Driving solely controlled by the brain, a morphing chassis and a cockpit that would look at home in a fighter jet: this is racing giant McLaren's vision for the future of motor-racing - the MP4-X Formula One concept.

Even with preparations for next season under way, McLaren's thoughts are already turning to years down the line with a new Batmobile-lookalike F1 car that utilises existing technology that could transform the sport when it reaches its full potential.

The MP4-X showcases some of the most advanced tech that McLaren's Applied Technologies division is working on and gives a glimpse of what life could be like on circuits around the world in the next generation of racing.  The design draws in current developments of the sport, such as the desire to provide protective canopies for drivers, while upgrading its core values of speed and excitement through development of almost every element to form a visually-stunning, technologically-advanced vehicle.

John Allert, group brand director of McLaren said: 'With the futuristic McLaren MP4-X concept race car, we wanted to peer into the future and imagine the art of the possible.  We have combined a number of F1's key ingredients – speed, excitement and performance, with the sport's emerging narratives - such as enclosed cockpits to enhance driver safety, and hybrid power technologies.  Formula 1 is the ultimate gladiatorial sport, and the future we envisage will be a high tech, high performance showcase that excites fans like no other sport.'

It certainly does that.  In addition to the protective canopy, other features of the car include tyre sensors that could warn of dangerous blow-outs before they occur, a race suit that would be able to transmit live biological information to the team and solar cells to supplement on-board systems or be used as a boost.

McLaren say much of the MP4-X would far outstrip the current generation of Formula One vehicles with 11 key areas of development focused upon.  The MP4-X could also potentially be controlled by signals from the driver's brain, with having no physical controls at all a 'theoretical possibility' or using gestures or holographic instrument panels within the cockpit.

Earlier this year researchers showed how brainwaves could control planes with the help of brain-to-computer (BCI) software.

During a public presentation, teams used a high-performance electroencephalogram (EEG) cap to measure the brain waves of a 'pilot'.   A bespoke software and algorithm then converted these brain signals into drone commands.

Tekever, a firm working on the project, said: 'Essentially, the electricity flowing through the pilot's brain acts as an input to the drone's control system, in order to perform, on the air, a mission with objectives previously defined by the research team.'

By thinking about which direction he wanted the drone to travel, the pilot was able to fly, turn and land the craft.  McLaren's concept could employ a similar system.

In the wake of recent serious and fatal accidents in the sport, changing from the open-cockpit racing format has been considered in order to reduce the number of injuries and deaths.

McLaren driver Jenson Button recently said: 'I was one of many drivers who said, 'This is open-cockpit racing, it should stay as open-cockpit racing,' but I think we've had enough now.  We've got to get a canopy on the car of some sort, because we can't have these sorts of accidents happening as much as they have over the last few years.  It's not the 1970s any more, we should know better.  Canopies probably are the way to go, but obviously that takes time.'

As far as McLaren are concerned, it seems the canopy is the favoured option for the future.  Their concept could improve a driver's visibility in different conditions while letting spectators see inside the cars.  The concept also includes some features currently banned in Formula One, but those regulations could be revisited as technology develops.  Electrodes that turn the air around the cars winds into plasma - plasma flow control - would be one option to help achieve top speeds after corners while the car's alloys could be adaptive by featuring shape memory.

There would be good news for sponsors, too.  Standard stickers would be replaced by a billboard that shows targeted adverts for specific viewers in a development that would see a car look unique to every viewer.

McLaren Marketing group head of digital and social media, Rob Bloom, says: 'Since when have the consumer demands of the fan in Lithuania and the fan in Lubbock, Texas been similar?  This approach merely reflects the diversity that could become available in a maturing digital age.'

The increased 'intelligence' of the concept vehicle would also see a structured chassis that could recover its original shape by morphing back after a deforming crash - providing more protection to drivers in the circumstances of a multiple collisions.

The MP4-X could also offer feedback on its own condition to help engineers understand problems quicker and easier than in the current way they work.

The technology extends to the driver's personal experience too, with augmented reality displays forming part of their view from the cockpit and a system similar to a fighter jet that McLaren say would effectively allow them to 'see through walls'.

Ferrari offered up their prediction for the future of Formula One earlier this year with a concept car of their own that was shown off in February.

Boss Maurizio Arrivabene said his team was trying to provoke its rivals into action with their restyled vehicle and it certainly seems to have pushed McLaren forward given their own futurist offering.

Formula One is discussing changes to its technical regulations for the 2017 season, which will look to make cars faster and more difficult to drive.  And McLaren might need the switch-up in technology as soon as possible... The just-ended season saw them finish on just 27 points in the Constructor Standings, a staggering 676 off winners Mercedes.

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Android users will be able bring 3-D versions of porn stars right into their living rooms thanks to a new app by adult entertainment studio Naughty America.

Naughty America released recently an augmented reality (AR) app for Android that allows phone users to create their own adult videos with digital porn stars at home.

The app scans a room using the phone's camera then on the screen superimposes a picture of a porn star, using Google's ARCore technology.  That means users can place their porn stars just about anywhere.  On their website Naughty America shows an adult performer standing in the nude in front of a pond with flamingos.

The app works similar to Pokemon Go which went viral two years ago for allowing phone users to interact with game characters in everyday settings.

The Naughty America AR app offers a free version with female and male porn stars in their underwear.  The characters have three to four second long videos where they do a few moves and address the viewer with dirty phrases, according to the New York Post.  Users who want more can pay to download completely nude characters.

Naughty America CEO Andreas Hronopoulos praises the app as 'the future of making content' as 'people can make their own scenarios', as said to Variety.  He says the AR app is a 'whole new era', adding 'For adults, it's obviously pretty massive'.

He added the company will create with longer video content if users request it.

Naughty America was one of the first companies to distribute VR porn and custom-made Deepfake porn, which allows users to superimpose their own faces on the bodies of porn stars.

The AR porn app is not available on Google or Apple as both have policies against distributing adult content on their app stores.  Naughty America is distributing the AR app directly on their website.  Hronopoulos says Naughty America may eventually manufacture content for AR headsets or VR headsets in the future.

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Liquid metal robots that can change their form and repair from damage just like the androids of the Terminator films could soon become a reality.  Researchers in China have developed a palm-sized prototype inspired by T-1000 from the science fiction franchise, albeit a lot less sinister.  The small, shape-shifting robot could be used to access environments that would be difficult for a human or fixed-shape bot to navigate, such as disaster zones.

The prototype, created by a team from the University of Science and Technology of China and the University of Wollongong in Australia is made up of a small plastic wheel, a lithium battery, and drops of gallium, a soft silvery metal, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

According to the researchers, liquid metal alloys are uniquely suited for soft robots due to their high conductivity, controllable surface tension, and flexibility.  This could prove useful for a wide range of applications, from military to medical.  Tiny robots could be used, for example, to deliver drugs through the body and directly attack tumor cells, the researchers told SCMP.

‘In the future, we expect to further develop soft robots incorporating liquid metal that could be used in special missions such as searching for and rescuing earthquake victims, since they can change shape to slide under doors or make it through spaces humans can’t get into,’ Tang Shiyang, from the University of Wollongong, told SCMP.

‘We think liquid metal alloys could help with the development of self-reconfiguring robots that can change their own shape,’ the researcher added.

In the prototype, the liquid metal drop were sealed into a tube that changes shape based on the voltage applied to it.  This, in turn, alters the center of gravity, and turns the plastic wheel.

The team published their work in the journal Advanced Materials this month, and is now planning to create a bot similar to Star Wars’ BB-8.  They’re also hoping to incorporate multiple wheels, and the ability to move in a three-dimensional environment, Tang told SCMP.

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A dad frustrated by the difficulties of feeding his three month old baby at night has invented a radical new breast-shaped bottle to make parent's lives easier.

Ayal Lanternari said he first started thinking about the design while waiting for milk to heat up for his son, Daniel, in the middle of the night.  'The bottle kind of designed itself in my head,' Lanternari told CNN.

He mentioned the idea to a friend and fellow biomedical engineer, Asaf Kehat, and the pair decided to pursue the idea and make it a reality.

Kehat told CNN: 'My first reaction was there was something so simple and genius about it.  It was an obvious solution.  I researched the baby bottle market and couldn't find anything like what Ayal had thought of.'

Because of the delicate properties of breast milk, parents are told not to microwave it or heat it directly on the stove.  Tests showed that they were able to cut the milk's warming time by more than half to about three to five minutes.

Called Nanobébé, the final product is a concave bottle that's meant to take after the shape of a mother's breast.  Nanobébé's unique design causes the milk to spread out into a thinner layer.  By expanding the milk's surface area, this allows it to warm up quickly.  This makes it so that parents can get the milk to their baby faster than having to heat it up on a stove or in the microwave, which have a high risk of damaging nutrients and immunological properties in the milk.

The FDA notes that bacteria in fresh breast milk doubles every 20 minutes when it's stored at room temperature.  Nanobébé is designed to slow that process.

'The unique geometry of nanobébé's Breastmilk Bottle and Storage Bags allows the breast milk to be spread into a thin layer that cools quickly, reducing bacterial growth.  It is beneficial to cool breast milk as quickly as possible so that the immunological properties inside go towards the baby's nutrition rather than fighting the bacterial growth,' the firm explained.

The firm describes the bottle as being 'the first and only baby bottle designed specifically to preserve essential breast milk nutrients.'  It features a minimalist design and is constructed so that babies can easily grasp it.  The company also claims that it warms stored breast milk twice as fast as standard bottles.  What's more, the bottle's concave shape allowed it to cool breast milk as fast as a traditional bottle could.  Adding to the device's ingenuity, the bottles can be stacked on top of one another for easy storage.

Nanobébé also offers 'starter sets' and 'newborn kits' that include a range of products in addition to the bottles.  The newborn kit, for example, includes three of the bottles, a drying rack, breast pump adapters, breast milk storage bags for the fridge or freezer, pacifiers, a smart warming bowl, plus the company's own microwave steam sterilizer, which cuts down on the cleaning process.  That will cost you about $95, but a 3-pack of bottles is more affordable at $23, or $49 for a starter pack of four bottles, two pacifiers and a smart warming bowl.  Ultimately, Nanobébé hopes that the innovative bottle can make busy mothers and fathers' lives easier.

Kehat said: 'Refusal to transition from breast to bottle is a point of concern for many parents upon mom's return to work or simply when she needs to be away from baby for a period of time.  The 'familiar' ergonomic shape of the bottle helps baby to instinctively connect, while faster warming satisfies immediate hunger needs.  Our bottle makes it easier for moms to combine breast and bottle feeding and provides an experience second only to direct breastfeeding.'

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If you thought deleting an app meant that was the last you'd ever see of it, think again.  Developers have figured out a way to determine which users have deleted an app and swiftly serve them up a lot of ads in a bid to get them to return.

A variety of firms have signed up as customers of these app tracking companies, which include Adjust, AppsFlyer, MoEngage, Localytics and CleverTap, among others, according to Bloomberg.  These firms offer uninstall trackers as part of a longer list of developer tools.

App developers are able to discern whether or not the user has uninstalled their software by utilizing silent push notifications.  Silent push notifications aren't a new tool.  Many apps use them to perform tasks in the background when the user isn't directly engaging with app.  For example, developers might send notifications to an installed app on a user's phone to update content inside the app, such as refreshing an email inbox.  When a user has removed the app from their phone, the developer won't receive a ping back from the device when they attempt to deliver a silent push notification.

Thanks to technology developed by those app tracking companies, developers can add those changes to the file linked to the mobile device's unique advertising ID, marking it as uninstalled, Bloomberg noted.  From there, this gives them the tools to be able to track the device owner wherever they go and serve up targeted advertisements beckoning them to re-download the app.

It's possible that the trackers violate Apple and Google's policies for iOS and Android, though neither firm responded to Bloomberg's request for comment.

'It's just generally sketchy to track people around the internet after they've opted out of using your product,' Alex Austin, CEO of Branch Metrics Inc., told Bloomberg.

Some app developers say the uninstall tracking features are used to improve their software and rid it of common bugs.  However, it seems unlikely that many users would deem it fair that an app be allowed to track their devices after they've uninstalled it.

Apple has created some tools to limit advertisers from being able to track users.  For example, users can anonymize their device's unique advertising ID by turning on 'Limit Ad Tracking.'  This can be done by going to Settings, then Privacy and navigating to the 'Advertising' section.  From there, users can swipe to turn on 'Limit Ad Tracking.'  This makes it so that advertisers see your unique identifier as a string of zeroes, safeguarding your identity from trackers.

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Bee populations may have plunged in recent years, but it seems they have been making honey while the sun shines, a survey has revealed.

Despite atrocious weather earlier this year, capped by the Beast from the East snowstorms, beekeepers said the long, warm summer has produced a honey crop up a third on the previous year to an average 30.8lb per hive.

The British Beekeepers Association (BBKA), which surveys its members every year, said that although this is still considered small compared to yields a few decades ago, new farming practices and a reduction in the use of pesticides are helping honeybees and other insects re-establish numbers.

Wales had exceptional improvements in its honey yield, nearly doubling from last year's average per hive to 31.4lb.

Calwyn Glastonbury, a beekeeper in the Usk Valley, said: 'Spring blossom came and went exceptionally quickly this year, which was a worry, but the warm summer more than made up for it and was great for our honeybees.'

Margaret Wilson, chairman of the BBKA, said: 'Honeybees and all our wild creatures need food to eat, and that can only come from what we plant and grow, so gardening and agricultural practices are incredibly important.'

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NASA has spotted a second perfectly rectangular iceberg in the Antarctic.  The second rectangular berg, known as a 'tabular' iceberg, was spotted off the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, near the Larsen C ice shelf and close to the first one.  It is part of a large field of bergs NASA experts may have recently broken off the shelf, and say the sharp angles and flat surfaces are evidence the break occurred very recently.

The image was taken during an IceBridge flight an airborne survey of the planet's polar ice that gives a 3D view of the ice that makes up the Arctic and Antarctic, providing vital information on how it changes over time.

'I thought it was pretty interesting; I often see icebergs with relatively straight edges, but I've not really seen one before with two corners at such right angles like this one had,' said IceBridge senior support scientist Jeremy Harbeck.

The rectangular iceberg appeared to be freshly calved from Larsen C, which in July 2017 released the massive A68 iceberg, a chunk of ice about the size of the state of Delaware.

In a different photo (above), Harbeck captured both the edge of the now-famous iceberg, and a slightly less rectangular iceberg.  That image also captures A68 in the distance.

'I was actually more interested in capturing the A68 iceberg that we were about to fly over, but I thought this rectangular iceberg was visually interesting and fairly photogenic, so on a lark, I just took a couple photos,' Harbeck said.

The flight originated from Punta Arenas, Chile, as part of a five-week-long IceBridge deployment, which began Oct. 10 and is scheduled to conclude Nov. 18.

The scheme is NASA's longest-running aerial survey of polar ice.  During the survey, designed to assess changes in the ice height of several glaciers draining into the Larsen A, B and C embayments, IceBridge senior support scientist Jeremy Harbeck spotted a very sharp-angled, tabular iceberg floating among sea ice just off of the Larsen C ice shelf.  The strange, angular berg is known as a tabular iceberg.  'The iceberg's sharp angles and flat surface indicate that it probably recently calved from the ice shelf.'

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A strange gigantic 'monolith' iceberg has been spotted by NASA scientists flying over Antarctica.  The rectangular berg was spotted off the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, near the Larsen C ice shelf.  NASA experts believe it may have recently broken off the shelf, and say the sharp angles and flat surfaces are evidence the break occurred very recently.  The strange, angular berg is known as a tabular iceberg.

The image was taken during an IceBridge flight—an airborne survey of the planet's polar ice that gives a 3D view of the ice that makes up the Arctic and Antarctic, providing vital information on how it changes over time.

In an interview with LiveScience, NASA scientist Kelly Brunt said: 'tabular icebergs are rather like fingernails that crack of, giving them sharp edges.  What makes this one a bit unusual is that it looks almost like a square.'  She estimated its size to be about a mile wide.

Scientists have been closely tracking Larsen C since a massive iceberg broke free, and began to spin.  Experts had previously said the giant area, estimated to be about the size of Delaware, was locked into place, saying it 'likely got stuck on the sea bed'

'But now A68 has started to swing northwards.  You can see that between 7-12 July 2018 the weather conditions and ocean currents conspire to swing the trillion tonnes of the giant iceberg A68 in an anticlockwise direction.   My guess is that A68a will continue rotating as it is now around that western point, until what is currently the northern edge collides with the Larsen C ice front.  It has a spectacular amount of momentum and it's not going to stop easily.  I should think we will see some interesting collisions with the ice shelf in the next few months,' said Polar oceanographer Mark Brandon recently, who spotted the movement using temperature data collected by the Suomi NPP satellite.

It is believed a 'temperature anomaly' on 20 July 2018, when it was almost 20 °C warmer than the mean over the Weddell Sea and Larsen Ice shelf, may have triggered the rotation beginning.

Glaciologist and former Project MIDAS collaborator Martin O'Leary told Earther a collision is 'certainly possible'.  He doubts it would have much of an effect on either the iceberg or shelf given the slow-motion speed at which it would occur.  Eventually, O'Leary says the prevailing ocean currents will push the iceberg northwards and eastwards into the Southern Ocean 'where it will probably break up and melt.'  Last year it was revealed dense ice cover had so far prevented it from drifting far out to sea.

An animation showing its movement over the last few months reveals how the trillion-plus ton Iceberg A-68 has shifted as it's battered by ocean currents, tides, and winds in the Weddell Sea.  While the huge chunk of ice, estimated to be about the size of Delaware, has moved around some, the experts say its surroundings have kept it somewhat locked into place. 

Iceberg A-68 is the sixth largest iceberg on record since scientists began keeping track, and its separation from the ice shelf sparked fears about its future impacts on global sea levels.

Despite all the activity in the Weddell Sea, 'its northern end has repeatedly been grounded in shallower water near Bawden Ice Rise,' according to Project Midas researchers, who have been monitoring the iceberg over the last year: 'These groundings led eventually to further pieces of the iceberg being shattered off in May 2018.  Whilst not quite large enough to be given labels themselves, the total area of icebergs lost from A-68 in May was the size of a small city.'

Earlier this year, scientists released the first-ever footage of 'A-68', a trillion-ton iceberg the size of Delaware that has broken off from Antarctica.  Stunning aerial clips capture the huge crack in Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf that led to the third largest iceberg ever recorded breaking off from the continent last July.

When A-68 separated from Larsen C, it revealed an ocean hidden under the ice shelf for 120,000 years, and a team of scientists are now studying the region to uncover some of the hidden ecosystem's mysteries.

Led by the Cambridge-based British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the group will study tiny animals, microbes and plankton on the seafloor to see how they cope with severe changes to their environment.  As part of preliminary research for the trip, the team have taken aerial footage of the iceberg to monitor how far it has drifted to sea - the very first video captured of the berg since it calved from Larsen C last year.

Marine biologist Dr Katrin Linse, the BAS researcher leading the mission, said: 'The calving of A-68 provides us with a unique opportunity study marine life as it responds to a dramatic environmental change.  It's important we get there quickly before the undersea environment changes as sunlight enters the water and new species begin to colonise.  We've put together a team with a wide range of scientific skills so that we can collect as much information as possible in a short time.  It's very exciting.'

The scientists are travelling by ship to collect samples from the newly exposed seabed, which covers an area of around 5,800 square kilometres.  The team says their mission is urgent because the ecosystem that's likely hidden beneath the ice for thousands of years may change as sunlight starts to alter the surface layers of the sea.

The team will investigate the area previously under the ice shelf by collecting seafloor animals, microbes, plankton, sediments and water samples using a range of equipment including video cameras and a special sledge pulled along the seafloor to collect tiny animals.  They will also record any marine mammals and birds that might have moved into the area.  Their findings will provide a picture of what life under the ice shelf was like so changes to the ecosystem can be tracked.

A-68 is 190 meters thick from top to bottom, with just 30 meters of it is visible above the ocean.  The iceberg was formed by a single crack along Larsen C, its parent ice shelf, and makes up a little over 10 per cent of the shelf.

BAS researchers flew around the iceberg to get a better view of it as it drifts into the Weddell Sea.

This newly exposed marine area is the first to benefit from an international agreement made in 2016 by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).  This agreement designates Special Areas for Scientific Study in newly exposed marine areas following the collapse or retreat of ice shelves across the Antarctic Peninsula region.  The agreement came following a European Union proposal to CCAMLR, led by BAS scientists.

Professor David Vaughan, Science Director at BAS, said: 'The calving of A-68 offers a new and unprecedented opportunity to establish an interdisciplinary scientific research programme in this climate sensitive region.  Now is the time to address fundamental questions about the sustainability of polar continental shelves under climate change.  We need to be bold on this one. Larsen C is a long way south and there's lots of sea ice in the area, but this is important science, so we will try our best to get the team where they need to be.' 

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Deafness could be reversed, research suggests.  Scientists have discovered how to regrow cells in the ear that are critical for hearing.

Viruses, genetics and even existing drugs could trigger little hairs to regrow in the inner ear, according to a study by the University of Rochester.  These hairs are the first step in picking up on noises and are not naturally replaced when killed off by age or overexposure to loud noise.

Humans do not regenerate hair cells in the inner ear once they are lost, which leads to permanent hearing damage.  These hair cells move in response to vibrations, which causes nerve impulses to be sent to the brain where they are interpreted as sounds.  In other animals, however, such as birds, frogs and fish, surrounding cells in the inner ear, known as the cochlear, can change into hair cells.  Although unclear exactly how this occurs, it is thought to be driven by protein signalling.

'It’s funny, but mammals are the oddballs in the animal kingdom when it comes to cochlear regeneration,' study author Dr Jingyuan Zhang said.

The researchers analysed the effects of one of these proteins, known as ERBB2, in the hair cells of newborn mice.  Previous studies suggest ERBB2 is involved in the production of new hair cells.  Results of the new trial confirmed surrounding cells that expressed ERBB2 were more likely to become hair cells.

The scientists then tested the effects of viruses that trigger ERBB2 production.  They also genetically modified the mice to over-express ERBB2 and gave them drugs that are known to activate the protein.  These drugs are already used to stimulate cell regeneration in the eyes and pancreas.  All these methods led to greater hair cell production.  The study was published in the European Journal of Neuroscience.

Lead author Professor Patricia White said: 'The process of repairing hearing is a complex problem and requires a series of cellular events.  You have to regenerate sensory hair cells and these cells have to function properly and connect with the necessary network of neurons.  This research demonstrates a signaling pathway that can be activated by different methods and could represent a new approach to cochlear regeneration and, ultimately, restoration of hearing.'

Hearing loss affects around 37.5 million people in the US and 11 million in the UK to some extent.  It is a normal part of getting older but can also be triggered by viral infections, diabetes, ear injuries and overexposure to loud noise.

This comes after research released earlier this year suggested children who were exposed to smoke in the womb and as babies are more than twice as likely to be deaf.  Nicotine interferes with chemical messengers in the nerve that tells the brain what sound it is hearing.  Smoking may also irritate the lining of the middle ear.

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Take a look at a world map and you’re likely to think that North America and Russia are both larger than Africa.  But in reality Africa is three times bigger than North America and significantly larger than Russia too.

This strange distortion has been explored by a climate data scientist at the Met Office who has created a two dimensional representation of what the world really looks like.  His incredible map shows that many countries - including Russia, Canada and Greenland - are not nearly as big as we think.

The world map distortion is the result of the Mercator projection - the map most commonly seen hanging in classrooms and in text books, which was created in 1596 to help sailors navigate the world.

The biggest challenge with creating an accurate map is that it is impossible to portray the reality of the spherical world on a flat map – a problem that has troubled cartographers for centuries.  As a result, shapes of world maps have typically been diverse, ranging from hearts to cones.

But the diversity gradually faded away with one model, invented by Gerardus Mercator in 1596, which surpassed the others.  The familiar 'Mercator' projection gives the right shapes of land masses, but at the cost of distorting their sizes in favour of the wealthy lands to the north.

Mr Neil Kaye, a climate data scientist at Met Office, created an accurate world map that shows countries near the northern hemisphere are much smaller than people typically think.  He did this by inputting Met Office data on the sizes of each country into Ggplot, which is a data visualisation package for statistical programming.  He then created the final map using a sterographic projection.  This is a mapping function that projects a sphere onto a plane.

'There was then some manual tweaking of countries that are closer to the poles.  This demonstrates you can't fit shapes on a sphere back together again once you put them on the flat,' wrote Mr Kaye on Reddit.

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