Lifeboat Foundation

The NREL scientists, along with colleagues at Yale University, Argonne National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, are part of the Department of Energy’s Co-Optimization of Fuels & Engines (Co-Optima) initiative. Co-Optima’s research focuses on improving fuel economy and vehicle performance while also reducing emissions.

“If you look at biomass, 30% of it is oxygen,” said Derek Vardon, a senior research engineer at NREL and corresponding author of a new paper detailing the Co-Optima research project. “If we can figure out clever ways to keep it around and tailor how it’s incorporated in the fuel, you can get a lot more out of biomass and improve the performance of diesel fuel.” The molecule, 4-butoxyheptane, contains oxygen while conventional petroleum-derived diesel fuel is comprised of hydrocarbons. The presence of oxygen significantly reduces the intrinsic sooting tendency of the fuel upon burning.

The paper, “Performance-advantaged ether diesel bioblendstock production by a priori design,” appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Vardon’s co-authors from NREL are Nabila Huq as the first author, with co-authors Xiangchen Huo, Glenn Hafenstine, Stephen Tifft, Jim Stunkel, Earl Christensen, Gina Fioroni, Lisa Fouts, Robert McCormick, Matthew Wiatrowski, Mary Biddy, Teresa Alleman, Peter St. John, and Seonah Kim.

The debut test flight of a Boeing Starliner astronaut taxi for NASA is ready to fly, with great weather expected for its launch to the International Space Station Friday (Dec. 20).

As the cars we drive become increasingly sophisticated, the technology that underpins them poses a unique set of challenges.

“Currently, technology is more likely to create distractions in vehicles than it is to combat it,” Alain Dunoyer, SBD Automotive’s head of autonomous research and consulting, said in a statement sent to CNBC via email earlier this month.

“These days, cars have a shopping list of features which has led to tasks that were historically quite simple becoming drastically more complicated and distracting,” he added.

NASA’s first large scale, piloted X-plane in more than three decades is cleared for final assembly and integration of its systems following a major project review by senior managers held Thursday at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Image of the X-59 main assembly coming together.

Similarly, quantum computing started as a specialized field, only accessible to researchers and scientists. Today, millions of developers can access quantum processors via the cloud, bringing about a surge in early adoption and the identification of hundreds of early applications. We’re already seeing companies apply quantum computers in problems with potential real-world impact — everything from optimizing taxi routes to digital advertising.

A major catalyst for this momentum toward commercialization was the aforementioned emergence of cloud access to quantum computers at accessible price points. Now that the barriers to access have dramatically diminished, we’re seeing three key indicators emerge that signal quantum’s commercial viability: an increase in early adoption from category leaders, the emergence of entrepreneurial “quantum pioneers” and the rise of a supporting ecosystem in the form of independent software vendors (ISVs) and consulting firms.

The first driverless cars were supposed to be deployed on the roads of American cities in 2019, but just a few days before the end of the year, the lofty promises of car manufacturers and Silicon Valley remain far from becoming reality.

Recent accidents, such as those involving Tesla cars equipped with Autopilot, a driver assistance software, have shown that “the technology is not ready,” said Dan Albert, critic and author of the book “Are We There Yet?” on the history of the American automobile.

He questioned the optimistic sales pitch that autonomous cars would help reduce road deaths — 40,000 every year in the United States, mostly due to human error — because these vehicles themselves have caused deaths.

Another Tesla driver was caught sleeping behind the wheel on the highway.

Amazon has been steadily growing its logistics operation over the last decade, and it now delivers more than half of all Amazon packages in the US, according to an estimate from Morgan Stanley published on Thursday and reported by CNBC. That’s a staggering increase over the course of the last few years. It means Amazon, which now operates its own freighters and cargo planes, is accelerating its push to own the entire logistics chain and end its relationship with companies like FedEx and UPS.

At the current rate, Amazon is set to pass both FedEx and UPS in US package volume, with the company currently delivering 2.5 billion packages per year compared to FedEx’s 3 billion and UPS’s 4.7 billion, Morgan Stanley says. Amazon’s number doubled in just the last year alone, from delivering about 20 percent of all of its own packages to now about half. A substantial contributing factor here is Amazon’s new one-day Prime shipping initiative, which it kicked off earlier this year and promises to bring to more markets and more products as time goes on.

“Customers love the transition of Prime from two days to one day — they’ve already ordered billions of items with free one-day delivery this year. It’s a big investment, and it’s the right long-term decision for customers,” CEO Jeff Bezos said of one-day Prime shipping on an earnings call in October. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding its package volume.

In 1893, Japanese entrepreneur Kokichi Mikimoto succeeded in creating the world’s first cultured pearls in the coastal city of Toba, Mie Prefecture. Mikimoto changed the world of jewelry and launched a new industry. Today, steps away from the island where Mikimoto created the pearls, Toba is aiming to launch another new industry: flying taxis to offshore settlements. Earlier this year, NEC showed off its eVTOL flying car concept, which hovered 3 meters off the ground for about a minute. These developments are part of a global push to develop autonomous aircraft that could become a $1.5 trillion market by 2040, according to Morgan Stanley Research.