A team of management researchers affiliated with several institutions in the U.S. has found that minority Lyft drivers in Florida are more likely to be stopped and ticketed for speeding and to be more highly fined than white drivers.
In their study published in the journal Science, the group analyzed data for more than 200,000 Lyft drivers working in Florida over the years 2017 to 2020.
Dean Knox and Jonathan Mummolo with the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Management and Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, respectively, have published a Perspective piece in the same journal, outlining the difficulty in finding suitable environments for conducting profiling studies in public settings and the results of the new effort.
Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have unlocked new insights into the turbulent behavior of hypersonic flows by using advanced 3D simulations.
Leveraging supercomputing power and custom-built software, they discovered unexpected instabilities and flow breaks around cone-shaped models at Mach 16, disturbances never seen before in previous 2D or experimental studies. These findings could significantly impact the design of future hypersonic vehicles by helping engineers understand how extreme speeds interact with surface geometries in new ways.
How gravity causes a perfectly spherical ball to roll down an inclined plane is part of the elementary school physics canon. But the world is messier than a textbook.
Scientists in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have sought to quantitatively describe the much more complex rolling physics of real-world objects. Led by L. Mahadevan, the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics, Physics, and Organismic and Evolutionary Biology in SEAS and FAS, they combined theory, simulations, and experiments to understand what happens when an imperfect, spherical object is placed on an inclined plane.
Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research, which was inspired by nothing more than curiosity about the everyday world, could provide fundamental insights into anything that involves irregular objects that roll, from nanoscale cellular transport to robotics.
Tesla is preparing to launch its robo taxi in June, leveraging its unique autonomy and data advantages to navigate challenges such as new tariffs and production shifts, while positioning itself for significant growth amid declining competitor viability ## Questions to inspire discussion ## Tesla’s Robo Taxi Service.
🚕 Q: When and where is Tesla launching its robo taxi service? A: Tesla’s robo taxi service is set to launch in Austin, Texas in June 2025, with plans for a nationwide rollout in the US later that year.
🏎️ Q: What vehicles will be eligible for Tesla’s robo taxi service? A: The service will be available on all vehicles equipped with Full Self-Driving (FSD) capability, including existing Model 3 and Model Y, not just the upcoming Cybertruck.
💰 Q: How will Tesla’s robo taxi network economics work? A: The economics will be based on cost per mile, factoring in low capital costs of Tesla EVs and low power consumption of their onboard autonomy systems.
📊 Q: What competitive advantage does Tesla have in the robo taxi market? A: Tesla’s existing fleet of billions of miles of deployed vehicles and hundreds of thousands of users provide a massive data advantage for improving and assessing the service. ## Tariffs and Supply Chain.
🏭 Q: What is Tesla’s supply chain strategy? A: Tesla aims to build cars where sold for environmental reasons, which is considered best practice in network design but extremely difficult to implement.
The company has been negotiating with both the Austin city authorities and the city’s autonomous vehicle working group since May 2024 regarding the introduction of the Robotaxi service safely. Set for release in June 2025, this fully self-driving fleet is a backup plan to the journey that Tesla is eager to accomplish of manufacturing electric and self-driving vehicles that can revolutionize city transportation.
During the Q4 2024 earnings conference call on January 29, Elon Musk announced the plan for the Robotaxi rollout in Austin. At the end of the interview, Musk further said, “We feel confident in being able to do an initial launch of unsupervised, no one in the car, full self-driving in Austin in June.” He noted that the process would be progressive to avoid risks that are associated with accidents and legal issues.
The future is autonomous & it starts in Austin, this June.
Things are looking up for Outbound Aerospace’s quest to build a new kind of passenger airplane. The Seattle startup has raised $1.15 million in pre-seed funding so far, and last weekend it sent a small-scale prototype into the skies over Oregon for its first-ever flight test.
“Over the last month, everything came together, and we went out there and got the plane up in the air, and proved that it flies,” said Jake Armenta, the former Boeing engineer who serves as Outbound’s chief technology officer and co-founder. “So, it’s been a really exciting month or two.”
The demonstrator aircraft — which is code-named STeVE (for Scaled Test Ve hicle) — is a remote-controlled plane that weighs 300 pounds and has a 22-foot wingspan. That’s only one-eighth of the planned wingspan for the Olympic airliner that Outbound eventually aims to build. What’s more, Saturday’s flight at the Pendleton UAS Range in eastern Oregon lasted just 16 seconds. Nevertheless, the test proved that Outbound’s fabrication process could turn out a flyable carbon-fiber aircraft.
Sometimes cell phones die sooner than expected or electric vehicles don’t have enough charge to reach their destination. The rechargeable lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries in these and other devices typically last hours or days between charging. However, with repeated use, batteries degrade and need to be recharged more frequently.
Electric vehicles (EVs) are transforming transportation, but challenges such as cost, longevity, and range remain barriers to widespread adoption. At the heart of these challenges lies battery technology—specifically, the electrolyte, a critical component that enables energy storage and delivery. The electrolyte’s properties directly impact a battery’s charging speed, power output, stability, and safety.
To overcome these hurdles, researchers are turning to AI-driven approaches to accelerate the discovery of novel battery materials.
SES AI, a leader in battery innovation, is leveraging the cutting-edge NVIDIA hardware and software ecosystem to revolutionize materials discovery. By combining domain-adapted LLMs with an AI model and GPU-accelerated simulations in a single workflow, SES AI compresses decades of research into months and unlocks groundbreaking advancements in EV battery performance.
Elon Musk envisions a future where automation and AI could transform society by creating abundance and new job opportunities, while also posing challenges such as job displacement, wealth concentration, and the need for innovative solutions like universal basic income ## Questions to inspire discussion ## Income Opportunities in the Age of Abundance.
🤖 Q: How can I profit from owning assets in an abundant future? A: Rent out assets like bots, cars, and homes as a major income source, creating new job opportunities in asset management and maintenance.
🎨 Q: What industries will thrive in a post-scarcity world? A: Bespoke industries like Etsy will flourish as people seek custom-made products from human artisans, creating new job opportunities for unique, high-quality craftsmanship. ## Lifestyle Changes and Affordability.
💰 Q: How will abundance affect the cost of living? A: Middle-class living becomes possible on **$20,000/year instead of **$100,000/year, reducing costs of energy, transportation, homes, groceries, and making luxuries more accessible.
✈️ Q: Will travel become more affordable in an abundant future? A: Vacation land and travel become more accessible as abundance reduces costs of travel and accommodations, creating new job opportunities in the travel industry. ## Entertainment and Sports.
🏆 Q: How will abundance impact professional sports and gaming? A: Professional athletes and gamers will gain popularity and lucrative opportunities as more people afford tickets and subscriptions, creating new job opportunities in competitive fields. ## Economic Considerations.
