Tomorrow in Brief
Bullets That Change Direction on the Fly
When fired from a rifle, most bullets spiral through the air like a football, thus making it impossible to adjust their trajectory. Now, researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed a bullet that can be fired without the spin, allowing it to change directions in mid-flight.
The bullets include an optical sensor in the nose that guides the projectiles to their laser-targeted destination. Tiny fins enable the bullet to fly without spinning, like a dart, and actuators allow the fins to alter the bullet’s trajectory to hit its target.
Potential markets for the “self-guided bullets” include the military, law enforcement, and recreational shooters, according to Sandia.
Source: Sandia National Laboratories, www.sandia.gov.
No Relief from Urban Noise
Vehicles of the future will make cities noisy no matter how they are powered. Lauded for their silence while idling, electric cars may not offer much noise-reduction value while in use, according to researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering (IAO).
A “Virtual Cityscape” project using 3-D urban mapping reveals that both gas-driven and electric motor vehicles produce rolling noises starting at speeds of 30 kilometers per hour (18.6 miles per hour), and get louder at higher speeds.
“We have yet to see any significant difference in the noise level in electric vehicles or gas-driven cars,” says IAO department head Roland Blach.
To reduce noise in cities, the researchers recommend that planners analyze the logistical flows of both pedestrian and vehicular traffic and alter urban designs accordingly.
Source: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, www.fraunhofer.de.
Licorice Root May Combat Diabetes
Already highly regarded as a medicinal plant, licorice root may soon add anti-diabetic effects to its repertoire of healing powers.
Licorice root contains amorfrutins, which reduce blood sugar, are anti-inflammatory, and are well tolerated by users, according to researchers at Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin. In addition, the substances help prevent fatty liver, a common disease caused by excessively fat-rich diets.
While adding licorice to one’s diet may be a sweet temptation, researchers caution that this is not a cure for diabetes; rather, the amorfrutins must be extracted and produced in appropriate concentrations in order to be beneficial.
Source: Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, www.mpg.de.
Blocking Bodyhackers
Medical devices like insulin-delivery systems operate wirelessly and are easily accessible to devices, but they are also vulnerable to hackers either eavesdropping or interfering with functionality. So researchers at Purdue and Princeton universities have built a monitor that could protect such devices.
Dubbed MedMon, the medical monitor can be worn as a necklace or integrated with a cell phone. Like a firewall, it monitors all communications with the implants and looks for anomalies that represent potentially malicious activity. The firewall raises an alarm and jams the suspicious communications.
Source: Purdue University Center for Implantable Devices, Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, http://engineering.purdue.edu/CID.
WordBuzz: Upcycling
Upcycling is recycling’s more creative, enterprising, and upscale cousin—a phenomenon that represents a confluence of entrepreneurship, environmentalism, and the DIY or “maker” trend.
Per Wikipedia, the term has been around since the early 1990s to describe the process of recycling used stuff into better stuff. (Downcycling, by contrast, also recycles used or wasted materials, but the resulting products do not have high commercial value.)
The concept gained popularity with the 2011 publication of craft master Danny Seo’s how-to book Upcycling: Create Beautiful Things with the Stuff You Already Have (Running Press). But the potential for entrepreneurial opportunities in upcycling are limited only by imagination, as Good magazine notes in a recent story about urban farmers growing gourmet mushrooms out of used coffee grounds.