All we ever see an earthworm. These beings are dragged along the ground alternately compressing and relaxing the muscles that have over their bodies, moving slowly with each wave of contractions. Well, this strange but efficient propulsion system has been imitated by a team of researchers from MIT, Harvard University and Seoul National University, who have built a robot called Meshworm that not only moves like a worm, but is able to "survive" with a hammer or footprints. Part of the project funding comes from the ubiquitous agency DARPA.
The researchers in robotics often tend to "brainstorm" in (or blatantly copied) nature. We've seen robots with legs fast as a cheetah, flying and even some can swim like a fish. However, there is still room for surprise. In the last hours, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT for its acronym in English) has issued a press release in which you can see a job that its engineers have made together scientists from Harvard University and the University Seoul National. This is the robot called Meshworm whose main feature is to mimic the way it moves and shifts an earthworm.
Earthworms crawl along the ground through a mechanism that basically boils down to alternately compress and stretch muscles that have over their bodies, moving slowly with each sequence of contractions. The snails and sea cucumbers also used to move a similar mechanism, called peristalsis, and the food moves through the inside of our body like ripples through our gastrointestinal tract. The robot Meshworm, composed almost entirely of soft materials, it is also very strong. As you can see in the video, is capable of withstanding a person will pass over or blows with a hammer.
Sangbae Kim, Esther and Harold E. Edgerton, project managers, say a robot "soft and flexible as it can be useful for traversing rough terrain or made by small cracks." The "muscles" of the robot is constructed with a wire of an alloy of nickel and titanium that has a certain shape memory, able to expand or contract when their temperature varies. Winding a wire around a tube these plain, form "muscle rings" like those with live worms because when they get a small stream segments wire mesh tube pressure, they deform and drive robot forward. The results of this work were presented at society through an article published in the journal IEEE / ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, explaining that it could be the first of a new generation of robots, soft and lightweight, ideal for exploring hard to reach spaces.
Kim explains that earthworms possess two main muscle groups: circular muscle fibers surrounding the tube-shaped body of the worm, and other longitudinal muscle fibers that run along it. The two groups of muscles work together so that the worm can move slowly. The research team set out to design a similar system, using "body" built a long tube with a heat seal polymer mesh. It is placed on the "muscles" nickel-titanium, thanks to the current provided by a computerized system, were able to move the robot. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the Pentagon agency that is always behind any project that could have a military application, provided some of the funds used to create the Meshworm.
Some suppliers around the globe apply "throttling" of BitTorrent transfers to "manage" their infrastructure and avoid falling into a saturation point. Nobody wants a slower connection when using a file sharing protocol, therefore, have an idea of what the providers more aggressive about using "throttling" BitTorrent traffic can help users to take action, including completely change supplier. The people of the Measurement Lab has updated the numbers on the application detector Glasnost the first quarter of 2012, and in some cases, the results are very striking.
Personally I must say that my internet connection does not have any kind of throttling BitTorrent traffic. The speeds at which I access my torrent box serve as confirmation, but I've also seen cases where a BitTorrent transfer falls apart, even with the client and ports configured correctly. If you think you've done everything right, and the amount of seeds is more than enough, but downloading never gets off completely, you may need to monitor more closely to your supplier. While I can understand that the provider seek to prevent your network is congested, I also understand that "not giving" the connection, and one would expect of the profits are invested with the aim of improving its infrastructure. The demand for greater speed increases every year, and although exchange protocols are key players are not the only ones with influence.
The people of Measurement Lab, supported by some high-profile names like Google, Amazon, Skype and BitTorrent itself, gives users free of charge different tools to measure and evaluate the Internet connection. One of the most important is Glasnost, which helps determine if a provider is applying throttling on a specific form of traffic. BitTorrent is one of the options, but also can study the Flash-based video (YouTube if you think too slow, you may be under throttling as well). Your data providers related to most of the globe have been recently updated. Some of the examples we found that despite popular belief, the throttling of BitTorrent in the United States is below five percent by providers like Verizon and AT & T. Even Comcast, remembered for blocking BitTorrent few years ago, has the level of throttling at three percent.
Things get more complicated in places like Canada and the United Kingdom, since the percentage of throttling BitTorrent traffic reaches 80 percent (Rogers Canada) and 65 percent (British Telecom). Looking at other countries of Europe, we find that the German provider Kabel Deutschland is the head of throttling in the country, with 37 percent. However, in the case of Spain virtually no throttling is recorded through the most important suppliers (Telefónica is an indicator of 4 percent, but may be within the margin of error). To name two Latin American countries as an example, Argentina and Mexico are throttling free, except for two suppliers: Telecentre in Argentina (64 percent), and Megacable in Mexico (47 percent). The numbers correspond to the first quarter of 2012, but by studying the numbers from previous years you reach a good idea of the "behavior" of your provider against BitTorrent traffic. Also to be considered that Glasnost has an error close to 10 percent in both directions. In any case, the best you can do is to perform a Glasnost directly on your connection. Each diagnosis takes about eight minutes, and you need to have Java installed.
These days, changing a keyboard is a matter of few notes. Low cost materials and manufacturing capacity monstrous Eastern countries have enabled keyboards can be easily replaced if a fault. But there is a special kind of keyboards, real tanks that have defied time and the requirement of users, with its characteristic sound flooding thousands of homes and offices around the globe. These mechanical keyboards, and although the most sought copies remain those of yesteryear, you can also find modern models based on similar designs.
I should mention that I have access to a good deal of keyboards. Usually I look for models from computer "brand", and the older the better. Still, my keyboard is an old art BTC-5100c 80 key, set to "United States-International" to easily invoke "N / N" and the euro symbol "€". Why use the keyboard? Because besides being very compact, has a sound more or less similar to the old mechanical keyboards. Of course, the sound of mechanical keyboards is impossible to confuse. When someone works on one of them, the rest of the room knows it immediately. There are some differences between the manufacturing mechanical keyboards, but that certainly is seen as the "representative" of them all, is the IBM Model "M", also known as "clicky".
The M model was launched by IBM in 1985 with the aim of replacing the previous model F and reduce costs. The term "Clicky" is due to the contact system by bending spring (Buckling Spring) they used. When you press a key, a spring inside bends to one side, a kind of hammer moving based on a membrane to generate the actual contact (in the case of model F, the contact was capacitive, and by extension, more expensive to manufacture). For some users, the noise of mechanical keyboards, especially the M model, was too high, and that's how some tricks to dampen it appeared, such as adding floss to the mechanism in each key. IBM released a lot of keyboards on the model M, with different characteristics. Some of them were designed for terminals (ie, incompatible with a conventional computer), while others had a cable that could be switched at will, for a simple replacement (which, indeed, did not happen very often because the resistance of these keyboards).
The market may be dominated by low-cost keyboards based on rubber domes, but who want a mechanical keyboard, you're in luck. You can still find old models M in online auction sites, but due to the "collector value" possessed, prices can be very high. Unicomp is a U.S. company that owns the rights to the old IBM model M, not only manufactures products and custom models, but also offers repair services for old keyboards. The site also reveals patterns like the Cooler Master Storm Quickfire, the Vortex KBT Pure and Happy Hacking Keyboard series, known for its minimalist design, manufacture Japanese and unfortunately, their high cost. If you plan to buy one of these keyboards, remember that the investment is much higher than in the case of a conventional keyboard, somewhat offset by its impressive durability. And if you can pose your claws on a model M, well ... I personally think you should restore it and use it.
