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The material is one of the thinnest antimicrobial coatings developed to date and is effective against a broad range of drug-resistant bacteria and fungal cells, while leaving human cells unharmed.

Importantly, the BP also began to self-degrade in that time and was entirely disintegrated within 24 hours—an important feature that shows the material would not accumulate in the body.

The identified the optimum levels of BP that have a deadly antimicrobial effect while leaving human cells healthy and whole.

The researchers have now begun experimenting with different formulations to test the efficacy on a range of medically-relevant surfaces.

Continue reading “Superbug killer: New nanotech destroys bacteria and fungal cells” | >

At any given time, 1100 tons of microplastic are floating over the western US. New modeling shows the surprising sources of the nefarious pollutant.

If you find yourself in some secluded spot in the American West—maybe Yellowstone, or the deserts of Utah, or the forests of Oregon—take a deep breath and get some fresh air along with some microplastic. According to new modeling, 1100 tons of it is currently floating above the western US. The stuff is falling out of the sky, tainting the most remote corners of North America—and the world. As I’ve said before, plastic rain is the new acid rain.

But where is it all coming from? You’d think it’d be arising from nearby cities—western metropolises like Denver and Salt Lake City. But new modeling published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that 84 percent of airborne microplastics in the American West actually comes from the roads outside of major cities. Another 11 percent could be blowing all the way in from the ocean. (The researchers who built the model reckon that microplastic particles stay airborne for nearly a week, and that’s more than enough time for them to cross continents and oceans.)

Microplastics—particles smaller than 5 millimeters—come from a number of sources. Plastic bags and bottles released into the environment break down into smaller and smaller bits. Your washing machine is another major source: When you launder synthetic clothing, tiny microfibers slough off and get flushed to a wastewater treatment plant. That facility filters out some of the microfibers, trapping them in “sludge,” the treated human waste that’s then applied to agricultural fields as fertilizer. That loads the soil with microplastic. A wastewater plant will then flush the remaining microfibers out to sea in the treated water. This has been happening for decades, and because plastics disintegrate but don’t ever really disappear, the amount in the ocean has been skyrocketing.

Continue reading “Plastic Is Falling From the Sky. But Where’s It Coming From?” | >

How seriously do you take your diet?

It is one of the foundations upon which everything else stands.

We have gone from abundant quality in a limited supply in our evolutionary past, to an abundance of quantity but with the quality now lacking (for many), and yet, as I show here, your health, future prospects for disease and illness, and ultimately, your longevity, are intrinsically linked.

In this video I take it right back to ground zero, and then bring the latest studies to bear, so we can see how it influences it all, so you can make the right decisions about what you should, and maybe should not, be eating.

Continue reading “Change Your Diet Change Your Life” | >

This ball-shaped rotating wing rc-aircraft was designed and built to learn about the flight behavior of constantly horizontally rotating wings.

It flies with a remarkable stability in winds up to 1bft. Flightweight is around 650grs. and it is powerd by a 3D vector control unit, permanently stabilized by a 3S-1050mA LiPo (120 grs.) as a pendulum. The rotating ball is made from 6mm DEPRON and cf-rods.

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Circa 2019

The “Forze VIII”, a hydrogen-electric Le Mans style prototype, became the first-ever hydrogen-electric vehicle to beat petrol-powered cars in an official race.

The car, that was designed, built, tested and raced by a group of students from Delft University of Technology, finished second in the Supercar Challenge at the TT Circuit in Assen, the Netherlands.

In a field of 43 petrol-powered race cars, the pink race car started the last race of the weekend from the fourth position. After a strong start, the car climbed quickly from fourth to second in its class. Within a few laps, driver Leo van der Eijk had already built up a 15-second gap between him and the third position. The team was able to keep up the pace for the rest of the race and secured a podium position. “We’re incredibly proud of what we have accomplished today. Never before did a hydrogen-electric race car beat other cars in an official competition – let alone the kind of petrol-powered race cars we were racing against today. This podium finish is the result of not just one year, but twelve years of dedication, faith and hard work. Being a student team makes it feel almost unreal to be the first to ever accomplish this” says Zhi Wei Cai, Team Manager.

Continue reading “World’s First: Forze VIII Hydrogen-Electric Race Car Beats The Petrol-Powered Competition” | >

Altman suggests taxing capital rather than labour. And, these taxes can be used to distribute ownership and wealth to citizens. Altman said his idea is nothing new but is more critical than ever as AI applications outclass their contemporaries. “If everyone owns a slice of American value creation, everyone will want America to do better,” wrote Altman.

“We should therefore focus on taxing capital rather than labor, and we should use these taxes as an opportunity to directly distribute ownership and wealth to citizens.”

Pinning careers and hopes to Moore’s law does sound like utopia, and even Altman admits it. He also believes that the AI revolution will compensate for the disruption by generating new jobs. Jobs, which we haven’t heard of yet (think: urban rodentologist). That’s why the OpenAI co-founder stresses establishing a system that will result in a society that is “less divisive” and enables everyone to participate in its gains. According to him, this technology revolution is an eventuality, and nothing can stop it. The revolution will be further accelerated as machines that make machines get smarter. For example, OpenAI’s GPT-3 was used to generate machine learning code, a million-dollar startup idea in itself. One application can put many developer jobs at risk.

Read more | >

Domino’s and Nuro teamed up for autonomous pizza delivery in Houston. Don’t get your hopes up, though, for a driverless drop-off: Many restrictions apply, and only a handful of hungry people can opt in right now.

Beginning this week, select customers who place a prepaid website order from the lone participating pizza shop in Woodland Heights can opt to have their food delivered by Nuro’s R2 robot. Those lucky patrons receive text alerts highlighting R2’s location, and can track the vehicle via GPS on the order confirmation page. Domino’s also provides a unique personal identification number required to open the bot’s door and reveal that piping hot pizza.

“We’re excited to continue innovating the delivery experience for Domino’s customers by testing autonomous delivery with Nuro in Houston,” Dennis Maloney, Domino’s senior vice president and chief innovation officer, said in a statement. “There is still so much for our brand to learn about the autonomous delivery space.”

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It may be possible in the future to use information technology where electron spin is used to store, process and transfer information in quantum computers. It has long been the goal of scientists to be able to use spin-based quantum information technology at room temperature. A team of researchers from Sweden, Finland and Japan have now constructed a semiconductor component in which information can be efficiently exchanged between electron spin and light at room temperature and above. The new method is described in an article published in Nature Photonics.

It is well known that electrons have a negative charge; they also have another property called spin. This may prove instrumental in the advance of . To put it simply, we can imagine the electron rotating around its own axis, similar to the way in which the Earth rotates around its own axis. Spintronics—a promising candidate for future information technology—uses this quantum property of electrons to store, process and transfer information. This brings important benefits, such as higher speed and lower energy consumption than traditional electronics.

Developments in spintronics in recent decades have been based on the use of metals, and these have been highly significant for the possibility of storing large amounts of data. There would, however, be several advantages in using spintronics based on semiconductors, in the same way that semiconductors form the backbone of today’s electronics and photonics.

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A team of researchers at Technion—Israel Institute of Technology has developed a new technique for conducting real-time evanescent wave imaging using standard optical technology. In their paper published in the journal Nature Photonics, the group describes their new technology and ways they believe it can be used in photonic device characterization and other applications.

Evanescent waves are oscillating electric or magnetic fields that do not propagate—their energy remains in the vicinity of the source that created them due to a quickly decaying amplitude. They play an important role in acoustic and optical applications. Guided waves, on the other hand, have certain frequencies and energy that can travel very quickly along a designated path—they also leave a trace of their passing—an evanescent wave that decays so quickly that it is very difficult to see it with standard technology. Past attempts to image them have run into trouble, such as perturbation in the field under study, long acquisition times or the need for complex and expensive equipment. In this new effort, the researchers have developed a technique for measuring and imaging that overcomes all these problems.

The work involved studying evanescent waves of light by mixing them with a . Doing so resulted in the creation of a new frequency that could be both seen and studied. The method works, they note, because the laser changes the direction of the electric field. They found during experimentation that they could create using the laser. And further study showed that it was possible to both insert information into the evanescent waves and to take it out when desired. They also found that the shapes could be imaged using standard commercial cameras. The team calls the new technique nonlinear near-field and note that it does not require exotic equipment and can be done at very little cost.

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