Impact Lab – Page 386 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

China’s “Artificial Sun” Fusion Reactor Just Set a World Record

June 2, 2021

The reactor got more than 10 times hotter than the core of the Sun.

Is it hot in here, or is it just the fusion reactor?

China broke a record with its Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) fusion reactor on Friday when it sustained a plasma temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds, according to the state-run outlet GlobalTimes. The reactor was also able to sustain a temperature of 160 million degrees Celsius for 20 seconds.

For perspective, the core of our solar system’s Sun “only” reaches about 15 million degrees Celsius, according to Space.com. So, for a moment, EAST got more than 10 times hotter than that.

This marks a big milestone for the EAST reactor, which has been dubbed the “artificial Sun” for its ability to replicate the natural nuclear fusion process of stars. Doing so could help unlock the mystery to creating sustainable, reliable fusion power.

drones, Science & Technology News

Botswana begins medical drone delivery service to prevent maternal deaths

June 2, 2021

By Ishveena Singh

This month, Botswana became the first country in southern Africa, and the third in Africa, to begin the use of medical delivery drones. Their aim? To bring down maternal mortality by delivering life-saving health supplies to hard-to-reach communities in a timely manner.

The initiative, called “Drones for Health,” has been made possible through a collaboration between Botswana’s Ministry of Health and Wellness, Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST), and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

Unlike Ghana and Rwanda, where US-based drone company Zipline has been delivering on-demand medical supplies to remote areas, the drone delivery ecosystem platform for Botswana has been developed in partnership with Dutch drone engineering company Avy.

The Avy Aera drone can travel a distance of 100 km on a single charge, carrying cargo weighing up to 2 kg. An uber-cool, interactive flight simulation page will show you three drones taking off from a BIUST drone port and flying to different communities of Botswana.

Alternative Transportation, Science & Technology News

Space plane aims to take you anywhere on the globe in one hour

June 2, 2021

Space plane aims to take you anywhere on the globe in one hour

A company called Venus Aerospace Corp. is pursuing a hypersonic space plane that has the potential to take people from Los Angeles to Tokyo in about an hour. The trip in their proposed space plane would take off from the ground like a conventional aircraft and fly up to a high cruising altitude. Once at that cruising altitude, a rocket booster would ignite and push the aircraft to the edge of space at more than 9000 mph.

That’s approximately 12 times the speed of sound. The aircraft would travel at that incredible velocity for approximately 15 minutes before gliding against the atmosphere to slow down and eventually landing at a conventional airport just as it took off. Venus was founded by a pair of former Virgin Orbit LLC employees, and the company currently has 15 employees of its own.

Energy, Science & Technology News

Scientists look to capture clean energy from our clothing

June 1, 2021

Could a jacket or a pair of jeans one day power your mobile phone and other electronic devices?

by Craig McManamon , Heriot-Watt University

This is the aim of a multi-disciplined team of scientists including from Heriot-Watt University’s Research Institute for Flexible Materials, who are behind a new project to harvest the kinetic energy generated in clothing through state-of-the-art nano technology.

The academics, all of whom are based in Scotland and Ireland, are attempting to create a friction based wearable autonomous energy system. They will use cutting-edge nanogenerators, which are designed to capture and reuse the kinetic energy in clothing materials created as the wearer moves. If successful, these tiny, unobtrusive devices will be woven into every-day clothing.

The team say their technology could be available as early as 2027 and capable of powering a host of devices such as mobile phones, smart watches and tablets.

Science & Technology News, Tesla

Tesla has activated its in-car camera to monitor drivers using Autopilot

June 1, 2021

By Kirsten Korosec

Tesla has enabled the in-car camera in its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles to monitor drivers when its Autopilot advanced driver assistance system is being used.

In a software update, Tesla indicated the “cabin camera above the rearview mirror can now detect and alert driver inattentiveness while Autopilot is engaged.” Notably, Tesla has a closed loop system for the data, meaning imagery captured by the camera does not leave the car. The system cannot save or transit information unless data sharing is enabled, according to Tesla. The firmware update was cited by a number of Tesla owners, industry watchers and bloggers who are active on Twitter.

Tesla has faced criticism for not activating a driver monitoring system within the vehicle even as evidence mounted that owners were misusing the system. Owners have posted dozens of videos on YouTube and TikTok abusing the Autopilot system — some of whom have filmed themselves sitting in the backseat as the vehicle drives along the highway. Several fatal crashes involving Tesla vehicles that had Autopilot engaged has put more pressure on the company to act.

Until now, Tesla has not used the camera installed in its vehicles and instead relied on sensors in the steering wheel that measured torque — a method that is supposed to require the driver to keep their hands on the wheel. Drivers have documented and shared on social media how to trick the sensors into thinking a human is holding the wheel.

Robots, Science & Technology News

The robot smiles back: Columbia scientists teach robot how to respond to human facial expressions

June 1, 2021

Columbia Engineering researchers use AI to teach robots to make appropriate reactive human facial expressions, an ability that could build trust between humans and their robotic co-workers and care-givers.

BY MARK ALLINSON

While our facial expressions play a huge role in building trust, most robots still sport the blank and static visage of a professional poker player.

With the increasing use of robots in locations where robots and humans need to work closely together, from nursing homes to warehouses and factories, the need for a more responsive, facially realistic robot is growing more urgent.

Long interested in the interactions between robots and humans, researchers in the Creative Machines Lab at Columbia Engineering have been working for five years to create EVA, a new autonomous robot with a soft and expressive face that responds to match the expressions of nearby humans.

The research will be presented at the ICRA conference on May 30, 2021, and the robot blueprints are open-sourced on Hardware-X (April 2021).

“The idea for EVA took shape a few years ago, when my students and I began to notice that the robots in our lab were staring back at us through plastic, googly eyes,” said Hod Lipson, James and Sally Scapa Professor of Innovation (Mechanical Engineering) and director of the Creative Machines Lab.

Lipson observed a similar trend in the grocery store, where he encountered restocking robots wearing name badges, and in one case, decked out in a cozy, hand-knit cap.

“People seemed to be humanizing their robotic colleagues by giving them eyes, an identity, or a name,” he said. “This made us wonder, if eyes and clothing work, why not make a robot that has a super-expressive and responsive human face?”

While this sounds simple, creating a convincing robotic face has been a formidable challenge for roboticists.

Science & Technology News, VR

The future of remote work is a lot like living in a video game

June 1, 2021

BY JOSEPH VOLPE

I didn’t know the closest I’d get to bonding with my coworkers in 2020 would be by strapping a screen to my face.

I never got to meet the bulk of them — you know, my East Coast work “family” — before lockdown life locked me into the Bay Area. Sure, there was the occasional weekly video chat. But that was really the extent of it.

“We’ll fly you out for a visit in the New Year,” management told me. That was the plan and I was fine with that.

Thing is, that New Year — the 2020 that will go down in infamy — brought with it a very unwelcome surprise. (Do I even need to spell it out?)

Eventually, we all adjusted to our new socially distanced world. Zoom soon became a buzzword even grandmothers knew. Webcams were often out of stock online. Life became one unending series of scheduled screen time.

Then the novelty wore off, the WFH fatigue set in, the cold winter months approached, and many wondered how we could continue on living and working this way.

And when would it end?

Driverless vehicles, Science & Technology News

SberAutoTech launches its first fully autonomous vehicle

June 1, 2021

SberAutoTech, a Sber ecosystem company, has revealed a prototype of its own autonomous vehicle for future mobility, which it has named “FLIP”.

By David Rafalovsky, CTO, Sberbank Group; executive vice president, head of technology, Sberbank

The brand-new and fully self-driving vehicle has been developed to match the highest level in international driving automation classification. It pursues the new mobility concept providing quick, safe, and comfortable transportation for passengers through cutting-edge IT and automotive technologies.

There is a proprietary electric platform driven by an electric motor powered by a replaceable battery module at the core of FLIP. Key differentiating know-how is that fast-swappable batteries can be replaced in five minutes. So the vehicle is ready to continue the journey in time comparable to a fueling of a conventional car.

Fast-swappable batteries is a solution that removes the current challenges of EV market, such as extensive charging time and high battery prices resulting from their expected capacity and range.

Moreover, FLIP is designed to be powered from both electricity and other alternative fuels like natural gas and hydrogen.

AI, Science & Technology News

How Emotion AI Can Make the World a Better Place

June 1, 2021

By Jenna Delport

Most of us take it for granted that we can read another person’s emotions through subtleties such as body language, yet this is a real struggle for many others. Enter emotion AI.

Researchers at Stanford University modified Google’s augmented reality glasses to read emotions in others and notify the wearer. The glasses detect someone’s mood through their eye contact, facial expressions and body language, and then tell the wearer what emotions it’s picking up.

“Emotion AI taps into the individual,” explains Zabeth Venter, CEO and co-founder of Averly. “If you think about facial recognition, which is a kind of emotion AI, I can pick up if you like what I’m saying by whether your smile is a smirk or a real genuine smile.”

Such nuances go deeper. Another example is polling: what is your favourite colour? Maybe it’s purple. But did you say that enthusiastically? Did you hesitate? Did you just say it to say something? Did you even understand the question?

We simply can’t get this level of context from the available surveys, sales data and the many other ways we try to understand humans through information. But through emotion AI, we can grasp incredible nuance.

AI, Science & Technology News

More than half of Europeans want to replace lawmakers with AI, study says

May 30, 2021

People walking at Strandvagen in Stockholm

By Sam Shead

KEY POINTS

Researchers at IE University’s Center for the Governance of Change asked 2,769 people from 11 countries worldwide how they would feel about reducing the number of national parliamentarians in their country and giving those seats to an AI that would have access to their data.
The results, published Thursday, showed that despite AI’s clear and obvious limitations, 51% of Europeans said they were in favor of such a move.
Outside Europe, some 75% of people surveyed in China supported the idea of replacing parliamentarians with AI, while 60% of American respondents opposed it.

LONDON — A study has found that most Europeans would like to see some of their members of parliament replaced by algorithms.

Researchers at IE University’s Center for the Governance of Change asked 2,769 people from 11 countries worldwide how they would feel about reducing the number of national parliamentarians in their country and giving those seats to an AI that would have access to their data.

The results, published Thursday, showed that despite AI’s clear and obvious limitations, 51% of Europeans said they were in favor of such a move.

new technology, Science & Technology News

Acer’s SpatialLabs is glasses-free 3D in a prototype laptop

May 30, 2021

By Chris Davies

Acer wants to bring stereoscopic 3D to laptops, with a new SpatialLabs display that promises to float graphics right out of a laptop’s screen without demanding you wear special glasses to see them. The system instead combines a switchable lenticular lens screen with an eye-tracking camera, all fitted into a prototype ConceptD notebook.

3D certainly isn’t new, and neither are attempts to bring it to graphics pros in a usable way. The reality, though, is that clunky glasses and mediocre visual quality has generally undermined such efforts.

Health & Fitness, Science & Technology News

Scientists Have Found a Way to Break the Limit of Human Longevity

May 30, 2021

Schematic illustration of loss of resilience along aging trajectories.

By GERO

The research team of Gero, a Singapore-based biotech company in collaboration with Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo NY, announces a publication in Nature Communications, a journal of Nature portfolio, presenting the results of the study on associations between aging and the loss of the ability to recover from stresses.

Recently, we have witnessed the first promising examples of biological age reversal by experimental interventions. Indeed, many biological clock types properly predict more years of life for those who choose healthy lifestyles or quit unhealthy ones, such as smoking. What has been still unknown is how quickly biological age is changing over time for the same individual. And especially, how one would distinguish between the transient fluctuations and the genuine bioage change trend.

The emergence of big biomedical data involving multiple measurements from the same subjects brings about a whole range of novel opportunities and practical tools to understand and quantify the aging process in humans. A team of experts in biology and biophysics presented results of a detailed analysis of dynamic properties of the fluctuations of physiological indices along individual aging trajectories.

Healthy human subjects turned out to be very resilient, whereas the loss of resilience turned out to be related to chronic diseases and elevated all-cause mortality risks. The rate of recovery to the equilibrium baseline level after stresses was found to deteriorate with age. Accordingly, the time needed to recover was getting longer and longer. Being around 2 weeks for 40 y.o. healthy adults the recovery time stretched to 6 weeks for 80 y.o. on average in the population. This finding was confirmed in two different datasets based on two different kinds of biological measurements — blood test parameters on one hand and physical activity levels recorded by wearable devices on the other hand.