Lifeboat Foundation

NASA’s Psyche mission launches on October 5 to explore the metal-rich asteroid Psyche, offering insights into planet formation.

As October 5 inches closer on the calendar, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida is buzzing with anticipation. Engineers and scientists are busy making final preparations for the groundbreaking Psyche mission, set to launch within less than a month. With its suite of high-end science instruments — a multispectral imager, magnetometer, and gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer — primed for action, the spacecraft aims to unlock the secrets of its namesake asteroid, Psyche.

Credits: NASA/Kim Shiflett.

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Recent data shows that both Korea and China are ahead of the US in terms of ratios of robots to manufacturing workers.

Robot use is an indication of economic prosperity and growth throughout the world. The ratio of industrial robots to manufacturing workers is one of the most frequently used approaches to benchmarking robot adoption rates.

The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) publishes statistics on robot utilization worldwide in manufacturing. Its most recent data is from 2021 and shows Korea leading the way in terms of robot use in manufacturing.

New technology allows hydrogen to be directly injected into the cylinders like an internal combustion engine.

As the world scrambles to transition to green fuels to achieve carbon neutrality, promoting power sources that use hydrogen as a clean fuel is one strategy to further the move. Now, researchers in South Korea have developed a new technology for a passenger car hydrogen engine that promises to make it more viable for mass production.

The powertrain developed by researchers at the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) and the Zero-Carbon Engine Research Lab of Hyundai-Kia Motor Company (HMC) is a 2-liter direct injection hydrogen engine that runs entirely on hydrogen fuel.

This soft robot uses “physical intelligence” to navigate complicated surfaces without the need for human or computer intervention.

Engineers have developed a “brainless” soft robot that can effortlessly traverse difficult terrain.

This breakthrough comes from North Carolina State University researchers, who previously created a soft robot capable of navigating basic mazes without the need for human or computer intervention.

AI research uses vast amounts of energy, but new research shows that analogue devices can run models far more efficiently due to their unusual ability to carry out data storage and processing in the same place.

By Matthew Sparkes

There are several perfectly good reasons why water isn’t a popular medium for calligraphers to write in. Constantly shifting and swirling, it doesn’t take long for ink to diffuse and flow out of formation.

An ingenious ‘pen’ developed by the researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany, and Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China, could give artists a whole new medium to work with.

The new device is a tiny, 50 micron-wide bead made of a special material that exchanges ions in the liquid, creating zones of relatively low pH. Traces of particles suspended in the water are then drawn to the acidic solution. Drawing out that zone can create persistent, ‘written’ lines.

The German firm, which specializes in making automotive components, has achieved this by integrating its inductive transmitter into the rotor itself. The design promises to offer performance on par with permanent-magnet synchronous machines (PSMs).

Smirkdingo/iStock.

Their research, recently published in the journal Nature, introduces a photocatalytic method that leverages light energy to activate water, potentially opening up new avenues in chemistry, particularly in the synthesis of compounds from simpler materials.

MIT researchers have demonstrated the first system for ultra-low-power underwater networking and communication, which can transmit signals across kilometer-scale distances.

This technique, which the researchers began developing several years ago, uses about one-millionth the power that existing underwater communication methods use. By expanding their battery-free system’s communication range, the researchers have made the technology more feasible for applications such as aquaculture, coastal hurricane prediction, and climate change modeling.

“What started as a very exciting intellectual idea a few years ago—underwater communication with a million times lower power—is now practical and realistic. There are still a few interesting technical challenges to address, but there is a clear path from where we are now to deployment,” says Fadel Adib, associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of the Signal Kinetics group in the MIT Media Lab.