Alternative Transportation

Zapata launches 250-km/h, flip-capable, jet-powered flying deck chair

Franky Zapata is back with another epic jet-powered flying machine

By Loz Blain

When we last saw Franky Zapata back in May, he was spinning uncontrollably down into the water from a serious height in a terrifying jetboard crash. But the flying Frenchman is back to launch a new, high-speed personal aircraft called the JetRacer.

Zapata has already built a resume most would be proud of. A former jet ski world champion, he went on to invent the Flyboard, a jet ski attachment that re-routes its water jets to let users rise out of the water like the love-child of Aquaman and Iron Man. Before long, he’d ditched the jet ski altogether, and moved to jet turbines to create the Flyboard Air, which allowed him to zoom around like the Green Goblin and set all sorts of records, on nothing more than a backpack full of kerosene fuel. He also built an “Ezfly” version with handles, a Segway of the skies for the rest of us, for whom no quantity of brown undies would ever suffice. 

The latest vehicle in the Zapata stable builds on this small-turbine technology base but takes things in a new direction. The JetRacer is effectively a carbon-fiber bucket seat that flies on the thrust from 10 of the same small jets that power the Flyboards. 

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Metaverse

How will the metaverse shape the future of the automotive industry?

Katrin Zimmermann explores how automotive companies can prepare for long-term success in a web3 world

Last month, Mercedes-Benz sold a very rare 1955 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe for US$142m, making it the most expensive car in history. Someday, that record too will fall, and it’s reasonable to ask whether it will be broken by a physical or digital mobility design object.

It’s no secret that the metaverse and web3 are on their way, taking early shape now and on course to influence all industries—including the automotive sector. According to a whitepaper by JP Morgan, which recently opened a bank in the metaverse known as Onyx Lounge, “the metaverse will likely infiltrate every sector in some way in the coming years, with the market opportunity estimated at over US$1tr in yearly revenues.” NFT sales alone eclipsed US$17.7bn in 2021.

The influence of the metaverse, and web3 more broadly, stand to impact all facets of the auto industry, including manufacturing, product customisation, community, and brand loyalty. Additionally, these technologies will enable a myriad of new opportunities for the digital and physical worlds to converge. Even grander still, such shifts will bring to the fore existential questions on where responsibilities lie between individuals, the auto sector, and web3 developers when it comes to sustainability and ethical operations.

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Space Flight

Hitchhiking to the moon: LunaH-Map

LunaH-Map with its solar panels unfolded

by: Kaitlin Kanable

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (WHNT) – Throughout the Apollo missions to the moon, all of the landings focused on areas near the equator. Now, on the first Artemis mission, a tiny satellite called LunaH-Map will be focusing on what things look like at the moon’s south pole. 

The Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper was one of 10 CubeSats chosen to fly aboard the Space Launch System’s (SLS) first fully integrated flight. These small satellites are helping with large science goals.

News 19 sat down with LunaH-Map Principal Investigator Craig Hardgrove to learn more about the CubeSat and its mission to the moon. The University of Tennessee graduate has been with the project from the very beginning.

“We’ve known for a while now that there is ice at the poles on the moon,” Hardgrove said. 

He explained previous missions have used scientific tools to take readings of hydrogen deposits, showing where water probably is, but LunaH-Map will help visually show what those areas look like. It will provide details on those areas such as how deep the water deposits are and how wide.

LunaH-Map has a neutron spectrometer onboard which the rest of the spacecraft has been built around. The spectrometer is about the size of a tissue box while all of LunaH is about the size of a large cereal box.

Hardgrove explained the project was first thought of about seven years ago when scientists wanted to know more about the ice at the lunar south pole.

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Medicine

New Wearable Sensor Detects Even More Compounds in Human Sweat

If you have ever had your blood drawn, whether to check your cholesterol, kidney function, hormone levels, blood sugar, or as part of a general checkup, you might have wondered why there is not an easier, less painful way.

Now there might be. A team of researchers from Caltech’s Cherng Department of Medical Engineering has unveiled a new wearable sensor that can detect in human sweat even minute levels of many common nutrients and biological compounds that can serve as indicators of human health.

The sensor technology was developed in the lab of Wei Gao, assistant professor of medical engineering, Heritage Medical Research Institute investigator, and Ronald and JoAnne Willens Scholar. For years, Gao’s research has focused on wearable sensors with medical applications, and this latest work represents the most precise and sensitive iteration yet.

“We’ve done wearable sweat sensors before,” he says. “There were so many biomarkers we wanted to detect, but in the past we could not. There was no good way.”

Gao says previous versions of his sweat sensors relied on enzymes embedded within them to detect a limited number of relevant compounds. While antibodies could be used in sensors to detect more compounds at low concentrations, that technique had a big weakness: antibodies in the sensor can only be used once, meaning the sensors will wear out.

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Robots

Google’s New Robot Learned To Take Orders By Scraping The Web

By Andrew McCollum 

Late last week, Google research scientist Fei Xia sat in the center of a bright, open-plan kitchen and typed a command into a laptop connected to a one-armed, wheeled robot resembling a large floor lamp. “I’m hungry,” he wrote. The robot promptly zoomed over to a nearby countertop, gingerly picked up a bag of multigrain chips with a large plastic pincer, and wheeled over to Xia to offer up a snack.

The most impressive thing about that demonstration, held in Google’s robotics lab in Mountain View, California, was that no human coder had programmed the robot to understand what to do in response to Xia’s command. Its control software had learned how to translate a spoken phrase into a sequence of physical actions using millions of pages of text scraped from the web.

That means a person doesn’t have to use specific preapproved wording to issue commands, as can be necessary with virtual assistants such as Alexa or Siri. Tell the robot “I’m parched,” and it should try to find you something to drink; tell it “Whoops, I just spilled my drink,” and it ought to come back with a sponge.

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3D Printer

India’s first 3-D printed cornea developed by scientists from Hyderabad

Developed indigenously through government and philanthropic funding, the product is completely natural, contains no synthetic components, is free of animal residues and is safe to use in patients.

For the first time in India, researchers in the city have successfully 3D-printed an artificial cornea and transplanted it into a rabbit eye. Researchers from L V Prasad Eye Institute (LVPEI), Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad (IITH), and the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), have collaborated to develop a 3D-printed cornea from the human donor corneal tissue, a press release issued on Sunday said.

Developed indigenously through government and philanthropic funding, the product is completely natural, contains no synthetic components, is free of animal residues and is safe to use in patients, it said. With recent advancements in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering, the researchers from LVPEI, IITH and CCMB used decellularised corneal tissue matrix and stem cells derived from the human eye to develop a unique biomimetic hydrogel (patent pending) that was used as the background material for the 3D-printed cornea.

As the 3D-printed cornea is composed of materials deriving from human corneal tissue, it is biocompatible, natural, and free of animal residues, it said. Dr Sayan Basu and Dr Vivek Singh, lead researchers from LVPEI, said this can be a groundbreaking and disruptive innovation in treating diseases like corneal scarring (where the cornea becomes opaque) or Keratoconus (where the cornea gradually becomes thin with time).

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Artificial Intelligence

Engineers Build Reconfigurable Artificial Intelligence Chip

MIT engineers have created a reconfigurable AI chip that comprises alternating layers of sensing and processing elements that can communicate with each other. (Image: Figure courtesy of the researchers and edited by MIT News)

The researchers plan to apply the design to edge computing devices.

MIT engineers are taking a modular approach with a LEGO-like design for a stackable, reconfigurable artificial intelligence chip. The design comprises alternating layers of sensing and processing elements, along with light-emitting diodes (LED) that allow for the chip’s layers to communicate optically. Other modular chip designs employ conventional wiring to relay signals between layers. Such intricate connections are difficult if not impossible to sever and rewire, making such stackable designs not reconfigurable.

The MIT design uses light, rather than physical wires, to transmit information through the chip. The chip can therefore be reconfigured, with layers that can be swapped out or stacked on, for instance to add new sensors or updated processors.

“You can add as many computing layers and sensors as you want, such as for light, pressure, and even smell,” said MIT Postdoc Jihoon Kang. “We call this a LEGO-like reconfigurable AI chip because it has unlimited expandability depending on the combination of layers.”

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Space Flight

Researchers Have Generated Oxygen From Magnets To Aid Long-Term Space Exploration

By Bharat Sharma

Scientists have managed to produce oxygen from magnets for astronauts of the future researchers from the University of Warwick have made oxygen for astronauts using magnets.NASA uses centrifuges to get oxygen in space. However, those machines are large and energy intensive. Magnets could produce the same results more practically, scientists have found.

Scientists have managed to produce oxygen from magnets for astronauts of the future. Yep, researchers from the University of Warwick have made oxygen for astronauts using magnets.

“On the International Space Station, oxygen is generated using an electrolytic cell that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, but then you have to get those gasses out of the system,” the study’s lead author, Álvaro Romero-Calvo, a recent Ph.D. graduate from the University of Colorado Boulder said in a statement.

This method might not work for a trip to Mars and could make things worse. Currently, NASA uses centrifuges to get oxygen in space. However, those machines are large and energy intensive. Magnets could produce the same results more practically, scientists have found.

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Robots

Hyundai, Boston Dynamics to invest $400M in AI robotics research

By Ishveena Singh

Remember how Hyundai Motor Group was so impressed by the robot dogs and humanoid bots developed by Boston Dynamics that it decided to acquire a majority stake in the robotics firm in 2020? Well, the two companies are now ready to take their relationship to the next level with the formation of the Boston Dynamics AI Institute.

The car manufacturer and the MIT spin-off will make an initial investment of more than $400 million in the new organization, which will be led by Marc Raibert, founder of Boston Dynamics.

At its core, Boston Dynamics AI Institute will be a research-oriented establishment. It will work on solving some of the most important and difficult challenges facing the creation of advanced robots. Combining the best features of university research labs with those of corporate development labs, the institute’s work will focus on four technical areas: cognitive AI, athletic AI, organic hardware design, as well as ethics and policy.

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Energy

A new fusion power station will mimic the Sun to provide limitless energy

‘The next technological step after the global ITER fusion experiment’.

By Chris Young

A European consortium, EuroFusion, has taken a crucial step on the long road to commercially viable nuclear fusi

The consortium just announced the start of a five-year “conceptual design” phase for its DEMOnstration power plant (DEMO), a press statement reveals.

This means nuclear fusion scientists are starting design work on a European demonstration power station that they hope will finally enable net nuclear fusion energy — the much-hyped method to end our reliance on fossil fuels by providing practically limitless energy.

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Nanotechnology

DNA-Based Nanorobot Interacts with Live Cells

 By CONN HASTINGS

Researchers at INSERM (Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale) in France, and collaborators, have developed a DNA-based nanorobot called the Nano-winch. The tiny creation is made using DNA molecules and a “DNA Origami” approach. The tiny robot is so small that it can land on a cell surface and interact with ‘mechanoreceptors’ that the cell uses to sense mechanical forces acting on it. 

The robots can apply tiny forces to the mechanoreceptors, allowing the researchers to measure the biochemical and molecular changes that result. While the technology is certainly useful for basic cellular research, it may also pave the way for similar nanorobots with medical applications, given its ability to interact with specific cellular receptors.       

It seems that every week someone develops a new nano- or microrobot that can perform tasks hitherto considered within the realm of science fiction. These breakthroughs could well herald a new era in medicine, with swarms of tiny machines performing an array of complex medical procedures within the body. This latest technology follows this trend, with the ability to land on the cell surface and delicately apply a tiny force to specific cellular receptors.  

The researchers describe their creation as a “programmable DNA origami-based molecular actuator” and have called it the Nano-winch. It consists of three DNA origami structures and can land on the cell surface and apply a force of 1 piconewton to a cellular receptor. To put this in perspective, this is 1 trillionth of a Newton, and 1 Newton is approximately the force exerted by your finger when you click the top of a pen.

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