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Blog – Page 4699

Aiming to become the world’s largest operator of supersonic aircraft fleet, American Airlines (A1G) (AAL) has signed an agreement with Boom Supersonic for the purchase of what will be the world’s fastest commercial airliners.

American Airlines (A1G) (AAL) committed to purchasing up to 20 Boom Supersonic Overture aircraft with an option for an additional 40 jets, it announced on August 16, 2022. Showing its intent, the Texas-based air carrier said it has already transferred a non-refundable payment to the manufacturer for first 20 planes. However, it did not specify the worth of the recent deal.

According to the terms of the deal, the manufacturer must meet industry-standard operating, performance, and safety requirements, as well as other American Airlines’ (A1G) (AAL) requirements, before any Overture jets are delivered to the airline.

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Overall, 86 percent of the survey respondents said they’re likely or extremely likely to want to stick with a four-day work week after the trial ends in three months.

Trials of this sort are becoming more popular; Spain, Scotland, Japan, and New Zealand have all looked into or trialed a reduced work week. Before the UK trial, the largest to date took place in Iceland in 2021, and it was broadly considered a success. The 2,500 participants reported decreased stress, increased energy levels, improved focus, more independence and control over their pace of work, and less conflict between their work and home lives. Managers reported boosts in employee morale, with productivity levels maintained if not improved.

Eighty-six percent of Iceland’s working population has subsequently either moved to a shorter work week or been given the option to do so. That’s a high percentage, but a small number compared to most European countries; Iceland’s total population is around 343,000, and it’s a highly equitable society in terms of income.

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Blainjett Aviation announced that initial testing of its hemi-rotor aerodynamic concept has confirmed its potential to deliver faster, more efficient performance in VTOL aircraft. Subscale tests demonstrated the novel configuration’s net positive lift and low drag through the ascent/hover, cruise, and descent/hover phases of flight.

The startup is applying the hemi-rotor concept to a subscale drone as part of a path to demonstrating that the configuration can scale to larger unmanned or manned aircraft in eVTOL applications from package delivery and cargo to transport and tactical military roles. Blainjett’s hemi-rotor design situates familiar vertical lift rotors partially inside opposite sides of an enclosed fuselage. The airfoil-shaped fuselage also houses a pair of electric motors to drive the lift-rotors. Situated in the empennage above an inverted V-tail, the third motor powers a pusher prop.

In a hover, conventional open-rotors generate an even amount of lift all the way around. But when a traditional rotorcraft flies forward, its rotor blades both advances forward into the relative wind and retreat from it during rotation. This yields a dissymmetry of lift on opposing sides of the rotor arc, eventually creating a hard speed limit.

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Circa 2015 face_with_colon_three

Researchers have built the world’s first artificial neuron that’s capable of mimicking the function of an organic brain cell — including the ability to translate chemical signals into electrical impulses, and communicate with other human cells.

These artificial neurons are the size of a fingertip and contain no ‘living’ parts, but the team is working on shrinking them down so they can be implanted into humans. This could allow us to effectively replace damaged nerve cells and develop new treatments for neurological disorders, such as spinal cord injuries and Parkinson’s disease.

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Crucially, they showed that the synapses were capable of Hebbian learning, the process by which the strength of the connection between two neurons increases or decreases based on activity. This is key to the way information is encoded into the brain, with the strengths of connections between neurons controlling the function of different brain circuits.

In biological neurons this ability to alter the strength of connections—known as plasticity—operates at two distinct timescales. Over shorter timescales, regular firing of the neuron leads to a buildup of ions that temporarily increase the ease with which signals pass across. In the long term though, regular activity can cause new receptors to grow at a synapse, resulting in more durable increases in the strength of the connection.

With the artificial synapses, short-term plasticity operates in much the same way due to a buildup of ions. But boosting the connection strength in the long term relies on using voltage pulses to essentially grow new material out of a soup of chemical precursors at the synapse, which increases its conductivity.

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