Page 1629
Sep 16, 2023
Sustainable Development Impact Meetings 2023
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: business, sustainability
Sustainable Development Impact Meetings 2023 are being held in NYC from Sep 18 to 22. This event by the World Economic Forum will bring together business leaders, policymakers and innovators to accelerate progress on UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Sep 16, 2023
This insect-sized robot can carry 22 times its own weight
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: materials, robotics/AI
An insect-sized robot powered by tiny explosions can crawl, leap and carry a load many times its own weight.
The robot, developed by materials engineer Robert Shepherd at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, his PhD student Cameron Aubin and their colleagues, is powered by tiny actuators. “The actuator kind of looks like a drum. It’s a hollow cylinder with an elastomeric silicone rubber on the top,” says Aubin.
The researchers used four actuators to drive the robot’s feet. To make the robot jump or crawl, a stream of methane and oxygen is fed into each foot and sparked with electricity from a battery. The resulting reaction between the gases to form water and carbon dioxide releases energy as a small explosion, causing the rubber layer to deform. “That acts sort of like a piston,” Aubin says.
Sep 16, 2023
Boeing to test DARPA’s upcoming ‘Glide Breaker’ hypersonic interceptor
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in category: military
The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has chosen Boeing to develop a prototype and conduct flight testing of its upcoming Glide Breaker hypersonic interceptor. An interceptor is a weapon designed to destroy other missiles mid-flight before they reach their targets. Glide Breaker is a planned huge leap forward in missile interceptors, as it’s designed to target the highly maneuverable class of weapons known as hypersonic glide vehicles, which are able to execute abrupt “zig-zag” maneuvers as they glide unpowered through Earth’s atmosphere at speeds of Mach 5 and higher. (Mach 1 is the speed of sound — about 767 mph, or 1,234 kph, at sea level.) This combination of speed and maneuverability makes such weapons much harder to defend against than traditional missiles.
Sep 16, 2023
Tesla Reportedly Makes One-Piece Giga Casting Breakthrough
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: Elon Musk, sustainability, transportation
Needless to say, this could transform the way Tesla builds EVs and contribute decisively to halving production costs, which is a long-time goal of CEO Elon Musk.
The sources said the know-how to achieve that is core to Tesla’s “unboxed” manufacturing strategy unveiled by Elon Musk in March, which is key to his plan to build tens of millions of cheaper EVs over the next ten years, and still turn a profit.
Two of the insiders said Tesla’s new design and manufacturing techniques could allow the company to develop a car from the ground up in 18–24 months, compared to 3–4 years for most rivals.
Sep 16, 2023
World’s First Zero-Emission Autonomous Cargo Ship Is All-Electric
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: economics, robotics/AI, transportation
According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates, transportation accounts for 27 percent of global carbon emissions. Powered by fossil fuels, road-based transportation contributes 80 percent of these emissions and therefore countries are aggressively pushing for the electrification of vehicles. While major advances have been made for passenger cars and air transport, water transport is still lagging. Yara’s new cargo ship might just lead the way.
Sep 16, 2023
If you’d bought Apple shares instead of iPhones, you’d now have $147,000
Posted by Gemechu Taye in categories: mathematics, mobile phones
What would happen if, instead of buying the newest iPhone every time Apple launches one, you bought that same amount of Apple stock? There is a tweet floating around saying that if you had bought Apple shares instead of an iPhone every time they came out, you’d have hundreds of millions of dollars. The math is off (if you’d spent $20k on Apple stock when the rumors of the iPhone first started, you’d have $1.5 million today, at best) but in any case – it’d only make sense if you were clairvoyant in 2007, and knew when Apple would be launching phones, and at which price.
I figured a more fair way of calculating it would be to imagine buy a top-of-the-line iPhone every time Apple releases a new iPhone, or spend the same amount on Apple stock. If you had done that, by my calculations, you’d have spent around $16,000 on iPhones over the years (that’s around $20,000 in today’s dollars). If you’d bought Apple shares instead, you’d today have $147,000 or so — or a profit of around $131,000.
Sep 16, 2023
Answering AI’s biggest questions requires an interdisciplinary approach
Posted by Gemechu Taye in categories: Elon Musk, robotics/AI, space
When Elon Musk announced the team behind his new artificial intelligence company xAI last month, whose mission is reportedly to “understand the true nature of the universe,” it underscored the criticality of answering existential concerns about AI’s promise and peril.
Whether the newly formed company can actually align its behavior to reduce the potential risks of the technology, or whether it’s solely aiming to gain an edge over OpenAI, its formation does elevate important questions about how companies should actually respond to concerns about AI. Specifically:
Sep 16, 2023
Nano rocket thruster can run on water, fit on a fingertip
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in category: satellites
Source: Imperial College/ESA
The engine called the Iridium Catalysed Electrolysis CubeSat Thruster (ICE-Cube Thruster) is based on electrolysis, a process that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen using an electric current. The hydrogen and oxygen are then fed into a combustion chamber and nozzle less than 1mm in length to produce thrust.
Sep 16, 2023
A newly created artificial photosynthesis system is 10 times more effective than existing systems
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: chemistry, solar power, sustainability
Peter Allen.
Published in Nature Catalysis, the six chemists discovered a method that could be used to produce other chemicals.