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Apr 24, 2019

Developing roads that can generate power from passing traffic

Posted by in categories: energy, transportation

Circa 2017


Researchers are looking at advanced materials for roads and pavements that could generate electricity from passing traffic.

Engineers from Lancaster University are working on such as ‘piezolectric’ ceramics that when embedded in road surfaces would be able to harvest and convert vehicle vibration into .

The research project, led by Professor Mohamed Saafi, will design and optimise energy recovery of around one to two Megawatts per kilometre under ‘normal’ volumes—which is around 2,000 to 3,000 cars an hour.

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Apr 24, 2019

Artificial Intelligence Can Detect PTSD in Your Voice

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, information science, mobile phones, robotics/AI

For years, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been one of the most challenging disorders to diagnose. Traditional methods, like one-on-one clinical interviews, can be inaccurate due to the clinician’s subjectivity, or if the patient is holding back their symptoms.

Now, researchers at New York University say they’ve taken the guesswork out of diagnosing PTSD in veterans by using artificial intelligence to objectively detect PTSD by listening to the sound of someone’s voice. Their research, conducted alongside SRI International — the research institute responsible for bringing Siri to iPhones— was published Monday in the journal Depression and Anxiety.

According to The New York Times, SRI and NYU spent five years developing a voice analysis program that understands human speech, but also can detect PTSD signifiers and emotions. As the NYT reports, this is the same process that teaches automated customer service programs how to deal with angry callers: By listening for minor variables and auditory markers that would be imperceptible to the human ear, the researchers say the algorithm can diagnose PTSD with 89% accuracy.

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Apr 24, 2019

Hackers can amplify your key fobs signal, allowing them to steal your car. But there is one simple product you can use to protect your car

Posted by in category: transportation

https://youtube.com/watch?v=8NAHqBXoCZs

The method behind the madness is actually quite sound.

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Apr 24, 2019

This Wireless Charging Station Table is the Perfect Blend of Elegance and Tech

Posted by in category: engineering

And you don’t need an engineering degree to assemble it.

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Apr 24, 2019

Prototype tire repairs itself instantly when a puncture occurs

Posted by in category: transportation

Circa 2015


I’m sure many of you have experienced that sinking feeling when you’re running out to your car to drive to work only to discover a flat tire. The cause: usually a nail your drove over the night before. It’s 2015, tires shouldn’t suffer punctures anymore, right? Well, they may not for much longer if this prototype tire from Japan makes it to mass production.

The tire is called Coreseal and it has been developed by Japanese company Sumitomo Rubber Industries Ltd. It looks like any other tire fitted on vehicles today, but it has one big advantage. If you drive over a nail and cause a puncture, the tire won’t deflate. In fact, it will repair itself and you’ll likely never know it happened.

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Apr 24, 2019

Forget about artificial intelligence, extended intelligence is the future

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, singularity

We should challenge the cult of Singularity. AI won’t take over the world.

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Apr 24, 2019

Scientists are world’s firsts to reproduce complete copy of ‘anti-tumour antibiotic’

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, innovation

After 20 years of dedicated research, scientists have cracked the chemical code of an incredibly complex ‘anti-tumour antibiotic’ known to be highly effective against cancer cells as well as drug-resistant bacteria, and have reproduced it synthetically in the lab for the first time.

This major breakthrough and world-first could hail a new era in the design and production of new antibiotics and anticancer agents.

The ‘super substance’—kedarcidin—was discovered in its natural form by a pharmaceutical company when they extracted it from a soil sample in India almost 30-years-ago. Soil is the natural source of all antibiotics developed since the 1940s but in order for them to be developed as potential drug treatments they must be produced via .

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Apr 24, 2019

Quality of laser beam shaping can be enhanced at no extra cost

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, holograms

Researchers from Osaka University have developed a technique for improving accuracy of laser beam shaping and wavefront obtained by conventional methods with no additional cost by optimizing virtual phase grating. The results of their research were published in Scientific Reports.

A high quality square flattop is in demand for various fields, such as uniform laser processing and medicine, as well as ultrahigh intensity laser applications for accelerators and nuclear fusion. Beam is key to realizing the laser’s potential abilities and effects. However, since beam shape and wavefront vary by laser, beam shaping is essential for producing the desired shapes to respond to various needs.

Static and adaptive beam shaping methods have been developed for various applications. With Diffractive Optical Element (DOE) as a static method, edge steepness and flatness are low and wavefront becomes deformed after shaping. (Figure 1 (a)) In addition, computer-generated hologram (CGH) as a typical adaptive method has the same difficulties.

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Apr 24, 2019

Microbes may act as gatekeepers of Earth’s Deep Carbon

Posted by in categories: biological, climatology, sustainability

Two years ago a team of scientists visited Costa Rica’s subduction zone, where the ocean floor sinks beneath the continent and volcanoes tower above the surface. They wanted to find out if microbes can affect the cycle of carbon moving from Earth’s surface into the deep interior. According to their new study in Nature, the answer is affirmatively—yes they can.

This groundbreaking study shows that microbes consume and—crucially—help trap a small amount of sinking carbon in this zone. This finding has important implications for understanding Earth’s fundamental processes and for revealing how nature can potentially help mitigate climate change.

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Apr 24, 2019

Quantum gas turns supersolid

Posted by in categories: particle physics, quantum physics

Researchers led by Francesca Ferlaino from the University of Innsbruck and the Austrian Academy of Sciences report in Physical Review X on the observation of supersolid behavior in dipolar quantum gases of erbium and dysprosium. In the dysprosium gas these properties are unprecedentedly long-lived. This sets the stage for future investigations into the nature of this exotic phase of matter.

Supersolidity is a paradoxical state where the matter is both crystallized and superfluid. Predicted 50 years ago, such a counter-intuitive phase, featuring rather antithetical properties, has been long sought in . However, after decades of theoretical and experimental efforts, an unambiguous proof of supersolidity in these systems is still missing. Two research teams led by Francesca Ferlaino, one at the Institute for Experimental Physics at the University of Innsbruck and one at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, now report on the observation of hallmarks of this exotic state in ultracold atomic gases.

While so far most work has focused on helium, researchers have recently turned to atomic gases—in particular, those with strong dipolar interactions. The team of Francesca Ferlaino has been investigating quantum gases made of atoms with a strong dipolar character for a long time. “Recent experiments have revealed that such gases exhibit fundamental similarities with superfluid helium,” says Lauriane Chomaz, referring to experimental achievements in Innsbruck and in Stuttgart over the last few years. “These features lay the groundwork for reaching a state where the several tens of thousands of particles of the gas spontaneously organize in a self-determined crystalline structure while sharing the same macroscopic wavefunction—hallmarks of supersolidity.”

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