After three years of intensive research and countless test flights in BMW’s horizontal wind tunnel, Salzmann and the wingsuit completed the maiden flight over the picturesque mountains of Austria last week. The 33-year-old was dropped by helicopter at just shy of 10,000 feet alongside two other fliers sporting conventional wingsuits. BMW says the electric wingsuit enabled Salzmann to accelerate faster than his mates at a peak speed of 186 mph. (Normal wingsuit operators typically reach horizontal speeds around 62 mph.)
The e-wingsuit is built upon BMW i EV technology and powered by a chest-mounted rig. It offers 15 kW of grunt that’s split between two 7.5 kW carbon impellers. The impellers spin at a speed of 25,000 rpm and produce thrust for up to five minutes. The aim of the electric wingsuit is to increase performance and eventually allow for longer distances to be covered.
The Indian and Japanese space agencies are planning a joint mission to the Moon, that is meant to explore the Polar region.
The mission, which will be known as Lunar Polar Exploration Mission (LUPEX), will feature an Indian lunar lander and a Japanese rover.
Dr Hiroshi Yamakawa, President, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) revealed this and Japan’s future mission plans, at the Sydney Dialogue, an initiative by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
At Europe’s Spaceport near Kourou in French Guiana, technicians are busy getting the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) ready for launch. The observatory arrived at the facility on Oct. 12th and was placed inside the upper stage of the Ariane 5 rocket that will carry it to space on Nov. 11th. The upper stage was then hoisted high above the core stage and boosters so that a team of engineers could integrate them.
Unfortunately, an “incident” occurred shortly after when the engineers attempted to attach the upper stage to the launch vehicle adapter (LVA) to the launch vehicle. According to a NASA Blogs post, the incident involved the sudden release of a clamp band (which secures the JWST to the LVA), which sent vibrations throughout the observatory. According to NASA, this incident could push the JWST’s launch date (slated for Dec. 18th) to Dec. 22nd.
A NASA-led anomaly review board was immediately convened to investigate the unexpected development and recommend how to proceed. The board recommended that additional testing be instituted to “determine with certainty” that the incident did not damage any components. NASA also indicated that it and its mission partners would provide an update when the testing is completed, which is expected to be by the end of this week.
Mica is Microsoft’s new transparency effect for Windows 11. It is similar to Acrylic but optimised for performance by only sampling from your wallpaper rather than the app below you.
Microsoft has been rolling out the new look to more and more native apps, and now Office Insiders and Beta users are reporting that the effect is also showing up in their apps.
It’s a cool concept; the blades cant get caught, or stuck, or broken. but, it’s pretty loud, there’s no audio in the demo videos. Still, i think a flying drone would be superior for exploring underground structurers and caves, til it hit a door or something anyways. Anyhow, i think the flight system should focus on some kind of a total silence ion drive.
It was three years ago that we first heard about the Cleo, a robust, donut-shaped prototype drone made by Cleo Robotics. Well, its successor is now commercially available, under the new (and apt) name of the Dronut X1.
Like its predecessor, the Dronut X1 features just two counter-rotating rotors stacked one above the other. While we have seen other drones that take this approach, Cleo Robotics goes the extra step of enclosing those rotors within a composite ducted body. This means that they can’t harm bystanders, nor can they be harmed when bumping into obstacles such as walls.
Physicists have created a new ultra-thin two-layer material with quantum properties that normally require rare earth compounds. This material, which is relatively easy to make and does not contain rare earth metals, could provide a new platform for quantum computing and advance research into unconventional superconductivity and quantum criticality.
The researchers showed that by starting from seemingly common materials, a radically new quantum state of matter can appear. The discovery emerged from their efforts to create a quantum spin liquid which they could use to investigate emergent quantum phenomena such as gauge theory. This involves fabricating a single layer of atomically thin tantalum disulfide, but the process also creates islands that consist of two layers.
Are viruses alive or are they lifeless packages of protein and nucleic acid? Watch the Q&A: https://youtu.be/-LUQTjdHYNo. Carl’s book “Life’s Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive” is available now — https://geni.us/zimmer.
Countless scientists around the world study life, and yet they can’t really agree on what it is. Join New York Times columnist Carl Zimmer as he explores the boundaries of life, encountering viruses and other strange residents of the borderlands.
Carl Zimmer is the author of fourteen books about science. Zimmer’s column “Matter” appears each week in the New York Times. His writing has earned a number of awards, including the Stephen Jay Gould Prize, awarded by the Society for the Study of Evolution. His book, She Has Her Mother’s Laugh, won the 2019 National Academies Communication Award. The Guardian named it the best science book of 2018.
Zimmer is a familiar voice on radio programs such as Radiolab and professor adjunct at Yale University. He is, to his knowledge, the only writer after whom both a species of tapeworm and an asteroid have been named.
The National Institutes of Health has launched a program to study a rare type of cells, called “senescent” cells, that play both positive and negative roles in biological processes. The NIH Common Fund’s Cellular Senescence Network (SenNet) program will leverage recent advances in studying individual cells, or single-cell analysis, to comprehensively identify and characterize the differences in senescent cells across the body, across various states of human health, and across the lifespan. The rarity and diversity of these cells previously made them difficult to identify and study; therefore, a deeper understanding will help researchers develop therapies that encourage beneficial effects of senescent cells while suppressing their tissue-damaging effects.
“The number of senescent cells in a person’s body increases with age, which may reflect both an increase in the generation of these cells and a decreased ability of the aging immune system to regulate or eliminate these cells. This age-related accumulation of senescent cells leads to production of inflammatory molecules and corruption of healthy cells,” said Richard J. Hodes, M.D., director of the National Institute on Aging, part of NIH. “This can affect a person’s ability to withstand stress or illness, recuperate from injuries, and maintain normal brain function. The aim of NIH’s strengthened focus on this field of science is to one day conquer these and other challenges.”
A cell dividing into two cells is a hallmark of human development. Over time, our bodies accumulate a small number of cells that no longer divide. These “senescent” cells can play important roles in health, either directly or through the release of molecules that affect neighboring cells. Senescent cells can play positive roles, such as aiding wound repair or preventing tumor growth in some cancers. However, they can also contribute to chronic diseases of aging such as cardiovascular disease and neurodegeneration. For this reason, therapeutics called “senolytics” are being developed to target senescent cells and remove them from the body.
Through the integrated use of sensors, closed-circuit television network, automatic licence plate readers and facial recognition software, all of which feed data into a central control room, the Safe City project helps authorities predict incidents and take preemptive action against crime or violence, said Dr Major Ahmed Al Shamsi, head of Safe City Project at Abu Dhabi Police.
“The project was launched three years ago and currently covers 85 per cent of the emirate’s infrastructure. It has helped reduce traffic incidents and fatalities, patrol areas more efficiently and take action to prevent untoward occurrences,” he told Gulf News on the sidelines of the Abu Dhabi Smart City Summit.
The two-day summit is seeing the attendance of 400 experts, with the focus on the technological advances and innovations that are improving the quality of life in the UAE capital. Organised by Abu Dhabi emirate’s municipalities sector regulator, the Department of Municipalities and Transport (DMT), the Summit has already seen the launch of driverless taxis on Yas Island, as well as the signing of other agreements with technology developers like Huawei, Bayanat and G42.
