Flying Robotic Ambulance Completes First Solo Test Flight

A new automated, flying ambulance completed its first solo flight, offering a potential solution for challenging search and rescue missions.

Completing such missions in rough terrain or combat zones can be tricky, with helicopters currently offering the best transportation option in most cases. But these vehicles need clear areas to land, and in the case of war zones, helicopters tend to attract enemy fire. Earlier this month, Israeli company Urban Aeronautics completed a test flight for a robotic flying vehicle that could one day go where helicopters can't.

On Nov. 14, the company flew its robotic flyer, dubbed the Cormorant, on the craft's first solo flight over real terrain. The autonomous vehicle is designed to eventually carry people or equipment (as reflected in its former name, the AirMule) without a human pilot on board.

Urban Aeronautics said the test was "a significant achievement for a student pilot, human or nonhuman," and said the company is "proud" of the vehicle's performance.

The Cormorant uses ducted fans rather than propellers or rotors to fly. These fans are effectively shielded rotors, which means the aircraft doesn't need to worry about bumping into a wall and damaging the rotors. Another set of fans propels the vehicle forward, according to Urban Aeronautics.

The robotic flyer pilots itself entirely through laser altimeters, radar and sensors. The system is "smart" enough to self-correct when it makes mistakes, company officials said. In a video released by Urban Aeronautics, the Cormorant tries to land, stops itself and then corrects its landing position.

The vehicle is effectively a decision-making system that can figure out what to do if the inputs from the sensors are off in some way, the company said. If the Cormorant detects a potential issue, the drone's robotic brain can decide what to do: go home, land and wait for more instructions, or try a different flight path, Urban Aeronautics said.

Despite the completion of this month's flight test, Urban Aeronautics still needs to refine some parts of the technology, the company said. For one, the test flight wasn't very long, lasting only a minute or two. And though the terrain was irregular (as in, not completely flat), it was still an open field without any real obstacles on either side. Further tests will look to improve how smoothly the aircraft goes from takeoff to level flight, and to increase speed and maneuverability, the company said in a statement

In Rare Disorder, Woman's Immune System Attacks Her Own Brain

A young woman's weeklong bout of "strange behavior" was caused by a rare disease in which the immune system attacks the brain, according to a new report of the woman's case.

The 27-year-old woman went to the emergency room in Colorado after a week of feeling ill. She had began experiencing short-term memory loss and anxiety, and later developed agitation, hallucinations and involuntary movements, the doctors who treated her wrote in their report.

Prior to that week, the woman had been healthy. She told the doctors that she hadn't drank alcohol, smoked tobacco or used any drugs, according to the report, published Nov. 30 in The New England Journal of Medicine.

When a person comes into the emergency room with an "altered mental status," doctors must consider a wide range of possible causes, which run the gamut from neurological conditions, to trauma, to psychiatric illnesses, to body-wide diseases, according to the report. [Here's a Giant List of the Strangest Medical Cases We've Covered]

The doctors ran tests and carefully evaluated the woman's symptoms, eventually ruling out that the problem could be an infection, or the result of a toxin or a metabolic disorder.

The woman's age, sex and the involuntary muscle movements suggested that she might have had a rare type of encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain, called anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, according to the report. The NMDA receptor, or N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor, is found on cells in the brain.

Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis is an autoimmune disorder, said Dr. Susan Mathai, who treated the woman and was the lead author of the case report. In autoimmune disorders, the immune system attacks a person's own body. In anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, the immune system makes antibodies that attack the NMDA receptor in the brain, said Mathai, who is also an assistant professor of medicine who teaches pulmonary science and critical care at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

When this attack happens, it causes inflammation in the brain, which, in turn, can cause neurological symptoms, such as seizures and a loss of muscle-movement control, Mathai told Live Science.

Although the disease is rare, it's "not as rare as people think," Mathai said. She noted that there have been multiple cases at the University of Colorado, and that this autoimmune disorder is "increasingly being recognized as a cause of encephalitis." About 4 out of 5 people with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis are women, according to the report.

Tests and treatment

To test for the condition, the doctors took a sample of the woman's spinal fluid. They found that it contained the antibodies, which confirmed she had the disease.

It's not entirely clear what causes a person to develop the autoimmune disorder. However, scientists think certain tumors may play a role.

Ovarian teratomas, which are a type of noncancerous tumor that grows on the ovaries, are the most common type of tumor found in patients with the disorder, according to the report.

In general, it's thought that certain proteins in these tumors trigger the immune system to create the antibodies that attack the NMDA receptor, Mathai said. 

Indeed, when the doctors looked at the woman's ovaries, they found such a tumor on her left ovary, and removed it, according to the report.

Tumor removal is an important part of treating the autoimmune disease, according to the report.

Doctors also need to remove all of the problematic antibodies from a person's blood. To do so, the woman in the case underwent plasmapheresis, a procedure to purify the blood, for five days, the doctors wrote. She was also given medications to suppress her immune system, in order to stop the production of more antibodies.

The woman has fully recovered from the illness, the doctors noted in the report.  

Lack of Sun in Teen Years Linked to Nearsightedness Later On

Teens and young adults who spend more time outdoors may be less likely to become nearsighted later in life than those who spend less time outdoors, a new study suggests.

People in the study who spent more time exposed to ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation — which the researchers calculated based on the participants' exposure to sunlight — between ages 14 and 39 were less likely to be nearsighted at 65 than those who spent less time exposed to UVB radiation, the researchers found.

"Increased UVB exposure was associated with reduced myopia, particularly in adolescence and young adulthood," the researchers wrote in the study, published yesterday (Dec. 1) in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology. Myopia is a term that eye doctors use for nearsightedness, where people can more clearly see objects if they are closer. [5 Experts Answer: What's the Best Way to Preserve My Eyesight?]

In the study, the researchers looked at 371 people with nearsightedness and 2,797 people without nearsightedness who lived in various locations in Europe, including Norway, Estonia, France, Italy, Greece, Spain and the United Kingdom. The people in the study were 65 years old, on average

Trained researchers examined the participants' eyesight, and collected blood samples to examine the levels of vitamin D in their blood. They did that because previous research had linked higher vitamin D concentrations to a lower risk of nearsightedness.

These researchers also interviewed the participants – they asked not only about their educations levels, diets and medical histories, but also about how much time the people had spent outdoors between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. since they  were 14 years old up to their current age.

The researchers then used the information about the participants' histories of exposure to sunlight and their geographical locations to calculate the levels of different types of outdoor sunlight wavelengths, including UVB wavelengths, the people had been exposed to.

It turned out that people who had been exposed to higher levels of UVB radiation — a factor that's closely related to how much time a person spends outdoors and is exposed to sunlight — as teens and young adults were less likely to be nearsighted at age 65 than those who had been exposed to lower levels of UVB radiation. This is in line with previous research, published in 2015 in the journal JAMA, that suggested that children who spent more time outdoors had a lower risk of becoming nearsighted.

However, in contrast to previous research, the new study did not find a link between higher levels of vitamin D and a person's risk of developing nearsightedness, the researchers said. [9 Good Sources of Disease-Fighter Vitamin D]

The new study shows a link between higher levels of exposure to UVB radiation and a lower risk of nearsightedness, but it does not prove that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between the two.

It is not clear exactly why UVB radiation or exposure to sunlight may be linked to a lower risk of nearsightedness, the researchers said. However, previous research suggested that sunlight might help stimulate the activation of certain cells in the eye, and may modulate a certain type of growth in the eye that is linked to nearsightedness, the researchers said.

Dr. Jules Winokur, an ophthalmologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, who was not involved in the study, said that the study was interesting, but had certain limitations. For example, it relied on people's recollections of how much time they had spent outdoors many years ago, when they were teens, which may not be a reliable or accurate source of this type of information, he said.

More research is needed to assess the relationship between people's exposure to sunlight and their risk of nearsightedness, Winokur said.

Reel Big: 112-Pound Catfish Caught in North Carolina

A gigantic, 112-lb. (50 kilograms) catfish was reeled in by a North Carolina man the day before Thanksgiving, according to local news reports.

The man, Riahn Brewington, caught the massive fish in the northeast section of Cape Fear River in North Carolina, local ABC affiliate WWAY reported. Despite its mammoth size, the fish was 5 lbs. (2.3 kg) shy of the state record for a reeled-in catfish.

Brewington said he could tell the catch was big, but he had only a 10-lb. (4.5 kg) line on his fishing rod. [Photos of the Largest Fish on Earth]

"In the water, it felt like it was pretty big … I thought it would have already snapped the line," Brewington told WWAY. "I didn't realize how big he was until I actually got my hands underneath him."

The beast pulled all the slack from the line, twice, during a 30-minute battle, before Brewington finally reeled in the catfish, WWAY reported. The fisherman took a few photos with the incredible catch, but then released the catfish back into the river.

A number of factors contribute to catfish growth, but according to Hal Schramm, a fisheries research biologist at Mississippi State University, temperature is a major factor.

"They begin active feeding and resume rapid growth at water temperatures above 70 degrees F [21 degrees Celsius], and growth isn't suppressed at high temperatures in natural waters if adequate food is available," Schramm wrote in an article for outdoor magazine In-Fisherman.

According to Schramm, catfish grow faster and larger in the warm waters of the South.

Lack of Sun in Teen Years Linked to Nearsightedness Later On

Teens and young adults who spend more time outdoors may be less likely to become nearsighted later in life than those who spend less time outdoors, a new study suggests.

People in the study who spent more time exposed to ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation — which the researchers calculated based on the participants' exposure to sunlight — between ages 14 and 39 were less likely to be nearsighted at 65 than those who spent less time exposed to UVB radiation, the researchers found.

"Increased UVB exposure was associated with reduced myopia, particularly in adolescence and young adulthood," the researchers wrote in the study, published yesterday (Dec. 1) in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology. Myopia is a term that eye doctors use for nearsightedness, where people can more clearly see objects if they are closer. [5 Experts Answer: What's the Best Way to Preserve My Eyesight?]

In the study, the researchers looked at 371 people with nearsightedness and 2,797 people without nearsightedness who lived in various locations in Europe, including Norway, Estonia, France, Italy, Greece, Spain and the United Kingdom. The people in the study were 65 years old, on average.

Trained researchers examined the participants' eyesight, and collected blood samples to examine the levels of vitamin D in their blood. They did that because previous research had linked higher vitamin D concentrations to a lower risk of nearsightedness.

These researchers also interviewed the participants – they asked not only about their educations levels, diets and medical histories, but also about how much time the people had spent outdoors between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. since they  were 14 years old up to their current age.

The researchers then used the information about the participants' histories of exposure to sunlight and their geographical locations to calculate the levels of different types of outdoor sunlight wavelengths, including UVB wavelengths, the people had been exposed to.

It turned out that people who had been exposed to higher levels of UVB radiation — a factor that's closely related to how much time a person spends outdoors and is exposed to sunlight — as teens and young adults were less likely to be nearsighted at age 65 than those who had been exposed to lower levels of UVB radiation. This is in line with previous research, published in 2015 in the journal JAMA, that suggested that children who spent more time outdoors had a lower risk of becoming nearsighted.

However, in contrast to previous research, the new study did not find a link between higher levels of vitamin D and a person's risk of developing nearsightedness, the researchers said. [9 Good Sources of Disease-Fighter Vitamin D]

The new study shows a link between higher levels of exposure to UVB radiation and a lower risk of nearsightedness, but it does not prove that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between the two.

It is not clear exactly why UVB radiation or exposure to sunlight may be linked to a lower risk of nearsightedness, the researchers said. However, previous research suggested that sunlight might help stimulate the activation of certain cells in the eye, and may modulate a certain type of growth in the eye that is linked to nearsightedness, the researchers said.

Dr. Jules Winokur, an ophthalmologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, who was not involved in the study, said that the study was interesting, but had certain limitations. For example, it relied on people's recollections of how much time they had spent outdoors many years ago, when they were teens, which may not be a reliable or accurate source of this type of information, he said.

More research is needed to assess the relationship between people's exposure to sunlight and their risk of nearsightedness, Winokur said.