Gecko-Gloves for Climbing Like Spiderman

Most of us would have watched Spiderman scaling the side of a building using just his hands and wondered what it would be like if it were really possible to be able to do such a thing. Well, now it is possible, thanks to scientists from Stanford University in the US.

The team, led by mechanical engineer Professor Mark Cutkosky, have developed hand pads that have been inspired by geckos. The pads were so successful that they enabled one of the team to climb and down a vertical glass wall multiple times without failing even once. Their findings have been published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface .

Geckos use something called van der Waals forces to stick to what they are climbing. The force is actually relatively weak but is multiplied by lots of tiny frills that cover the underside of a gecko’s foot. These frills, called setae, effectively increase the surface area of the toes, thus boosting the electrical attraction between the gecko and the surface it clings to and producing a dry adhesive.

The hand pads, made of silicone, use the same forces to stick to the wall, but on a larger scale. Along the same lines as a gecko’s tiny toe-hairs, the team created micro-wedges, which are small tiles that are able to harness the adhesive power.

Using this method, researchers were able to create a dry adhesive, like that from the gecko but even more efficient - which they found out during testing.

PhD candidate Elliot Hawkes was the volunteer climber to climb a 3.6m/12ft tall vertical glass wall using only a 140cm² pad on each hand. Hawkes, who weighs around 11 stone (70kg/154lb), found that the pads easily peeled on and off of the glass surface. Despite this, he was still able to test the pads hundreds of times without them losing any of their stickiness.

“As the load [on the micro-wedges] increase, the tendons and springs ensure that all tiles converge to the same maximum load,” said Professor Cutkosky. He explained that if this didn’t happen, then one of the tiles would fail. And if one tile fails, they all fail. “The failure proceeds like an avalanche across the entire array.”

One problem the team did come across, however, was that the pads didn’t perform as well on rough surfaces as on smooth, clean glass. That is the one area that a gecko is able to outperform the pads. Hawkes suggested that to overcome this, the tiles on the pads could be made smaller.

“On contaminated surfaces, even geckos have trouble producing adhesions,” Hawkes pointed out. He added that the micro-wedges on the silicone pads could be cleaned after each step using materials like sticky tape, which have a higher surface energy. This could ultimately lead to the pads becoming self-cleaning.

Professor Cutkosky explained that past efforts involving some kinds of “spider-suit” don’t work because they don’t take into account that humans tend to have more strength in their legs than in their arms. But the professor now thinks that a system could be created whereby the silicone pads on the hands were connected to the feet with cables and links to transfer the load.

Talking Therapies Shown to Reduce Suicide Risk

When it comes to illnesses like depression, many people dismiss the idea of talking therapies as something that simply doesn’t work. But according to a new study coming out of the US, talk-therapy sessions can actually reduce the risk of suicide in people who have previously attempted to take their own life.

The team from John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland studied information pertaining to around 65,000 people in Denmark who had previously attempted suicide. From this group, the researchers tracked more than 23,000 individuals from this group for around 20 years.

The study, published in Lancet Psychiatry , involved 5,678 participants who volunteered to undergo six to 10 talk-therapy sessions at suicide prevention clinics around Denmark.

The idea of this form of therapy is to give people the opportunity to talk about their troubles. This is done with the help of a trained professional who also allows the patient to explore otherwise difficult feelings. Ultimately, it allows the patient to understand that they will always have someone to talk to and talks things through with.

The outcomes of the volunteers were compared with those of 17,000 people who had opted out of further treatment.

During the first year, those receiving counselling were found to be 27% less likely to attempt the act of self-harm again.

Five years down the line, this same group saw 26% fewer attempted self-harm incidents.

After 10 years, the trend continued with the positive effects of talk-therapy still evident in the group.

Study co-author Dr Elizabeth Stuart is from the university’s department of mental health. She explained that following up the study participants on such a long-term scale allowed researched to gather more accurate information on which treatments for the prevention of suicide worked best.

“Our findings provide a solid basis for recommending that this type of therapy be considered for populations at risk from suicide,” Dr Stuart declared.

Lead researcher Dr Annette Erlangsen agreed, explaining that people who had tried to commit suicide once were at high-risk of attempting to do so again, and something needs to be done to help these people.

“We did not know what would be effective in terms of treatment,” Dr Erlangsen explained. “Now we have evidence that psychosocial treatment (which provides support, not medication) is able to prevent suicide in a group at high-risk.”

The researchers still plan to gather as much more information as they can on the specific types of talking therapies and which ones work best. However, they agree that providing somewhere safe and confidential for the patient to talk was essential for the success of such therapy sessions. Ultimately, the study results just go to show that talking therapies might not be something to be dismissed so easily, and could provide the sort of long-term help that doesn't come from taking medication.

Wikipedia Page-Views Can Predict Disease Outbreaks

Trying to stay ahead of outbreak trends is not an easy task. It usually involves laboratory tests, collecting data, calls to doctors’ surgeries and trying to keep track of the number of people who visit health facilities. This process might be accurate, but it is also slow and expensive, and by the time an outbreak is being announced to the publicly, it had already been in effect for a couple of weeks.

But some scientists in the US have published a new study in PLOS Computational Biology with a promising suggestion. They say that the number of views a disease-related page on Wikipedia has could actually predict an outbreak of a disease nearly a month before official health advice.

The team, from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, explained that this was because people check out their symptoms online before seeking professional medical help. So, as part of their study, the researchers tracked the number of page-views on related pages between 2010 and 2013.

Wikipedia is an open-data site, which means that hourly traffic data on all pages is publicly available. But because this data doesn’t indicate which country a Wikipedia search has been made in, the language the information was written in was mapped by the researchers. This was able to give them an potential location of the person making the search.

The data was then compared with national health surveillance information on disease outbreaks. And using their Wiki-system, the team were able to forecast outbreaks of influenza, tuberculosis, and dengue fever in different countries. In eight out of 14 cases, this forecast was up to four weeks in advance of the news being announced by health officials.

Dr Sara Del Valle, lead researcher and co-author of the paper, said that a disease-forecasting system that can work on a global scale would greatly benefit the way we respond to epidemics.

“In the same way we check the weather each morning, individuals and public health officials can monitor disease incidence and plan for the future based on today’s forecast,” Dr Del Valle explained. She added that the ultimate aim of the research was to create a disease monitoring and forecasting system with both open data and open source code and that the research paper demonstrated that this was possible.

At the moment, it is unclear how the system would be able to work in a region where there is little-to-no internet access - and therefore limited access to Wikipedia. However, the team has indicated that it might be possible to create a trainable prediction model for their system. This would take the available data from one region and apply it to another region where the information is either less readily available or less reliable.

Although some experts have expressed some doubts about how such a system could be applied on a global scale, the US scientists have demonstrated that we may have to look for out-of-the-box solutions. And as the team pointed out: “Our Wikipedia-based approach is sufficiently promising to explore in more detail.”

Life-Size Katniss Sponge is Icing on the Cake…

Last year, Lara Clarke from the West Midlands made headlines around the world with her entry in the Cake International bakers’ competition in Birmingham. Swaying rather far from traditional cakes, Lara's “almost life-sized” cake of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean certainly gave spectators something to talk about..

“The judges are probably more used to seeing three-tier wedding cakes than giant Jack Sparrows,” Lara said at the time. And she wasn’t far wrong - the judges certainly were surprised at her entry.

Lara had only been baking for two years previously, with her first attempt at a decorated cake - outside of home economics, that is - being for her mother-in-law’s silver wedding anniversary. “I thought [the cake] was rubbish,” she said, “but everyone else seemed to like it.”

Since then, Lara has expanded her cake-baking repertoire to include a variety of novelty cakes, such as a motorbike and the Grinch (standing at 4ft/1.2m tall). She has also created a cake replica of her mother-in-law, though nothing on the same scale as Captain Jack.

While her regular job saw her working for a bingo website, Lara said that she learnt her skills from watching tutorial videos on YouTube (which is how pretty much everybody learns pretty much everything nowadays).

One evening, whilst watching Pirates of the Caribbean and on the phone to her friend, it was suggested to Lara that she should enter the Cake International competition. Glancing at the screen, she saw Johnny Depp as Captain Jack and thought he would be the perfect model for a cake because of all the different fabrics he wears could translate well into different textures.

Overall, it took her 90 hours over three months to make the 5ft 5in (1.65m) tall cake out of crisped rice and marshmallows. Detail was added with both royal and fondant icing as well as edible paint. However, because of what the cake was made from, it didn’t need baking and some people suggested that it didn’t pass for a cake.

Regardless, because the cake was so big, Lara had to hire a minibus to transport it to the competition, where cake fans and judges marvelled at the almost life-sized creation.

This year, Lara decided to go bigger, this time creating two entries for the competition. One was based on Tyrion Lannister, her favourite Game of Thrones character, and the other was a life-size model of Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games. And to ensure that Katniss was indeed precisely to scale, Lara even researched Jennifer Lawrence’s measurements online.

Being a huge fan of both made the task even more a sweet treat for Lara. And to hush the potential nay-sayers, both Katniss and Tyrion are sponge cakes. A total of 10kg/22lbs of flour, 10kg/22lbs of butter, an astonishing 150 eggs, and two-and-half months were used to create alternating chocolate and vanilla sponge layers, which were then crafted around frames.

Both cakes were entered into the Decorative Exhibit category of the competition. Tyrion Lannister won Lara one of the silver ribbons, while Katniss achieved a coveted gold.

For Lara, it is too soon to think about what her entry might be for next year, but there is no doubt that cake enthusiasts around the world will be waiting with bated breath and sweet tooth.

Alibaba Breaks Records with Singles’ Day

Within only the first 17 hours of China’s “Singles’ Day” shopping event, online-retail giant Alibaba had already smashed sales records, ultimately improving on last year’s sales figures by a whopping 62%.

Singles’ Day is an annual online shopping event based in China, held on November 11 every year. The day was originally created by students at Nanjing University who wanted a sort of anti-Valentine’s Day where people could celebrate their single-ness and buy things for themselves. The date - 11/11 - is even thought to have been chosen for its four single ones.

Alibaba then adopted Singles’ Day in 2009 in a bid to boost sales. Which is exactly what it did, because, since then, the event has gone on to become one of - if not the - biggest 24-hour online sales in the world. It even rivals Cyber Monday, held the Monday after Thanksgiving in the US and the online equivalent of Black Friday.

Last year’s Singles’ Day saw Alibaba bringing in record sales of $5.75 billion (£3.65 billion) and shipping more than 150 million packages. But before this year’s sale even took off, the company said it was expecting to break records, helping this along by offering huge discounts to customers.

It also didn’t hurt that advertising for the event began at the beginning of October, and customers were able to place deposits for their items, securing them for the full payment on the actual day.

Jack Ma, Founder and Executive Chairperson of Alibaba, estimated that around 200 million packages would be sent out just for orders made on the day. “I bet the number [of goods bought] is going to be scary!” he added.

And he was right.

Only 18 minutes into the day and the company had already made the equivalent of its first billion dollars. After the first hour, $2 billion (£1.3 billion) of goods had already been sold.

Seventeen hours in, the firm had hit $6.96 billion (£4.5 billion), wiping the record and leaving industry experts predicting that sales could surpass $8 billion (£5.1 billion) this year.

And surpass it, it did, reaching an astounding $9.3 billion (£5.9 billion).

This year’s event attracted the participation of global brands numbering in their tens of thousands, reaching shoppers in more than 200 countries.

“Lots of clients from the brands side have for the first time approached Singles’ Day as an event of its own,” said Shaun Rein from Shanghai’s China Market Research (CMR) . He explained that these clients have now earmarked Singles’ Day as a significant retail operation, on par with the Chinese New Year and Christmas.

Alibaba are obviously doing something right, and we can only wait and see what they do to break sales records for next year… and they have 12 months to work on it.

SWAT Superheroes “Save” Children’s Hospital

Children who are ill enough to have to spend time in hospital miss out on a lot of fun, especially if they have to stay in for the holidays.

For residing patients at Ohio’s Promedica Toledo Children’s Hospital in the US, it is the same story. Being too ill to go out and trick-or-treat, the children were disappointed to be missing out on Halloween.

That is - until they got caught up in a special heist to save the city from the evil Dr Trickster!

Watching a newsflash on television inside the hospital, patients at the children’s hospital were informed that Dr Trickster wanted to ruin Halloween for everyone in Toledo. He had stolen all of the city’s Halloween candy to fuel his winter-weather device.

But all was not lost! The newscaster announced that help was on the way in the form of superheroes who would be converging on the roof of the children’s hospital. To help, all of the children had to dress up in Halloween costumes donated by a local charity and stand at the front fifth-floor window waving glowsticks, signalling the heroes where to go.

Once the helicopters had dropped the heroes onto the roof, they scaled down the building, waving at the children as they passed their window.

After reaching the ground, the superheroes faced their foe and managed to capture him. The patients and their families then watched a video showing Dr Trickster being led into custody by the Toledo police SWAT team.

After they had “saved the day” the heroes gathered inside to meet the children and their families and to have hugs and pictures taken.

The members of the SWAT team that had led Dr Trickster away were actually the same people behind the superhero masks. They had been inspired to give the young children a Halloween to remember after hearing stories of window-washers elsewhere who would dress up in the same way and surprise sick children.

Police patrolman Matt Slaman, also known as Wolverine, described the whole experience as both cool and awesome. “To see all the kids, as you are going down the floor; all those people in their rooms, you can see their faces light up,” he said. “So, you’re really seeing you are bringing some joy in their life.”

These people gave the children a Halloween when they would otherwise have missed out because of their illnesses, and gave them some happy memories of their time in hospital. If you want to watch them in action, there is a video below. And if you want to check out more photos of the day, you can on the hospital’s Facebook page .

As you can see from the children’s face, these SWAT superheroes certainly “saved” Halloween for them!

[video width="570" height="275" id="Nsw17DOEzTs" type="youtube"]

“Beautiful Buddhist Monks” Fashion Show!

Shingon Buddhists in Japan have taken a rather unconventional approach - for them, anyway - to celebrate their 1,200th anniversary next year…

But first, what is a Buddhist? Well, some describe it as a religion, some, a philosophy, others, simply a better way of life.

Whichever way you look at it, the ultimate ambition of a Buddhist is to reach Nirvana, which is a state of enlightenment. To do this, a Buddhist must free themselves of the suffering of an eternity of reincarnation by removing greed, ignorance and hatred from their lives. They must live a good life because when a person does good, good consequences will come of it and vice versa.

Shingon Buddhism is one of the mainstream schools of Buddhism and one of the few surviving lineages the originally spread to China and Japan from India in the 3rd and 4th century.

Kōyasan Shingon-shū is the oldest and largest of the 18 Shingon sects in Japan. The main temple of this sect, Kongōbu-ji, is located on Mount Kōya, known locally as Kōyasan.

Next year marks the 1,200th anniversary of the opening of a discipline-training hall on the mountain, and the Buddhists monks wanted to do something special to bring the public’s attention to Mount Kōya. So they held an event called “Kōyasan Festa in Nara - Ikunara Kōyasan”, the last part of which means, “If you want to go somewhere, you should go to Mount Kōyasan.”

But what was this event, we hear you ask? The Buddhist monks held a fashion show!

The fashion show was organised by the monks’ young teacher association, which saw 10 of its 1,500 members become models for the day. The theme of the show was “Bi-bozu”, which literally means, “Beautiful Buddhist Monks”.

The monks took the catwalk in front of an audience of around 300, wearing outfits that are rarely seen by the public. Some of the modelled pieces are normally only worn by high-ranking monks. The audience, most of whom were women, were cheering the monks on and shouting their adoration.

After the fashion show, a commemorative photo session was held on the catwalk stage for the audience and the monks.

Nao Ozu, 35, was one of the members of the audience who enjoyed the show. “All of the monks are really handsome,” she said, “I was excited.”

One of the models, Shuchi Matsuki, had been nervous about participating in the event. “I was a little bit embarrassed,” he said, “but I enjoyed playing the role of model.”

UK Rubbish Heating Denmark’s Homes

Regarding rubbish in the UK, there is no doubting the landfill problems we often hear about. But did you know that last year alone we exported around 200,000 tonnes of the stuff - to Denmark?

And over the last year or so, that figure has doubled. But what are they doing with it? Well, they are turning it into heating for their radiators and lights for their lamps - generally creating energy for their homes. And the scheme has been such a success that is is spreading across the country.

Waste management company ASØ provides heating and power for the citizens of Frederikshavn, a town in northeast Denmark. They import non-hazardous waste - such as cardboard, wood and plastic - mainly from construction sites in Manchester, burn it in incinerators to turn it into home energy.

The UK rubbish stands 3m (10ft) high and 15m (50ft) wide, wrapped in big bales like something you would see in a hay field during harvest.

“I guess we have 600 tonnes here that provide a good combustible mixture,” said AVØ Operations Manager Orla Frederiksen, explaining that this concoction is just right to convert into district heating and power.

Waste now accounts for around 15% of the fuel in Denmark, with just under half of that rubbish coming from the UK.

And, according to AVØ Director, Tore Vedelsdal, creating energy by burning rubbish is actually cheaper than using natural gas. “The British are interested because they lack incinerators and pay heavy taxes on their landfills,” he explained. “They save having to bury the waste and we save on the consumption of natural gas.”

Using waste as fuel is a method slowly spreading across Denmark, with rubbish from the UK also being burned in incinerators in the towns of Aalborg and Hjørring as well.

Amanda Hill, who is researching waste management at Aalborg University, agrees with the scheme. She said that anything that involves the rubbish not ending up in a landfill is considered good for the environment.

“But we must be careful that we do not build as much incineration capacity that it prevents a shift to a greener technology in the future,” she added.

So, could Denmark hold the key to the rubbish solutions of the future? We’ll just have to wait and see...

A Cancer Sensor from Google?

Google is working on new technology that could potentially diagnose health problems like cancer or heart attacks at a much earlier stage than is currently possible.

As with treatment of many diseases, early diagnosis is key. Unfortunately, many can only be detected when they have already passed the treatable stage and have become fatal.

But there are clearly noticeable differences between cancerous cells and healthy ones, and Google wanted to tap into that to see if it could be used as a sort of early warning system.

The company’s research division, Google X, which investigates potentially revolutionary innovations, may have come up with a workable concept. This would involve combining a special pill and a sensor worn on the body that could alert the wearer of possible malignant cells.

The pill would contain nanoparticles that would enter the bloodstream when swallowed, and different nanoparticles could be tailored for different conditions. For example, the microscopic particles could be designed to stick to cancerous cells, or find evidence of heart attack-causing fatty plaques breaking from the lining of blood vessels.

So, the patient swallows the pill containing nanoparticles, which then travel through the body looking for identifying cells.

“What we are trying to do is change medicine from reactive and transactional to proactive and preventative,” explained molecular biologist Dr Andrew Conrad, head of life sciences for Google X. “Nanoparticles give you the ability to explore the body at a molecular and cellular level.”

The team has also been exploring ways of using magnetism with these nanoparticles. This means that the particles could be controlled - to an extent - and temporarily concentrated in a single area. Using this method, they could be called back to the wrist to report their findings to a sensory device worn on that part of the body.

Google X’s ultimate ambition is to create a wristband that would be able to take nanoparticle readings through light or radio waves at least once a day.

But Dr Conrad stressed that these devices would not be given out or sold on a commercial scale as consumer devices, and Google has no intention of monetising the technology. In fact, apparently the only reason that the project has been made public knowledge now is because the company is looking to establish partnerships. These partners could then take the tech to doctors and patients.

And anyone worried that Google would use the information gathered from the sensors to create a sort of person-based health database can stay rest assured that this is not the intention at all.

“[The devices] are prescriptive medical devices,” Dr Conrad explained, “and you know that doctor-patient relationships are pretty privileged and would not involve Google in any way.”