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May 20, 2019

Researchers develop new lens manufacturing technique

Posted by in categories: engineering, physics, robotics/AI, transportation

Researchers from Washington State University and Ohio State University have developed a low-cost, easy way to make custom lenses that could help manufacturers avoid the expensive molds required for optical manufacturing.

Led by Lei Li, assistant professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, and graduate student, Mojtaba Falahati, the researchers developed a liquid mold from droplets that they can manipulate with magnets to create lenses in a variety of shapes and sizes. Their work is featured on the cover of the journal, Applied Physics Letters.

High-quality lenses are increasingly used in everything from cameras, to self-driving cars, and virtually all robotics, but the traditional molding and casting processes used in their manufacturing require sophisticated and expensive metal molds. So, manufacturers are mostly limited to mass producing one kind of lens.

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May 20, 2019

Startup Hermeus Wants to Build a Hypersonic Jet That Flies at 5 Times the Speed of Sound

Posted by in category: transportation

A U.S. venture-capital firm recently led a round of seed investment for Hermeus Corp., a new startup developing a hypersonic aircraft.

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May 20, 2019

Amazing AI Generates Entire Bodies of People Who Don’t Exist

Posted by in categories: information science, robotics/AI

Watching the algorithm work is like perusing a stock photo catalog from hell.

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May 20, 2019

Amazon Tribe Wins Lawsuit Against Big Oil, Saving Millions Of Acres Of Rainforest

Posted by in categories: government, habitats, law

The Amazon Rainforest is well known across the world for being the largest and most dense area of woodland in the world. Spanning across nine countries, the Amazon is home to millions of different animal and plant species, as well as harboring some for the world’s last remaining indigenous groups. The Waorani people of Pastaza are an indigenous tribe from the Ecuadorian Amazon and have lived in the Rainforest for many generations. However, there Home came under threat from a large oil company — they didn’t take it lightly.

Ecuador Rainforest Amazon River

After a long legal battle with a number of organizations, the Waorani people successfully protected half a million acres of their ancestral territory in the Amazon rainforest from being mined for oil drilling by huge oil corporations. The auctioning off of Waorani lands to the oil companies was suspended indefinitely by a three-judge panel of the Pastaza Provincial Court. The panel simply trashed the consultation process the Ecuadorian government had undertaken with the tribe in 2012, which rendered the attempt at land purchase null and void.

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May 20, 2019

Computers will be like humans by 2029: Google’s Ray Kurzweil

Posted by in categories: engineering, finance, Ray Kurzweil, robotics/AI

In less than two decades, you won’t just use your computers, you will have relationships with them.

Because of artificial intelligence, computers will be able to read at human levels by 2029 and will also begin to have different human characteristics, said Ray Kurzweil, a director of engineering at Google.

“My timeline is computers will be at human levels, such as you can have a human relationship with them, 15 years from now,” he said. Kurzweil’s comments came at the Exponential Finance conference in New York on Wednesday.

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May 20, 2019

Captain Marvel’s Suit Was Entirely CGI in AVENGERS: ENDGAME

Posted by in category: entertainment

As you saw in Avengers: Endgame, Captain Marvel not only sported a new haircut, she was also sporting a new suit. It wasn’t always like that, though. Since Endgame was shot before Captain Marvel, the suit she originally wore while shooting the film, was the same suit that she wore in the solo Captain Marvel movie.

After her scenes were shot, the creative team decided that they needed to give her suit a different look since so much time had passed since the 90s. Weta Digital’s Matt Aitken, who was a VFX supervisor on Endgame, explained when they changed up the suit design it was all done digitally, so the final suit design that was shown on screen was 100% CGI.

Aitken talked to CB about the new suit design, explaining:

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May 20, 2019

AMD says its chips are immune to crippling new vulnerabilities

Posted by in category: computing

AMD’s chips are immune to the latest vulnerabilities, and Intel is taking a huge performance hit.

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May 20, 2019

Tabletop dryer vacuum-evaporates water out of clothing

Posted by in category: futurism

For apartment-dwellers who don’t like going to laundromats, there are already compact washing machines – but what happens when the washed clothes need to be dried? Well, that’s where the diminutive Morus Zero comes in.


May 20, 2019

The average person in Europe loses two years of their life due to air pollution

Posted by in category: sustainability

It also causes 800,000 premature deaths in Europe every year, with an ‘Iron Curtain’ dividing East and West.

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May 20, 2019

Self-driving electric wheelchairs to be tested at Narita Airport

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

In a bid to help those with limited mobility get to the gate, Tokyo Narita International Airport is set to welcome a number of self-driving wheelchairs to its floors. With the ability to navigate the airport all on their own, the new wheelchairs are hoped to streamline foot traffic in one of Japan’s busiest airports and form part of a wider plan to boost mobility options at such facilities.

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