BMW is promising a series of new all-electric cars starting next with the first all-electric Mini, but the most anticipated one is the 2021 iNext electric vehicle, which the German automaker has been positioning as a Tesla Model 3 competitor.
They are now hinting at a major range increase for the upcoming vehicle.
You know that warning on your car’s side view mirror that says “objects may be closer than they appear”? You won’t see that on this new Mitsubishi prototype. You won’t even see mirrors on it.
That’s because Mitsubishi has ditched the mirrors and replaced them with cameras: one each on the driver’s and passengers side and another to handle rear-view duties. There’s more to the system than just cameras, of course.
As is the case with almost everything tech-related in the news these days, Mitsubishi’s mirrorless system will utilize an advanced AI to help keep drivers safe. The cameras can detect objects as far away as 100 meters, and the AI can distinguish between pedestrians and vehicles — and even figure out what kind of vehicle is approaching.
Continue reading “Mitsubishi Will Sell Cars With No Mirrors Next Year” »
A new analysis of global science and engineering competence shows that the United States is struggling to fight off an increasingly competitive China.
The numbers: According to the National Science Foundation, China published over 426,000 research papers in 2016. America pumped out almost 409,000. If you consider the number of citations for those papers, a measure of the influence they have in the scientific community, America does better—it placed third internationally, while China comes in fifth (Sweden and Switzerland took the top spots).
Strengths elsewhere: The report does, however, note that America invests the most in R&D, attracts the most venture capital, and awards the most advanced degrees compared with every other nation in the world.
Continue reading “China publishes more scientific articles than the U.S.” »
A joint China-Austria team has performed quantum key distribution between the quantum-science satellite Micius and multiple ground stations located in Xinglong (near Beijing), Nanshan (near Urumqi), and Graz (near Vienna). Such experiments demonstrate the secure satellite-to-ground exchange of cryptographic keys during the passage of the satellite Micius over a ground station. Using Micius as a trusted relay, a secret key was created between China and Europe at locations separated up to 7,600 km on the Earth.
Private and secure communications are fundamental for Internet use and e-commerce, and it is important to establish a secure network with global protection of data. Traditional public key cryptography usually relies on the computational intractability of certain mathematical functions. In contrast, quantum key distribution (QKD) uses individual light quanta (single photons) in quantum superposition states to guarantee unconditional security between distant parties. Previously, the quantum communication distance has been limited to a few hundred kilometers due to optical channel losses of fibers or terrestrial free space. A promising solution to this problem exploits satellite and space-based links, which can conveniently connect two remote points on the Earth with greatly reduced channel loss, as most of the photons’ propagation path is through empty space with negligible loss and decoherence.
A cross-disciplinary multi-institutional team of scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led by Professor Jian-Wei Pan, has spent more than 10 years developing a sophisticated satellite, Micius, dedicated to quantum science experiments, which was launched on August 2016 and orbits at an altitude of ~500 km. Five ground stations in China coordinate with the Micius satellite. These are located in Xinglong (near Beijing), Nanshan (near Urumqi), Delingha (37°22’44.43’‘N, 97°43’37.01” E), Lijiang (26°41’38.15’‘N, 100°1’45.55’‘E), and Ngari in Tibet (32°19’30.07’‘N, 80°1’34.18’‘E).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJp55EFbSlc
Website ► http://sens.org
YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/user/SENSFVideo
Facebook ► https://www.facebook.com/sensf
Twitter ► https://twitter.com/senstweet
SENS Research Foundation is a 501©(3) public charity that is transforming the way the world researches and treats age-related disease.
In a scientific first, researchers have turned skin cells from mice into stem cells by activating a specific gene in the cells using CRISPR technology. The innovative approach offers a potentially simpler technique to produce the valuable cell type and provides important insights into the cellular r…
A new model can detect abnormalities in x-rays better than radiologists—in some parts of the body, anyway.
The results: Stanford researchers trained a convolutional neural network on a data set of 40,895 images from 14,982 studies. The paper documents how the algorithm detected abnormalities (like fractures, or bone degeneration) better than radiologists in finger and wrist radiographs. However, radiologists were still better at spotting issues in elbows, forearms, hands, upper arms, and shoulders.
The background: Radiologists keep getting put up against AI, and they usually don’t fare even as well as this. Geoffrey Hinton, a prominent AI researcher, told the New Yorker that advances in AI mean that medical schools “should stop training radiologists now.”
Continue reading “AI is continuing its assault on radiologists” »
Treating the diseases of ageing requires rethinking of our approach to treating disease. Rather than a “whack-a-mole” strategy going after individual conditions, a concerted medical effort against ageing as a whole is in order.
Aging is something that we all share, rich or poor; it is something that happens to us all, and we are taught from a young age that it is inevitable. However, some scientists believe that aging is amenable to medical intervention and that such interventions could be the solution to preventing or reversing age-related diseases.
Academics are currently debating whether aging is natural or a pathological disease that we can treat.
Continue reading “Is aging natural or a pathological disease that we can treat?” »
That failure, and another one last year involving another type of Long March rocket, slowed China’s space efforts. Officials had hoped to launch around 30 rockets of one type or another in 2017 but only managed 18 (there were 29 launches in America and another 20 of Russian ones—see chart). But they promise to bounce back in 2018, with 40-or-so lift-offs planned this year. These will probably include a third outing for the Long March 5—assuming its flaws can be fixed in time—and missions that will greatly expand the number of satellites serving BeiDou, China’s home-grown satellite navigation system.
NATTY yellow carts whizz tourists around Wenchang space port, a sprawling launch site on the tropical island of Hainan. The brisk tour passes beneath an enormous poster of Xi Jinping, China’s president, then disgorges passengers for photographs not far from a skeletal launch tower. Back at the visitor centre there is a small exhibition featuring space suits, a model moon-rover and the charred husk of a re-entry capsule that brought Chinese astronauts back from orbit. A gift shop at the exit sells plastic rockets, branded bottle openers and cuddly alien mascots.
The base in a township of Wenchang city is the newest of China’s four space-launch facilities. It is also by far the easiest to visit—thanks in part to the enthusiasm of officials in Hainan, a haven for tourists and rich retirees. Wenchang’s local government has adopted a logo for the city reminiscent of Starfleet badges in “Star Trek”. It is building a space-themed tourist village near the launch site, with attractions that include a field of vegetables grown from seeds that have been carried in spaceships.
