Lifeboat Foundation

Japan’s government to join forces with industry to supercharge development.

TOKYO — A trip of 500 km on one charge. A recharge from zero to full in 10 minutes. All with minimal safety concerns. The solid-state battery being introduced by Toyota promises to be a game changer not just for electric vehicles but for an entire industry.

The technology is a potential cure-all for the drawbacks facing electric vehicles that run on conventional lithium-ion batteries, including the relatively short distance traveled on a single charge as well as charging times. Toyota plans to be the first company to sell an electric vehicle equipped with a solid-state battery in the early 2020s. The world’s largest automaker will unveil a prototype next year.

Continue reading “Toyota’s game-changing solid-state battery en route for 2021 debut” »

Today we are going to discuss the topic drug enforcement from a very interesting technological angle.

Brian Drake, is the Director of Artificial Intelligence for the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) Directorate of Science and Technology. Mr. Drake works with the DIA’s Future Capabilities and Innovation Office, and he also leads an initiative to test the effectiveness of different applications of artificial intelligence at solving various mission problems, including using AI to combat the opioid crisis with a DIA program known as SABLE SPEAR.

Continue reading “Fighting The Opioid Epidemic with AI — Brian Drake, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) — Sable Spear” »

A vulnerability in VMWare has prompted a warning that companies—and government agencies—need to patch as soon as possible.

FireEye, normally the first company that cyberattack victims will call, has now admitted it too has fallen victim to hackers, which the company called a “sophisticated threat actor” that was likely backed by a nation-state.

In a blog post confirming the breach, the company’s chief executive Kevin Mandia said the nation-backed hackers have “top-tier offensive capabilities,” but did not attribute blame or say which government was behind the attack.

Mandia, who founded Mandiant, the incident response firm acquired by FireEye in 2014, said the hackers used a “novel combination of techniques not witnessed by us or our partners in the past” to steal hacking tools used typically by red teams, which are tasked with launching authorized but offensive hacking campaigns against customers in order to find weaknesses or vulnerabilities before malicious hackers do.

Mexico’s Senate approved a bill to legalize marijuana nationally on Thursday.

Before it can become law it must also be passed by the other body of the country’s Congress, the Chamber of Deputies.

The legislation, which was circulated in draft form earlier this month, would establish a regulated cannabis market in Mexico, allowing adults 18 and older to purchase and possess up to 28 grams of marijuana and cultivate up to six plants for personal use.

A congressional investigation into the 2016 U.S. presidential election has unearthed evidence that major banks processed $2 trillion in transactions despite suspecting they were connected to illegal activity.

So-called suspicious activity reports, filed by banks with government regulators, indicate the banks were concerned the transactions would help suspected terrorists, drug dealers, corrupt foreign officials and other bad actors move trillions of dollars around the world, as well as perpetuate investment frauds. The private reports, which covered 1999 through 2017, were obtained by BuzzFeed News and shared with the nonprofit International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

The two organizations published their investigations into the documents over the weekend, but did not publish the complete reports. Both also declined to make public most of the information contained in the reports, including the customers who the banks suspected of illegal activity.

This Week in Engineering is multi-segment show that explores the latest innovations and tech trends across many engineering disciplines from academic institutions, government agencies and industry.

EPISODE SEGMENTS:
0:14 GM Unveils Massive Investment in EV’s.
2:30 UK’s Kar-go Autonomous Delivery Vehicle.

Continue reading “All About Electric Transportation” »

Yummy?

Eat Just Inc., a maker of meat and egg substitutes, has been approved to sell its laboratory-created chicken in Singapore, which becomes the first government to allow the sale of cultured meat.

Earlier in the year, many funders agreed to extend deadlines for research projects halted or delayed by the pandemic — but fewer offered extra funding to cover this period. Worryingly, most of the funders we approached still have no concrete plans to provide such additional financial support to postdocs. Many postdocs are not eligible for the government salary subsidies, or furlough schemes, that have been made available to many workers during the pandemic. Expanding access to such schemes is arguably the one intervention that could do the most to ease pressures at this time.

Most funders have no plans to provide postdoctoral researchers with additional pandemic funding. Society will pay a high price if this neglect continues.