Impact Lab – Page 405 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

Electric Vehicles, Science & Technology News

FedEx pledges to go carbon-neutral by 2040 with EV delivery vans and more

March 10, 2021

The company responsible for moving so much around the US and the globe laid out a number of massive initiatives to reach its target.

By Sean Szymkowski

This battery-powered commercial van is sure to get couriers and delivery companies all hot and bothered.GM

FedEx said on Wednesday it will do its part to cut emissions from its global business, which is a big deal for a corporation as sprawling as FedEx. The company said it’s committed to become carbon-neutral by 2040 at the latest and laid out a number of projects and initiatives it will enact to meet its goal.

Electric Automobile, Science & Technology News

Volvo plans to sell only electric cars by 2030, seeing ‘no future’ for internal combustion engines

March 10, 2021

Volvo launched its first fully electric car on Tuesday.

By Miguel Ángel Moreno Ramos and Jeevan Ravindran

Volvo announced on Tuesday that it would go fully electric by 2030 and 50% electric by 2025.
To celebrate the plan, the company also launched the C40 Recharge, its first fully electric car.
“There is no long-term future for cars with an internal combustion engine,” said CTO Henrik Green.

Volvo announced on Tuesday that it would become a “fully electric” manufacturer by 2030.

The Swedish company plans to launch a series of electric vehicles over the coming years but they will only be available for purchase online.

Science & Technology News, SpaceX

Elon Musk Wants To Build a City Called ‘Starbase’ in Texas

March 10, 2021

If Texas approves, the Starbase city will be located near SpaceX’s Boca Chica site.

By Fabienne Lang

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is thinking about creating a city called Starbase, which will be located around his space company’s rocket launch and production facility in Texas.

Musk already approached state county officials about his interest to incorporate the Boca Chica Village into the City of Starbase, as read SpaceX’s official inquiry.

In typical Musk style, the billionaire also shared his idea on Twitter, where he simply said “Creating the city of Starbase, Texas.” Followed by “From thence to Mars, and hence the Stars.”

Batteries, Science & Technology News

Battery startup Ample announces autonomous swapping stations

March 10, 2021

By Scooter Doll

EV startup Ample today announced the rollout of its new modular battery swapping technology. A fully autonomous station deploys robots to remove and replace modules from an electric vehicle containing Ample’s modular battery architecture. These swapping stations are currently operational in California’s Bay Area.

Augmented Reality, Science & Technology News

The Future of Vision: Augmented reality contact lenses will make you bionic

March 10, 2021

Augmented reality contact lenses have been “around the corner” for years. They’re finally set to arrive.

By Jeremy Kaplan

A decade ago, Google’s ambitions seemed unchecked: The company would design self-piloting cars through Waymo, sponsor moonbases, and even conquer death. One of the company’s plans: Smart contact lenses to measure the glucose level of your tears — and perhaps help reduce the damage caused by diabetes. “It’s still early days for this technology, but we’ve completed multiple clinical research studies, which are helping to refine our prototype,” wrote Google’s Brian Otis and Babak Parvizback in 2014.

Seven years later, the company’s ego remains just as inflated, but Verily’s smart contact lenses are nowhere to be seen; the side project of Google parent Alphabet was officially abandoned in 2018. Yet smart lenses are finally becoming a reality, thanks to the efforts of countless scientists and engineers. And the future of this intriguing technology is nothing like what you might expect.

Electric Vehicles, Science & Technology News

The Futuristic Car Looks Like a Small Spaceship and Might Be Distributed by the End of the Year

March 8, 2021

The electric car features an aerodynamic design with only three wheels and two seats.

By Pitney Bowes

Do you remember the futuristic car that we could set aside with 2,000 Mexican pesos? It looks like we will soon see Aptera Motors start distributing them.

The vehicle manufacturing company has just closed a round of four billion dollars and now its plans to start its distribution at the end of this year 2021 seem more real, as we mentioned in December of last year.

“The Aptera must undergo safety testing before the company can begin distribution, which it hopes to do later this year. Even then, it is not clear that consumers want to buy something that looks like a cross between the Batmobile and a beetle,” wrote The Washington Post .

Aviation, Science & Technology News

NASA’s Experimental Electric Airplane Edges Closer to Its First Flight

March 8, 2021

Concept art of the electric, 14-motor X-57 Maxwell in flight.

By Isaac Schultz

Looking every bit like a winged tube of toothpaste, NASA’s X-57 Maxwell experimental plane sits in a hangar at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The is NASA’s first crewed experimental plane in 20 years; it runs solely on electric power, an agency first, and it’s about to undergo high-voltage functional testing in advance of its first flight, scheduled for later this year.

“Currently, we have a battery emulator that we’re using to provide power to the aircraft,” said Nick Borer, an aerospace engineer at NASA’s Langley Research Center, in a video call. “But this is the first time we’ve had the low-voltage and high-voltage systems operating together.”

NASA’s compendium of experimental aircraft, or X-planes, speaks to the agency’s long history of sussing out the future of flight. They range from kite-shaped, Bush-era combat drones to the Eisenhower administration’s autogyro, which sounds like a Greek dish that eats itself but looks more like a tricked-out tricycle combined with a helicopter. The new electric craft certainly looks more like a plane than any of them, and will have 14 propellers.

quantum computing, Science & Technology News

Artificial ‘Magnetic Texture’ in Graphene May Add New Spin to Quantum Computers

March 9, 2021

The image shows eight electrodes around a 20-nanometer-thick magnet (white rectangle). The graphene, not show, is less than 1 nanometer thick and next to the magnet. (Image: University at Buffalo.)

Graphene is incredibly strong, lightweight, conductive … the list of its superlative properties goes on.

It is not, however, magnetic — a shortcoming that has stunted its usefulness in spintronics, an emerging field that scientists say could eventually rewrite the rules of electronics, leading to more powerful semiconductors, computers and other devices.

Now, an international research team led by the University at Buffalo is reporting an advancement that could help overcome this obstacle. The researchers added that the advance may lead to powerful spintronic devices, such as semiconductors and quantum computers.

In a study published today in the journal Physical Review Letters, researchers describe how they paired a magnet with graphene, and induced what they describe as “artificial magnetic texture” in the nonmagnetic wonder material.

Science & Technology News, Space Flight

Kentucky firm plans orbital mini space station in two years

March 7, 2021

by Paul Brinkmann

A Kentucky space firm that conducts science experiments on the International Space Station has plans to launch its own miniature, automated orbital research platform in about two years.

Lexington-based Space Tango has small research containers, or CubeLabs, on the space station. Bustling business and growing need for such experiments in microgravity led the company to plan its own space station, founder and CEO Twyman Clements said.

“As the scale of our business grows across a number of uses, having a dedicated spacecraft for manufacturing is the way to go,” Clements said in an interview Friday.

He declined to say how much the company would spend on the project or how much each spacecraft might cost.

DNA, Science & Technology News

Experimental CRISPR Treatment Cuts Cholesterol in Mice by Up to 57% in a Single Shot

March 7, 2021

By PETER DOCKRILL

Scientists have improved upon a form of gene-editing therapy, creating an experimental treatment that looks to hold great promise for treating high cholesterol – a diagnosis affecting tens of millions of Americans, and linked to a number serious health complications.

In new research conducted with mice, researchers used an injection of a newly-formulated lipid nanoparticle to deliver CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing components to living animals, with a single shot of the treatment reducing levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol by up to 56.8 percent.

In contrast, an existing FDA-approved lipid nanoparticle (or LNP; a tiny, biodegradable fat capsule) delivery system could only manage to reduce LDLs by 15.7 percent in testing.

Of course, these results have so far only been demonstrated in mice, so the new therapy will take a lot of further testing before we know it’s both safe and equally effective in humans. But based on these results so far, signs are promising.

AI, Science & Technology News

Sonantic uses AI to infuse emotion in automated speech for game prototypes

March 8, 2021

By Dean Takahashi

Sonantic has figured out how to use AI to turn written words into spoken dialogue in a script, and it can infuse those words with the proper emotion.

And it turns out this is a pretty good way to prototype the audio storytelling in triple-A video games. That’s why the Sonantic technology is finding use with 200 different video game companies for audio engineering.

The AI can provide true emotional depth to the words, conveying complex human emotions from fear and sadness to joy and surprise. The breakthrough advancement revolutionizes audio engineering capabilities for gaming and film studios, culminating in hyper-realistic, emotionally expressive and controllable artificial voices.

“Our first pilots were for triple-A companies, and then when we started building this,” said cofounder Zeena Qureshi in an interview with GamesBeat. “We went a lot more vertical and deeper into just working very closely with these types of partners. And what we found is the highest quality bar is for these studios. And so it’s really helped us bring our technology into a very great place.”

Building upon the existing framework of text-to-speech, London-based Sonantic’s approach is what differentiates a standard robotic voice from one that sounds genuinely human. Creating that “believability” factor is at the core of Sonantic’s voice platform, which captures the nuances of the human voice.

Microsoft, Science & Technology News

Microsoft Mesh aims to bring holographic virtual collaboration to all

March 6, 2021

The platform will let developers easily build apps for cross-platform remote meetings.

By D. Hardawar

Last week, I sat around a table with fellow journalists as Greg Sullivan, Microsoft’s head of Mixed Reality, detailed the company’s vision for the future of virtual collaboration. Nobody was wearing masks or standing apart. We weren’t worried about getting sick. Instead, we were all wearing HoloLens 2 headsets and sitting in different parts of the world. The holographic table was right beside my actual desk, and my media pals were floating around my office as we chatted with our cartoonish avatars. For a second, it felt like mingling in real life during the Before Times.