"It can be done-we could be flying around in pilotless planes, just as we could be living on cities on Mars-but is it worth the cost and the effort?" asks Patrick Smith, author of the Ask the Pilot column, which ran for years in Salon magazine. "I fly airplanes for a living, and my jaw drops when I hear people say that flying is already mostly automated. Even the most 'automated' flight is still subject to so much human input and subjective decisions."

So why then are all these startups starting up? "It'd be a novelty, not necessarily meant even for profit, but as a way to prove and build the technology," Smith suggests.

And should one of these outfits ever offer seats to the paying public, would you entrust your life to a robotic pilot? "People want a pilot in the cockpit, to know there's someone in charge who shares their fate," says Missy Cummings, a former U.S. Navy fighter pilot, now a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke University. "I don't think we'll ever have a passenger airliner be a drone-there will always be some version of a Captain James T. Kirk on board." But, she adds, things are different for hops of, say, 50 miles (80 kilometers), where for some people, at least, convenience might outweigh fear.

"It's technologically achievable in the near term; as for the regulatory problem, I think we'll see it in China first," Cummings says. "Ehang [in Guangzhou, China] is supposedly doing a test in March."

The company claims that its roboplane has already carried a passenger, and if it performs the feat in public, we'll let you know. And if it doesn't.

This article appears in the January 2017 print issue as "Fly Robotic?"

RELATED ARTICLE

Only a few years ago, the long-held dream of harnessing the strong, steady gusts off the Atlantic coast to make electricity seemed destined to remain just that. Proposals for offshore wind farms foundered on the shoals of high costs, regulatory hurdles and the fierce opposition of those who didn't want giant industrial machinery puncturing the pristine ocean views.

Now the industry is poised to take off, just as the American political landscape and energy policy itself face perhaps the greatest uncertainty in a generation.

Last fall, five turbines in the waters of Rhode Island - the country's first offshore farm - began delivering power to the grid. European energy developers like Statoil and Dong Energy are making big investments to bring projects to American waters. Last year in Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, signed into law a mandate that is pushing development forward.

And in New York, after years of stymied progress, the Long Island Power Authority has reached an agreement with Deepwater Wind, which built the Rhode Island turbine array, to drop a much larger farm - 15 turbines capable of running 50,000 average homes - into the ocean about 35 miles from Montauk. If approved by the utility board on Wednesday, the $1 billion installation could become the first of several in a 256-square-mile parcel, with room for as many as 200 turbines, that Deepwater is leasing from the federal government.

By  FOX News, Jan. 17, 2017 - 5:18 - 

Summary by Thomas Valone, Integrity Research Institute

STEM Star Teacher Andy Bramante trains students at Greenwich High School to become genius scientists on par with university graduate research assistants. Their solutions to problems from lab research is presented at conferences a poster sessions. One of his students found a non-invasive assay card test for the ebola virus, another invented a tattoo-based biosensor for atherosclerosis plaque in the arteries, another student found a way to increase charge rate and capacity for Lithium-Ion batteries. Some of Bramante's students have gone to the White House, others have won Intel and Google science competitions, besides the usual science fairs.

IRI believes that the genius of Andy Bramante, a noted aerospace engineer, provides the framework for exciting and state-of-the-art equipment necessary for training high school students to think like professional research scientists. If more senior scientists are willing to take an early retirement to go into teaching, the shortage of engineers can be bridged with STEM students ready to contribute to the advancement of science.

Watch the five (5) minute video. It is truly inspiring what high school students are capable of with the right training. Maybe there is hope for blue collar workers who need to move into more technical jobs as well.

By Stephanie L. Miller, Dezba G. Coughlin, Dezba G. Coughlin, Erik I. Waldorff, James T. Ryaby, Jeffrey C. Lotz,

Ed. Note:  This is a recent, breakthrough, scholarly article which demonstrates the efficacy of PEMF for reducing spinal disc degeneration. IRI is proud to support such research results with its experimentally proven www.OsteoPad.org, also shown to increase bone density with before and after tests, in about a six month period. With 50% of older Americans affected to some degree with disc or bone degeneration, electrotherapy is a very promising avenue to choose.

"The results of this study are clinically important as they demonstrate PEMF has disease modifying activities that may, in the future, provide a minimally-invasive solution for patients living with painful degenerative disc disease," said Dr. Jeffrey C. Lotz, Ph.D., Professor and Vice Chair of Research, at the UCSF Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, and co-author of the journal article. "While an important first step, more studies are needed to determine if this is indeed a viable option for managing inflammation and impaired healing associated with painful intervertebral discs."

In an in-vitro human cell culture and microarray gene expression study, cells were stimulated to elicit the inflammatory environment associated with degenerative disc disease (DDD). The cells were exposed to the Orthofix Physio-Stim®PEMF for four hours daily. At day four, this study revealed that cells treated with PEMF showed a reduction in proinflammatory markers and a decrease in degeneration of the cellular matrix relative to the control group, although this reduction did not persist to day seven.

"We continue to support preclinical evaluation of PEMF technology to confirm and validate the potential for new clinical applications," said Orthofix Chief Scientific Officer and co-author James Ryaby, Ph.D. "We remain committed to furthering the body of clinical evidence that drives best medical practice and improved patient outcomes. We believe this study suggests that PEMF may be an important future treatment option for patients suffering from degenerative disc disease."