Science & Technology News – Page 122

New Inventions, Science & Technology News

This see-through wood could replace glass windows

February 8, 2021

It’s lighter, stronger, easier to make, and would make it easier to heat and cool buildings.

A sheet of transparent new material at a University of Maryland lab looks like it might be plastic. But it’s actually wood—and it could eventually be used to make energy-efficient windows or even see-through buildings.

“Compared to glass, wood has lower thermal conductivity, and it’s lighter, stronger, and more environmentally friendly,” says Liangbing Hu, a materials science professor at the University of Maryland and one of the authors of a new study of the material. The idea is to employ the material in buildings. With a window made from transparent wood instead of glass, for example, a building would take less energy to heat and cool. Because of the structure of the wood, the windows could also reduce glare from the sun while allowing in natural light.

3D Printer, Science & Technology News

A 3D PRINTED GLOBAL HOUSING COMMUNITY IS BEING CONSTRUCTED IN ITALY FOR SUSTAINABLE LIVING!

February 8, 2021

BY RUCHI THUKRAL

Sustainable designs are now taking center stage in the design world as we battle the climate crisis affecting several industries. To implement sustainability in architecture is trickier given the scale of design but if we find the right solutions, the impact will also be big enough to cause ripples of positive changes. Fun fact: it is not the aviation industry but actually the construction industry that contributes to the global greenhouse gas emissions and the difference is 2% vs 39%. In fact, cement alone is responsible for 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions which is why the need for more sustainably constructed housing arose. Mario Cucinella Architects and WASP decided to do something about it and designed TECLA – a completely 3D printed global habitat based on natural materials.

TECLA’s construction started as a prototype in 2019 near Bologna, Italy as a response to pressing societal issues of explosive population growth which inevitably led to a lack of affordable accommodation. TECLA is created using entirely reusable, recyclable materials taken from the local terrain – it aims to be a model for circular housing as well as eco-housing. The habitat has been designed by Mario Cucinella Architects and brought to life by WASP’s engineering and printing tech. TECLA is set to be the first house to be entirely 3D-printed using locally sourced clay which has been used for centuries in countries like India as a cost-effective and environmentally friendly alternative to cement – clay is a biodegradable and recyclable material that will make the building a zero-waste structure. The project’s name comes from an imaginary city described by writer Italo Calvino, it will be built using multiple collaborative 3D-printers all working at the same time – a feat in itself given the scale.

Driverless vehicles, Science & Technology News

Toyota reveals plans to take on big tech with self-driving vehicles

February 8, 2021

Toyota has devised a plan to take on big tech. The Japanese car making giant recently unveiled its Woven Planet research group, which is set to develop driverless and connected cars.

This move represents a giant change of direction for the car maker, which has previously spurned development of autonomous car tech in comparison to companies such as Mercedes-Benz and VW that have invested heavily.

Tesla is also a big time developer of autonomous car tech, with its controversial Autopilot and Full Self-Driving mode.

Toyota said it would unveil a fully self-driving prototype in the near future but didn’t give any further details.

Woven Planet is led by ex-Google roboticist James Kuffner, who said that Toyota has a distinct advantage in developing electric cars because of the amount of data they can collect from the tens of millions of Toyotas on the road around the globe.

Toyota is now on a collision course with some of tech’s biggest names.

Machine Learning, Science & Technology News

Going Beyond Machine Learning To Machine Reasoning

February 7, 2021

By Ron Schmelzer

The conversation around Artificial Intelligence usually revolves around technology-focused topics: machine learning, conversational interfaces, autonomous agents, and other aspects of data science, math, and implementation. However, the history and evolution of AI is more than just a technology story. The story of AI is also inextricably linked with waves of innovation and research breakthroughs that run headfirst into economic and technology roadblocks. There seems to be a continuous pattern of discovery, innovation, interest, investment, cautious optimism, boundless enthusiasm, realization of limitations, technological roadblocks, withdrawal of interest, and retreat of AI research back to academic settings. These waves of advance and retreat seem to be as consistent as the back and forth of sea waves on the shore.

This pattern of interest, investment, hype, then decline, and rinse-and-repeat is particularly vexing to technologists and investors because it doesn’t follow the usual technology adoption lifecycle. Popularized by Geoffrey Moore in his book “Crossing the Chasm”, technology adoption usually follows a well-defined path. Technology is developed and finds early interest by innovators, and then early adopters, and if the technology can make the leap across the “chasm”, it gets adopted by the early majority market and then it’s off to the races with demand by the late majority and finally technology laggards. If the technology can’t cross the chasm, then it ends up in the dustbin of history. However, what makes AI distinct is that it doesn’t fit the technology adoption lifecycle pattern.

But AI isn’t a discrete technology. Rather it’s a series of technologies, concepts, and approaches all aligning towards the quest for the intelligent machine. This quest inspires academicians and researchers to come up with theories of how the brain and intelligence works, and their concepts of how to mimic these aspects with technology. AI is a generator of technologies, which individually go through the technology lifecycle. Investors aren’t investing in “AI”, but rather they’re investing in the output of AI research and technologies that can help achieve the goals of AI. As researchers discover new insights that help them surmount previous challenges, or as technology infrastructure finally catches up with concepts that were previously infeasible, then new technology implementations are spawned and the cycle of investment renews.

Robots, Science & Technology News

We’re teaching robots to evolve autonomously so they can adapt to life alone on distant planets

February 7, 2021

In the future, robots we’ve programmed may evolve and multiply on distant planets.

by Emma Hart

It’s been suggested that an advance party of robots will be needed if humans are ever to settle on other planets. Sent ahead to create conditions favorable for humankind, these robots will need to be tough, adaptable and recyclable if they’re to survive within the inhospitable cosmic climates that await them.

Collaborating with roboticists and computer scientists, my team and I have been working on just such a set of robots. Produced via 3-D printer—and assembled autonomously—the robots we’re creating continually evolve in order to rapidly optimize for the conditions they find themselves in.

Our work represents the latest progress towards the kind of autonomous robot ecosystems that could help build humanity’s future homes, far away from Earth and far away from human oversight.

Science & Technology News, SpaceX

SpaceX aims to launch ‘all-civilian’ trip into orbit

February 7, 2021

SpaceX will launch two crewed flights for NASA in 2021 and four cargo refueling missions, and it hopes to launch the world’s first commercial astronaut mission

SpaceX announced Monday it’s aiming to launch this year the first all-civilian mission into Earth’s orbit, led by a tech billionaire who plans to raffle off one of the spots aboard the craft.

Entrepreneur Jared Isaacman is to be joined by three other novice astronauts for a multi-day journey into space, including one lucky winner of a drawing.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime adventure: a journey into outer space on the first all-civilian space flight,” according to a website dedicated to the mission.

SpaceX, the company started by Elon Musk, said Isaacman is “donating the three seats alongside him… to individuals from the general public who will be announced in the weeks ahead.”

Launch of the Dragon spacecraft is being targeted for “no earlier than the fourth quarter of this year”, the firm said.

3D Printer, Science & Technology News

Novameat 3D Prints “World’s Biggest” Cell-Based Meat Prototype

February 6, 2021

By Vanesa Listek

Alternative meat startup Novameat has unveiled what it calls the world’s biggest piece of cell-based, whole-cut meat analog. Since its foundation in 2018, the Barcelona-based startup has been 3D printing plant-based meat substitutes to combat the unsustainable and insufficient global agricultural system and solve the world’s food supply problem. The news comes weeks after Novameat received €250,000 through the Spanish government to ramp up 3D printed meat production by integrating its microextrusion-technology into higher-output industrial printing machines.

Novameat’s proprietary technology mimics the texture, taste, appearance, and nutritional properties of animal meat products, including beef steaks. Based on CEO and Founder Giuseppe Scionti’s decade-long tissue engineering research, the company’s microextrusion platform takes in vegetable fat (3%), water (72%), and plant protein sources (25%) to print a meat fiber matrix that looks and tastes like the real thing.

Novameat released the “world’s biggest piece of cell-based whole cut analog meat.

In an interview with the media site FoodNavigator, Scionti revealed that Novameat’s latest development, along with the 3D printing technology that created it, could be a game-changer for the cultured meat industry. Scionti referred to his new product as a “hybrid meat analog” since his company mixed mammalian adipose cells with a biocompatible plant-based large-scale scaffold with a volume of 22,500 mm³.

Agriculture, Science & Technology News

Here’s what happened when AI and humans met in a strawberry-growing contest

February 6, 2021

Do they really need a human touch?

By Victoria Masterson

In Pinduoduo’s Smart Agriculture Competition, four technology teams competed with traditional farmers over four months to grow strawberries.
Data analysis, intelligent sensors and greenhouse automation helped the scientists win.
Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies such as AI are forecast to deliver huge productivity gains – but need the right governance, according to the Global Technology Governance Report 2021.

Strawberries can be easy to grow – especially, it seems, if you’re an algorithm.

When farmers in China competed to grow the fruit with technology including machine learning and artificial intelligence, the machines won, by some margin.

Data scientists produced 196% more strawberries by weight on average compared with traditional farmers.

Elon Musk, Science & Technology News

What Starlink beta testers really think about Elon Musk’s satellite internet

February 6, 2021

For people otherwise stuck with sluggish performance from earlier satellite technologies or DSL, Starlink looks like a promising way to get up to speed.

BY ROB PEGORARO

In less than a year, Elon Musk’s space startup SpaceX has gone from having launched 242 Starlink satellites to exceeding 1,000 as it builds its constellation of satellites dedicated to providing broadband internet access back on Earth, particularly for people who might lack other good options.

Those 1,025 “smallsats” sent to space (962 remain in orbit, as tracked by astronomer Jonathan McDowell) have given rise to something new on the ground: testimony from early Starlink customers about SpaceX’s low-Earth-orbit broadband.

Since the October opening of Starlink’s “Better Than Nothing Beta” to early adopters willing to pay $499 for receiver hardware and $99 per month for the service, reports have been bubbling up in such online forums as Reddit’s r/Starlink.

They generally agree that Starlink’s satellites, around 340 miles up, easily beat the previous options in much of the target rural market: aging DSL connections that might be no faster than 3G wireless speeds, and laggy satellite broadband from geosynchronous orbit, 22,236 miles up.

“I am more than satisfied,” emailed Leigh Phillips, a software developer in Kelowna, British Columbia. He called his speeds—downloads averaging 110 megabits per second (Mbps) and uploads of 20 Mbps, per the dashboard he posted— “good to go” for a household with two working parents, plus moderate gaming and video streaming.

Another r/Starlink regular, a business owner in Duluth, Minnesota, who asked to be identified as Bryan, reported slower connectivity— “upload speeds are pretty consistent (around 7 Mbps) but download speeds seem to swing quite a bit from 40-190 Mbps”—that he called “definitely acceptable” for streaming.

He said his other broadband, CenturyLink DSL, hits 30 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up on good days.

Driverless vehicles, Science & Technology News

Driverless bus trials draw 320, including curious passengers

February 5, 2021

Japanese housewife Satoko Nemoto boarding one of the driverless buses at Haw Par Villa.

Singapore- Ms. Satoko Nemoto, a 43-year-old Japanese housewife who has been in Singapore for only three months, travelled by MRT all the way from her home is Pasir Ris to Haw Par Villa just to ride on a driverless buss operated by SMRT.

She said the bus ride was quiet and smooth, and she especially liked that the bus was fully electric thus, eco-friendly.

She was among a total of 320 people who have taken the driverless buses at HawPar Villa and Jurong Island since they were launched last month, with some specially making the trip to the two areas for the ride.

Most found it a pleasant enough experience, saying the buses were not as slow as they had expected and the presence of a driver at the wheel in case of emergencies reassured them.

There remained concerns, however, over safety issues.

Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

New realm of personalized medicine with brain stimulation

February 5, 2021

Research represents a major step forward in achieving new therapies for a whole host of neurological and mental disorders. Credit: Cornelia LI

Millions of patients suffering from neurological and mental disorders such as depression, addiction, and chronic pain are treatment-resistant. In fact, about 30% of all major depression patients do not respond at all to any medication or psychotherapy. Simply put, many traditional forms of treatment for these disorders may have reached their limit. Where do we go from here?

Research to be published in Nature Biomedical Engineering led by Maryam Shanechi, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Early Career Chair in electrical and computer engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, paves the way for a promising alternative: personalized deep brain stimulation. The work represents a major step forward in achieving new therapies for a whole host of neurological and mental disorders.

Until now, the challenge of personalized deep brain stimulation has been the human brain itself. Mental disorders can manifest differently in each patient’s brain. Similarly, whether and how each patient’s brain activity and their symptoms will respond to stimulation can be very different. This makes it difficult to know the effect of stimulation in a given patient or how to change the dose of stimulation—that is, its amplitude or frequency—over time to tailor it to a patient’s needs.

Science & Technology News, SpaceX

Elon Musk reveals ambitious plans to get humans to Mars by 2026 – seven YEARS before NASA aims to take astronauts to the Red Planet

February 5, 2021

The worlds richest man, Elon Musk, has revealed an ambitious plan to get humans on Mars by 2026 – seven years before NASA aims to land astronauts on the Red Planet.

By Ryan Morrison

Elon Musk says the first crewed flight to the Red Planet could happen in 2026
This isn’t a ‘hard deadline’ as a number of new technologies are needed first
Speaking on Clubhouse, Musk says it is vital humans become multi-planetary
He said the first Mars colony will be a ‘frontier’, dangerous and a ‘hard place’
Musk said by the fourth or fifth Martian landing – operating every two years or so – he’d consider allowing his children to make the trip to the Red Planet

Speaking on the audio-only Clubhouse app on Sunday, the SpaceX founder told the Good Times Show his goal was to establish a self-sustaining Martian civilisation.

The ambitious deadline gives him five and a half years to get the massive Starship spacecraft off the ground – but there is a long way to go as the massive 160ft rocket is still at the prototype stage – with a second high-altitude test flight due soon.

It currently takes at least six months to get to the planet, but Musk believes that could be down to as little as a month, with flights operating every two years.

He said the first colony will be a tiny, dangerous, ‘frontier-like’ environment as they begin to establish propellant manufacturing, food production and power plants.

NASA plans to put the first humans on Mars by 2033 as part of its Artemis program that will see the next man and first woman land on the Moon in 2024.