An active ingredient in honeybee venom rapidly kills aggressive and hard-to-treat forms of breast cancer cells.
The arrival of government-operated autonomous police robots does not look like predictions in science fiction movies. An army of robots with gun arms is not kicking down your door to arrest you. Instead, a robot snitch that looks like a rolling trash can is programmed to decide whether a person looks suspicious —and then call the human police on them. Police robots may not be able to hurt people like armed predator drones used in combat— yet —but as history shows, calling the police on someone can prove equally deadly.
Long before the 1987 movie Robocop, even before Karel Čapek invented the word robot in 1920, police have been trying to find ways to be everywhere at once. Widespread security cameras are one solution—but even a blanket of CCTV cameras couldn’t follow a suspect into every nook of public space. Thus, the vision of a police robot continued as a dream, until now. Whether they look like Boston Dynamics’ robodogs or Knightscope’s rolling pickles, robots are coming to a street, shopping mall, or grocery store near you.
The Orwellian menace of snitch robots might not be immediately apparent. Robots are fun. They dance. You can take selfies with them. This is by design. Both police departments and the companies that sell these robots know that their greatest contributions aren’t just surveillance, but also goodwill. In one brochure Knightscope sent to University of California-Hastings, a law school in the center of San Francisco, the company advertises their robot’s activity in a Los Angeles shopping district called The Bloc. It’s unclear if the robot stopped any robberies, but it did garner over 100000 social media impressions and Knightscope claims the robot’s 193 million overall media impressions was worth over $5.8 million. The Bloc held a naming contest for the robot, and said it has a “cool factor” missing from traditional beat cops and security guards.
In a technique known as DNA origami, researchers fold long strands of DNA over and over again to construct a variety of tiny 3D structures, including miniature biosensors and drug-delivery containers. Pioneered at the California Institute of Technology in 2006, DNA origami has attracted hundreds of new researchers over the past decade, eager to build receptacles and sensors that could detect and treat disease in the human body, assess the environmental impact of pollutants, and assist in a host of other biological applications.
Although the principles of DNA origami are straightforward, the technique’s tools and methods for designing new structures are not always easy to grasp and have not been well documented. In addition, scientists new to the method have had no single reference they could turn to for the most efficient way of building DNA structures and how to avoid pitfalls that could waste months or even years of research.
That’s why Jacob Majikes and Alex Liddle, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) who have studied DNA origami for years, have compiled the first detailed tutorial on the technique. Their comprehensive report provides a step-by-step guide to designing DNA origami nanostructures, using state-of-the-art tools. Majikes and Liddle described their work in the Jan .8 issue of the Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Wi-Fi 6E devices are now being certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance. Smartphones, PCs, and laptops are expected in the first quarter of 2021, while TVs and VR devices should follow in the second quarter of 2021.
Three thousand days and counting: NASA’s Curiosity rover continues its extraordinary exploration of Mars.
Hyundai and Apple teaming up to challenge Tesla? 😃
Apple and Hyundai plan to sign a deal that would lead to a “beta” version of an Apple electric vehicle as early as 2022, according to a Sunday report from Reuters.
Reuters cited a report from Korea IT News that said the companies are planning to sign a deal by March 2021 to partner on the self-driving electric cars, according to a Sunday report from Korea IT News.
With a deal in place, the companies may have a beta version of the vehicle ready by next year, according to the report. Mass production of the self-driving electric vehicles could begin by 2024. The plan would be to build about 100000 vehicles in the US that year, according to Reuters.
This liquid fuel engine is a beast.
NASA plans to ignite an absolutely mammoth rocket on Jan. 17, the largest it’s built since the Apollo program.
Like.
The core section of China’s space station is scheduled to launch in the next several months, the first of 11 missions carrying lab elements, cargo, and astronauts to the fledgling outpost over the next two years, according to Chinese space program officials.
The launch of the first element of the Chinese station is one of more than 40 missions scheduled this year by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., or CASC, China’s largest state-owned aerospace contractor.
CASC’s subsidiaries build China’s Long March rockets, manufacture satellites, and oversee construction of the Chinese space station.
Scientists have recently discovered a totally new type of chemical bond – and it’s way stronger than it has any right to be.
The new type of bond shows that the divide between powerful covalent bonds, which bind molecules together, and weak hydrogen bonds, which form between molecules and can be broken by something as simple as stirring salt into a glass of water, isn’t as clear as chemistry textbooks would suggest.
Think back to that high-school chemistry class, and you’ll remember that there are different types of bonds that link atoms together into molecules and crystal structures.
Gene therapies are opening up possibilities that were once reserved for science fiction.
At Harvard University, Professor of Genetics David Sinclair says he believes it’s possible to unlock the fountain of youth, and gene therapy is the key.
Sinclair spent two years trying to correct the vision of a mouse using gene therapy, and finally succeeded in doing it.
Although these discoveries are encouraging, Sinclair cautions that people set their expectations realistically.