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The Vision Pro is Apple’s bold entry into the world of spatial computing, and it seems like the company has learned a lot from the VR and AR headsets before it. The front of the device features an OLED screen that can display your eyes, making you more connected to the people in the real world. Its springy side bands and ribbed rear headband look like suitably high-end. And, simply put, it has the wow factor you’d expect from a prestige Apple product.

Still, there’s plenty of cause for concern. The required battery pack is a bit un-Apple, since you’ll have to stuff it into your pocket or find somewhere to store it. And we’ve yet to see someone wearing this headset in the real world. Apple’s event staff stressed that we couldn’t touch the Vision Pro or lean too close. And of course, we won’t see if Apple’s spatial computing vision lives up to its slick promotional videos until we can actually wear this thing.

At the very least, though, the Vision Pro makes me hopeful about the future of spatial computing. Recent headsets, like Sony’s PlayStation VR2 and the Meta Quest Pro, have made the limits of virtual reality very clear. They’re a bit too isolated from the real world, and they’re mainly focused on games. The Vision Pro, on the other hand, is a glimpse at a world beyond screens.

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The ability to produce more electricity per weight compared to traditional silicon solar cells makes them highly suitable for sending into space to harvest the Sun’s energy, according to the researchers.

“High specific power is actually one of the greatest goals of any space-based light harvesting or energy harvesting technology,” said Deep Jariwala from the University of Pennsylvania.

“This is not just important for satellites or space stations, but also if you want real utility-scale solar power in space. The number of [silicon] solar cells you would have to ship up is so large that no space vehicles currently can take those kinds of materials up there in an economically viable way.”

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Scientists from the Radboud University have developed synthetic molecules that resemble real organic molecules. A collaboration of researchers, led by Alex Khajetoorians and Daniel Wegner, can now simulate the behavior of real molecules by using artificial molecules. In this way, they can tweak properties of molecules in ways that are normally difficult or unrealistic, and they can understand much better how molecules change.

Their paper is published in the journal Science.

Emil Sierda, who was in charge of conducting the experiments at Radboud University said, “A few years ago we had this crazy idea to build a . We wanted to create that resembled real molecules. So we developed a system in which we can trap electrons. Electrons surround a molecule like a cloud, and we used those trapped electrons to build an artificial molecule.” The results the team found were astonishing. Sierda says, “The resemblance between what we built and real molecules was uncanny.”

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Apple’s Vision Pro headset is the company’s first new product category since the Apple Watch, and it is unlike any other Apple device. It runs an operating system called visionOS, and developers will need to create augmented and virtual reality apps specifically for the headset.

To ensure that there are a wide selection of experiences available at launch, Apple plans to provide Apple Vision Pro developer kits to developers at some point in the future.

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BEIJING, June 9 (Reuters) — BYD announced on Friday a new brand of electric vehicles (EV) ranging from off-road to sports cars as the company looks to meet more diversified consumer demand.

The new brand is called Fang Cheng Bao, which translates from Chinese literally as “Formula” and “Leopard”. The Chinese EV giant is expected to launch the first model this year — an SUV identified for now internally as SF, BYD said in a statement.

BYD, with its Dynasty and Ocean series of pure electric and plug-in hybrid models mostly priced under 300,000 yuan ($42,140.16), has been out selling Volkswagen-branded cars in China since November.

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Almost as soon as there were super-resolution microscopes, scientists pointed them towards molecular motors called kinesins. These proteins, powered by the molecular fuel ATP, drive crucial processes including cell division, cell signalling and intracellular transport by shuttling cargo along protein highways called microtubules. Researchers have long wanted to understand how these motors work, but to visualize them, scientists have had to slow them down or isolate them in simplified, in vitro systems.

Now, in papers published concurrently in Science, two teams working independently have used a super-resolution tool called MINFLUX to study the motor in near-real time at physiologically relevant concentrations of ATP. The first paper, led by MINFLUX’s inventor, Stefan Hell, who has a joint appointment at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Göttingen and the MPI for Medical Research in Heidelberg, both in Germany, used a new instrument design to track the protein in 3D, revealing details about its motion1. The second, led by biophysicist Jonas Ries at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, showed for the first time that MINFLUX is capable of tracking kinesin even amid the bustle of living cells2.

“This technology requires a lot of different things to work, and it’s fun to see all of these things coming together,” says Michelle Digman, a biomedical engineer at the University of California, Irvine, who develops imaging strategies but was not involved in either study. “It seemed like a proof of concept to show that they’re able to track kinesin very precisely. And when you have the live cell system, that’s even more spectacular.”

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