Amazon unveiled the electric delivery van that is being built by Michigan-based EV startup Rivian. The delivery giant aims to have 10,000 vehicles on the road by 2022 and 100,000 by 2030.
Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.
The world’s first Gattaca baby tests are finally here
Anxious couples are approaching fertility doctors in the US with requests for a hotly debated new genetic test being called “23andMe, but on embryos.”
The baby-picking test is being offered by a New Jersey startup company, Genomic Prediction, whose plans we first reported on two years ago.
The company says it can use DNA measurements to predict which embryos from an IVF procedure are least likely to end up with any of 11 different common diseases. In the next few weeks it’s set to release case studies on its first clients.
Aerodynamicists reveal link between fish scales and aircraft drag
The team’s findings have been published in Nature: Scientific Reports: “Transition delay using biomimetic fish scale arrays,” and in the Journal of Experimental Biology: “Streak formation in flow over biomimetic fish scale arrays.”
Reducing drag means faster aircraft speeds and less fuel consumption—an important area of study for aerodynamicists such as Professor Bruecker, City’s Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair in Nature-Inspired Sensing and Flow Control for Sustainable Transport, and City’s Sir Richard Oliver BAE Systems Chair for Aeronautical Engineering.
Through their biomimetic study, Professor Bruecker’s team has discovered that the fish-scale array produces a zig-zag motion of fluid in overlapping regions of the surface of the fish, which in turn causes periodic velocity modulation and a streaky flow that can eliminate Tollmien-Schlichting wave induced transition to reduce skin friction drag by more than 25 percent.
Suspected Chinese Hackers Unleash Malware That Can Survive OS Reinstalls
“This attack demonstrates that, albeit rarely, in exceptional cases, actors are willing to go to great lengths in order to gain the highest level of persistence on a victim’s machine,” said Kaspersky Lab researcher Mark Lechtik in a statement.
The company discovered the UEFI-based malware on machines belonging to two victims. It works to create a Trojan file called “IntelUpdate.exe” in the Startup Folder, which will reinstall itself even if the user finds it and deletes it.
Another universe existed before ours – and energy from it is coming out of black holes, says Nobel Prize winner
Sir Roger Penrose also claims that another universe will exist after this one.
Optical Matter Machine: Nanoscale Machines Convert Light Into Work
Based on optical matter, new machines could be used to move and manipulate tiny particles.
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.
“Our work addresses a long-standing goal in the nanoscience community to create self-assembling nanoscale machines that can perform work in conventional environments such as room temperature liquids,” said research team leader Norbert F. Scherer from the University of Chicago.
