Intriguingly, brain organoids preserved in MEDY showed similar growth and function patterns to those that had never been frozen. Incredibly, one batch was frozen in MEDY for as long as 18 months, and still showed similar protections against damage after thawing.
The team also froze samples of living brain tissue taken from a human epilepsy patient, and found that MEDY protected them from damage. The process didn’t disrupt the structure of the brain cells, and even preserved the pathologies of epilepsy – that’s important, because it means samples can be frozen for later study or analysis without damage from the freezing process confusing the results.
Very cool especially for research - hopefully this can allow for better research into how the brain functions as they're able to amass rare brain issues and study them together with this new found ability to preserve brain matter
I'm cautiously optimistic about this, it seems like an okay idea and the fact that they have vehicles working on a test track IRL means it's at least not an obvious scam like hyperloop.
Also the fact that they have a specific use case in mind, don't say it's going to revolutionize all transportation, and are reusing existing infrastructure, all bode well.
The problem is that the wheels have flanges on both sides, so I don't think switches work.
The best solution would be a loop connecting the rails at each end, but that's obviously not compatible with running regular freight trains since it would need to be switchless.
Thus presumably they need to be externally flipped around and moved, for which I'd guess a crane like those used for moving containers on and off trains is ideal.
With a crane they could also easily move the vehicles to a storage area so freight trains can pass through.
I could imagine an autonomous, on-demand rural train service. Due to the low expected traffic, it seems like you could just build some additional sidings and use a more conventional design.
If someone was willing to invest into building and maintaining infrastructure there would be no need for this concept, but that's a political issue. The idea of this concept is do make the best of what you have.
And then you can widen it to fit more people abreast. Then lengthen it to fit more people front to back. Then hook them together because a lot of people are going to the same destination... The new becomes old again.
No disagreement at all, but I genuinely think something like this is at least worth consideration. In low traffic or rural areas having a "cab" on standby would come at worst with no downsides as long as it doesn't conflict with normal tram traffic.
At best it would be the best selling point to populations that have become accustom to personal vehicles. Be it for privacy, safety, poor time management, or whatever other reasons. Its also technically a monorail bahn
E: Also this one could've been just fine being its own cab, or we could also include the GYROSCOPE because everyone likes monorails with gyroscopes!
My main issue with these is they don't have any benefit a regular train doesn't have for long distance and for shorter commutes in low traffic areas that aren't densley populated enough to warrent a proper train or tram... You'd probably just a bike.
I happen to know the approximate area where this is being trialed, and a bike (even an electric one) is really only an alternative for hard-core all-weather bikers that have no problem driving 60+ kilometres a day.
The distances are just too far, the weather too bad 80% of the year, and the shrinking, elderly population too low density for other means of public transport to work economically.
The options are really either cars, such kind of novel ideas, or abandoning these tiny villages all together.
I think the one and only benefit would be that they can have carts going both directions at the same time using the existing 2 rail system, without building a second pair of rails. I'd love to see some sort of bike add-on that would let me do this with a bicycle.
Project founder Thorsten Försterling tells us that the team is working on a track-installed machine that will be able to lift individual pods off of one rail and place them on the other (without passengers in them at the time), keeping them from all collecting at either end of the route.
Still sounds dumb to me. How much effort would it be to lay down a second track, rather than invent a gyroscope-balanced pod that can propel itself along a single railroad rail, along with a specialized machine to move it over to the other rail?
Just dealing with with land rights for the extra space the second track would need is a nightmare. And the very idea of these is to use existing tracks without getting into new track construction.
Project founder Thorsten Försterling tells us that the team is working on a track-installed machine that will be able to lift individual pods off of one rail and place them on the other (without passengers in them at the time), keeping them from all collecting at either end of the route.
What the heck, can't you just have a Y at the end?
Hmm, so your thinking is they're not allowed to modify the existing tracks at all?
It just seems like building and maintaining a machine that lifts these pods, that's gotta be a magnitude more expensive than a slight change to the rails...
I'm not saying that it's hugely expensive. I'm just saying that a Y-shaped rail with a switch should be significantly cheaper.
Particularly, moving parts are a pain for maintenance. These kind of systems, you want to operate for 20+ years and the less bearings there are to oil, the better.
They're probably marketing this as requiring zero infrastructure changes to attract buyers and investors. Just put the pod lifter at the end of the track and it's done.
Yeah, that's quite possible, that they offer it for marketing. Maybe also to give municipalities an option to try out the system for a few months and see, if it attracts much interest. If it doesn't, you can just pack up the pods and cranes, and market it to the next city.
I was mainly confused how off-handedly this gets mentioned in the article, as if that was clearly the logical method for moving a vehicle from one place to another...
I'm definitely willing to believe that they've got monorail-like flanges. That would probably help with stabilizing. But where the hell are you able to see a picture of the wheels? There's a few angles in the video which quickly show the wheels, but I can't actually see much anyways. 🫠
Yes Louis Brennan designed a gyroscopic monorail in the early 1900's but there's a reason it didn't work out. Every car needs its own gyroscope which is a lot of dynamic components that need maintenance. A regular two rail train is much simpler and cheaper to operate. The idea these techbros have that everything is made better with individual pods is pretty wasteful when we already have better and cheaper solutions to virtually every problem they have tried to invent for us. Are we even super concerned about rural folks taking transit? By definition they are a small portion of the population and have the greatest need for personal transport. Where we need transit adoption is in urban areas with large populations who all want to drive their personal 2 tonnes of plastic and steel right into town and park it (for free obviously) in their own little parking space.
A gadgetbahn like this will only serve a limited population and won't be able to tie into the existing transit network. There might be niche situations where it's not a terrible idea but it is not a good generalized solution.
I could see those as an option for rural areas without much traffic. A full train might not be economical, but a small pod is. It could transport people to the closest proper train station where they can hop off.
But that would mean you'd have to maintain a ton of tracks for a handful of people.
This wouldnwork better on smaller scale, less traveled rural routes. Maintaining a whole ass train for a few dozen people is overkill. I kinda like this.
Depends on what you call a "whole ass train". Many of these routes could be easily service by a 1 or 2 car DMU like the rural routes in Scotland and Wales.
There are stations on Anglesey where you have to stick your arm out to hail the train, and the only two routes they lie on are served by the kind of 1970s DMU like you mentioned on its way to Chester or a Pendelino on its way to London or something.
I've used those request stops! Those sort of rural lines are exactly what we're missing here in the states, just bouncing back and forth on the line. You can see here Americans don't even know what they are, but they're the perfect solution for these lines going between little towns
They're definitely trains. I live next to a similar one. It is physically a train, with exactly the same hardware as trains on busier lines (though typically only hauling 1-2 carriages instead of 4+). It's just more fuel-efficient for a train to keep going through a station if nobody is getting on or off, so when passenger numbers are low, the practice is to let the driver know if you need on or off.
I live next to a railway line in the south west that is similar. A single train runs up and down the line. If you're on one of the stations, you wave to the train so it'll stop for you. If you're on the train and want to get off, you ask the driver to stop.
Seems like a train that uses both sides of the track fulfills different requirements. A train can only be made to go one way at a time, but can hold more people (increased bandwidth), but these smaller half-cars can be moving people in both directions at the same time (lower latency). Seems quite clever if it works out.
Would it though? It's just vans on tracks instead of roads.
It's not going to be more energy efficient with individually powered cabs. It's not going to be more convenient unless your origin and destination are near a station. It's not going to be more time efficient because of the extra distance getting to and from tracks and because you aren't going to drive highway speeds in tiny self-balancing cars on old rails, especially when passing cars going the opposite direction. It's not going to be more cost efficient because it's more total moving parts requiring maintenance per person per trip.
It sounds like they are solving the problem of turning around only for terminal stations. This might make sense for trains that carry many people, but if you're making cars on tracks there is no good solution. If you need to spend money on a system that turns the cabs around, then you either spend more money installing those systems at most stations or you spend money maintaining cabs that are driving around empty. Either way, cars on roads are cheaper.
They say it's good for people who don't want to wait for public transit, but they don't say how this solves that problem. With public transit, you know when the train will be there. With this, unless they have a way for the cabs to wait at the station without blocking other cabs going the same direction, you have to wait for a cab to come and you can't time your trip to the station around when the cab will be there. Maybe they have one? It would be a disaster if you wanted to get on from near the middle and needed to wait for either a cab that has already been vacated to come or for a cab to come all the way from the start of the track.
OK, it's 2pm. With this system, you call a pod and ride it. With a rural train, you check the schedule and see that the next train is at 5pm. And you have to plan your trip back as well. Great, time to take your car.
And you might say "let's have trains run at least once per hour then". That means running empty trains all day, not sure it's the best way to spend public money.
Old railway lines in Europe often aren't complete anymore and only cover relatively small distances.
There simply isn't enough infrastructure to handle a full train network and fixing them up would probably require existing infrastructure and buildings to be disowned and destroyed.
Some of this technology may sound a bit "over-ambitious," but keep in mind the project was inspired by a fully functional self-balancing monorail that mechanical engineer Louis Brennan designed and demonstrated back in the early 1900s.
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