Lifeboat Foundation

Bell Helicopter showed its vision for airborne mobility, essentially an air taxi passengers could summon like an Uber, at CES 2018.

The company rolled out the first of them for the U.S. on Thursday, a plug-in rechargeable Wrangler to go on sale in America, Europe and China early next year.

The Wrangler 4xe can go 25 miles (40 kilometers) on electricity before a 2-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine takes over. Drivers can choose to have an engine-powered generator recharge the batteries (at a higher fuel consumption rate), although it would take about 2.5 hours at 45 to 55 mph (72.4 to 88.5 kilometers per hour) to fully replenish them.

A big driver of the new offerings is FCA’s obligation to meet fuel economy and pollution regulations in Europe, China, and the U.S. or face stiff fines or steep costs to buy electric vehicle credits from companies like Tesla.

Circa 2019 o.o

A grizzly’s body can slow down for months without damage. Researchers wonder if the ability can be harnessed to aid human health.

“I was shocked at the huge increase in measured force,” Hal Fearn, close collaborator and physicist at California State University, Fullerton, told Wired.

Yet other researchers are still skeptical of the novel device.

“I’d say there’s between a 1-in-10 and 1-in-10,000,000 chance that it’s real, and probably toward the higher end of that spectrum,” Mike McDonald, an aerospace engineer at the Naval Research Laboratory in Maryland, told the magazine.

The giant Waltham, Massachusetts-based defense contractor (NYSE: RTX) is hiring to fill 200 open positions in Aurora, where Raytheon already employs 2,500 people.

Depending on how fast Raytheon finds candidates, the number of open jobs could rise because of the company’s growth, said Sullivan, the business’ top local executive. Raytheon last year expected to increase its workforce in Aurora by 400 to 500 positions by 2024.

Read more at the Denver Business Journal.

Scientists have developed the most accurate computing method to date to reconstruct the patchwork of genetic faults within tumors and their history during disease development, in new research funded by Cancer Research UK and published in Nature Genetics.

Their powerful approach combines artificial intelligence with the mathematical models of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to analyze genetic data more accurately than ever before, paving the way for a fundamental shift in how cancer’s genetic diversity is used to deliver tailored treatments to patients.

Applying these new algorithms to DNA data taken from patient samples revealed that tumors had a simpler genetic structure than previously thought. The algorithms showed that tumors had fewer distinct subpopulations of cells, called “subclones,” than previously suggested. The scientists, based at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, and Queen Mary University of London, could also tell how old each subclone was and how fast it was growing.

SpaceX gave an update on early tests of its Starlink satellite internet network, which showed speeds capable of playing online video games and streaming movies.

Starlink is the ambitious plan by Elon Musk’s company to build an interconnected network of about 12,000 small satellites in low Earth orbit. To date, SpaceX has launched about 650 of its version 1.0 satellites and is currently building a system of ground stations and user terminals to connect consumers directly to its network.

The company confirmed during the webcast of its latest launch on Monday that employees have been testing Starlink’s latency and download speeds, key measures for an internet service provider. SpaceX senior certification engineer Kate Tice said that the initial results of those tests “have been good.”

Millions of students are learning through Zoom this fall. So why does it still feel like a corporate meeting app that has been MacGyvered into an education platform?

[Photos: Ridofranz/iStock, syntika/iStock].

Thanks to Amazon’s success, CEO Jeff Bezos is the richest person in the world, worth $207 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

But when he started Amazon as an online bookseller in 1994, Bezos thought it was likely that his business would fail.

Continue reading “Jeff Bezos thought there was a ‘30% chance’ Amazon would succeed: I told my parents ‘it’s very likely they’ll lose their entire investment’” »