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Oct 9, 2020

World’s biggest wind and solar producer now worth more than ExxonMobil

Posted by in categories: energy, sustainability, transportation

Renewable energy is now richer than the Oil industry.


In yet another sign of the pace of the global energy transition – and the massive switch taking place in the investment community – the market value of company that describes itself as the world’s biggest producer of wind and solar power, US utility NextEra, has overtaken that of what used to be the world’s most valuable company, oil major ExxonMobil.

The flip occurred last last week, when NextEra overtook ExxonMobil to become the largest energy company in the US by market value. As Forbes reported, an investment in NextEra a decade ago would have delivered to return of 600 per cent, while an investment in ExxonMobil would have returned minus 25 per cent.

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Oct 9, 2020

Rockets that will reuse their first stages

Posted by in category: space travel

Photos credit: DailySpace00.

Oct 9, 2020

A New Era of Healthcare with AI | I AM AI

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, robotics/AI

#AI is creating new possibilities in #healthcare, elevating the quality of care providers can deliver and giving the gift of time back to physicians to connect with patients. Learn how NVIDIA AI solutions are advancing medicine https://nvda.ws/33EGX6m #IAMAI

Oct 9, 2020

AI-Powered Drone Learns Extreme Acrobatics

Posted by in category: drones

AI powered drones are doing acrobatics.

Oct 9, 2020

For the First Time, Scientists Fully Sequenced the Human X Chromosome

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Scientist have sequenced the x chromosome.


The sequencing of the human genome was one of the greatest scientific feats of the past century, but it’s a little-known fact that it’s still a work in progress with considerable gaps. New research suggests we could be just months away from finally finishing the job.

Nearly two decades after the Human Genome Project released the first map of our DNA, there are still large sections that are a mystery to us. Scientists have been slowly filling in the gaps, but certain portions that feature repetitive sequences going on for millions of base pairs have long been seen as intractable.

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Oct 9, 2020

Nanoscale machines convert light into work

Posted by in categories: chemistry, nanotechnology, particle physics

“In previous work, the researchers discovered that when optical matter is exposed to circularly polarized light, it rotates as a rigid body in the direction opposite the polarization rotation. In other words, when the incident light rotates one way the optical matter array responds by spinning the other. This is a manifestation of “negative torque”. The researchers speculated that a machine could be developed based on this new phenomenon.

In the new work, the researchers created an optical matter machine that operates much like a mechanical machine based on interlocking gears. In such machines, when one gear is turned, a smaller interlocking gear will spin in the opposite direction. The optical matter machine uses circularly polarized light from a laser to create a nanoparticle array that acts like the larger gear by spinning in the optical field. This “optical matter gear” converts the circularly polarized light into orbital, or angular, momentum that influences a nearby probe particle to orbit the nanoparticle array (the gear) in the opposite direction.”


Researchers have developed a tiny new machine that converts laser light into work. These optically powered machines self-assemble and could be used for nanoscale manipulation of tiny cargo for applications such as nanofluidics and particle sorting.

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Oct 9, 2020

Scientists Create ‘Super Enzyme’ That Eats Plastic Bottles Six Times Faster than Previous Enzymes

Posted by in category: food

After several other plastic eating enzymes have been discovered, a super enzyme further increases the speed at which it eats plastic.

Oct 9, 2020

NVIDIA Uses AI to Slash Bandwidth on Video Calls

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

What the researchers have achieved has remarkable results: by replacing the traditional h.264 video codec with a neural network, they have managed to reduce the required bandwidth for a video call by an order of magnitude. In one example, the required data rate fell from 97.28 KB/frame to a measly 0.1165 KB/frame — a reduction to 0.1% of required bandwidth.


NVIDIA Research has invented a way to use AI to dramatically reduce video call bandwidth while simultaneously improving quality.

Oct 9, 2020

New Reactor Design Could Produce First Ever Energy-Positive Fusion Reaction

Posted by in categories: energy, physics

Could this be the energy source of the future?


The secret to the SPARC reactor is that its magnets will be built from new high-temperature superconductors that require much less cooling and can produce far more powerful magnetic fields. That means the reactor can be ten times more compact than ITER while achieving similar performance.

As with any cutting-edge technology, converting principles into practice is no simple matter. But the analysis detailed in the papers suggests that the reactor will achieve its goal of producing more energy than it sucks up. So far, all fusion experiments have required more energy to heat the plasma and sustain it than has been generated by the reaction itself.

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Oct 9, 2020

World Space Week: Six ways satellites improve our lives

Posted by in category: satellites

The theme of this year’s World Space Week is satellites improve life. We are taking this opportunity to appreciate satellite technology and its incredible benefits.