The WARR Hyperloop team, from the Technical University of Munich, claimed the top prize by sending its vehicle through the nearly airless tube at a top speed of 327 kilometers per hour. That was more than triple the speed runner-up Paradigm Hyperloop, a Canadian-U.S. team that attained 102 kph in the lengthy tube.
Say hello to Temi. Wired reports that this sleek, 3-foot robot with a tablet for a face is essentially a kind of travelling AI butler for your home—a Siri or Alexa, only on wheels. It will come rolling when you holler. It can use facial recognition to follow people around, so they can watch TV or Skype as they stroll. And it taps Google’s artificial intelligence to help answer your questions. A run of 1,000 robots will be made available November by its maker, Roboteam, and it’s planned to cost under $1,500 when it launches widely next year. But, as we’ve argued in the past, these kinds of domestic robots are more a source of entertainment than much practical use, and are certainly not the kinds of practical machines that may one day be able to take over some of your household chores. For now, you might be better off carrying your phone around the home—especially if you have stairs.
The Colorado School of Mines is no longer concerned with just earthly matters.
The world-renowned science and engineering institution in Golden is now eyeing asteroids, the moon, Mars and beyond to explore, extract, process and use the raw materials they provide to help sustain life in space.
Mines hopes to launch a first-of-its kind interdisciplinary graduate program in space resources in 2018, pending approval by school leaders. The first course, Space Resources Fundamentals, is being offered as a pilot program this fall.
Continue reading “School of Mines hopes to launch first-ever space mining program” »
Nigerian Oshi Agabi has unveiled a computer based not on silicon but on mice neurons at the TEDGlobal conference in Tanzania.
The system has been trained to recognise the smell of explosives and could be used to replace traditional airport security, he said.
Eventually the modem-sized device — dubbed Koniku Kore — could provide the brain for future robots.
TOKYO — A joint venture between Japanese and American high-technology power houses Hitachi and General Electric is developing special robots for removing nuclear debris from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the most difficult task in decommissioning the plant’s six reactors, three of which suffered core meltdowns in the March 2011 accident.
The machines under development by Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy are called “muscle robots,” as their hydraulic springs operate like human muscles. The company, based in Hitachi, Ibaraki Prefecture, is stepping up efforts to complete the development project in time for the start of debris removal in 2021.
Hitachi-GE is testing the arms of the robots at a plant of Chugai Technos, a Hiroshima-based engineering service company, located a 30-minute drive from the center of the city. The testing is taking place in a structure with a life-size model of the primary containment vessel of the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima plant. The robots awkwardly move about, picking up concrete lumps standing in for fuel debris.
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LEATHERMAKING is an ancient craft. The oldest leather artefact found so far is a 5,500-year-old shoe from a cave in Armenia, but paintings in Egyptian tombs show that, 7,000 years ago, leather was being turned into all manner of things, from sandals to buckets to military equipment. It is a fair bet that the use of animal skins for shelter and clothing goes back hundreds of thousands of years at least.
Leathermaking is also, though, a nasty business. In 18th-century London the soaking of putrefying hides in urine and lime, to loosen any remaining flesh and hair, and the subsequent pounding of dog faeces into those skins to soften and preserve them, caused such a stench that the business was outlawed from the City proper and forced downwind and across the river into Bermondsey. In countries such as India and Japan, the trade tainted people as well as places and was (and often still remains) the preserve of social outcasts such as Dalits and Burakumin.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, 66, a retired Marine four-star general, in impromptu remarks to troops abroad, in a Facebook video:
It’s good to see you all out here, young men and women. For those of you that I haven’t met, my name’s Mattis. I work at the Department of Defense, obviously… And thank you for being out here, OK? I know at times you wonder if anybody knows… The only way this great big experiment you and I call America is going to survive is if we got tough hombres like you…
You’re a great example for our country right now. It’s got a few problems. You know it and I know it. It’s got problems that we don’t have in the military.
Continue reading “Mattis to troops: ‘Hold the line’ until U.S. is less divided” »
