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The flying fungus: NASA's biodegradable drone that flies and dies

A bio-drone that dissolves after use leaving no trace it ever existed may sound like the stuff of a James Bond film, but NASA and a team of researchers are actually building one.
Made from a substance that combines mushroom fibers and cloned paper wasp spit, the drone might resemble a propeller-powered egg carton, but its designers say it has the ability to fly into environmentally sensitive areas and leave almost no trace.
Lynn Rothschild, the NASA developer guiding students from Stanford-Brown-Spelman working on the project, says the drone could be made to disappear simply by ditching it into a stream or puddle.
She said her interest in unmanned aerial vehicles was sparked by work on environmentally sensitive areas in her Earth Science group at NASA.
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"Periodically, UAVs get lost -- for example on coral reefs or in other sensitive habitats," she said in an interview with the project team.
"As I started to hear about this, I thought, 'Well, wouldn't it be useful if the UAV was biodegradable, so if it crashed somewhere that was sensitive, it wouldn't matter if it dissolved."
The mushroom-like substance known as mycelium, which makes up the chassis of the drone, is being hailed as the new plastic -- a plastic that has the advantage of degrading quickly.
The team grew cellulose "leather" to coat the fungal body of the flying craft and then covered the sheets with proteins sourced from the saliva of paper wasps -- a water resistant material that the insects use to cover their nests.
The circuits are printed from silver nanoparticle ink in an effort to make the machine as biodegradable as possible.
Despite a heavy preponderance of biological parts, the team said the project had its limits.
"There are definitely parts that can't be replaced by biology, " said Stanford University's Raman Nelakanti.
At its first short flight at the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition in Boston, the team used a standard battery, motor and propellers to fly the drone.
Nevertheless, the team is working on making other parts biodegradable and is studying how to build its sensors from modified E. coli bacteria, the bacteria most commonly found in the intestines of humans and animals.
There are definitely parts that can't be replaced by biology
Raman Nelakant, Stanford Universit.
The team said that ultimately the drone could be sent into areas where it might not be expected to return such as wildfires or nuclear accidents, sending data and never coming back.
While the parts degrade naturally, the team also experimented with enzymes that would help the drone self-destruct, breaking it down further on impact.
Creating a drone that does not infect the environment has been another challenge for the team.
"If you have living organisms acting as biosensors and the plane crashes, there certainly could be problems as the plane interacts with the environment," Rothschild said.
"Hopefully people could think of this in advance, and design such that this never becomes a problem.
"For example, on crashing, the cells might die. Or the cells could be attenuated. There are all sorts of other processes to keep them from contaminating the environment. But that, to me, is the largest concern with a biological UAV - having living things on the UAV."
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Trash talk: 269,000 tons of plastic litter choke world's oceans

There are plastic shopping bags, bottles, toys, action figures, bottle caps, pacifiers, tooth brushes, boots, buckets, deodorant roller balls, umbrella handles, fishing gear, toilet seats and so much more. Plastic pollution is pervasive in Earth's oceans.

Researchers unveiled on Wednesday what they called the most scientifically rigorous estimate to date of the amount of plastic litter in the oceans - about 269,000 tons - based on data from 24 ship expeditions around the globe over six years.

"There's much more plastic pollution out there than recent estimates suggest," said Marcus Eriksen, research director for the Los Angeles-based 5 Gyres Institute, which studies this kind of pollution.


"It's everything you can imagine made of plastic," added Eriksen, who led the study published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE. "It's like Walmart or Target set afloat."

Ninety-two percent of the plastic comes in the form of "microplastic" - particles from larger items made brittle by sunlight and pounded to pieces by waves, bitten by sharks and other fish or otherwise torn apart, Eriksen said.

Experts have sounded the alarm in recent years over how plastic pollution is killing huge numbers of seabirds, marine mammals and other creatures while sullying ocean ecosystems.

Some plastic objects like discarded fishing nets kill by entangling dolphins, sea turtles and other animals. Plastic fragments also lodge in the throats and digestive tracts of marine animals.

The researchers said plastic litter enters the oceans from rivers and heavily populated coastal regions as well as from vessels navigating shipping lanes.

Larger plastic objects, abundant near coastlines, often float into the world's five subtropical gyres - big regions of spinning currents in the North and South Pacific, North and South Atlantic and Indian Ocean.

In the middle of these gyres, plastic trash has accumulated into huge "garbage patches" that act as "giant blenders - shredders that eviscerate plastic from large pieces to microplastics," Eriksen said.

The study, based on data from expeditions to all five subtropical gyres, coastal Australia, the Bay of Bengal and the Mediterranean Sea, estimated that there are 5.25 trillion particles of plastic litter. Tiny plastic particles, down to the size of a sand grain, have fanned out through the oceans and reach even remote polar regions.

The researchers said the particles readily absorb chemical pollutants like PCBs, DDT and others, and these toxins enter marine food webs when ingested by fish and other sea creatures.

Tech companies help the homeless

American cities are no stranger to wealth inequality - but in San Francisco it is rising faster than any other.
Seduced by record levels of employment and investment, tech companies and workers have been flooding to the area.
But as its complexion has changed, long-time residents bemoan what they see as the gentrification of the city - with accusations the new arrivals are not doing enough to support the city they now dominate.
The BBC's North America technology correspondent Richard Taylor has been on the road to witness how it has been playing out.

Uber taxi app suspended in Spain

A judge has ordered taxi booking service Uber to stop operating in Spain, after a series of protests by taxi associations.

In his ruling on the temporary ban, the judge said Uber drivers didn't have official authorisation and accused the service of "unfair competition".

The move follows a complaint by the Madrid Taxi Association.

An Uber spokesman said the company was "still operating" in Spain.

The Madrid taxi association has to raise a €10,000 down-payment before the ruling can come into effect.

The BBC understands that Uber first heard of the hearing through media reports.

The technology firm described the Spanish ruling - which could suspend the UberPop ride-sharing service across the country - as "highly unusual".

"UberPop is our ride-sharing solution and is about sharing the costs of vehicle ownership and helping people give up their cars," an Uber spokesman said, "and we will continue to run the service".

"This ruling is inconsistent with broad political acknowledgement in Spain and across the European Union on the benefits of sharing economy services.

"Uber will continue to comply with Spanish law and is currently assessing its legal options under this sudden and unusual proceeding," the spokesman added.

Global restraints
The Spanish order comes just a day after Uber was blacklisted in the Indian capital Delhi.

Drivers "lack the administrative authorisation to carry out the job, and the activity they carry out constitutes unfair competition," the Spanish court services said in a statement after the ruling.

The company does not own cars or employ drivers, but connects customers and vehicles through its app, bringing what it says is much needed competition to the taxi industry.

It is the latest blow for the San-Francisco based firm, which has faced strong opposition globally from some governments and established taxi firms, including London's "black cab" drivers.

On Monday, Uber was banned by officials in Delhi after a driver allegedly raped a female passenger.

On the same day, judges in The Netherlands banned its UberPop ride-sharing service, which was launched as a pilot project in Amsterdam between July and September and subsequently extended to The Hague and Rotterdam.

"Drivers who transport people for payment without a licence are breaking the law," said the decision from the Hague-based Trade and Industry Appeals Tribunal.

In a statement on Monday, Uber said it would "continue to offer UberPop", despite the threat of a fine of up to €100,000 for itself, and one of up to €40,000 for drivers.

Uber has expanded rapidly since its 2009 launch and now operates in more than 250 cities across 50 countries.

Earlier this month Uber was valued at $40bn (£25.5bn), following its latest round of fund raising.

Man charged with trying to take U.S. military documents to China

A former Connecticut resident and Chinese citizen who allegedly worked on the F135 engine was charged with trying to take sensitive documents about military technology to China, according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Tuesday.

Yu Long was en route to China in November via Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey where customs officers found proprietary documents in his luggage that included equations and test results used to develop titanium for U.S. military aircraft, prosecutors said.

Yu Long was arrested two days later in Ithaca, New York.

U.S. defense officials have sounded the alarm in recent years about increased efforts by China, Russia and other countries to gain access to U.S. military technologies.

Between 2008 and earlier this year, Yu Long worked as a senior engineer for a Connecticut defense contractor. He had said he worked on the F119 and F135 engines, which are used in U.S. fighter aircraft and manufactured by United Technologies Corp.

Yu Long worked for the United Technologies Research Center, which does research for the conglomerate, a source familiar with the case said. He was let go in May when the probe began, said the source, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

The company said in a statement it was cooperating with authorities, but had no further comment since the investigation was ongoing. A lawyer for Yu Long did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Prosecutors said Yu Long was also stopped at John F. Kennedy International Airport in August and found to have $10,000 in undeclared cash, registration documents for a new Chinese corporation and an application to work for a state-controlled aviation research center in China that highlighted Yu Long's work experience on the engines.

The United States has long prohibited the export of U.S. defense technology and information to China.

NASCAR, NHRA drivers come to life with McFarlane's hyper-detailed action figures

McFarlane Toys' line of racing heroes makes for great gifts 10 years after release

Besides creating tremendously detailed tributes to NBA, MLB, NFL and NHL players, famed figure-maker McFarlane Toys also started producing action figures of auto-racing personalities with the launch of the NASCAR and NHRA lines in 2003. The Series I wave of figures featured NASCAR drivers like Rusty Wallace, Ryan Newman, Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Dale Earnhardt Sr. and Dale Earnhardt Jr. on store shelves.

McFarlane Toys made a name for itself with its award-winning line of action figures for the "Spawn" comic book franchise in the early 1990s, and in the early 2000s they expanded their offerings to action figures of movie characters and professional athletes. The company's figures quickly earned praise for their hyperrealistic sculpts, poseability, extensive accessories and innovative packaging, and they continue to surprise with recent lines from TV series "The Walking Dead." Virtually all of McFarlane Toys' products were ahead of their time, and their expansion into the sports genre was welcomed by sports fans and action-figure collectors alike.

What was different about McFarlane's take on sports personalities were the designs of the figures and their obsessive attention to detail, even when it came to the smallest items on the figures and their accessories. So even tiny details like the decals on the racing helmets and the interior lining of the helmets are just right -- no corners were cut.

Just like the company's other lines, the figures featured very lifelike reproductions of the racers' faces, in addition to great action poses. About the only things that were lacking were the actual cars to put them in. McFarlane did a number of versions of each racer in different racing suits, and in 2004 Bobby Labonte, Richard Petty and Jimmie Johnson were added to the mix.

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