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Blog – Page 6039

Get ready for the ‘White Bat’.

What’s the best way to counter gossip? Coming out with the truth. That seems to be the idea behind a new video released by the U.S. Air Force’s Profession of Arms Center of Excellence (PACE).

The video that was released earlier this month recounts the ways intelligence gathering, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) have improved over the decades. The U.S. has moved far ahead from the days when balloons were sent up in the air to understand what was happening behind enemy lines. Adversaries of the U.S. are now a world away and the military still has the ability to “find the unfindable.”

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But it might not be a success, warns Elon Musk.

SpaceX’s launch vehicle scheduled to take humans back to the Moon is expected to make its first orbital flight as early as January 2022.

Speaking in a video call at the fall meeting of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, CEO Elon Musk said that SpaceX is scheduled to carry out some tests in December, ahead of Starship’s first orbital flight in January, Business Insider reported.

The biggest launch vehicle built to date, SpaceX’s Starship consists of two parts, a first stage booster called Super Heavy and the actual spacecraft that gives it the name, Starship. Both these components are powered by SpaceX’s Raptor engines but differ in capacities. When finally ready, the Super Heavy is expected to have 33 Raptor engines while the spacecraft will have just six. Both components are designed to be reusable and are expected to play an important role in taking humankind to Moon, Mars, and even beyond, Space reported.

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Continue reading “SpaceX’s Starship Will Fly Into Orbit For the First Time in January 2022” | >

The team has set an internal deadline of 2025.

In a move that could peg it against electric vehicle market leader, Tesla, Apple has begun working aggressively on its fully autonomous electric car, Bloomberg reported. Developing a car has been on Apple’s agenda since 2014 but recent moves within the company signal a push towards making an Apple car a reality.

Given Apple’s history of taking regularly used products and transforming them into their must-have versions using excellent design, it is hardly a surprise. With Steve Jobs at the helm of affairs, Apple made the iPod even when music players were ubiquitous. Then the company revealed the iPhone when Nokia was still selling resistive touch screens as its premium product. And recently, the Apple Watch has become the “it” wearable even though there are other smartwatch options in the market. During a time where electric vehicles are in a surge, it only seems natural that the electric car is Apple’s next target.

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By using ‘the holy grail of low drag.’

Business travel is going egg-shaped. Otto Aviation’s Celera 500L was just put through its paces with its first flight tests, a press statement reveals. The aircraft was designed as a business aircraft that is much cheaper to run than today’s options.

To achieve this ambitious goal, the Celera employs an egg-like design that achieves laminar flow — the uninterrupted flow of air — when in flight, vastly reducing drag by allowing air to flow smoothly over the aircraft’s surface.

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Glaucoma is a surprisingly common condition that can have serious consequences if it goes untreated. Understanding the importance of early detection, a team of engineers and ophthalmologists in Australia has developed a novel approach using AI to diagnose glaucoma that can yield results in just 10 s.

Have you ever experimented with food dye? It can make cooking a lot more fun, and provides a great example of how two fluids can mix together well—or not much at all.

Add a small droplet in water and you might see it slowly dissolve in the larger liquid. Add a few more drops and perhaps you’ll see a wave of color spread, the colored droplets spreading and breaking apart to diffuse more thoroughly. Add a spoon and begin stirring quickly, and you’ll probably find that the water fully changes color, as desired.

Researchers at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, led by Ivan Bermejo-Moreno, assistant professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, studied a similar phenomenon with gases at high speeds, with an eye toward more efficient mixing to support supersonic scramjet engines. In the study, published in Physics of Fluids, USC Viterbi Ph.D. Jonas Buchmeier, along with Xiangyu Gao (USC Viterbi Ph.D. ‘20) and former visiting M.Sc. student Alexander Bußmann (Technical University Munich), developed a novel tracking method that zoomed in on the fundamentals of how mixing happens. The study helps understand, for example, how injected fuel interacts with the surrounding oxidizers (air) in the engine to make it operate optimally, or how interstellar gases mix after a supernova explosion to form new stars. The method focuses on the geometric and physical properties of the turbulent swirling motions of gases and how they change shape over time as they mix.

Continue reading “New AI Test Diagnoses Glaucoma in Just 10 Seconds” | >

Have you ever experimented with food dye? It can make cooking a lot more fun, and provides a great example of how two fluids can mix together well—or not much at all.

Add a small droplet in water and you might see it slowly dissolve in the larger liquid. Add a few more drops and perhaps you’ll see a wave of color spread, the colored droplets spreading and breaking apart to diffuse more thoroughly. Add a spoon and begin stirring quickly, and you’ll probably find that the water fully changes color, as desired.

Researchers at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, led by Ivan Bermejo-Moreno, assistant professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, studied a similar phenomenon with gases at , with an eye toward more efficient mixing to support supersonic scramjet engines. In the study, published in Physics of Fluids, USC Viterbi Ph.D. Jonas Buchmeier, along with Xiangyu Gao (USC Viterbi Ph.D. ‘20) and former visiting M.Sc. student Alexander Bußmann (Technical University Munich), developed a novel tracking method that zoomed in on the fundamentals of how mixing happens. The study helps understand, for example, how injected interacts with the surrounding oxidizers (air) in the to make it operate optimally, or how interstellar gases mix after a supernova explosion to form . The method focuses on the geometric and physical properties of the turbulent swirling motions of gases and how they change shape over time as they mix.

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Sources “familiar with the matter” told Bloomberg that the team in charge of developing the Apple Car was previously stuck choosing between two different developments paths: a more traditional EV with some enhanced driver-assist features similar to what you get from a number of existing vehicles, or a more sophisticated EV capable of a true autonomous driving with no input from its passengers.

Now, based on Bloomberg’s report, it seems Project Titan (Apple’s codename for the Apple Car) and new project leader Kevin Lynch have decided to go the latter route, with Apple looking to create a fully autonomous vehicle with no pedals or steering.

Of course, deciding to make a true self-driving car is easier said than done, as no automaker has yet to release a proper Level 5 autonomous vehicle, defined as a car that can pilot itself without any human intervention under any conditions or driving situations.

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Professor Norikazu Ichihashi and his colleagues at the University of Tokyo have successfully induced gene expression from a DNA, characteristic of all life, and evolution through continuous replication extracellularly using cell-free materials alone, such as nucleic acids and proteins for the first time.

The ability to proliferate and evolve is one of the defining characteristics of living organisms. However, no artificial materials with these characteristics have been created. In order to develop an artificial molecular system that can multiply and evolve, the information (genes) coded in DNA must be translated into RNA, proteins must be expressed, and the cycle of DNA replication with those proteins must continue over a long period in the system. To date, it has been impossible to create a reaction system in which the genes necessary for DNA replication are expressed while those genes simultaneously carry out their function.

The group succeeded in translating the genes into proteins and replicating the original circular DNA with the translated proteins by using a circular DNA carrying two genes necessary for DNA replication (artificial genomic DNA) and a cell-free transcription-translation system. Furthermore, they also successfully improved the DNA to evolve to a DNA with a 10-fold increase in replication efficiency by continuing this DNA replication cycle for about 60 days.

By adding the genes necessary for transcription and translation to the artificial genomic DNA developed by the group, it could be possible to develop artificial cells that can grow autonomously simply by feeding them low-molecular-weight compounds such as amino acids and nucleotides, in the future. If such artificial cells can be created, we can expect that useful substances currently produced using living organisms (such as substances for drug development and food production) will become more stable and easier to control.

This research has been led by Professor Norikazu Ichihashi, a research director of the project “Development of a self-regenerative artificial genome replication-transcription-translation system” in the research area “Large-scale genome synthesis and cell programming” under the JST’s Strategic Basic Research Programs CREST (Team type). In this research area, JST aims to elucidate basic principles in relation to the structure and function of genomes for the creation of a platform technology for the use of cells.

Continue reading “Novel artificial genomic DNA can replicate and evolve outside the cell” | >

The pandemic brought about a change in the way people look at technology. 2021 proves to be the development of a new era of technology where AI is at the core.

According to McKinsey’s Global Survey on artificial intelligence (AI) 2020, organizations are using AI as a tool for generating value in the form of revenues. Some executives have even observed that implementing AI has brought about a change of 20% in the organizations’ earnings. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the concept of ‘all things digital’, and these companies plan to invest more in AI.

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