The proposed Infinity London tower, whose construction could begin in 2020, would be 55 stories tall and adorned with a rooftop infinity pool with transparent sides and a transparent floor.
Swimmers would enter and exit the pool via “a rotating spiral staircase based on the door of a submarine, rising from the pool floor,” the company designing the pool said.
The pool’s designer, Alex Kemsley, explained to INSIDER how this actually works.
Levitation of a magnet on a superconductor
When it first came out, the IISc study created quite a stir because superconductivity at room temperature is seen as the holy grail of physics.
Bengaluru: Researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, have reiterated their promising, if controversial, discovery of superconductivity at room temperature, with eight more researchers backing the finding originally put forth by a team of two last year.
The team of 10 posted a preprint of their paper on arXiv, an open repository where peers discuss academic research, last week, but it is yet to be peer-reviewed or published in any scientific journal.
A number of research teams around the world are currently working towards scrubbing all the excess carbon dioxide from the air. It’s one of the prime reasons we are seeing record breaking rise in temperature across India this summer.
Not only could this do wonders to push back global warming, but we can also put all of that CO2 to good use in other applications.
Continue reading… “Scientists have found an easy way to remove CO2 from air & reduce global warming”
To keep clients, Nippon Steel is developing super-strong metal
Cars must get lighter to meet new emissions rules or electrify.
Imagine the weight of 24 elephants bearing down on a tiny spot the size a postage stamp.
That’s how much pressure Nippon Steel Corp.’s strongest metal can withstand. The Japanese company is pushing the envelope in order to stay relevant as the auto industry, its most important customer, goes through major changes.
Continue reading… “The Reinvention of steel could make car bodies 30% lighter”
Quantum physics, the study of the universe on an atomic scale, gives us a reference model to understand the human ecosystem in the discrete individual unit. It helps us understand how individual human behavior impacts collective systems and the security of humanity.
Metaphorically, we can see this in how a particle can act both like a particle or a wave. The concept of entanglement is at the core of much of applied quantum physics. The commonly understood definition of entanglement says that particles can be generated to have a distinct reliance on each other, despite any three-dimensional or 4-dimensional distance between the particles. What this definition and understanding imply is that even if two or more particles are physically detached with no traditional or measurable linkages, what happens to one still has a quantifiable effect on the other.
Now, individuals and entities across NGIOA are part of an entangled global system. Since the ability to generate and manipulate pairs of entangled particles is at the foundation of many quantum technologies, it is important to understand and evaluate how the principles of quantum physics translate to the survival and security of humanity.
Continue reading… “A quantum revolution is coming”
Engineers develop new AI technology that amplifies correct speaker from a group; breakthrough could lead to better hearing aids
Our brains have a remarkable knack for picking out individual voices in a noisy environment, like a crowded coffee shop or a busy city street. This is something that even the most advanced hearing aids struggle to do. But now engineers are announcing an experimental technology that mimics the brain’s natural aptitude for detecting and amplifying any one voice from many.
Powered by artificial intelligence, this brain-controlled hearing aid acts as an automatic filter, monitoring wearers’ brain waves and boosting the voice they want to focus on.
Mark Bissett, lecturer in nanomaterials at The University of Manchester, poses for a photograph holding a model showing the hexagonal structure of graphene inside a laboratory at the National Graphene Institute facility, part of the The University of Manchester, in Manchester, U.K., on Thursday, April 12, 2018. Researchers are studying ways to use graphene in batteries, and the material has the potential to significantly boost performance in a much-needed technology.
Continue reading… “The holy grail of lithium batteries”
For emerging wearable tech to advance, it needs improved power sources. Now researchers from Michigan State University have provided a potential solution via crumpled carbon nanotube forests, or CNT forests.
Changyong Cao, director of MSU’s Soft Machines and Electronics Laboratory, led a team of scientists in creating highly stretchable supercapacitors for powering wearable electronics. The newly developed supercapacitor has demonstrated solid performance and stability, even when it is stretched to 800% of its original size for thousands of stretching/relaxing cycles.
The team’s results, published in the journal Advanced Energy Materials, may spur the development of new stretchable energy electronic systems, implantable biomedical devices, as well as smart packaging systems.
Continue reading… “Self-Powered wearable tech”
The market for organic solar cells is expected to grow more than 20% between 2017 and 2020, driven by advantages over traditional silicon solar cells: they can be mass produced at scale using roll-to-roll processing; the materials comprising them can be easily found in the earth and could be applied to solar cells through green chemistry; they can be semitransparent and therefore less visually intrusive — meaning they can be mounted on windows or screens and are ideal for mobile devices; they are ultra-flexible and can stretch; and they can be ultra-lightweight.
Ford Gravity Sketch
Ford outlined how it’s increasingly using virtual reality (VR) technology to eliminate the distance between its design studios in North America, in Asia, and in Europe. The Co-Creation tool the firm created jointly with Gravity Sketch lets engineers work on the same project even if they’re located thousands of miles apart. VR is part of the company’s effort to streamline its design and development processes, and it illustrates an ongoing trend in the automotive industry.
Instead of drawing on a piece of paper, or sketching using CAD software, Ford designers are beginning to use VR headsets and controllers to bring their ideas to life. Significantly, the co-creation tool lets Ford skip the 2D stage of design when it wants to save time, and go straight to 3D. Designers can use the technology to transfer virtual ideas. For example, if a designer prefers an upcoming car (like the born-again Bronco) with a more upright grille, he or she can send a VR-wearing colleague a file containing a sample design.
Continue reading… “Ford designers are dropping their pencils and reaching for VR goggles instead”
Logic and memory devices, such as the hard drives in computers, now use nanomagnetic mechanisms to store and manipulate information. Unlike silicon transistors, which have fundamental efficiency limitations, they require no energy to maintain their magnetic state: Energy is needed only for reading and writing information.
One method of controlling magnetism uses electrical current that transports spin to write information, but this usually involves flowing charge. Because this generates heat and energy loss, the costs can be enormous, particularly in the case of large server farms or in applications like artificial intelligence, which require massive amounts of memory. Spin, however, can be transported without a charge with the use of a topological insulator—a material whose interior is insulating but that can support the flow of electrons on its surface.
Continue reading… “Move over, silicon switches: There’s a new way to compute”
Stronger and more flexible than graphene, a single-atom layer of boron could revolutionize sensors, batteries, and catalytic chemistry.
Not so long ago, graphene was the great new wonder material. A super-strong, atom-thick sheet of carbon “chicken wire,” it can form tubes, balls, and other curious shapes. And because it conducts electricity, materials scientists raised the prospect of a new era of graphene-based computer processing and a lucrative graphene chip industry to boot. The European Union invested €1 billion to kick-start a graphene industry.
This brave new graphene-based world has yet to materialize. But it has triggered an interest in other two-dimensional materials. And the most exciting of all is borophene: a single layer of boron atoms that form various crystalline structures.
Continue reading… “Sorry, graphene—borophene is the new wonder material that’s got everyone excited”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.