Engineering – Page 13

Breakthrough Thinking, Engineering, Machine Learning, new technology, Science & Technology News

Simple ‘smart’ glass reveals the future of artificial vision

August 4, 2019

From left to right, Zongfu Yu, Ang Chen and Efram Khoram developed the concept for a “smart” piece of glass that recognizes images without any external power or circuits.

The sophisticated technology that powers face recognition in many modern smartphones someday could receive a high-tech upgrade that sounds — and looks — surprisingly low-tech.

This window to the future is none other than a piece of glass. University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers have devised a method to create pieces of “smart” glass that can recognize images without requiring any sensors or circuits or power sources.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Engineering, new technology, Science & Technology News

First programmable memristor computer aims to bring AI processing down from the cloud

August 2, 2019

First programmable memristor computer aims to bring AI processing down from the cloud

The memristor array chip plugs into the custom computer chip, forming the first programmable memristor computer. The team demonstrated that it could run three standard types of machine learning algorithms. Credit: Robert Coelius, Michigan Engineering

The first programmable memristor computer—not just a memristor array operated through an external computer—has been developed at the University of Michigan.

It could lead to the processing of artificial intelligence directly on small, energy-constrained devices such as smartphones and sensors. A smartphone AI processor would mean that voice commands would no longer have to be sent to the cloud for interpretation, speeding up response time.

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Energy, Engineering, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

Energy abundance : The future of nuclear

July 26, 2019

Yes, I want nuclear energy *in my back yard*!

Extraordinary new innovations are giving us failsafe nuclear fission and the potential to achieve our age-old dream of fusion.

This year, Bill Gates commented: “Nuclear is ideal for dealing with climate change, because it is the only carbon-free, scalable energy source that’s available 24 hours a day. The problems with today’s reactors, such as the risk of accidents, can be solved through innovation.”

This blog is about convincing you to re-consider nuclear as a viable and critical idea. The upside of success is extraordinary, which is why, for the first time, we’re beginning to see venture capital make massive investments in the field.

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Biotech, Energy, Engineering, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

South Korean tech breakthrough could change biofuels forever

July 25, 2019

Researchers in South Korea have made a major breakthrough in using bacteria to sustainably and efficiently produce biofuels. The team of scientists from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) report that they have developed a new kind of engineered microorganisms that are capable of producing greater volumes of the fatty acids that make up biodiesel than ever before.

A team of researchers from KAIST released a study detailing their discovery last month in the scientific journal Nature Chemical Biology. The paper, titled “Engineering of an oleaginous bacterium for the production of fatty acids and fuels” details the development of these record-breaking microorganisms which could prove to be a key breakthrough in the effort to develop sustainable, bio-based energy sources to replace dirtier, finite fossil fuels.

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Engineering, Environment, Green Friendly, New Discoveries, Science & Technology News

Hydrogel uses sunlight to harvest fresh water from the sea

July 22, 2019

The research team (led by Tan Swee Ching, at right) with samples of the hydrogel

In many arid coastal regions, a great quantity of valuable fresh water is lost into the atmosphere every day, as it evaporates from the surface of the ocean. This situation prompted scientists to create a new hydrogel that’s highly effective at capturing moisture from the sea air, and then releasing it as fresh water.

Developed by a team at the National University of Singapore, the zinc-based material is claimed to be over eight times more absorbent than existing drying agents such as silica gel and calcium chloride – it can absorb more than four times its dry weight in water. Additionally, unlike the case with traditional drying agents, no electricity is required to get that water back out of it, plus the gel can be reused over 1,000 times.

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Breakthrough Thinking, cutting edge, Engineering, quantum computing, Science & Technology News

Physicists use light waves to accelerate supercurrents, enable ultrafast quantum computing

July 18, 2019

Scientists have discovered that terahertz light — light at trillions of cycles per second — can act as a control knob to accelerate supercurrents. That can help open up the quantum world of matter and energy at atomic and subatomic scales to practical applications such as ultrafast computing.

Jigang Wang patiently explained his latest discovery in quantum control that could lead to superfast computing based on quantum mechanics: He mentioned light-induced superconductivity without energy gap. He brought up forbidden supercurrent quantum beats. And he mentioned terahertz-speed symmetry breaking.

Then he backed up and clarified all that. After all, the quantum world of matter and energy at terahertz and nanometer scales — trillions of cycles per second and billionths of meters — is still a mystery to most of us.

Continue reading… “Physicists use light waves to accelerate supercurrents, enable ultrafast quantum computing”

Drone, drones, Engineering, Science & Technology News

We’re going to mistake the drones of the future for annoying flying insects

July 17, 2019

Harvard’s robotic flying bee has been in development for well over a decade now. And despite its incredibly simple design, over the past few years, its creators have improved Robobee’s capabilities, adding abilities such as the ability to hover and even steer itself down a pre-determined flight path. It’s too tiny to carry its own batteries and has been long reliant on a connected power cable. But last August, for the first time ever, Robobee made its first flight without a wire tether.

It wasn’t necessarily the most spectacular flight, however. Instead of soaring across the laboratory, buzzing past researcher’s ears, Robobee lifted off for a mere second under its own power before falling out of the sky—saved from a crash landing by an emergency kevlar safety wire. To achieve this feat, RoboBee received a couple of key hardware upgrades last year, including the addition of two extra wings, bringing the total to four, which contributed to a 38 percent boost in lifting power. It also got the smallest set of solar cells you can buy, weighing in at just 10 milligrams.

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Engineering, Inventions, New Inventions, Science & Technology News

Materials science may be the most important technology of the next decade. Here’s why:

July 16, 2019

Think of just about any major challenge we will face over the next decade and materials are at the center of it. To build a new clean energy future, we need more efficient solar panels, wind turbines and batteries. Manufacturers need new materials to create more advanced products. We also need to replace materials subject to supply disruptions, like rare earth elements.

Traditionally, developing new materials has been a slow, painstaking process. To find the properties they’re looking for, researchers would often have to test hundreds — or even thousands — of materials one by one. That made materials research prohibitively expensive for most industries.

Yet today, we’re in the midst of a materials revolution. Scientists are using powerful simulation techniques, as well as machine learning algorithms, to propel innovation forward at blazing speed and even point them toward possibilities they had never considered. Over the next decade, the rapid advancement in materials science will have a massive impact.

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Big Data, City Planning, Engineering, Green Friendly, Science & Technology News

Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs unveils its high-tech ‘city-within-a-city’ plan for Toronto

July 11, 2019

Sidewalk Labs says it will spend $1.3 billion on the project in the hopes of spurring $38 billion in private sector investment by 2040

Sidewalk Labs, Alphabet’s smart city subsidiary, released its massive plan Monday to transform a slice of Toronto’s waterfront into a high-tech utopia. Eighteen months in the making and clocking in at 1,524 pages, the plan represents Alphabet’s first, high-stakes effort to realize Alphabet CEO Larry Page’s long-held dream of a city within a city to experiment with innovations like self-driving cars, public Wi-Fi, new health care delivery solutions, and other city planning advances that modern technology makes possible.

Previously, Sidewalk Labs called it “a neighborhood built from the internet up.” But on Monday, Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff went a step further to describe it as “the most innovative district in the world.”

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Biotech, Engineering, Science & Technology News, security

The Pentagon has a laser that can identify people from a distance—by their heartbeat

July 11, 2019

The Jetson prototype can pick up on a unique cardiac signature from 200 meters away, even through clothes.

Everyone’s heart is different. Like the iris or fingerprint, our unique cardiac signature can be used as a way to tell us apart. Crucially, it can be done from a distance.

It’s that last point that has intrigued US Special Forces. Other long-range biometric techniques include gait analysis, which identifies someone by the way he or she walks. This method was supposedly used to identify an infamous ISIS terrorist before a drone strike. But gaits, like faces, are not necessarily distinctive. An individual’s cardiac signature is unique, though, and unlike faces or gait, it remains constant and cannot be altered or disguised.

Continue reading… “The Pentagon has a laser that can identify people from a distance—by their heartbeat”

Automobiles, Energy, Engineering, Science & Technology News

New material could unlock potential for hydrogen powered vehicle revolution

July 1, 2019

New material could unlock potential for hydrogen powered vehicle revolution

Scientists have discovered a new material that could hold the key to unlocking the potential of hydrogen powered vehicles.

As the world looks towards a gradual move away from fossil fuel powered cars and trucks, greener alternative technologies are being explored, such as electric battery powered vehicles.

Another ‘green’ technology with great potential is hydrogen power. However, a major obstacle has been the size, complexity, and expense of the fuel systems—until now.

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Automobiles, Driverless cars, Engineering, Science & Technology News

Volkswagen is testing anti-vomit technology for autonomous cars

June 23, 2019

VW’s solution is better than a barf bag, but testing continues on the perfect solution to a messy problem.

One-third of all people are highly susceptible to motion sickness, according to the National Institutes of Health.

It tends to get worse when that susceptible person is a passenger instead of a driver, which will be the case more often as self-driving cars and semi-autonomous driving features enter the mainstream.

Volkswagen is testing solutions to carsickness in self-driving cars that involve such features as red and green LED lights and movable seats.

Forget the technical and safety challenges facing self-driving cars’ march toward the mainstream: good old-fashioned carsickness is coming up as a worthy consideration for automakers designing autonomous vehicles. Volkswagen has announced that it has set scientists in Wolfsburg, Germany, on the task of studying motion sickness in autonomous cars and developing anti-puke solutions (our term, not VW’s).

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