2020 – Page 76 – Impact Lab

Batteries, Battery, Energy, Engineering, Science & Technology News

High-density hybrid powercapacitors: A new frontier in the energy race

March 17, 2020

Toomen’s high-density hybrid power capacitors offer the density of lithium batteries, but with much greater charge and discharge rates, a massive range of safe operating temperatures, enormous lifespans and no danger of explosion

Hybrid “power capacitors” that can store as much energy as lithium batteries, but with much higher charge/discharge rates, a huge range of safe operating temperatures, super-long lifespans and no risk of explosion are already in production, says a small Belgian company that’s been testing them and selling them for some time.

Chinese family-owned company Shenzhen Toomen New Energy is tough to find, at least on the English-language internet, but Belgian electronic engineer Eric Verhulst bumped into Toomen representatives on a tiny stand at the Hannover Messe expo in Germany back in 2018, while looking for next-gen battery solutions for an electric mobility startup he was running.

The Toomen team made a hell of a claim, saying they’d managed to manufacture powerful supercapacitors with the energy density of lithium batteries. “Of course, that’s an unbelievable claim,” Verhulst told us. “It’s a factor of 20 better than what, for example, Maxwell had at the time. So I took my time, went over there, looked at their tests, did some tests myself, and I got convinced this is real. So at the end of 2018, we made an agreement to become their exclusive partner.”

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Drone, drones, military drones, Science & Technology News, Weapons

Drone swarms use nets to catch other drones in flight

March 16, 2020

Sandia National Laboratories researchers leading the MARCUS project are working to develop a system that addresses current and future national security threats posed by small unmanned aircraft systems

Robotics engineers from Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) are developing drones that can capture hostile drones in flight. Funded by the NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme, the Mobile Adaptive/Reactive Counter Unmanned System (MARCUS) project uses swarms of four unmanned quad-copters working in concert to intercept a drone and catch it in a net.

As drones become more numerous and more sophisticated, they also pose a growing threat. Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are now a major component of the world’s major militaries but drones are also showing up in terrorist attacks, invasions of privacy, or acts of mischief at airports that could down an aircraft.

There have been a number of anti-drone systems developed over the years, including jammers, lasers, and even eagles trained to bring them down, but MARCUS aims to not only counter the threat of small UAVs but also to capture them for disposal or information gathering. According to SNL, this isn’t the first system to use nets but it is the first to combine nets with teams of drones controlled by a ground-based computer to coordinate the swarm’s course to ensure interception.

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Elon Musk, Science & Technology News, Space Flight, SpaceX

Elon Musk says he’s ‘definitely going to be dead’ before humans ever reach Mars — unless the pace of innovation picks up

March 16, 2020

An illustration of a woman orbiting Mars inside a SpaceX vehicle. Elon Musk/SpaceX

Elon Musk said he’s “definitely going to be dead” before humans reach Mars unless innovation speeds up.

The SpaceX CEO made the comments on Monday while speaking to attendees of the Satellite 2020 conference in Washington, DC.

Musk said the biggest obstacle is designing and building a large and “rapidly reusable” rocket.

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Electric Automobile, Elon Musk, Record Breaker, Science & Technology News, Tesla

Tesla produces its 1 millionth electric car

March 14, 2020

Tesla announced that it produced its 1 millionth electric car — becoming the first automaker to achieve the milestone.

Only a few years ago, many people didn’t believe that Tesla could produce electric vehicles in any meaningful numbers, but the automaker managed to ramp up three electric vehicle programs: Model S, Model X, and Model 3.

Now it is about to launch its fourth electric vehicle, the Model Y, and it is doing it on the momentum of a new milestone.

Today, CEO Elon Musk announced that Tesla produced its 1 millionth car and released a picture of the car, a Model Y, and the team who made it:

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Genes, Health & Fitness, Healthcare, Science & Technology News

How caloric restriction prevents negative effects of aging in cells

March 14, 2020

Summary:

A new study provides the most detailed report to date of the cellular effects of a calorie-restricted diet in rats. While the benefits of caloric restriction have long been known, the new results show how this restriction can protect against aging in cellular pathways.

If you want to reduce levels of inflammation throughout your body, delay the onset of age-related diseases, and live longer, eat less food. That’s the conclusion of a new study by scientists from the US and China that provides the most detailed report to date of the cellular effects of a calorie-restricted diet in rats. While the benefits of caloric restriction have long been known, the new results show how this restriction can protect against aging in cellular pathways, as detailed in Cell on February 27, 2020.

“We already knew that calorie restriction increases life span, but now we’ve shown all the changes that occur at a single-cell level to cause that,” says Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a senior author of the new paper, professor in Salk’s Gene Expression Laboratory and holder of the Roger Guillemin Chair. “This gives us targets that we may eventually be able to act on with drugs to treat aging in humans.”

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communication, cutting edge, Engineering, Science & Technology News

Cloud data speeds set to soar with aid of laser mini-magnets

March 14, 2020

Model of a single-molecule magnet

Tiny, laser-activated magnets could enable cloud computing systems to process data up to 100 times faster than current technologies, a study suggests.

Chemists have studied a new magnetic material that could boost the storage capacity and processing speed of hard drives used in cloud-based servers.

This could enable people using cloud data systems to load large files in seconds instead of minutes, researchers say.

A team led by scientists from the University of Edinburgh created the material—known as a single-molecule magnet—in the lab.

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AI, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News, Shopping

AI is growing, but the robots are not coming for customer service

March 14, 2020

Recent data out of the World Economic Forum in Davos has shed new light on the role that AI and customer service are playing in shaping the future of work. Jobs of Tomorrow: Mapping Opportunity in the New Economy provides much-needed insights into emerging global employment opportunities and the skill sets needed to maximize those opportunities. Interestingly, the report, supported by data from LinkedIn, found that demand for both “digital” and “human” factors is fueling growth in the jobs of tomorrow, raising important considerations for a breadth of industries worldwide.

The report predicts that in the next three years, 37% of job openings in emerging professions will be in the care economy; 17% in sales, marketing and content; 16% in data and AI; 12% in engineering and cloud computing; and 8% in people and culture. Among the roles with fastest projected growth include specialists in both AI and customer success, underscoring the need for technology, yes, but technology that incorporates the human touch.

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AI, Machine Learning, Robots, Science & Technology News

This robot taught itself to walk entirely on its own

March 14, 2020

Google is creating AI-powered robots that navigate without human intervention—a prerequisite to being useful in the real world.

Within 10 minutes of its birth, a baby fawn is able to stand. Within seven hours, it is able to walk. Between those two milestones, it engages in a highly adorable, highly frenetic flailing of limbs to figure it all out.

That’s the idea behind AI-powered robotics. While autonomous robots, like self-driving cars, are already a familiar concept, autonomously learning robots are still just an aspiration. Existing reinforcement-learning algorithms that allow robots to learn movements through trial and error still rely heavily on human intervention. Every time the robot falls down or walks out of its training environment, it needs someone to pick it up and set it back to the right position.

Now a new study from researchers at Google has made an important advancement toward robots that can learn to navigate without this help. Within a few hours, relying purely on tweaks to current state-of-the-art algorithms, they successfully got a four-legged robot to learn to walk forward and backward, and turn left and right, completely on its own.

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3D Printer, Housing, new technology, Robotics, Science & Technology News

3D-Printed Homes: The concept is now turning into something solid

March 17, 2020

Homes of the future, made through 3-D printing

In a Northeast Austin neighborhood, new 3-D-printed homes are taking their distinctive shape on the grounds of the Community First Village, where about 180 formerly homeless people have found shelter and camaraderie in the most expensive city in Texas. (Regan Morton Photography)

AUSTIN — Tim Shea is counting the days until he can move into a new 3-D-printed house. Shea, 69, will be the first to live in one of six such rentals created by what some in the housing industry call a futuristic approach that could revolutionize home construction.

Shea is among a growing number of seniors in America who have struggled to keep affordable housing. He has, at times, been homeless. He has arthritis and manages to get around with the aid of a walker. He said he looks forward to giving up the steep ramp he’s had to negotiate when entering or exiting the RV he’s called home.

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Aviation, Breakthrough Thinking, Energy, Science & Technology News, Transportation

This electric aircraft concept uses stratospheric air-friction as a power source!

March 13, 2020

If you’ve ever seen a jet blaze through the sky leaving a perfect line of smoke behind it, you’ve probably wondered why that smoke holds its shape so perfectly for so long, but doesn’t hold true on land when a motorbike or car zooms down the road. Air movement anywhere above the troposphere (the lowest region of our atmosphere) is extremely negligible. Jets, which fly in the stratosphere, leave behind that trail of smoke because the air there doesn’t move to disrupt the smoke trails. This also means that there’s immense amounts of friction when a jet travels at high speeds, cutting through the motionless air particles. Designer Michal Bonikowski believes that friction could actually be a source of clean energy that a plane could harness to reduce its carbon footprint.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, government, Military, Science & Technology News

The intelligence community is developing its own AI ethics

March 13, 2020

While less public than the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, the intelligence community has been developing its own set of principles for the ethical use of artificial intelligence.

The Pentagon made headlines last month when it adopted its five principles for using artificial intelligence, marking the end of a months-long effort over what guidelines the department should follow as it develops new AI tools and AI-enabled technologies.

Less well known is that the intelligence community is developing its own principles governing the use of AI.

“The intelligence community has been doing it’s own work in this space as well. We’ve been doing it for quite a bit of time,” Ben Huebner, chief of the Office of Director of National Intelligence’s Civil Liberties, Privacy, and Transparency Office, said at an Intelligence and National Security Alliance event March 4.

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Automation, Big Problems, Employment, Science & Technology News

In the age of automation, technology will be essential to reskilling the workforce

March 13, 2020

Employees sort parcels with automated guided vehicles (AGVs) at a logistic centre of a postal service in China last November.

Manufacturing as we know it isn’t quite dead – but it will be soon. We’re at the cusp of a major transformation where the classic factory worker’s tasks will soon be digitized and managed by robots and intelligent software.

Human jobs have been sacrificed through every major industrial revolution and this change will be no different. Unfortunately, the speed at which this next displacement is taking place exceeds the speed at which people are being retrained for the new factory roles that are now required. In this environment, technology companies will have new responsibilities to reskill their workforce and the workforces impacted by their products.

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