Lifeboat Foundation

With lithium-containing batteries facing constraints on many of the metals they contain, Nina Notman looks at whether its group 1 neighbour sodium can supply the answer.

The lithium-ion battery powers much of our modern lives, a fact reflected in this year’s Nobel prize. It resides in devices ranging from very small wearable electronics, through mobile phones and laptops, to electric vehicles and ‘the world’s biggest battery’ – the huge 100MW/129MWh Tesla battery installed on an Australian wind farm in 2017.

‘Lithium-ion has a massive span of applications,’ explains Jonathan Knott, an energy storage researcher at the University of Wollongong in Australia. ‘It is being used as a hammer to crack every nut and we need to start getting a little bit more sophisticated in the use of the best tool for the job.’

Most people won’t have the kind of money it takes to train trillion-parameter models of deep learning. Instead they’ll simply shave off what they want.

Researchers at MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms have created tiny building blocks that exhibit a variety of unique mechanical properties, such as the ability to produce a twisting motion when squeezed. These subunits could potentially be assembled by tiny robots into a nearly limitless variety of objects with built-in functionality, including vehicles, large industrial parts, or specialized robots that can be repeatedly reassembled in different forms.

The researchers created four different types of these subunits, called voxels (a 3D variation on the pixels of a 2D image). Each voxel type exhibits special properties not found in typical natural materials, and in combination they can be used to make devices that respond to environmental stimuli in predictable ways. Examples might include airplane wings or turbine blades that respond to changes in air pressure or wind speed by changing their overall shape.

The findings, which detail the creation of a family of discrete “mechanical metamaterials,” are described in a paper published today in the journal Science Advances, authored by recent MIT doctoral graduate Benjamin Jenett PhD ’20, Professor Neil Gershenfeld, and four others.

A recent research study conducted by City, University of London’s Professor Christoph Bruecker and his team has revealed how micro-structured finlets on owl feathers enable silent flight and may show the way forward in reducing aircraft noise in future.

Professor bruecker is city’s royal academy of engineering research chair in nature-inspired sensing and flow control for sustainable transport and sir richard olver BAE systems chair for aeronautical engineering.

His team have published their discoveries in the Institute of Physics journal, Bioinspiration and Biomimetics in a paper titled ‘Flow turning effect and laminar control by the 3D curvature of leading edge serrations from owl wing.’

Just finished up an interview for “Career Buzz,” a radio progam airing on Toronto based CIUT next Wednesday at 11am. The topic initially focused around jobs in the Canadian aerospace industry, but after the host noted that air travel was down 94% over the last year because of covid and no one sane is going to buy any new planes for a very, very long time, the focus changed to Covid and how that’s affecting the industry. I’ve been invited back next month to talk more about Covid. It’s the big story of our generation…

Wednesdays, 11:00am-12:00pm

Since 2006, we’ve broadcast unrehearsed and informative conversations featuring extraordinary career stories of ordinary people, and insights from future-of-work thought leaders including Dragon’s Den star Arlene Dickinson, Canada’s career guru Barbara Moses, National Geographic explorer-in-residence Wade Davis, and career scholars Norm Amundson, John Krumboltz and many more.

Cerebras Systems and the federal Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory today announced that the company’s CS-1 system is more than 10,000 times faster than a graphics processing unit (GPU).

On a practical level, this means AI neural networks that previously took months to train can now train in minutes on the Cerebras system.

Cerebras makes the world’s largest computer chip, the WSE. Chipmakers normally slice a wafer from a 12-inch-diameter ingot of silicon to process in a chip factory. Once processed, the wafer is sliced into hundreds of separate chips that can be used in electronic hardware.

(next Monday, 23rd November)
Please pre-register at https://www.taufriends.ch/registration

Please pre-register at https://www.taufriends.ch/registration

“We are delighted to bring you access to two giants in the world of AI, 2020 Dan David laureates, Dr. Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of DeepMind, the world’s leading AI research company, and Prof. Amnon Shashua, CEO and co-founder of Mobileye, the largest ever Israeli acquisition whose technology powers more than 55 million cars around the world today. Dr. Hassabis and Prof. Shashua will enlighten us on the potential of AI at an exclusive event in conjunction with the Dan David Prize on Monday, November 23, 2020.”

Article from carbuzz.com. Was this human or AI error?

Semi-autonomous driving systems continue to come under the microscope, and the results are mixed. Tesla’s Autopilot system is one of the more well-known examples, and while some drivers like this Model 3 owner have faith in the technology, we have seen some disturbing instances of the system potentially leading to serious crashes.

Well, yet another Tesla was involved in a nasty crash and is a reminder that humans and driving aids don’t always make a safe combination. The video — recorded by the car’s camera system — was shared by GreenTheOnly on Twitter, a hacker who has previously uncovered some of the shortcomings of Tesla’s in-car tech. It’s not known what Tesla model this was.

Tokyo-based Nakabayashi offers everything from bookbinding services, child car seats and office products. But the newest (and certainly coolest) product of the 2,000-man company is an in-office machine, which turns used copier paper into toilet rolls, right there in the office. Brillant.

The toilet paper machine is able to produce two rolls per hour from around 1,800 sheets (or 7.2kg) of used A4-sized paper, which would have usually been just thrown away. At 600kg, it seems to be a dangerously massive piece of hardware.

Distribution in Japan begins in August and Nakabayashi wants to sell 60 units in the first year. Good luck with that, as each machine comes with a price tag of $95,000. Unfortunately, there is no information on operating costs yet, but I can’t imagine these being in proportion.