Australia Populated from New Guinea?

First Australian populations followed footpath ‘superhighways’ across the continent of Australia/New Guinea

From: Santa Fe Institute

April 29, 2021 -- The best path across the desert is rarely the straightest. For the first human inhabitants of Sahul — the super-continent that underlies modern Australia and New Guinea — camping at the next spring, stream, or rock shelter allowed them to thrive for hundreds of generations. Those who successfully traversed the landmarks made their way across the continent, spreading from their landfall in the Northwest across the continent, making their way to all corners of Australia and New Guinea.

By simulating the physiology and decisions of early way-finders, an international team* of archaeologists, geographers, ecologists, and computer scientists has mapped the probable “superhighways” that led to the first peopling of the Australian continent some 50,000-70,000 years ago. Their study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, is the largest reconstruction of a network of human migration paths into a new landscape. It is also the first to apply rigorous computational analysis at the continental scale, testing 125 billion possible pathways.

"We decided it would be really interesting to look at this question of human migration because the ways that we conceptualize a landscape should be relatively steady for a hiker in the 21st century and a person who was way-finding into a new region 70,000 years ago,” says archaeologist and computational social scientist Stefani Crabtree, who led the study. Crabtree is a Complexity Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute and Assistant Professor at Utah State University. “If it's a new landscape and we don't have a map, we're going to want to know how to efficiently move throughout a space, where to find water, and where to camp — and we'll orient ourselves based on high points around the lands.”

“One of the really big unanswered questions of prehistory is how Australia was populated in the distant past. Scholars have debated it for at least a hundred and fifty years,” says co-author Devin White, an archaeologist and remote sensing scientist at Sandia National Laboratories. “It is the largest and most complex project of its kind that I’d ever been asked to take on.” 

To re-create the migrations across Sahul, the researchers first needed to simulate the topography of the supercontinent. They “drained” the oceans that now separate mainland Australia from New Guinea and Tasmania. Then, using hydrological and paleo-geographical data, they reconstructed inland lakes, major rivers, promontory rocks, and mountain ranges that would have attracted the gaze of a wandering human.

Next, the researchers programmed in-silico stand-ins for the human travelers. The team adapted an algorithm called “From Everywhere to Everywhere,” created by White*, to program the way-finders based on the caloric needs of a 25-year-old female carrying 10 kg of water and tools.

The researchers imbued these individuals with the realistic goal of staying alive, which could be achieved by finding water sources. Like backcountry hikers, the digital travelers were drawn to prominent landmarks like rocks and foothills, and the program exacted a caloric toll for activities such as hiking uphill within the artificial landscape. 

When the researchers “landed” the way-finders at two points on the coast of the re-created continent, they began to traverse it, using landmarks to navigate in search of freshwater. The algorithms simulated a staggering 125 billion possible pathways, run on a Sandia supercomputer, and a pattern emerged: the most-frequently traveled routes carved distinct “superhighways” across the continent, forming a notable ring-shaped road around the right portion of Australia; a western road; and roads that transect the continent. A subset of these superhighways map to archaeological sites where early rock art, charcoal, shell, and quartz tools have been found.

“Australia’s not only the driest, but it’s also the flattest populated continent on Earth,” says co-author Sean Ulm, an archaeologist and Distinguished Professor at James Cook University. Ulm is also Deputy Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH), whose researchers contributed to the project. “Our research shows that prominent landscape features and water sources were critical for people to navigate and survive on the continent. In many Aboriginal societies, landscape features are known to have been created by ancestral beings during the Dreaming. Every ridgeline, hill, river, beach and water source is named, storied and inscribed into the very fabric of societies, emphasising the intimate relationship between people and place. The landscape is literally woven into peoples’ lives and their histories. It seems that these relationships between people and Country probably date back to the earliest peopling of the continent.”

The results suggest that there are fundamental rules humans follow as they move into new landscapes and that the researchers’ approach could shed light on other major migrations in human history, such as the first waves of migration out of Africa at least 120,000 years ago.

Future work, Crabtree says, could inform the search for undiscovered archaeological sites, or even apply the techniques to forecast the movements of human migration in the near future, as populations flee drowning coastlines and climate disruptions.

Read the paper, “Landscape rules predict optimal superhighways for the first peopling of Sahul” in Nature Human Behaviour (April 29, 2021)

https://www.santafe.edu/news-center/news/first-australian-populations-followed-footpath-superhighways-across-continent

The Possibility of Life on Mars

The possibility of life on Mars is a subject of interest in astrobiology due to its proximity and similarities to Earth.  To date, no proof of past or present life has been found on Mars.  Cumulative evidence suggests that during the ancient Noachian time period, the surface environment of Mars had liquid water and may have been habitable for microorganisms. But, the existence of habitable conditions does not necessarily indicate the presence of life.

Scientific searches for evidence of life began in the 19th century and continue today via telescopic investigations and deployed probes. While early work focused on phenomenology and bordered on fantasy, the modern scientific inquiry has emphasized the search for water, chemical biosignatures in the soil and rocks at the planet's surface, and biomarker gases in the atmosphere.

Mars is of particular interest for the study of the origins of life because of its similarity to the early Earth. This is especially so since Mars has a cold climate and lacks plate tectonics or continental drift, so has remained almost unchanged since the end of the Hesperian period. At least two thirds of Mars' surface is more than 3.5 billion years old, and Mars may thus hold the best record of the prebiotic conditions leading to life, even if life does not or has never existed there, which might have started developing as early as 4.48 billion years ago.

Following the confirmation of the past existence of surface liquid water, the Curiosity, Perseverance and Opportunity rovers started searching for evidence of past life, including a past biosphere based on autotrophic, chemotrophic, or chemolithoautotrophic microorganisms, as well as ancient water, including fluvio-lacustrine environments (plains related to ancient rivers or lakes) that may have been habitable.  The search for evidence of habitability, taphonomy (related to fossils), and organic compounds on Mars is now a primary NASA and ESA objective.

The findings of organic compounds inside sedimentary rocks and of boron on Mars are of interest as they are precursors for prebiotic chemistry.  Such findings, along with previous discoveries that liquid water was clearly present on ancient Mars, further supports the possible early habitability of Gale Crater on Mars.  Currently, the surface of Mars is bathed with ionizing radiation, and Martian soil is rich in perchlorates toxic to microorganisms.  Therefore, the consensus is that if life exists—or existed—on Mars, it could be found or is best preserved in the subsurface, away from present-day harsh surface processes.

In June 2018, NASA announced the detection of seasonal variation of methane levels on Mars. Methane could be produced by microorganisms or by geological means.  The European ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter started mapping the atmospheric methane in April 2018, and the 2022 ExoMars rover Rosalind Franklin will drill and analyze subsurface samples, while the NASA Mars 2020 rover Perseverance, having landed successfully, will cache dozens of drill samples for their potential transport to Earth laboratories in the late 2020s or 2030s. As of February 8, 2021, an updated status of studies considering the possible detection of lifeforms on Venus (via of phosphine) and Mars (via methane) was reported.

Early Speculation

Mars' polar ice caps were discovered in the mid-17th century.  In the late 18th century, William Herschel proved they grow and shrink alternately, in the summer and winter of each hemisphere. By the mid-19th century, astronomers knew that Mars had certain other similarities to Earth, for example that the length of a day on Mars was almost the same as a day on Earth. They also knew that its axial tilt was similar to Earth's, which meant it experienced seasons just as Earth does—but of nearly double the length owing to its much longer year.  These observations led to increase in speculation that the darker albedo features were water and the brighter ones were land, whence followed speculation on whether Mars may be inhabited by some form of life.

In 1854, William Whewell, a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, theorized that Mars had seas, land and possibly life forms.  Speculation about life on Mars exploded in the late 19th century, following telescopic observation by some observers of apparent Martian canals—which were later found to be optical illusions. Despite this, in 1895, American astronomer Percival Lowell published his book Mars, followed by Mars and its Canals in 1906, proposing that the canals were the work of a long-gone civilization.  This idea led British writer H. G. Wells to write The War of the Worlds in 1897, telling of an invasion by aliens from Mars who were fleeing the planet's desiccation.

Spectroscopic analysis of Mars' atmosphere began in earnest in 1894, when U.S. astronomer William Wallace Campbell showed that neither water nor oxygen were present in the Martian atmosphere.  The influential observer Eugène Antoniadi used the 83-cm (32.6 inch) aperture telescope at Meudon Observatory at the 1909 opposition of Mars and saw no canals, the outstanding photos of Mars taken at the new Baillaud dome at the Pic du Midi observatory also brought formal discredit to the Martian canals theory in 1909, and the notion of canals began to  fall out of favor.

Potential for Habitability

Chemical, physical, geological, and geographic attributes shape the environments on Mars. Isolated measurements of these factors may be insufficient to deem an environment habitable, but the sum of measurements can help predict locations with greater or lesser habitability potential.  The two current ecological approaches for predicting the potential habitability of the Martian surface use 19 or 20 environmental factors, with an emphasis on water availability, temperature, the presence of nutrients, an energy source, and protection from solar ultraviolet and galactic cosmic radiation.

Scientists do not know the minimum number of parameters for determination of habitability potential, but they are certain it is greater than one or two of the factors in the table below.  Similarly, for each group of parameters, the habitability threshold for each is to be determined.  Laboratory simulations show that whenever multiple lethal factors are combined, the survival rates plummet quickly.  There are no full-Mars simulations published yet that include all of the biocidal factors combined.  Furthermore, the possibility of Martian life having a far different biochemistry and habitability requirements than the terrestrial biosphere is an open question.

Liquid Water on Mars

Liquid water is a necessary but not sufficient condition for life as humans know it, as habitability is a function of a multitude of environmental parameters.  Liquid water cannot exist on the surface of Mars except at the lowest elevations for minutes or hours.  Liquid water does not appear at the surface itself, but it could form in minuscule amounts around dust particles in snow heated by the Sun.  Also, the ancient equatorial ice sheets beneath the ground may slowly sublimate or melt, accessible from the surface via caves.

Water on Mars exists almost exclusively as water ice, located in the Martian polar ice caps and under the shallow Martian surface even at more temperate latitudes.  A small amount of water vapor is present in the atmosphere.  There are no bodies of liquid water on the Martian surface because its atmospheric pressure at the surface averages 600 pascals (0.087 psi)—about 0.6% of Earth's mean sea level pressure—and because the temperature is far too low, (210 K (−63 °C)) leading to immediate freezing. Despite this, about 3.8 billion years ago, there was a denser atmosphere, higher temperature, and vast amounts of liquid water flowed on the surface, including large oceans.

It has been estimated that the primordial oceans on Mars would have covered between 36% and 75% of the planet.  On November 22, 2016, NASA reported finding a large amount of underground ice in the Utopia Planitia region of Mars. The volume of water detected has been estimated to be equivalent to the volume of water in Lake Superior.  Analysis of Martian sandstones, using data obtained from orbital spectrometry, suggests that the waters that previously existed on the surface of Mars would have had too high a salinity to support most Earth-like life. Tosca et al. found that the Martian water in the locations they studied all had water activity, a_w ≤ 0.78 to 0.86—a level fatal to most Terrestrial life.  Haloarchaea, however, are able to live in hypersaline solutions, up to the saturation point.

In June 2000, possible evidence for current liquid water flowing at the surface of Mars was discovered in the form of flood-like gullies.  Additional similar images were published in 2006, taken by the Mars Global Surveyor, that suggested that water occasionally flows on the surface of Mars. The images showed changes in steep crater walls and sediment deposits, providing the strongest evidence yet that water coursed through them as recently as several years ago.

There is disagreement in the scientific community as to whether or not the recent gully streaks were formed by liquid water. Some suggest the flows were merely dry sand flows.  Others suggest it may be liquid brine near the surface, but the exact source of the water and the mechanism behind its motion are not understood.

In July 2018, scientists reported the discovery of a subglacial lake on Mars, 1.5 km (0.93 mi) below the southern polar ice cap, and extending sideways about 20 km (12 mi), the first known stable body of water on the planet.  The lake was discovered using the MARSIS radar on board the Mars Express orbiter, and the profiles were collected between May 2012 and December 2015.  The lake is centered at 193°E, 81°S, a flat area that does not exhibit any peculiar topographic characteristics but is surrounded by higher ground, except on its eastern side, where there is a depression.

                              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Mars

Vertical Turbines: the Future of Wind Power?

The now-familiar sight of traditional propeller wind turbines could be replaced in the future with wind farms containing more compact and efficient vertical turbines.

From: Oxford Brookes University

April 26, 2021 -- New research from Oxford Brookes University[in Headington, UK] has found that the vertical turbine design is far more efficient than traditional turbines in large scale wind farms, and when set in pairs the vertical turbines increase each other’s performance by up to 15%.

A research team from the School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics (ECM) at Oxford Brookes led by Professor Iakovos Tzanakis conducted an in-depth study using more than 11,500 hours of computer simulation to show that wind farms can perform more efficiently by substituting the traditional propeller type Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines (HAWTs), for compact Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs). 

Vertical turbines are more efficient than traditional windmill turbines

The research demonstrates for the first time at a realistic scale, the potential of large scale VAWTs to outcompete current HAWT wind farm turbines. 

VAWTs spin around an axis vertical to the ground, and they exhibit the opposite behaviour of the well-known propeller design (HAWTs). The research found that VAWTs increase each other’s performance when arranged in grid formations. Positioning wind turbines to maximise outputs is critical to the design of wind farms.

Professor Tzanakis comments “This study evidences that the future of wind farms should be vertical. Vertical axis wind farm turbines can be designed to be much closer together, increasing their efficiency and ultimately lowering the prices of electricity. In the long run, VAWTs can help accelerate the green transition of our energy systems, so that more clean and sustainable energy comes from renewable sources.” 

With the UK’s wind energy capacity expected to almost double by 2030, the findings are a stepping stone towards designing more efficient wind farms, understanding large scale wind energy harvesting techniques and ultimately improving the renewable energy technology to more quickly replace fossil fuels as sources of energy. 

Cost effective way to meet wind power targets

According to the Global Wind Report 2021, the world needs to be installing wind power three times faster over the next decade, in order to meet net zero targets and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Lead author of the report and Bachelor of Engineering graduate Joachim Toftegaard Hansen commented: “Modern wind farms are one of the most efficient ways to generate green energy, however, they have one major flaw: as the wind approaches the front row of turbines, turbulence will be generated downstream. The turbulence is detrimental to the performance of the subsequent rows. 

“In other words, the front row will convert about half the kinetic energy of the wind into electricity, whereas for the back row, that number is down to 25-30%. Each turbine costs more than £2 million/MW. As an engineer, it naturally occurred to me that there must be a more cost-effective way.”

The study is the first to comprehensively analyse many aspects of wind turbine performance, with regards to array angle, direction of rotation, turbine spacing, and number of rotors. It is also the first research to investigate whether the performance improvements hold true for three VAWT turbines set in a series.

Dr Mahak co-author of the article and Senior Lecturer in ECM comments: “The importance of using computational methods in understanding flow physics can’t be underestimated. These types of design and enhancement studies are a fraction of the cost compared to the huge experimental test facilities. This is particularly important at the initial design phase and is extremely useful for the industries trying to achieve maximum design efficiency and power output.”

https://www.brookes.ac.uk/about-brookes/news/vertical-turbines-could-be-the-future-for-wind-farms/

Experimental Drug Fights Alzheimer's Disease

Removing 'garbage' from brain cells improves memory in mice

From:  Albert Einstein College of Medicine

April 22, 2021 -- The drug works by reinvigorating a cellular cleaning mechanism that gets rid of unwanted proteins by digesting and recycling them.  The study was published online today in the journal Cell.

"Discoveries in mice don't always translate to humans, especially in Alzheimer's disease," said co-study leader Ana Maria Cuervo, M.D., Ph.D., the Robert and Renée Belfer Chair for the Study of Neurodegenerative Diseases, professor of developmental and molecular biology, and co-director of the Institute for Aging Research at Einstein. "But we were encouraged to find in our study that the drop-off in cellular cleaning that contributes to Alzheimer's in mice also occurs in people with the disease, suggesting that our drug may also work in humans." In the 1990s, Dr. Cuervo discovered the existence of this cell-cleaning process, known as chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA) and has published 200 papers on its role in health and disease.

CMA becomes less efficient as people age, increasing the risk that unwanted proteins will accumulate into insoluble clumps that damage cells. In fact, Alzheimer's and all other neurodegenerative diseases are characterized by the presence of toxic protein aggregates in patients' brains. The Cell paper reveals a dynamic interplay between CMA and Alzheimer's disease, with loss of CMA in neurons contributing to Alzheimer's and vice versa. The findings suggest that drugs for revving up CMA may offer hope for treating neurodegenerative diseases.

Establishing CMA's Link to Alzheimer's

Dr. Cuervo's team first looked at whether impaired CMA contributes to Alzheimer's. To do so, they genetically engineered a mouse to have excitatory brain neurons that lacked CMA. The absence of CMA in one type of brain cell was enough to cause short-term memory loss, impaired walking, and other problems often found in rodent models of Alzheimer's disease. In addition, the absence of CMA profoundly disrupted proteostasis -- the cells' ability to regulate the proteins they contain. Normally soluble proteins had shifted to being insoluble and at risk for clumping into toxic aggregates.

Dr. Cuervo suspected the converse was also true: that early Alzheimer's impairs CMA. So she and her colleagues studied a mouse model of early Alzheimer's in which brain neurons were made to produce defective copies of the protein tau. Evidence indicates that abnormal copies of tau clump together to form neurofibrillary tangles that contribute to Alzheimer's. The research team focused on CMA activity within neurons of the hippocampus -- the brain region crucial for memory and learning. They found that CMA activity in those neurons was significantly reduced compared to control animals.

What about early Alzheimer's in people -- does it block CMA too? To find out, the researchers looked at single-cell RNA-sequencing data from neurons obtained postmortem from the brains of Alzheimer's patients and from a comparison group of healthy individuals. The sequencing data revealed CMA's activity level in patients' brain tissue. Sure enough, CMA activity was somewhat inhibited in people who had been in the early stages of Alzheimer's, followed by much greater CMA inhibition in the brains of people with advanced Alzheimer's.

"By the time people reach the age of 70 or 80, CMA activity has usually decreased by about 30% compared to when they were younger," said Dr. Cuervo. "Most peoples' brains can compensate for this decline. But if you add neurodegenerative disease to the mix, the effect on the normal protein makeup of brain neurons can be devastating. Our study shows that CMA deficiency interacts synergistically with Alzheimer's pathology to greatly accelerate disease progression."

A New Drug Cleans Neurons and Reverses Symptoms

In an encouraging finding, Dr. Cuervo and her team developed a novel drug that shows potential for treating Alzheimer's. "We know that CMA is capable of digesting defective tau and other proteins," said Dr. Cuervo. "But the sheer amount of defective protein in Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases overwhelms CMA and essentially cripples it. Our drug revitalizes CMA efficiency by boosting levels of a key CMA component."

In CMA, proteins called chaperones bind to damaged or defective proteins in cells of the body. The chaperones ferry their cargo to the cells' lysosomes -- membrane-bound organelles filled with enzymes, which digest and recycle waste material. To successfully get their cargo into lysosomes, however, chaperones must first "dock" the material onto a protein receptor called LAMP2A that sprouts from the membranes of lysosomes. The more LAMP2A receptors on lysosomes, the greater the level of CMA activity possible. The new drug, called CA, works by increasing the number of those LAMP2A receptors.

"You produce the same amount of LAMP2A receptors throughout life," said Dr. Cuervo. "But those receptors deteriorate more quickly as you age, so older people tend to have less of them available for delivering unwanted proteins into lysosomes. CA restores LAMP2A to youthful levels, enabling CMA to get rid of tau and other defective proteins so they can't form those toxic protein clumps." (Also this month, Dr. Cuervo's team reported in Nature Communications that, for the first time, they had isolated lysosomes from the brains of Alzheimer's disease patients and observed that reduction in the number of LAMP2 receptors causes loss of CMA in humans, just as it does in animal models of Alzheimer's.)

The researchers tested CA in two different mouse models of Alzheimer's disease. In both disease mouse models, oral doses of CA administered over 4 to 6 months led to improvements in memory, depression, and anxiety that made the treated animals resemble or closely resemble healthy, control mice. Walking ability significantly improved in the animal model in which it was a problem. And in brain neurons of both animal models, the drug significantly reduced levels of tau protein and protein clumps compared with untreated animals.

"Importantly, animals in both models were already showing symptoms of disease, and their neurons were clogged with toxic proteins before the drugs were administered," said Dr. Cuervo. "This means that the drug may help preserve neuron function even in the later stages of disease. We were also very excited that the drug significantly reduced gliosis -- the inflammation and scarring of cells surrounding brain neurons. Gliosis is associated with toxic proteins and is known to play a major role in perpetuating and worsening neurodegenerative diseases."

Treatment with CA did not appear to harm other organs even when given daily for extended periods of time. The drug was designed by Evripidis Gavathiotis, Ph.D.,, professor of biochemistry and of medicine and a co-leader of the study.

Drs. Cuervo and Gavathiotis have teamed up with Life Biosciences of Boston, Mass., to found Selphagy Therapeutics, which is currently developing CA and related compounds for treating Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases.

The study is titled, "Chaperone-mediated autophagy prevents collapse of the neuronal metastable proteome." The study's other co-leader and first author is Mathieu Bourdenx, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Cuervo's lab and also a junior researcher at the Institute of Neurodegenerative Diseases, University of Bordeaux, France. Additional Einstein authors include: Adrián Martín-Segura, Aurora Scrivo, Susmita Kaushik, Ph.D., Inmaculada Tasset, Ph.D., Antonio Diaz and Yves R. Juste.

Other contributors include: Jose A. Rodriguez-Navarro (formerly at Einstein) at Hospital Universitario Ramón y Cajal, Madrid, Spain, Nadia J. Storm (formerly at Einstein) at University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Qisheng Xin (formerly at Einstein), Erica Stevenson, Nevan Krogan and Danielle L. Swaney both at University of California at San Francisco, CA, Enrique Luengo at Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain, Cristina Clement, Ph.D., and Laura Santambrogio, M.D., Ph.D., both at Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, Se Joon Choi, Ph.D., Eugene V. Mosharov and David Sulzer, Ph.D., all at Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY and Fiona Grueninger, Ph.D., and Ludovic Collin both at Roche Pharma, Switzerland.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210422150402.htm

New Polymer Mimics Cartilage

Inspired by nature, research developed a new load-bearing material

From: University of Leeds

April 22, 2021 -- Engineers have developed a material that mimics human cartilage – the body’s shock absorbing and lubrication system, and it could herald the development of a new generation of lightweight bearings.

Cartilage is a soft fibrous tissue found around joints which provides protection from the compressive loading generated by walking, running or lifting. It also provides a protective, lubricating layer allowing bones to pass over one another in a frictionless way.

For years, scientists have been trying to create a synthetic material with the properties of cartilage. To date, they have had mixed results. 

But in a paper published in the journal Applied Polymer Materials, researchers at the University of Leeds and Imperial College London have announced that they have created a material that functions like cartilage. 

The research team believes a cartilage-like material would have a wide-range of uses across engineering.

Nature's cushion 

Cartilage is a bi-phasic porous material, meaning it exists in solid and fluid phases. It switches to its fluid phase by absorbing a viscous substance produced in the joints called synovial fluid. This fluid not only lubricates the joints but when held in the porous matrix of the cartilage, it provides a hydroelastic cushion against compressive forces.

Because the cartilage is porous, the synovial fluid eventually drains away and as it does, it helps dissipate the energy forces travelling through the body, protecting joints from wear and tear and impact injuries. At this point the cartilage returns to its sold phase, ready for the cycle to be repeated.

Many potential applications' 

Dr Siavash Soltanahmadi, Research Fellow in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Leeds, who led the research, said: “Scientists and engineers have been trying for years to develop a material that has the amazing properties of cartilage. 

"We have now developed a material for engineering applications that mimics some of the most important properties found in cartilage, and it has only been possible because we have found a way to mimic the way nature does it.

“There are many applications in engineering for a synthetic material that is soft but can withstand heavy loading with minimum wear and tear, such as in bearings. There is potential across engineering for a material that behaves like cartilage.” 

Earlier attempts at developing a synthetic cartilage system have focused on the use of hydrogels, materials that absorb water. Hydrogels are good at reducing friction but perform poorly when under compressive force. 

One of the problems is that it takes time for the hydrogel to return to its normal shape after it has been compressed.

The researchers have overcome this problem by creating a synthetic porous material made of a hydrogel held in a matrix of polydimethylsiloxane or PDMS - a silicone-based polymer. The matrix keeps the shape of the hydrogel.  

The hydrogel also provided a lubricating layer. 

In the paper, the scientists report that the load-bearing behaviour of the hydrogel held in the PDMS matrix was 14 to 19 times greater than the hydrogel on its own. The equilibrium elastic modulus of the composite was 452 kPa at a strain range of 10%-30%, close to the values reported for the modulus of cartilage tested.

Water as an effective lubricant 

The scientists believe future applications of a new material based on the function of cartilage could challenge many traditional oil-lubricated engineering systems.

Dr Michael Bryant, Associate Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering, who supervised the research, said: “The ability to use water as an effective lubricant has many applications from energy generation to medical devices. However this often requires a different approach when compared to traditional engineering systems which often use oil-based lubricants and hard-surface coatings.

“This project has helped us to better understand these requirements and develop new tools to address this need.” 

https://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/4807/inspired_by_nature_the_research_to_develop_a_new_load-bearing_material

What Is Generative Design?

From: Autodesk

Generative design is a design exploration process. Designers or engineers input design goals into the generative design software, along with parameters such as performance or spatial requirements, materials, manufacturing methods, and cost constraints. The software explores all the possible permutations of a solution, quickly generating design alternatives. It tests and learns from each iteration what works and what doesn’t.

Quickly generate high-performing design alternatives—many that you’d never think of on your own—from a single idea. With generative design, there is no single solution; instead, there are multiple great solutions. You choose the design that best fits your needs.

https://www.autodesk.com/solutions/generative-design?mktvar002=678907&ef_id=Cj0KCQjw1PSDBhDbARIsAPeTqrdzpnED2iOdrVYKWBbQV_e2zoIDcjs7xK1LPOAcF3THcD_YUyYzIB4aAr-WEALw_wcB:G:s&s_kwcid=AL!11172!3!330171926122!e!!g!!generative%20design!621448685!27870611445&mkwid=sMxVoYQPt%7Cpcrid%7C330171926122%7Cpkw%7Cgenerative%20design%7Cpmt%7Ce%7Cpdv%7Cc%7Cslid%7C%7Cpgrid%7C27870611445%7Cptaid%7Ckwd-3935580345%7Cpid%7C&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=GGL_DM_FOMT-Generative_AMER_US_Visits_SEM_NBR_NEW_EX_ADSK_3461051&utm_term=generative%20design&utm_content=sMxVoYQPt%7Cpcrid%7C330171926122%7Cpkw%7Cgenerative%20design%7Cpmt%7Ce%7Cpdv%7Cc%7Cslid%7C%7Cpgrid%7C27870611445%7Cptaid%7Ckwd-3935580345%7C&gclid=Cj0KCQjw1PSDBhDbARIsAPeTqrdzpnED2iOdrVYKWBbQV_e2zoIDcjs7xK1LPOAcF3THcD_YUyYzIB4aAr-WEALw_wcB

The Ultimate Music Toy for Multi-Millionaires

Steinway has a new player piano available as a Spirio grand piano.  There is nothing like this.  Due to the complexity of the sounds coming out of a piano because of its dozens of strings and wooden drum, it is impossible to completely copy the sound electronically.

But the Steinway Spiro accomplishes this in a manner that is indistinguishable from live performance.  And the cost?  If you have to ask, you can’t get one.

Spirio Player Piano | Steinway & Sons - Steinway & Sons

Bright Future for Infinitely Recyclable Plastic

A new environmental and technological analysis suggests that a revolutionary eco-friendly plastic is almost ready to hit the shelves

From: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

April 22, 2021 -- Plastics are a part of nearly every product we use on a daily basis. The average person in the U.S. generates about 100 kg of plastic waste per year, most of which goes straight to a landfill. A team led by Corinne Scown, Brett Helms, Jay Keasling, and Kristin Persson at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) set out to change that.

Less than two years ago, Helms announced the invention of a new plastic that could tackle the waste crisis head on. Called poly(diketoenamine), or PDK, the material has all the convenient properties of traditional plastics while avoiding the environmental pitfalls, because unlike traditional plastics, PDKs can be recycled indefinitely with no loss in quality.

Now, the team has released a study that shows what can be accomplished if manufacturers began using PDKs on a large scale. The bottom line? PDK-based plastic could quickly become commercially competitive with conventional plastics, and the products will get less expensive and more sustainable as time goes on.

“Plastics were never designed to be recycled. The need to do so was recognized long afterward,” explained Nemi Vora, first author on the report and a former postdoctoral fellow who worked with senior author Corinne Scown. “But driving sustainability is the heart of this project. PDKs were designed to be recycled from the get-go, and since the beginning, the team has been working to refine the production and recycling processes for PDK so that the material could be inexpensive and easy enough to be deployed at commercial scales in anything from packaging to cars.”

The study presents a simulation for a 20,000-metric-ton-per-year facility that puts out new PDKs and takes in used PDK waste for recycling. The authors calculated the chemical inputs and technology needed, as well as the costs and greenhouse gas emissions, then compared their findings to the equivalent figures for production of conventional plastics.

“These days, there is a huge push for adopting circular economy practices in the industry. Everyone is trying to recycle whatever they’re putting out in the market,” said Vora. “We started talking to industry about deploying 100% infinitely recycled plastics and have received a lot of interest.”

“The questions are how much it will cost, what the impact on energy use and emissions will be, and how to get there from where we are today,” added Helms, a staff scientist at Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry. “The next phase of our collaboration is to answer these questions.”

Checking the boxes of cheap and easy

To date, more than 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic material have been produced, and the vast majority of this has ended up in landfills or waste incineration plants. A small proportion of plastics are sent to be recycled “mechanically,” meaning they are melted down and then re-shaped into new products. However, this technique has limited benefit. Plastic resin itself is made of many identical molecules (called monomers) bound together into long chains (called polymers). Yet to give plastic its many textures, colors, and capabilities, additives like pigments, heat stabilizers, and flame retardants are added to the resin. When many plastics are melted down together, the polymers become mixed with a slew of potentially incompatible additives, resulting in a new material with much lower quality than newly produced virgin resin from raw materials. As such, less than 10% of plastic is mechanically recycled more than once, and recycled plastic usually also contains virgin resin to make up for the dip in quality.

PDK plastics sidestep this problem entirely – the resin polymers are engineered to easily break down into individual monomers when mixed with an acid. The monomers can then be separated from any additives and gathered to make new plastics without any loss of quality. The team’s earlier research shows that this “chemical recycling” process is light on energy and carbon dioxide emissions, and it can be repeated indefinitely, creating a completely circular material lifecycle where there is currently a one-way ticket to waste.

Yet despite these incredible properties, to truly beat plastics at their own game, PDKs also need to be convenient. Recycling traditional petroleum-based plastic might be hard, but making new plastic is very easy.

“We’re talking about materials that are basically not recycled,” said Scown. “So, in terms of appealing to manufacturers, PDKs aren’t competing with recycled plastic – they have to compete with virgin resin. And we were really pleased to see how cheap and how efficient it will be to recycle the material.”

Scown, who is a staff scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Energy Technologies and Biosciences Areas, specializes in modeling future environmental and financial impacts of emerging technologies. Scown and her team have been working on the PDK project since the outset, helping Helms’ group of chemists and fabrication scientists to choose the raw materials, solvents, equipment, and techniques that will lead to the most affordable and eco-friendly product.

“We’re taking early stage technology and designing what it would look like at commercial-scale operations” using different inputs and technology, she said. This unique, collaborative modeling process allows Berkeley Lab scientists to identify potential scale-up challenges and make process improvements without costly cycles of trial and error.

The team’s report, published in Science Advances, models a commercial-scale PDK production and recycling pipeline based on the plastic’s current state of development. “And the main takeaways were that, once you’ve produced the PDK initially and you’ve got it in the system, the cost and the greenhouse gas emissions associated with continuing to recycle it back to monomers and make new products could be lower than, or at least on par with, many conventional polymers,” said Scown.

Planning to launch

Thanks to optimization from process modeling, recycled PDKs are already drawing interest from companies needing to source plastic. Always looking to the future, Helms and his colleagues have been conducting market research and meeting with people from industry since the project’s early days. Their legwork shows that the best initial application for PDKs are markets where the manufacturer will receive their product back at the end of its lifespan, such as the automobile industry (through trade-ins and take-backs) and consumer electronics (through e-waste programs). These companies will then be able to reap the benefits of 100% recyclable PDKs in their product: sustainable branding and long-term savings.

“With PDKs, now people in industry have a choice,” said Helms. “We’re bringing in partners who are building circularity into their product lines and manufacturing capabilities, and giving them an option that is in line with future best practices.”

Added Scown: “We know there’s interest at that level. Some countries have plans to charge hefty fees on plastic products that rely on non-recycled material. That shift will provide a strong financial incentive to move away from utilizing virgin resins and should drive a lot of demand for recycled plastics.”

After infiltrating the market for durable products like cars and electronics, the team hopes to expand PDKs into shorter-lived, single-use goods such as packaging.

A full-circle future

As they forge plans for a commercial launch, the scientists are also continuing their techno-economic collaboration on the PDK production process. Although the cost of recycled PDK is already projected to be competitively low, the scientists are working on additional refinements to lower the cost of virgin PDK, so that companies are not deterred by the initial investment price.

And true to form, the scientists are working two steps ahead at the same time. Scown, who is also vice president for Life-cycle, Economics & Agronomy at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), and Helms are collaborating with Jay Keasling, a leading synthetic biologist at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley and CEO of JBEI, to design a process for producing PDK polymers using microbe-made precursor ingredients. The process currently uses industrial chemicals, but was initially designed with Keasling’s microbes in mind, thanks to a serendipitous cross-disciplinary seminar.

“Shortly before we started the PDK project, I was in a seminar where Jay was describing all the molecules that they could make at JBEI with their engineered microbes,” said Helms. “And I got very excited because I saw that some of those molecules were things that we put in PDKs. Jay and I had a few chats, and we realized that nearly the entire polymer could be made using plant material fermented by engineered microbes.”

“In the future, we’re going to bring in that biological component, meaning that we can begin to understand the impacts of transitioning from conventional feedstocks to unique and possibly advantaged bio-based feedstocks that might be more sustainable long term on the basis of energy, carbon, or water intensity of production and recycling,” Helms continued.

“So, where we are now, this is the first step of many, and I think we have a really long runway in front of us, which is exciting.”

The Molecular Foundry is a Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility that specializes in nanoscale science. JBEI is a Bioenergy Research Center funded by DOE’s Office of Science.

           The Future Looks Bright for Infinitely Recyclable Plastic (lbl.gov)

Undersea Volcanoes Release Enormous Heat

Energy unleashed by submarine volcanoes could power a continent

From:   Leeds University

April 21, 2021 -- Eruptions from deep-sea volcanoes were long-thought to be relatively uninteresting compared with those on land. While terrestrial volcanoes often produce spectacular eruptions, dispersing volcanic ash into the environment, it was thought  that deep marine eruptions only produced slow moving lava flows.

But data gathered by remotely operated vehicles deep in the North East Pacific and analysed by scientists at the University of Leeds, has revealed a link between the way ash is dispersed during submarine eruptions and the creation of large and powerful columns of heated water rising from the ocean floor, known as megaplumes.

These megaplumes contain hot chemical-rich water and act in the same way as the atmospheric plumes seen from land-based volcanoes, spreading first upwards and then outwards, carrying volcanic ash with them. The size of megaplumes is immense, with the volumes of water equivalent to forty million Olympic-sized swimming pools. They have been detected above various submarine volcanoes but their origin has remained unknown. The results of this new research show that they form rapidly during the eruption of lava. 

 The research was carried out by Dr Sam Pegler, from the School of Mathematics and Dr David Ferguson, from the School of Earth and Environment and is being published today in the journal Nature Communications. 

Together they developed a mathematical model which shows how ash from these submarine eruptions spreads several kilometres from the volcano. They used the ash pattern deposited by a historic submarine eruption to reconstruct its dynamics. This showed  that the rate of energy released and required to carry ash to the observed distances is extremely high – equivalent to the   power used by the whole of the USA. 

Dr Ferguson said: “The majority of Earth’s volcanic activity occurs underwater, mostly at depths of several kilometres in the deep ocean but, in contrast to terrestrial volcanoes, even detecting that an eruption has occurred on the seafloor is extremely challenging. Consequently, there remains much for scientists to learn about submarine volcanism and its effects on the marine environment.”

The research shows that submarine eruptions cause megaplumes to form but the release of energy is so rapid that it cannot be supplied from the erupted molten lava alone.  Instead, the research concludes that submarine volcanic eruptions lead to the rapid emptying of reservoirs of hot fluids within the earth’s crust. As the magma forces its way upwards towards the seafloor, it drives this hot fluid with it.

Dr Pegler said: “Our work provides evidence that megaplumes are directly linked to the eruption of lava and are responsible for transporting volcanic ash in the deep ocean. It also shows that plumes must have formed in a matter of hours, creating an immense rate of energy release.”

Dr Ferguson added: “Observing a submarine eruption in person remains extremely difficult but the development of instruments based on the seafloor means data can be streamed live as the activity occurs. 

“Efforts like these, in concert with continued mapping and sampling of the ocean floor means the volcanic character of our oceans is slowly being revealed.”   

Further information

Rapid heat discharge during deep-sea eruptions generates megaplumes and disperses tephra is published in Nature Communications 22 April 10:00 GMT. DOI:10.1038/s41467-021-22439-y.

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/4803/energy_unleashed_by_submarine_volcanoes_could_power_a_continent

Human-Monkey Chimeric Embryos Generated

Researchers have injected human stem cells into primate embryos and were able to grow chimeric embryos for a significant period of time -- up to 20 days. The research, despite its ethical concerns, has the potential to provide new insights into developmental biology and evolution. It also has implications for developing new models of human biology and disease.

From:  Cell Press

April 15, 2021 -- Investigators in China and the United States have injected human stem cells into primate embryos and were able to grow chimeric embryos for a significant period of time -- up to 20 days. The research, despite its ethical concerns, has the potential to provide new insights into developmental biology and evolution. It also has implications for developing new models of human biology and disease. The work appears April 15 in the journal Cell.

"As we are unable to conduct certain types of experiments in humans, it is essential that we have better models to more accurately study and understand human biology and disease," says senior author Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a professor in the Gene Expression Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences. "An important goal of experimental biology is the development of model systems that allow for the study of human diseases under in vivo conditions."

Interspecies chimeras in mammals have been made since the 1970s, when they were generated in rodents and used to study early developmental processes. The advance that made the current study possible came last year when this study's collaborating team -- led by Weizhi Ji of Kunming University of Science and Technology in Yunnan, China -- generated technology that allowed monkey embryos to stay alive and grow outside the body for an extended period of time.

In the current study, six days after the monkey embryos had been created, each one was injected with 25 human cells. The cells were from an induced pluripotent cell line known as extended pluripotent stem cells, which have the potential to contribute to both embryonic and extra-embryonic tissues. After one day, human cells were detected in 132 embryos. After 10 days, 103 of the chimeric embryos were still developing. Survival soon began declining, and by day 19, only three chimeras were still alive. Importantly, though, the percentage of human cells in the embryos remained high throughout the time they continued to grow.

"Historically, the generation of human-animal chimeras has suffered from low efficiency and integration of human cells into the host species," Izpisua Belmonte says. "Generation of a chimera between human and non-human primate, a species more closely related to humans along the evolutionary timeline than all previously used species, will allow us to gain better insight into whether there are evolutionarily imposed barriers to chimera generation and if there are any means by which we can overcome them."

The investigators performed transcriptome analysis on both the human and monkey cells from the embryos. "From these analyses, several communication pathways that were either novel or strengthened in the chimeric cells were identified," Izpisua Belmonte explains. "Understanding which pathways are involved in chimeric cell communication will allow us to possibly enhance this communication and increase the efficiency of chimerism in a host species that's more evolutionarily distant to humans."

An important next step for this research is to evaluate in more detail all the molecular pathways that are involved in this interspecies communication, with the immediate goal of finding which pathways are vital to the developmental process. Longer term, the researchers hope to use the chimeras not only to study early human development and to model disease, but to develop new approaches for drug screening, as well as potentially generating transplantable cells, tissues, or organs.

An accompanying Preview in Cell outlines potential ethical considerations surrounding the generation of human/non-human primate chimeras. Izpisua Belmonte also notes that "it is our responsibility as scientists to conduct our research thoughtfully, following all the ethical, legal, and social guidelines in place." He adds that before beginning this work, "ethical consultations and reviews were performed both at the institutional level and via outreach to non-affiliated bioethicists. This thorough and detailed process helped guide our experiments."

         Scientists generate human-monkey chimeric embryos -- ScienceDaily

Boosting AI With Light and Superconductors

As artificial intelligence has attracted interest, researchers are focused on understanding how the brain accomplishes cognition so they can construct systems with general intelligence comparable to humans' intelligence.

From:  American Institute of Physics

April 20, 2021 -- Researchers propose an approach to AI that focuses on integrating photonic components with superconducting electronics; using light for communication and complex electronic circuits for computation could enable artificial cognitive systems of scale and functionality beyond what can be achieved with either light or electronics alone.

Many have approached this challenge by using conventional silicon microelectronics in conjunction with light. However, the fabrication of silicon chips with electronic and photonic circuit elements is difficult for many physical and practical reasons related to the materials used for the components.

In Applied Physics Letters, by AIP Publishing, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology propose an approach to large-scale artificial intelligence that focuses on integrating photonic components with superconducting electronics rather than semiconducting electronics.

"We argue that by operating at low temperature and using superconducting electronic circuits, single-photon detectors, and silicon light sources, we will open a path toward rich computational functionality and scalable fabrication," said author Jeffrey Shainline.

Using light for communication in conjunction with complex electronic circuits for computation could enable artificial cognitive systems of scale and functionality beyond what can be achieved with either light or electronics alone.

"What surprised me most was that optoelectronic integration may be much easier when working at low temperatures and using superconductors than when working at room temperatures and using semiconductors," said Shainline.

Superconducting photon detectors enable detection of a single photon, while semiconducting photon detectors require about 1,000 photons. So not only do silicon light sources work at 4 kelvins, but they also can be 1,000 times less bright than their room temperature counterparts and still communicate effectively.

Some applications, such as chips in cellphones, require working at room temperature, but the proposed technology would still have wide reaching applicability for advanced computing systems.

The researchers plan to explore more complex integration with other superconducting electronic circuits as well as demonstrate all the components that comprise artificial cognitive systems, including synapses and neurons.

Showing that the hardware can be manufactured in a scalable manner, so large systems can be realized at a reasonable cost, will also be important. Superconducting optoelectronic integration could also help create scalable quantum technologies based on superconducting or photonic qubits. Such quantum-neural hybrid systems may also lead to new ways of leveraging the strengths of quantum entanglement with spiking neurons.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210420131057.htm

NASA Helicopter Flies on Mars

The small rotorcraft made history, hovering above Jezero Crater, demonstrating that powered, controlled flight on another planet is possible.

From: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

April 19, 2021-- NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter took this shot, capturing its own shadow, while hovering over the Martian surface on April 19, 2021, during the first instance of powered, controlled flight on another planet. It used its navigation camera, which autonomously tracks the ground during flight.

Monday, NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter became the first aircraft in history to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet. The Ingenuity team at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed the flight succeeded after receiving data from the helicopter via NASA's Perseverance Mars rover at 6:46 a.m. EDT (3:46 a.m. PDT).

"Ingenuity is the latest in a long and storied tradition of NASA projects achieving a space exploration goal once thought impossible," said acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk. "The X-15 was a pathfinder for the space shuttle. Mars Pathfinder and its Sojourner rover did the same for three generations of Mars rovers. We don't know exactly where Ingenuity will lead us, but today's results indicate the sky -- at least on Mars -- may not be the limit."

The solar-powered helicopter first became airborne at 3:34 a.m. EDT (12:34 a.m. PDT) -- 12:33 Local Mean Solar Time (Mars time) -- a time the Ingenuity team determined would have optimal energy and flight conditions. Altimeter data indicate Ingenuity climbed to its prescribed maximum altitude of 10 feet (3 meters) and maintained a stable hover for 30 seconds. It then descended, touching back down on the surface of Mars after logging a total of 39.1 seconds of flight. Additional details on the test are expected in upcoming downlinks.

Ingenuity's initial flight demonstration was autonomous -- piloted by onboard guidance, navigation, and control systems running algorithms developed by the team at JPL. Because data must be sent to and returned from the Red Planet over hundreds of millions of miles using orbiting satellites and NASA's Deep Space Network, Ingenuity cannot be flown with a joystick, and its flight was not observable from Earth in real time.

NASA Associate Administrator for Science Thomas Zurbuchen announced the name for the Martian airfield on which the flight took place.

"Now, 117 years after the Wright brothers succeeded in making the first flight on our planet, NASA's Ingenuity helicopter has succeeded in performing this amazing feat on another world," Zurbuchen said. "While these two iconic moments in aviation history may be separated by time and 173 million miles of space, they now will forever be linked. As an homage to the two innovative bicycle makers from Dayton, this first of many airfields on other worlds will now be known as Wright Brothers Field, in recognition of the ingenuity and innovation that continue to propel exploration."

Ingenuity's chief pilot, Håvard Grip, announced that the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) -- the United Nations' civil aviation agency -- presented NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration with official ICAO designator IGY, call-sign INGENUITY.

These details will be included officially in the next edition of ICAO's publication Designators for Aircraft Operating Agencies, Aeronautical Authorities and Services. The location of the flight has also been given the ceremonial location designation JZRO for Jezero Crater.

As one of NASA's technology demonstration projects, the 19.3-inch-tall (49-centimeter-tall) Ingenuity Mars Helicopter contains no science instruments inside its tissue-box-size fuselage. Instead, the 4-pound (1.8-kg) rotorcraft is intended to demonstrate whether future exploration of the Red Planet could include an aerial perspective.

This first flight was full of unknowns. The Red Planet has a significantly lower gravity -- one-third that of Earth's -- and an extremely thin atmosphere with only 1% the pressure at the surface compared to our planet. This means there are relatively few air molecules with which Ingenuity's two 4-foot-wide (1.2-meter-wide) rotor blades can interact to achieve flight. The helicopter contains unique components, as well as off-the-shelf-commercial parts -- many from the smartphone industry -- that were tested in deep space for the first time with this mission.

"The Mars Helicopter project has gone from 'blue sky' feasibility study to workable engineering concept to achieving the first flight on another world in a little over six years," said Michael Watkins, director of JPL. "That this project has achieved such a historic first is testimony to the innovation and doggedness of our team here at JPL, as well as at NASA's Langley and Ames Research Centers, and our industry partners. It's a shining example of the kind of technology push that thrives at JPL and fits well with NASA's exploration goals."

Parked about 211 feet (64.3 meters) away at Van Zyl Overlook during Ingenuity's historic first flight, the Perseverance rover not only acted as a communications relay between the helicopter and Earth, but also chronicled the flight operations with its cameras. The pictures from the rover's Mastcam-Z and Navcam imagers will provide additional data on the helicopter's flight.

"We have been thinking for so long about having our Wright brothers moment on Mars, and here it is," said MiMi Aung, project manager of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter at JPL. "We will take a moment to celebrate our success and then take a cue from Orville and Wilbur regarding what to do next. History shows they got back to work -- to learn as much as they could about their new aircraft -- and so will we."

Perseverance touched down with Ingenuity attached to its belly on Feb. 18. Deployed to the surface of Jezero Crater on April 3, Ingenuity is currently on the 16th sol, or Martian day, of its 30-sol (31-Earth day) flight test window. Over the next three sols, the helicopter team will receive and analyze all data and imagery from the test and formulate a plan for the second experimental test flight, scheduled for no earlier than April 22. If the helicopter survives the second flight test, the Ingenuity team will consider how best to expand the flight profile.

More About Ingenuity

JPL, which built Ingenuity, also manages the technology demonstration project for NASA. It is supported by NASA's Science, Aeronautics, and Space Technology mission directorates. The agency's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley and Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, provided significant flight performance analysis and technical assistance during Ingenuity's development.

Dave Lavery is the program executive for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, MiMi Aung is the project manager, and Bob Balaram is chief engineer.

NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter succeeds in historic first flight -- ScienceDaily

NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter succeeds in historic first flight -- ScienceDaily