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Realistic robot carp created: First robot fish with autonomous 3-D movement in Asia

June 26, 2013 ? A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering has developed a robot fish that mimics the movements of a carp. This robot which is essentially an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is ready for applications, as it can be programmed to perform specific functions, for example, for underwater archaeology such as exploring nooks and corners of wreckage -- or sunken city which are difficult for divers or traditional AUVs to access. Other applications include military activities, pipeline leakage detection, and the laying of communication cable.

The team comprises Professor Xu Jianxin, Mr Fan Lupeng, graduating Electrical Engineering student and Research Fellow, Dr Ren Qinyuan. Mr Fan worked on the project for his final year which won the High Achievement Award at the Faculty's 27th Innovation and Research Award. It will also be featured at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, a top international conference on intelligent robots, in Tokyo on 3-7 November 2013.

Said Prof Xu, "Currently, robot fish capable of 2-D movements are common, meaning that these models are not able to dive into the water. Our model is capable of 3-D movements as it can dive and float, using its fins like a real fish. Compared to traditional AUVs, they are certainly more mobile, with greater manoeuvrability. If used for military purpose, fish robots would definitely be more difficult to detect by the enemy."

Fish robots are also quieter and consume less energy, compared to traditional AUVs. Said Mr Fan who studied the movements of real life carps for three months, in order to develop their robot, "We chose to study carps because most fish swim like them. There is no literature at all on designing a mathematical model on the locomotion of fish and so we had to start from scratch. We used a camera to capture all the possible movements of a carp and then converted the data mathematically so that we could transfer the locomotion of real carp to our robot using different actuators."

This has been most challenging as fish use a lot of different muscles to move, and many actuators are required to enable the robot to move in the same manner.

Added Dr Ren, "Some fish can achieve almost 180 degree turning in a small turning radius through bending their body while traditional underwater vehicles have a much larger turning radius. Hence it is quite a feat for us to achieve this movement in our robot fish."

Other challenges included waterproofing the fish body, the motor and the control box. The fins and tails also need to be flexible and the team decided to use very fine (1mm) acrylic board for these. Buoyancy and balance for the robot is maintained by using plastic foams attached to both sides. For the diving mechanism, their robot fish is equipped with an internal ballast system to change density. The system is sophisticated enough to enable the fish to dive suddenly, as well as to the precise depth intended.

The team has constructed two fish robots. The larger prototype is about one and half metres in length, weighing about 10kg and it can dive to a depth of 1.8 metres. The smaller robot is about 60 centimetres long and weighs a mere 1.5kg. It is developed for investigation on 2D motion control and motion planning in a small place, and it can only swim at water surface.

"To my knowledge, the world's smallest fish robot is one about 12.7 centimetres (5 inches) in length. It was designed by MIT for specific military purpose and could go to a depth of 1.5 metres," said Dr Ren.

Moving forward

Underwater vehicles have long gone past the days of the submarines, said Mr Fan. Fish robots, besides being a micro submarine, can also be fully autonomous and can be programmed to perform many difficult and dangerous tasks.

The team hopes to make their robot fish even smaller and more realistic. Said Mr Fan, "We intend to equip it with more sensors like GPS and video camera to improve autonomous 3-D movement. We also intend to test out our fish with more challenging tasks such as object detection."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/Hexvc4gQL0o/130626113027.htm

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UK banks' insurance bill tops 10 billion pounds and rising

By Huw Jones

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's banks have paid out more than 10 billion pounds for mis-selling loan insurance, the Financial Conduct Authority said on Thursday, and the bill is rising with no deadline set for claims.

Separately, the FCA said it will levy a hefty fine next month on a firm for poor handling of complaints about insurance it sold to cover the loss or theft of mobile phones.

The FCA - launched in April after the financial crisis convinced legislators the Financial Services Authority was too lenient a regulator and had to be scrapped - is mandated to protect consumers and end years of mis-selling products.

It said banks have paid 10.1 billion pounds to customers hit by the country's biggest financial mis-selling scandal. Compensation is still being paid out at the rate of about 400 million pounds a month.

The Bank told five British banks last week to increase their capital buffers by a collective 13 billion pounds by December, partly because of the rising bill for mis-selling payment protection insurance (PPI).

Banks have made PPI provisions of about 14 billion pounds and had hoped that the FCA would set a deadline for claims, but talks with the regulator broke down.

In a review of mobile phone insurance (MPI), the watchdog said there is a gap between what the customer expects from a policy and what it gets from a sector dominated by nine, unnamed firms.

Some products were not designed to meet customers' needs, terms and conditions were unclear and unfair, and claims were poorly handled, the FCA said.

"Although the costs of MPI are relatively low, with premiums for some policies as little as a few pounds a month, the product is widely held with over 10 million customers," the FCA said.

One man lost his phone in the back of cab and made a claim after being unable to recover it, but it was rejected on the basis he'd left the phone unattended in a public place.

Another claimant was rejected because of "mis-use" of his phone - it had not been used in the last two weeks.

"We have begun communicating the findings to the firms that took part in the review and they are making improvements," FCA director of supervision, Clive Adamson said.

The review is the latest example of how the regulator is stepping in earlier and scrutinising the products themselves more closely, compared with looking at sales practices in the past long after evidence of mis-selling had emerged.

(Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/uk-banks-insurance-bill-tops-10-billion-pounds-113743494.html

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Lemurs' group size predicts social intelligence

Primates that live with many others know not to steal food when someone is watching

Primates that live with many others know not to steal food when someone is watching

By Cristy Gelling

Web edition: June 26, 2013

Enlarge

A ring-tailed lemur chooses food on a plate next to a person with his back turned, rather than trying to take it from someone watching.

Credit: E.L. MacLean et al/PLOS ONE

View the video

Never turn your back on a lemur ? especially if it?s a member of a big gang.

Lemur species that live in large groups can tell when to steal food from a competitor in a lab experiment, researchers report June 26 in PLOS ONE. The finding supports the idea that brain power in primates evolved to fit their complex social lives. Because the sneakier lemurs have the same size brains as less-sneaky ones living in smaller groups, researchers suggest that social smarts don?t always depend on brain size.

Much of the evidence for sociality?s role in the evolution of intelligence comes from indirect measures such as brain size, says study coauthor Evan MacLean of Duke University. But brain size does not always correspond to brain power, so MacLean uses behavioral tests.

He and his colleagues tested the social intelligence of six species of lemurs, primates from Madagascar distantly related to monkeys and apes. Each of the species lives in social groups ranging from families of just three, mongoose lemurs? preferred posse, to gangs of about 16, a typical size for a group of ring-tailed lemurs.

The researchers trained lemurs to view humans as competitors for food, then presented the animals with a choice between pilfering treats from one of two people: one facing the animals or another with his or her back turned. Species that live in small groups reached for the food under a competitor?s nose as often as they did behind people?s backs. But the ring-tailed lemurs were much more likely to choose the unguarded food.

Most intriguing, says Susanne Shultz, a biological anthropologist at England?s University of Manchester, is that group size was much better than brain size at predicting which species would perform well in either the social intelligence test or in a separate nonsocial intelligence test. ?We assume that if you have a bigger brain you should be better at solving problems,? she says. Her own research suggests that brain size in primates does correspond to cognitive ability, but she used a different set of intelligence tests and more kinds of primates. She says she would be interested to see how other species perform on MacLean?s tests.

MacLean agrees that a general relationship probably exists between brain size and cognition. But he speculates that this might not be the case with very closely related species like the lemurs. ?Cognition might evolve a little bit ahead of brain size,? he says.

In pre-trial training, a ring-tailed lemur learns that a person watching is a competitor for a morsel of food. The animal then chooses to take food from behind a person?s back, rather than from a watchful person.
Credit: E.L. MacLean et al./PLOS ONE, 2013.

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/351237/title/Lemurs_group_size_predicts_social_intelligence

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Bison may shrink as planet warms, study says

Kansas State University

Descendents of these bison 50 years from today may be smaller in size, a result of degrading grass quality on the prairie.

By?Laura Poppick
LiveScience

Bison roaming the U.S. prairie may grow smaller as a result of climate change, a new study suggests.

Interested in how regional climate affects bison?size, biologist Joseph Craine of Kansas State University collected body mass data for more than 250,000 bison across the country. He found that herds from hot, dry regions tend to weigh less than those from cooler, wetter regions. The average South Dakota adult male bison, for example, weighed roughly 1,900 pounds (860 kilograms), whereas the average Oklahoma adult bison ? subject to hotter conditions ? weighed closer to 1,300 pounds (590 kg), Craine reported last week in the journal PLOS ONE.

"The difference in temperature between those two states is around 20 degrees Fahrenheit (11 degrees Celsius), which is about three times the projected increase in temperatures over the next 75 years," Craine said in a statement. "That's a pretty extreme difference and beyond the worst-case scenario. But it is a clear indicator that long-term warming will affect bison, and is something that will happen across the U.S. over the next 50-75 years."

Craine thinks this size discrepancy results from differences in grass quality. Grasses in warm, dry regions tend to contain less protein than those in cooler, wetter regions. Protein deficiency slows bison growth early in life, resulting in smaller adults.

Other grazers, like cattle, will likely face similar changes in a warming climate, Craine said. Though more work is needed to predict the extent of warming on the prairie, Craine suggests that the cattle industry could face losses of more than $1 billion within the next 75 years as a result of degrading grass quality.

Follow Laura on Twitter. Follow us @livescience, Facebook and Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653377/s/2dbc2260/l/0Lscience0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A60C240C191198220Ebison0Emay0Eshrink0Eas0Eplanet0Ewarms0Estudy0Esays0Dlite/story01.htm

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Knee Replacement Often Beneficial for Rheumatoid Arthritis: Study ...

Patients did as well as those with osteoarthritis, but same did not hold true for hip replacement

WebMD News from HealthDay

By Maureen Salamon

HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, June 20 (HealthDay News) -- The common belief that rheumatoid arthritis patients don't benefit from knee replacement surgery as much as those with the more common osteoarthritis has been challenged by the findings from a pair of studies by New York City scientists.

Researchers from the Hospital for Special Surgery also found, however, that rheumatoid arthritis patients who underwent a total hip replacement didn't fare as well as those with osteoarthritis, though they did experience improvements in pain and function.

"One thing that we can clearly pull out of this research is that the levels of pain and function among those with rheumatoid arthritis were so much worse preoperatively at the point they approached joint replacement," explained rheumatologist Dr. Susan Goodman, the lead author of both studies. "They may be postponing or not getting to surgery until they're really in a much worse state. Perhaps that's one of the explanations for the results . . . perhaps it's their generalized disease. We really just don't know yet."

Goodman presented the research last week at the European League Against Rheumatism's annual meeting in Madrid, Spain. Research presented at scientific conferences has typically not been peer-reviewed or published and is considered preliminary.

Affecting one of every five adults, along with 300,000 children, arthritis is the leading cause of disability in the United States, according to the Arthritis Foundation. Osteoarthritis, the most prevalent form, progressively breaks down cartilage in the joints due to wear and tear, while rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease marked by inflammation of the membranes surrounding joints. Along with bringing chronic pain, both types can result in joint destruction.

Historically, rheumatoid arthritis patients have had worse outcomes after joint replacement surgeries than osteoarthritis patients, according to the study authors, but more effective drugs developed over the last two decades have helped them to better control their disease.

In the first study, Goodman and her team analyzed joint replacement registry data to identify 178 rheumatoid arthritis patients and more than 5,200 osteoarthritis patients who underwent knee replacement surgery. Though rheumatoid arthritis patients had worse pain and function before surgery, patients in both groups had similar satisfaction rates after surgery.

The second study compared outcomes of 202 rheumatoid arthritis patients and more than 5,800 osteoarthritis patients who underwent hip replacement, finding that those with rheumatoid arthritis started out with worse function before surgery and also had worse pain and function scores after surgery. However, rheumatoid arthritis patients were as likely as those with osteoarthritis to experience an overall improvement after hip replacement, though the gains didn't erase the disparity between the two groups.

"The advice to rheumatoid arthritis patients is, really, that you will have significant pain relief [from joint replacement surgery]," Goodman said. "It is an area that needs more study. We're looking forward to assessing more rheumatoid-specific factors."

The research, which looked at participants with active rheumatoid arthritis, is consistent with what Dr. Olivia Ghaw, an assistant professor of medicine in rheumatology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, sees in her practice.

But Ghaw said she felt the study's two-year follow-up period was perhaps not long enough to confirm if the joint replacement outcomes remained positive for rheumatoid arthritis patients.

"For some of my patients, if their joint is severely destructed, I still do recommend joint replacement," she said. "Ideally, we would love to get their underlying disease under better control. If we can bring their inflammation down, perhaps they can have better results with joint replacement."

Source: http://www.webmd.com/rheumatoid-arthritis/news/20130620/knee-replacement-often-beneficial-for-rheumatoid-arthritis-study

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