Science & Technology News – Page 80

Telemedicine with 5G could be a gamechanger for military health

July 30, 2021

Telehealth became an even bigger industry during COVID-19. Doctors were forced to think of creative ways to see patients as people were forced to stay home to avoid the spread of the virus.

However, as 5G is starting to roll out, telehealth may be breaking into a completely new plane. At Joint Base San Antonio (JBSA) the Air Force is testing capabilities that could be the future of medicine.

“5G brings a whole new paradigm and architecture to the table. From what we’ve seen before even up through the current 5G non-standalone that you see advertised on TV today,” Jody Little, executive program manager for 5G NextGen at JBSA, said during a Federal Insights discussion sponsored by Verizon. “Now you can bring large amounts of data forward or back to it and operate in the forward edge. You can virtualize these applications and get very ultra-low latency. And now you’re supporting lots of sensors. Whereas in, say, 4G, you could support maybe 100. Here, you can support 1000s.”

That means that doctors have the opportunity to monitor patients like never before. Doctors across the country can sit in on surgeries and experience them as if it were almost in-person by looking at multiple sensors and using virtual reality.

Science & Technology News, Space Flight

European Robotic Arm is launched into space

July 28, 2021

The European Robotic Arm (ERA) is on its way to the International Space Station after being launched on a Proton rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in Kazakhstan, at 16:58 CEST today.

The 11-m-long robot is travelling folded and attached to what will be its home base – the Multipurpose Laboratory Module, also called ‘Nauka’. The Proton-M booster placed Nauka and ERA into orbit around 10 minutes after liftoff, nearly 200 km above Earth.

drones, Science & Technology News

Dubai creates its own rain to break heatwave by sending drones to ‘zap’ clouds

July 28, 2021

The mini-planes ‘shock’ the clouds into releasing their moisture

By Michael Moran

With temperatures soaring to over 120F (49C), Dubai desperately needs rain – and a new initiative from the Brit university is delivering a bigger downpour than expected.

Drones that give clouds ‘electric shocks’ to encourage rainfall are being tested in the skies above Dubai.

The United Arab Emirates [UAE] is one of the world’s driest countries, and with a summer heatwave driving temperatures up as high as 122F (49C) locals are desperate for a few drops of rain.

Average rainfall in the Emirates is just under four inches per year (compared to almost 35” in the UK) and the UAE is only expected to get hotter and drier as climate change takes hold.

Driverless cars, Science & Technology News

Ford and partner Argo AI will launch Lyft self-driving cars this year

July 28, 2021

The first autonomous cars ready for ride hailing will hit the road in Miami by the end of this year.

By Sean Szymkowski

Look out Miami, there are some new machines in town.Ford

Ford last year said it needed to delay its robotaxi service until 2022 because of the pandemic, but now a big first step will happen this year. On Wednesday, Ford announced that by the end of 2021 it will deploy the first self-driving cars with its partner Argo AI on ride-hailing service Lyft’s network. The first cars will land in Miami, the automaker said.

This first step is one of many to commercialize (that’s corporate speak for “make money”) autonomous ride-hailing services. Many companies and automakers have promised these services for years now, but Google’s sister company Waymo is the only one to actually pick riders up and charge them a fare. And that’s only outside of Phoenix — far from nationwide.

drones, Science & Technology News

New Algorithm Flies Drones Faster than Human Racing Pilots

July 28, 2021

To be useful, drones need to be quick. Because of their limited battery life they must complete whatever task they have – searching for survivors on a disaster site, inspecting a building, delivering cargo – in the shortest possible time. And they may have to do it by going through a series of waypoints like windows, rooms, or specific locations to inspect, adopting the best trajectory and the right acceleration or deceleration at each segment.

Record Breaker, Science & Technology News

China unveils 373-mph ‘levitating’ train, fastest ground vehicle in the world

July 26, 2021

The Chinese train uses “maglev” technology, meaning it levitates above the track with no contact between body and rail.

By Theo Wayt

China unveiled a futuristic “levitating” train on Tuesday that has a top speed of 373 miles per hour — making it the fastest ground vehicle in the world.

By comparison, Tesla’s Model S Plaid — which the company bills as the fastest production car in the world — tops out at just 200 mph.

The Chinese train uses “maglev” technology, meaning electromagnetic forces allow the train to levitate above the track with no contact between body and rail. The lack of friction lets the train reach blistering speeds.

AI, Science & Technology News

Scientists Are Giving AI The Ability to Imagine Things It’s Never Seen Before

July 26, 2021

Artificial intelligence (AI) is proving very adept at certain tasks – like inventing human faces that don’t actually exist, or winning games of poker – but these networks still struggle when it comes to something humans do naturally: imagine.-

Once human beings know what a cat is, we can easily imagine a cat of a different color, or a cat in a different pose, or a cat in different surroundings. For AI networks, that’s much harder, even though they can recognize a cat when they see it (with enough training).

To try and unlock AI’s capacity for imagination, researchers have come up with a new method for enabling artificial intelligence systems to work out what an object should look like, even if they’ve never actually seen one exactly like it before.

“We were inspired by human visual generalization capabilities to try to simulate human imagination in machines,” says computer scientist Yunhao Ge from the University of Southern California (USC).-

“Humans can separate their learned knowledge by attributes – for instance, shape, pose, position, color – and then recombine them to imagine a new object. Our paper attempts to simulate this process using neural networks.”

Energy, Science & Technology News

China adding finishing touches to world-first thorium nuclear reactor

July 26, 2021

China is pursuing an experimental form of nuclear fission in thorium molten salt reactors, and will reportedly begin tests at a facility in the coming months

China is moving ahead with development of an experimental reactor that would be the first of its kind in the world, but could prove key to the pursuit of clean and safe nuclear power. According to local news reports, the Chinese government intends to finish building a prototype molten salt nuclear reactor in the desert city of Wuwei in the coming months, with plans to establish a number of larger-scale plants in similar settings thereafter.

With an ability to generate power while producing very minimal carbon emissions, nuclear reactors have a clear upside when it comes to the sustainable generation of energy. But there are very valid reasons the technology hasn’t been widely adopted across the world, many of which stem from the reliance on uranium and plutonium for fuel.

Not only is uranium expensive and rare, it can also be used to build nuclear weapons. These reactors also generate radioactive waste that needs to be safely stored, and carry the very real risk of catastrophic meltdown, as seen at Fukushima in 2011.

Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

Israeli Company’s ‘Spiderman’ Technology Spins New Artificial Skin for Patients

July 25, 2021

by Yafit Ovadia

Ctech – Company: Nanomedic

Product: Spincare System

Raised: Undisclosed

Founded: 2018

Founders: Spinoff company of Nicast with no specific founders

Treating burns, wounds, and scars presents both psychological and physical hindrances. This treatment also becomes complex, costly, and can deprive a patient of the use of that limb or area. Yet one biotech company, Nanomedic Technologies, has engineered an artificial skin that is 3D-printed, is affixed directly onto a patient’s skin, and after 24-48 hours allows patients to use that area as they normally would, explained Gary Sagiv, VP of Marketing & Sales at Nanomedic.

“We have leveraged our electrospinning technology to develop a commercialized franchise handheld device for wound care that prints a nanofiber matrix directly onto a patient’s wound, via 3D printing, and treats three specific areas, primarily burns, trauma, and wound care,” Sagiv said, adding: “People quip our technology is reminiscent of Spiderman.”

DNA, Science & Technology News

How Designer DNA Is Changing Medicine

July 25, 2021

Normal and sickle-shaped red blood cells.

By Carolyn Barber

A genomic revolution is poised to cure sickle cell and other genetic diseases

For as long as he could remember, Razel Colón had known pain. It ripped down his neck and back, shot through his legs and traveled on to his feet, often leaving him writhing and incapacitated. He suffered occasional attacks of “acute chest,” in which breathing suddenly becomes difficult. “It felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest, with tight, tight pain,” Colón tells me. Trips to the emergency department and the hospital were commonplace. “If I was lucky,” he says, “I could stay away for a month.”

Colón, from Hoboken, N.J., is just 19, but the sickle cell disease that produced these effects had been a constant, if unwelcome, companion. But he tells his story now from the perspective of one who has gone a year and a half without that pain. He can do things that previously were out of the question: play basketball, lift weights, swim in cold water. His treatment, says his long-time physician Stacey Rifkin-Zenenberg, a pediatric hematologist-oncologist at Hackensack University Medical Center, “changed him from having the disease to being a carrier.”

Colón’s case represents a point on the curve of an emerging technology that may forever alter our approach to treating diseases like sickle cell. That world, the cutting-edge world of innovative genomic therapies, is once again in the midst of explosive change—and designer DNA lies at the heart of the conversation.

Electric Vehicles, Science & Technology News

Indiana To Build Wireless In-Motion Charging For Electric Vehicles On Highway

July 25, 2021

BY TYLER DURDEN

The Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) has begun the first phase of a project to transform a segment of the state’s highway into wireless charging pavement for electric vehicles, according to local news WRTV.

INDOT partnered with Advancing Sustainability through Power Infrastructure for Road Electrification (ASPIRE) Initiative, in a three-phase project that will use magnetizable concrete, developed by a German startup Magment GmbH, to allow seamless wireless charging of electric vehicles while in motion.

“We’re quite eager to see this first of its kind project unfold in Indiana,” David Christensen, the ASPIRE Innovation Director, said. “This partnership that includes Magment, INDOT, Purdue University, and the larger ASPIRE consortium has great promise to really move the needle on technology development, which will, in turn, enable more positive impacts from deeper electric vehicle adoption.”

The project will be conducted in three phases. The first and second will be pavement testing at Purdue University’s West Lafayette campus. The third phase will be INDOT installing a quarter-mile-long wireless charging pavement on a stretch of highway in the state.

Alternative Transportation, Science & Technology News

World’s First Flying Motorcycle Is Getting one Test Closer To Becoming a Reality

July 24, 2021

· By Cristina Mircea

David Mayman is a visionary, an inventor, and passionate aviator. He is also the founder and CEO of JetPack Aviation, a VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) aircraft manufacturer based in Los Angeles. After the company succeeded in building the world’s first portable JetPack, it started advertising another exciting product: the world’s first flying motorcycle, called Speeder.

While JetPack Aviation only teased us with animations of the aircraft so far, we now have footage of an actual prototype nailing its first platform tests. As seen in the video posted by New Atlas on YouTube, the P1 VTOL that will eventually be powered by four individual turbojet engines, does very well in its tests, thanks to JetPack Aviation’s flight control software, which was created by the company’s team.

While the P1 prototype looks nothing like the aircraft in their animation, and it is also tethered in these tests, this is nevertheless a major step forward for JetPack Aviation. The VTOL proved to be impressively stable and resilient, including with dummy loads on it and performing in 30-knot winds. The safety tether doesn’t support the P1, as seen in the footage. Tests confirmed that the Speeder can takeoff, do turns,climb, and hold itself in a stable hover using LiDAR.