A solar-powered airplane finished crossing the United States on Saturday, landing in New York City after flying over the Statue of Liberty during its historic bid to circle the globe, the project team said. The spindly, single-seat experimental aircraft, dubbed Solar Impulse 2, arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport at about 4 a.m. local time after it took off about five hours beforehand at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania, the team reported on the airplane's website. Such a pleasure to land in New York! For the 14th time we celebrate sustainability," said the project's co-founder Andre Borschberg on Twitter after flying over the city and the Statue of Liberty during the 14th leg of the trip around the globe. The Swiss team flying the aircraft in a campaign to build support for clean energy technologies hopes eventually to complete its circumnavigation in Abu Dhabi, where the journey began in March 2015. The solar cr...
Monarchs are the only insects to migrate such a vast distance. So, by teaming up with biologists, mathematicians set out to recreate the internal compass they use to navigate on that journey. The findings are published in the journal Cell Reports. Lead researcher Prof Eli Shlizerman, from the University of Washington, explained that, as a mathematician, he wants to know how neurobiological systems are wired and what rules we can learn from them. "Monarch butterflies [complete their journey] in such an optimal, predetermined way," he told. "They end up in a particular location in Central Mexico after two months of flight, saving energy and only using a few cues."
Prof Shlizerman worked with biologist colleagues, including Steven Reppert at the University of Massachusetts, to record directly from neurons in the butterflies' antennae and eyes. "We identified that the input cues depend entirely on the Sun," explained Prof Shlizerman. "One is the horizontal position of the Sun and the other is keeping the time of day.
Having worked out the inputs for this internal compass, Prof Shlizerman then created a model system to simulate it. This consisted of two control mechanisms - one based on the timekeeping "clock" neurons in the butterflies' antennae and the other from what are called azimuth neurons in their eyes. These monitor the position of the Sun.
"The circuit gets those two signals then matches them, according to how it's wired, to control signals that tell the system if a correction is needed to stay on the correct course," explained Prof Shlizerman. "For me this is very exciting - it shows how a behaviour is produced by the integration of signals," he added. "We can take these concepts to produce robotic versions of these systems - something [that is] powered by and that navigates by the Sun." Prof Shlizerman said that one of his team's goals was to build a robotic monarch butterfly that could follow the insects and track their entire migration.
"It's a very interesting application that could follow the butterflies and even help maintain them. Their numbers are decreasing, so we want to keep this insect - the only one that migrates these huge distances - with us for many years."Our current robots are far cruder than even the simplest nervous system," he added.
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