Many people see autonomy cars as the smart answer to all our traffic problems. But developers still have a long road ahead because self driving vehicles and lot of complex technology. Is Autonomous Vehicles are ones able to get from point a to point b. Without a human at the wheel. An Autonomous Car could drop you off somewhere and go look for parking all by itself and when youre ready to go somewhere else they could come pick you up on its own. But the Technology Needs further development before it really hits dealerships the sector differentiates between five levels of automation. The first is driver assistance which most new cars built today already have. Yeah they include systems like antilock brakes and electronic stability control then hand safety by helping drivers maintain traction in dangerous situations. At the second level semi automation assisting systems play a bigger role in maneuvering the vehicle the driver may have to keep a hand on the wheel while monitoring the situation but the vehicle is able to steer and brake on its own. Level three is conditional automation thats when the car has an autopilot function the driver is no longer required to monitor the situation permanently but still has to be ready to resume control of the vehicle at any time. The fourth level is high automation this is where drivers can almost take a back seat they can busy themselves with some other activity especially on the highway if their attention is needed drivers are alerted and plenty of time to take command again. Finally theres a level five full automation a fully automated car would be able to cope with any traffic conditions even those in cities and could function as a taxi Steering Wheels and pedals would then be redundant as is a driver. But thomas cars are not only complex in technological terms they also raise a number of ethical issues and technology can always go wrong when that happens whos liable. To be useful to pull is one of sixty participants in a study on advanced automated driving of the Technical University of her. The road simulator measures the time it takes for drivers to take control of the Steering Wheel when prompted. The right in tricky situations snow heavy rain or missing lane markings drivers should be ready to resume command of the vehicle at any moment. The study in braunschweig was commissioned by secret walkman head of the German Insurers Accident Research association today hes evaluating the results with survey director mark fall apart. Their objective is to find out how long they take overtime is for drivers busy doing Something Else such as writing an email or playing on their tablet. The ranks. Just ninety percent of our participants needed six to eight seconds to resume manual driving depends on what else theyre doing the more distracted someone knows the longer they need. But thats the whole point of automated driving when you will to do other things when it will come out of. The study also shows that it takes ninety percent of motorists twelve to fifteen seconds to check the speedometer and mirrors. In other words to properly gauge the current traffic situation. But according to the working group for the United Nations Economic Commission for europe this interval should be no longer than four seconds. Automated vehicles would have to meet this standard to be approved. Ideally vehicles fitted with sensors have a visibility of up to three hundred meters. Assuming the driving needs four seconds to resume control a car moving at one hundred twenty kilometers an hour will cover one hundred thirty five meters. The driver take over time resulting from the study is over eight seconds enough for the car to travel two hundred seventy meters m for the driver to also assess the current traffic situation that gap expands to at least twelve seconds the distance covered would now be four hundred meters one hundred meters further than the range of the sentence. The un is to introduce a stipulation that suppliers worldwide produce one in the same system giving the driver four seconds to respond to a situation you hear about the simulator has shown that drivers will need more time if they are genuinely to consider all factors so while there is no formal problem for the industry there is for drivers. And. Can make is say the system would carry out a minimal risk maneuver after those four seconds the car slows down gradually and stays in the same lane even if in the fast lane. A scenario that secret brockman finds alarming. Sort of fatsos in this case the car stopped in between two lanes its an extreme example but the car no longer knew where it was in the real world drivers coming from behind would never expect this vehicle to just stop because the driver failed to respond and that could well lead to serious pile ups of. The researchers conducted a second study to examine the takeover times among drivers who are tired or are taking longer trips in a driverless car the team rated their level of drowsiness using a range of indicators such as frequency of blinking i movement and yawning. Tire drivers displayed similarly slow reaction times to drivers distracted by other activities. Between twelve and fifteen seconds and drivers of highly Automated Vehicles who are at the wheel for long periods of time grow tired far more quickly than those who are actually in constant command of the vehicle half reached a critical fatigue level after just twenty minutes. Studies show the dangers of journeys longer than a quarter of an hour people fall asleep but are supposed to be able to take control of the attraction of highly automated driving relaxing and even having a nap on the highway is a definite no no no puts a question mark over the whole concept. And the researchers arent just worried about highly Automated Vehicles the kind of car that brockman drives bridges the gap between assisted and automated driving it has integrated systems that help the driver park stay in one lane and perform emergency stops many cars on the road today can supposedly already perform those and other tasks but in a tight curve this car has problems staying between the lane markings. And. Lets see if it works its now detected the lane. But suddenly the green Steering Wheel light showing the function has engaged goes out. And you can see how it failed to see the curb maybe it didnt recognize the lane markings back there. The danger brockman says is that drivers might not know what the system can and cannot do. A system comes with a feature it cant just switch itself off without warning which is exactly what just happened here and these scenarios are covered in the manual but that presumes that drivers actually read it and remember the instructions and you dont need to be an expert to know that thats not a realistic expectation. On facebook we asked if you think Autonomous Cars should be part of our lives in the future. Says he never wants to be a driver sharing. Lane with a driverless car the solution they need to have their own designated lane. Of itto disagrees he calls autonomy driving a great idea and says hes so busy that hed be happy to leave the chauffeuring to a machine. And Gillespie Desmond King who says Autonomous Cars will help one hundred percent in view of the fatal risk posed by drunk human drivers. At the end of a long day what your body needs is a comfortable bed and a good nights sleep. It turns out that deep sleep is vitally important for the brain. Researchers are only now discovering what effect sleep has on memory. Not being able to sleep can be torturous the body needs sleep to regenerate at night the brain is able to process the experiences of the day getting up and reading or watching t. V. Is no substitute. A sleepless night leaves you unable to concentrate or be affective. At the university of tubing and professor yon bawn and his doctoral student hung yet no have spent years studying the effect that sleep has on brain performance. Sleep has many functions thats clear but what were focusing on here is the role that sleep plays in memory for a long time we thought that memories are formed during rem sleep but thats not correct. Our Research Shows that memory is actually primarily formed during deep sleep. So people who sleep deeply are also sleeping healthily because on. Different phases of sleep are recorded with electroencephalography or e. G. Brain activity is typically charted at low amplitudes during rem sleep deep sleep phases on the other hand are characterized by very high amplitude slow brain waves called slow oscillations these waves play a decisive role in sleep quality. Our goal is to reinforce these slow oscillations to increase the amplitude of slow oscillations like those displayed here to lengthen the way trains that are made up of these slow oscillations we already know that you can basically do that with electrical stimulation. But we want to find a more natural way to improve deep sleep through acoustic stimulation. So. The method involves playing special clicking sounds that are just fifty milliseconds long. Before hits were going to play a couple so you get a feel for what they sound like and. They serve as an acoustic stimulus but dont interrupt sleep. Deep sleep determines memory performance. In this test the subjects are supposed to memorize one hundred twenty pairs of words. They are quizzed directly after studying them. When they hit the sack. As soon as the subject enters a deep sleep phase the clicks are played into their headphones. The researchers tracked the different phases of sleep on the e. G. Deep sleep as instantly recognizable due to the slow oscillations that click is played just as the wave begins to crest at fifty its the important thing is the timing when exactly you play the click sounds its kind of like a kid on a swing that youre pushing with. You can increase the length of the swing by giving the child a push at exactly the moment when it says far back and up as its going to go. By giving a small place then you can enhance the swing motion and as a result it lasts longer. The show can linger on. The test subjects are roused after sleeping for seven hours then they once again try to recall the word pairs. In the control group the subjects or arent exposed to any acoustic stimulation. Comparison shows that after sleeping through the night control group subjects or able to memorize on average thirteen more peers of words but the subjects who received acoustic stimulation during the night did much better they could memorize twenty two more pairs of words than before sleeping. During deep sleep phases slow brain waves a rise in the cerebral cortex and propagate to the hippocampus an interim Storage Space for information absorbed during the day. In deep sleep the positive wave patterns reactivate the information during this process its transferred to the long term memory where its stored in a more permanent form acoustic stimulation reinforces the slow brain waves. That encourages deep sleep and the subsequent formation of long term memories. Its certainly conceivable that devices like these could be developed for daily use in the near future and you can imagine a scenario where the sleepers may be wearing an amplifier on a band around their forehead thats able to detect slow oscillations with doctors in them that would then be linked for example to a smartphone which would play the right acoustic signals to the sleeper at the right times and play with fishing fleet for forth so. With their successful study the researchers have opened the door to new methods of influencing memory and the quality of sleep. This week our viewers question takes us under the sea theres a whole world there of fascinating colors as long as you dont dive too deep. Down youre available from san cristoval de luxe cost us wants to know why is it dark on the seabed. The Twilight Zone begins about sixty meters below the surface. Thats about as far as sunlight can penetrate. The. Light passes through the atmosphere far more easily than through the ocean water is more dense so it can absorb much more sunlight. An air can. What we call light is actually a spectrum of different wavelengths of radiation which we perceive as colors. Shorter wavelengths in the blue part of the spectrum are able to penetrate the water more easily than red or frequencies. So as divers descend the watery surroundings appear not only darker but also more blue. The red component of sunlight is completely filtered out close to the surface. Thats why red fish already appear black just borders six metres below the waves. While yellow fish can still be made out at depths of over twenty metres. And bluefish retain their color even sixty metres down. The ocean is full of particles and floating organisms which function much like fine droplets of mist in the atmosphere. They also prevent light from reaching the seabed by reflecting and scattering it. Thats why its so dark on the sea bed unless of course a diving robot comes on lights things up. Do you have a science question go to our website and send it in if we answer it on the show youll get our d. V. D. For light hearted look at albert einsteins most famous theories. The most important thing is to never stop asking questions. Good from tropical forests is often evenly textured dense and robust thats why tropical timber is sought after in the woodworking industry but many species of exotic trees are now protected and thats why researchers are knocking for alternatives for example for making musical instruments. Two scientists and a guitar. Engineer Alexander Freeman his colleagues and father are more interested in the physical data from the instrument than its musical qualities theyre assessing how suitable different types of wood are for making guitars and they may be on the brink of a revolution two things are crucial for guitar sound box design isnt the first there are the Elastic Properties and especially good reflection low attenuation. Of the night you also need dimensional stability so that the form is not affected by changes in humidity that. Elastic yet stable both properties are essential for high end guitars. Brazilian rosewood and other tropical timber varieties have those characteristics. But instrument makers are facing a problem the trees sourced from the brazilian rain forest have been listed as endangered species for years in twenty seventeen trade in the timber was all but prohibited. While rosewood and other tropical woods are Still Available supplies are dwindling. The question now is what to replace them with. But first a look back at the evolution of the guitar in times past instruments had to both sound and look supreme. This seventeenth century italian guitar has a sound box made of ebony its decorated with ivory and mother of pearl in lathes. And still make the beat you think of how they put in fifty hoof instruments like these guitars were made for royal like asians so a sumptuous exterior a treat for the eyes was just as important as the acoustics for the ears acoustic for the. Historically speaking the guitar is a relatively recent instrument but its nonetheless gone through many stages of development in transfixed your conduct of the Twentieth Century saw big changes to the size and construction of the guitar as well as playing technics that was the phase in which the use of tropical would speak came standard to performers and audiences quickly got used to the sound and the tropical board caught on couldnt but those times are over now. Twenty years ago good turf reinhardt a guitar maker into began in southern germany had the idea of using local woods instead. I built guitars out of untreated local word but i wasnt happy with the acoustics so i looked for a way to change the wood so it sounds like tropical wood. In the Wood Engineers have been collaborating with trying hard to find out how to use domestic timber as a substitute for tropical wood to give the wood the necessary characteristics for guitar building its chemical composition is first altered by heating it. Was. The challenge was to find the right recipe that is to say the exact temperature in the length of time the wood has to be in the oven to improve the Acoustic Properties disallowing stuff so far as. Wood is made up of three main components cell walls consists largely of cellulose which makes them rigid along with lignin another large molecule that gives the wood stability helped by hemi cellulose polymers the ratio of these components affects the woods Acoustic Properties including vibrational characteristics and the attenuation of the sound three hours of thermal treatment at most one hundred eighty degrees celsius that proved to be a method for optimizing the sound of the german Domestic Woods. We dont know exactly what is responsible for the properties of these tropical woods all we can do is measure their physical characteristics and then try to adjust the Domestic Wood to match them in terms of their Acoustic Properties of the shining soft night sound sensors measure the vibrations of the wood and replicate them once. The researchers tested thirty different types of wood with unexpected results. But honestly last time we were especially surprised by the. Zoltan ashen alderwood and i fortunately because of the fungal disease that causes ash tree die back ashwood is no longer available on a wide scale but just as surprising was the alderwood where we saw a tremendous improvement in Acoustic Properties and its also readily available for us the treatment didnt just change the sound of the wood it also made the light alderwood noticeably darker. I mean some n. T. I. Have we produced instruments that we tested in a low noise environment and could clearly show that the finished instruments have a comparable and similar sound and we should always be at these trials of. Just a few models of this guitar have been produced so far. Guitarist you tested the guitar made of alderwood. What does she think of the sound. Effect a ton of records i like the guitar a lot i would describe the sound as quite womb full well. It can hold its own with guitars made from tropical wood its quite comparable summed up in five. High quality instruments made with woods native to europe able to recreate the acoustics of the worlds greatest guitars. For more stories from the world of research and technology visit our website and get in touch with us on twitter and facebook we love to hear from you. On our next show well be looking at new technology for two wheelers soon bicycles will come equipped with computers and Onboard Electronics how engineers are gearing up for the bike of the future join us for that next time on tomorrow today. The be. An entire generation robbed of their and their future syrian refugee children and. Their exploited as wage slaves and forced to work instead of going to school its a vicious cycle. But they are the ones who would have to rebuild syria levanon the last generation. Kristinas on d w. The fast pace of life in. The fish as the low down on the way of showing new developments providing useful information. And interviews with the makers and users. Should in forty five minutes the be. And i think one day this war. Will end. Certainly crain every man woman and child. Only friend their homeland is the enemy. Here. D. W. Made for mines. Take it personally you went with the people once to make the game so special. For all true for. More than football on line w. s program guide. Dot com highlights. A museums. Shes not the only one said. The call to shake up the food is consumed. By the first. Place. People put big dreams on the big screen. Movie magazine monday demi. Dangerous and why a. Venture of. Airplane seventeen thousand kilometers in six weeks taking landscape. Can experience a. Touch. Of seventeen. Years through china starting february twenty seventh. Human rights monitors say the Syrian Government has stepped up its bombardment of a rebel held area near damascus scores have died in eastern guta including nearly eighty people on monday the suburb has been under siege by Regime Forces for more than four years. I. Must. Dozens of washington d. C. Teenagers calling for gun reform staged a socalled die in outside the white house
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