Credits: xxxx Credits: xxxx

A delivery drone flies near Australia’s Sydney Harbor Bridge on its way to make a delivery.

DeliveryDrone!

Is It a Plane?

No, It’s a

© Learning A–Z All rights reserved. www.sciencea-z.com

March 2014

Science Newsinthe

By Jane King, PhD

What’s Inside:

Bacteria Candy Help Teeth

Bad Breath Scares Spiders

Spacewalkers Repair Space Station

P o w e r e d b y , a d i v i s i o n o f L e a r n i n g A - Z

Credits: Font cover: courtesy of Zookal.com; page 2 (top): © Friso Gentsch/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images; page 2 (center): © REUTERS/Beawiharta; page 2 (bottom): courtesy of the Dairy Science Group and the Australian Centre for Field Robotics

© Learning A–Z All rights reserved. www.sciencea-z.com2

Robots are not just the stuff of science fiction movies. From making cars in

factories to vacuuming floors in homes, robots are making life easier for people. New kinds of robots are changing the way we think about and use this technology. People are inventing new uses for robots and their flying cousins, drones.

On the FarmEngineers at the University of Sydney in Australia designed a robot called the Shrimp. Its job? To herd dairy cows from a grassy field into a barn. In the barn, other robots collect the cows’ milk. Compared to other ways of herding, the Shrimp moves slowly and steadily, allowing the cows to walk at their own speed. This reduces injury and keeps the cows calm.

In the AirDrones are robots that fly. People can send a drone to a specific place using a remote control. Some drones have a Global Positioning System (GPS) onboard to tell them where they are and where to go. One new way people are using drones is to deliver small items, such as books and pizzas. Because these robots fly, traffic is never a problem. Deliveries are fast. Amazon.com is planning to use its Prime Air drones to deliver packages. Domino’s Pizza is testing its DomiCopter in England. The drone would deliver hot pizzas faster than people in cars can. In Australia, a company called Zookal wants to use drones to deliver textbooks to students (see cover).

LifesaversBeyond delivering pizzas and books, some robots may help save lives! The Defikopter is a drone that delivers a defibrillator—a machine that helps restart a person’s heart after a heart attack. The Defikopter can land on the side of a steep mountain or in the middle of a traffic jam. Scientists are even sending drones with sensors to the tops of erupting volcanoes. The drones collect information about a volcano and whether it may erupt. Scientists can then send out warnings.

Robots may soon be part of your everyday life. Maybe they already are. But sorry, they still won’t do your homework for you! v

March 2014

New Uses for

RobotsD r onesand

In this demonstration, the Defikopter drone delivers a lifesaving defibrillator.

The Shrimp gently guides a herd of cows to the barn.

A scientist sends a drone to collect data from a volcano in Indonesia.

SCIENCE in the NEWS

Technology

Which new use of robots will be the most important in the future? Why?

Credits: top: © Eye of Science/Science Source; bottom main: courtesy of Pavan Kumar, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany; bottom inset: © Nature’s Images, Inc./Science Source

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You may not know it, but a battle is taking place in your mouth. Different

kinds of bacteria are at work. Some are protecting your teeth, while others are damaging them. When you eat, sugars in your food feed the “bad” (harmful) bacteria. As these bad bacteria grow, they can cause cavities in your teeth. But other, “good” bacteria can grab onto the bad bacteria and stop them before they do damage.

Scientists invented a sugar-free candy made of the good bacteria. They wanted to know if eating this candy could reduce bad bacteria in the mouth. When people ate the candy after a meal, the amount of bad bacteria in their mouth went down! The next step is to find out whether eating this bacteria candy can help prevent cavities. v

The tobacco hornworm

caterpillar has bad breath. Bad enough to scare away even the hungriest of predators! As their name suggests, tobacco hornworms eat tobacco plants. As they eat, a chemical from the plants called nicotine builds up in their bodies. When the caterpillars exhale, some of the nicotine gets released in stinky puffs.

Wolf spiders are one of the caterpillars’ predators. Biologists studying these animals found that wolf spiders ran away from the caterpillars that smelled the most like nicotine. The spiders happily ate the less smelly ones. For hornworm caterpillars, bad breath may be a lifesaver! v

March 2014

B a c t e r i a C a n d y H e l p s T e e t h

A wolf spider eating a tobacco hornworm

A tobacco hornworm eating a tobacco plant

A microscopic image of bad bacteria (Streptococcus mutans), which cause cavities

B a d B r e a t hScares Spiders

SCIENCE in the NEWS

Life Science

Life Science

Credits: both: courtesy of NASA

Writ

ing

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If something goes wrong on the outside

of your home, you can just walk outside and get to work. But what if your home is the International Space Station (ISS)?

Recently, an important cooling system failed on the ISS. Two astronauts went outside the ISS to remove and replace the broken machine. But spacewalks like this one are no walk in the park. Outside the space station, there is no air to breathe, and it is very cold. Less gravity means that things, including people, can just float away. The astronauts wore spacesuits for protection. The suits provided air, stabilized the pressure, and kept them warm. The suits were tied, or tethered, to the space station at all times so the astronauts would stay put.

Even under the harsh conditions of outer space, the two astronauts successfully replaced the broken part during their two-day mission. v

Spacewalkers Repair Space

Station

How could a drone help people whose house gets surrounded by water in a flood? Write your response in the space provided.

Useful Drones

March 2014

John in Arizona wrote, “I like to experiment with the gears on my bike to try and go faster up hills.”

In the February issue of Science in the News, we asked: “Where can you find gears in

your classroom or home?”

Gear Survey

The top five responses were: clock, bicycle, pencil sharpener,

car engine, and can opener.

eSurvey

NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins works to replace a broken part on the outside of the ISS.

The International Space Station requires regular repairs to keep it running and safe for the astronauts onboard.

SCIENCE in the NEWS

Space Science