Reusable, N95 alternative face mask developed by a collaborative team hits production

When nations across the globe began facing the growing danger of the Covid-19 pandemic, it became evident that Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) would be in short supply. In March 2020, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) admitted that the country struggles to meet even a fraction of the demand for respirator face masks.

In response to this serious need, a diverse team consisting of engineers, designers, clinicians, technicians, molders, among other entities, concentrated their intellects and efforts towards the rapid deployment and mass manufacture of an “open hardware, reusable, sterilizable, modular, and filter-media agnostic face mask that aims to hit the N95 efficacy criteria.” The project coalesced from a collaboration through Helpful Engineering, a volunteer-run nonprofit dedicated to aiding the fight against Covid-19, though Open Standard Respirator currently spearheads the project organization. 

Co-leads of the project include MIT Media Lab postdoctoral researcher Matt Carney, Aaron Cantrell (Principal Designer at Cofab Design), and Philip Brown (PhD, Wake Forest Baptist Health). An interview with Carney on the front porch of his home in Somerville, MA, sheds light on specific aspects of the creation process.  

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM) specify a handful of tests that must be satisfied to ensure the safety of this type of PPE. In addition to testing the filter media, there are two tests that directly relate to the combination of the face mask’s mechanical design and the specific filter material: the residual CO2 test and the particle filtration efficiency test at specific volume flow-rates (and resulting air-velocities). Both of these metrics can only be evaluated with analytical equipment and directly affect the safety of the mask.  

The team’s early advantages included rapid iteration with access to 3D-printed silicone (technology developed at MIT), technical testing of their prototypes at every stage of development, and intense focus on the user experience. From the first week they were sending parts to test on equipment similar to that specified by NIOSH and ASTM, particularly to assess the safety of the mask, which encompasses three main criteria: 1) inhale/exhale pressure drop or breathing resistance, 2) re-breathing of residual CO2, and 3) filter efficiency. “As you exhale, you breathe out a bunch of CO2, and if there’s dead space between your face and the mask, when you re-inhale that you’re re-inhaling CO2, so you’re not getting as much oxygen as you would expect…[and] as the filter area shrinks, the air and particle velocities increase, making the filter media less effective at protecting you,” Carney states.

Medical workers have provided feedback on the design of these prototypes; three hospitals and three county emergency medical services are currently evaluating them. Bryan Gallimore, Battalion Chief of the Quality Assurance/Training Division at Forsyth County Emergency Services (Winston-Salem, NC), says that “this project has been really, really good for us...I’ve had multiple users wear them and run through some of the standard procedures [and] job requirements that we would have with the other PPE that typically would go hand-in-hand with an N95.” 

Starting in early June 2020, the “Open Standard Respirator, Model 1” has entered large scale production phases in the US, Portugal, and expanding to Colombia and Brazil. From the very beginning, as Carney notes, the project’s collaborative nature embodies the spirit of the MIT Media Lab. “It’s leveraging what we’re good at, at the Media Lab. This desire to jump in and think a little differently about things, and to build up a team to actually make things happen.”  

People Prefer Communicating With Robots That Imitate Them

New research in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library takes lessons from human interactions

People are social creatures who, without realizing it, synchronize their movements to fit in with friends, relatives, and colleagues. Watch a group of friends together and you’ll notice they walk in sync, and even talk like one another. Turns out that people prefer robots to respond to their behavior in the same manner and in real time, according to new research from the University of Hertfordshire, in England,

This type of interaction helps establish a social rapport between humans and machine, and shows that motor coordination is crucial to the interpersonal dynamics between the two. Published in January in IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development, the research brings us one step closer to communicating with robots in a natural and more sophisticated way.

HUMAN-ROBOT INTERACTION

Paying attention to human social behavior, the researchers replicated the concept in a human-robot scenario. They used a child-sized humanoid (a robot that resembles a human) equipped with a speech module that informed the 23 participants, 19 of which are staff and students from the university, of three gesture patterns to perform They could wave their hands in the shape of a circle, triangle, or infinity symbol.

Participants held a Wii Remote when performing the gestures. This allowed the robot to capture, record, and recognize the gestures so it could make appropriate reactions to the participants’ movements. The Wii Remote also has an optical sensor and an acceleration sensor, which helped increase the accuracy of the robot’s movements.

The robot had 18 degrees of freedom—or the number of independent pieces of information—that enabled it to mimic the person’s gesture patterns simultaneously.  A synchrony detection system method, for example, was adopted that allowed the robot to respond in real time. This technique calculates the spatial and temporal relationships between the participant and robot’s movements. In the future, one can imagine this to mean that when people wave good-bye to the robot, it would wave back.

FUTURE FRIENDS

A majority of participants reported they preferred interacting with a robot that had motor coordination than without. Perhaps more surprisingly, human-robot motor coordination works both ways. The researchers said that previous studies in this area have shown that humans also adapt their behaviors to that of the robots when given the opportunity to interact with them, similar to how we change our voice and body language when we speak to kids or pets. (Just as long as we don’t start imitating robot dance moves.)

NASA's Exploration Plans Include Living Off the Land

By Bob Granath
NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Florida

A close-up view of Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong's boot and boot print in the lunar soil, showing the makeup of regolith on the moon. Basalt in the soft, powdery soil could be useful in building structures on the lunar surface.

Credits: NASA/ Neil Armstrong

Rob Mueller, NASA senior technologist in the Surface Systems Office at the Kennedy Space Center, left, talks with former NASA Gemini and Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin during a demonstration of the Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot, or RASSOR. The robot has been tested at Kennedy's Swamp Works. A similar spacecraft could be used to collect samples or excavate a landing pad for future landers.

Credits: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

Engineers make adjustments to the second generation Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot prior to a test at the Kennedy Space Center's Swamp Works. As a resource, regolith shows promise for construction due to the extensive presence of basalt in the surface soil. The mineral is widespread among all igneous rocks and comprises more than 90 percent of all volcanic material and it is commonly found on both the moon and Mars.

Credits: NASA

In the Kennedy Space Center's Swamp Works laboratory, scientists and engineers are developing robotic concepts for building structures on the moon or Mars focusing on in-situ resource utilization, or living off the land. This robotic arm could be the basis of a system to construct basic shelters for future explorers.

Credits: NASA/Dan Casper

This artist's concepts depicts an example of a construction strategy from Contour Crafting and University of Southern California. The approach was selected by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Project. Contour Crafting technology has potential for building safe, reliable and affordable lunar and Martian structures, habitats, laboratories and other facilities. Contour Crafting construction systems are being developed that exploit in-situ resources and can utilize regolith as construction material.

Credits: Contour Crafting and University of Southern California

When early explorers crossed vast oceans to reach new worlds, they traveled with only what they needed to get there. After arriving at their destination, the pioneers planned to live off the land. NASA engineers and scientists now are developing capabilities needed once astronauts reach destinations such as an asteroid, the moon or Mars.

At NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, researchers are studying how to best practice in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), that is, harvesting and relying on available raw materials as astronauts visit deep-space destinations.

Josephine Burnett, director of Kennedy's new Exploration Research and Technology Programs organization, points out the significance of creating new capabilities.

"Pioneering space will require several game changing technologies, some of which are being developed here at Kennedy," said Burnett. "These new technological capabilities will enable NASA to become less dependent on Earth-based logistics and instead use local resources to maintain a sustained human presence in space."

According to Jack Fox, chief of the Science and Technology Projects Division of the Exploration Research and Technology Programs Directorate at Kennedy, ISRU could reduce the weight of an outfitted exploration spacecraft by 40 percent.

"The purpose of our in-situ resource utilization research is to harness these resources," he said. "When the early settlers came to North America, they brought only ax heads. They knew they could make ax handles from trees they would find when they reached their destination. We believe learning to live off available resources will significantly reduce the mass, cost and risk of near and long-term space exploration."

Fox explained that resources such as water ice, metals and regolith will be available in great supplies whether planning to work on the moon, Mars or other destinations.

Regolith is a layer of loose material covering solid rock. It includes dust, soil, broken rock, and other related materials and is present on Earth, the moon, some asteroids and Mars.

One resource that is key to numerous applications is water.

"Several recent planetary missions have sent back data that points to lunar water representing a significant resource that could be used by future explorers," Fox said.

The Clementine mission, launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in 1994, conducted a bistatic radar experiment that showed water might exist in the Shackelton crater near the lunar south pole.

Officially called the Deep Space Program Science Experiment, the objective of the Clementine mission was to test sensors and spacecraft components under extended exposure to the space environment and to make scientific observations of the moon and an asteroid.

Launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in 1998, the Lunar Prospector mission detected elevated amounts of hydrogen in both of the moon's polar regions, but could not distinguish its chemical form. Other data returned during the mission also helped scientists construct a detailed map of the lunar surface composition.

NASA's mini-RF and M³ instruments on the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter provided more information on the moon's water resources. Chandrayaan-1 was India's first lunar probe, launched in 2008,

Flown from the Cape in 2009, more potential water resources were located by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) missions.

Besides the obvious benefits of water itself, it is made up of hydrogen and oxygen.

"By separating these elements, we have what it takes to operate fuel cells to create electricity," Fox said. "That gives us a power plant on a distant destination."

A fuel cell converts energy from an element, such as liquid hydrogen, into electricity through a chemical reaction with liquid oxygen or another oxidizing agent.

Such technology is under development at Kennedy. The Regolith and Environment Science and Oxygen and Lunar Volatiles Extraction (RESOLVE) payload is in development for a planned Resource Prospector probe. This ISRU-driven mission features a rover that would map lunar volatiles, drill to extract samples and process water and other volatiles.

In planetary science, volatiles are chemical elements and compounds with low boiling points that are associated with a planet or moon's crust or atmosphere.

"RESOLVE is an important first step in enabling long-duration human exploration by actually extracting water from under the lunar surface," Fox said.

Hydrogen and oxygen are the most efficient chemical rocket propellants know. Therefore, extracting these elements from local lunar resources might permit using the moon as a "gas station" for a spacecraft to explore further into the solar system. Oxygen and water, obviously represents a valuable life support commodity.

Since 1965, a fleet of robotic spacecraft have flown by, orbited and landed on Mars. Collectively, they have dramatically increased the knowledge-base about the Red Planet, helping pave the way for human pioneers.

Robotic scientific rovers now are being developed to further determine what raw materials are available and in what quantities. A prototype rover called RASSOR, for Regolith Advanced Surface System Operations Robot, has been tested at Kennedy's Swamp Works. Established to provide rapid, innovative and cost effective exploration mission solutions, Swamp Works leverages partnerships across NASA, industry and academia.

"RASSOR is designed to climb over difficult terrain," Fox said. "It has wheels with scoops that pick up regolith. It could be used to collect samples or excavate a landing pad for future landers. While the first generation RASSOR has been very successful, we now are working on RASSOR 2 which will be lighter in weight and use less energy."

As a resource, regolith shows promise for construction partly due to the extensive presence of volcanic basalt in the surface soil.

"Construction materials containing basalt and a bonding agent would be two to three times stronger in compression than normal cement concrete typically used here on Earth," Fox said. "It would be an excellent raw material for construction on the moon or Mars."

Fox noted that the strength of basalt in construction is demonstrated in second-century Roman architecture which has withstood the elements for centuries.

"We recently teamed with researchers at the Marshall Space Flight Center and the U.S. Army to study how to use regolith to build structures to support exploration of Mars," he said.

Planetary surface construction and mining tasks that may be possible using planetary regolith include launch and landing pads, equipment shelters, regolith mining for oxygen production, and water ice mining from shadowed craters.

While NASA develops ways of to use available resources at deep-space destinations, crews aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are performing human research experiments and testing advance environmental and life support systems.

The ability to grow food and recycle carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen may prove crucial for astronauts and add to the body of knowledge as they live in space for months or years at a time. A plant habitat with a large growth chamber also is being studied by Kennedy engineers to determine the affect long-duration microgravity exposure has on plants in space. Similarly, projects such as NASA's Veggie pave the way to growing and eating food in space.

The Veggie experiment is being used aboard the ISS to study the in-orbit function and performance of a new expandable plant growth facility.

To continue research into the availability and accessibility of raw materials for human exploration of Mars, NASA is planning the Mars 2020 mission, building on the success of the Curiosity mission. Scheduled for launch in 2020, the rover mission goals include detecting and characterizing ancient environments that could have harbored life, caching samples for a future sample return mission and testing the ability to extract oxygen from the Red Planet's carbon-dioxide atmosphere to prepare for future human exploration.

The Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment (MOXIE) will test a solid oxide electrolysis technology that could be scaled up to meet human mission requirements, while the Mars Environment Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) will improve understanding of atmospheric dust.

In addition to NASA and space agencies of other nations, Fox believes there will be future commercial interest in utilization of resources on the moon or planets.

"There are so many possibilities for mining raw materials and putting resources to work, industries may find it economically useful to join this effort," he said.

Technology investments in space can create new markets, thus stimulating growth of the nation’s economy.

"We know there are solvable challenges for human missions to Mars," Fox said. "We have multiple programs in progress that will allow us to overcome the unknowns and make the best use of what we need to take along and what we'll find when we get there."

Last Updated: June 4, 2015

Editor: Bob Granath

DIY Soft Robot Hand

Before we go on exploring this blog, let us know what Soft Robotics is. It deals with making the robot fluidic and multi-functional so that it can biomimic itself to exhibit more of human or any other random animal like behavior.  You can take Tony Stark’s Iron Man suits for example.  Ok, are we going to know about something like suit? It is sort of similar to it, but you cannot wear it and it is totally non-lethal in use.  But then Tony Stark had a huge lab. Yes he did, and so do other geniuses working on this technology. What about the Garage genius? Let’s find out a way.

Taking out of the Hi-tech labs to the garage labs is this DIY by Brian Klutch of the Popular Mechanics. Using simple plastic lubes, pump hoses and simple flexible items, he explores making out a hand that works quite a lot on the idea of Soft Robotics.

Making it even more accessible is the usage of Arduino Mega making it, which, however, doesn’t make it a less tiring project. Apart from the Arduino, the other attachments for this DIY vary from an air compressor to an FET board.

What you would get as end result is a smart robotic hand that can be used in almost as many ways as a human hand can be.  You can use it to count, move things, give directions, fist, hold or other similar gestures and uses.

Watch This Terrifying Cheetah Robot Jump Over Hurdles

When you combine robots and cheetahs with military funding, you’re bound to end up with something incredible. Robotics engineers from MIT have spent over five years developing a battery-powered quadruped robot capable of running as fast as a human being. And now they’ve trained that robot to jump over hurdles—autonomously.

In a video released today, the team from MIT shows off their DARPA-funded, four-legged harbinger of terror approaching and clearing obstacles up to 18 inches tall while maintaing an average speed of 5 mph. The 70-lb robot (roughly the same weight as a female cheetah) estimates the height, size, and distance of objects in its path, and adjusts its approach to prepare a jump and safe landing—all without slowing down.

“It’s the first legged robot to be able leap hurdles like this autonomously,” says team leader Sangbae Kim. “Many other robots can move faster on wheels, or maybe jump higher, but they can’t do it on their own.” Kim and his colleagues will hold a live demonstration of the robot’s running jump at the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals in June, and present the findings from this latest round of tests at robotics conference in July.

The previous cheetah had most of the same hardware—except it was blind. It used an IMU (internal measurement unit) with an accelerometer and a gyroscope to keep its balance. These sensors—the same used to control drones, satellites, and missiles—were combined with a specially-designed algorithm that could help determine how much force to exert and adapt to any changes in terrain and programmed speed. But the robot still had no way of seeing objects in the way.

The new system implements a new LIDAR sensor system that grants the robot the gift of sight, using reflections from lasers to map terrain. Combined with the unique algorithm and all the other sensors in place, the cheetah-bot can run and avoid oncoming obstacles all on its own, adjusting to new information in about half the time of a single stride and determining how much force its 12 electric motors will need to deliver to its 3D-printed legs to clear any hurdles.

Kim and his colleagues are hoping this kind of design could be used to create military robots or machines that can play a role in disaster response. But there’s still plenty of work to do—the MIT robot was able to complete 90 percent of the hurdles in tests on the indoor track, but only 70 percent on the treadmill. Kim wants to improve the vision-sensing systems to navigate through more complex environments. The cheetah-bot is capable of running “blind” at 13 mph (average human speed is 15 mph, *ahem*), and further testing will be needed to match or surpass that speed on the vision-sensing model.

This isn’t the only cheetah robot being developed with DARPA money. Robotics company Boston Dynamics is also using military money to develop its own fast-moving quadruped. This one uses an off-board hydraulics pump to reach speeds of up to 30 mph. Of course, it’s much louder and less mobile than its MIT counterpart. But if the MIT engineers find a way to increase the cheetah robot’s speed while retaining the low noise, it will make for a very stealthy and energy-efficient machine. It’s not clear what it will be tasked with, but “search-and-destroy” doesn’t seem too farfetched…

We Can Now Make Computer Chips Out of Wood

We’re one step closer to biodegradable gadgets. These computer chips are made almost entirely out of wood.

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin, Madison teamed up with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Products Laboratory to fashion the new semiconductor chip. The paper was published today in Nature Communications.

See, most of a computer chip is composed of a “support” layer that cradles the actual chip. The research team replaced that support layer’s non-biodegradable material with something called cellulose nanofibril (CNF), which is flexible, wood-based, biodegradable—all things that can make a device way less hazardous.

“Now the chips are so safe you can put them in the forest and fungus will degrade it,” says Professor Zhenqiang Ma, who led the team. “They become as safe as fertilizer.”

A possible roadblock was the fact that wood can expand or shrink based on how much moisture it sucks in from the air. The fix? Glaze the CNF film with an epoxy coating, a substance that makes CNF more resistant to water. In addition to wicking away moisture, the coating also made the CNF smoother.

The result: a sustainable “green chip” that’s cheaper and less toxic than the materials currently used in electronics. Every little bit helps when we’re piling landfills with thrown out phones, especially when dangerous chemicals in existing computer chips, like gallium arsenide, can leak into the ground. Perhaps this new technology could lead to, say, entire phones being made out of wood-based materials, creating a landscape of responsible electronic devices.

Most phones, tablets, and other portable gizmos are made out of stuff that isn’t biodegradable and is toxic to the environment. Plus, gadgets go obsolete so quickly, prompting folks to rapidly chuck older versions. But using a wood-based material to build the bulk of a computer chip could lead to less harmful devices in the future.

Audi has made a synthetic, high-grade fuel from plant sugars

Making petroleum-based fuel a thing of the past.

Just last month, German car manufacturer Audi invented a carbon-neutral diesel fuel, made from water, carbon dioxide and renewable energy sources, and they say their pilot plant in Dresden will pump out 160 litres of the of the stuff every day in the coming months to power their Audi A8 cars.

Now, they’ve announced the development of another new type of environmentally friendly, petroleum-free synthetic fuel, which they’re calling 'e-benzin'. Manufactured in France by Audi’s partner company, Global Bioenergies, the fuel is produced by converting corn-derived glucose - a renewable source of biomass sugar - into isobutane gas. 

Commonly used in refrigeration systems and aerosols, isobutane gas is also one of the staples of the petrochemical industry. About 13 million tonnes of it is extracted annually from oil, and used to produce various types of fuels, plastics and elastomers. In this case, the team at Global Bioenergies refined it into a clear, high-grade, 'unleaded’ fuel.

"The next step in the process was to run the material through a conditioning and purification process, allowing it to be collected and stored in liquid form under pressure," Eric Mack reports for Gizmag. "Some of it was then sent to Germany to be converted into isooctane fuel, creating a pure, 100 octane gasoline."

That last point refers to the octane rating of the fuel, which is the standard measure for how much compression a type of engine or aviation fuel can withstand before it ignites. While a low octane rating is better for diesel engines, a high rating is required for gasoline engines, and the higher the rating, the more efficient it is to use.

The team says their Isooctane fuel can be used as an additive to regular unleaded fuel to make it more efficient, or can be used on its own as a fuel. And because their new fuel contains no benzene or sulphur, they say it burns very cleanly. While the next step of the process will be figuring out how to produce the fuel in large quantities, the company also aims to modify the manufacturing process so that no biomass is required - just water, hydrogen, CO2 and sunlight, like how they're producing their new 'e-diesel' fuel.

"We're thinking we're bringing green-ness to a field that desperately needs green-ness," Rick Bockrath, vice president for chemical engineering at Global Bioenergies, told Gizmag. "It's basically how we're moving away from an oil-based economy towards something that has a renewable, sustainable future to it."

With an 'e-gas'- or synthetic methane - being made on an industrial scale already, and projects dedicated to getting 'e-ethanol’, Audi 'e-diesel' and Audi 'e-benzin' on the market in the coming years, it’s hard not to be impressed by a car company that appears to be so invested in making petroleum-based fuels a thing of the past.

Watch Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s7FuxtDZ8M&feature=youtu.be

This could be the official flag of Earth that we'll plant on Mars

Gather round, Earthlings! Time to judge our new flag.

You’re looking at the proposed design for the flag that our intrepid Earthling explorers will plant on the surface of Mars when they hopefully make it there by mid-2030.

The brains behind the design is graphic designer, Oskar Pernefeldt, from Beckmans College of Design in Sweden, who came up with it as part of his graduation project called 'The International Flag of Planet Earth.' According to Michael Rundle at Wired, companies such as LG and BSmart helped him formalise his design, and NASA appears to be involved, but it’s not clear exactly how.

While we’re a long way off actually having a discussion, as a global population, about what flag to plant on Mars, and whether there’s actually any point, considering how unlikely it is that anyone else will actually see it, it’s still a pretty fun exercise. It’s a chance for us to consider what things planet Earth would project to someone looking at it from the outside in.

Pernefeldt explains the thinking behind the design:

"Centred in the flag, seven rings form a flower - a symbol of the life on Earth. The rings are linked to each other, which represents how everything on our planet, directly or indirectly, [is] linked.

The blue field represents water which is essential for life - also as the oceans cover most of our planet's surface. The flower's outer rings form a circle which could be seen as a symbol of Earth as a planet and the blue surface could represent the Universe."

Watch the video below to hear Pernefeldt talk about how he came up with the design, and check out the images he’s put together of the flag in a whole bunch of different scenarios. I can’t help but feel a little patriotic about our little blue dot of a planet. 

Beckmans College of Design

Beckmans College of Design

Beckmans College of Design

Beckmans College of Design

Black Solar Cells Reach Incredible New Efficiency Record

The bright world of photovoltaics

Solar Panels

Oregon Department of Transportation/Flickr CC by 2.0

Renewable energy is the future. All over the world cities and countries are vowing to go quit fossil fuels and commit to getting their energy fix from 100 percent renewable sources.

One of the most popular renewable options is solar—especially in areas that are, well, sunny. But in order to capture sunlight and turn it into electricity, you need solar cells, also known as photovoltaic cells.

With solar cells of particular interest to researchers, businesses, environmental groups, and just about everybody else, it always seems like there are new advances in research. Just last week, researchers at Aalto University published a paper in Nature Nanotechnology announcing that they created a black silicon solar cell with an efficiency of 22.1 percent. What does that mean, exactly? It sounds good, and Black Silicon would be a great name for a rock band, but how does it compare with everything else in the wide world of solar power?

Here are three of the most common types of solar cells that you might hear about, and what they do:

Crystalline Silicon: These are the solar cells dominating the market right now. In 2011, 90 percent of all solar cells were made from crystalline silicon. They can convert sunlight into electricity at a rate of 25 percent in ideal conditions. This is what other types of solar cells are measuring themselves against. The downside is these versions tend to be bulky.

Thin Film: Thin-film solar cells are less expensive to produce than crystalline silicon solar cells. Made from cadmium compounds, these cells are around 75 times thinner and can absorb sunlight better than silicon. Their flexibility and low weight makes them ideal as unobtrusive energy collectors. So why aren’t they at the top of the heap? Because they aren’t as good at converting sunlight to electricity as their crystalline silicon competitors… yet. Last year in the lab, thin-film technology reached a high of 20.4 percent efficiency. Not bad.

Black Silicon: Black silicon solar cells are similar to crystalline silicon solar cells. Really similar. The difference is that black silicon solar cells are treated so that they appear to be black on the surface. Why is that a big deal? Think of wearing a black T-shirt on a hot summer day. The black color tends to absorb more sunlight, which translates to an uncomfortable summer afternoon for you, but more energy gathered for a solar cell. It’s an attractive option for areas that don’t get as much sunlight but still want to make good use of the light they do receive. Until now, turning silicon cells black tended to undercut their efficiency at turning sunlight into power, however. That’s why the new paper, showing an efficiency of 22.1 percent is promising.

Mysterious New Type of Star Cluster Carries Extra Baggage

This huge elliptical galaxy NGC 5128 (also known as Centaurus A) is the closest such galaxy to the Earth, at a distance of about 12 million light-years. Observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile have discovered a new class of “dark” globular star clusters around this galaxy. These are marked in red. Normal globulars are marked in blue and globulars showing similar properties to dwarf galaxies are in green.
Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey. Acknowledgement: Davide De MartinAstronomers studying the globular star clusters orbiting the giant elliptical galaxy Centaurus A (NGC 5128) have stumbled upon a fascinating discovery — the clusters are too massive.

What does this mean? Well, it could be that each of the dozens of clusters studied are packed with dark matter or may even by hiding a massive black hole, but neither of the explanations make any sense.

NEWS: Far Flung Star Cluster Found at Milky Way's Edge

Globular star clusters are ancient ensembles of thousands of stars that can be found orbiting galaxies like our Milky Way. Their study is critical to help us understand how galaxies on the whole evolve as the stars they are known to contain are often as old as the galaxies they orbit.

"Globular clusters and their constituent stars are keys to understanding the formation and evolution of galaxies. For decades, astronomers thought that the stars that made up a given globular cluster all shared the same ages and chemical compositions — but we now know that they are stranger and more complicated creatures," said Matt Taylor, a PhD student at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile, and lead author of the study.

Using the FLAMES instrument on the ESO's Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile, Taylor and his team surveyed 125 of the around 2,000 globular clusters in orbit around Centaurus A and gauged their masses. Usually, the mass of a globular cluster can be derived by measuring their brightness. The brighter the cluster, the more stars it has and the more massive it is.

NEWS: Hubble: Abell 1689 is Stuffed with Globular Clusters

This sky map pinpoints the peculiar galaxy Centaurus A (NGC 5128) in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur)
Credit: ESO, IAU and Sky & Telescope

 

As expected, for the most part, this brightness-mass relationship held true. But something strange started to emerge from the data — some of the clusters were more massive than the brightness data suggested. What's more, the more massive these strange clusters were, the greater the fraction of their mass was dark.

 

This huge elliptical galaxy NGC 5128 (also known as Centaurus A) is the closest galaxy of its type to the Earth, lying at a distance of about 12 million light-years.
Credit: ESO,ESA/Hubble, NASA. Digitized Sky Survey. Acknowledgement: Davide de Martin          

Naturally, the researchers' suspicions are focusing on these clusters amassing a reservoir of dark matter. But globular star clusters are not thought to contain significant quantities of invisible stuff. Perhaps, therefore, these islands of stars have massive black holes in their cores, or maybe a massive graveyard of other stellar corpses, like the burnt-out husks of stars like neutron stars? For now, where this extra baggage comes from remains mystery.

"Our discovery of star clusters with unexpectedly high masses for the amount of stars they contain hints that there might be multiple families of globular clusters, with differing formation histories. Apparently some star clusters look like, walk like, and smell like run-of-the-mill globulars, but there may quite literally be more to them than meets the eye," added co-author Thomas Puzia, also at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile.

NEWS: Hubble Stares Into the Heart of an Ancient Star Cluster

To widen the search, the researchers are now carrying out a survey of other globular clusters around other galaxies in the hope of finding more of these mysterious "dark clusters."

"We have stumbled on a new and mysterious class of star cluster! This shows that we still have much to learn about all aspects of globular cluster formation. It's an important result and we now need to find further examples of dark clusters around other galaxies," concluded Taylor.

Source: ESO

This article was provided by Discovery News.

Designing and Building a Homemade Transformer

Homemade Transformer 

   

What is a transformer?

It is nothing but a static device which is used for transforming electrical energy between circuits. It can be done without the help of any electrical connection. It helps in transforming power between circuits by keeping the frequency constant. However, the voltage level may vary. 

Make your own transformer

What are the Parts of a Transformer?

The followings are the parts of a transformer:

• Silica Gel Breather
• Magnet Wire
• Oil Level Indicator
• Conservator
• Radiators
• Double Diaphragm Explosion Vent
• Buchhloz Relay

The basics of transformer design

What are the Materials Needed to build a Transformer

In order to build a homemade electric transformer, the following items are required:

• Magnet Copper Wire
• Plates or sheets of Silicon Iron in the shapes of letters “I” and letter “E”
• Pressboard or Wax paper. It is used to provide heat resistance and sealing out moisture.
• Masking tape to hold the paper and the wire
• Screws and Brackets
• Formwork or Spool. They are available in plastic, cardboards and plastic glass. It can build at home

Building a Transformer at Home

Winding your homemade transformer

Here is a stepwise description on how to build a homemade electric transformer.

• At first, you need to pierce one end of the framework for entering one end of the primary winding wire.
• Remove rubber coating of about 5 mm from the magnet wire.
• Using a shouldering iron pre-tin the wire piece which gets exposed after removing the rubber coating.
• Pre-tin the copper wire magnet using a soldering iron
• Bind cable and the wire with the help of a soldering iron
• Use thermal insulator of 3 mm to isolate the joint. This heat- thermal shrinking isolator isolates.
• Insert the wire to the whole created on the Formwork. Ensure the junction of cable and wire.
• In the next step, wrap the wire uniformly around the body of the Formwork. After you have wrapped the wire, cut the wire with a cutter.
• Using a sand paper remove the electric burnish from the wire
• Then pre-tin the tips of the cable and the wire
• Join the wire and the cable using a soldering iron
• Using a heat-thermal shrinking isolator, coat the union of cable and wire
• Insert the cord to a slot
• Cover the insulated wire with masking tape. Wrap the masking tape with wax paper.
• Cover the wax paper with more masking tape.
• Ensure the secondary winding wire
• Roll the double wire
• Cut the wire and insert their tips at the output slot
• Measure the end of the wires with a multimeter.
• Cover the secondary winding completely with masking tape and wax paper
• Roll the additional winding
• Press the joined cables against press board reinforcing
• Cover it with a cardboard coated with an adhesive paper
• Place the iron silicon sheets
• Sheets must enter the last forced
• Match all the plates using a hammer
• Test the circuit with a bulb

In order to build a home made transformer, you must know the basics of handling electrical devices. It is very important to be careful while you are testing the current and working with the exposed wires. Make sure that you are well equipped before you start working on it

Raspberry Pi DIY: Audio Language Translator

With a Raspberry Pi, Wolf Paulus made a language translator using the on device sphinxbase / pocketsphinx open source speech recognition toolkit. While it worked well, it has limited accuracy and vocabulary, Wolf needed to use some other service if he wanted to take his project a step further.
Google’s Speech Recognition Service was what was called upon. It needs an FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) encoded voice sound file. Also, accessing Google’s speech recognition service warrants an API key which is gettable through the Google Developers Console. After going through the directions for Chromium Developers, Wolf managed to successfully create his ‘Pi Translator’.
Wolf acquired text translation from Microsoft. Next, he created an operational process to implement language translation which works like this. First, the maker records their voice. The FLAC encodes it, and sends it to Google for transcription. Now, the maker will  take help of Google’s Speech Synthesizer to create a recognizable utterance. By Microsoft’s translation service a translation of the transcription into the target language. With Google’s Speech Synthesizer synthesize the translation in a target language.
You can watch a demonstration of the audio language translator. It is extremely effective. More efective than the speech recognition systems which come inbuilt in most smartphones.
Watch Video : https://vimeo.com/123657124

Here's why it'll take us decades to master nuclear fusion

This is why we can’t use safe, clean nuclear fusion power yet.

 

This article was written by Matthew Hole, from the Australian National University and Igor Bray, from Curtin University, and was originally published by The Conversation. It's part of their worldwide series on the Future of Nuclear, and you can read the rest of the series here.

Nuclear fusion is what powers the Sun and the stars - unleashing huge amounts of energy through the binding together of light elements such as hydrogen and helium. If fusion power were harnessed directly on Earth, it could produce inexhaustible clean power, using seawater as the main fuel, with no greenhouse gas emissions, no proliferation risk, and no risk of catastrophic accidents. Radioactive waste is very low level and indirect, arising from neutron activation of the power plant core. With current technology, a fusion power plant could be completely recycled within 100 years of shutdown.

Today’s nuclear power plants exploit nuclear fission - the splitting of atomic nuclei of heavy elements such as uranium, thorium, and plutonium into lighter 'daughter' nuclei. This process, which happens spontaneously in unstable elements, can be harnessed to generate electricity, but it also generates long-lived radioactive waste.

Why aren’t we using safe, clean nuclear fusion power yet? Despite significant progress in fusion research, why do we physicists treat unfounded claims of "breakthroughs" with scepticism? The short answer is that is it very difficult to achieve the conditions that sustain the reaction. But if the experiments under construction now are successful, we can be optimistic that nuclear fusion power can be a reality within a generation.

The fusion process

Unlike fission, nuclei do not spontaneously undergo fusion: atomic nuclei are positively charged and must overcome their huge electrostatic repulsion before they can get close enough together that the strong nuclear force, which binds nuclei together, can kick in.

In nature, the immense gravitational force of stars is strong enough that the temperature, density and volume of the star’s core is enough for atomic nuclei to fuse through 'quantum tunnelling' of this electrostatic barrier. In the laboratory, quantum tunnelling rates are far too low, and so the barrier can only be overcome by making the fuel nuclei incredibly hot - six to seven times hotter than the Sun’s core.

Even the easiest fusion reaction to initiate - the combination of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, to form helium and an energetic neutron - requires a temperature of about 120 million degrees Celsius. At such extreme temperatures, the fuel atoms are ruptured into their component electrons and nuclei, forming a superheated plasma.

Keeping this plasma in one place long enough for the nuclei to fuse together is no mean feat. In the laboratory, the plasma is confined using strong magnetic fields, generated by coils of electrical superconductors which create a donut-shaped 'magnetic bottle' in which the plasma is trapped.

Schematic diagram of a fusion power plant. Figure supplied courtesy of JET-EFDA publications copyright Euratom, Author provided

Today’s plasma experiments such as the Joint European Torus can confine plasmas at the required temperatures for net power gain, but the plasma density and energy confinement time (a measure of the cooling time of the plasma) are too low to for the plasma to be self-heated. But progress is being made - today’s experiments have fusion performance 1,000 times better, in terms of temperature, plasma density and confinement time, than the experiments of 40 years ago. And we already have a fair idea of how to move things to the next step.

Regime change

The ITER reactor, now under construction at Cadarache in the south of France, will explore the 'burning plasma regime', where the plasma heating from the confined products of fusion reaction exceeds the external heating power. The total power gain for ITER will be more than five times the external heating power in near-continuous operation, and will approach 10-30 times for short durations.

At a cost exceeding US$20 billion, and funded by a consortium of seven nations and alliances, ITER is the largest science project on the planet. Its purpose is to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of using fusion power for peaceful purposes such as electricity generation.

The engineering and physical challenge is immense. ITER will have a magnetic field strength of 5 Tesla (100,000 times the Earth’s magnetic field) and a device radius of 6 metres, confining 840 cubic metres of plasma (one-third of an Olympic swimming pool). It will weigh 23,000 tonnes and contain 100,000 km of niobium tin superconducting strands. Niobium tin is superconducting at 4.5K (about minus 269 degrees Celsius), and so the entire machine will be immersed in a refrigerator cooled by liquid helium to keep the superconducting strands just a few degrees above absolute zero.

A cross-section cutaway of ITER. For scale, note the human under the reactor core. The ITER Organisation, Author provided

ITER is expected to start generating its first plasmas in 2020. But the burning plasma experiments aren’t set to begin until 2027. One of the huge challenges will be to see whether these self-sustaining plasmas can indeed be created and maintained without damaging the plasma facing wall or the high heat flux 'divertor' target.

The information we get from building and operating ITER will inform the design of future fusion power plants, with an ultimate aim of making the technology work for commercial power generation. At the moment it seems likely that the first prototype power plants will be built in the 2030s, and would probably generate around 1 gigawatt of electricity.

While first-generation power plants will probably be on a similarly large scale to ITER, it is hoped that improvement in magnetic confinement and control will lead to more compact later generation power plants. Likewise, power plants will cost less than ITER: long-term modelling which extrapolates to power plants suggest fusion could be economic with low impact on the environment.

So while the challenges to nuclear fusion are big, the pay-off will be huge. All we have to do is get it to work.

This article is part of The Conversation’s worldwide series on the Future of Nuclear. You can read the rest of the series here.

Matthew Hole is Senior Research Fellow, Plasma Research Laboratory at Australian National University. Igor Bray is Head of Physics, Astronomy and Medical Radiation Sciences at Curtin University.

What is Einstein's theory of general relativity?

Einstein's theory of general relativity predicted that the space-time around Earth would be not only warped but also twisted by the planet's rotation. Gravity Probe B showed this to be correct. Credit: NASA

In 1905, Albert Einstein determined that the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers, and that the speed of light in a vacuum was independent of the motion of all observers. This was the theory of special relativity. It introduced a new framework for all of physics and proposed new concepts of space and time.

Einstein then spent 10 years trying to include acceleration in the theory and published his theory of general relativity in 1915. In it, he determined that massive objects cause a distortion in space-time, which is felt as gravity.

The tug of gravity

Two objects exert a force of attraction on one another known as "gravity." Sir Isaac Newton quantified the gravity between two objects when he formulated his three laws of motion. The force tugging between two bodies depends on how massive each one is and how far apart the two lie. Even as the center of the Earth is pulling you toward it (keeping you firmly lodged on the ground), your center of mass is pulling back at the Earth. But the more massive body barely feels the tug from you, while with your much smaller mass you find yourself firmly rooted thanks to that same force. Yet Newton's laws assume that gravity is an innate force of an object that can act over a distance.

Albert Einstein, in his theory of special relativity, determined that the laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers, and he showed that the speed of light within a vacuum is the same no matter the speed at which an observer travels. As a result, he found that space and time were interwoven into a single continuum known as space-time. Events that occur at the same time for one observer could occur at different times for another.

As he worked out the equations for his general theory of relativity, Einstein realized that massive objects caused a distortion in space-time. Imagine setting a large body in the center of a trampoline. The body would press down into the fabric, causing it to dimple. A marble rolled around the edge would spiral inward toward the body, pulled in much the same way that the gravity of a planet pulls at rocks in space. 

Experimental evidence

Although instruments can neither see nor measure space-time, several of the phenomena predicted by its warping have been confirmed.

Einstein's Cross is an example of gravitational lensing.
Credit: NASA and European Space Agency (ESA)

Gravitational lensing: Light around a massive object, such as a black hole, is bent, causing it to act as a lens for the things that lie behind it. Astronomers routinely use this method to study stars and galaxies behind massive objects.

Einstein's Cross, a quasar in the Pegasus constellation, is an excellent example of gravitational lensing. The quasar is about 8 billion light-years from Earth, and sits behind a galaxy that is 400 million light-years away. Four images of the quasar appear around the galaxy because the intense gravity of the galaxy bends the light coming from the quasar.

Gravitational lensing can allow scientists to see some pretty cool things, but until recently, what they spotted around the lens has remained fairly static. However, since the light traveling around the lens takes a different path, each traveling over a different amount of time, scientists were able to observe a supernova occur four different times as it was magnified by a massive galaxy.

In another interesting observation, NASA's Kepler telescope spotted a dead star, known as a white dwarf, orbiting a red dwarf in a binary system. Although the white dwarf is more massive, it has a far smaller radius than its companion.

"The technique is equivalent to spotting a flea on a light bulb 3,000 miles away, roughly the distance from Los Angeles to New York City," Avi Shporer of the California Institute of Technology said in a statement.

Changes in the orbit of Mercury: The orbit of Mercury is shifting very gradually over time, due to the curvature of space-time around the massive sun. In a few billion years, it could even collide with Earth.

Frame-dragging of space-time around rotating bodies: The spin of a heavy object, such as Earth, should twist and distort the space-time around it. In 2004, NASA launched the Gravity Probe B (GP-B). The precisely calibrated satellite caused the axes of gyroscopes inside to drift very slightly over time, a result that coincided with Einstein's theory.

"Imagine the Earth as if it were immersed in honey," Gravity Probe-B principal investigator Francis Everitt, of Stanford University, said in a statement.

"As the planet rotates, the honey around it would swirl, and it's the same with space and time. GP-B confirmed two of the most profound predictions of Einstein's universe, having far-reaching implications across astrophysics research."

Gravitational redshift: The electromagnetic radiation of an object is stretched out slightly inside a gravitational field. Think of the sound waves that emanate from a siren on an emergency vehicle; as the vehicle moves toward an observer, sound waves are compressed, but as it moves away, they are stretched out, or redshifted. Known as the Doppler Effect, the same phenomena occurs with waves of light at all frequencies. In 1959, two physicists, Robert Pound and Glen Rebka, shot gamma-rays of radioactive iron up the side of a tower at Harvard University and found them to be minutely less than their natural frequency due to distortions caused by gravity.

Gravitational waves: Violent events, such as the collision of two black holes, are thought to be able to create ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) is currently searching for the first signs of these tell-tale indicators.

In 2014, scientists announced that they had detected gravitational waves left over from the Big Bang using the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization (BICEP2) telescope in Antarctica. Such waves are thought to be embedded in the cosmic microwave background. However, further research revealed that their data was contaminated by dust in the line of site.

"Searching for this unique record of the very early universe is as difficult as it is exciting," Jan Tauber, the European Space Agency's project scientist for the Planck space mission to search for cosmic waves, said in a statement.

Clarification: This article was updated on May 4, 2015, to better define gravity.  

Incredible Technology: NASA's Wild Airship Idea for Cloud Cities on Venus

Astronauts could start exploring Venus in the not-too-distant future — as long as they stay high up in the planet's acid-laced skies.

View of the gondola, habitat and ascent vehicle beneath a HAVOC airship.
Credit: Advanced Concepts Lab at NASA Langley Research Center

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NASA researchers have come up with a plan to send piloted, helium-filled airships cruising through the Venusian atmosphere. The idea, called the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC), could eventually lead to the permanent settlement of Earth's hellishly hot sister planet, its developers say. You can see how HAVOC might work in a mesmerizing NASA video on the Venus airships.

Establishing cloud cities on Venus "would definitely be a very big technological challenge, but it is something that we envision could be possible down the road," Chris Jones, of NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia, told Space.com. [Project HAVOC: NASA's Venus Airship Concept in Images] 

Don't rule out Venus

Putting boots on Mars is the top long-term priority of the international human-spaceflight community. Indeed, NASA is working to get astronauts to the vicinity of the Red Planet by the mid-2030s.

But Venus is another potential target for human exploration, say Jones and his colleague Dale Arney, also of NASA Langley. At first blush, this assertion may seem surprising; the planet's surface temperature is about 860 degrees Fahrenheit (460 degrees Celsius) — hot enough to melt lead — and its atmospheric pressure at ground level is a staggering 90 times that of Earth.

Artist's concept of a Venus cloud city — a possible future outcome of the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC) plan.
Credit: Advanced Concepts Lab at NASA Langley Research Center

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But HAVOC would avoid the surface, instead hovering about 30 miles (50 kilometers) up in Venus' thick, carbon-dioxide-dominated air. Up there, conditions are much more manageable; atmospheric pressure is roughly what we're used to, and the average temperature is 167 F (75 C).

Venus, which is about the same size as Earth, is also the closest planet to our own, making it the easiest (or at least the quickest) to get to.

Venus "is no worse than the second planet we would go to after leaving Earth," Arney told Space.com. "We started with that in mind, and then we started looking at the orbital mechanics, and some of the ways that getting to Venus and living there and operating there are fairly benign and favorable. That's sort of what kick-started this whole study." [Mysterious Venus: 10 Weird Facts]

HAVOC remains just that — a study. At this point, NASA has no concrete plans to move the mission from concept to reality.  

Illustration of the HAVOC ascent vehicle climbing to Venus orbit.
Credit: Advanced Concepts Lab at NASA Langley Research Center

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Creating HAVOC

The overarching HAVOC plan envisions establishing Venus cloud cities in five phases, the first four of which would validate technologies needed for the more ambitious steps to come.

Phase 1 would involve robotic exploration of the Venusian atmosphere using an unmanned, 102-foot-long (31 meters) airship. In Phase 2, two astronauts would spend 30 days in orbit around Venus. In Phase 3 and Phase 4, two crewmembers would cruise through the skies of Venus in a 423-foot-long (129 m) airship for 30 days and one year, respectively. Permanent settlement would come in Phase 5.

HAVOC's solar-powered airships would fly at an altitude of about 30 miles, where they'd receive 40 percent more solar energy than Earth receives at its surface.

The propeller-driven vehicles would carry a variety of instruments to study Venus' atmosphere. The manned airships would also feature a human habitat and a multistage rocket that would launch the crewmembers back to orbit when their time on Venus was done.

Once in orbit, the astronauts would rendezvous with a spacecraft that would take them back to Earth.

Challenges to overcome

Making all of this happen would not be easy, of course. While the Soviet Union explored the Venus atmosphere with unmanned balloons in 1985 during the Vega mission, humanity has never sent a full-on airship to another world.

HAVOC's airships, folded up to fit inside a launch shroud, would enter the Venus atmosphere going about 16,000 mph (25,750 km/h). They would deploy a parachute to slow down, jettison their protective aeroshell, and then begin to unfurl and inflate with helium. If everything were to go well, the airships would settle at about 30 miles up, never touching Venus' forbidding surface.

Robotic missions during Phase 1 would validate this complex entry, descent and inflation (EDI) strategy at Venus before humans would try it out.

The airships' solar panels would also have to function in a hostile environment; concentrated droplets of sulfuric acid are common in Venus' atmosphere. The HAVOC team has done some experimental work to identify materials that could serve as protective coatings for the panels, Jones said.

Getting back to Venus orbit from the airships poses another challenge: Venus' gravity is similar to that of Earth, so a large, powerful rocket would be required to reach the rendezvous craft circling the planet, Arney said. (The gravitational pull of Mars, in contrast, is just 40 percent as strong as Earth's.)

Making HAVOC happen would also involve challenges that aren't so Venus-specific — devising reliable life-support systems for the airships and deep-space vehicles, for example.

"There's a lot that you're going to have to develop, regardless of what desination you go to," Arney said.

He and Jones have not come up with an estimated price tag for the HAVOC plan; their study concentrated on performance and technological aspects of the mission concept.

 Science and exploration

Jones and Arney aren't pushing to shift NASA's human-spaceflight focus from Mars to Venus.

"We aren't saying, 'Abandon all other planets and just go to Venus,'" Arney said. "We are saying, 'If we wanted to go to Venus, what would it actually take to do that mission?'"

The airship concept has caught the attention of scientists interested in learning more about the planet and its evolution, he and Jones said. There are many reasons to study Earth's sister planet. For example, it was similar to Earth long ago, until a runaway greenhouse effect took hold and turned Venus into a pressure cooker.

Planetary scientists "have been very excited about [HAVOC]," Jones said. "They appreciate that it involves a number of technological challenges that are not going to be overcome just tomorrow. But the fact that it does suggest a platform for motivating the exploration of Venus has definitely intrigued them."

Indeed, researchers and NASA higher-ups are taking the HAVOC plan more and more seriously these days, Arney said.

"When we first started this, a lot of people did say, 'Wow, that's crazy. You're going to send humans to Venus?'" he said. "But once we started to do the analysis and show them where the feasibility is, it started getting some people to come around to, 'OK, that is something that is feasible."

Watch Video :
http://www.space.com/29140-venus-airship-cloud-cities-incredible-technology.html?cmpid=514630_20150524_44368226&adbid=10152831905006466&adbpl=fb&adbpr=17610706465#ooid=d4b2dmcjqtpyv-ZP7zBHwKv3sxmz4LbS