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Cyborg cockroaches sound terrifying but could save lives

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Could a cyborg cockroach be trained to come to your rescue in a natural disaster?

Thats what researchers in North Carolina are trying to figure out.

We are raised with a phobia against insects, Dr. Alper Bozkurt, with the NC State University said. Cockroaches are our friends.

The doctor has a soft spot for Madagascar hissing cockroaches. Hes an assistant professor in computer and electrical engineering at NC State University, and hes working to turn these insects into cyborgs.

We implant electrodes to their antennae and we send tiny pulses, very small pulses, to their antennae.

As it walks, the insect feels the pulses, believes they are obstacles and moves to avoid them.

It took a few tries but Bozkurt and his assistant found a cockroach that walked the line set for them. As the assistant moves a joystick, the roach responds, moving around a U-shaped track.

This kind of research isnt just interesting to watch, it could mark the start of a new era in search and rescue after disasters.

Our ultimate goal is to use cockroaches in the rubble after natural disasters, like earthquakes, to find victims, Bozkurt said.

These remote-controlled cockroaches could find their way through cramped, dark spaces, carrying tiny microphones and listening for survivors.

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Cyborg cockroaches sound terrifying but could save lives

'Cyborg Astrobiologist' Helps Rovers Seek Aliens

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Sending an exploratory rover to another planet is riddled with challenges, among them, what to investigate and what to ignore. Take the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars for example. Ground control scientists decide where the rovers should go and what they should investigate but commands sent via radio signals from Earth can take up to 20 minutes to reach Mars, depending on where the rover is relative to Earth.

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Patrick McGuire from the Freie Universitt, Berlin, has a way to speed up extra-planetary exploration. His Cyborg Astrobiologist program teaches robots whats worth looking and what to leave behind. Future rovers and probes could use it to check out otherwise ordinary-looking rocks for signs of life.

The program will be based on a huge database of images of geological features on Earth, the reasoning behind it being that rocks and such out there are similar to those down here. A rover would snap images of its surroundings and then compare those images to the ones in the database. If the computer program found something unusual or something that looked like a living organism on Earth such as lichen the rover would investigate more closely.

McGuire and his colleagues have tested the system in landscapes similar to Martian ones, such as around coalbeds and gypsum cliffs as well on sandstone, limestone and mudstone.

Some of those rocks were partly covered with lichen. Lichens are particularly important when seeking out alien life; its one of the few living things that could conceivably survive in a Martian environment. Anything that lives on marks is likely to look and act like lichens or algae mats.

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Thus far, matching images with similar features in images from the database seems to have worked pretty well. McGuire said in a press release that the computer program agreed with human geologists that it was looking at a lichen nine out of ten times.

McGuire presented his results at the European Planetary Science Congress in London.

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'Cyborg Astrobiologist' Helps Rovers Seek Aliens

'Novel' phone-cam using cyborg astrobiologist could help search for life in universe

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Washington, Sept. 10 (ANI): Scientists have developed a hybrid part-human, part-machine visual system, which uses a mobile phone camera, to search for evidence of past or present life in planetary analogue sites on Earth.

Patrick McGuire from the Freie Universitat, Berlin, and other researchers from the Freie Universitat, West Virginia University, the Centro de Astrobiologia in Madrid and the University of Malta have been working for over a decade towards giving more scientific autonomy to robotic rovers in choosing the most promising sites for geological and astrobiological investigation.

In the Cyborg Astrobiologist system, initially the human astrobiologist takes images of his/her surroundings using a mobile phone camera.

These images are sent to via Bluetooth to a laptop, which processes the images to detect novel colours and textures and communicates back to the astrobiologist the degree of similarity to previous images stored in the database.

Tests of the Cyborg Astrobiologist system have been conducted at field sites with similarities to landscapes that are found on Mars, imaging gypsum cliffs, red-bed sandstones, limestones, mudstones and coal beds.

Some rocks have been partly covered with lichen, a life-form that can possibly spread to/from other planets. Matching images with similar features in images from the database has been very successful.

The results are currently under review for publication by the International Journal of Astrobiology. (ANI)

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'Novel' phone-cam using cyborg astrobiologist could help search for life in universe

Cyborg astrobiologist uses phone-cam to search for signs of life

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Sep. 10, 2013 A novel, hybrid part-human, part-machine visual system that uses a simple mobile phone camera has been developed to search for evidence of past or present life in planetary analogue sites on Earth. Patrick McGuire from the Freie Universitt, Berlin, will present results from this Cyborg Astrobiologist at the European Planetary Science Congress in London on Monday 9th September.

Members of McGuire's team, which include researchers from the Freie Universitt, West Virginia University, the Centro de Astrobiologa in Madrid and the University of Malta have been working for over a decade towards giving more scientific autonomy to robotic rovers in choosing the most promising sites for geological and astrobiological investigation. In the Cyborg Astrobiologist system, initially the human astrobiologist takes images of his/her surroundings using a mobile phone camera. These images are sent to via Bluetooth to a laptop, which processes the images to detect novel colours and textures and communicates back to the astrobiologist the degree of similarity to previous images stored in the database.

"Over the years, our system has shrunk down from a camera on a tripod and wearable computer, to a small laptop and a phone-cam," said McGuire. "We are now working to speed up the image compression analysis and put the whole system onto a Smartphone -- and eventually onto a Mars rover!"

The robotic rovers currently exploring Mars are heavily reliant on guidance from scientists back on Earth to detect areas that are most interesting for further analysis. The time delay in transmitting and receiving the commands can take between 4 and 24 minutes depending on the relative positions of Earth and Mars on their orbital paths. Exploration would be speeded up significantly if the rovers could identify autonomously unusual colours and textures created by geochemical or biological processes that may be a sign of past or present life.

Tests of the Cyborg Astrobiologist system have been conducted at field sites with similarities to landscapes that are found on Mars, imaging gypsum cliffs, red-bed sandstones, limestones, mudstones and coalbeds. Some rocks have been partly covered with lichen, a life-form that can possibly spread to/from other planets. Matching images with similar features in images from the database has been very successful.

"In our most recent tests at a former coal mine in West Virginia, the similarity-matching by the computer agreed with the judgement of our human geologists 91% of the time. The novelty detection also worked well, although there were some issues in differentiating between features that are similar in colour but different in texture, like yellow lichen and sulphur-stained coalbeds. However, for a first test of the technique, it looks very promising," said McGuire. These results of the Cyborg Astrobiologist's field-work in West Virginia are currently under review for publication by the International Journal of Astrobiology.

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Cyborg astrobiologist uses phone-cam to search for signs of life

Holly Holm set to meet only fighter who defeated Cris Cyborg

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Erica Paes has the distinction of handing current Invicta featherweight champion Cris Cyborg her only career loss, a first-round kneebar submission in Cyborg's first career fight in Brazil in 2005.

On Oct. 24, Paes will attempt to hand crossover boxing star Holly Holm her first MMA defeat. Holm will face Paes at Legacy Fighting 24 on Oct. 11 in Dallas. AXS TV Fights tweeted the news on Friday.

Holm, a Jackson's fighter who has a 33-2-3 boxing record, began competing in MMA in 2011. Since then, she racked up a record of 4-0, with all her wins via stoppage. Her most recent victory was a head-kick knockout of Allanna Jones on July 19.

While Paes first fought in 2005 (her win over Cyborg was her career debut, like Holm, she only has four career fights, posing a 2-2 record. She returned from an eight-year break this year and is 1-1 since, with a unanimous decision loss to Bethe Correia on June 29.

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Holly Holm set to meet only fighter who defeated Cris Cyborg


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