Terrafugia TF-X, the flying supercar

Well, it’s about time. Since the 1950s, we’ve been
promised flying cars were just around the corner. But
despite a steady stream of outlandish concepts, a
working car-o-plane has always remained frustratingly,
tantalizingly out of reach. Until now.
This is the Terrafugia TF-X, and it is surely the answer
to our airborne automotive prayers. Built by the Boston-
based outfit behind the still-not-yet-in-production
Transition, it’s a bold vision of a transportation future
unbounded by roads, runways or pleasing aesthetics.
As you’ll see from the video above, the TF-X – which
will seat four open-minded humans – is capable of
vertical take-off, thus negating the need for a runway.
Wings furled, it’ll squeeze into a standard single garage,
thus negating the need for a hanger in which to store
your personal plane.
It’s powered by a plug-in hybrid arrangement, a pair of
electric motors combining with a 300bhp petrol engine
to produce a megawatt of output. Aerial thrust is
provided by a ducted fan at the rear, and a propeller at
the end of each retractable wing.
We don’t know how fast the TF-X will go on road, but
once airborne it’ll soar at speeds of 200mph for a
distance of up to 500 miles. Which means you could hop
from London to Geneva in under three hours, and in a
single bound. It’s the future we were always promised.
We’re in.
However. There are, admittedly, a few tiny issues with
the TF-X. First, as you may have deduced from the
rather renderised images, it doesn’t actually exist yet.
Terrafugia admits bringing the flying car to production is
a process ‘expected to last 8-12 years’, which means,
realistically, it’ll be the middle of next decade before we
see one on the driveway of TG Towers.
It’s as yet unclear exactly how much the TF-X might
cost, but Terrafugia has hinted that the final price ‘could
be on-par with the very high-end luxury cars of today’.
But hey, does a Bugatti Veyron afford the opportunity to
evade traffic jams by leaping over them?
And then there’s the wider issue of safety and
legislation, both of which have played a significant role
in scuppering previous flying car attempts.
Terrafugia reckons the TF-X ‘should be statistically safer
than driving a modern automobile’, and says learning to
fly it will take just five hours of training.
That’s thanks, at least in part, to a high degree of
autonomy: once airborne, the TF-X will effectively fly
itself – though the driver can override the controls –
and land automatically, without human input.
In the event of failure, the TF-X can deploy its full-
vehicle parachute, allowing, hopefully, the flying car to
float safely down to terra firma.
Foolproof in theory, but convincing both the car-buying
public and the lawmakers that filling the sky with
personal planes is a safe, sensible thing to do will
remain a challenge for a while to come. Consider the
muddle legislators are getting into around self-driving
cars right now, then add the vertical dimension into the
mix, and it’s clear the world’s lawmakers will need every
one of those eight-to-twelve years of development to
figure out the car-o-plane small print.

Facebook builds drone for internet access

Facebook has built its own drone that will bring internet
connectivity to remote parts of the world, the social
network has announced.
The drone - which has a wingspan of a Boeing 737 - will
operate as high as 90,000 feet in the air, and can stay
airborne for 90 days at a time.
Facebook said the drones would be able to offer internet
speeds of 10 gigabits a second.
They will be tested in the US later this year.
It was designed in the UK by Facebook's aerospace
team, said Jay Parikh, Facebook's vice president of
global engineering and infrastructure.
"Our goal is to accelerate the development of a new set
of technologies that can drastically change the
economics of deploying internet infrastructure," Mr
Parikh said.
"We are exploring a number of different approaches to
this challenge, including aircraft, satellites and
terrestrial solutions.
"Our intention is not to build networks and then operate
them ourselves, but rather to quickly advance the state
of these technologies to the point that they become
viable solutions for operators and other partners to
deploy."
Laser
It is the social network's latest initiative in its
Internet.org scheme, a project designed to bring
connectivity to the developing world.
The strategy will help the network continue to grow
users, a key requirement of keeping investors happy.
Mr Parikh said the drone's technology should be
regarded as a "significant breakthrough".
"They've designed and lab-tested a laser that can
deliver data at 10s of Gb per second - approximately 10x
faster than the previous state-of-the-art in the industry
- to a target the size of a dime from more than 10 miles
away.
"We are now starting to test these lasers in real-world
conditions.
"When finished, our laser communications system can be
used to connect our aircraft with each other and with
the ground, making it possible to create a stratospheric
network that can extend to even the remotest regions of
the world."
However, Facebook's expansion beyond its current
markets has raised eyebrows, and accusations of cynical
intentions.
Internet.org angered many in India's technology
community when it launched there, offering free mobile
access to a small handful of sites, but not the internet
as a whole.
Internet companies in the country said it was giving
those free services an unfair advantage in the market,
and noted that Facebook is able to track what users on
the free service were doing.

The Disgusting Secrets of Smelly Feets

Cheesy feet aren’t just an embarrassment –
understanding the stench could save lives.
Renate Smallegange is something of a connoisseur of
smelly feet – and she goes to surprising lengths to
study their odours. Sometimes she’ll collect worn nylon
socks that have become imbued with the fragrance. If
that’s not good enough, she asks people to rub their feet
on glass beads and wipe their sweaty skin on the
surface. When she’s being really picky, she’ll trap the
feet in a plastic bag, allowing her to draw up the aroma
in gusts of air.
Of all the jobs in the world, it’s certainly not the most
pleasant, but Smallegange is mostly unperturbed by the
occasional whiff of cheese. “It’s not a big deal,” she
tells me. “Of course some people do smell nicer than
others – from my personal point of view.”
Not everyone finds the stink so discomforting. While a
strong stench may cause Smallegange to politely hold
her nose, however, it happens to be a real turn-on for
the other objects of her study: malaria-carrying
mosquitoes. For this reason, Smallegange has been
trying to find the unique recipe that gives our feet their
odour, in a quest to help stem the spread of that deadly
disease.
No matter how clean you are, a slight odour is almost
inevitable, given the anatomy of our feet. The average
foot contains 600 sweat glands per square centimetre –
hundreds more than the armpits . They secrete a
nutritious soup of salts, glucose, vitamins, and amino
acids that provides the perfect diet for a colony of
bacteria. In return for the free lunch, the bacteria leave
us with a cocktail of fatty acids that together give rise to
the signature musk.
There are so many bacteria living on our feet that
microbiologists have had a hard time finding exactly
which species cause the stench, and where they live on
the foot. Showing remarkably little vanity, James
Reynolds at Loughborough University and colleagues
recently attempted to answer this question by mapping
out the populations on their own feet .
Five groups stood out: Corynebacteria, Micrococci,
Propionibacteria, Betaproteobacteria and Brevibacteria – but
the biggest offender appeared to be Staphylococci.
Tellingly, it always seemed to coincide with a
particularly potent chemical, called isovaleric acid. “If
you imagine a well-aged stilton – that’s the smell you
get if you open a bottle of the stuff,” Reynolds says. “If
you spill a drop in the lab you’ll smell it all afternoon –
it’s horrible.” What’s more, they were most common on
the sole, rather than the top – with particular high
numbers around the ball of the foot – perhaps
explaining why these are the smelliest areas. The
comparison to cheese is appropriate. Many cheeses
contain a similar mix of volatile chemicals, with
Limburger cheese apparently offering the closest
comparison.
Eventually, these findings may pave the road to a more
fragrant future. “If we know what these compounds are
and the species that produce them, we could make
clothing that absorbs the smell or neutralises it,” says
Reynolds. It could also lead to better deodorants. The
task will be tricky – alongside the smelly bacteria, our
feet harbour some potentially friendly organisms that act
as gatekeepers against infection. But nature may already
have some answers. A recent Japanese study found that
three chemicals commonly found in citrus fruits can
help target the Staphylococcus bacteria without harming
its neighbours.
In some situations, foot odour is much more serious
than slight embarrassment, however – it might be a
matter of life or death. Dutch scientist Bart Knols was
one of the first to notice that certain species of malaria-
carrying mosquitoes are attracted to the smells wafting
from our feet. His work has since inspired many of
Smallegange’s latest studies at Wageningen University in
the Netherlands.
She has found, for instance, that the malaria parasite
seems to alter the mosquitoes’ sense of smell so that
they are even more attracted to smellier feet, swarming
to worn socks like bees to a flower bed. “There is some
evidence that some proteins in the head of the mosquito
change somehow, and they have a role in the olfactory
response of mosquitoes,” says Smallegange. It’s a
devious mechanism that leads the malaria’s host to
home in on potential victims, so that it can continue its
life cycle in a human body. “It’s why the mosquito is
such a good vector of malaria.”
There are many ways this knowledge could help the
fight against malaria. Smallegange has also examined
whether the particular combination of smell-producing
bacteria on feet can alter your chances of being bitten;
as you might expect, those hosting more
Staphylococcus tend to be more attractive. Attempts to
combat those bacteria could therefore offer some
protection against the deadly disease.
Alternatively, the siren call of the odour could be used
to bait mosquito traps. One idea has been to bait traps
with used socks ; they seem to maintain their allure for
at least 8 days after wear. If that seems like a waste of
good underwear, Knols has also found that Limburger
cheese seems to do the trick. Smallegange, meanwhile,
is hoping to bottle the smell – using isovaleric acid and
other components to produce her own, synthetic odour.
(You could call it “eau de pied”.) “The combination is
very important,” she says. “In general, a blend is more
attractive than a single component.” It’s possible that
you will need to use different recipes for different
species of mosquito, though – each may have their own
particular tastes.
It’s unclear exactly how effective these measures will be
for protection. A small trial in Rusinga Island, Kenya is
currently investigating whether the traps can kill or
distract enough mosquitoes to reduce the overall
number of bites and infections. At the very least, they
could be used for an early warning – to detect whether
malaria-carrying mosquitoes are already breeding
nearby.
For most of us, cheesy feet are no more than an
inconvenience which can be temporarily fixed with a
shower. But Smallegange’s pursuits are worth bearing in
mind, whenever you catch a whiff of your under-soles.
With her collection of smelly socks, skin swabs and “eau
de pied”, she is doing a job that few of us could
stomach, all in the hope of saving lives. And that’s a
mission that’s not to be sniffed at.

One of South Korea's most controversial mergers has been given approval by shareholders of the construction company Samsung C&T.

The deal will see the firm taken over by holding
company Cheil Industries, another part of the Samsung
group.
The merger is strongly opposed by some of Samsung
C&T's shareholders, led by US hedge fund Elliott
Associates.
For Samsung's founding family, the move is a crucial
step in consolidating control of the conglomerate.
Shareholders in Cheil Industries approved the merger
earlier on Friday.
Shares in Samsung C&T fell 10.4% and Cheil Industries
dropped 7.7% after the merger was approved.
Power transfer
Elliott Associates, which is the second largest single
shareholder in C&T, says the takeover significantly
undervalues the company's stock.
The hedge fund had filed several unsuccessful law suits
to stop the vote from going ahead.
The takeover is key to consolidating the Samsung
founding family's control of the multi-headed
conglomerate.
It is of particular significance as it comes ahead of a
generational power transfer at Samsung.
The business empire's patriarch Lee Kun-hee has been
in hospital since May 2014 and his son Lee Jae-yong is
to take a bigger leadership role.

a statement French Formula 1 driver Jules Bianchi has died, nine months after suffering severe head injuries in a crash at the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix.

The 25-year-old had been in a coma since crashing his
Marussia car into a recovery vehicle in wet conditions in
Suzuka last October.
His family said: "Jules fought right to the very end, as
he always did, but today his battle came to an end."
Marussia, now known as Manor, said the team was
"devastated".
Bianchi is the first F1 driver to die from injuries
sustained in a Grand Prix since Brazilian triple world
champion Ayrton Senna was killed at Italy's Imola circuit
in 1994.
Bianchi died in hospital near his parents' home in Nice
in the south of France.
His family said: "We thank Jules's colleagues, friends,
fans and everyone who has demonstrated their affection
for him over these past months, which gave us great
strength and helped us deal with such difficult times.
"Listening to and reading the many messages made us
realise just how much Jules had touched the hearts and
minds of so many people all over the world."
Bianchi made his F1 debut with Marussia in 2013 and
was also a member of the Ferrari young driver academy
after previously working as a test driver for the team.
The Manor team tweeted: "We are devastated to lose
Jules after such a hard-fought battle. It was a privilege
to have him race for our team."
The accident happened when Bianchi's car slid off the
track and into a crane picking up German driver Adrian
Sutil, who had crashed at the same spot one lap earlier.
A working group of the sport's governing body, the FIA,
investigated the accident and found that as Bianchi went
off the track into the run-off area, he "applied both
throttle and brake together, using both feet" over-riding
the fail-safe mechanism. His front wheels had also
locked.
It also said that Bianchi "did not slow sufficiently to
avoid losing control".
The world of motorsport has been paying tribute to
Bianchi.
McLaren's Jenson Button posted on Twitter: "Last night
we lost a truly great guy and a real fighter. RIP Jules, my
sincerest condolences to his family and friends."
Lotus driver Romain Grosjean said: "Yesterday we lost
one of the best guys and best drivers I've ever met. I'll
miss you so much my friend.
Williams' Valtteri Bottas paid tribute, saying: "Woke up
to the very sad news. RIP Jules. You will be never
forgotten. My thoughts are with the family."
"No words can describe what his family and the sport
have lost. All I can say it was a pleasure knowing and
racing you," tweeted British driver Max Chilton, who was
Bianchi's team-mate last year.
"Rest in peace dear Jules. We lost a great fighter today.
All my thoughts are with you and your family," tweeted
endurance racer Andre Lotterer.