Impact Lab – Page 309 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

X-BOW EXITS STEALTH MODE WITH ITS 3D PRINTED ROCKET ENGINES

March 29, 2022

X-Bow testing one of its solid fuel rocket engines. Photo via X-Bow.

X-Bow Launch Systems, a space technology 3D printing company, has exited stealth mode this week.

Originally founded in 2016, the New Mexico-headquartered startup specializes in the development of 3D printed solid fuels and rocket motors and has already created a lineup of small launch vehicles suitable for both orbital and suborbital launches.

Having already secured several contracts with U.S. government organizations, X-Bow’s existing customers include the Air Force Research Lab, AFWERX, Los Alamos National Lab, Sandia National Lab, and the Defense Research Projects Agency(DARPA).

Jason Hundley, CEO of X-Bow, said, “X-Bow is leveraging a unique combination of technologies with an improved manufacturing model to serve existing aerospace markets and enable new ones. Our breakthrough 3D printing technology is positioned to rapidly innovate the solid propulsion and energetics markets just as SpaceX revolutionized the launch market. Our mission is to modernize solid motor production through additive manufacturing while dramatically improving unit economics.”

brain-computer interfaces

SCIENTISTS SAY BRAIN IMPLANT LET COMPLETELY PARALYZED MAN COMMUNICATE AGAIN

March 29, 2022

“I MYSELF COULD NOT BELIEVE THAT THIS IS POSSIBLE.”

A 34-year-old paralyzed man who had even lost the ability to move his eyes due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), is able to communicate again through a brain implant.

Rather than the system tracking his eyes as with current-generation tech, The New York Times reports, the implant was able to pick up on the man imagining moving his eyes. It’s a notable neuroscience achievement that could give others in a similar locked-in state a way to express themselves again — though it’s not a perfect solution, and will require additional work before it can help others.

The results of the 2020 experiment conducted by Ujwal Chaudhary, a since retired biomedical engineer then at the University of Tübingen, Germany and co-author of a study about the project published in the journal Nature Communications this week, came as a shock.

“I myself could not believe that this is possible,” Chaudhary told the NYT.

Futurati Podcast, Science & Technology News

Ep. 78 with Elaine PoFeldt

March 29, 2022

Watch our interview with Elaine Pofeldt on Youtube or listen on the Futurati Podcast.

Elaine Pofeldt is an independent journalist and speaker specializing in careers and entrepreneurship. In 2018 she published a well-received book called “The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business”, and today she’s joining us to discuss her newest book “Tiny Business, Big Money”.

Space Flight

‘Groundbreaking moment’ UK to launch nuclear reactor in space to create unlimited energy

March 28, 2022

BRITAIN is poised to launch a nuclear fusion reactor into space by 2027, which could create limitless clean energy in a major breakthrough for the future of both interplanetary travel and energy security.

By JACOB PAUL

Pulsar Fusion Ltd, a UK nuclear fusion company based in Bletchley, is developing green rocket technology that could eventually send humans to distances further than our Solar System. Nuclear fusion is the energy process that powers the stars which scientists have been scrambling to create on Earth to produce unlimited supplies of low-carbon, low-radiation energy.

This could play an incredibly important role in the UK as the Government presses ahead with its net zero targets while seeking to slash its dependence on foreign imports.

Pulsar has claimed that this could be “the answer to the energy crisis”.

Bur Pulsar is also seeking to harness the process of nuclear fusion in space with its nuclear fusion reactors, which it says could enable rockets to access travel to planets beyond our solar system.

As fusion rocket technology only works in the vacuum of space, Pulsar has had to develop hybrid rocket engines, which it has been testing.

se lay the groundwork for the Pulsar’s hyper-speed propulsion engines, which could even slash the journey time from Earth to Mars by half, according to scientists.

According to Pulsar CEO Richard Dinan, the firm is looking to use this technology to launch its nuclear fusion reactors into space.

The first prototype for the propulsion engine is expected by 2025.

drones

Skyports takes off with $23 million to scale up drone services

March 28, 2022

The London-based startup will scale its drone services operations in new and existing markets, building on active operations in the U.K., Europe, and Asia drone operations markets

By Megha Paul

London-based electric air taxi infrastructure and drone services provider Skyports has raised $23 million. The first close of its Series B round saw the participation of existing institutional shareholders, including Deutsche Bahn Digital Ventures, Groupe ADP, Solar Ventus, Irelandia and Levitate Capital, and new investors such as Japanese conglomerate Kanematsu Corporation, global industrial property group Goodman Group, Italian airport platform 2i Aeroporti, Ardian’s Infrastructure Fund and F2i Italian Infrastructure Fund, and US-based VC firm GreenPoint.

The capital will enable the company to consolidate its position in the advanced air mobility infrastructure and drone operations markets.

Offering advanced air mobility (AAM), the startup builds and operates take-off and landing infrastructure for air taxis, and partners with electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) passenger and cargo vehicle manufacturers to enable safe, sustainable, and efficient flight operations within urban and suburban environments.AD

Space Flight

A startup wants to provide high-speed internet on the Moon by 2024

March 28, 2022

The company will also provide asteroid detection data for planetary defense.

A startup called Aquarian Space announced that it just received $650,000 in seed funding to work on the development of a broadband internet connection that would link the Earth, Moon, and maybe even Mars.

The company announced on Thursday, March 17, that it had received funding from Draper Associates. The company aims to deploy its first lunar system as soon as 2024, according to a report from Space.

Medical Breakthrough

Worm-on-a-Chip’ Could Diagnose Lung Cancer

March 27, 2022

A “worm-on-a-chip” device tracks nematodes’ movements toward odor molecules produced by lung cancer cells.

By Katie Cottingham, American Chemical Society

It could noninvasively diagnose cancer at an earlier stage.

Dogs can use their incredible sense of smell to sniff out various forms of cancer in human breath, blood and urine samples. Similarly, in the lab a much simpler organism, the roundworm C. elegans, wriggles its way toward cancer cells by following an odor trail. Today, scientists report a device that uses the tiny worms to detect lung cancer cells. This “worm-on-a-chip” could someday help doctors noninvasively diagnose cancer at an earlier stage.

The researchers will present their results at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Spring 2022 is a hybrid meeting being held virtually and in-person March 20-24, with on-demand access available March 21-April 8. The meeting features more than 12,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics.

Early diagnosis of cancer is critical for effective treatment and survival, says Nari Jang, a graduate student who is presenting the work at the meeting. Therefore, cancer screening methods should be quick, easy, economical and noninvasive. Currently, doctors diagnose lung cancer by imaging tests or biopsies, but these methods often can’t detect tumors at their earliest stages. Although dogs can be trained to sniff out human cancer, they aren’t practical to keep in labs. So Jang and Shin Sik Choi, Ph.D., the project’s principal investigator, decided to use worms called nematodes, which are tiny (~1 mm in length), easy to grow in the lab and have an extraordinary sense of smell, to develop a noninvasive cancer diagnostic test.

Science & Technology News, Space Flight

Incredible new supersonic jet will fly from China to New York in 1 hour

March 27, 2022

By Joshua Hawkins

A Chinese company is developing a supersonic jet capable of traveling from New York to China in just one hour (via Robb Report). The company behind the jet is Space Transportation. It says that it is developing a “rocket with wings”, which will work for space tourism and point-to-point travel.

Driverless vehicles

NAVYA’s technology is ready for the commercialization of Level 4 remotely supervised driverless fleets

March 27, 2022

VILLEURBANNE, France–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Regulatory News:

NAVYA (FR0013018041- Navya) (Paris: NAVYA), a leading company in autonomous mobility systems, presented a fleet of self-driving shuttles operated by remote supervision at the Autonomy mobility show, which was held in Paris on March 16th and 17th. NAVYA took the opportunity to transform its booth into a genuine control center where visitors had a ring-side view of four driverless shuttles being shepherded remotely in real-life conditions on two different sites. While the operator carried out various control and monitoring tasks, Olivier Le Cornec, NAVYA’s Technical Chief Officer gave a running commentary of each situation that was transmitted live onto a big screen.

Manage, monitor, secure and anticipate were the catchwords that demonstrated NAVYA’s holistic answer to a series of critical situations: an obstacle on the road, an absent-minded pedestrian in the lane, a passenger feeling ill, fire on the route, to name but a few. Eleven simulated scenarios from a large range of potential events were projected onto the screen, to which NAVYA reacted and responded, guaranteeing the safety of both the passengers and other road users on each occasion.

As a recognized Level 4 global player, NAVYA also took the opportunity to host a round-table discussion with a number of high-level speakers on its vision for Level 4 and related ecosystems, where the challenges facing driverless autonomous mobility were aired and the solutions debated.

Batteries

New Quantum Technology To Make Charging Electric Cars As Fast as Pumping Gas

March 26, 2022

Quantum charging will cut the charging time of electric vehicles from ten hours to three minutes.

By INSTITUTE FOR BASIC SCIENCE

Whether it’s photovoltaics or fusion, sooner or later, human civilization must turn to renewable energies. This is deemed inevitable considering the ever-growing energy demands of humanity and the finite nature of fossil fuels. As such, much research has been pursued in order to develop alternative sources of energy, most of which utilize electricity as the main energy carrier. The extensive R&D in renewables has been accompanied by gradual societal changes as the world adopted new products and devices running on renewables. The most striking change as of recently is the rapid adoption of electric vehicles. While they were hardly seen on the roads even 10 years ago, now millions of electric cars are being sold annually. The electric car market is one of the most rapidly growing sectors, and it helped propel Elon Musk to become the wealthiest man in the world.

Unlike traditional cars which derive energy from the combustion of hydrocarbon fuels, electric vehicles rely on batteries as the storage medium for their energy. For a long time, batteries had far lower energy density than those offered by hydrocarbons, which resulted in very low ranges of early electric vehicles. However, gradual improvement in battery technologies eventually allowed the drive ranges of electric cars to be within acceptable levels in comparison to gasoline-burning cars. It is no understatement that the improvement in battery storage technology was one of the main technical bottlenecks which had to be solved in order to kickstart the current electric vehicle revolution.

brain-computer interfaces

Decoding brain signals to control a robotic arm

March 26, 2022

Experimental paradigm. Subjects were instructed to perform reach-and-grasp movements to designate the locations of the target in three-dimensional space. (a) Subjects A and B were provided the visual cue as a real tennis ball at one of four pseudo-randomized locations. (b) Subjects A and B were provided the visual cue as a virtual reality clip showing a sequence of five stages of a reach-and-grasp movement. Credit: The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)

by The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)

Researchers have developed a mind-reading system for decoding neural signals from the brain during arm movement. The method, described in the journal Applied Soft Computing, can be used by a person to control a robotic arm through a brain-machine interface (BMI).

A BMI is a device that translates nerve signals into commands to control a machine, such as a computer or a robotic limb. There are two main techniques for monitoring neural signals in BMIs: electroencephalography (EEG) and electrocorticography (ECoG).

The EEG exhibits signals from electrodes on the surface of the scalp and is widely employed because it is non-invasive, relatively cheap, safe and easy to use. However, the EEG has low spatial resolution and detects irrelevant neural signals, which makes it difficult to interpret the intentions of individuals from the EEG.

On the other hand, the ECoG is an invasive method that involves placing electrodes directly on the surface of the cerebral cortex below the scalp. Compared with the EEG, the ECoG can monitor neural signals with much higher spatial resolution and less background noise. However, this technique has several drawbacks.

“The ECoG is primarily used to find potential sources of epileptic seizures, meaning the electrodes are placed in different locations for different patients and may not be in the optimal regions of the brain for detecting sensory and movement signals,” explained Professor Jaeseung Jeong, a brain scientist at KAIST. “This inconsistency makes it difficult to decode brain signals to predict movements.”

Stem cells

Blood stem cells treat brain disease after transplant

March 26, 2022

By Anette Breindl

Researchers at Stanford University have developed a method to efficiently replace microglia, which are brain-specific immune cells, via a modified bone marrow transplant.

They used their approach to ameliorate a mouse model of prosaposin deficiency, an early-onset neurodegenerative disorder that is an atypical form of the lysosomal storage disorder Gaucher disease.

“We have developed a protocol, a way, to essentially replace all microglia in the brain with very similar cells, [and] We have shown that this replacement can be used for a therapeutic application,” Marius Wernig told BioWorld. “By using genetically normal cells, you can rectify the problem. Cure is too much of a word, but certainly treat.”