Algorithms are now essential for making predictions, boosting efficiency, and optimizing in real-time.
Inside Clean Energy
Posted in energy, sustainability, transportation
The price of the batteries that power electric vehicles has fallen by about 90 percent since 2010, a continuing trend that will soon make EVs less expensive than gasoline vehicles.
This week, with battery pricing figures for 2021 now available, I wanted to get a better idea of what the near future will look like.
First, the numbers: The average price of lithium-ion battery packs fell to $132 per kilowatt-hour in 2021, down 6 percent from $140 per kilowatt-hour the previous year, according to the annual battery price survey from BloombergNEF. The new average is a step closer to the benchmark of $100 per kilowatt-hour, which researchers say is the approximate point where EVs will cost about the same as gasoline-powered vehicles.
A nervous excitement hangs in the air. Half a dozen scientists sit behind computer screens, flicking between panels as they make last-minute checks. “Go and make the gun dangerous,” one of them tells a technician, who slips into an adjacent chamber. A low beep sounds. “Ready,” says the person running the test. The control room falls silent. Then, boom.
Next door, 3 kilograms of gunpowder has compressed 1,500 liters of hydrogen to 10,000 times atmospheric pressure, launching a projectile down the 9-meter barrel of a two-stage light gas gun at a speed of 6.5 kilometers per second, about 10 times faster than a bullet from a rifle.
On the monitors the scientists are checking the next stage, when the projectile slams into the target—a small transparent block carefully designed to amplify the force of the collision. The projectile needs to hit its mark perfectly flush. The slightest rotation risks derailing the carefully calibrated physics.
China’s new hypersonic aircraft based its design on an ambitious proposal that NASA rejected back in the 90s.
Good telescope that I’ve used to learn the basics: https://amzn.to/35r1jAk.
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Hello and welcome! My name is Anton and in this video, we will talk about a new study that discusses how we could potentially create an actual (but tiny) warp bubble.
Links:
https://thedebrief.org/darpa-funded-researchers-accidentally…63vzz&s=03
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1140/epjc/s10052-021-09484-z.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive.
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James McKenzie is excited about the prospects of firms that are developing technology based on seemingly esoteric fundamental quantum phenomena.
Physicists have long boasted of their success in what’s known as “quantum 1.0” technology – semiconductor junctions, transistors, lasers and so on. Thanks to their efforts over the last 75 years, we have smart phones, computers, laptops and other quantum-enabled devices that have transformed our lives. But the future will increasingly depend on “quantum 2.0” technology, which taps into phenomena like superposition and entanglement to permit everything from quantum computing and cryptography to quantum sensing, timing and imaging.
The incredible possibilities of quantum 2.0 were brought home to me when I attended the UK’s National Quantum Technologies Showcase in central London last month. The event featured more than 60 exhibitors and I was amazed how far things have progressed. In fact, it coincided with two positive developments. One was an announcement by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) of a further £50m to support quantum industrial projects. The other was the UK and US signing a joint “statement of intent” to boost collaboration on quantum science and technologies.
Britain on Sunday announced additional measures to stop the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant, including the extension of booster jabs to people over 30.
From Tuesday, fully vaccinated contacts of people who test positive for Covid-19 will be required to take daily lateral flow tests for seven days.
But those who have not had one or two shots of a Covid vaccine will have to self-isolate for 10 days, the Department of Health and Social Care said.
Microsoft wasn’t the only big console maker hoping to bring its games to phones. The Verge said it has obtained a document from Epic Games’ lawsuit against Apple indicating the iPhone maker had learned Sony was planning a “mobile extension” of PlayStation Now in 2017. The service would stream over 450 PS3 games at first, and follow up with PS4 titles.
Apple mentioned the PlayStation Now expansion as it was in the early stages of developing Apple Arcade, its answer to Sony’s service as well as Xbox Game Pass. While Arcade didn’t launch until 2019 and still doesn’t include streaming, Apple saw PlayStation Now as indicative of a broader shift toward gaming subscriptions.
Provided Apple’s scoop was accurate, it’s unclear why Sony still isn’t streaming games to smartphone owners. A hybrid of PlayStation Now and PlayStation Plus is reportedly due in spring 2022, but the relevant rumor didn’t make mention of mobile access. Sony has already declined to comment.
Senescent cells refer to those that have stopped dividing but do not die. They damage nearby healthy cells by releasing chemicals that cause inflammation.
The team identified a protein found in senescent cells in humans and mice and created a peptide vaccine based on an amino acid that constitutes the protein.
The vaccine enables the body to create antibodies that attach themselves to senescent cells, which are removed by white blood cells that adhere to the antibodies.
The earliest genetic traces of Native American ancestry among Polynesians.
The peopling of Polynesia was a stunning achievement: Beginning around 800 C.E., audacious Polynesian navigators in double-hulled sailing canoes used the stars and their knowledge of the waves to discover specks of land separated by thousands of kilometers of open ocean. Within just a few centuries, they had populated most of the Pacific Ocean’s far-flung islands. Now, researchers have used modern DNA samples to trace the exploration in detail, working out what order the islands were settled in and dating each new landfall to within a few decades.
“The whole question of the settlement of Polynesia has been going on for 200 years,” says University of Hawaii, Manoa, archaeologist Patrick Kirch, who was not involved in the research. “This is a really great paper, and I’m happy to see it.”
Archaeologists already had hints of how this great exploration took place. Studying the styles of stone tools and carvings, as well as languages, of the people on the various islands had suggested the original ancestors traced back to Samoa and that the expansion ended halfway across the ocean in Rapa Nui, or Easter Island. But they disagreed on whether it happened in a few centuries, beginning around 900 C.E., or started much earlier and lasted 1 millennium or more.