Impact Lab – Page 399 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

Driverless vehicles, Science & Technology News

Volvo and Aurora team up on fully autonomous trucks for North America

April 10, 2021

Another day, another partnership

Volvo is partnering with self-driving startup Aurora on a new lineup of fully autonomous semi trucks, the companies announced. The trucks will be deployed in North America on highly frequented hub-to-hub routes.

The deal between Volvo Autonomous Solutions and Aurora — which was founded by former executives from Google, Tesla, and Uber — is a “long-term partnership spanning several years,” the companies said.

It’s also the latest partnership between a major OEM (original equipment manufacturer) and an autonomous technology startup, as the industry continues to slowly inch toward a future with more fully driverless passenger vehicles and trucks on the road.

Aurora has been testing its “Aurora Driver” hardware and software stack in its test fleet of minivans and Class 8 trucks in the Dallas-Fort Worth area since last year. Unlike its rivals, which are largely focused on robotaxi applications, the company has said that its first commercial service will be in trucking “where the market is largest today, the unit economics are best, and the level of service requirements is most accommodating.”

drones, Science & Technology News

Drones vs. hungry moths: Dutch use hi-tech to protect crops

April 9, 2021

Technology eliminates the need to use chemicals to kill pests

By MIKE CORDER | The Associated Press

A moth-killing drone hovers over crops in a green house in Monster, Netherlands, on Thursday, Feb. 25, 2021. A Dutch startup is using drones to kill moths in midair as a way of protecting valuable crops in greenhouses that are damaged by caterpillars.

MONSTER, NETHERLANDS — Dutch cress grower Rob Baan has enlisted high-tech helpers to tackle a pest in his greenhouses: palm-sized drones seek and destroy moths that produce caterpillars that can chew up his crops.

“I have unique products where you don’t get certification to spray chemicals and I don’t want it,” Baan said in an interview in a greenhouse bathed in the pink glow of LED lights that help his seedlings grow. His company, Koppert Cress, exports aromatic seedlings, plants and flowers to top-end restaurants around the world.

Robotics, Science & Technology News

This is Boston Dynamics’ next commercial robot

April 9, 2021

Handle’s descendant Stretch finds the company making a big play for logistics

Brian Heater

Boston Dynamics’ transitionfrom a decades-long research robotics firm to a company that productizes and sells hardware has been a fascinating one to watch. There have been some tough lessons along the way, including the very real lesson that at the end of the day, most robots in the world will be deployed for mundane tasks.

Sure, the company will continue to court the public with fun viral videos of its technology dancing to the oldies, but when it comes to actually selling robotics, the targets continue to be the dull, dirty and dangerous jobs we humans just don’t want to do. Or, as I’ve been putting it for a while now, robotics are — more often than not — cool technology performing decidedly uncool tasks.

Spot has found most of its success as an inspection robot. The quadruped has been deployed to oil rigs, nuclear plants and other places where most people would rather limit their time, given a choice. That takes care of the dangerous part of the three Ds, and you could make a reasonable argument that the company’s second commercially available robot is going after the dull bit.

Bitcoin, Science & Technology News

Visa moves to allow payment settlements using cryptocurrency

April 9, 2021

KEY POINTS

Visa said on Monday it will allow the use of the cryptocurrency USD Coin to settle transactions on its payment network.
It was the latest sign of growing acceptance of digital currencies by the mainstream financial industry.

Visa said on Monday it will allow the use of the cryptocurrency USD Coin to settle transactions on its payment network, the latest sign of growing acceptance of digital currencies by the mainstream financial industry.

new technology, Science & Technology News

Industry clouds could be the next big thing

April 8, 2021

By Shaikh, Virtana

Despite predictions of a cloud shift accelerated by the pandemic and Gartner projecting a $651 billion public cloud market in 2024, organizations have barely scratched the surface of public cloud adoption. So it might seem odd at this stage to ask, “What’s the next big thing in public clouds?”

The war between traditional on-premises data center infrastructure providers such as Dell, HPE, and Cisco and the public cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud is far from over. However, one opportunity worth examining is industry clouds.

Industry clouds are collections of cloud services, tools, and applications optimized for the most important use cases in a specific industry. APIs, common data models and workflows, and other components are available to customize capabilities. Industry cloud solutions from major public cloud providers also typically offer a variety of software and services, including industry-specific applications, from partners. For example, Microsoft and SAP partner to deliver SAP supply chain solutions through Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing.

brains, Science & Technology News

If You Transplant a Human Head, Does Its Consciousness Follow?

April 8, 2021

MAX G. LEVY SCIE

In her new book, Brandy Schillace recalls the unbelievable legacy of a Cold War era neurosurgeon’s mission to preserve the soul.

BRANDY SCHILLACE SOMETIMES writes fiction, but her new book is not that. Schillace, a medical historian, promises that her Cold War-era tale of a surgeon, neuroscientist, and father of 10 obsessed with transplanting heads is true from start to finish.

Schillace came across the story behind her book, Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher, somewhat serendipitously: One day, her friend, Cleveland neurologist Michael DeGeorgia, called her to his office. He quietly slid a battered shoebox toward her, inviting her to open it. Schillace obliged, half-worried it might contain a brain. She pulled out a notebook—perhaps from the ‘50s or ‘60s, she says—and started to leaf through it.

“There’s all these strange little notes and stuff about mice and brains and brain slices, and these little flecks,” Schillace says. “I was like, ‘What … what are all these marks?’”

quantum computing, Science & Technology News

Quantum computing: How basic broadband fiber could pave the way to the next breakthrough

April 8, 2021

By Daphne Leprince-Ringuet |

New research from NIST could hold the key to accelerating the development of large-scale quantum computers packing one million qubits – using simple telecommunications cables.

Google’s Sycamore quantum processor. Image: Google

The usefulness of most quantum computers is still significantly limited by the low number of qubits that hardware can support. But simple fiber optic cables – just like the ones used for broadband connections – could be the answer.

A team of researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) found that, with just a few tweaks, optical fiber can be used to communicate with the qubits sitting inside superconducting quantum computers, with the same level of accuracy as existing methods.

Cancer, Science & Technology News

Engineered Immune Cells Deliver Anticancer Signal, Prevent Cancer From Spreading

April 7, 2021

By U.S. National Institutes of Health

Scientists have genetically engineered immune cells, called myeloid cells, to precisely deliver an anticancer signal to organs where cancer may spread. In a study of mice, treatment with the engineered cells shrank tumors and prevented the cancer from spreading to other parts of the body. The study, led by scientists at the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Center for Cancer Research, part of the National Institutes of Health, was published March 24, 2021, in Cell.

“This is a novel approach to immunotherapy that appears to have promise as a potential treatment for metastatic cancer,” said the study’s leader, Rosandra Kaplan, M.D., of NCI’s Center for Cancer Research.

Metastatic cancer — cancer that has spread from its original location to other parts of the body — is notoriously difficult to treat. Dr. Kaplan’s team has been exploring another approach: Preventing cancer from spreading in the first place.

Before cancer spreads, it sends out signals that get distant sites ready for the cancer’s arrival — like calling ahead to have the pillows fluffed in your hotel room prior to arrival. These “primed and ready” sites, discovered by Dr. Kaplan in 2005, are called premetastatic niches.

In the new study, the NCI team explored the behavior of immune cells in the premetastatic niche. Because Dr. Kaplan is a pediatric oncologist, the team mainly studied mice implanted with rhabdomyosarcoma, a type of cancer that develops in the muscles of children and often spreads to their lungs.

Internet of Things, Science & Technology News

Researchers turn 5G networks into wireless power grids for IoT

April 7, 2021

Shane McGlaun – Mar 26, 2021, 8:08am CDT

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have come up with a novel method of tapping into the over-capacity of 5G mobile networks. The new technique turns the 5G network into a wireless power grid able to power small Internet of Things (IoT) devices that currently require batteries to operate. In many of these small devices, the battery prevents the miniaturization of the devices to smaller scales.

Georgia Tech researchers developed a flexible Rotman lens-based rectifying antenna system capable of harvesting millimeter-wave in the 28 gigahertz band for the first time. A Rotman lens is critical for beamforming networks and is typically used in radar surveillance systems for viewing targets in multiple directions without physically moving the antenna. To create the system able to harvest enough power to run low-power devices at long ranges, larger aperture antennas are required.

The challenge with larger aperture antennas is that they have a narrow field of view, limiting their operation if the antenna is widely dispersed from the 5G base station. Project researchers solved that problem by looking from only one direction with a system that has a wide-angle of coverage. The team says that current 5G networks were built for high-bandwidth communication. The high-frequency network holds an opportunity to harvest unused power that would otherwise be wasted.

drones, Science & Technology News

Samsung Electronics launches drone deliveries in Ireland

April 7, 2021

By Park Eel-kyung & Kim Tae-gyu, UPI News Korea

SEOUL, March 26 (UPI) — Samsung Electronics has launched drone delivery service of smartphones and other digital gadgets within minutes of an order in Ireland.

The company said Wednesday it launched the new service this week in Oranmore, some 125 miles west of Dublin, through a partnership with Ireland’s Manna Drone Delivery.

When customers make an online order via Samsung’s Irish website, a drone will fly at a speed of 35 mph to reach homes in Oranmore within three minutes, according to Samsung.

Available through the service are such products as the Galaxy S21 Ultra, the Galaxy Buds Pro, the Galaxy Tab S7, the Galaxy Watch 3 and Galaxy A series phones.

Samsung aims to expand the service across Ireland for now.

Clothing, Science & Technology News

The clothes we wear are about to undergo a wild digital revolution

April 6, 2021

BY JARED LINDZON

Imagine an article of clothing that could tell your washing machine how to keep its colors from fading. Imagine a piece of clothing that could warm your body in the winter and cool it down in the summer. Imagine wearing clothes that weren’t designed last year, or last season, but yesterday, in response to that day’s buying patterns. Imagine being able to fully customize every article of clothing in your wardrobe for the same cost as mass-produced items.

And imagine a clothing industry that could do all of this while significantly reducing emissions and retaining most of its workforce.

Thanks to new advancements in manufacturing, you won’t have to imagine forever. While the clothing we wear today is largely designed, manufactured, and sold in the same way it was 100 years ago, what we wear is expected to change dramatically in the not-so-distant future, thanks to advancements in manufacturing technology.

Climate Change, Science & Technology News

Supercharged soil could pull carbon right out of the air

April 6, 2021

A simple seed treatment could drastically increase the amount of atmospheric carbon captured by crops, and store it underground for longer

By DELLE CHAN

Fundamentally, two of the world’s most pressing challenges, climate change and soil degradation, boil down to a simple imbalance: there is too much carbon in the air, and not enough in the ground. And for Guy Hudson and Tegan Nock, the solution is patently obvious.

The duo are the co-founders of Soil Carbon Co, an Australian agritech startup specialising in what it terms “microbe-mediated carbon sequestration” – a method of removing carbon from the atmosphere via microbial fungi and bacteria. The technology in question? A biological treatment applied to seeds that converts atmospheric carbon into a more stable compound which can then be stored deep in the ground – potentially for centuries.