Year: 2018

Impact Lab > 2018
Agriculture, Animals, Farms, Green Friendly, Inventions

World’s first floating dairy farm could be wave of the future

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Floating farm project leader Mink van Wingerden beside the floating dairy farm plaform being built at Merwehaven in the Dutch city of Rotterdam.

“It’s a logical step to produce fresh food on the water.”

You’ve heard of offshore drilling platforms and offshore wind farms. Now a Dutch company is developing what’s being called the world’s first offshore dairy farm. Plans call for the high-tech, multilevel facility to open this fall in Rotterdam, a port city about 50 miles southwest of Amsterdam.

Continue reading… “World’s first floating dairy farm could be wave of the future”

Analysis, Google, Money Talk

Google now provides a big data view of Etherium blockchain

 

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Internet search giant Google has added ethereum to its big data analytics platform BigQuery.

Making the announcement in a blog post on Saturday, the company said that, while an API exists for commonly used functions such as checking transaction status or wallet balances, it’s not so easy to access all of the data stored on the ethereum blockchain.

The post continues to say that “perhaps more importantly,” the API doesn’t allow for viewing blockchain data “in aggregate.”

Continue reading… “Google now provides a big data view of Etherium blockchain”

Alternative Transportation, Breakthrough Thinking, Engineering, Science & Technology News, Space, Space Flight

Can we get into space without big rockets?

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Since humans began putting satellites into orbit in the 1950s, we’ve relied upon big, powerful rockets to escape Earth’s gravity and get into space. But big rockets have a major downside, in that they make space launches expensive. Case in point: NASA’s Space Launch System heavy lift rocket, which is scheduled for its maiden flight in December 2019, will cost an estimated $1 billion per launch, according to a 2017 report by NASA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). Launch costs for SpaceX’s far more economical Falcon Heavy, which launched successfully from Kennedy Space Center in February 2018, still range between $90 million and $150 million for a fully expendable, maxed-out version, according to CNBC.

For decades, however, visionaries have looked for ways to get into space without relying — at least not primarily — upon rocket power.

Continue reading… “Can we get into space without big rockets?”

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Children, Futurist, Robots, Science & Technology News

Kids will build ’emotional bonds’ with robots and ignore their parents, futurologist predicts

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Children will soon have their own ‘cute’ artificial intelligence-equipped robot toys and will pay more attention to the machines’ advice than guidance issued by their parents.

That’s the warning from futurologist Ian Pearson, who was speaking at an event by the tech firm Beko held at the IFA 2018 conference in Berlin. He said robots would be commonplace in our homes within the next 15 years. But parents will be concerned to hear that he believes they will have a greater influence on ‘educating and training’ children than their own parents.

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Biotech, Breakthrough Thinking, DNA, Medicine, Nanotechnology

Genetically engineered bacteria paint microscopic masterpieces

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Scientists have used genetically engineered bacteria to recreate a masterpiece at a microscopic scale. By engineering E. coli bacteria to respond to light, they’ve guided the bacteria like tiny drones toward patterns that depict Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. It’s not artistic recognition they’re after. Rather, the researchers want to show that these engineered organisms may someday be used as “microbricks” and living propellors.

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3D Printer, Automation, cutting edge, Home Technology

Research team develops the world’s first-ever 4-D printing for ceramics

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A research team at City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has achieved a groundbreaking advancement in materials research by successfully developing the world’s first 4-D printing for ceramics, which are mechanically robust and can have complex shapes. This could turn a new page in the structural application of ceramics.

Ceramic has a high melting point, so it is difficult to use conventional laser printing to make ceramics. The existing 3-D-printed ceramic precursors, which are usually difficult to deform, also hinder the production of ceramics with complex shapes. To overcome these challenges, the CityU team has developed a novel “ceramic ink,” which is a mixture of polymers and ceramic nanoparticles. The 3-D-printed ceramic precursors printed with this novel ink are soft and can be stretched three times beyond their initial length. These flexible and stretchable ceramic precursors allow complex shapes, such as origami folding. With proper heat treatment, ceramics with complex shapes can be made.

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3D Printer, Analysis, Biotech, cutting edge, Healthcare, Medicine

CDC uses HP bioprinters to speed up testing for new antibiotics

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The pilot will help test effectiveness against superbugs.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention is turning to some bleeding edge tech in its bid to stamp out drug-resistant ‘superbug’ bacteria. It’s buying a slew of HP bioprinters (the D300e you see above) as part of a pilot program that could speed up the testing of more effective antibiotics. The machines will give regional labs in New York, Minnesota, Tennessee and Wisconsin their first shot at printing drug samples used for developing and running antimicrobial susceptibility tests. Hospitals won’t have to wait for testing or else risk mistakes like overusing drugs.

The testing will start at CDC’s regional labs in the first quarter of HP’s fiscal 2019 (between November and January). Its initial focus is on widely resistant bacteria. And HP won’t be done once th e bioprinters are in the Center’s hands. HP will help the CDC study the success of the pilot, tweak it if needed, and explore the possibility of wider-scale printer uses if the test proves successful. This may become an instrumental part of fighting superbugs if all goes smoothly.

Via Engadget 

AI, Education, Engineering, IBM Watson

IBM’s Holodeck-style classroom tech makes language-learning apps look primitive

Whether it’s apps like Duolingo or the ease of travel, there are plenty of ways technology has made it more straightforward to learn a second (or third or fourth …) language. Now, IBM Research and New York’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have come up with an entirely new high-tech approach — and it totally reminds us of the Vulcan school from 2009’s Star Trek movie.

Called the Cognitive Immersive Room (CIR), it pairs an A.I.-powered chatbot smart assistant with a 360-degree panoramic display system to place users into a variety of immersive locations to try out their language skills. Currently, it’s being used for Mandarin, which is widely considered to be among the more difficult languages for Westerners to learn. The CIR setup drops students into scenarios like a restaurant in China and a tai chi class, where they can put their Mandarin to the test.

Continue reading… “IBM’s Holodeck-style classroom tech makes language-learning apps look primitive”

Architecture, Breakthrough Thinking, Engineering, Great New Product, Housing

New “Super Wood” is as strong as steel

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Wood is great. It looks nice as a building material. It grows right out of the ground. But compared to things like concrete, marble, and steel, it’s not all that strong. Well, it didn’t used to be, anyway. Scientists have now created a “super wood” that’s strong enough to stop a bullet.

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3D Printer, Automation, Housing, Military, Science & Technology News

The Marines 3D printed a concrete barracks

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Letting robots do construction jobs on the battlefield frees Marines to fight.

Forging ahead with plans to have robots do “dull, dangerous and dirty” jobs, the U.S. Marine Corps used a 3D printer to create a barracks building out of concrete. The process, which took less than two days, created a hardened living space capable of resisting enemy fire, a real improvement over canvas and nylon tents.

The U.S. Marine Corps moves around a lot, deploying worldwide, often to dusty, remote locations for months at a time. As a consequence, they tend to build a lot of housing for themselves, and it takes a team of ten Marines five days to build a barracks from wood. Not only is construction dangerous, it also prevents those ten Marines from doing other things during those five days.

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