Latest Gliding Stories
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Scientists from the Michigan State University made a number of improvements on a high-tech robotic fish. The new fish, called Grace, was designed and built by Xiaobo Tan, an MSU associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and his team. They equipped the new fish with an array of sensors, allowing it to travel autonomously through the water, as well as measure water temperature, quality and other pacts. These...
Albatrosses leverage the energy of the wind to fly with essentially no mechanical cost to themselves, very rarely flapping their wings, and new work published Sep. 5 in the open access journal PLOS ONE offers insight into how exactly they accomplish this feat. The researchers, led by Gottfried Sachs of the Technische Universitaet Muenchen and Francesco Bonadonna of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), used advanced GPS tracking to determine that the energy gain during...
Never in the history of flight has a pilot flown 475 miles using only the sun and a small wing attached to their body. Zapata, TX (PRWEB) July 08, 2012 Dustin Martin, US Hang Gliding Champion, and Jonny Durand, an Australian RedBull athlete, smashed the World Hang Gliding Open Distance record with a powerless flight of over 474 miles from Zapata, Texas, to east of Lubbock. The previous record had been set almost a decade ago by Austrian world champion, Manfred Ruhmer, who flew 435 miles,...
FRANKFURT, Germany, May 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- With the German logistics company Conceptum Sport Logistics ( http://www.conceptum-sport-logistics.com), the organizers of the World Gliding Championship 2012 (http://www.wgc2012uvalde.us) have gained a well-known partner from the field of cultural project logistics. From July 28 until August 19, gliders from all over the world will fill the sky above Uvalde, Texas. 23 teams and 107 pilots will participate in the event once...
Las Vegas Powered Paragliding LLC provides a combination of Paragliding services that can't be found anywhere else in southern Nevada. Las Vegas Powered Paragliding LLC trained pilots are some of the best and safest paraglider/powered paraglider pilots and have the most fun possible in the sport. Las Vegas, NV (PRWEB) August 08, 2011 Las Vegas Powered Paragliding LLC offers flight training in Paragliding and Powered Paragliding. Las Vegas Powered Paragliding LLC sale and rent some...
Gripping tightly to a tree trunk, at first sight a colugo might be mistaken for a lemur. However, when this animal leaps it launches into a graceful glide, spreading wide the enormous membrane that spans its legs and tail to cover distances of up to 150m. So, when Greg Byrnes and his colleague Andrew Spence from the University of California, Berkeley, USA, were looking around for a mammal to carry the accelerometer/radio transmitter backpacks that the duo designed to track animals in the...
Underwater glider sets 2 Antarctic firstsResearcher Walker Smith of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, has been conducting shipboard studies of biological productivity in Antarctica's Ross Sea for the last three decades. This year he's letting underwater robots do some of the work.Smith and graduate student Xiao Liu are using a two-year grant from the National Science Foundation to deploy and test a free-swimming underwater glider in the frigid waters of...
Large birds, such as storks, save energy on the flight to their wintering grounds by soaring through the air on thermal currents. Until now, however, we knew nothing about the flight patterns of small migrating songbirds, such as whether they flap their wings or soar and whether these styles of flight allow them to save energy. Now, a team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell, Ben-Gurion-University of the Negev, and Hebrew University of Jerusalem have...
We're all familiar with birds that are as comfortable diving as they are flying but only one family of fish has made the reverse journey. Flying fish can remain airborne for over 40s, covering distances of up to 400m at speeds of 70km/h. Haecheon Choi, a mechanical engineer from Seoul National University, Korea, became fascinated by flying fish when reading a science book to his children. Realising that flying fish really do fly, he and his colleague, Hyungmin Park, decided to find out how...
Tracking fish across Alaska's vast continental shelves can present a challenge to any scientist studying Alaska's seas. Researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks have successfully tested a possible solution in the form of underwater gliders.Last month, Peter Winsor, associate professor of physical oceanography, and Andrew Seitz, assistant professor of fisheries, tested the use of autonomous underwater vehicles, called gliders, for tracking tagged fish. Winsor and Seitz suspended...
Latest Gliding Reference Libraries
A thermal column is a column of rising air in lower altitudes of the atmosphere. Thermal columns are created by uneven heating patterns of the Earth's surface from solar radiation. The sun warms the ground, and the air directly above the ground begins to warm. As the warm air expands, it becomes less dense than the air around it and rises. As the warmer air rises, it cools due to its expansion in lower high-altitude pressures. When it cools to the same temperature as the surrounding air, it...
The Greater Glider (Petauroides volans), is a large gliding possum found in Australia. It is more related to the Lemur-like Ringtail possum than it is to the lesser gliding possums of its genus. The Greater Glider is found in wet forestland from Mossman, Queensland, to Daylesford, Victoria. The Greater Glider is roughly the size of a cat and is a nocturnal and solitary herbivore feeding mostly on Eucalyptus leaves and buds. Like its relative the Lemur-like Ringtail, the Greater Glider is...
The Feathertail Glider (Acrobates pygmaeus), also known as the Pygmy Gliding Possum, is the world's smallest gliding mammal. It is named for its long feather-shaped tail. Although only the size of a very small mouse 2.56 to 3.15 in and .35 to .49 oz (65 to 80 mm and 10 to 14 g), it can leap and glide long distances from tree to tree. It can glide up to 27 yards (25 meters). Like other gliding mammals, the Feathertail Glider has a skin membrane between the fore and hind legs. It is thicker...
The Sugar Glider (Petaurus breviceps), sometimes called the Flying Sugar, is a small gliding possum. It is native to eastern and northern mainland Australia, New Guinea, and the Bismarck Archipelago, and introduced to Tasmania. Physical description The Sugar Glider is around 6.3 to 7.5 in (16 to 20 cm) long, with a tail almost as long as the body. It weighs between 3 and 5.3 oz (90 to 150 g). The fur is generally pearl grey, with black and cream patches at the base of the black or grey...
