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Blog – Page 6301

26 Oct 2021 — Public Chinese government records reviewed by the Good Food Institute (GFI) APAC indicate that significant funds are being allocated to help the nascent alternative protein sector optimize and scale up – as was previously done for the nation’s development of solar panels, lithium-ion batteries and electric vehicles.

While Chinese funding for alternative protein remains a tiny proportion of what the nation is capable of, these moves by various government entities demonstrate the scope of interest among local officials, which could potentially position China at the forefront of the next big food tech boom.

“There is no pathway to achieve the climate goals set out in the Paris Agreement without changing how we produce protein, but encouraging new evidence suggests that Chinese leaders understand the massive benefits of making meat from plants and growing it directly from cells,” stresses the GFI.

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Australian company AMSL Aero is preparing to start flight tests on what it claims will be the world’s most efficient eVTOL design, and one of the most affordable. This box-wing beauty, the Vertiia, will travel up to 1,000 km (620 miles) on a tank of hydrogen, carrying five people or 500 kg (1,100 lb) of cargo at a quick cruise speed of 300 km/h (186 mph).

First emerging from stealth mode late last year, AMSL has a unique design, a prototype nearly ready to fly, and a target date of 2024 to get its aircraft certified and into production. Its small team has achieved an impressive amount on a shoestring budget, and it’s now raising another round of funding to finance flight testing and pre-production as it moves toward the certification process.

We spoke to co-founder Andrew Moore to learn more about this fascinating aircraft, and how Vertiia plans to stand out in a global emerging eVTOL air taxi market that’s starting to look comically crowded. What follows is an edited transcript.

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Delta Air Lines expects 2.5 million passengers to move through the Atlanta airport during the Thanksgiving period. Ahead of the holiday rush, Delta is testing new facial recognition technology to reduce the time it takes between arriving at the airport and getting passengers in their seats.

The company’s senior vice president for customer experience, Ranjan Goswami, said the facial recognition technology has been years in the making and will speed up travel.

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“We’ve been fueling this fire for a long time and we shouldn’t be surprised it’s now out of control,” one employee wrote on an internal message board, the documents show.

“Hang in there everyone,” Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s chief technology officer, wrote on a message board, calling for calm as he explained the company’s approach to the riot, according to the documents.

In response to Schroepfer’s message, Facebook employees said it was too little too late.

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Nd it’s also the lightest.

A Mumbai, India-based startup called Vazirani Automotive revealed images of its Ekonk electric hypercar, which was designed to be the “lightest EV ever,” a report from Motor1.com explains. The car, which looks like it’s out of the ‘Speed Racer’ movie, was designed with a special cooling system to keep it as light and fast as possible.

Though the Ekonk is still in the prototype phase, the Vazirani Automotive team says it aims to develop the fastest… See More.

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In service since 2,002 the Stryker combat vehicles have been constantly upgraded in light of changing warfare techniques. When deployed in Iraq, these combat vehicles had to be protected from the rocket-propelled grenades but were recently found to be lacking against unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in Europe. As warfare moves at lightning speed from drones to drone swarms, General Dynamics, the manufacturer of Stryker vehicles, is looking to arm the vehicle with a directed energy weapon.

To accelerate the pace of this upgrade, the defense manufacturer has teamed up with Los Angeles-based Epirus Inc., which has developed a counter-electronics system, Leonidas, capable of handling single as well as multiple threats.

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We might be witnessing the start of the private space station race.

Dare we say that a new type of space race is heating up? Blue Origin, the space tourism firm founded by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced a partnership with Sierra Space and Boeing to build and launch a commercial space station called Orbital Reef by the end of the decade, a press statement reveals.

If Lockheed Martin and Nanoracks have their way, Orbital Reef won’t be the first commercial orbital outpost in low Earth orbit, as the two firms are collaborating to launch their own station by 2027.

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