Ants found on the inside of a car, hitching a ride to find a new home. Credit: Scotty Yang for Virginia Tech
Insects are masters of transportation and get around by flying, crawling, swimming, burrowing, and even gliding. Now, ants have been observed using a new method of getting around: hitchhiking. These social insects pack up the whole family, including their queen, and hop in the car for an opportunistic ride to a new area where they can set up a home.
Scotty Yang, assistant professor in the Virginia Tech Department of Entomology within the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, recently published a paper in Ecological Entomology describing this automotive phenomenon.
His observations of this ant behavior spanned 2017–2023, when he observed nine species of ants hitchhiking on personal vehicles. Of these nine species, seven were considered invasive to the places they were found.
It has been well documented that insects can hitch a ride on vehicles, but typically the research focuses on agricultural machinery or the trucking industry. Yang’s work is the first to look at ants hitching on everyday vehicles.
Yang’s study was a citizen science effort that incorporated social media reports from people throughout Taiwan. The work primarily studied ant populations and their hitchhiking on the island, and it included examples of species such as the ghost ant and the black cocoa ant. In the study, factors such as the time of year, weather, type of car, location, duration of stay, and number of ants were examined to better understand the patterns which gave rise to a successful hitchhiker colony.
“We saw social media posts where people were devastated about finding their cars covered in ants,” Yang said. “Although we felt sorry for them, we wanted to examine whether these events had anything in common.”
Based on the data collected, Yang learned that hitchhiking ants need three main things to succeed: The ants must be able to climb the surface of the vehicle, the ants must be exhibiting foraging/colonizing behaviors, and the ants must be able to withstand the temperature of the part of the vehicle they settle in.
Tracking invasive insects and how they spread is an important subject for entomologists because these creatures can represent threats to native species of plants and animals. The spread of invasive ants was previously thought to occur primarily through the transport of agricultural, arboreal, and horticultural materials such as logs, plants, and dirt. The impact of noncommercial transport of ants was poorly understood.
Most personal vehicles offer no real food or shelter, but when ants live in overcrowded colonies, they look to leave and find a new, bigger home. Native species of ants tend to face these pressures less frequently, meaning invasive species are more likely to hitchhike, further dispersing these insects into new areas.
As an entomologist based at Virginia Tech, Yang explained how this study could have broad impact in Virginia and the Eastern United States. Of the 100 worst invasive species in the world, five are species of ants and two of these are already established in Virginia: the red imported fire ant and the Argentine ant. These ants have been found in increasingly northern territories, potentially drawn to rising seasonal temperatures over the past decade.
Yang suggests that hitchhiking events will provide more chances for these ants to arrive in new locations, speeding the ants’ spread. He hopes to implement a similar citizen science program in Virginia to the one he conducted in Taiwan, with the goal of tracking the spread of invasive ants and their connection to personal vehicles.
More information:
Feng‐Chuan Hsu et al, Free ride without raising a thumb: A citizen science project reveals the pattern of active ant hitchhiking on vehicles and its ecological implications, Ecological Entomology (2024). DOI: 10.1111/een.13336
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Invasive ants spread by hitchhiking on everyday vehicles (2024, June 27)
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Boeing 737 MAX aircraft are seen in various states of assembly at the company factory in Renton, Washington.
At its plane factory near Seattle, Boeing has increased employee training, appointed mentors for new recruits, brought back retirees as coaches and stepped up tracking of performance metrics.
It’s all part of an effort to strengthen quality control on the 737 MAX, a bestselling airliner that has suffered some high-profile problems.
Boeing this week led a tour for reporters at its manufacturing facility in Renton, Washington to see what the company is doing to rebuild confidence and hear from employees on the front line.
“I am extremely confident that every plane leaving this plant is safe,” said Elizabeth Lund, a senior vice president for quality at Boeing.
The manufacturer has been under a microscope by regulators at the Federal Aviation Administration following a near-disastrous Alaska Airlines flight in January when a 737 MAX had to make an emergency landing after a fuselage panel blew out mid-flight.
An FAA audit following the incident pointed to compliance problems in Boeing’s processes control, parts handling and storage, one factor in the FAA order limiting MAX output.
The agency plans to closely monitor Boeing’s implementation of a safety “roadmap” required by the FAA after the Alaska flight.
Elizabeth Lund, Boeing’s senior vice president of quality, says she is ‘extremely confident’ the planes leaving the company’s assembly factory in Renton, Washington, are safe.
Lund described four categories of actions Boeing is taking to address systemic issues: investing in workforce training; simplifying plans and processes; eliminating defects; and elevating safety and quality culture.
“We are getting stronger,” she said, adding that fully upgrading the operation will take a few years.
Boeing deployed Bill Riley, a 16-year quality inspector, to Spirit AeroSystems’ factory in Kansas where fuselages are built for the 737.
“I went to Spirit to teach them what I know here, and learn from them there,” Riley said. “And you do see changes on the fuselages we receive here.”
Such “face-to-face” meetings lead to a more seamless operation, he said.
Post-pandemic training blitz
Since January, some 150 Boeing employees have been assigned to Spirit’s Wichita operation, a major increase from before, said Katie Ringgold, vice president and general manager for the 737 program.
Instructor Andy Tran (R) works with Dmitriy Rudenko on a 90-degree motor at the Boeing Foundational Training Center in Renton, Washington.
The result has been a “significant reduction in the defects on fuselages in just three months,” said Ringgold.
The shift has also improved efficiency, resulting in more than a 50 percent drop in late tasks.
These improvements will help Boeing as the company implements improvements throughout its three assembly lines, which are split into 10 stations.
In one change currently underway, workers must check at each station whether the operation has met key criteria before it can pass to the next station.
At first glance, the Renton factory operation seems chaotic, with a succession of planes at various stages of assembly.
But staff scrutinize the details—reporting if a piece is wrongly detached, or defective in some way. Since the January incident, barcode tracking has been introduced in some cases, overseen by a steward.
Around 300 to 500 people work on each assembly line against a steady industrial buzz.
A Boeing 737 MAX aircraft — a jet series facing intense scrutiny after two fatal crashes and a series of dangerous incidents — is under assembly at the company’s factory in Renton, Washington.
Nearby sits a training center where new recruits learn the ropes as mechanics and quality inspectors.
The company has added more than 300 hours of supplementary training since the pandemic, which saw a turnover of tens of thousands of workers replaced by newcomers.
New recruits need about four months before they can work on the assembly plant’s shop floor.
Boeing engineers also have undertaken training even if it isn’t always required, said Mani Tiggs, vice president for manufacturing and safety at Boeing’s commercial plane business.
In all, about 600 people frequent the training center each day.
The idea behind the training is to simulate actual factory operations as closely as possible, said Tiggs, adding that the operation has about 160 workplace coaches who guide staff.
A 737 MAX is composed of more than two million components, including around 40,000 rivets that are installed one by one, a process that can sometimes involve more than one person. The MAX also includes some 36 miles (58 kilometers) of cable.
And if one piece “falls on the floor, we don’t use it anymore,” said one instructor. “It goes in the FOD box,” which stands for foreign object debris.
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Boeing aims to lift MAX quality control at Renton factory (2024, June 27)
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Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai speaks about Google DeepMind at a Google I/O event in Mountain View, Calif., Wednesday, May 10, 2023. Google on Thursday, Feb. 7, 2024, introduced a free artificial intelligence app that will implant the technology on smartphones to enable people to quickly connect to a digital brain that can write for them, interpret what they’re reading and seeing in addition to helping manage their lives. Credit: AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File
Google on Thursday introduced a free artificial intelligence app that will enable people to rely on technology instead of their own brains to write, interpret what they’re reading and deal with a variety of other task in their lives.
With the advent of the Gemini app, named after an AI project unveiled late last year, Google will cast aside the Bard chatbot that it introduced a year ago in an effort to catch up with ChatGPT, the chatbot unleashed by the Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI in late 2022. Google is immediately releasing a standalone Gemini app for smartphones running on its Android software.
In a few weeks, Google will put Gemini’s features into its existing search app for iPhones, where Apple would prefer people rely on its Siri voice assistant for handling various tasks.
Although the Google voice assistant that has been available for years will stick around, company executives say they expect Gemini to become the main way users apply the technology to help them think, plan and create. It marks Google’s next foray down a new and potentially perilous avenue while remaining focused on its founding goal “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
“We think this is one of the most profound ways we are going to advance our mission,” Sissie Hsiao, a Google general manager overseeing Gemini, told reporters ahead of Thursday’s announcement.
The Gemini app initially will be released in the U.S. in English before expanding to the Asia-Pacific region next week, with versions in Japanese and Korean.
Besides the free version of Gemini, Google will be selling an advanced service accessible through the new app for $20 a month. The Mountain View, California, company says it is such a sophisticated form of AI that will it be able to tutor students, provide computer programming tips to engineers, dream up ideas for projects, and then create the content for the suggestions a user likes best.
The Gemini Advanced option, which will be powered by an AI technology dubbed “Ultra 1.0,” will seek to build upon the nearly 100 million worldwide subscribers that Google says it has attracted so far—most of whom pay $2 to $10 per month for additional storage to back up photos, documents and other digital material. The Gemini Advanced subscription will include 2 terabytes of storage that Google currently sells for $10 per month, meaning the company believes the AI technology is worth an additional $10 per month.
Google is offering a free two-month trial of Gemini Advanced to encourage people to try it out.
The rollout of the Gemini apps underscores the building moment to bring more AI to smartphones—devices that accompany people everywhere—as part of a trend Google began last fall when it released its latest Pixel smartphones and Samsung embraced last month with its latest Galaxy smartphones.
It also is likely to escalate the high-stakes AI showdown pitting Google against Microsoft, two of the world’s most powerful companies jockeying to get the upper hand with a technology that could reshape work, entertainment and perhaps humanity itself. The battle already has contributed to a $2 trillion increase in the combined market value of Microsoft and Google’s corporate parent, Alphabet Inc., since the end of 2022.
In a blog post, Google CEO Sundar Puchai predicted the technology underlying Gemini Advanced will be able to outthink even the smartest people when tackling many complex topics.
“Ultra 1.0 is the first to outperform human experts on (massive multitask language understanding), which uses a combination of 57 subjects—including math, physics, history, law, medicine and ethics—to test knowledge and problem-solving abilities,” Pichai wrote.
But Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella made a point Wednesday of touting the capabilities of the ChatGPT-4 chatbot—a product released nearly a year ago after being trained by OpenAI on large-language models, or LLMs.
“We have the best model, today even,” Nadella asserted during an event in Mumbai, India. He then seemingly anticipated Gemini’s next-generation release, adding, “We’re waiting for the competition to arrive. It’ll arrive, I’m sure. But the fact is, that we have the most leading LLM out there.”
The introduction of increasingly sophisticated AI is amplifying fears that the technology will malfunction and misbehave on its own, or be manipulated by people for sinister purposes such as spreading misinformation in politics or to torment their enemies. That potential has already led to the passage of rules designed to police the use of AI in Europe, and spurred similar efforts in the U.S. and other countries.
Google says the next generation of Gemini products have undergone extensive testing to ensure they are safe and were built to adhere to its AI principles, which include being socially beneficial, avoiding unfair biases and being accountable to people.
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Google rebrands its AI services as Gemini, launches new app and subscription service (2024, February 8)
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Doctoral student Max Chern takes a closer look at the wind tunnel setup where University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science researchers demonstrated that control of a dual-mode scramjet engine is possible with an optical sensor. Credit: Wende Whitman, UVA Engineering
What if the future of space travel were to look less like Space-X’s rocket-based Starship and more like NASA’s “Hyper-X,” the hypersonic jet plane that, 20 years ago this year, flew faster than any other aircraft before or since?
In 2004, NASA’s final X-43A unmanned prototype tests were a milestone in the latest era of jet development—the leap from ramjets to faster, more efficient scramjets. The last test, in November of that year, clocked a world-record speed only a rocket could have achieved previously: Mach 10. The speed equates to 10 times the speed of sound.
NASA culled a lot of useful data from the tests, as did the Air Force six years later in similar tests on the X-51 Waverider, before the prototypes careened into the ocean.
Although hypersonic proof of concept was successful, the technology was far from operational. The challenge was achieving engine control, because the tech was based on decades-old sensor approaches.
This month, however, brought some hope for potential successors to the X-plane series.
As part of a new study, University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science researchers published data in the June issue of the journal Aerospace Science and Technology that show for the first time that airflow in supersonic combusting jet engines can be controlled by an optical sensor. The finding could lead to more efficient stabilization of hypersonic jet aircraft.
In addition, the researchers achieved adaptive control of a scramjet engine, representing another first for hypersonic propulsion. Adaptive engine control systems respond to changes in dynamics to keep the system’s overall performance optimal.
“One of our national aerospace priorities since the 1960s has been to build single-stage-to-orbit aircraft that fly into space from horizontal takeoff like a traditional aircraft and land on the ground like a traditional aircraft,” said professor Christopher Goyne, director of the UVA Aerospace Research Laboratory, where the research took place.
“Currently, the most state-of-the-art craft is the SpaceX Starship. It has two stages, with vertical launch and landing. But to optimize safety, convenience and reusability, the aerospace community would like to build something more like a 737.”
Goyne and his co-investigator, Chloe Dedic, a UVA Engineering associate professor, believe optical sensors could be a big part of the control equation.
“It seemed logical to us that if an aircraft operates at hypersonic speeds of Mach 5 and higher, that it might be preferable to embed sensors that work closer to the speed of light than the speed of sound,” Goyne said.
Additional members of the team were doctoral student Max Chern, who served as the paper’s first author, as well as former graduate student Andrew Wanchek, doctoral student Laurie Elkowitz and UVA senior scientist Robert Rockwell.
Stopping ‘unstart’ to stay in control
NASA has long sought to prevent something that can occur in scramjet engines called “unstart.” The term indicates a sudden change in airflow. The name derives from a specialized testing facility called a supersonic wind tunnel, where a “start” means the wind has reached the desired supersonic conditions.
UVA has several supersonic wind tunnels, including the UVA Supersonic Combustion Facility, which can simulate engine conditions for a hypersonic vehicle traveling at five times the speed of sound.
“We can run test conditions for hours, allowing us to experiment with new flow sensors and control approaches on a realistic engine geometry,” Dedic said.
Goyne explained that “scramjets,” short for supersonic combustion ramjets, build on ramjet technology that has been in common use for years.
Ramjets essentially “ram” air into the engine using the forward motion of the aircraft to generate the temperatures and pressures needed to burn fuel. They operate in a range of about Mach 3 to Mach 6. As the inlet at the front of the craft narrows, the internal air velocity slows down to subsonic speeds in a ramjet combustion engine. The plane itself, however, does not.
Scramjets are a little different, though. While they are also “air-breathing” and have the same basic setup, they need to maintain that super-fast airflow through the engine to reach hypersonic speeds.
“If something happens within the hypersonic engine, and subsonic conditions are suddenly created, it’s an unstart,” Goyne said. “Thrust will suddenly decrease, and it may be difficult at that point to restart the inlet.”
NASA’s B-52B launch aircraft cruises to a test range over the Pacific Ocean carrying the third and final X-43A vehicle, attached to a Pegasus rocket, on Nov. 16, 2004. Credit: NASA
Testing a dual-mode scramjet engine
Currently, like ramjets, scramjet engines need a step-up to get them to a speed where they can intake enough oxygen to operate. That may include a ride attached to the underside of a carreir aircraft as well as a rocket boost.
The latest innovation is a dual-mode scramjet combustor, which was the type of engine the UVA-led project tested. The dual engine starts in ramjet mode at lower Mach numbers, then shifts into receiving full supersonic airflow in the combustion chamber at speeds exceeding Mach 5.
Preventing unstart as the engine makes that transition is crucial.
Incoming wind interacts with the inlet walls in the form of a series of shock waves known as a “shock train.” Traditionally, the leading edge of those waves, which can be destructive to the aircraft’s integrity, have been controlled by pressure sensors. The machine can adjust, for example, by relocating the position of the shock train.
But where the leading edge of the shock train resides can change quickly if flight disturbances alter mid-air dynamics. The shock train can pressurize the inlet, creating the conditions for unstart.
So, “If you are sensing at the speed of sound, yet the engine processes are moving faster than the speed of sound, you don’t have very much response time,” Goyne said.
He and his collaborators wondered if a pending unstart could be predicted by observing properties of the engine’s flame instead.
Sensing the spectrum of a flame
The team decided to use an optical emission spectroscopy sensor for the feedback needed to control the shock train leading edge.
No longer limited to information obtained at the engine’s walls, as pressure sensors are, the optical sensor can identify subtle changes both inside the engine and within the flow path. The tool analyzes the amount of light emitted by a source—in this case, the reacting gases within the scramjet combustor—as well as other factors, such as the flame’s location and spectral content.
“The light emitted by the flame within the engine is due to relaxation of molecular species that are excited during combustion processes,” explained Elkowitz, one of the doctoral students. “Different species emit light at different energies, or colors, offering new information about the engine’s state that is not captured by pressure sensors.”
The team’s wind tunnel demonstration showed that the engine control can be both predictive and adaptive, smoothly transitioning between scramjet and ramjet functioning.
The wind tunnel test, in fact, was the world’s first proof that adaptive control in these types of dual-function engines can be achieved with optical sensors.
“We were very excited to demonstrate the role optical sensors may play in the control of future hypersonic vehicles,” first author Chern said. “We are continuing to test sensor configurations as we work toward a prototype that optimizes package volume and weight for flight environments.”
Building toward the future
While much more work remains to be done, optical sensors may be a component of the future Goyne believes will be realized in his lifetime: plane-like travel to space and back.
Dual-mode scramjets would still require a boost of some sort to get the aircraft to at least Mach 4. But there would be the additional safety of not relying exclusively on rocket technology, which requires highly flammable fuel to be carried alongside large amounts of chemical oxidizer to combust the fuel.
That decreased weight would allow more room for passengers and payload.
Such an all-in-one aircraft, which would glide back to Earth like the space shuttles once did, might even provide the ideal combination of cost-efficiency, safety and reusability.
“I think it’s possible, yeah,” Goyne said. “While the commercial space industry has been able to lower costs through some reusability, they haven’t yet captured the aircraft-like operations. Our findings could potentially build on the storied history of Hyper-X and make its space access safer than current rocket-based technology.”
More information:
Max Y. Chern et al, Control of a dual-mode scramjet flow path utilizing optical emission spectroscopy, Aerospace Science and Technology (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.ast.2024.109144
Citation:
Wind tunnel study shows hypersonic jet engine flow can be controlled optically (2024, June 27)
retrieved 27 June 2024
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Orthosia retinaculata (Schltr.). Credit: H.A. Keller, Facultad de Ciencias Forestales, Universidad Nacional de Misiones, Instituto de Botánica del Nordeste, Corrientes
Flowers of the genus Orthosia are small but rich in detail. After decades of research, plant systematics researchers at the University of Bayreuth have now presented a complete overview of the genus for the first time. A total of 55 species were identified and described, twice as many as expected.
All information about a plant is linked to its Latin species name and can be accessed in databases via this name. It is therefore essential that the same name is understood worldwide. Re-analyzing a previously insufficiently studied genus therefore means compiling all the available information, supplementing missing data and reorganizing the information according to the latest findings based on molecular phylogenetic studies.
Although the angiospermous plants are among the best-studied organisms, there are still groups among them whose diversity, distribution and phylogeny are largely unexplored.
Prof. Dr. Sigrid Liede-Schumann and PD Dr. Ulrich Meve from the Plant Systematics working group at the University of Bayreuth began studying the little-studied milkweed plants (Asclepiadoideae) of tropical America more than 20 years ago.
Now, for the first time, they have been able to present a comprehensive overview of the genus Orthosia with 55 species, which is distributed from Florida and Mexico to Argentina. The research is published in the journal Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden.
The work is based on the examination of herbarium specimens and living material. It includes a genetic and phylogenetic analysis of about half of the Orthosia species and a comprehensive description and illustrations of each individual species. Identification keys for each of the three main distribution areas, South America, Central America and the Caribbean, are provided.
Compared to previous estimates, the number of species in the genus Orthosia has almost doubled, which is partly due to the description of new, previously unknown species. One of these new species is Orthosia micrantha from Venezuela, which, with a flower diameter of less than one millimeter, has the smallest flower known to date within its plant family.
In addition, the application of modern phylogenetic methods has shown that groups that were previously understood as widespread species are now divided into morphologically very similar, but geographically restricted subgroups that are not directly related to each other.
Available species names, which are linked to a precise species description, represent the key to all known information about a plant, such as distribution, uses and chemical constituents. The revision of the genera of these South American climbing plants by the Bayreuth botanists thus contributes to a better understanding of the composition and evolution of the South American flora.
More information:
Sigrid Liede-Schumann et al, Toward a Revision of the Genus Orthosia (Apocynaceae: Asclepiadoideae: Asclepiadeae), Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden (2024). DOI: 10.3417/2024795
Citation:
Researchers complete genus overview for 55 species of silk plants (2024, June 27)
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