SpaceX just got the okay to build its giant Mars spaceship in LA.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said on Monday that he’s officially approved SpaceX’s plan to build a Mars spaceship factory at the city’s port.
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Researchers in the US and UK examined an existing enzyme which had occurred naturally in landfill sites and was able to slowly digest man-made plastics.
But in the course of testing the enzyme’s origins, the researchers made biological changes to it that turbo-charged its ability to digest plastics, according to Britain’s University of Portsmouth.
According to The Guardian, the enzyme starts breaking down plastic in a matter of days, a process which would take centuries under normal conditions.
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Many large cities (Seoul, Tokyo, Shenzhen, Singapore, Dubai, London, San Francisco) serve as test beds for autonomous vehicle trials in a competitive race to develop “self-driving” cars. Automated ports and warehouses are also increasingly automated and robotized. Testing of delivery robots and drones is gathering pace beyond the warehouse gates. Automated control systems are monitoring, regulating and optimizing traffic flows. Automated vertical farms are innovating production of food in “non-agricultural” urban areas around the world. New mobile health technologies carry promise of healthcare “beyond the hospital.” Social robots in many guises – from police officers to restaurant waiters – are appearing in urban public and commercial spaces.
Tokyo, Singapore and Dubai are becoming prototype ‘robot cities,’ as governments start to see automation as the key to urban living.
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While NASA has had several female astronauts, the space agency is yet to a put a woman on the moon.
To compensate, a training chief at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston claims that the first person on Mars should be a woman.
Speaking to BBC Radio 5’s Anna Foster, Allison McIntyre said: We have female astronauts, but we haven’t put a woman on the Moon yet.
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With advances in stem cell research and nanotechnology helping us fight illnesses from heart disease to superbugs, is the fusion of biology and technology speeding us towards a sci-fi future — part human, part synthetic?
In Ridley Scott’s seminal blockbuster Blade Runner, humanity has harnessed bio-engineering to create a race of replicants that look, act and sound human — but are made entirely from synthetic material.
We may be far from realising that sci-fi future, but synthetics are beginning to have a profound effect on medicine.
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