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An international team has succeeded in propagating a commercial hybrid rice strain as a clone through seeds with 95 percent efficiency. This could lower the cost of hybrid rice seed, making high-yielding, disease resistant rice strains available to low-income farmers worldwide. The work was published Dec. 27 in Nature Communications.

First-generation hybrids of crop plants often show higher performance than their parent strains, a phenomenon called hybrid vigor. But this does not persist if the hybrids are bred together for a second generation. So when farmers want to use high-performing hybrid plant varieties, they need to purchase new seed each season.

Rice, the staple crop for half the world’s population, is relatively costly to breed as a hybrid for a yield improvement of about 10 percent. This means that the benefits of rice hybrids have yet to reach many of the world’s farmers, said Gurdev Khush, adjunct professor emeritus in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of California, Davis. Working at the International Rice Research Institute from 1967 until retiring to UC Davis in 2002, Khush led efforts to create new rice high-yield rice varieties, work for which he received the World Food Prize in 1996.

The US space agency selected 14 projects that are focused on “making the impossible possible”.

Part of the value of space exploration comes from the fact it will open new frontiers to science that we don’t yet know exist.

Continue reading “NASA considers Titan hybrid aircraft mission and other visionary space concepts” »

The study is being funded by the U.S. Army and Air Force.

Researchers at the Case Western Reserve University in the U.S. are currently working toward an experiment that will record something that has never been captured at such a resolution before; the moment of impact when a projectile traveling at 9,000 miles (14,484 km) an hour hits a wall of water, a press release said.

Research of this nature has been done earlier, but that was nearly eight decades ago. Back in the 1940s, the U.S. military conducted such studies to gauge the impact of shockwaves from underwater explosions on boats and submarines.

Continue reading “Researchers will shoot a projectile at 9,000 miles an hour for science” »

A mix of computer simulations and gamma-ray burst observations shed new light on merging neutron stars.

Astronomers trawled through archival observations of short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and detected the rapid evolution of two merging neutron stars into a superheavy neutron star, which then collapsed into a black hole.

Continue reading “Scientists detect superheavy neutron star that existed for only a fraction of a second” »

The recent announcement of Scale AI layoffs has served as a reminder that even the most promising startups and IT giants are not immune to the problems of the collapsing tech market as the artificial intelligence (AI) industry continues to grow.

Despite having a CEO heralded as “the next Zuckerberg” and a $7 billion valuation, Scale AI announced the “hardest change” – the layoff of 20 percent of its 700-person workforce on Monday in a blog post.

Modular aviation to meet vector thrust propulsion.

Node Air and JetX are teaming up to develop a new type of aircraft that combines the best of their respective technologies. This collaboration will connect Node Air’s modular transportation system with JetX ‘s Vector Thrust Propulsion.

Node Air.

Continue reading “US startups are teaming up to develop a new type of aircraft” »

The German carmaker has received approval in Nevada, with California next on the list.

The German automaker, Mercedes Benz, is set to become the first to offer Level 3 autonomous driving technology in the US with approvals for its Drive Pilot system in Nevada, followed by California. The announcement was made at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2023, showcasing a host of new technology.

Sundry Photography/iStock.

Continue reading “Mercedes Benz to become the first to offer Level 3 autonomous driving in the US” »

“The domestic transportation sector presents an enormous opportunity to drastically reduce emissions that accelerate climate change and reduce harmful pollution.”

In what can be hailed a significant and impactful move, the U.S. Department of Energy, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and the Environmental Protection Agency released a Blueprint on how to decarbonize the entire U.S. transport system. The strategy is hoped to cut all greenhouse emissions from the transportation sector by 2050.

The Biden administration unveiled a comprehensive blueprint for decarbonizing the transportation sector, which accounts for the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

In the last week, I’ve been experimenting with the hot new version of ChatGPT to discover how it might conserve a leader’s scarcest resource: time. When OpenAI launched the AI chatbot at the end of November, it instantly attracted millions of users, with breathless predictions of its potential to disrupt business models and jobs.

It certainly promises to deliver on a prediction I made in 2019 in my book The Human Edge, which explores the skills needed in a world of artificial intelligence and digitization. I forecasted: “…AI can offer us more free time by automating the stupid stuff we currently have to do, thereby reducing our cognitive burden.”

This new chatbot can help time-poor managers by writing emails and talking points — but also in delivering complex tasks like HR performance reviews.

Continue reading “How The New AI ChatGPT Can Help Leaders Make Time To Be Human” »