A newly demonstrated technique for making lab-grown wood could overcome several shortcomings of traditional logging, if it’s scalable.
A pacesetting institution, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is opening a psychedelic research center focusing on MDMA and trauma.
Blockchain 50 2021
Posted in bitcoin
Bitcoin’s 2020 surge grabbed the attention of C-suite executives worldwide; not only are companies employing the technology underlying Bitcoin to perform tasks such as reconciling invoices and verifying product provenance, but dozens are now holding Bitcoin as a treasury asset.
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Posted in futurism
Apollo 14: ‘A Wild Place Up Here’
Posted in space
50 years ago today, Apollo 14 astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell landed on the Moon for a 33-hour stay full of science, as fellow crew member Stuart Roosa conducted observations from lunar orbit. Revisit this # Apollo50th anniversary: youtu.be/l7MMTm1-DAA
That’s not to say Taiwan is the only player in the semiconductor supply chain. The U.S. still holds dominant positions, notably in chip design and electronic software tools; ASML Holding NV of the Netherlands has a monopoly on the machines needed to fabricate the best chips; Japan is a key supplier of equipment, chemicals and wafers.
U.S., European and Japanese automakers are lobbying their governments for help, with Taiwan and TSMC being asked to step in. Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Emmanuel Macron discussed the potential for shortages last year and agreed on the need to accelerate Europe’s push to develop its own chip industry, according to a French official with knowledge of the matter.
The auto industry’s pleas illustrate how TSMC’s chip-making skills have handed Taiwan political and economic leverage in a world where technology is being enlisted in the great power rivalry between the U.S. and China — a standoff unlikely to ease under the administration of Joe Biden.
Taiwan’s grip on the semiconductor business — despite being under constant threat of invasion by Beijing — also represents a choke point in the global supply chain that’s giving new urgency to plans from Tokyo to Washington and Beijing to increase self-reliance.
While a multitude of companies are jostling to compete in the emerging electric VTOL air taxi market, it’s very rare to find aircraft designs carrying more than five people. But British multinational giant GKN Aerospace is looking into something much bigger: “park ‘n’ ride” Skybus transports capable of carrying 30 to 50 passengers across congested parts of town, moving affordable public transport into the third dimension.
This initiative is part of the UK’s Future Flight Challenge, which is using some £125 million (US$171 million) of government cash and a further £175 million (US$239 million) from the industrial sector to fund a wide range of projects related to electric aviation, including drone swarm and delivery technologies, air traffic control that can handle a huge influx of autonomous drones and aircraft, eVTOL air taxis, sensor technologies, industrial inspection UAVs and other projects like the pop-up eVTOL airport in Coventry we wrote about yesterday.
Where most passenger-carrying eVTOL projects are envisaged as on-demand Uber-style services connecting individual passengers or small groups with ride-share services at either end, the Skybus project takes a public transport approach, with large birds ferrying significant numbers of people over city routes on fixed schedules.
