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Jeanna Bryner Senior Writer LiveScience.com Wed Oct 8, 7:21 AM ET Pterodactyls may have gone extinct millions of years ago, but a newly designed spy plane could bring the flying reptiles to life, albeit replacing blood and guts with carbon fiber and batteries. ADVERTISEMENT "The next generation of airborne drones won't just be small and silent," the design team announced recently. "They'll alter their wing shapes using morphing techniques to squeeze through confined spaces, dive between buildings, zoom under overpasses, land on apartment balconies, or sail along the coastline." Called Pterodrone, the spy plane is about the size of a crow but with a much larger wingspan that reaches nearly 32 inches (80 cm). Its design will be inspired by one of the savviest movers of the Cretaceous, a pterosaur called Tapejara wellnhoferi. This ancient reptile was a morphing machine. On land, Tapejara walked on four legs before rearing up on its two back limbs and running to reach takeoff speed. Once airborne, the beast could cruise at some 19 mph (30 km/h), according to the researchers. Then, to snap up fish food, the reptile would bend the tips of its wings up to form a three-mast sailboat structure with its body. The membranous crest atop its head would have served as the third sail, used as a rudder for steering, said Sankar Chatterjee, a paleontologist of Texas Tech University who is working on the bio-inspired craft. Similarly, the Pterodrone will sport morphing wings and a head crest made of carbon fiber and nylon for such multimodal locomotion. "The crest is analogous to a vertical tail on an aircraft. However, a vertical tail is actually destabilizing if it is placed on the nose instead of the rear, said design team member Rick Lind, a mechanical and aerospace engineer at the University of Florida. "We are investigating the tradeoff such that the crest provides better turn performance and sensor pointing but also requires the wings to compensate and provide stability." While the real deal had blood vessels and nerves that served as sensors for temperature, pressure and wind direction, the Pterodrone will be equipped with gyroscopes and a GPS. "We are trying to build a vehicle that can mimic the motion of the pterosaur, but we are not trying to mimic its nerve/sensory system," Lind told LiveScience. Pterodrone is in the design phases right now, but its designers hope to complete a walking, flying and sailing prototype in the near future, depending on funding. The reptile-inspired concept will be detailed in a presentation this week in Houston at a joint meeting of the Geological Society of America, Soil Science Society of America-American Society of Agronomy-Crop Science Society of America, and Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies. * Top 10 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles * Video - Roboswift: The Robotic Bird * Video - Personal Spy Planes Take Off * Original Story: New Flying Dinosaur Drone to Resemble Pterodactyl LiveScience.com chronicles the daily advances and innovations made in science and technology. We take on the misconceptions that often pop up around scientific discoveries and deliver short, provocative explanations with a certain wit and style. Check out our science videos, Trivia & Quizzes and Top 10s. Join our community to debate hot-button issues like stem cells, climate change and evolution. You can also sign up for free newsletters, register for RSS feeds and get cool gadgets at the LiveScience Store.

Zur Hausen discovered that two types of HPV promote cervical cancer, bucking a prevailing idea that blamed a different kind of virus. He made the viruses available to the scientific community. That led to the development of HPV vaccines to prevent cervical cancer. Vaccination is recommended for millions of young women and girls in the U.S. Zur Hausen will get half of the $1.4 million prize, while the two French scientists split the other half. The discovery the AIDS virus by Montagnier and Barre-Sinoussi was crucial to understanding the biology of AIDS and how to fight it, the Nobel Assembly said in its citation issued in Stockholm, Sweden. Since the scientists' work in the early 1980s, millions of people with HIV are still alive thanks to new drug treatments. The announcement of the Nobel winners was notable for one scientist who was not named: U.S. researcher Dr. Robert Gallo, who almost 25 years ago also claimed credit for the discovery of HIV and who played a big role in research of the disease. The dual claims led to a high-profile dispute between Gallo and Montagnier. They agreed publicly in 1987 to share the discovery credit equally, as part of a settlement of patent claims for an AIDS blood test. But Gallo later said he'd found that his lab's cultures had accidentally become contaminated with AIDS virus from Montagnier's lab. Dr. Anthony Fauci, a prominent AIDS researcher and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md., said the French scientists clearly identified HIV first and deserved Monday's honor. Gallo would have been "an obvious choice" to be included on the Nobel if the prize's rules had allowed for a fourth recipient, Fauci said. That's because of Gallo's role in showing HIV causes AIDS and in a technical advance that allowed HIV to be isolated, he said.

Gallo, director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland, told The Associated Press that it was "a disappointment" not to be included in the Nobel. But he said all three of the winners deserved the honor. Reached in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where he is attending an international AIDS conference, Montagnier said he wished Gallo had been included in the prize. "It is certain that he deserved this as much as us two," he said. Montagnier said the prize "encourages us all to keep going until we reach the goal at the end of this effort." He said he remains optimistic about conquering AIDS. Progress in developing a vaccine to prevent it has been frustrating. Barre-Sinoussi said that when she and Montagnier isolated the virus 25 years ago they hoped they would be able to prevent the global AIDS epidemic that followed. Last year, more than 33 million people worldwide were living with HIV and 2.1 million died of AIDS, according to global health estimates. Two-thirds of HIV infections are in sub-Saharan Africa.