Impact Lab – Page 329 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

drones

How Meituan is redefining food delivery in China with drones

January 9, 2022

Descending from the cloudy heavens, drones are helping the company get to places harder to reach by bike or car

On a congested sidewalk next to a busy mall in Shenzhen, a 20-something woman uses a smartphone app to order a milk tea on Meituan, a major food delivery company. In less than 10 minutes, the pearl-white drink arrives, not on the back of one of the city’s ubiquitous delivery bikes, but descending from the cloudy heavens, in a cardboard box on the back of a drone, into a small roadside kiosk. The only thing the scene is missing is a choir of angels.

Over the past two years, Meituan, one of China’s largest internet companies, has flown 19,000 meals to 8,000 customers across Shenzhen, a city with close to 20 million people. The pilot program is available to just seven neighborhoods, each with a three-kilometer stretch, and only from a select number of merchants. The drones deliver to designated streetside kiosks rather than hover outside people’s windows as envisioned by sci-fi writers. But the trials are proof of concept for Meituan’s ambitions, and the company is now ready to ramp up its aerial delivery ambitions.

Tencent-backed Meituan isn’t the only Chinese tech giant that hopes to fill urban skies with tiny fliers. Alibaba, which runs Meituan’s rival Ele.me and e-commerce powerhouse JD.com, have also invested in similar drone delivery services in recent years.

On the back of the pilot program, Meituan has applied to operate a commercial drone delivery service across all of Shenzhen, Mao Yinian, head of the company’s drone delivery unit, said at a press event this month. The application, submitted in September, is currently under review by Shenzhen’s aviation authority and is expected to receive approval in 2022, though the actual timeline is subject to government decisions.

“We went from experimenting in the suburbs to a central area. That means our operational capability has reached a new level,” said Chen Tianjian, technical expert at Meituan’s drone business, at the same event.

Blockchain

Altaeros partners with World Mobile to raise blockchain network to the sky

January 9, 2022

By Lindsey Schutters

World Mobile, the first mobile network built on blockchain and run by the people, partners with Altaeros, developers of the world’s first autonomous aerostats, to connect the unconnected.

Altaeros is focused on developing and deploying innovative infrastructure solutions

Through this partnership, Altaeros and World Mobile will provide low-altitude aerostats (tethered balloon platforms) with a coverage area of approximately 8 000 square kilometres each, forming part of World Mobile’s Dynamic Network.

Several aerostats will launch in Zanzibar anchoring the network and delivering connectivity near to 100 percent of the island. Each aerostat will connect hundreds of thousands of subscribers and each subscriber on the network will create a blockchain wallet. World Mobile will be deploying thousands of aerostats across the continent.

The aerostat system consists of a helium-filled envelope and stabilising fins. The unique three-tethered architecture limits the aerostat’s movement in the air (pitch, roll and yaw), which is essential in stabilizing telco coverage so connectivity doesn’t drop in and out.

The aerostat is attached to a movable mooring platform with built-in software that adjusts the balloon’s position depending on wind conditions. The onboard communication system, using beamforming technology (a technique that focuses a wireless signal towards a specific receiving device) will allow 3G, 4G and 5G handsets to connect directly and will also connect WM AirNodes in the vicinity via traditional and alternative spectrums.

AI

Hi-tech AI-powered robots are replacing recycling centre workers in Finland

January 9, 2022

Image shows an AI-powered zenrobotics recycling robot at work. – Copyright zenroboticsBy Euronews and AP • Updated: 31/12/2021

On the outskirts of Finnish capital Helsinki, new technology is making recycling easier.

A recently-opened, 35-million-euro plant, owned by Finnish firm Remeo, can process up to 120,000 tonnes of construction waste, including wood, plastics, and metals.

It is said to be the most advanced recycling plant in Europe.ADVERTISING

“We have thousands of thousands of customers, all industries,” said Johan Mild, CEO of Remeo, which operates eight plants across Finland.

“From shopping malls, from production sites, from all over our customers, with our lorry it comes here.”

According to the European Union, the average European produces about five tonnes of waste a year, but only 38 per cent of that gets recycled. Over 36 per cent of all EU waste comes from construction.

Recycling waste is complicated due to the limited information on materials’ content and quality.

“Unpure” items often cannot be recycled and reused as raw materials.

In several European countries, including Finland, some waste that can’t be recycled is sent to incineration plants, which produce power and heat, but also add to greenhouse gas emissions.

Medicine

A ‘game-changer’ weight-loss drug was approved in 2021. Demand was so high that there were shortages within months.

January 9, 2022

By Gabby Landsverk

Semaglutide, a weight-loss drug, showed promise for treating obesity in recent research.
Demand quickly exceeded supply after the FDA in June approved once-weekly semaglutide injections.
However, some experts worry that we don’t yet understand the drug’s long-term effects.

2021 was a historic year for obesity treatment. In June, the Food and Drug Administration approved the weight-loss drug semaglutide, which some experts described as a “game-changer.”

The medication, initially developed to treat Type 2 diabetes, was the first drug treatment to be approved by the FDA for weight management since 2014. Wegovy, the brand of semaglutide sold by Novo Nordisk, is a once-weekly injection designed to balance out hunger hormones. It’s prescribed for people with a body mass index of 30 or more, or a BMI of 27 with related conditions such as diabetes.

Semaglutide was widely praised, prompting such high demand that there were shortages within months of Wegovy’s entrance into the market.

While questions remain about its long-term effects, the drug made a splash in healthcare this year, changing how experts and the public think about weight loss.

DNA

New method for genetic analysis of resting human immune cells

January 9, 2022

by Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

CD4+ T cells are important parts of the immune system and play a key role in defending the body against pathogens. As they possess a great variety of defense mechanisms against HIV in their resting state, they are infected only very rarely—but these few infected cells form a latent reservoir for HIV in the body that currently cannot be reached by antiviral drugs. Consequently, the virus can spread again from there after activation of the CD4+ T cells. Understanding how HIV interacts with resting CD4+ T cells is essential for finding new therapeutic approaches. Scientists led by Prof. Oliver T. Keppler from the Max von Pettenkofer Institute at LMU have now developed a method that for the first time allows these specific immune cells to be genetically manipulated under physiological conditions in an efficient and uncomplicated manner. As the authors report in the journal Nature Methods, this permits previously unobtainable insights into the biology of these cells.

Resting CD4+ T cells had been scarcely amenable to genetic manipulations, because the available methods generally presuppose dividing cells, as Keppler explains. “And resting cells do not divide by definition.” As the first step in the development of the new method, the team of scientists optimized the cultivation conditions. As a result, the researchers were able to keep these cells alive in the laboratory after extracting them from the blood of healthy donors not just for 3-4 days as before, but for up to six weeks. The decisive progress came with an advance in nucleofection, a special method that allows reagents to be delivered into the nucleus of a cell. Using this technique, the researchers introduced the genetic scissors CRISPR-Cas into resting CD4+ T cells, enabling them to make targeted modifications to the genome of the host cells—for example, by eliminating genes by means of so-called knockouts. “This combination worked very efficiently, and we were able to reach and genetically manipulate around 98 percent of the cells. Moreover, we did this without activating the CD4+ T cells,” says Keppler. “What was particularly exciting was that we were able to eliminate up to six genes simultaneously with high efficiency by means of a single nucleofection. Nobody had managed to do that in primary cells before—and we did it with cells isolated from an intact organ.”

Metaverse

Samsung joins the so-called metaverse at CES with ‘My House’ virtual space

January 9, 2022

By Mihai M.

“Metaverse” may be the latest buzzword of the tech world, but regardless of whether or not this concept has a future, Samsung’s joining the metaverse with its own VR world called “My House” in collaboration with Naver Z’s ZEPETO platform.

Metaverse, as a concept, consists of an online virtual world that incorporates internet and IoT functionalities and allows users to interact with each other through virtual meetings, conversations, get-togethers, and so on.

Samsung isn’t building its own metaverse from the ground up, but rather, the company has teamed up with Naver Z to utilize the ZEPETO metaverse platform.

Mass Transit

Bus or train? World’s first ‘dual-mode vehicle’ to begin operating in Japan – ET Auto

January 9, 2022

The train wheels lift the front tyres off the track while the rear wheels stay down to propel the DMV onto the railway.

TOKYO – It’s a bus, it’s a train, it’s a DMV! The world’s first dual-mode vehicle, equally at home on road and rail, is set to make its public debut on Saturday in the town of Kaiyo in Japan’s Tokushima prefecture.

The DMV looks like a minibus and runs on normal rubber tyres on the road. But when it arrives at an interchange, steel wheels descend from the vehicle’s underbelly onto the rail track, effectively turning it into a train carriage.

The train wheels lift the front tyres off the track while the rear wheels stay down to propel the DMV onto the railway.

The CEO of Asa Coast Railway company, which operates the DMVs, said the vehicles could help small towns like Kaiyo with an ageing and shrinking population, where local transport companies struggle to make a profit.

Medical Breakthrough

SMART BANDAGE CHECKS CHRONIC WOUNDS IN REAL-TIME

January 9, 2022

The VeCare platform comprises a chip, wound sensor, bandage (above), and app for real-time, point-of-care chronic wound monitoring.

BY NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

A new smart wearable sensor can conduct real-time, point-of-care assessment of chronic wounds wirelessly via an app, according to a new study.

The sensor detects temperature, pH, bacteria type, and inflammatory factors specific to chronic wounds within 15 minutes, allowing for fast and accurate wound assessment.

Given the rapidly aging population, healthcare providers are seeing more patients suffering from non-healing wounds such as diabetic foot and chronic venous leg ulcers. Estimates suggest that about 2% of the world’s population suffer from chronic wounds.

Infection and repeated trauma often interrupt the healing processes for these chronic wounds, leading to severe stress, pain, and discomfort to afflicted patients.

For patients with diabetic foot ulcers, this can lead to more severe outcomes such as foot amputation. Timely care and proper treatment of chronic wounds are needed to speed up wound recovery. However, this requires multiple clinical visits for lengthy wound assessment and treatment, which adds to the healthcare cost.

The new sensor, described in the journal Science Advances, can help mitigate these consequences and relieve patients with chronic wounds from unnecessary distress.

Space Flight

MIT engineers test an idea for a new hovering Lunar rover

January 9, 2022

MIT aerospace engineers are testing a concept for a hovering rover that levitates by harnessing the moon’s natural charge. This illustration shows a concept image of rover.

By Jennifer Chu for MIT News

Aerospace engineers at MIT are testing a new concept for a hovering rover that levitates by harnessing the moon’s natural charge.

Because they lack an atmosphere, the moon and other airless bodies such as asteroids can build up an electric field through direct exposure to the sun and surrounding plasma. On the moon, this surface charge is strong enough to levitate dust more than 1 meter above the ground, much the way static electricity can cause a person’s hair to stand on end.

Engineers at NASA and elsewhere have recently proposed harnessing this natural surface charge to levitate a glider with wings made of Mylar, a material that naturally holds the same charge as surfaces on airless bodies. They reasoned that the similarly charged surfaces should repel each other, with a force that lofts the glider off the ground. But such a design would likely be limited to small asteroids, as larger planetary bodies would have a stronger, counteracting gravitational pull.

The MIT team’s levitating rover could potentially get around this size limitation. The concept, which resembles a retro-style, disc-shaped flying saucer, uses tiny ion beams to both charge up the vehicle and boost the surface’s natural charge. The overall effect is designed to generate a relatively large repulsive force between the vehicle and the ground, in a way that requires very little power. In an initial feasibility study, the researchers show that such an ion boost should be strong enough to levitate a small, 2-pound vehicle on the moon and large asteroids like Psyche.

“We think of using this like the Hayabusa missions that were launched by the Japanese space agency,” says lead author Oliver Jia-Richards, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “That spacecraft operated around a small asteroid and deployed small rovers to its surface. Similarly, we think a future mission could send out small hovering rovers to explore the surface of the moon and other asteroids.”

The team’s results appear in the current issue of the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets. Jia-Richards’ co-authors are Paulo Lozano, the M. Aleman-Velasco Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and director of MIT’s Space Propulsion Lab; and former visiting student Sebastian Hampl, now at McGill University.

Augmented Reality

Oppo Air Glass assisted reality device will project 2D information into your field of view

January 9, 2022

Oppo’s Air Glass will attach conveniently to frames

By Mark Gulino

If you’ve been waiting for smart glasses that really make a difference, you may not have to wait much longer. Tech company Oppo is developing new assisted reality glasses. Read on to learn more!

Remember Google Glass? We sure do. It was a bold idea with plenty of potential, but it was well ahead of its time. Since then, other digitally enhanced glasses have come to fill the void.

While some bring new things to the table, others fall flat. It isn’t necessarily the concept that’s the problem, it’s the execution.

Well, the next company throwing its hat in the AR glasses race is Oppo. What is it up to, exactly? A new pair of assisted reality glasses: Oppo Air Glass. Let’s take a gander at this cool new gadget.

Metaverse

How AI, VR, AR, 5G, and blockchain may converge to power the metaverse

January 9, 2022

Emerging technologies including AI, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), 5G, and blockchain (and related digital currencies) have all progressed on their own merits and timeline. Each has found a degree of application, though clearly AI has progressed the furthest. Each technology is maturing while overcoming challenges ranging from blockchain’s energy consumption to VR’s propensity for inducing nausea. They will likely converge in readiness over the next several years, underpinned by the now ubiquitous cloud computing for elasticity and scale. And in that convergence, the sum will be far greater than the parts. The catalyst for this convergence will be the metaverse — a connected network of always-on 3D virtual worlds.

The metaverse concept has wide-sweeping potential. On one level, it could be a 3D social media channel with messaging targeted perfectly to every user by AI. That’s the Meta (previously Facebook) vision. It also has the potential to be an all-encompassing platform for information, entertainment

and work.

There will be multiple metaverses, at least initially, with some tailored to specific interests such as gaming or sports. The key distinction between current technology and the metaverse is the immersive possibilities the metaverse offers, which is why Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and others are investing so heavily in it. It may also become the next version of the Internet.

Instead of watching the news, you could feel as if you are in the news. Instead of learning history by reading about an event in a book – such as Washington crossing the Delaware – you could virtually witness the event from the shore or from a boat. Instead of watching a basketball game on television, you could experience it in 360-surround. People could attend a conference virtually, watch the keynotes, and meet with others. In the metaverse, our digital presence will increasingly supplement our real one. According to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the metaverse could be the next best thing to a working teleportation device.

brain-computer interfaces

Paralysed man sends tweet using only his mind after microchip installed in brain

January 9, 2022

In the “first direct-thought tweet,” the patient said “Hello World”

By Leigh Mcmanus

In what the company behind the technology is calling the “first direct-thought tweet,” the patient said “Hello World,” using the implantable brain computer interface, or microchip.

A paralysed man has become the first person to tweet a message to the world using only direct thought.

The feat was pulled off by Philip O’Keefe – a motor neurone disease patient – using a microchip implant that picks up his brain signals.

It’s been described as the “first direct-thought tweet” after Mr O’Keefe said said “Hello World” using the brain implant.

Synchron, a brain computer interface company, announced a Twitter takeover by Philip O’Keefe on December 23rd.

He is one of the patients implanted with computer company Synchron’s Stentrode brain computer interface, or in other words, a microchip in his body that analyses his brain signals and helps carry out commands.

Mr O’Keefe is the first person to successfully message the world on social media directly through thought, Synchron said.