– Full steam ahead: China plans floating nuclear power plants by 2020
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The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. – Benjamin Franklin
– Meet The “Bionic Barrista” Whose Mission Is To Terminate Millions Of Minimum Wage Jobs:
Tired of your barista giving you attitude, spitting in your coffee if you only mention Trump, or misspelling your name on your morning cup of joe? Surely a robot could do better. Well, we are about to find out, because on Monday, Cafe X opened its very first robotic cafe in San Francisco’s Metreon shopping center Digital Trends reports. Promising “precision crafted specialty coffee in seconds, the way the roaster intended,” Cafe X thinks that anything a human can do, its machines can do better. Or rather just one machine.
Nicknamed Gordon, after a Cafe X employee, this robot mans, or robots, two standard professional coffee machines in order to serve up espressos and lattes. In the San Francisco location, customers can grab a cup of coffee with beans from AKA Coffee, Verve Coffee Roasters, or Peet’s. While the coffee itself may not make Cafe X stand out from the competition, the startup hopes that the robot’s efficiency and utility will.
– Sodium-ion full battery’s energy density approaches that of lithium-ion batteries:
(TechXplore)—Most of the sodium-ion batteries that have been developed so far have been half-cell batteries, meaning that the anode is made of a standard sodium metal. However, this standard sodium metal becomes highly active when exposed to oxygen or moisture, creating a safety hazard. For this reason, researchers have been exploring sodium-ion batteries in a full cell format, in which the anode is made of an alternative material.
In a new study, researchers have designed and fabricated a sodium-ion full-cell battery that uses sodium titanium oxide nanotubes as the anode material. In addition to greatly reducing the safety risks compared to sodium-ion half-cell batteries, the new battery can store nearly the same amount of energy in a given volume as today’s state-of-the-art lithium-ion batteries. Although the new battery’s energy density (220 Wh/kg by itself, or an estimated 130 Wh/kg when fully assembled) is not as high as that of the best sodium-ion half-cells, it is the highest achieved so far for sodium-ion full-cell batteries. A high energy density ultimately translates to longer battery lifetimes and—when used in electric vehicles—longer driving ranges.
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– Lab-Made ‘Metallic Hydrogen’ Could Revolutionize Rocket Fuel:
Metallic hydrogen, a bizarre form of the element that conducts electricity even at low temperatures, has finally been made in the lab, 80 years after physicists predicted its existence.
Scientists managed to create the elusive, electrically conductive hydrogen by squeezing it to incredibly high pressures between two ultrapure diamonds, the researchers reported in a new study.
“No one has ever encountered metallic hydrogen because it’s never existed on Earth before,” Isaac Silvera, a condensed matter physicist at Harvard University, told Live Science. “Probably the conditions in the universe are such that it has never existed in the universe.”
Read moreLab-Made ‘Metallic Hydrogen’ Could Revolutionize Rocket Fuel
A six-year-old girl from Dallas, Texas, became one happy little lady recently after her family’s Amazon Echo, an always-listening speaker device that’s gradually being implemented into thousands of consumer electronic products, responded to a simple voice command she made and ordered her both a tin of shortbread cookies and a large dollhouse — both of which were automatically delivered to the family’s home without so much as the click of a mouse or the press of a touchpad.
Reports indicate that Brooke Neitzel simply spoke to “Alexa,” the Ai-like, voice-command response system built into the Amazon Echo, about her desire for a dollhouse when the machine went ahead and processed an order through the Amazon portal for the products without her family’s permission. Within days, both the dollhouse and the cookies that Brooke casually mentioned out loud to Alexa were sitting on the family’s doorstep, much to the surprise of her parents.
“Alexa ordered me a dollhouse and cookies,” young Brooke gleefully told CBS 11 news when the incident was first reported, prompting other little girls who saw it to do the same exact thing. Within days, many children throughout the country had ordered their own dollhouses through Alexa, revealing not only the exceptional ease with which this increasingly popular tech device can purchase products without people’s permission, but also how clearly and constantly it listens to what people are saying around it.
– Cost of electricity from offshore windfarms drops by a third in just four years:
‘The first time we can really say we expect offshore wind to be in the next decade on the same sort of cost structure as other power generators’
The cost of electricity produced by offshore wind turbines has fallen by a third in just four years, according to a new report.
The analysis, by Dong Energy and other firms, found that the average cost during 2015/16 was £97 per megawatt hour (mwh), according to the Financial Times.
In 2012, the industry was asked by the UK Government to reduce prices to £100 per mwh within eight years, but the target has been reached in about half that time.
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https://youtu.be/I3DmwyfGRDs
H/t reader kevin a.
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Sources & Credits:
10. Hüttlin-Kugelmotor-Hybrid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhrMB…
9. V8 Paper Model Engine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf3jn…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiSNm…
8. Free Piston Engine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4b0_…
– It Costs Less Than $600 To Build Your Own Mobile Phone Network:
Sometimes, owning a smartphone feels pricey. There’s the hefty chunk of change you’ll need to spend on the phone itself, and then the monthly fee you’ll need to fork over to operate it. But for just $US400 ($530) and the cost of a few old Zack Morris-style brick phones, you can avoid those expenses and build your own damn 1G mobile phone network.
Hackaday first pointed us to the DIY 1G project this past weekend at Shmoocon, a Washington, DC-based hacker convention. The scheme is the brainchild of Brandon Creighton, who previously helped build a small GSM-based phone network at DEF CON, an annual hacker conference in Las Vegas. But unlike GSM — which is currently used as the standard for phone networks in Australia — his 1G phone network is a tad less sophisticated.
Read moreIt Costs Less Than $600 To Build Your Own Mobile Phone Network
– Driverless Shuttles Hit Las Vegas: No Steering Wheels, No Brake Pedals:
Electric, driverless shuttles with no steering wheel and no brake pedal are now operating in Las Vegas.
There’s a new thrill on the streets of downtown Las Vegas, where high- and low-rollers alike are climbing aboard what officials call the first driverless electric shuttle operating on a public U.S. street.
Read moreDriverless Shuttles Hit Las Vegas: No Steering Wheels, No Brake Pedals
They’re known for their timidity and love of cheese, but scientists have tapped into the ‘killer instinct’ of mice, to turn them into aggressive ‘zombies’.
Researchers isolated the brain circuitry in mice that coordinates predatory hunting, including one set of neurons in the amygdala – the brain’s centre of emotion and motivation, making the animal pursue prey.
They also ‘switched on’ another set in the brain region signalling the animal to use its jaw and neck muscles to bite anything in its path – a little like a fictional zombie
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– Liquid metal 3-D printing could revolutionize how things are made:
A father and son team in the START-UP NY program have invented a liquid metal printing machine that could represent a significant transformation in manufacturing. A breakthrough idea five years ago by former University at Buffalo student Zack Vader, then 19, has created a machine that prints three-dimensional objects using liquid metal.
Vader Systems is innovating and building the machines in a factory in the CrossPoint Business Park in Getzville. Zack’s father Scott, a mechanical engineer, is the CEO. Zack is the chief technology officer. His mother, Pat Roche, is controller.
Read moreLiquid metal 3-D printing could revolutionize how things are made
It all sounds so futuristic and exciting, this concept of driverless cars, but the reality is, our society may not be nearly as ready for it as other people in other lands may be. That’s because if there is one thing Americans are infatuated with, it is the automobile.
And yet, the technology is here and it is getting better every year. So we may have little choice about whether or not we want our vehicle to do the driving for us in the near future.
Indeed, the technology has even advanced to the point where media and technology giant Google has given them a “greenlight” for business, The New York Times reported recently.
https://youtu.be/dg_RxE-T_jk
H/t reader kevin a.
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– Germany Sees 4 Catastrophic Wind Turbine Failures In Four Weeks …Man Nearly Hit By Ice Projectile:
A few of days ago I reported on a spate of wind turbine collapses occuring in Germany and Europe. Well the folly appears to be continuing as the online German Tageblatt here reports how yet another has come crashing down, with a passerby witnessing it live.
The fourth collapse in four weeks!
German news site NTV here writes:
South of Hamburg an approximately 100-meter tall wind turbine collapsed. The turbine in Neu Wulmstorf fell during the morning, a police spokesman said. A passerby observed the incident and called the fire department.”
The NTV reports it’s still unknown why the bolted connection 20 meters high came apart at around 11 a.m, but was probably due to brisk winds at the time.
– Swiss watchmakers try out 3D printing that could cut costs, and allow making of bespoke watches:
Watchmakers have so far used 3D printing only to prototype parts, and their customers may baulk at loss of handmade tradition. Swiss chocolatiers look like beating them to market with a 3D product – instant chocolates
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– Swiss Watchmakers Use 3D Printing to Cut Costs of Bespoke Watches
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