City Planning

Blockchain will empower smart cities of the future

Smart Dubai is exploring blockchain use cases across a variety of areas as part of its goal to make Dubai the happiest and most innovative city on the planet

By Rohma Sadaqat

Blockchain is a novel technology that can remove market inefficiencies and spur economic growth when applied to existing businesses or industries, says Kokila Alagh, founder of Karm Legal Consultants.

Speaking to Khaleej Times on the sidelines of the Gitex Global 2021 exhibition in Dubai, she explained that all the industries stand to benefit from blockchain technology. “Blockchain can empower smart cities as it enables information sharing without the need for a single administrator and a single point of failure. Blockchain allows network members to share data with a high degree of dependability and transparency. Cities have a diverse set of stakeholders, and data sharing among them is critical for providing high-quality urban services.”

For this data exchange, blockchain is anticipated to be utilised. Smart Dubai, for example, is exploring blockchain use cases across a variety of areas, including banking, education, and transportation, as part of its goal to make Dubai the happiest and most innovative city on the planet. In another use case, a program is underway to use blockchain to simplify registration processes for students travelling between different emirates.

Continue reading… “Blockchain will empower smart cities of the future”
Bitcoin

Sam Altman’s Worldcoin wants to scan eyeballs in exchange for crypto

It all starts with a 5-pound chromatic sphere called ‘The Orb’

By Lucas Matney@lucasmtny

As investors race to capitalize on surging interest in cryptocurrencies, startups are getting creative in how they onboard a generation of crypto users to their first wallets.

Worldcoin is perhaps one of the most audacious efforts to bribe the world to embrace their currency. The startup, founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Alex Blania, wants to put a crypto wallet (and some of their currency) onto every human’s smartphone, but in order to do so they have to build a way to determine whether someone is a unique human. Worldcoin is aiming to make their proof-of-personhood network in the least dystopian way possible. That being said, it still requires scanning a billion people’s eyeballs with a five-pound chromatic sphere called “The Orb”.

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AI

Israeli team says AI platform can predict which drugs are safe, effective

Quris, an artificial intelligence (AI) company operating in the pharmaceutical space, launched this week and announced a $9 million in seed funding.

By MAAYAN JAFFE-HOFFMAN 

   

Chips from Quris’ AI technology.(photo credit: COURTESY QURIS)AdvertisementRobert Langer, the co-founder of Moderna and a lauded MIT professor, said, “We are at the tipping point of the modernization of drug discovery” and that the “Quris platform could be a significant value to pharma companies and the health of society at large.”

Langer is a member of the scientific advisory board of Quris, which officially launched this week and announced $9 million in seed funding to support its efforts.Nobel laureate Aaron Ciechanover is the chairman of the company’s scientific advisory board.

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drones

South Korea’s LIG Nex1 reveals hydrogen-powered cargo drone

A mockup of the KCD-200, a prospective cargo drone, was unveiled at the Seoul International Aerospace & Defense Exhibition (ADEX) by South Korean aerospace and defense company, LIG Nex1. 

By VALIUS VENCKUNAS

The drone will be powered by hydrogen cells and boast a cargo capacity of 200 kilograms (440 pounds).

The manufacturer also claims that it can be used for both civilian and military applications.

The KCD-200 was announced in May 2021, after LIG Nex1 was awarded a 44.3 billion won ($37.6 million) five-year contract by South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy to develop a hydrogen-powered cargo drone.

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Robots

A Robotic Mini-Armada Will Probe the Secrets of Hurricanes

By Sierra Mitchell

This year, as hurricanes race into the warming coastal waters of the U.S., an array of seagoing robots will be waiting for them.

The torpedo-shaped machines will be positioned in what amounts to no man’s land, places where no ships or humans might survive and where space satellites can’t gauge the potency of storm action.

But for the stubby-winged and narwhal-horned “Slocum ocean glider,” this is the world it was made for.

The mini-armada is one way scientists are trying to better understand how the howling storms are changing as warming oceans amplify their intensity and extend their inland reach.

The robots’ work appears as blips of new data on computer screens, put there by a growing navy of autonomous vehicles waiting for hurricanes in the choppy water, or cruising just beneath it.

“We have gliders that have gone through two or three hurricanes already,” explained Gustavo Goni, a lead scientist at the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami, which is run by NOAA.

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Electric Vehicles

An e-Bus Starts Testing World’s First Wireless Electric Road, in Breakthrough Project

by Otilia Drăgan

After the 80-ton electric truck that was tested on 0.9 miles (1.4 km) of the ElectReon electrified roadway, a fully-electric bus was successfully launched as part of the groundbreaking SmartRoad Gotland Project. 8 photos

Several countries are promoting a carbon-neutral future by supporting electric vehicles, but Sweden, which is always one step ahead when it comes to innovations, is taking things even further, by introducing electric highways. It plans to have 1,240 miles (2,000 km) of electric highways by 2030, and become emissions-free by 2045.

To achieve these goals, the Swedish Transport Administration is funding four electric road demonstration projects implemented by several partners, in Italy, Germany, Sweden, and Israel. ElectrReon plays a leading part, as the provider of the in-road wireless EV charging technology. 

SmartRoad Gotland is the world’s first wireless electric inter-city road system, designed to be tested by an electric heavy-duty truck and an electric bus. The project’s electric road is 0,9-mile (1.4 km) long, located on the route between the airport and the center of Visby, on Gotland island, in Sweden.

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Science & Technology News, Wearables

Sentons launches smaller sensors that can turn any surface into virtual controls

Sentons has launched a new low-power and small sensor with an accompanying gesture engine to be used in wearables (including glasses, earbuds, watches, and fitness trackers) to create virtual controls to navigate apps and features on the devices themselves.

The SDSwave processor (model SNT8255) and gesture engine unlock a customizable, ergonomic user experience, while eliminating UX design restrictions that come from the limited real estate and tiny surfaces found on the displays of wearables. As an example, it can embed a force sensor in wireless earbuds.

“Wearable makers haven’t been able to deliver streamlined, sleek wearable devices with natural user interfaces because of the constraints that come with limited space,” Sentons CEO Jess Lee. “Moreover, traditional touch technologies not only respond to touch but also to water, making them impractical for use on wearables that are often outdoors and exposed to the elements. We’re excited to finally bring a solution to market that allows device designers to make use of even the tiniest surface to make it touch and force interactive. This outdoor and water-immune interactivity unlocks new user experiences and capabilities for wearables, something the industry has never seen before.”

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drones

Wing to launch store-based drone delivery in Dallas-Fort Worth

By Bruce Crumley

Leading global drone delivery company Wing is undertaking more innovation of its operational model by introducing store-prepared orders in new service to the Dallas-Fort Worth area – its biggest urban market to date.

Owned by Google holding company Alphabet, Wing is launching its new, retail-based drone delivery method as ideally adapted to serving the dense population cities it hopes to expand to in the US and around the world. The first version of that will operate in the Frisco and Little Elm areas of Dallas-Fort Worth, using a container-housed command center located at Walgreens store Wing is partnering with. Serving as an operational mini-hangar, the unit can be brought to virtually any business wanting to fly goods to waiting customers, and house the Wing drones, pilots, and navigation equipment to provide that transportation.

The new model will involve designated Walgreen employees processing client orders and load those packages onto the delivery drones. Once the payload box holding goods is secured, Wing pilots take over, flying the drones to client addresses for delivery. The system is designed to allow expanded operation and UAV take off and landing from adjacent parking lots, surrounding open spaces, or even from rooftops.

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Energy, Science & Technology News

Autonomous Flying Wind Turbines Can Generate Energy at Nearly Half the Cost

Kitekraft’s flying turbine during flight tests.

By  Chris Young

Sustainable energy is taking flight.

German startup Kitekraft is developing flying wind turbines that require 10 times less materials to develop than traditional wind turbines. The company just announced successful flight tests, which it describes as a “major milestone towards our first 100kW product.”

On its website, Kitekraft explains that the reduced requirement for materials for its flying turbine — which uses a tether instead of a huge tower — means it can reduce the costs of its energy to almost half of that produced by traditional wind farms at megawatt scale. Its carbon footprint is also lower than that of standard wind turbines, the company says, partially due to the fact that large wind turbine towers are typically transported by road.

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Education

Futurati Podcast Ep 57: Victoria Ransom on entrepreneurship and the future of education.

By Thomas Frey and Trent Fowler


Watch on Youtube

Listen on the Futurati Podcast website


Victoria is a powerhouse serial entrepreneur who sold a growing company to Google in 2012, then spent the next few years thinking about how to have a large, positive impact on the world.

Around this time she was considering how she wanted to educate her children, so she was also spending a lot of energy researching different models for education and issues with existing approaches.

She wanted something holistic, in which a child is a key partner in the exciting process of learning, and was taught skills like communication along with the standard mathematics, science, and the like.

Though there were schools that offered what most of what she was looking for, they all had the same issue: they couldn’t scale.
This is the problem she and her husband set out to solve.

Continue reading… “Futurati Podcast Ep 57: Victoria Ransom on entrepreneurship and the future of education.”
Stem cells

Building Stronger Anti-Cancer Therapies With Stem Cells

Cancer therapies have seen great development over the decades. Radiotherapies and chemotherapies have saved countless lives, but the latest arsenal, adoptive cell therapies (ACT), has stirred most excitement. In ACT, cells are processed to enhance their anti-cancer immune effects and injected into the patient. A new study by CiRA Professor Shin Kaneko and colleagues shows how iPS cell technology can produce some of the most potent anti-cancer immune cells for ACT yet.

T cells are the primary cells used in ACT, as they are the immune cells in the body most capable of killing cancer. However, current strategies using T cells have several, limiting the number of patients who can benefit from ACT. The Kaneko lab is exploring iPS cell technology as a solution.

“We have to process the T cells before injecting them into the patient. This processing affects the quality. If we first process the cells as iPS cells and then differentiate them into T cells, we can avoid many of these problems,” he said.

Continue reading… “Building Stronger Anti-Cancer Therapies With Stem Cells”
Augmented Reality

This smart white cane works like a self-driving car

By Stanford University

A new, affordable smart cane guides people with visual impairments safely and efficiently through their environments, say researchers.

Most know the white cane as a simple but crucial tool that assists people with visual impairments in making their way through the world.

Using tools from autonomous vehicles, the research team built the augmented cane, which helps people detect and identify obstacles, move easily around those objects, and follow routes both indoors and out.

The augmented cane is not the first smart cane.

Research sensor canes can be heavy and expensive—weighing up to 50 pounds with a cost of around $6,000. Currently available sensor canes are technologically limited, only detecting objects right in front of the user.

The new cane sports cutting-edge sensors, weighs only three pounds, can be built at home from off-the-shelf parts, and free, open-source software, and costs $400.

Continue reading… “This smart white cane works like a self-driving car”