Science & Technology News – Page 225

3D Printer, new technology, Record Breaker, Science & Technology News

Micro-angelo? This 3D-printed ‘David’ is just one millimeter tall

December 27, 2019

3D printing has proven itself useful in so many industries that it’s no longer necessary to show off, but some people just can’t help themselves. Case in point: this millimeter-tall rendition of Michelangelo’s famous “David” printed with copper using a newly developed technique.

The aptly named “Tiny David” was created by Exaddon, a spin-off company from another spin-off company, Cytosurge, spun off from Swiss research university ETH Zurich. It’s only a fraction of a millimeter wide and weighs two micrograms.

It was created using Exaddon’s “CERES” 3D printer, which lays down a stream of ionized liquid copper at a rate of as little as femtoliters per second, forming a rigid structure with features as small as a micrometer across. The Tiny David took about 12 hours to print, though something a little simpler in structure could probably be done much quicker.

Continue reading… “Micro-angelo? This 3D-printed ‘David’ is just one millimeter tall”

Business, Latest Trend, Report, Science & Technology News

The future of industrial real estate

December 29, 2019

Lincoln Property Co. developed Lincoln Logistics 40, a state-of-the-art warehouse/distribution building that features 40-foot clear height in Goodyear, Ariz.

Logistics properties in the U.S. are getting loftier and more high-tech as an evolving supply chain drives innovation in sheds.

Prologis Inc., the largest warehouse provider in the U.S., wrapped up construction of a three-story distribution center in Seattle in October of last year. The 590,000-square-foot project, called Georgetown Crossroads, is the nation’s first logistics property to have multiple floors that are serviceable by large delivery trucks. Amazon has reportedly agreed to take up about 500,000 square feet in the warehouse, with Home Depot also planning to lease space.

Although common in the dense, costly urban centers of Asia and Europe, multistory warehouses are a novel concept in the U.S., where land is abundant and cheap and suppliers historically haven’t faced huge pressure to locate close to cities. But the future of industrial real estate is changing as e-commerce continues its rapid growth trajectory and consumers demand ever-faster delivery times.

Continue reading… “The future of industrial real estate”

Cancer, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

Scientists successfully turn breast cancer cells into fat to stop them from spreading

December 26, 2019

Researchers have been able to coax human breast cancer cells to turn into fat cells in a new proof-of-concept study in mice.

To achieve this feat, the team exploited a weird pathway that metastasising cancer cells have; their results are just a first step, but it’s a truly promising approach.

Continue reading… “Scientists successfully turn breast cancer cells into fat to stop them from spreading”

Hyperloop, Record Breaker, Science & Technology News, Transportation

Toronto to Montreal Hyperloop Train in under 40 minutes

December 26, 2019

Toronto to Montreal Hyperloop Train – Would you like to get from Montreal to Toronto in 39 minutes, in a futuristic vehicle propelling you through a low-pressure tube at up to 1080 kilometers per hour? Well, that soon may very well be possible with the Toronto to Montreal Hyperloop Train.

Toronto and Montreal are finalists in Hyperloop One’s global competition to build the first ‘hyperloop high-speed transportation system’. The Toronto to Montreal route is one of their top choices. The two cities are major contenders where the company would build one of their first routes in the world.

The proposed route would connect Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto and would travel 2-3 times faster than high-speed rail and magnetic levitation trains and 10-15 times faster than traditional rail.

Continue reading… “Toronto to Montreal Hyperloop Train in under 40 minutes”

Amazon.com, Science & Technology News, United Parcel Service

What will make cargo bike package delivery succeed in New York?

December 26, 2019

Lessons from other cities that have started replacing trucks with bikes.

What will make cargo bike package delivery succeed in New York?

At a UPS operating center in midtown Manhattan, two cargo delivery bikes will soon begin rolling out of a driveway in the morning a few hours before the usual delivery trucks begin their routes. The company is part of a new six-month pilot program in New York City that will test how well cargo bikes, with electric “pedal assist” for couriers, can potentially help relieve traffic by replacing some delivery trucks. A similar system is already in use in several other cities around the world: New York can learn from what’s working elsewhere to consider how the pilot could scale up.

In European cities, UPS typically brings a shipping container from a depot to a spot in the city center early in the morning, and couriers on bikes take loads of deliveries to nearby neighborhoods. Since the cargo bikes can’t carry as much as a truck, the cyclists have to make multiple trips; the system only makes economic sense in congested areas where trucks struggle to park, but bikes can reach customers more quickly. (We’re using the term bike liberally here, many of these vehicles have more than two wheels.)

Continue reading… “What will make cargo bike package delivery succeed in New York?”

Automation, communication, Driverless cars, Science & Technology News

Smart intersections could cut autonomous car congestion

December 26, 2019

Researchers have developed a first-of-its-kind model to control traffic and intersections in order to increase autonomous car capacity on urban streets of the future, reduce congestion and minimize accidents.

In the not-so-distant future, city streets could be flooded with autonomous vehicles. Self-driving cars can move faster and travel closer together, allowing more of them to fit on the road — potentially leading to congestion and gridlock on city streets.

A new study by Cornell researchers developed a first-of-its-kind model to control traffic and intersections in order to increase car capacity on urban streets, reduce congestion and minimize accidents.

“For the future of mobility, so much attention has been paid to autonomous cars,” said Oliver Gao, professor of civil and environmental engineering and senior author of the study, which published in Transportation Research Part B.

Continue reading… “Smart intersections could cut autonomous car congestion”

Automation, Automobiles, Driverless vehicles, Science & Technology News, Transportation

Waymo is taking the safety drivers out to its autonomous taxis

December 26, 2019

No Hands!

Waymo, the Google-affiliated self-driving car company, has finally started to operate its self-driving taxi service without any humans sitting behind the wheel.

That means passengers using the company’s Uber-like Waymo One service might find themselves shuttled around Arizona in the back seat of an otherwise-empty minivan, as one reporter for The Verge did. Removing the drivers is a major milestone in the race for fully-autonomous transport — the vehicles are still supervised remotely, but Waymo is now confident enough in its cars to almost entirely take humans out of the loop.

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Aviation, Electric Vehicles, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

‘World’s first’ fully-electric commercial flight takes off

December 26, 2019

A Harbour Air electric aircraft

An all-electric powered seaplane has taken flight in Vancouver, Canada, in what the operators describe as a “world first” for the aviation industry.

The short test flight by Harbour Air and magniX involved a six-passenger aircraft fitted with an electric motor.

The companies said it was a first step to building the “world’s first all-electric commercial fleet”.

The push to electric could help slash carbon emissions in the high-polluting aviation sector.

“This historic flight signifies the start of the third era in aviation – the electric age,” Harbour Air and magniX said in a statement.

Continue reading… “‘World’s first’ fully-electric commercial flight takes off”

China, drones, Record Breaker, Science & Technology News

Chinese scientists create ‘game-changer’ methanol battery that keeps drone in the air for 12 hours

December 26, 2019

Developers of FY-36 say they overcame ‘tons of problems’ to create alcohol-fuelled battery that allows 15kg (33lb)6 drone to fly for up to 12 hours

With 15 test flights under their belt, Chinese team achieve methanol-powered flight before German company

Scientists working on a drone development programme created a “game-changing” methanol-powered fuel system that kept their UAV in the air for 12 hours.

It took them more than two years to get the FY-36 unmanned aerial vehicle to the flying prototype stage, said Zhang Wenyu, general manager of Feye UAV Technology, a Tianjin-based drone manufacturer that collaborated with the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in northeastern Liaoning province.

At 15 kilograms (33 pounds), the low-noise FY-36 can be lifted by an adult or transported in a pickup truck, and designers said its hybrid aerodynamic shape – with four vertical propellers – can allow it to cruise at speeds as high as 90km/h, or 56mph.

Continue reading… “Chinese scientists create ‘game-changer’ methanol battery that keeps drone in the air for 12 hours”

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Healthcare, Medicine, Science & Technology News

The AI doctor will see you now

December 25, 2019

A lightbox showing a mammogram xray

Advances in neural networks and other techniques promise to transform health care while raising profound questions about our bodies and society.

AI software can identify early signs of breast cancer long before the disease can be diagnosed by conventional means.

When MIT professor Regina Barzilay received her breast cancer diagnosis, she turned it into a science project. Learning that the disease could have been detected earlier if doctors had recognized the signs on previous mammograms, Barzilay, an expert in artificial intelligence, used a collection of 90,000 breast x-rays to create software for predicting a patient’s cancer risk.

Continue reading… “The AI doctor will see you now”

AI, Amazon.com, Artificial Intelligence, Music, Science & Technology News

Amazon’s AI creates synthesized singers

December 25, 2019

AI and machine learning algorithms are quite skilled at generating works of art — and highly realistic images of apartments, people, and pets to boot. But relatively few have been tuned to singing synthesis, or the task of cloning musicians’ voices.

Researchers from Amazon and Cambridge put their collective minds to the challenge in a recent paper in which they propose an AI system that requires “considerably” less modeling than previous work of features like vibratos and note durations. It taps a Google-designed algorithm — WaveNet — to synthesize the mel-spectrograms, or representations of the power spectrum of sounds, which another model produces using a combination of speech and signing data.

Continue reading… “Amazon’s AI creates synthesized singers”

Employment, Human Behavior, Report, Science & Technology News

Here’s how long you should take off to feel productive at work again, according to study

December 25, 2019

According to the website Sleep Judge, the U.S. is one of only a few countries that doesn’t mandate a set number of vacation days.

People are overworked and burnt out, and we seem content to treat this as a fact of life. But it doesn’t have to be.

In fact, the issue that Americans are so overworked — one-third of all American workers haven’t even taken a vacation in over two years — is precisely why we should be making a commitment to take more time off in 2020.

Continue reading… “Here’s how long you should take off to feel productive at work again, according to study”