Mad-Scientist Dad Just Won Father’s Day By Building His Son a Jet-Powered Scooter

Mad-Scientist Dad Just Won Father’s Day By Building His Son a Jet-Powered Scooter

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What was the best thing your parents ever built for you? A treehouse? Maybe a go-kart? I’m afraid their efforts pale in comparison to the jet-powered scooter Colin Furze built for his son who finally has a definite answer to the question, “which parent do you love the most?”

Unlike the jet engines powering commercial airliners whose hot exhaust could easily melt your face, the battery-powered ducted fan strapped to this scooter produces its thrust without scorching the rider’s legs. It’s also controlled remotely, allowing Furze to limit the speed of the scooter. Had my dad handed me a jet-powered scooter as a kid, five minutes later I’d be soaring off ramps and risking life and limb with it.

[YouTube]

Tech

via Gizmodo http://gizmodo.com

June 14, 2018 at 12:09PM

Stanford’s new lab could make particle accelerators 1,000 times smaller

Stanford’s new lab could make particle accelerators 1,000 times smaller

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Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Particle accelerators have proven vital to understanding subatomic physics, but current technology tends to make them… rather large. And Stanford is determined to address that. SLAC has started assembling a new location, FACET-II (Facility for Advanced Accelerator Experimental Tests), that could lead to accelerators 100 to 1,000 times smaller than you see today. The facility will produce ultra-high quality electron beams that should help develop new, more size- and cost-effective plasma acceleration techniques.

One of those techniques is the plasma wakefield acceleration method you see above. The approach shoots super-energized electrons through a plasma to create a “wake” that provides energy to trailing particles. Where existing accelerators may need miles to provide enough acceleration power, this would need only “a few meters.” FACET-II is also flexible enough to offer the possibility of accelerating positrons (antimatter electrons), and could develop new electron sources like extremely bright X-ray lasers.

The facility won’t be ready until the end of 2019, and it won’t be cheap at $26 million. If it does produce smaller accelerators, though, it could dramatically reduce the costs of future locations. It’ll also serve as a hub for other forms of accelerator research, so you may see some additional breakthroughs regardless of how long it takes SLAC to achieve its main objective. Either way, it may be worth the effort if it improves humanity’s understanding of atoms and the universe at large.

Tech

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

June 11, 2018 at 05:12PM

Boeing gave $20,000 to these ten wacky personal flyer designs

Boeing gave $20,000 to these ten wacky personal flyer designs

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GoFly Prize / Texas A&M University

Last year, Boeing announced the GoFly Prize, a new competition that will award one winner $1 million for a successful personal flying device prototype. It has to take off and land vertically, carry a human 20 miles without the need for refueling or recharging and be quiet, safe and compact, but otherwise, the design is completely up to those building it. Phase I of the competition just wrapped up and GoFly has announced the top 10 designs, each of which will be awarded $20,000.

GoFly says over 600 innovators from more than 30 countries submitted designs for Phase I and 97 experts selected the top 10. The winning teams come from Latvia, the US, the UK, the Netherlands and Japan and their submissions include an incredibly wide range of designs. Aeroxo LV from Latvia describes its device as a “tilt rotor aerial vehicle type that combines VTOL capabilities of helicopter with range and speed of fixed-wing aircraft.” Georgia Tech’s HummingBuzz design “utilizes the fully electric, ducted coaxial rotor configuration, with the fuselage on top, in the shape of a motorcycle.” And team Mamba from the US touts its hexcopter’s safety while Tetra from Japan notes its design’s stylishness.

With Phase I completed, Phase II is now underway and anyone, not just the 10 teams selected for Phase I prizes can enter. The registration deadline is December 8th and by February 6th, teams will have to provide a status report about their prototype’s flying capabilities. The top four teams will then receive $50,000 each. In October 2019, GoFly will hold the final fly-off and hand out a number of prizes. The “disruptive advancement” prize comes with $100,000, the smallest and quietest entries will each get $250,000 and the Grand Prize winner will be awarded $1 million.

You can check out all of the top 10 Phase I designs here.

Images: GoFly Prize

Tech

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

June 14, 2018 at 09:00PM

Common drugs have depression as a possible side effect—a third of us take them

Common drugs have depression as a possible side effect—a third of us take them

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More than 200 medications list depression as a potential adverse effect.

More than a third of Americans are estimated to be taking at least one prescription medication that carries the risk of depression, including suicidal symptoms, as a possible adverse effect—and they may have no idea—according to a study published this week in JAMA.

The study is an observational one, meaning it can only identify associations and not whether common drugs are causing depression or suicide in people. Still, the researchers found some worrying links between the use of common medications and the potential for depression. Most notably, the researchers found that those taking three or more medications with depression risks had a greater chance of self-reporting depressive symptoms on a nine-question survey. Their rate of self-reported depressive symptoms was 15.3 percent, about double the rate reported by those taking just one drug with a risk of depression and about triple the rate of those taking no medications with risk of depression.

This is particularly concerning, the researchers suggest, because patients may not make a connection between their depressive symptoms and the drugs they’re taking. Drugs with risks of depression are very common, they may not have clear warning labels, and some can even be purchased as over-the-counter medications. The most common of them are drugs such as hormonal birth control, beta-blockers (used for conditions such as high blood pressure, heart attacks, and migraines), and proton-pump inhibitors (used for acid reflux).

In all, there are more than 200 medications in use in the US that list depression or suicidal symptoms as possible adverse effects. The only class of drugs with a “black-box warning”—the Food and Drug Administration’s clearest and gravest warning label—for suicidal risks are antidepressants.

While the study is just a starting point for probing the potential role of prescription drugs in depression and suicide, the authors argue that now is the time for that start. The study comes as public health researchers report high rates of depression and suicide in the country. Between 2013 and 2016, 8.1 percent of American adults had depression in a given two-week period. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released nationwide figures showing that suicide rates had increased nearly 30 percent overall between 1999 and 2016, with nearly every state seeing increases. Of those who committed suicide, 54 percent were not known to have a mental health condition such as depression.

Dreary data

The authors of the JAMA study—led by Dima Mazen Qato, a pharmacist and health policy expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago—say that more research into the links between drugs and depressive symptoms are needed. In the meantime, they suggest that doctors should better communicate risks to patients who are taking medications with potential side effects of depression and suicide.

Their conclusions are based on data from a nationally representative observational survey that collected information between 2005 and 2014 on 26,192 participants aged 18 or over. Overall, 37.2 percent of participants reported taking at least one medication that listed depression as a potential adverse effect, with 7.5 percent of those taking three or more.

The prevalence of self-reported depressive symptoms rose from 6.9 percent in the participants taking just one risky drug to 9.5 percent in those taking two, and to 15.3 percent in those taking three or more. Those taking no drugs with a risk of depression had a rate of self-reported depressive symptoms of 4.7 percent. Thus, the more drugs with a risk of depression, the greater the likelihood of depressive symptoms, the researchers found.

This held up when the researchers excluded data on patients who were taking psychotropic drugs—ones that intended to alter a mental state. It also held when researchers compared rates of depressive symptoms just in patients with high blood pressure, comparing those that took three or more drugs with a depression risk and those who took drugs with no such risk.

The researchers also noted that the situation may be getting worse over time. Breaking the data out across the survey period, they found that use of drugs with a risk of depression increased from 35 percent in 2005-2006 data to 38.4 percent in the 2013-2014 data. Between those time frames, use of three or more risky drugs increased from 6.9 percent to 9.5 percent.

The study had plenty of limitations in addition to being an observational study. For one thing, the survey data didn’t include information on mental health history. So, it’s not possible to sort out the patients who had preexisting or independent cases of depression. Also, the self-reported survey on depressive symptoms is a screening tool, not a diagnostic. And self-reported data can yield skewed or incomplete pictures of mental health.

Still, the authors conclude that “polypharmacy” (taking more than one drug at the same time) is a concern for medications with risk of depression—and one that requires more research.

JAMA, 2018. DOI: 10.1001/jama.2018.6741  (About DOIs).

Tech

via Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com

June 15, 2018 at 01:12PM