UK Firms Aim to Beam 5G from Stratosphere Via Drones
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Nov. 5, 2020 Briton banned Twitter banned the account of British conspiracy theorist David Icke over 8 COVID-19 misinformation, BBC News reported. Science & Technology We’ve rarely seen a dinosaur UK firms aim to beam 5G brain like this before Some 230 million years ago, in the forests of what humans would eventually call Brazil, a small bipedal dinosaur zipped after its prey. It had a slender head, a long tail and from stratosphere via drones sharp teeth, and it was about the size of a basset hound. Buriolestes schultzi, as paleontologists have named the lans to beam 5G signals to the pub- creature, is one of the earliest known relatives of more fa- lic via drones that stay airborne for mous dinosaurs that emerged 100 million years later: The Pnine days at a time were announced lumbering brachiosaurus, up to 80 feet long and weighing by two UK firms. up to 80 metric tons, the likewise massive diplodocus, as They want to use antenna-equipped well as other sauropod dinosaurs, The New York Times re- aircraft powered by hydrogen to deliver ported. high-speed connectivity to wide areas, By the time the Jurassic period rolled around and the BBC News reported. time of Buriolestes had passed, these quadrupedal cousins Stratospheric Platforms and Cambridge had reached tremendous size. They also had tiny brains Consultants say they could cover the around the size of a tennis ball. whole of the UK with about 60 drones. Buriolestes’s brain was markedly different, scientists But telecoms analysts question wheth- who built a 3D reconstruction of the inside of its skull er the economic case for this scheme is report in a paper published in the Journal of Anatomy. quite as simple as it sounds. The brain was larger relative to its body size, and it had The Cambridge-based companies say structures that were much more like those of predatory they would run the service in partnership animals. The findings suggest that the enormous her- with existing mobile operators. bivores of later eras, whose ancestors probably looked They are already backed by Deutsche a lot like Buriolestes, lost these features as they transi- Telekom, which hopes to trial the technol- tioned to their ponderous new lifestyle. It’s also a rare ogy in rural southern Germany in 2024. CAMBRIDGE CONSULTANTS glimpse into dinosaurs’ neural anatomy at a very early Pilotless planes will fly at about 60,000ft. up and provide a 5G signal to mobile devices. moment in their evolution. Safety rules “This is a very high-density energy “Getting a network of constantly flying But he acknowledges they could be Cambridge Consultants designed the source, which enables us to produce a drones in the stratosphere within three or useful in hard-to-reach areas, for instance antenna for the Stratospheric Platforms huge amount of power for long periods of four years would be difficult.” “over large expanses of water, such as a aircraft, which is designed to fly at an al- time,” explained Richard Deakin. Deakin is a former chief executive of shipping lane.” titude of 20,000m (65,617ft.). He added that each drone would cover NATS — the UK’s National Air Traffic Delaney agrees, adding that the solu- They say they have successfully tested an area of 140km (87 miles) in diameter Control Service — so is well aware of tion might suit companies looking to beaming a lower-bandwidth signal from a below. what is involved. quickly link machines together, for ex- plane flying at a lower height. And users would get download speeds And he says the initiative is already ample autonomous trucks driving in and But so far, the drone required is still on of about 100Mbps — allowing them to talking to air traffic control services out of a mine. the drawing board and would need to be download a typical four-gigabyte movie across Europe. “You could see a role for a technology tested with an emission-free hydrogen in under six minutes. like this which lets you get coverage up fuel cell and 5G antenna on board. “Terrestrial masts are extremely expen- Shipping signals and running very quickly in very remote Google, with its Project Loon, is run- sive to install,” added Deakin. areas,” he said. ning a similar project to bring wireless “With our system, each aircraft will re- By 2024, UK mobile operators should For now, the biggest challenge could broadband to remote places using solar- place at least 200 masts.” have built much of their 5G networks. be funding. powered high-altitude balloons. But industry watchers say safety issues “It is unrealistic to expect that exist- Despite Deutsche Telekom’s involve- But the chief executive of Stratospher- need to be resolved. ing infrastructure is going to be displaced ment, the two British firms need more ic Platforms said using hydrogen fuel “The skies are very heavily regulated,” by a network of drones,” comments Ben money if they are to offer connectivity MÁRCIO L. CASTRO AND RODRIGO TEMP MÜLLER An artist’s concept of the skull and brain of the sauropodomorph cells is a superior solution. said John Delaney from research firm IDC. Wood from CCS Insight consultancy. from the stratosphere within four years. Buriolestes In 2009, Rodrigo Müller of the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria and colleagues discovered the first partial Buriolestes fossil in southern Brazil. In 2015, they uncov- DNA-based tagging tech ered another Buriolestes nearby — and this time, to their excitement, the dinosaur’s skull was nearly all there. They used computed tomography scanning to get a peek inside, could be replacing barcodes drawing inferences about the brain from the contours of the Scannable barcodes, QR codes and “With these initial barcodes, Porcu- cavity left behind. RFID tags may soon be surpassed by pine can produce roughly 4.2 billion They found that one portion of the cerebellum, the floc- DNA-based tagging technology. unique tags using basic laboratory cular lobe, was particularly large in Buriolestes. Researchers from the University of equipment without compromising reli- “This structure is related with the capability to track prey Washington and Microsoft Research ability upon readout.” with the eyes,” Müller said. in the US say they have developed a Recent advances in DNA sequenc- It’s tiny in the enormous brachiosauruses, diplodocuses fast, reliable and inexpensive system ing technology allowed the team to NASA and other sauropods that lived later, which suggests that the of molecular tagging that uses DNA ensure the system is inexpensive and The south pole of the Moon structure grew less important as they transitioned to eating sequences as identification, Cosmos user-friendly: DNA is notoriously dif- only plants. magazine reported. ficult to read and write, but by using Buriolestes also had small olfactory bulbs, suggesting Smaller and lighter than conven- synthetic, prefabricated strands, the Asteroid trailing after Mars that smell wasn’t of crucial importance to the little hunter. tional tags, this method can be used to cost could be lowered. In later sauropods, these bulbs grew in relative size, which track objects that are too small or too Additionally, dehydrating the might have helped them smell each other or detect preda- numerous to be tagged with existing strands after the initial tag assembly could be stolen twin of Moon tors. technology. both extends the tag’s shelf life and A distant asteroid trailing in the gravitational wake of Mars has been ob- Most striking, however, was the brain’s large size rela- The system, dubbed “Porcupine”, is prevents contamination from other served in greater detail than ever before, and the close-up reveals a surpris- tive to the rest of the body, Müller said. In many lineages, described in a paper in the journal Na- DNA in the environment. ing resemblance — one that raises some interesting questions about the ob- relative brain size increases over time, he said — but not, ture Communications. A portable nanopore device is then ject’s ancient origins. apparently, in this case. “Molecular tag- The asteroid in question, called (101429) 1998 VF31, is part of a group of “Probably this change is related with the feeding habits ging is not a new trojan asteroids sharing the orbit of Mars, sciencealert.com reported. changing,” he said. “Carnivorous animals generally need idea, but existing Trojans are celestial bodies that fall into gravitationally balanced regions more cognitive capabilities.” methods are still of space in the vicinity of other planets, located 60 degrees in front of and These details about Buriolestes’s brain are intriguing be- complicated and behind the planet. cause it is such an early dinosaur, said Lawrence Witmer, a require access to Most of the trojan asteroids we know about share Jupiter’s orbit, but oth- paleontologist and professor of anatomy at Ohio University a lab, which rules er planets have them too, including Mars and Earth too. who studies sauropods. out many real- What makes (101429) 1998 VF31 (hereafter ‘101429’) interesting is that “It gives us a window into the earliest evolution of the world scenarios,” among the Red Planet’s trailing trojans (the ones that follow behind Mars as brain and sensory systems of the largest animals ever to explained Wash- it orbits the Sun), 101429 appears to be unique. walk on land, the sauropod dinosaurs,” he said, noting that ington’s Kathryn The rest of the group, called the L5 Martian Trojans, all belong to what’s Buriolestes’s inner ear canal and floccular lobe suggest it Doroschak, the known as the Eureka family, consisting of 5261 Eureka — the first Mars used quick, coordinated movements of the head, neck and lead author.