Last year, engineering students at the University of Maryland in College Park tried to set a record
for flying a human-powered helicopter. Today they are at it again, with a lighter, more advanced cycle-copter. So far, they've managed to break the world record for human-powered choppers in their first flight by staying airborne for 35 seconds (see video above).
The team's Gamera II craft
weighs around 32 kilograms, roughly two-thirds the weight of its predecessor, and has an improved rotor and cockpit design. Gamera I achieved just 4
seconds of flight last year, failing to beat the previous record of 20 seconds
set in 1994 by a copter called Yuri I.
As they continue their tests today, the team hopes to break the 60-second
barrier, an important step to claiming the American Helicopter Society's
Sikorsky prize for human-powered flight.
There are many ways to stimulate creativity, but sometimes an offbeat project can do the trick. In a recent event at the Dyson design centre in Wiltshire, UK, engineers were challenged to build racing cars using spare vacuum cleaner parts.
The participants were given two weeks to complete their designs, which required imagination to overcome the material limitations. In this video, you can see some of their creations in action. Winning entries were chosen based on speed and the most ambitious design: the winner in the latter category allowed a person to sit in the car.
Like a living work of art, a chick embryo's beating heart and intricate pattern of blood vessels are exposed as it's injected with ink under a microscope. Captured by biologist Anna Franz from the University of Oxford as she attempted the technique for the first time, the video has just won first place in the Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition.
The movie shows how blood vessels inside and outside the embryo are connected, as well as revealing the direction of blood flow through arteries and veins. The technique is often used by researchers to visualise how nutrients and oxygen are transported to an embryo and to study how a heart functions and develops.
According to Franz, the procedure was relatively quick and easy to perform. A window was first cut into the egg to expose the 72 hour-old embryo before it was placed under a microscope. Then a capillary needle was carefully inserted into an artery in the yolk sac, releasing ink throughout the network of blood vessels.
The technique gives insight into both chick and human circulatory systems since they are very similar. "An increased understanding of the development and function of the heart and blood vessels can help to discover novel ways of healing wounds and treating cancer and cardiovascular diseases," says Franz.
It's a move that's sure to impress even the most skilled circus contortionists. During flight, geese can twist their necks to flip their bodies upside down, while keeping their heads upright.
Now amateur videographers Hans de Koning and Lodewijk van Eekhout have captured the first slow-mo video of the manoeuvre, winning a prize in a competition organised by the Flight Artists group at Wageningen University. Known as whiffling, the move is often performed before landing as a means of braking. Upside down wings generate more drag causing a goose to slow down quickly, just like what happens when a plane is inverted during flight.
According to Paul Stancliffe from the British Trust for Ornithology, who has observed this manoeuvre several times in nature, what makes the move impressive is the way it allows a goose to quickly lose height. "I like the fact that this clip shows the birds turning completely upside down," he says. "It's difficult to see this happening in real time."
A picture of a flipped goose was captured by wildlife photographer Brian Macfarlane a few years ago, attracting a lot of attention since the pose has rarely been photographed. Although the twist is most common in geese and ducks, it's also used by other species of birds. "In the UK, I've observed cormorants and grey herons whiffling as well as pelicans and cranes in the Middle East," says Stancliffe.
Think flies aren't acrobatic? In this video, a fly performing an aerial somersault has been filmed in nature for the first time. The move is seldom observed in real time due to its speed, but Joris Schaap and Emile van Wijk managed to capture the behaviour using a high-speed camera. The escape manoeuvre is performed when a fly is taken by surprise, allowing it to regain control during the tumble.
The same behaviour in fruit flies has been observed in the lab by biologists Michael Dickinson from the University of Washington and Gwyneth Card from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dickinson and Card typically study fruit flies in flight, for example to find out more about wing dynamics and how the brain translates decisions into motion.
The short film is one of the winners in a competition organised by the Flight Artists group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. The team taught amateur filmmakers how to use high-speed cameras to capture flying animals, or plant seeds, and selected the best results.
UPDATE: Congratulations to Adam Wanderer who won the competition for suggesting the invention of an app that hones your internal clock, allowing you to estimate the time using your own mind rather than relying on a time-keeping device. Thanks to everyone who entered - we were inspired by all the innovative submissions!
Think a ticking clock is an outdated way to depict time? Why not invent a more novel solution - and win this cool touchscreen watch, courtesy of TokyoFlash.
We want to hear your ideas for representing time using computer technology. Here's some inspiration to get your creative juices flowing.
UPDATE: Congratulations to Nik Sargent, who won the Parrot AR
Drone mini helicopter for his suggestion that it could track the
behaviour of bumblebees. Although several people mentioned bees in their
entries, we were particularly impressed with the detail and insight
shown in Nik's submission, as well as his fascinating work as a
passionate amateur apiologist. We look forward to hearing what Nik discovers from his tiny eye in the sky.
Thank you to everyone who entered - we were blown away by the innovative and interesting ideas submitted.
Once you have a mini helicopter, you'll wonder how you ever lived without one - especially if you need to sample some whale snot as it shoots out of a cetacean's blowhole.
This year, New Scientist will be live-streaming the quirky awards ceremony in Boston on our NSTV blog from 7.30 pm EDT on 29 September (12.30 am BST on 30 September). We'll be live-tweeting the event from the very room where "genuinely bemused genuine Nobel laureates" will be presenting the awards to the winners whose "achievements first make people laugh, and then make them think".
To celebrate our live-streaming event, and in honour of Acevedo-Whitehouse's triumph, we're giving away a Parrot AR Drone mini helicopter.
The model contains 17 different viral and cellular proteins and the membrane incorporates 160 thousand lipid molecules, of 8 different types, in the same proportions as in an actual HIV particle. It denotes the parts encoded by the virus's own genome in orange, while grey shades indicate structures taken into the virus when it interacts with a human cell.
Although both of the shapes are the same size, the one on the bottom looks bigger. The brain trick is thought to occur because the short edge of one shape is lined up against the longer side of the other. However, there is still no consensus among researchers on why our brains perceive this effect.
The illusion was recreated here by psychologist Richard Wiseman, who will be revealing why our brain is hard-wired for weirdness in his new book, Paranormality, coming out next month.