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Participants at the DLD Tel Aviv Digital Conference, Israel’s largest international high-tech gathering, held at the Old Train Station complex in Tel Aviv on Sept. 6, 2017. Photo: Miriam Alster/Flash90.

Israel announced the launch of a $6.2 million program to boost the number of Arab-Israelis employed in the high-tech sector as the country suffers from a shortage of skilled workers.

The grants will be awarded to companies, corporations and NGOs to cover a maximum of 70 percent of their costs for developing programs and models to help further integrate Arab-Israelis into the high-tech industry, the Israel Innovation Authority and the Economy Ministry’s Directorate General of Labor said in a joint statement on Thursday.

Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk has taken Twitter by storm by sharing his “sex tape” tweet, sending his fans wild guesses.

What Happened: Musk shared an image that he labeled as his “sex tape,” showing two tape dispensers placed in a way that formed the number 69.

Then he joked in the caption, saying, “But have you seen my sex tape?”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has revealed more details about Tesla Optimus, the company’s upcoming humanoid robot, and how he sees the product rolling out over the next decade.

Over the last few years, Musk has been getting quite cozy with the Chinese government.

In a country known for its protectionism, the CEO managed to score for Tesla the first car factory in China wholly owned by a foreign automaker.

The companies aim to achieve standardization in inductive charging systems.

Siemens and MAHLE have announced that the two companies signed a letter of intent.

They are teaming up to develop infrastructure and automotive engineering and to provide wireless charging to electric vehicles.

The aim is to close gaps to ensure full interoperability between vehicles and the charging infrastructure.


Over the past decade, digital cameras have been widely adopted in various aspects of our society, and are being massively used in mobile phones, security surveillance, autonomous vehicles, and facial recognition. Through these cameras, enormous amounts of image data are being generated, which raises growing concerns about privacy protection.

Some existing methods address these concerns by applying algorithms to conceal sensitive information from the acquired images, such as image blurring or encryption. However, such methods still risk exposure of sensitive data because the raw images are already captured before they undergo digital processing to hide or encrypt the sensitive information. Also, the computation of these algorithms requires additional power consumption. Other efforts were also made to seek solutions to this problem by using customized cameras to downgrade the image quality so that identifiable information can be concealed. However, these approaches sacrifice the overall for all the objects of interest, which is undesired, and they are still vulnerable to adversarial attacks to retrieve the that is recorded.

A new research paper published in eLight demonstrated a new paradigm to achieve privacy-preserving imaging by building a fundamentally new type of imager designed by AI. In their paper, UCLA researchers, led by Professor Aydogan Ozcan, presented a smart design that images only certain types of desired objects, while instantaneously erasing other types of objects from its images without requiring any digital processing.

The world is highly dependent on fossil fuels to power its industry and transportation. These fossil fuels lead to excessive carbon dioxide emission, which contributes to global warming and ocean acidification. One way to reduce this excessive carbon dioxide emission that is harmful to the environment is through the electroreduction of carbon dioxide into value-added fuels or chemicals using renewable energy. The idea of using this technology to produce methane has attracted wide interest. However, researchers have had limited success in developing efficient catalysts for methane.

A Soochow University research team has now developed a simple strategy for creating cobalt copper alloy catalysts that deliver outstanding methane activity and selectivity in electrocatalytic carbon dioxide reduction. Their research is published in Nano Research.

Over the past 10 years, scientists have made notable progress in advancing their understanding of catalysts and applying the knowledge to their fabrication. But the catalysts that have been developed have not been satisfactory for use with methane, in terms of selectivity or current density. Despite the great insights scientists have gained, the strategies they have attempted in creating catalysts for methane are just too costly to be useful in practical applications.

Canada-based Tyromer is building a pilot factory in Arnhem to bring its circular rubber products to the European market. Specializing in the devulcanization of rubber from scrap tires, Tyromer will fine-tune and exhibit its recycling technology at its new Dutch facility in order to sell the process to third parties. The company is one of the first in the Netherlands to give this hard-to-process residual product a high-quality new life, making it a valuable addition to the Dutch circular economy.

Located at Kleefse Waard Industrial Park (IPKW) in Arnhem, the factory is currently being set up. “We expect to be able to start early in the summer [of 2021],” said Jos van Son, managing director of Tyromer Europe. Tyromer will employ approximately 12 people in Arnhem.

“Tyromer has a unique solution to a major problem: mountains of car tire rubber that cannot be reused. Companies such as Tyromer, which have solutions for societal challenges with smart technologies, are a welcome addition to the East Netherlands ecosystem. The fact that Tyromer is establishing itself at IPKW, where many companies are involved with energy and circularity issues, is good news for the activity in our region,” added René Brama, investment manager of Tech at Oost NL.

I’ll admit that I didn’t see this one coming: Retraction Watch is reporting that the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Center (CCDC), the world’s main repository of small-molecule crystal data, is on the way to pulling nearly a thousand deposited crystal structures because they appear to have been faked. A preprint from earlier this year from David Bimler flagged what seems to be a paper-mill operation flooding out bogus papers on metal-organic frameworks: hundreds and hundreds of weirdly worded manuscripts on nonexistent MOFs and their imaginary applications, full of apparently randomly selected “references” to the rest of the literature. And these things depositited crystal data with the CCDC, which is the step that I really didn’t expect.

After all, anyone who studies the scientific literature has (especially in recent years) seen these auto-generated papers full of crap. But faked crystal structure files? That’s nasty. The record of these papers shows a sudden jump in 2020 and 2021, leading Bimler to wonder:

The dates paint a picture of accelerating publication, as if a small-scale cottage industry had been scaled up to a production line with a larger staff. One can imagine crystallographers initially ghostwriting manuscripts as a favour for friends, moonlighting from their day job, and becoming progressively more professional, though this must remain speculation.

Steven PostrelIrwin Allen called…


When producer Irwin Allen’s popular television series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea debuted its second season on ABC in September, 1965, viewers would note some exciting changes and additions to the show. Voyage was now broadcast in color, the nuclear submarine Seaview had been modified into a sleeker, four-windowed look, and the show would feature an important new star: the Flying Sub, a vehicle that flies through the air at incredible speeds and submerges to travel underwater at great depths.

The Flying Sub (also referred to as the FS-1) quickly became a signature element of the show, featured in almost every episode not only as a quick transport from the Seaview to land, but as an underwater exploration and defense vehicle that could dock at underwater research laboratories or on other submarines, and do battle with the menagerie of undersea monsters that threatened the Seaview. With its upswept, manta ray-like shape, vivid yellow-and-blue paint scheme, twin stabilizer fins, upper and lower hatches, gleaming headlights and the large forward windows that allowed viewers to actually see Admiral Nelson and Captain Crane (or at least miniature figures of them) at the controls of the craft, the Flying Sub became one of the most familiar and unique sights on ABC television in the 1960s, adding action and excitement to a TV show already overflowing with visual wonders.

Moebius Models presents an authentic 1/32-scale reproduction of the Flying Sub. This spectacular, high-end collectible is a fully finished, large-scale deluxe replica featuring incredible detail, highlighted by authentic lights and sounds. A true work of art created for the discriminating collector, the FS-1 Flying Sub Gallery Edition is limited to 300 pieces, includes a certificate of authenticity and is offered in deluxe collector’s packaging.