Science & Technology News – Page 180

Automation, Coronavirus, Driverless cars, Science & Technology News, Transportation

Pandemic alters carmakers’ driverless plans. Here’s how

June 20, 2020

Detroit — The coronavirus pandemic is proving to be yet another obstacle for the self-driving and ride-sharing movement, delaying the widely touted arrival of next-generation automotive technology.

Ford Motor Co. is postponing for a year the commercial deployment of its autonomous vehicles. Waymo LLC, the self-driving unit of Google parent Alphabet Inc., had to temporarily suspend its on-road testing and its ride-hailing offerings in Arizona. Uber Advanced Technologies Group recently announced layoffs of 3,500, citing the pandemic. And General Motors Co. is shutting down Maven, the car-sharing service that debuted in 2016 as the wave of the future.

With demand for car-sharing and ride-sharing diminishing sharply in the age of social-distancing and other forms of vigilant hygiene, companies are shifting their focus to using driverless vehicles to deliver goods before they ferry people — a reversal of a robo-taxi future envisioned just a few years ago, courtesy of the virus that causes COVID-19.

Expensive electrification programs that have yet to create revenue for automakers, however, continue despite automakers losing billions with auto plants closed for eight weeks and many dealerships unable to sell vehicles with stay-at-home orders in place during the pandemic. Still, the prevailing industry consensus holds that electric vehicles must be an option for consumers, and electrified powertrains are the foundation of self-driving vehicles and future mobility technologies.

Continue reading… “Pandemic alters carmakers’ driverless plans. Here’s how”

Electric Vehicles, Elon Musk, Science & Technology News, Tesla, Transportation

Tesla will develop a new 12-seater electric van for Boring Company airport tunnel

June 20, 2020

A new electric van could replace the prototype Tesla Model X for future The Boring Company tunnels.

A Southern California airport connector project will work with Elon Musk’s The Boring Company to build a high-speed underground tunnel and a new Tesla vehicle is reportedly part of the plan.

The San Bernardino County Transportation Authority approved a connector line between Rancho Cucamonga with the Ontario International Airport last week. The proposal is for a 2.8 mile-long tunnel that would move riders at 127 mph in electric vehicles. But which electric vehicles?

A county supervisor said that the new system would work with Musk’s electric car company Tesla to develop 12-seater electric vans, as reported in The Mercury News. The projected $60 million project is expected to carry 1,200 people per day to the airport and back.

Continue reading… “Tesla will develop a new 12-seater electric van for Boring Company airport tunnel”

2020 Predictions, Business, Coronavirus, Employment, Science & Technology News

Why the office simply cannot go away : The compelling case for the workplace

June 20, 2020

The office is critical now for engagement, innovation and experience–and cannot go away.

We’re in the midst of the most significant reinvention of work in our time. We’ve proven people can work anywhere and the greatest social experiment—sending everyone home to do their work—has decimated barriers to working away from the office.

Some contend people are working with a reasonable level of productivity from home. And this is during arguably the worst-case situation for remote work: Being forced to work from home without choice, experiencing stress about the pandemic, sharing space with spouses or partners who are furloughed or also trying to work from home and finding time to educate children who would normally be at school—all of these create challenging conditions. Even so, people are getting work done—and could probably perform even better from home when the coronavirus abates, children go back to school and employees can return to a more typical way of life.

Continue reading… “Why the office simply cannot go away : The compelling case for the workplace”

2020 Predictions, Coronavirus, Economy, Higher Education, Science & Technology News, Trending

Almost half of Universities may be gone in 5 to 10 years, professor admits

June 19, 2020

Scott Galloway, lecturer in Marketing at New York University, speaking at the DLD (Digital-Life-Design) conference in Munich, Germany, 18 January 2016.

An NYU professor of business surmises that because of the effects of the coronavirus, anywhere from one-quarter to almost one-half of universities in the nation may go out of business in the next five to ten years. NYU professor Scott Galloway also admitted that foreign students paying full tuition are the “cash cow” for universities and “might decide not to show up.” He commented, “What department stores were to retail, tier-two higher tuition universities are about to become to education and that is they are soon going to become the walking dead.”

Speaking with Hari Sreenivasanon on PBS’ “Amanpour and Co.,” Galloway spoke of the impact of the coronavirus on colleges and universities, forcing them to hold their classes over the internet, and how that may catalyze flight from the universities and the universities’ subsequent downfall. Galloway stated, “Students I think across America along with their families listening in on these Zoom classes are all beginning to wonder what kind of value, or lack thereof, they’re getting for their tuition dollars … There’s generally a recognition or disappointment across America, and I would argue that it’s not that they’re disappointed in the Zoom classes, it’s more the recognition that Zoom has uncovered how disappointing college education is. I think there’s a lot of households saying, ‘This is what we’re paying for?’”

Continue reading… “Almost half of Universities may be gone in 5 to 10 years, professor admits”

Animals, Environment, Green Friendly, Insects, Science & Technology News

These hungry superworms happily munch through plastic

June 19, 2020

A superworm can eat about eight times more than other plastic-ingesting insects.

Recycling seems like a simple cure for our plastic addiction: just take the plastic we have and make it into new items. But problems abound. Current technology mostly creates plastic of a lower quality than it was before, many types of plastic aren’t recyclable at all, and much of the plastic is floating in the ocean, not even in the recycling stream. So it’s vital that we find new ways to break down plastic, and scientists have just discovered one: a superworm that can eat about eight times more than other plastic-ingesting insects like mealworms.

Superworms are actually beetle larvae, and commonly sold at pet stores as food for reptiles and fish. In a paper recently published by the American Chemical Society, researchers Jiaojie Li, Dae-Hwan Kim, and their team detail how they placed 50 superworms in a chamber with two grams of polystyrene. After 21 days, the superworms had consumed about 70% of the polystyrene.

Continue reading… “These hungry superworms happily munch through plastic”

App, Automation, Coding, mobile apps, Science & Technology News

Bryter raises $16M for a no-code platform for non-technical people to build enterprise automation apps

June 19, 2020

Automation is the name of the game in enterprise IT at the moment: We now have a plethora of solutions on the market to speed up your workflow, simplify a process and perform more repetitive tasks without humans getting involved. Now, a startup that is helping non-technical people get more directly involved in how to make automation work better for their tasks is announcing some funding to seize the opportunity

Bryter — a no-code platform based in Berlin that lets workers in departments like accounting, legal, compliance and marketing who do not have any special technical or developer skills build tools like chatbots, trigger automated database and document actions and risk assessors — is today announcing that it has raised $16 million. This is a Series A round being co-led by Accel and Dawn Capital, with Notion Capital and Chalfen Ventures also participating.

The funding comes less than a year after Bryter raised a seed round — $6 million in November 2019 — and it was oversubscribed, with term sheets coming in from many of the bigger VCs in Europe and the U.S. With this funding, the company has now raised around $25 million, and while the valuation is considerably up on the last round, Bryter is not disclosing what it is.

Continue reading… “Bryter raises $16M for a no-code platform for non-technical people to build enterprise automation apps”

Automobiles, Electric Vehicles, Science & Technology News, Transportation

Germany requires all gas stations to provide EV charging

June 18, 2020

As part of Germany’s new increased electric-vehicle incentive package, the country will require gas stations to offer EV charging. Details about the plan are not yet known, such as the timeline and type of required chargers. But EV advocates quickly praised the move as a boost to electric-car adoption.

BDEW, Germany’s association for energy and water industries, believes that at least 70,000 charging stations and 7,000 fast-charging stations are required to achieve a mass market for EVs in the country. BDEW reports that there are currently about 28,000 stations in Germany.

According to Reuters, electric cars made up only 1.8% of new passenger car registrations last year in Germany, with diesel and petrol cars accounting for 32% and 59.2%, respectively.

New German EV incentives double existing subsidies to €6,000 ($6,720) on electric vehicles costing up to €40,000 ($44,800). Germany will also implement higher taxes for fuel-thirsty, internal-combustion SUVs.

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Automobiles, China, Electric Vehicles, Science & Technology News, Tesla

Tesla announces massive Supercharger expansion in China to support growth

June 18, 2020

Tesla announced plans to install 4,000 Superchargers in China this year alone in order to support its growth in the market.

Over the last five years, Tesla has deployed over 2,500 Supercharger stalls in over 150 cities in China.

At their Shanghai office last week, the automaker announced its plan to deploy 4,000 Superchargers in the country in 2020 alone.

This is a massive acceleration of Supercharger deployment for Tesla in China.

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Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News, Stem cells

Mini human livers grown from stem cells successfully implanted into rats

June 18, 2020

Miniature human livers can be grown from stem cells and implanted into rats – and hopefully, one day humans

Imagine needing a liver transplant, and instead of waiting for a donor, a new one could be grown from your own skin cells. Scientists have now taken quite a big step towards that future, by successfully transplanting miniature human livers grown from induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSCs) into rats.

Organ transplants save lives, but there are hurdles to overcome. For one, there’s a constant shortage of donors and, even when one is found, the patient’s immune system often rejects the new tissue.

Growing a replacement organ from a patient’s own cells could solve both problems. It can be done on demand when a patient needs one, and the organ won’t be rejected because the immune system recognizes the cells as “self.”

Continue reading… “Mini human livers grown from stem cells successfully implanted into rats”

Automation, Housing, New Inventions, Record Breaker, Robotics, Science & Technology News

Hadrian X brick-laying robot ups the ante to 200 blocks an hour

June 17, 2020

The Hadrian robot was created by Australian firm Fastbrick Robotics (FBR) and is named after the UK’s Hadrian Wall

Back in 2015 we looked at an interesting approach to automated construction in the form of a brick-laying robot, capable of putting together full-sized homes in just two days. The engineers behind the Hadrian X have continued making software improvements and have now announced a new record brick-laying speed, which they say makes the robot commercially competitive with manual workers around much of the world.

The Hadrian X robot was created by Australian firm Fastbrick Robotics (FBR) and is named after the UK’s Hadrian Wall. It features a telescopic boom that mounts to an excavator or truck, which is fed a 3D CAD model of a house and goes about placing bricks along with mortar and adhesive to build out the structure.

While the team has concept demonstrator robots designed to one day achieve laying rates of more than 1,000 bricks an hour, on the practical side things have been a little more slow-going. Software upgrades to the Hadrian X have seen it go from laying around 85 blocks an hour before the COVID-19 pandemic, to around 150 blocks an hour, and then onward to up over 200 blocks an hour.

Continue reading… “Hadrian X brick-laying robot ups the ante to 200 blocks an hour”

Business, communication, Coronavirus, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

7 ways companies can deliver better virtual events

June 17, 2020

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” — William Shakespeare

Audiences still want what audiences want: content, community and connections. There are seven ways businesses can deliver what their audiences want through live events delivered virtually.

What happens when that stage no longer has a jumbotron, special effects, and a state-of-the-art sound system? How do you amplify your pitch and your prospects when front row, center stage seats go virtual? While the context has shifted, the demand for events that create connections and convert leads into sales haven’t.

“Audiences still want what audiences want: content, community and connections,” reminds Bari Baumgardner, an event planning veteran and founder of SAGE Event Management. “The question is how to deliver what audiences want through live events delivered virtually.” To stage a performance that leaves your audience wanting more – and results in revenue and raving fans – create a backdrop for success with these leading practices.

Continue reading… “7 ways companies can deliver better virtual events”

Electric Vehicles, Environment, Health & Fitness, Report, Science & Technology News

New study : Every electric car brings $10,000 in life-saving benefits

June 17, 2020

Converting all cars and SUVs in the Greater Toronto area into electric vehicles would cause 313 fewer deaths per year, an estimated social benefit of $2.4 billion. That’s the high-level finding of a study published today by Environmental Defence and the Ontario Public Health Association.

EV drivers cite numerous reasons for ditching a gas car and buying an EV: lower operating costs, high resale values, quick and quiet acceleration, and mitigating climate change. But what’s more compelling than saving human lives?

Continue reading… “New study : Every electric car brings $10,000 in life-saving benefits”