Category: Science & Technology News

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Science & Technology News, Space Flight

The World’s First Space Hotel to Open in 2027

The team working on Voyager Station hopes to partner with SpaceX in its aim to send passengers to the first-ever space hotel.

By Nick Mafi

The Voyager Station, which would accommodate 280 guests, aims to be the first commercial space hotel upon completion

Those of us making grand postpandemic travel plans might want to consider the final frontier as a destination. That’s because Orbital Assembly Corporation, a new construction company run by former pilot John Blincow, is planning to open a luxury space hotel by 2027. Voyager Station, as it’s being called, would accommodate 280 guests and 112 crew members while aiming to be the first commercial space hotel, upon completion.

“We’re trying to make the public realize that this golden age of space travel is just around the corner. It’s coming. It’s coming fast,” Blincow told CNN in an interview. Golden age indeed, as space tourism has piqued the interest of such visionaries as Richard Branson and Elon Musk. And it’s the latter Blincow and his team hope to partner with in the near future. “We cannot call [Musk’s] SpaceX our partner, but in the future we look forward to working with them,” Blincow said at a recent live, asking the viewers to “hang tight.”

Continue reading… “The World’s First Space Hotel to Open in 2027”
Futurist, Science & Technology News

Thinking Like A Futurist is the #1 Skill For Leaders: Here’s How to Master It

By Jacob Morgan

What’s the top skill leaders need to succeed over the next decade and beyond? According to my interviews with more than 140 top CEOs, far and away the most needed skill is being able to think like a futurist.

Contrary to what some people believe, futurists don’t predict the future. Instead, they help make sure individuals and organizations aren’t surprised by what the future might bring. Thinking like a futurist involves looking at different possibilities and scenarios as opposed to picking one path and sticking to it.

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Human Behavior, Science & Technology News

What is Dunbar’s number?

By  Robin Dunbar

Our social networks can have dramatic effects on our lives. Your chances of becoming obese, giving up smoking, being happy or depressed, or getting divorced are all influenced by how many of your close friends do these things. A good social network could even help you live longer since laughing with friends triggers the release of endorphins, which seem to “tune” the immune system, making you more resilient to disease. So what factors influence the form and function that our social networks take?

From as far back as hunter-gatherer societies, everyone in the community is related to everyone else, either as biological relatives or in-laws. In post-industrial societies this is no longer true – we live among strangers, some of whom become friends. As a result, our social circles really consist of two separate networks – family and friends – with roughly half drawn from each group.

Because the pull of kinship is so strong, we give priority to family, choosing to include them in our networks above unrelated individuals. Indeed, people who come from large extended families actually have fewer friends. One reason we favour kin is that they are much more likely to come to our aid when we need help than unrelated individuals, even if these are very good friends.

Family and friend relationships differ in other important ways, too. One is that friendships are very prone to decay if untended. Failure to see a friend for six months or so leaves us feeling less emotionally attached to them, causing them to drop down through the layers of our network hierarchy.

Family relationships, by contrast, are incredibly resilient to neglect. As a result, the family half of our network remains constant throughout most of our lives whereas the friendship component undergoes considerable change over time, with up to 20 per cent turnover every few years.

Although the average social network contains around 150 friends, there is considerable individual variation in the number of relationships; some people have fewer than 100, a few may have 250 or more. There are three main reasons for this: gender, social skills and personality.

Continue reading… “What is Dunbar’s number?”
Driverless cars, Science & Technology News

Honda’s Now Selling the World’s First Production Car with Level 3 Self-Driving Tech

IN A MOVE FEW SAW COMING, HONDA IS THE NEW LEADER IN ADVANCED DRIVER-ASSISTANCE TECH.

BY JAMES GILBOY

Carmakers have strived for the SAE’s third tier of vehicular autonomy for years, but none had achieved it yet. Not Tesla, not Cadillac and not Audi, which pledged its new A8 flagship would be Level 3-capable before eventually backing down on its promise. Yet out of the blue came Honda with an enhanced version of its Honda Sensing advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) called Honda Sensing Elite, which will become the first commercially available SAE Level 3 system in Honda’s domestic-market Legend sedan.

SAE Level 3 crucially differs from Level 2 in that it’s a graduation from partial automation—like in Tesla’s Autopilot—to conditional automation, which means a car can read its environment and make decisions based on what it sees. This allows a car equipped with a Level 3 system like Honda Sensing Elite to act on its own accord (no pun intended) based on the situation at hand—sometimes with the driver’s hands off the wheel, and in a few cases, with their eyes off the road.

Continue reading… “Honda’s Now Selling the World’s First Production Car with Level 3 Self-Driving Tech”
Driverless vehicles, Science & Technology News

Europe’s first full-sized self-driving urban electric bus has arrived

The bus has a maximum carrying capacity of 60 passengers.

By Sean Fleming

  • Málaga is the first place in Europe to trial full-size autonomous buses.
  • China has recently changed the law to allow trials of its own.
  • In Norway, where electric cars are already popular, two trials have been underway.

The electric, self-driving bus is coming to cities. In some parts of the world, it has already arrived. One of the latest cities to run a live-trial of autonomous buses is Málaga, in southern Spain. 

Málaga is the sixth largest city in Spain and is a thriving tourist destination – in pre-pandemic times, at least. Now, a 12-metre self-driving bus will make an eight kilometre round-trip from the city centre to the port, six times daily.

The bus has a maximum carrying capacity of 60 passengers and is kitted out with sensors that allow it to respond to the environment around it. “The bus knows at all times where it is and what is around it,” Rafael Durban Carmona, from the Spanish transport company Avanza, told The Guardian newspaper.

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Alzheimer's Disease, Science & Technology News

Artificial intelligence reveals current drugs that may help combat Alzheimer’s disease

PET scan of a human brain with Alzheimer’s disease.

New treatments for Alzheimer’s disease are desperately needed, but numerous clinical trials of investigational drugs have failed to generate promising options. Now a team at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School (HMS) has developed an artificial intelligence-based method to screen currently available medications as possible treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. The method could represent a rapid and inexpensive way to repurpose existing therapies into new treatments for this progressive, debilitating neurodegenerative condition. Importantly, it could also help reveal new, unexplored targets for therapy by pointing to mechanisms of drug action.

“Repurposing FDA-approved drugs for Alzheimer’s disease is an attractive idea that can help accelerate the arrival of effective treatment—but unfortunately, even for previously approved drugs, clinical trials require substantial resources, making it impossible to evaluate every drug in patients with Alzheimer’s disease,” explains Artem Sokolov, Ph.D., director of Informatics and Modeling at the Laboratory of Systems Pharmacology at HMS. “We therefore built a framework for prioritizing drugs, helping clinical studies to focus on the most promising ones.”

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Science & Technology News, Space Flight

Space Race: China to Launch New Space Station; Trains Astronauts for Crewed Flights

The central module for China’s proposed orbital space station has passed a flight approval examination. It will launch in the coming months, kicking off a whirlwind of major missions for the region.


IN SPACE – MAY 23: In this handout image provided by the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA, the International Space Station and the docked space shuttle Endeavour orbit Earth during Endeavour’s final sortie on May 23, 2011 in Space. Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli captured the first-ever images of an orbiter docked to the International Space Station from the viewpoint of a departing vessel as he returned to Earth in a Soyuz capsule.

China Manned Space, the world’s human spaceflight agency, announced on January 14 as the country prepares to begin work on its own three-module space station.

The Tianhe central module, which means “harmony of the heavens,” will be the primary living quarters for three-person crews visiting for up to six months.

Following the completion of the space station and the establishment of a national space laboratory, a number of subsequent flight missions will be carried out as planned.

Continue reading… “Space Race: China to Launch New Space Station; Trains Astronauts for Crewed Flights”
drones, Science & Technology News

Ghana is using drones to deliver coronavirus vaccines to rural communities

One of Zipline’s drones. 

By Grace Dean 

  • Zipline has started delivering coronavirus vaccines with drone in Ghana.
  • This tackles one of the biggest problems with the rollout – distributing doses in poorer countries.
  • Zipline has delivered medical supplies by drone since 2016, and works with Walmart and Novant Health.

Ghana has become the first country to launch a nationwide program to deliver coronavirus vaccines with drones.

Zipline started delivering the shots on Tuesday as part of the WHO’s first shipment of vaccines through COVAX, its program that aims to provide poorer countries with enough doses to cover 20% of their population.

Zipline, a San Francisco startup, has been delivering medical supplies including blood, personal protective equipment, and vaccines since 2016 using patented, autonomous drones.

Doctors can use Zipline’s app to place orders and track shipments.

Continue reading… “Ghana is using drones to deliver coronavirus vaccines to rural communities”
Electric Automobile, Science & Technology News

A Huge Chunk Of America Is Getting A New Electric Car Charging Network

We’ve been jealous of Europe’s burgeoning electric car charging infrastructure for a while now but the U.S. is finally getting some of that sweet, sweet infrastructure of our own with six American utilities across the South and the Midwest announcing a new EV charging network called the Electric Highway Coalition.

The following American energy companies are banding together to develop this new network:

  • American Electric Power
  • Dominion Energy
  • Duke Energy
  • Entergy Corporation
  • Southern Company
  • Tennessee Valley Authority

The network will stretch across 16 states and connect “major highway systems from the Atlantic Coast, through the Midwest and South, and into the Gulf and Central Plains regions,” as outlined in a statement from American Electric Power (AEP), which happens to be one of the U.S’s largest electric companies.

Continue reading… “A Huge Chunk Of America Is Getting A New Electric Car Charging Network”
AI, Science & Technology News

Intel’s 3D and AI tech now helps train athletes

By Michael Vizard

Intel today revealed that its 3D Athlete Tracking (3DAT) technology is being employed by Exos, a firm that focuses on human performance conditioning, to help train professional athletes aspiring to join the National Football League (NFL) and other organizations.

Intel’s 3DAT technology captures skeletal data when an athlete is sprinting, using a video camera running at 60 frames per second. That data is then analyzed using Intel Deep Learning Boost AI capabilities that have been built into the latest generation of Intel Xeon Scalable processors Intel has deployed in a cloud it manages.

The goal is to make it simpler for coaches and athletes to understand how different types of skeletal structures may give one athlete an edge over another, said Ashton Eaton, two-time Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon and a product development engineer in Intel’s Olympic Technology Group.

“We don’t know why people won or lost,” Eaton said. “There are a lot of unknowns.”

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Electric Automobile, Science & Technology News

Volkswagen pilots blockchain to integrate electric vehicles with power grids

Energy Web plans to use blockchain technology to help ensure an efficient future for Volkswagen’s electric vehicles.

Automobile makers everywhere are betting big on electric vehicles as the world begins to push for environmentally friendly modes of transportation. For example, while fewer than 1% of cars on the roads in the United States today are electric, a number of automobile manufacturers are aiming to change this by stopping sales of gasoline-powered cars. 

At the end of January 2021, General Motors said it would stop selling gas-powered cars and trucks by 2035. In addition, automakers such as Tesla, Ford, Volkswagen and even Porsche have announced plans to introduce new electric models in the coming years. At the same time, President Joe Biden recently announced an executive order to replace the U.S. government’s fleet of about 650,000 vehicles with electric models. 

The desire to move away from gas-powered vehicles is clear, but this goal may be easier said than done. Despite the potential for clean energy, major silos exist between EV solutions and global power grids today. For instance, more electric vehicles will surely result in the need for additional charging stations and careful planning from utility companies to accommodate EV requirements. As such, a digital, common frame of reference is needed to integrate EVs into global energy markets. 

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Nanotechnology, Science & Technology News

Filming a 3-D video of a virus with ‘instantaneous light’ and AI

Elastic strain analysis Credit: POSTECH

by Pohang University of Science & Technology

It is millions of trillions of times brighter than sunlight and a whopping 1,000 trillionth of a second, appropriately called ‘instantaneous light’—the X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) light that opens a new scientific paradigm. Combining it with AI, an international research team has succeeded in filming and restoring the 3-D structure of nanoparticles that share structural similarities with viruses. With the fear of a new pandemic growing around the world due to COVID-19, this discovery is attracting attention among academic circles for imaging the structure of the virus with both high accuracy and speed.

An international team of researchers from POSTECH, National University of Singapore (NUS), KAIST, GIST, and IBS have successfully analyzed the structural heterogeneities in 3-D structures of nanoparticles by irradiating thousands of nanoparticles per hour using the XFEL at Pohang Accelerator Laboratory (PAL) in Korea and restoring 3-D multi-models through machine learning. The research team led by Professor Changyong Song and Ph.D. candidate Do Hyung Cho of Department of Physics at POSTECH has driven the international research collaboration to realize it.

Continue reading… “Filming a 3-D video of a virus with ‘instantaneous light’ and AI”