If you’ve ever seen a jet blaze through the sky leaving a perfect line of smoke behind it, you’ve probably wondered why that smoke holds its shape so perfectly for so long, but doesn’t hold true on land when a motorbike or car zooms down the road. Air movement anywhere above the troposphere (the lowest region of our atmosphere) is extremely negligible. Jets, which fly in the stratosphere, leave behind that trail of smoke because the air there doesn’t move to disrupt the smoke trails. This also means that there’s immense amounts of friction when a jet travels at high speeds, cutting through the motionless air particles. Designer Michal Bonikowski believes that friction could actually be a source of clean energy that a plane could harness to reduce its carbon footprint.
While less public than the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, the intelligence community has been developing its own set of principles for the ethical use of artificial intelligence.
The Pentagon made headlines last month when it adopted its five principles for using artificial intelligence, marking the end of a months-long effort over what guidelines the department should follow as it develops new AI tools and AI-enabled technologies.
Less well known is that the intelligence community is developing its own principles governing the use of AI.
“The intelligence community has been doing it’s own work in this space as well. We’ve been doing it for quite a bit of time,” Ben Huebner, chief of the Office of Director of National Intelligence’s Civil Liberties, Privacy, and Transparency Office, said at an Intelligence and National Security Alliance event March 4.
Employees sort parcels with automated guided vehicles (AGVs) at a logistic centre of a postal service in China last November.
Manufacturing as we know it isn’t quite dead – but it will be soon. We’re at the cusp of a major transformation where the classic factory worker’s tasks will soon be digitized and managed by robots and intelligent software.
Human jobs have been sacrificed through every major industrial revolution and this change will be no different. Unfortunately, the speed at which this next displacement is taking place exceeds the speed at which people are being retrained for the new factory roles that are now required. In this environment, technology companies will have new responsibilities to reskill their workforce and the workforces impacted by their products.
The trip is expected to launch during the second half of 2021.
It may not be a trip to the moon, but Axiom Space is offering deep-pocketed customers a trip to space. And no, we’re not talking a quick little jaunt into orbit either. Instead, the company is offering an all-inclusive stay on the International Space Station for the humble sum of $55 million.
On Thursday, Axiom announced it had signed a contract with SpaceX that will allow a trained commander and three private astronauts the chance to hitch a ride to the space station aboard one of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsules, reports the New York Times. Expected to take place next year, the trip could very likely be the first fully private human spaceflight to orbit.
Currently scheduled to launch during the second half of next year, the trip will give customers the chance to “experience at least eight days of microgravity and views of the Earth that can only be appreciated in the large, venerable station,” according to a press release from Axiom. In addition to the two days of travel and room and board on the ISS, the company will also provide training, planning, life support, medical support, crew provisions, certifications, on-orbit operations and overall mission management.
Grafting tiny bits of muscle to amputated nerves provides a way to control a robotic limb
Joe Hamilton intuitively controls a prosthetic hand using the Regenerative Peripheral Nerve Interface, or RPNI, in a lab on the University of Michigan Medical Campus. (Evan Dougherty/University of Michigan Engineering)
Researchers with the University of Michigan have announced a breakthrough in nerve-controlled prosthetic technology, which allows amputees the ability to control their hands and fingers precisely, intuitively, and in real time.
They’re claiming it as a major advancement in mind-controlled prosthetics.
“The idea of trying to get a prosthetic control signal from a nerve has been around at least as long as Empire Strikes Back,” Cindy Chestek told Quirks & Quarks host Bob McDonald. “It’s just been really hard to do because the physics is not in your favour.”
The ruling, the result of a dispute between Bitcoin marketplace Paymium and crypto investment firm BitSpread, could benefit the French crypto market.
A French court has ruled that Bitcoin is money, for the first time.
The result of the ruling could lead to more action in the French Bitcoin market.
It’s the first time a French court has issued such a ruling, according to French publication Les Echos.
The ruling came from a dispute between French Bitcoin marketplace Paymium and crypto investment company BitSpread. Paymium had loaned BitSpread 1,000 Bitcoin in 2014. But in 2017, Bitcoin forked into Bitcoin Cash.
Researchers have developed a new battery for electric vehicles that can last 1 million miles.
Researchers have been working on increasing the power and life cycle of the batteries we use in electric vehicles while maintaining safety standards for years. A battery reaching its end of life, with diminishing returns, would be a long term nightmare for both customers and companies.
A team in Penn State’s Battery and Energy Storage Technology (BEST) Center claims to have developed a powerful battery that can last for 1 million miles. Elon Musk promised last year that Tesla cars would at some point have batteries that last a million miles, and it seems this battery can do just that.
As Tesla learned years ago, a lithium-ion battery that has a high energy density can catch fire or even explode in certain circumstances. That’s obviously something any electric vehicle manufacturer wants to avoid, but we also want our electric vehicles to have batteries that are powerful and long-lasting. Researchers at Penn State appeared to have created a battery that’s stable, powerful and has a very long life using a counterintuitive approach.
For more than a century, automotive engineers have focused much of their attention on making vehicles as comfortable, safe and convenient as possible for drivers.
They’ve perfected the positioning of the steering wheel and gas pedal. Experimented with the best way to arrange knobs and controls. Determined the optimum placement of mirrors and other accessories.
What happens to all of this knowledge as cars become driverless? More important, how will an automotive engineer’s job change — and what new skills and knowledge will become essential to performing it?
This excerpt comes from an article in the upcoming issue of Community College Journal, which should be reaching your mailbox soon.
Futurist Thomas Frey uses this example to show how technology is fundamentally altering everything we thought we knew. This includes the nature of many long-standing occupations — and even the college experience.
“The world is changing rapidly,” says Frey, who is founder and executive director of the Colorado-based DaVinci Institute. “Ten years from now, education is going to look radically different. It might not feel like it, but we’re in the midst of a huge transition.”
“The best-kept secret in quantum computing.” That’s what Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQC) CEO Ilyas Khan called Honeywell‘s efforts in building the world’s most powerful quantum computer. In a race where most of the major players are vying for attention, Honeywell has quietly worked on its efforts for the last few years (and under strict NDA’s, it seems). But today, the company announced a major breakthrough that it claims will allow it to launch the world’s most powerful quantum computer within the next three months.
In addition, Honeywell also today announced that it has made strategic investments in CQC and Zapata Computing, both of which focus on the software side of quantum computing. The company has also partnered with JPMorgan Chase to develop quantum algorithms using Honeywell’s quantum computer. The company also recently announced a partnership with Microsoft.
Making Mars more Earth-like would be a gargantuan task. From giant mirrors to tiny microbes, here’s the thinking behind making Mars habitable for humans.
This story is part of Welcome to Mars, our series exploring the red planet.
At the end of 1990’s sci-fi adventure Total Recall, all it takes is the push of a button. In a matter of minutes, Mars’ sky transforms from a hellish red to an Earth-like blue. After nearly suffocating on the Martian surface just moments before, Arnold Schwarzenegger takes in lungfuls and lungfuls of that sweet, sweet breathable Martian air.
This is terraforming, the concept of making a planet more hospitable to humans, and it’s been cropping up in pop culture since the early 1900s, everywhere from books to movies to video games. Once upon a time, the idea of turning Mars into Earth 2.0 might have been merely a fanciful notion, as theoretical as actually going to the planet at all.
But in 2020, Mars is very much on the agenda. NASA, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic — they all want to put space boots on the ground, and in some cases as soon as the 2030s. But as scientists work toward blastoff, the concept of terraforming will most likely be a case of “failure to launch.”
Every human on Earth is ingesting nearly 2,000 particles of plastic a week. These tiny pieces enter our unwitting bodies from tap water, food, and even the air, according to an alarming academic study sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, dosing us with five grams of plastics, many cut with chemicals linked to cancers, hormone disruption, and developmental delays. Since the paper’s publication last year, Sen. Tom Udall, a plain-spoken New Mexico Democrat with a fondness for white cowboy hats and turquoise bolo ties, has been trumpeting the risk: “We are consuming a credit card’s worth of plastic each week,” Udall says. At events with constituents, he will brandish a Visa from his wallet and declare, “You’re eating this, folks!”
With new legislation, the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2020, Udall is attempting to marshal Washington into a confrontation with the plastics industry, and to force companies that profit from plastics to take accountability for the waste they create. Unveiled in February, the bill would ban many single-use plastics and force corporations to finance “end of life” programs to keep plastic out of the environment. “We’re going back to that principle,” the senator tells Rolling Stone. “The polluter pays.”
The battle pits Udall and his allies in Congress against some of the most powerful corporate interests on the planet, including the oil majors and chemical giants that produce the building blocks for our modern plastic world — think Exxon, Dow, and Shell — and consumer giants like Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and Unilever that package their products in the stuff. Big Plastic isn’t a single entity. It’s more like a corporate supergroup: Big Oil meets Big Soda — with a puff of Big Tobacco, responsible for trillions of plastic cigarette butts in the environment every year. And it combines the lobbying and public-relations might of all three.
It’s been touted as the builder’s “most spacious model to date.”
After making a major splash in the marine world earlier this year, Silent Yachts is doubling down—or tripling, perhaps—on its groundbreaking solar-powered catamaran. The Austrian-based builder has just unveiled a brand-new tri-deck version of its flagship Silent 80 series.
Touted as the marque’s “most spacious model to date,” the triple-decker boasts an epic panoramic air-conditioned saloon on the flybridge—a feature which sets it apart from its predecessor. The layout can be arranged with either a sweeping skylounge on the top deck or an expansive 295-square-foot fly deck—whatever the owner desires.
“We thought we can make another step forward with the new model,” Silent Yachts founder and chief executive Michael Köhler said. “The additional sky lounge is a very convenient space and helps stretch out the period of using the boat. The extra space on top extends social areas onboard, while offering new opportunities in terms of layout.”
