Impact Lab – Page 371 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

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.

Science & Technology News, Space Flight

China Secretly Flew A Space Plane That Takes Off Vertically Like A Rocket

July 24, 2021

China secretly conducted the first test flight of a reusable suborbital vehicle last week on Friday, edging a step closer to the development of a reusable space transportation system, according to a report by SpaceNews.

The spacecraft took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre on Friday and later landed at an airport just over 800 kilometres away at Alxa League in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Not so surprisingly, no official images or footage of any kind was shared by the space agency.

Moreover, there was also no information on the flight duration, the kind of propulsion technology that was at play or even the altitude at which it flew and landed safely.

The press release did mention, however, that the spacecraft made use of integrated aviation and space technologies indicating a vertical take-off and horizontal landing profile.

AI, Science & Technology News

The Pentagon Is Bolstering Its AI Systems—by Hacking Itself

July 24, 2021

A new “red team” will try to anticipate and thwart attacks on machine learning programs.

THE PENTAGON SEES artificial intelligence as a way to outfox, outmaneuver, and dominate future adversaries. But the brittle nature of AI means that without due care, the technology could perhaps hand enemies a new way to attack.

The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, created by the Pentagon to help the US military make use of AI, recently formed a unit to collect, vet, and distribute open source and industry machine learning models to groups across the Department of Defense. Part of that effort points to a key challenge with using AI for military ends. A machine learning “red team,” known as the Test and Evaluation Group, will probe pretrained models for weaknesses. Another cybersecurity team examines AI code and data for hidden vulnerabilities.

Machine learning, the technique behind modern AI, represents a fundamentally different, often more powerful, way to write computer code. Instead of writing rules for a machine to follow, machine learning generates its own rules by learning from data. The trouble is, this learning process, along with artifacts or errors in the training data, can cause AI models to behave in strange or unpredictable ways.

“For some applications, machine learning software is just a bajillion times better than traditional software,” says Gregory Allen, director of strategy and policy at the JAIC. But, he adds, machine learning “also breaks in different ways than traditional software.”

AI, Science & Technology News

Hungryroot delivers AI-powered grocery experience

July 23, 2021

By Poornima Apte

There’s Netflix for movies. Stitch Fix for clothes. Hungryroot, an AI-powered delivery service, hopes to occupy a similar niche for online groceries in the United States.

The recommender system uses a collaborative filtering, supervised learning model to match consumer preferences to foods. Customers answer questions about their dietary habits, the kinds of foods they (and family members) like, the family size, budget, and more. On a weekly basis, the Hungryroot algorithm predicts the groceries the customer might like. Once the customer approves the list, a box ships from one of three Hungryroot locations. Customers also receive a set of recipes, also predicted by the algorithm, that use the week’s ingredients.

Neil Saunders, the managing director of GlobalData’s retail division, has seen grocery retailers of all stripes lean into AI as a way of better forecasting demand. “With the disruption from the pandemic and more people buying groceries online, demand forecasting has become increasingly difficult for retailers and AI can help them make sense of the data and make more accurate decisions about what to stock,” Saunders says.

Science & Technology News, Space Flight

China launches secretive suborbital vehicle for reusable space transportation system

July 23, 2021

The Chinese suborbital vehicle for a reusable space transportation system launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, northwest China.

by Andrew Jones

HELSINKI — China conducted a clandestine first test flight of a reusable suborbital vehicle Friday as a part of development of a reusable space transportation system.

The vehicle launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center Friday and later landed at an airport just over 800 kilometers away at Alxa League in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC) announced.

No images nor footage nor further information, such as altitude, flight duration or propulsion systems, were provided. The CASC release stated however that the vehicle uses integrated aviation and space technologies and indicates a vertical takeoff and horizontal landing (VTHL) profile.

The test follows a September 2020 test flight of a “reusable experimental spacecraft”. The spacecraft orbited for days, releasing a small transmitting payload and later deorbited and landed horizontally. The spacecraft is widely believed to be a reusable spaceplane concept, though no images have emerged.

Automobiles, Science & Technology News

Self-healing materials to shape the cars of the future

July 23, 2021

Self-healing materials could revolutionise both vehicles and road surfaces

Ben Smye explores the current trends in self-healing materials research, and where they might take the automotive industry in the coming years

It sounds like something out of a science fiction film, but the idea of a self-healing car might not be as wild and futuristic as it seems. Though machines that can fix themselves remain a long way off, materials engineers have been developing technology that could soon make this fiction a reality.

Driverless vehicles, Science & Technology News

The measure of: Trombia Free autonomous electric street sweeper

July 23, 2021

The world’s first autonomous electric street sweeper promises efficient and silent operation in all weathers.

Developed by Finnish road maintenance equipment manufacturer Trombia Technologies, Trombia Free is an autonomous electric street-cleaner that uses less than 15 per cent of the power needed by current sweeping technologies and 95 per cent less water, while still being capable of heavy-duty operation, effectively removing both debris and fine PM2.5 dust.

Built to operate in all weather conditions, the Trombia Free has the look of an oversized robotic vacuum cleaner or lawnmower. It makes use of lidar and machine vision technology to trundle around cleaning up city streets and pathways. The company equipped the sweeper with a safety margin zone so it can register obstacles in front and stop if needed.

DNA, Science & Technology News

Hollow nano-objects made of DNA could trap viruses and render them harmless

July 23, 2021

Lined on the inside with virus-binding molecules, nano-shells made of DNA material bind viruses tightly and thus render them harmless.

by Technical University Munich

To date, there are no effective antidotes against most viral infections. An interdisciplinary research team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now developed a new approach: they engulf and neutralize viruses with nano-capsules tailored from genetic material using the DNA origami method. The strategy has already been tested against hepatitis and adeno-associated viruses in cell cultures. It may also prove successful against corona viruses.

There are antibiotics against dangerous bacteria, but few antidotes to treat acute viral infections. Some infections can be prevented by vaccination, but developing new vaccines is a long and laborious process.

Now an interdisciplinary research team from the Technical University of Munich, the Helmholtz Zentrum München and the Brandeis University (USA) is proposing a novel strategy for the treatment of acute viral infections: The team has developed nanostructures made of DNA, the substance that makes up our genetic material, that can trap viruses and render them harmless.