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Desert-dwelling bacteria that feed on sunlight, slurp up carbon dioxide, and emit oxygen could be incorporated into paint that supplements the air in a habitat on Mars.

It’s called Chroococcidiopsis cubana, and scientists have developed a biocoating that emits measurable amounts of oxygen on a daily basis while reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the air around it. This has implications, not just for space travel but here at home on Earth, too, according to a team led by microbiologist Simone Krings of the University of Surrey in the UK.

“With the increase in greenhouse gasses, particularly CO₂, in the atmosphere and concerns about water shortages due to rising global temperatures, we need innovative, environmentally friendly, and sustainable materials,” says bacteriologist Suzie Hingley-Wilson of the University of Surrey.

Quantum mechanics is full of weird phenomena, but perhaps none as weird as the role measurement plays in the theory. Since a measurement tends to destroy the “quantumness” of a system, it seems to be the mysterious link between the quantum and classical world.

Furthermore, when dealing with a vast system of quantum data units called “qubits,” the impact of measurements can lead to profoundly different outcomes, even driving the emergence of entirely new phases of quantum information.

This happens when two competing effects come to a head: interactions and measurement. In a quantum system, when the qubits interact with one another, their information becomes shared nonlocally in an “entangled state.”

Congress is currently debating the FAA’s long-term reauthorization, which might have an impact on the ongoing use of leaded aviation fuel at smaller airports.

Serjio74/iStock.

Since 1980, the US has had a stunning 99 percent reduction in airborne lead levels as a result of EPA regulations. However, Leaded gas is still used in the aviation industry, according to a report published by EPA on Wednesday.

Continue reading “Health crisis: 220,000 planes still use lead fuel, warns US agency” »

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Researchers from the Australian National University, the University of Oxford, and the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence have developed a new AI system called “3D-GPT” that can generate 3D models simply from text-based descriptions provided by a user.

The system, described in a paper published on arXiv, offers a more efficient and intuitive way to create 3D assets compared to traditional 3D modeling workflows.

Amazon is always on the frontier of technological advancements, and in a recent move, the e-commerce giant announced its plans to deepen its collaboration with Agility Robotics. As part of their ongoing partnership, Amazon will commence tests using the bipedal robot, Digit, in its operations. This exciting development comes after Amazon’s strategic investment in Agility Robotics through the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund.

For those unfamiliar with Digit, it’s a marvel of modern robotic engineering. Developed by Agility Robotics, Digit stands out with its unique bipedal design. It isn’t just any robot; it’s designed with two legs, allowing it to move and operate in human-like ways, making it exceptionally fit for environments crafted for humans. Equipped with advanced sensors like LIDAR, it perceives its surroundings and avoids obstacles with ease. Its arms are adept at maintaining balance, carrying objects, and interacting with various elements of its environment.

Continue reading “Amazon Field-Testing Awe-Inspiring Digit Bipedal Robot” »

IBM’s NorthPole processor sidesteps need to access external memory, boosting computing power and saving energy.

Eureka has also taught quadruped, dexterous hands, cobot arms and other robots to open drawers, use scissors, catch balls and nearly 30 different tasks. According to NVIDIA Research, the AI agent’s trial and error-based reward programs are 80 percent more effective than those written by human experts. This shift meant the robots’ performance also improved by over 50 percent. Eureka also self-evaluates based on training results, instructing changes in reward functions as it sees fit.

NVIDIA Research has published a library of its Eureka algorithms, encouraging others to try them out on NVIDIA Isaac Gym, the organization’s “physics simulation reference application for reinforcement learning research.”

The idea of robots teaching robots is seeing increased interest and success. A May 2023 paper published in the Transactions on Machine Learning Research journal presented a new system called SKILL (Shared Knowledge Lifelong Learning), which allowed AI systems to learn 102 different skills, including diagnosing diseases from chest X-rays and identifying species of flowers. The AIs shared their knowledge — acting as teachers in a way — with each other over a communication network and were able to master each of the 102 skills. Researchers at schools like MIT and the University of Bristol have also had success, specifically in using AI to teach robots how to manipulate objects.

NOAA scientists investigating the stratosphere have found that in addition to meteoric ‘space dust,’ the atmosphere more than seven miles above the surface is peppered with particles containing a variety of metals from satellites and spent rocket boosters vaporized by the intense heat of re-entry.

The discovery is one of the initial findings from analysis of data collected by a high-altitude research plane over the Arctic during a NOAA Chemical Science Laboratory mission called SABRE, short for Stratospheric Aerosol processes, Budget and Radiative Effects. It’s the agency’s most ambitious and intensive effort to date to investigate aerosol particles in the stratosphere, a layer of the atmosphere that moderates Earth’s climate and is home to the protective ozone layer.

Using an extraordinarily sensitive instrument custom-built at NOAA in Boulder, Colorado, and mounted in the nose of a NASA WB-57 research aircraft, scientists found aluminum and exotic metals embedded in about 10 percent of sulfuric acid particles, which comprise the large majority of particles in the stratosphere. They were also able to match the ratio of rare elements they measured to special alloys used in rockets and satellites, confirming their source as metal vaporized from spacecraft reentering Earth’s atmosphere.

Oct. 21, 2023 9:00 am ET

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