ELON MUSK MADE a lot of promises during  Tesla’s Battery Day last September. Soon, he said, the company would have a car that runs on batteries with pure silicon anodes to boost their performance and reduced cobalt in the cathodes to lower their price. Its battery pack will be integrated into the chassis so that it provides mechanical support in addition to energy, a design that Musk claimed will reduce the car’s weight by 10 percent and improve its mileage by even more. He hailed Tesla’s structural battery as a “revolution” in engineering—but for some battery researchers, Musk’s future looked a lot like the past.

“He’s essentially doing something that we did 10 years ago,” says Emile Greenhalgh, a materials scientist at Imperial College London and the Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies. He’s one of the world’s leading experts on structural batteries, an approach to energy storage that erases the boundary between the battery and the object it powers. “What we’re doing is going beyond what Elon Musk has been talking about,” Greenhalgh says. “There are no embedded batteries. The material itself is the energy storage device.”

Today, batteries account for a substantial portion of the size and weight of most electronics. A smartphone is mostly a lithium-ion cell with some processors stuffed around it. Drones are limited in size by the batteries they can carry. And about a third of the weight of an electric vehicle is its battery pack. One way to address this issue is by building conventional batteries into the structure of the car itself, as Tesla plans to do. Rather than using the floor of the car to support the battery pack, the battery pack becomes the floor.

Continue reading… “The Batteries of the Future Are Weightless and Invisible”

South Korea’s Korea Railroad Research Institute (Korail) has announced that its “Hyper Tube” train test model has reached a speed of at least 1,000km/h.

The Korail research institute developed a 1:17 scale test model to test the concept. The Hyper Tube train is intended for use in a near-vacuum tube and accelerated using powerful magnets.

According to Korail, its miniature model reached a top speed of 1,019km/hr at 0.001 atm (far lower pressure than has been achieved in any comparable test) during this week’s test. This is around the speed of aircraft designed for transcontinental flights and twice as fast as the fastest ground transport currently available, maglev trains.

Continue reading… “Korea’s tube transport”

• PayPal announced that its US customers can now buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrencies.
• If the launch is successful, PayPal can bring this service to new markets, helping grow its customer base and diversify its offerings.
• Insider Intelligence publishes hundreds of insights, charts, and forecasts on the Payments & Commerce industry with the Payments & Commerce Briefing. You can learn more about subscribing here.

The payments firm introduced its new crypto service that lets its users buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrencies last month. PayPal rolled it out to all US customers on Friday—and to meet high demand, it also increased the weekly cryptocurrency purchase limit from $10,000 to $20,000, per TechCrunch.

Continue reading… “PayPal’s crypto service officially debuts in the US”

Outcomes4Me, developer of a free mobile app and platform to navigate cancer treatment and care, announced that it has raised $4.7 million in funding, led by Asset Management Ventureswith participation from Sierra Ventures, Merstal Ltd. and others. A portion of the funding includes federal funds from the National Cancer Institute. The company will use the funding to expand its reach to address a variety of cancers beyond the more than 10,000 current breast cancer patients who have been using the app in the past year.

Outcomes4Me also announced that Sami Shalabi, who previously headed up engineering and product development at Google, has joined the team as chief operating officer.

Outcomes4Me is the first commercially available app to offer all breast cancer patients a personalized evidence-based experience to help them navigate their care, irrespective of their geography or healthcare provider. The app helps patients achieve better outcomes by retrieving and consolidating their health information, providing them with options for approved treatments and clinical trials, and supplying tools to manage their symptoms.

“Being diagnosed with cancer can be stressful and overwhelming. Outcomes4Me is on a mission to support patients through this journey by empowering them with easy to understand, relevant and evidence-based information,” said Maya R. Said, Sc. D., founder, president and CEO of Outcomes4Me. “Patients are our highest priority as we strive to bring transparency between them and the medical field, using our continually evolving insights to improve care and accelerate research.”

Continue reading… “Outcomes4Me Raises $4.7 Million To Help Patients Navigate Cancer Care Using AI”

Brittany Chang 

• REE Automotive is developing multi-sized flat electric vehicle platforms that can turn into endless types of vehicles, such as cargo delivery trucks and passenger shuttles.
• Building a scalable “one platform fits all” product instead of a full fledged electric vehicle is strategic, according to REE Automotive’s co-founder and CEO Daniel Barel.
• The platforms use several of the Israeli company’s proprietary systems, such as the REEcorner, REEboard, and x-by-wire.

REE Automotive is developing electric vehicle platforms that can turn into cargo delivery trucks, passenger shuttles, and more.

Unlike most major automakers looking to build fully fledged electric vehicles, REE is taking the business approach of creating multi-sized electric vehicle platforms, an idea that other makers like Daimler, Volkswagen, General Motors, startup Karma Automotive, and even the German Aerospace Center have started exploring as well.

Continue reading… “This modular EV vehicle platform can shift into endless types of vehicles from trucks to tiny delivery vehicles — see how it works”

MIT Technology Review

Organizations are using the internet of things and a constellation of smart devices to drive business change. It’s a technological shift that will ultimately have worldwide implications.

In association with LumenNew technologies can optimize the way people work. When implemented thoughtfully, such innovations can improve overall business processes.

Those changes are accepted as part of progress.But when a technology changes how and where people live and their relationships to one another and upends economies, it merits the term “revolution.” Because it changes everything.The promise of the fourth industrial revolution

Continue reading… “The promise of the fourth industrial revolution”

By Nhx T. 

China is reportedly amping up its plans to send more satellites into space to compete with American company SpaceX.
China is planning to send 10,000 satellites into space as soon as possible.

Continue reading… “CHINA COMPETING WITH SPACEX? COUNTRY REPORTEDLY LAUNCHING 10,000 SATELLITES INTO SPACE”

Amanda Jane Hughes and Stefania Soldini

It sounds like science fiction: giant solar power stations floating in space that beam down enormous amounts of energy to Earth. And for a long time, the concept – first developed by the Russian scientist, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, in the 1920s – was mainly an inspiration for writers.

A century later, however, scientists are making huge strides in turning the concept into reality. The European Space Agency has realised the potential of these efforts and is now looking to fund such projects, predicting that the first industrial resource we will get from space is “beamed power”.

Climate change is the greatest challenge of our time, so there’s a lot at stake. From rising global temperatures to shifting weather patterns, the impacts of climate change are already being feltaround the globe. Overcoming this challenge will require radical changes to how we generate and consume energy.

Renewable energy technologies have developed drastically in recent years, with improved efficiency and lower cost. But one major barrier to their uptake is the fact that they don’t provide a constant supply of energy. Wind and solar farms only produce energy when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining – but we need electricity around the clock, every day. Ultimately, we need a way to store energy on a large scale before we can make the switch to renewable sources.

Continue reading… “SOLAR POWER STATIONS IN SPACE COULD BE THE ANSWER TO OUR ENERGY NEEDS”

By Dawn Gesk

The 3D virtual shopping experience comes courtesy of gourmet grocer McEwan Fine Foods Don Mills through a partnership with Inabuggy – an online grocery delivery service that launched in 2015.

Through the virtual 3D walkthrough of McEwan Fine Foods, customers can browse curated aisles of the store just like they were shopping in person. They can select items they want to purchase from store shelves and display cases and add them to their cart for purchase.

The shopping tour gives customers the ability to shop quickly or browse aisles for produce, meats, fish, prepared meals, and gourmet grocery items.

“We have a wide variety of unique products and quality produce and this feature will allow our guests to discover our offerings from the comfort of their homes, making it even easier to eat well,” Mark McEwan, chef and owner of The McEwan Group, said.

Continue reading… “GROCERY STORE TAKES CONTACTLESS SHOPPING TO THE NEXT LEVEL WITH ‘3D VIRTUAL’ EXPERIENCE”

Khari Johnson

Canvas, a company that uses machine learning to install drywall at construction sites, emerged from stealth today. Canvas was founded in 2017 and uses a modified JLG lift, robotic arm, and sensors to automate drywall installation.

Once that task is perfected, Canvas plans to expand into areas like painting and spray-on insulation. The company focuses on commercial construction sites larger than 10,000 square feet, and Canvas’ founders say its machines operate faster and at a higher level of quality than humans working without a robot.

Continue reading… “Canvas emerges from stealth with AI for drywall installation”

The once-daily medicine, called baricitinib, was first identified as a potential treatment for the virus by BenevolentAI, a startup based in London.

The company used its AI software to comb through scientific literature for drugs that might block the infection process. The most promising treatment it discovered was baricitinib, which it predicted could stop the infection from entering lung cells.

The new study has now shown the drug’s safety and efficacy in the largest group of patients published thus far.

Continue reading… “AI discovered an old arthritis drug that can help elderly people survive COVID-19”

Damian Carrington 

Cultured meat, produced in bioreactors without the slaughter of an animal, has been approved for sale by a regulatory authority for the first time. The development has been hailed as a landmark moment across the meat industry.

The “chicken bites”, produced by the US company Eat Just, have passed a safety review by the Singapore Food Agency and the approval could open the door to a future when all meat is produced without the killing of livestock, the company said.Advertisement

Dozens of firms are developing cultivated chicken, beef and pork, with a view to slashing the impact of industrial livestock production on the climate and nature crises, as well as providing cleaner, drug-free and cruelty-free meat. Currently, about 130 million chickens are slaughtered every day for meat, and 4 million pigs. By weight, 60% of the mammals on earth are livestock, 36% are humans and only 4% are wild.Revealed: UK supermarket and fast food chicken linked to deforestation in Brazil

Continue reading… “No-kill, lab-grown meat to go on sale for first time”