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Directly converting electrical power to heat is easy. It regularly happens in your toaster, that is, if you make toast regularly. The opposite, converting heat into electrical power, isn’t so easy.

Researchers from Sandia National Laboratories have developed a tiny -based that can harness what was previously called waste and turn it into DC power. Their advance was recently published in Physical Review Applied.

“We have developed a new method for essentially recovering energy from . Car engines produce a lot of heat and that heat is just waste, right? So imagine if you could convert that engine heat into for a hybrid car. This is the first step in that direction, but much more work needs to be done,” said Paul Davids, a physicist and the principal investigator for the study.

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https://paper.li/e-1437691924#/


Would you put on an exoskeleton that meant you could run for an entire day without getting tired?

What about one that would allow you to stay on your feet longer at work?

The technology to give people superhuman strength is currently being developed but the ethical questions about whether we should be developing it and in what circumstances it should be used, are only just beginning to be asked.

Tactical Robotics’ Cormorant drone design allows it to navigate tight areas where a helicopter’s blades would get caught on the environment. The remote-controlled military drone can transport two injured people from a battle zone. The Israeli-based company believes the drone could one day also be used to inspect bridges, deliver medical supplies and spray crops.

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Take this seriously and you can see how the idea of living for ever is incoherent. If your body could be kept going for a thousand years, in what sense would the you that exists now still be around then? It would be more like a descendant than it would a continuation of you. I sometimes find it hard to identify with my teenage self, and that was less than 40 years ago. If I change, I eventually become someone else. If I don’t, life becomes stagnant and loses its direction.


It’s great that more of us are living to 100, but the transhumanist dream of immortality would betray what it means to be human says philosopher Julian Baggini.

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