testing delivery with drones, CEO Bezos says

AFP | Dec 2, 2013, 09.52 AM IST

READ MORE CBS|Amazon.Com|Drones|CEO Jeff Bezos|Bezos
Amazon testing delivery with drones, CEO Bezos says
Bezos said the drones, unmanned vehicles that fly through the air, could deliver packages that weigh up to five pounds (2.3 kg).
WASHINGTON: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed Sunday that his company is looking to the future with plans to use "octocopter" mini-drones to fly small packages to consumers in just 30 minutes.

The US retail giant's ambitious project still requires additional safety testing and federal approval, butBezos estimated that Amazon "Prime Air" would be up and running within four to five years.

A demo video posted on the company's website showed the tiny robotic devices picking up packages in small yellow buckets from Amazon's fulfillment centers and then whizzing through the air to deliver the items to customers just 30 minutes after they made their purchase on Amazon.com.

"I know this looks like science fiction. It's not," Bezos told CBS television's "60 Minutes" program.

"We can do half-hour delivery... and we can carry objects, we think, up to five pounds (2.3 kilograms), which covers 86 percent of the items that we deliver."

The mini-drones are powered by electric motors and could cover areas within a 10-mile (16-kilometer) radius of fulfillment centers, thus covering a significant portion of the population in urban areas.

They operate autonomously and drop the items at the target locations thanks to GPS coordinates transmitted to them.

"It's very green, it's better than driving trucks around," said Bezos. Amazon said the octocopters would be "ready to enter commercial operations as soon as the necessary regulations are in place," noting that the Federal Aviation Administration was actively working on rules for unmanned aerial vehicles.

It projected a more optimistic timeline than Bezos himself for the project to be activated, saying the FAA's rules could be in place as early as 2015 and that Amazon Prime Air would be ready at that time.

Bezos hinted that part of the motivation behind the mini-drones was to make sure Amazon remains on the cutting edge of the retail industry.

"Companies have short life spans... And Amazon will be disrupted one day," he said.

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Brain gain: Secret of crows' intelligence decoded

PTI | Dec 2, 2013, 06.06 AM IST
READ MORE Neurobiologists|Germany|crow|The Game
Brain gain: Secret of crows' intelligence decoded
Behavioural biologists have even called crows "feathered primates" because the birds make and use tools, are able to remember large numbers of feeding sites, and plan their social behaviour according to what other members of their group do.
BERLIN: Crows are no bird-brains! Scientists have for the first time demonstrated how the brains of crows produce intelligent behaviour when the birds have to make strategic decisions.

Researchers have long suspected that corvids - the family of birds including ravens, crows and magpies - are highly intelligent.

Behavioural biologists have even called crows "feathered primates" because the birds make and use tools, are able to remember large numbers of feeding sites, and plan their social behaviour according to what other members of their group do.

This high level of intelligence might seem surprising because birds' brains are constructed in a fundamentally different way from those of mammals, including primates - which are usually used to investigate these behaviours.

Neurobiologists Lena Veit and Professor Andreas Nieder from Eberhard Karls University of Tubingen in Germany investigated the brain physiology of crows' intelligent behaviour.

They trained crows to carry out memory tests on a computer. The crows were shown an image and had to remember it. Shortly afterwards, they had to select one of two test images on a touchscreen with their beaks based on a switching behavioural rules.

One of the test images was identical to the first image, the other different. Sometimes the rule of the game was to select the same image, and sometimes it was to select the different one.

The crows were able to carry out both tasks and to switch between them as appropriate. That demonstrates a high level of concentration and mental flexibility which few animal species can manage - and which is an effort even for humans.

The crows were quickly able to carry out these tasks even when given new sets of images. The researchers observed neuronal activity in the nidopallium caudolaterale, a brain region associated with the highest levels of cognition in birds.

One group of nerve cells responded exclusively when the crows had to choose the same image - while another group of cells always responded when they were operating on the "different image" rule.

By observing this cell activity, the researchers were often able to predict which rule the crow was following even before it made its choice.

The study published in Nature Communications provides valuable insights into the parallel evolution of intelligent behaviour.

"Many functions are realised differently in birds because a long evolutionary history separates us from these direct descendants of the dinosaurs," said Lena Veit.

"This means that bird brains can show us an alternative solution out of how intelligent behaviour is produced with a different anatomy," Veit said.
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Alzheimer's a late stage of diabetes: Study

PTI | Dec 2, 2013, 06.36 AM IST
READ MORE T2 diabetes|neurodegenerative disorder|Alzheimer's|the rest|Poison
LONDON: Scientists have found that Alzheimer's - a neurodegenerative disorder - may actually be a late stage of Type 2 diabetes.

The findings also suggest that losing weight and exercising may ward off Alzheimer's, at least in the very early stages, researchers said.

The extra insulin produced by those with Type 2 diabetes also gets into the brain, disrupting its chemistry, which can lead to the formation of toxic clumps of amyloid proteins that poison brain cells, researchers said.

"The discovery could explain why people who develop T2 diabetes often show sharp declines in cognitive function, with an estimated 70 per cent developing Alzheimer's - far more than in the rest of the population," said Ewan McNay at Albany University in New York.

"People who develop diabetes have to realise this is about more than controlling their weight or diet. It's also the first step on the road to cognitive decline," McNay said.

The increased risk of Alzheimer's disease in Type 2 diabetics has been known for a long time.

McNay's research aimed at discovering the mechanism by which T2 diabetes might cause Alzheimer's.

He fed rats on a high-fat diet to induce T2 diabetes and then carried out memory tests, showing that the animals' cognitive skills deteriorated rapidly as the disease progressed, 'The Sunday Times' reported.

An examination of their brains showed clumps of amyloid protein had formed, of the kind found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients.

McNay suggests that, in people with Type 2 diabetes, the body becomes resistant to insulin, a hormone that controls blood-sugar levels - so the body produces more of it.

However, some of that insulin also makes its way into the brain, where its levels are meant to be controlled by the same enzyme that breaks down amyloid.

"High levels of insulin swamp this enzyme so that it stops breaking down amyloid. The latter then accumulates until it forms toxic clumps that poison brain cells. It's the same amyloid build-up to blame in both diseases - T2 diabetics really do have low-level Alzheimer's," McNay said.

The research was presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego.
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