Impact Lab – Page 527 – A Laboratory of the Future Human Experience

3D Printer, Engineering, new technology, Science & Technology News

Multimaterial 3-D printing manufactures complex objects, fast

November 22, 2019

Multimaterial multinozzle 3D printheads. Credit: Nature (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1736-8

3-D printers are revolutionizing manufacturing by allowing users to create any physical shape they can imagine on-demand. However, most commercial printers are only able to build objects from a single material at a time and inkjet printers that are capable of multimaterial printing are constrained by the physics of droplet formation. Extrusion-based 3-D printing allows a broad palette of materials to be printed, but the process is extremely slow. For example, it would take roughly 10 days to build a 3-D object roughly one liter in volume at the resolution of a human hair and print speed of 10 cm/s using a single-nozzle, single-material printhead. To build the same object in less than 1 day, one would need to implement a printhead with 16 nozzles printing simultaneously!

Continue reading… “Multimaterial 3-D printing manufactures complex objects, fast”

Healthcare, new technology, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

Robot overlords? More like co-verlords. The future is human-robot collaboration

November 22, 2019

Davinci surgical system at Magdeburg University Hospital

It’s the classic trope of buddy cop movies: you introduce two characters with little in common aside from the job that they do. Maybe one’s old and the other’s young. Maybe one’s black and the other’s white. Maybe one’s a maverick and the other is a stickler for doing things by the book. At first they don’t get along. Perhaps one is new to the precinct and the other fears that they’re being phased out as a result. But, wouldn’t you know it, they turn out to be a great team. The strengths of one are the weaknesses of the other. The police chief might get pissed at their zany antics, but they’re much better friends than they are enemies. Could the same be true of humans and their relationship with robots?

The typical narrative, as cliché as any Lethal Weapon buddy cop movie ripoff, is that robots are here to steal our jobs. Unless you’re one of the people lucky enough to be building or selling the robots, you should view robots as the flashy new rival in town, hovering in the wings to replace you. But while there are certainly jobs that robots will take from humans (hopefully the dirty, dull, and dangerous jobs humans don’t really want), there are plenty of other jobs in which robots working alongside humans could greatly increase human productivity.

In doing so, they won’t just augment our abilities; they’ll make it possible to scale jobs in a way that was unimaginable in the pre-robot age.

Continue reading… “Robot overlords? More like co-verlords. The future is human-robot collaboration”

Banking, Latest Trend, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

The invisible company powers almost the entire finance industry

November 21, 2019

The days of going to a bank are coming to an end.

In the past 10 years, 15,000 bank branches have shut their doors for good. And foot traffic to banks has fallen by 50%. Bank branches are shutting down left and right for a simple reason… They’re useless!

These days, you can deposit a check by taking a photo with your phone. You can open a bank account or order a new credit card in five minutes over the internet. You can even take out a mortgage without ever seeing a human banker, thanks to disruptive services like Quicken Loans.

And it’s not just banks. Digital disruption is eating away at every “old” business model in finance. Everyone from stockbrokers to financial planners is under assault.

Continue reading… “The invisible company powers almost the entire finance industry”

Banking, Google, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

Google to offer checking accounts in partnership with banks starting next year

November 21, 2019

Google is the latest big tech company to make a move into banking and personal financial services: The company is gearing up to offer checking accounts to consumers, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal, starting as early as next year. Google is calling the project “Cache,” and it’ll partner with banks and credit unions to offer the checking accounts, with the banks handling all financial and compliance activities related to the accounts.

Google’s Caesar Sengupta spoke to the WSJ about the new initiative, and Sengupta made clear that Google will be seeking to put its financial institution partners much more front-and-center for its customers than other tech companies have perhaps done with their financial products. Apple works with Goldman Sachs on its Apple Card credit product, for instance, but the credit card is definitely presented primarily as an Apple product.

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Employment, Higher Education, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

The 5 college majors American students most regret picking

November 21, 2019

Obtaining an undergraduate degree is almost always worth it — bachelor’s degree holders earn 84% more than those with just a high school diploma.

However, not all majors are the same, ZipRecruiter found.

As tuition costs soar, more students and their families are asking themselves if college is still worth it.

Some experts say the value of a bachelor’s degree is fading. Starting salaries for new college graduates have grown less than 1% over the past two years, remaining at around $50,000.

Worse yet: A decade after leaving school, more than 1 in 5 graduates are working in a job that doesn’t even require a degree.

Continue reading… “The 5 college majors American students most regret picking”

Elon Musk, Science & Technology News, Space Flight, SpaceX

1,000 Starships and 20 years are needed to build sustainable city on Mars, says Elon Musk

November 20, 2019

The CEO of SpaceX took to Twitter to share the news of how dangerous and arduous the task continues to be.

Elon Musk shared more details about what will be needed to reach Mars and to build a sustainable city there.

The SpaceX CEO and his company have been working hard at their long term vision of setting up an actual city on the Red Planet, which could sustain life.

The timeline Musk shared via Twitter could be interpreted as an ambitious goal or an impressive one.

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Aviation, Record Breaker, Science & Technology News, Travel

London to Sydney flight breaks world record

November 20, 2019

Sydney (CNN) — Until someone invents a device to teleport humans from one side of the Earth to the other, this is the next best thing.

An experimental research flight operated by Australian airline Qantas touched down in Sydney on Friday, after flying nonstop from London — a journey that pushes the frontier of modern aircraft capabilities — smashing two aviation records and witnessing a rare double sunrise along the way.

Flight QF7879 became the world’s longest passenger flight by a commercial airline both for distance, at 17,800 kilometers (about 11,060 miles), and for duration in the air, at 19 hours and 19 minutes.

The achievement could help usher in a new generation of so-called ultra long haul flights that will directly connect far-flung Sydney with destinations across Europe and the United States.

The 50 or so people onboard departed London’s Heathrow on Thursday in the pitch dark of pre-dawn, having sucked down their last lungfuls of rain-drenched November air.

Two sunrises later, they emerged blinking into a bright, warm Friday afternoon on the east coast of Australia. At least three whole hours sooner than if they’d had to change aircraft en route.

Continue reading… “London to Sydney flight breaks world record”

Business, Employment, Science & Technology News, Startup

Why Canada is becoming a start-up mecca rivaling Silicon Valley

November 20, 2019

KEY POINTS

Five Canadian companies made CNBC’s 2019 Upstart 100 list unveiled on Tuesday: Attabotics, Calgary; Cmd, Vancouver; Deep Genomics and Nobul, Toronto; and RenoRun, Montreal.

Collectively, these promising start-ups raised more than $77 million in venture capital.

The entrepreneurial ecosystem is booming in major cities in Canada, thanks to government incentives, a growing tech talent pool and access to venture capital.

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Children, DNA, Medicine, new technology, Science & Technology News

The world’s first Gattaca baby tests are finally here

November 19, 2019

The DNA test claims to let prospective parents weed out IVF embryos with a high risk of disease or low intelligence.

Anxious couples are approaching fertility doctors in the US with requests for a hotly debated new genetic test being called “23andMe, but on embryos.”

The baby-picking test is being offered by a New Jersey startup company, Genomic Prediction, whose plans we first reported on two years ago.

The company says it can use DNA measurements to predict which embryos from an IVF procedure are least likely to end up with any of 11 different common diseases. In the next few weeks it’s set to release case studies on its first clients.

Continue reading… “The world’s first Gattaca baby tests are finally here”

Batteries, Energy, Engineering, Science & Technology News

Scientists develop superfast-charging, high-capacity potassium batteries

November 19, 2019

Skoltech researchers in collaboration with scientists from the Institute for Problems of Chemical Physics of RAS and the Ural Federal University have shown that high-capacity, high-power batteries can be made from organic materials without lithium or other rare elements. In addition, they demonstrated the impressive stability of cathode materials and recorded high energy density in fast charge/discharge potassium-based batteries. The results of their studies were published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A, the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters and Chemical Communications.

Lithium-ion batteries are widely used for energy storage, particularly in portable electronics. The demand for batteries is surging due to the rapid advancement of electric vehicles with high requirements for lithium. For example, Volvo intends to increase the share of electric vehicles to 50 percent of its overall sales by 2025, and Daimler announced its plans to give up internal combustion engines altogether, shifting the emphasis to electric vehicles.

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Cancer, Engineering, Medical Breakthrough, Science & Technology News

Engineer finds way to pull diseases from blood using magnets

November 19, 2019

“IN THEORY, YOU CAN GO AFTER ALMOST ANYTHING. POISONS, PATHOGENS, VIRUSES, BACTERIA…”

A British engineer has found a way to filter unwanted cells from blood using magnets — and his tool could be used in clinical trials as soon as next year.

Thanks to existing research, biochemical scientist George Frodsham knew it was possible to force magnetic nanoparticles to bind to specific cells in the body. But while other researchers did so primarily to make those cells show up in images, he wondered whether the same technique might allow doctors to remove unwanted cells from the blood.

“When someone has a tumour you cut it out,” he told The Telegraph. “Blood cancer is a tumour in the blood, so why not just take it out in the same way?”

To that end, he created MediSieve, a treatment technology that works similarly to dialysis, by removing a patient’s blood and infusing it with magnetic nanoparticles designed to bind to a specific disease. It then uses magnets to draw out and trap those cells before pumping the filtered blood back into the patient.

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2020 Predictions, AI, Energy, Futurist, Science & Technology News, Tom Frey

Futuristic advancements we can expect within the next decade

November 18, 2019

Our society has made incredible advancements in technology, resulting in pivotal discoveries and accomplishments. We are lucky to be living in a time when science and innovation are proceeding at an increasingly rapid pace. The things we see as commonplace today were simply science-fiction just 10-20 years ago. Looking to the next decade, here are some marvelous technological advancements we can expect.

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