It’s tough to change, but your job could depend on it. Be flexible in your career goals – and talk with your kids about their own aspirations, because if you want to be employed for the long haul, you need to think about how industries are changing.
No one has a crystal ball, but we are in a time of great change, and we want our skills to be relevant and needed moving forward. And just as important, we want our kids and grandkids to have happy and fulfilling jobs. Which brings us to an important question: What jobs are likely to disappear or become obsolete over the next decade or so?
The Commercial UAV Expo Americas is one of the most important events in the drone industry, having first dibs on all the breakthroughs and releases in the field. This year’s edition brought some really cool UAS (unmanned aircraft systems) in the spotlight and the Hammerhead eV20 is one of them. 6 photos
The eV20 is a delivery drone developed by Airlogix, a company headquartered in Delaware, which also has a research and development center in Ukraine. Its new VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) is an electric drone propelled by four tilt electric motors with a maximum thrust of 104 lb (47 kg) each.
Freight train manufacturer Wabtec, in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, unveiled the world’s first battery-electric locomotive, a report in Digital Journal reveals.
The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based firm claimed its new machine is “dramatically more powerful” than a Tesla electric car and that it can help to significantly reduce carbon emissions for the already relatively green freight train transportation sector.
Located in Orani, Sardinia, Exosteel comprises the world’s first housing development to use a steel 3D-printed “exoskeleton” construction system that supports and distributes all the functional elements of the building, inspired by the sculpture work of Costantino Nivola.
Museums are social hubs for travelers. They’re cultural and artistic landmarks first, yes. But they’re also guaranteed spots where tourists can take some respite from long hours spent wandering the city. Near the Nivola Museum in Sardinia, Italy, international design studio Mask Architects visualized a cluster of homes to function as a housing development for the surrounding community. Conceptualized as a small village of modular prefabricated steel houses, Mask Architects is the world’s first architecture and design firm to use a steel 3D-printed “exoskeleton” construction system to build the small village, calling it Exosteel.
Combination therapy against anti-PD-1-resistant lung cancer. A combination of anti-PD-1 antibodies and stimulator of an interferon gene (STING)-loaded lipid nanoparticles (STING-LNP) had the maximum effect in reducing metastases (black regions) on lungs (pink tissue; far right). STING-lipid nanoparticles alone had a better effect (center right) than anti-PD-1 antibodies (center left), which were as effective as the control saline solution.
A specially designed lipid nanoparticle could deliver immune-signaling molecules into liver macrophage cells to overcome resistance to anti-tumor immunotherapy.
After intravenous injection into mice, STING-lipid nanoparticles (red) transported through blood vessels(green) accumulate in the liver (Takashi Nakamura, et al. Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer. July 2, 2021).
Hokkaido University scientists and colleagues in Japan have found a way that could help some patients overcome resistance to an immunotherapy treatment for cancer. The approach, proven in mice experiments, was reported in the Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer.
Since the lack of personnel is a hard truth for most employers worldwide, Hyundai found a way to reduce its security staff, especially during after hours. 8 photos
While most guards that are working the night shifts are taking a nap every now and then, a robot won’t do that. It also won’t drink, or eat, or watch games when on duty. Boston Dynamics already had a quadruped robot named Spot, which proved to be very creative thanks to its AI functions.
Built with an integrated thermal camera and 3D LiDAR, the robot can detect high-temperature areas and alert the fire department for potentially hazardous situations. In addition, its integrated 3D map allows it to roam around the factory and check for opened doors or detect uninvited guests. Of course, it won’t fire at them (yet), but at least it can spread the image thanks to its live stream images sent to a secured webpage.
Summary: A newly identified gene therapy pathway has the potential to protect us against dementia and cancer, researchers report.
Source: University of Sheffield
Researchers from the University of Sheffield have discovered a new gene therapy pathway that has uncovered an important regulatory mechanism to keep our genome healthy. This pathway has the potential to protect us against serious life-limiting diseases such as cancer and dementia.
Cancer and neurodegeneration are two major health challenges currently affecting the population, and they constitute two sides of the same coin – one is caused by uncontrolled cell proliferation due to genome damage, and the other is caused by excessive genome damage that causes cell death. This new pathway impacts both and offers new therapeutic opportunities to help the fight against disease.
Published in Nature Communications, the research found that when cells in our body read DNA to build proteins, they often make mistakes that can damage our genome, causing disease such as cancer and dementia.
However, by investigating how cells fix damage in the DNA to keep us healthy, scientists have discovered the benefits of three proteins working together as a team. The three proteins, called USP11, KEAP1 and SETX, receive instructions from their coach to direct their function in space and time with remarkable harmony, to keep our DNA healthy.
The volatile nature of space rocket engines means that many early prototypes end up embedded in dirt banks or decorating the tops of any trees that are unfortunate enough to neighbour testing sites. Unintended explosions are in fact so common that rocket scientists have come up with a euphemism for when it happens: rapid unscheduled disassembly, or RUD for short.
Every time a rocket engine blows up, the source of the failure needs to be found so that it can be fixed. A new and improved engine is then designed, manufactured, shipped to the test site and fired, and the cycle begins again – until the only disassembly taking place is of the slow, scheduled kind. Perfecting rocket engines in this way is one of the main sources of developmental delays in what is a rapidly expanding space industry.
Today, 3D printing technology, using heat-resistant metal alloys, is revolutionising trial-and-error rocket development. Whole structures that would have previously required hundreds of distinct components can now be printed in a matter of days. This means you can expect to see many more rockets blowing into tiny pieces in the coming years, but the parts they’re actually made of are set to become larger and fewer as the private sector space race intensifies.
Autonomous driving startup WeRide unveiled China’s first self-driving cargo van capable of level 4 autonomy — that is, the ability to act without any human intervention in the vast majority of situations — on September 9.
WeRide is developing the new vehicle, dubbed the Robovan, in partnership with Chinese automaker Jiangling Motors and Chinese delivery company ZTO Express. WeRide and Jiangling Motors will help develop the vehicle for mass production on JMC’s customized assembly lines, which ZTO Express aims to use in urban logistics applications.
“WeRide has always emphasized that autonomous driving technologies should be used effectively in reality to serve the society. With the introduction of Robovan, the very first level 4 self-driving cargo van in China, we have heralded a new era of autonomous driving for urban logistics in the country,” Tony Han, the founder and CEO of WeRide, said in a statement. “We are aiming to deliver both smart mobility and smart logistics for cities in the future.”
The company was founded to commercialise a peptide ligation reaction developed by Jeffrey Bode’s research group
BY VANESSA ZAINZINGER
Bright Peak Therapeutics makes modified protein drugs from scratch.
Jeffrey Bode from ETH Zurich in Switzerland has a fitting analogy for why synthetic proteins are a compelling next step for the development of therapeutic molecules. ‘Almost all modern antibiotics have been found or produced in nature, but were then modified with synthetic chemistry to make a better drug,’ he says. ‘In the same way, natural proteins often have fantastic biological activity but limitations in terms of, for example, toxicity. They can be made better and safer by using synthetic chemistry.’
Bode is a co-founder of Bright Peak Therapeutics, a privately held biotechnology company based in San Diego, US, and Basel, Switzerland, that is commercialising fully synthetic proteins for use in cancer immunotherapy and autoimmune diseases.
The company’s most advanced product is a synthetic version of cytokine signalling protein interleukin-2 called BPT-143. It is currently in chemistry, manufacturing and controls (CMC) manufacturing – an integral part of any pharmaceutical product application to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in which the manufacturing process, testing regimes and and product characteristics are developed to ensure they are consistent across batches. ‘As far as we know, no one has brought such a sophisticated synthetic molecule so far along clinical development,’ Bode says.
Australian in-space transportation provider, Space Machines Company (SMC) has announced two deals, linking with an Italian satellite services provider and committing to deploy Fleet Space nanosatellites in orbit next year.
Space Machines linked up with Italian satellite services provider Leaf Space to support its Optimus-1 satellite launch timed for next year.
Optimus-1, the largest commercial satellite under construction in Australia, is an orbital transfer vehicle providing cost-effective insertion of small satellites into low Earth orbit.
Today Space Machines confirmed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to test the deployment of nanosatellites from Fleet Space Technologies, the Adelaide nanosatellite manufacturer for the Internet of Things (IoT).
The first mission will analyse the suitability of Optimus to deliver Fleet’s satellites into orbit.
Recently, Iteris announced the development of a new AI-powered sensor system that can detect, monitor, and manage traffic. What challenges do growing cities face, what does the system provided by Iteris offer, and what problems can integrated smart systems face?
As the world population grows, so does the demand for transportation services, whether it be increased use in buses, taxis, or privately owned vehicles. While the current climate crisis is changing how vehicles are made and what sources of energy they use, it has little impact on the increasing number of vehicles. Using public transport may be better for the environment, but poor availability and inconvenience leads many to privately own vehicles.
Most roads around the world were laid during a time of significantly fewer vehicles, and these roads may have been designed with a few decades of vehicle growth in mind. If the demand on a road increases to the point where traffic starts to build up, it is often impossible to widen the road and add lanes as roads often have buildings on either side.
This leads us to a new challenge where modern road networks are quickly becoming congested. Congested traffic is not only bad for waiting times, but it also results in increased emissions from vehicles and can increase the chances of collisions and accidents.
For traffic management to improve, smart cities will need to be introduced, which involve the placement of sensors and smart technologies that allow computers to take over control in real-time. Simply put, a smart city would recognise key areas of congestion and then redirect traffic to improve safety while reducing waiting times. Furthermore, a smart city would be able to more efficiently control signals at traffic lights to prevent severe congestion forming while making better decisions on when to let pedestrian’s crossroads.
