Machine-learning methods can predict the long-term stability of planetary configurations 100,000 times faster than previous approaches.
These days, you’d have to actually be living on Mars not to have heard that Elon Musk wants to colonize it — and his team at SpaceX is putting in overtime to make it happen. They worked straight through December on refinements to their latest Starship spacecraft prototype, which Musk says will begin performing high-altitude tests within 2 to 3 months.
SpaceX has set the goal of first sending a cargo mission to Mars in 2022, and following it up with a manned mission in 2024 — which makes SpaceX the contender to put the first human footprint on the Red Planet.
Car buyers in Europe can now get their hands on a brand-new electric vehicle for less than the typical cost of a mobile-phone contract. Thanks to newly generous subsidies, some are even free.
Shoppers have swarmed virtual showrooms in Germany and France — the region’s two largest passenger car markets — after their national governments boosted electric-vehicle incentives to stimulate demand. Their purchase subsidies are now among the most favorable in the world.
The state support is allowing Autohaus Koenig, a dealership chain with more than 50 locations across Germany, to advertise a lease for the battery-powered Renault Zoe that is entirely covered by subsidies. In the 20 days since it put the offer online, roughly 3,000 people have inquired and about 300 have signed contracts.
Scientists from the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine have discovered a compound commonly found in capers, regulates proteins required for normal human brain and heart activity.
Featured Image Source: SpaceX / FCC document.
SpaceX is in the process of building its Starlink broadband internet network that will offer service worldwide to fund future missions to the moon and Mars. The aerospace company has been deploying internet-beaming Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit. As of today, there is a total of 540 satellites in space, out of the 12,000 SpaceX plans to deploy. The next deployment of 57 satellites is scheduled for this month [date pending]. Company officials said 800 satellites will offer “moderate” internet coverage; 60 Starlink satellites can provide service to 40,000 customers streaming high-definition videos simultaneously. “With performance that far surpasses that of traditional satellite internet, and a global network unbounded by ground infrastructure limitations, Starlink will deliver high-speed broadband internet to locations where access has been unreliable, expensive, or completely unavailable,” the company website states.
A new gadget called the OpenCV AI Kit, or OAK, looks to replicate the success of Raspberry Pi and other minimal computing solutions, but for the growing fields of computer vision and 3D perception. Its new multi-camera PCBs pack a lot of capability into a small, open-source unit and are now seeking funding on Kickstarter.
The OAK devices use their cameras and onboard AI chip to perform a number of computer vision tasks, like identifying objects, counting people, finding distances to and between things in frame and more. This info is sent out in polished, ready-to-use form.
Having a reliable, low-cost, low-power-draw computer vision unit like this is a great boon for anyone looking to build a smart device or robot that might have otherwise required several and discrete cameras and other chips (not to mention quite a bit of fiddling with software).
Choi and other researchers have also tried to use lithium-ion battery electrodes to pull lithium directly from seawater and brines without the need for first evaporating the water. Those electrodes consist of sandwichlike layered materials designed to trap and hold lithium ions as a battery charges. In seawater, a negative electrical voltage applied to a lithium-grabbing electrode pulls lithium ions into the electrode. But it also pulls in sodium, a chemically similar element that is about 100,000 times more abundant in seawater than lithium. If the two elements push their way into the electrode at the same rate, sodium almost completely crowds out the lithium.
Lithium is prized for rechargeables because it stores more energy by weight than other battery materials. Manufacturers use more than 160,000 tons of the material every year, a number expected to grow nearly 10-fold over the next decade. But lithium supplies are limited and concentrated in a handful of countries, where the metal is either mined or extracted from briny water.
Lithium’s scarcity has raised concerns that future shortages could cause battery prices to skyrocket and stymie the growth of electric vehicles and other lithium-dependent technologies such as Tesla Powerwalls, stationary batteries often used to store rooftop solar power.
Seawater could come to the rescue. The world’s oceans contain an estimated 180 billion tons of lithium. But it’s dilute, present at roughly 0.2 parts per million. Researchers have devised numerous filters and membranes to try to selectively extract lithium from seawater. But those efforts rely on evaporating away much of the water to concentrate the lithium, which requires extensive land use and time. To date such efforts have not proved economical.
British Health Minister Matt Hancock said that the government would not recommend that office workers wear face masks while at work.
“We will not be recommending masks in the office,” Hancock told Sky News on Wednesday.
Nearly a dozen Indian states have imposed a partial lockdown in high-risk areas after spikes in coronavirus cases, with the country’s infections topping 900,000 just three days after crossing the 800,000 mark.
Scott Morrison will unveil $748m in new cyber security initiatives, with the planned reallocation of resources from within the defence portfolio rising to $1.35bn over a decade once the government unveils a new cyber security strategy in coming months.
Resources reallocated from defence portfolio are planned to rise to $1.35bn over a decade with 500 new jobs created.
Elon is unique.
At age 17, Elon Musk left his home in South Africa and moved to Canada, where he enrolled at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. During his freshman-year in the fall of 1990, Musk befriended Navaid Farooq while living in the same dorm, according to the book “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future,” by Ashlee Vance.
Farooq, a Canadian who grew up in Geneva, bonded with Musk over their backgrounds abroad and their interest in strategy games, according to the book. Living in such close quarters, Farooq learned a lot about Musk, including what Farooq sees as his defining trait.
“When Elon gets into something, he develops just this different level of interest in it than other people,” Farooq said in Vance’s book. “This is what differentiates Elon from the rest of humanity.”