Stefano Boeri Architetti won the bid just one year after completing their first acclaimed vertical forest, or Bosco Verticale, one year ago in Milan. Like its predecessor, the forested tower planned for Lausanne will be covered by shrubs and plants, and will add 3,000 square meters of greenery along its 117-meter-tall facade. The new tower is named “La Tour des Cedres” after the architects’ vision to install over 100 cedar trees on the structure.
The Scottish government has announced that it’s approved the construction of the UK’s first – and world’s largest – floating offshore wind development.
The world’s largest floating wind farm is set to be installed 25 kilometres off the coast of Peterhead at the easternmost point of mainland Scotland. The development, called Hywind, will be developed by Norwegian energy company Statoil and is expected to generate enough electricity to power nearly 20,000 homes.
“Hywind is a hugely exciting project, in terms of electricity generation and technology innovation, and it’s a real testament to our energy sector expertise and skilled workforce that Statoil chose Scotland for the world’s largest floating wind farm,” said John Swinney, deputy first minister.
A new lithium-air battery created by researchers at the University of Cambridge points the way to the ultimate battery packs of the future, its makers say. With a very high energy density, more than 90 percent efficiency and the capability for more than 2,000 recharge cycles, the new test battery could prove an important stepping stone in the development of this essential technology.
If you’re getting tired of announcements about breakthroughs in battery technology, that’s understandable: as they’re so essential to modern life, many teams of scientists are busy working on the problem around the clock, but it’s an incredibly complex area of chemistry. Any new battery has to improve on what we already have, be safe to use in consumer gadgets, and be commercially viable enough to be affordable for manufacturers.
Those are difficult targets to hit, and that’s why many ‘miracle’ batteries have since fallen by the wayside – once the initial lab work is done, proving concepts and scaling up production is very difficult to get right. The potential rewards are huge though, not just for smartphones but for electric cars and solar power, where batteries are essential for storing energy to use when the sun isn’t shining.
Forty-eight scientists from 50 institutions in the U.S. have formed the Unified Microbiome Initiative Consortium (UMIC). The scientists envision a coordinated effort spanning national cross-institutional and cross-governmental agency support with the goal of driving forward cutting-edge microbiome research, enabling breakthrough advances in medicine, ecosystem management, sustainable energy, and production of commodities. Their proposal was published online in the journal Science on Oct. 28.
During the press conference for the release of the Autopilot, Tesla CEO Elon Musk referred to each Model S owners as “expert trainers” – meaning that each driver will train the autonomous features of the system to feed the collective network intelligence of the fleet by simply driving the electric vehicle on Autopilot.
He said that the system should improve everyday, but that improvements might only become noticeable every week or so by adding up. Just a few weeks after the release, Model S owners are already taking to the Tesla Motors Club forum to describe how the Autopilot is improving…
At the launch of its latest Autopilot features, Tesla CEO Elon Musk noted that it would roll out the new vehicle capabilities to nations outside the United States once it got regulatory approval. Today Musk tweeted that the company has gotten approval from all those countries (except Japan). Now Tesla owners around the world can enjoy the slightly unnerving feeling of letting their Model S drive itself on the highway. Musk also announced that Autopilot 1.01 would be coming soon with improved fleet learning, better lane tracking on poor roads, curved speed adoption and controller smoothness.
Rendering of a virus used in the MIT experiments. The light-collecting centers, called chromophores, are in red, and chromophores that just absorbed a photon of light are glowing white. After the virus is modified to adjust the spacing between the chromophores, energy can jump from one set of chromophores to the next faster and more efficiently. (credit: the researchers and Lauren Alexa Kaye)
MIT engineers have achieved a significant efficiency boost in a light-harvesting system, using genetically engineered viruses to achieve higher efficiency in transporting energy from receptors to reaction centers where it can be harnessed, making use of the exotic effects of quantum mechanics. Emulating photosynthesis in nature, it could lead to inexpensive and efficient solar cells or light-driven catalysis,
This achievement in coupling quantum research and genetic manipulation, described this week in the journal Nature Materials, was the work of MIT professors Angela Belcher, an expert on engineering viruses to carry out energy-related tasks, and Seth Lloyd, an expert on quantum theory and its potential applications, and 15 collaborators at MIT and in Italy.
“Tens of billions of dollars have been spent in the past 60 years, entire careers have been invested, but the ability to produce a commercially viable nuclear fusion reactor remains undemonstrated.”
For 60 years the world’s been waiting for cheap, clean, safe, sustainable power from nuclear fusion. Are we there yet?
Tesla’s new autopilot system is relying on the cutting edge of machine learning, connectivity and mapping data.
While Tesla’s new hands-free driving is drawing a lot of interest this week, it’s the technology behind-the-scenes of the company’s newly-enabled autopilot service that should be getting more attention.
At an event on Wednesday Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk explained that the company’s new autopilot service is constantly learning and improving thanks to machine learning algorithms, the car’s wireless connection, and detailed mapping and sensor data that Tesla collects.
