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Archive for the ‘transportation’ category: Page 349

Apr 8, 2018

Goodyear goes green in Geneva with photosynthesizing concept tire

Posted by in categories: futurism, transportation

Many great ideas in this article!


For the last few years, Goodyear has rolled into the Geneva Motor Show with new tire designs that could be described as intriguing concepts at best and crazy, outlandish ideas at worst. Either way, they do provoke thought around the future of transport and this year’s rendition is no different, hiding living moss inside the sidewall to cleanse the surrounding air as the car rolls down the road.

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Apr 7, 2018

How AI and Machine Learning Are Redefining Cybersecurity

Posted by in categories: business, cybercrime/malcode, mobile phones, nuclear energy, robotics/AI, transportation

We are now a connected global community where many digital natives cannot remember a time before the iPhone. The rise of smart homes means that we are increasingly attaching our lighting, door locks, cameras, thermostats, and even toasters to our home networks. Managing our home automation through mobile apps or our voice illustrates how far we have evolved over the last few years.

However, in our quest for the cool and convenient, many have not stopped to consider their cybersecurity responsibilities. The device with the weakest security could allow hackers to exploit vulnerabilities on our network and access our home. But this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Businesses and even governments are starting to face up to the vulnerabilities of everything being online. Sophisticated and disruptive cyberattacks are continuing to increase in complexity and scale across multiple industries. Areas of our critical infrastructure such as energy, nuclear, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing have vulnerabilities that make them a target for cybercriminals and even a state-sponsored attack.

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Apr 7, 2018

To Understand the Atmospheres of Distant Exoplanets, Look to Your Car Engine

Posted by in categories: space, transportation

Your car can’t transport you to other worlds, but it could help us understand them.


French researchers have discovered that the models used to simulate how car engines produce pollutants can also model the atmospheres of hot exoplanets.

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Apr 3, 2018

Lockheed wins nearly $250 million NASA contract to build supersonic plane

Posted by in category: transportation

Silence is Golden.


Lockheed Martin has won a nearly quarter-billion dollar NASA contract to develop a plane capable of supersonic speed without creating the deafening sonic boom that comes with breaking the sound barrier.

The cost-plus NASA contract, valued at $247.5 million, will allow the defense contractor’s secretive Skunk Works division to continue development of Lockheed Martin’s Quiet Supersonic Technology (or QueSST) aircraft.

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Apr 3, 2018

NASA Is Developing A Quiet Plane That’s Faster Than Sound

Posted by in category: transportation

NASA is making a plane that will go from NYC to LA in 2 hours.

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Apr 3, 2018

Elon Musk and Peter Diamandis

Posted by in categories: business, Elon Musk, life extension, Peter Diamandis, singularity, sustainability, transportation

Elon Reeve Musk is a South African-born Canadian-American business magnate, engineer, inventor and investor. He is the CEO and CTO of SpaceX, CEO and product architect of Tesla Motors, and chairman of SolarCity as well as co-chairman of OpenAI.

He is the founder of SpaceX and a co-founder of Zip2, PayPal, and Tesla Motors. He has also envisioned a conceptual high-speed transportation system known as the Hyperloop and has proposed a VTOL supersonic jet aircraft with electric fan propulsion. He is the wealthiest person in Los Angeles.

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Apr 3, 2018

From the quantum level to the car battery

Posted by in categories: economics, information science, quantum physics, robotics/AI, transportation

New developments require new materials. Until recently, these have been developed mostly by tedious experiments in the laboratory. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing SCAI in Sankt Augustin are now significantly shortening this time-consuming and cost-intensive process with their “Virtual Material Design” approach and the specially developed Tremolo-X software. By combining multi-scale models, data analysis and machine learning, it is possible to develop improved materials much more quickly. At the Hanover Trade Fair from April 23 to 27, 2018, Fraunhofer will be demonstrating how the virtual material design of the future looks.

In almost every industry, new materials are needed for new developments. Let’s take the automotive industry: while an automobile used to consist of just a handful of materials, modern cars are assembled from thousands of different materials – and demand is increasing. Whether it’s making a car lighter, getting better fuel economy or developing electric motor batteries, every new development requires finding or developing the material that has exactly the right properties. The search for the right material has often been like a guessing game, though. The candidates have usually been selected from huge material databases and then tested. Although these databases provide insight into specific performance characteristics, they usually do not go far enough into depth to allow meaningful judgments about whether a material has exactly the desired properties. To find that out, numerous laboratory tests have to be performed.

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Apr 2, 2018

Storm hunter launched to International Space Station

Posted by in categories: space, transportation

ESA’s observatory to monitor electrical discharges in the upper atmosphere is on its way to the International Space Station. The Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor is riding in the Dragon cargo vehicle that lifted off at 20:30 GMT (16:40 local time) from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA.

A suite of instruments will search for high-altitude electrical discharges associated with stormy weather conditions. It is the first time that such a set of sensitive cameras, light sensors and X- and gamma-ray detectors are flying together to study the inner anatomy of luminous phenomena in Earth’s upper atmosphere and the link with bursts of high-energy radiation.

ASIM mounted on Columbus.

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Apr 1, 2018

Lockheed Martin Receives Patent For ‘World Changing’ Fusion Reactor

Posted by in categories: nuclear energy, transportation

CBS Local — Lockheed Martin has reportedly been working on a revolutionary new type of reactor that can power anything from cities to aircraft carriers.

The Maryland-based defense contractor recently received a patent for the compact fusion reactor (CFR) after filing plans for the device in 2014. According to reports, one generator would be as small as a shipping container but produce the energy to power 80,000 homes or one of the U.S. Navy’s Nimitz-class carriers.

Lockheed’s advanced projects division, Skunk Works, has reportedly been working on the futuristic power source since 2014 and claimed at the time that a CFR could be ready for production by 2019.

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Mar 30, 2018

OFFSET “Sprinters” to Pursue State-of-the-art Solutions for Second Swarm Sprint

Posted by in categories: information science, robotics/AI, transportation, virtual reality

DARPA’s OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) program envisions future small-unit infantry forces using small unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) and/or small unmanned ground systems (UGSs) in swarms of 250 robots or more to accomplish diverse missions in complex urban environments. By leveraging and combining emerging technologies in swarm autonomy and human-swarm teaming, the program seeks to enable rapid development and deployment of breakthrough swarm capabilities.

To continue the rapid pace and further advance the technology development of OFFSET, DARPA is soliciting proposals for the second “swarm sprint.” Each of the five core “sprints” focuses on one of the key thrust areas: Swarm Tactics, Swarm Autonomy, Human-Swarm Team, Virtual Environment, and Physical Testbed. This second group of “Swarm Sprinters” will have the opportunity to work with one or both of the OFFSET Swarm Systems Integrator teams to develop and assess tactics as well as algorithms to enhance autonomy.

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