tesla Roadster and Starman since February 6, when the Falcon Heavy successfully completed its first launch.

But if you tune in early Wednesday, don’t expect to see a close-up of Starman. The car is just over a million miles away from Earth and currently appears only as a faint dot among a sea of stars. The final live-stream is a chance to say goodbye as it enters what will likely be an orbit around the sun.

The wacky payload was an attempt by Elon Musk to make space “fun” and get people interested and inspired by deep space projects. This is the guy that wants to build a city on Mars, don’t forget.

Oh, and for anyone new to this story — and sorry to break this to anybody who’s formed a deep emotional bond with Starman in the past week — we should just state that he (or more accurately, “it”) is in fact a spacesuit-clad mannequin and not a real person … well, as far as we know.

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These drones could team up to lift injured soldiers off the battlefield

Until robots replace human soldiers on the battlefield, it’s unfortunately a reality that soldiers run the risk of getting injured in war zones. In cases where that injury is severe enough, it may be necessary to physically evacuate the individual from the field of conflict to take them out of harm’s way. That’s where an innovative new project from researchers at Georgia Tech Research Institute aims to help.

Rather than resorting to anything as old-fashioned as medics with a stretcher, Georgia Tech engineers have been working on a system that involves teams of drones working together to lift wounded soldiers off the battlefield or, potentially, take civilians from a disaster area. This is achieved by using multiple eight-propellor drones, each capable of lifting a 65-pound object, which, when combined, can lift a person a distance of 500 yards. You can think of it a little bit like a version of Amazon’s proposed drone delivery service — with the exception that it could one day save lives rather than just delivery time.

“The difference between our system and other concepts of ‘drone delivery’ is that we allow multiple vehicles to carry a package together, rather than only using a single vehicle,” Jonathan Rogers, assistant professor at Georgia Tech’s George W. Woodruff school of mechanical engineering, told Digital Trends. “This allows the range of package weights that can be carried to be significantly expanded. For instance, if one drone can carry a package up to 15 lbs, four drones together can carry a package that is 60 lbs. It allows us to scale our lift capacity to different payload weights by adding more vehicles as needed.”

Georgia Tech

As neat and obvious a solution as this may sound, there’s a reason why it hasn’t been widely adopted — it’s a tricky engineering feat to pull off. In order to achieve cooperative flight control, the drones must coordinate with one another on control actions. That’s especially difficult in cases where the center of gravity location of the package (in this case a person) is unknown. The drones also have to be mindful of where their partner drones are located, lest they collide with one another.

To cope with these challenges, Rogers’ team has developed special adaptive flight control algorithms.

“We have already designed and demonstrated a docking device that will allow these drones to connect to packages, which has been demonstrated in a series of flight tests,” Rogers said. “The next steps will include finalizing the cooperative flight control laws and performing flight experiments where multiple vehicles fly to a payload, connect to it, fly it to a destination, and detach from it. This will demonstrate that such a system can work in practice.”

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Skydio’s R1 is the smart flying action cam we always dreamed of

Another drone with built-in camera isn’t all that exciting, right? Try telling that to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineering graduates at Skydio who this week introduced their new R1 flying action cam. Utilizing 13 cameras to view the world and an Nvidia Jetson chip more commonly used in self-driving cars, the R1 promises to be the smartest flying 4K camera you ever tried — with its guiding mission being to keep you in the frame at all times while dodging any obstacles around it.

“The R1 was designed for full autonomy,” Skydio’s CEO and co-founder Adam Bry told Digital Trends. “With other drones the autonomy features are targeted as pilot assistance, and they’re generally designed with the notion that there’s still a pilot ready to take over at a moment’s notice. Getting beyond this is very technically challenging, but that’s what we’ve been focused on for the last four years — and that’s what makes R1 special.”

The system is based on state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms, which are able to look at raw images and simultaneously balance obstacle avoidance and the need to capture amazing video. Navigating by sight is a frankly amazing challenge, and it is one that R1 seems to be able to pull off pretty darn effortlessly, all while traveling at speeds of more than 20 mph.

At $2,499, it’s not cheap, and its battery life is limited to 16 minutes, but if you’re in the market for a great action cam, the R1 should totally be at the top of your list. Whether you’re an athlete hoping for a hands-free recording of your practices or an outdoors enthusiast who hopes to capture some stunning vistas, this looks like a brilliant bit of tech.

“There’s potential for a broad range of applications, but initially, we see this as a product that sports enthusiasts, adventurers, creators and early adopters will love,” Bry continued. “There are always going to be people that enjoy flying a drone, but the R1 is less about flying a drone manually and more about being able to create content that you wouldn’t normally be able to create.”

We can’t wait to put it through its obstacle-avoiding paces!

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These $1 test strips detect fentanyl in street drugs, could curb overdoses

Johns Hopkins

The United States is in the midst of an opioid crisis, which President Trump recently requested more than $13 billion to help control. At the heart of the epidemic is what seems to be an ever-changing supply of drugs making their way on to the streets. Not least of these is fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller often mixed with heroin but many times more potent. It can be fatal even in small doses and was responsible for more than 20,000 deaths in America in 2016, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse.

Now, researchers have shown that low-cost test strips can be used to detect fentanyl in street drugs, warning opioid abusers of its presence and potentially saving them from a fatal overdose. A recent study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Brown University showed that these strips, which cost about $1 each, can assist drug users while informing a public discussion about one of the leading causes of the opioid crisis.

“[Our study] was a multifaceted approach to try to understand if these kinds of technologies work and how they will be accepted by people who need to accept them,” Susan Sherman, a professor of health, behavior, and society at Johns Hopkins, told Digital Trends. “Meaning either drug users of [health] service providers.”

Sherman and her colleagues ran the study in multiple parts, checking the validity of three drug-testing technologies, speaking to 335 drug users, and interviewing 32 representatives from groups that work with drug users. Through their research they found that the low-cost strip had the lowest detection limit and the highest sensitivity in a comparison with more high-tech technologies, and that both drug users and social workers welcomed the strips as a way to keep people safe.

“The strips are really great, particularly in markets where you don’t know how much fentanyl there is,” Sherman said. “If 100 percent of the drugs test positive for fentanyl, you don’t necessarily need to test the drug. But since we never really know the [street] drug market, it’s useful to have strips.”

Sherman responded to the criticism that such tools may enable drug abusers to use more drugs by pointing to decades of evidence from syringe exchange programs, which show that such programs don’t increase drug use.

“It’s misguided thinking that drug users don’t want to protect themselves or their well-being like anybody else would,” Sherman said. “This is a way to help support that.”

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Best RPGs for your PlayStation 4

Looking for some awesome RPG games on your PlayStation 4? Check these out!

Uh oh! It’s game night but your D&D group has canceled. Fortunately for you, there are other ways to scratch your roleplaying itch. If you’re looking for some great RPGs for your PlayStation 4 then you should probably check out this list.

• Nier: Automata
• Monster Hunter World
• Undertale
• Persona 5
• bloodborne

Nier: Automata

If you are a passionate fan of video games then you owe it to yourself to play Nier: Automata. Developer PlatinumGames uses Nier as an opportunity to work in the language of gaming to create a lush and stunning meta-portrait of the medium itself. If gaming were to gaze into a mirror and find that it was staring back then this game would be the end result.

As an expansion of the Drakengard series, Neir Automata does not require you to play all the previous titles in the series in order to enjoy it. It is an action roleplaying game which you can enjoy on a surface level but as you work your way through it you will be rewarded with fantastic storytelling and a high level of replayability as the game morphs into something new with each play through.

See at Amazon

Monster Hunter World

Monster Hunter World was just released by Capcom in the very beginning of 2018 and it’s already on track to become one of the best games of the year. Capcom managed to take the popular action RPG and give it an approachability the series has never had until now.

Travel to the New World to stalk and take down massive and stunning monsters. As you progress you will use resources from the monsters you slay in order to create weapons and gear to go on greater and more dangerous expeditions. Monster Hunter World has more reasonable learning curve than previous entry’s but still has the depth of mechanics you would expect from a Monster Hunter game.

See at Amazon

Undertale

Undertale is one man’s love letter to RPG games. Developed and published by Toby Fox, it was originally released on PC in 2015 and saw a PlayStation version come out in 2017. Undertale has garnered much praise and awards for its innovative gameplay and writing.

While it may not be the most beautiful RPG on this list it is certainly dripping with charm. The writing is at once fun and goofy while still maintaining a certain heart and beauty. If you love RPG games and want to try something that acknowledges the long history of the genre while still doing something entirely new then you should give Undertale a spin.

See at Playstation

Persona 5

The sixth game in the Persona series, Persona five easily stands out as one of the best JRPG games in the last decade. As one would come to expect, Persona 5 has a gorgeous anime visual style, solid turn-based combat mechanics, and a dash of social simulation. Take on the role of the main character Protagonist, transfer to Shujin Acadamy and discover and learn to harness your Persona powers.

While Persona 5 is a stellar entry to the Persona series and a laudable RPG in its own right, I would be remiss if I were not to at least mention the painfully regressive and tone-deaf handling of LGBT characters. The only acknowledgment of the existence of anything but straight humans comes in the form of a ham-fisted and grotesque caricature of two gay men. Despite the fact that the series could use an update when it comes to certain social issues, it still manages to be a great JRPG.

See at Amazon

Bloodborne

If you’re looking for an action RPG that doesn’t hold your hand then you might want to consider Bloodborne. In fact, not only does it refrain from holding your hand it might slap it every now and then. If you played either Demon Souls or Dark Souls and found that sort of granular combat enjoyable then you are going to love Bloodborne as well.

FromSoftware takes the sort of grinding combat RPG experience that they do so well and ports it over to a gothic Lovecraftian world to great effect with Bloodborne. Take the role of The Hunter in order to save the town of Yharnam. The town’s safety relies on your combat precision and your ability to not throw your controller across the room in frustration.

See at Amazon

Hopefully at least a few of these games can keep you satiated until next week when you can get back to some classic pen and paper role-playing. Or maybe you will be so ensconced in your new PS4 RPG that you will have to be the one to cancel the next D&D session.

What are your favorite PS4 RPGs?

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Heads of U.S. intelligence agencies tell Americans not to buy Huawei phones

The Mate 10 Pro is launching in the U.S. this week.

During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing earlier this week, the heads of the FBI, NSA, CIA, and others proffered a narrative that’s been permeating throughout U.S. government agencies since 2012: Huawei (and to a lesser extent ZTE) are bad actors that can’t be trusted to operate independently in the United States.

According to the head of the FBI, Christopher Wray, “We’re deeply concerned about the risks of allowing any company or entity that is beholden to foreign governments that don’t share our values to gain positions of power inside our telecommunications networks.”

U.S. carriers have tacitly been prohibited from purchasing network equipment from Huawei and ZTE since 2012, but at this hearing, the intelligence chiefs extended that warning to handsets. Pressure from the U.S. government is believed to be what led to AT&T and Verizon pulling their support for the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, which is arriving this week in unlocked form through Amazon, Best Buy, and other retailers.

For its part, Huawei stayed the course with its response, noting that its phones and networking equipment is sold in “170 countries worldwide and poses no greater cybersecurity risk than any ICT vendor.” The concern that Huawei’s and ZTE’s close relationships with the Chinese government poses a potential for espionage and opens vectors for cyber attacks that could be avoided by just not using their products.

During CES, when Huawei was all set to announce carrier support for the Mate 10 Pro, the company launched a wide-spanning awareness campaign that introduces Americans to Huawei brand, and the latest flagship, with the tag, “The best phone you’ve never heard of.” It has also employed Wonder Woman star, Gal Gadot, as a spokesperson for the company in future international campaigns.

While there is no evidence that Huawei has offered backdoor access to the Chinese government, it doesn’t look like the U.S. government and its affiliated intelligence community is going to let up anytime soon.

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