December 2019 show notes
For more about me, see: https://ralphbond.wixsite.com/aboutme
Story 1: Why scientists are so excited about quantum supremacy
Source: Vox, via MSN News Story by Brian Resnick
Link: https://a.msn.com/r/2/AAJmUf5?m=en-us&ocid=News
- WARNING: this story is extremely geeky!
- Scientists at Google this month declared they’d done something extraordinary
- They build a quantum computer that solved an incredibly hard problem in 200 seconds — a problem the world’s fastest supercomputer would take 10,000 years to solve.
- This achievement demonstrated “quantum supremacy.”
- That is: Google’s quantum computer did something that no conventional computer could reasonably do.
- What is a quantum computer?
- Traditional computers utilize the flow of electricity and can be turned on or off at switches inside circuits. Whether a switch is on or off generates the ones and zeros that underlie all computer code.
- Quantum computers, on the other hand, are not built upon using the flow of electricity. They rely instead on the physical properties of electrons, photons, and other tiny bits of matter that are subject to the laws of quantum mechanics.
- In a normal computer, a bit can be in two states — on or off. Zero or one. But a qubit — a.k.a. a quantum bit — can be in many states at once. That means a single qubit can contain exponentially more information than a normal bit.
Story 2: Tesla launches third generation of Solar Roof tiles for home use
Source: Yahoo News AFP Relax News release
Link: https://news.yahoo.com/tesla-launches-third-version-solar-roof-tiles-home-111216520.html
- Late last month, Tesla launched its latest line of solar roofing, which is allegedly three times sturdier than traditional shingles.
- These dark, tempered glass tiles, which company CEO Elon Musk refers to as “solarglass” tiles, have been designed to resemble traditional roofing while supplying homeowners with the energy benefits of solar panels.
- Though only one type of solar tech-equipped shingle is available as of now, the company has plans to offer more styles in the future — possibly every six to nine months — including those that look like clay or other materials.
- Based on the estimate pricing outlined on the Tesla website, outfitting a 2,000-square-foot roof with the Solar Roof tiles will cost approximately $42,500 before federal tax incentives, a cost comparable to that of installing traditional shingles.
Story 3: Engineers develop a new way to remove carbon dioxide from air: The process could work on the gas at any concentrations, from power plant emissions to open air
Source: Science Daily
Link: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191025170815.htm
- The big brains at MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] have come up with a breakthrough way to remove carbon dioxide from a stream of air
- For example, the new technology could remove carbon dioxide in a power plant where exhaust gas is being produced continuously.
- How it works:
- It’s based on passing air through a stack of charged electrochemical plates
- The device is essentially a large, specialized battery that absorbs carbon dioxide from the air (or other gas stream) passing over its electrodes as it is being charged up
- The new technology allows capture of carbon dioxide from any concentration, including 400 parts per million
- This is an elegant solution – there’s no need for thermal, pressure, or chemical input. It’s just these very thin electrochemical sheets, with both surfaces active, that can be stacked in a box and connected to a source of electricity.
Story 4: Oral-B’s new $220 “Genius X” toothbrush has Artificial Intelligence to tell you when you’re brushing poorly
Source: The Verge Story by Jay Peters
- My note: Great luxury holiday gift for the dental hygiene challenged super geek in your life!
- The new toothbrush uses Bluetooth wireless tech to communicate with a smartphone app.
- When you start brushing, the app will show a timer of how long you’ve been brushing and guide you to where should brush next.
- The toothbrush uses sensors to know when you’re applying too much pressure or not brushing long enough in a certain spot, and then sends data from the sensors to the smartphone app.
- The app takes this sensor data and uses the “Genius X Artificial Intelligence algorithm” to tell you where you need to brush better and give you a rating on how well you brushed.
- Oral-B launched its Genius line of toothbrushes in 2016, but earlier models needed to use your smartphone’s camera to follow your brushing.
Story 5: Meet Mr. Christmas: You can buy an Alexa-enabled holiday tree for $300
Source: USA Today Story by Dalvin Brown
- For this holiday season, Amazon now offers a smart tree they named “Mr. Christmas”
- It’s an Alexa-enabled, voice-activated pre-lit tree designed to mimic a traditional Douglas fir.
- You can schedule the tree to turn on or off at the same time each day — or select the color of the lights using your voice.
- The 7-foot-tall, artificial tree includes red, green, yellow and blue color displays as well as more extravagant lighting effects like fading, twinkling and sparkling.
- Setting up the artificial tree is easy, Amazon says. You just slide the tree sections together using the built-in power pole.
- Once it’s plugged in, you can use your voice to get started.
Story 6: Holiday Photo Alert – If you have an iPhone but use a Windows 10 PC to edit images, you need to know about the HEIC format dilemma
Source: My personal experience
Link:
- Just before Thanksgiving my iPhone was updated to the latest Apple operating system.
- At Thanksgiving I took a bunch of photos with my phone and imported them to my Windows PC
- When I went to edit my photos my Windows PC said I needed a “codec” to see the images!
- Codec is GEEK SPEAK for coder-decoder.
- A Codec compresses data to enable faster transmission and then decompresses the received data.
- The most popular image codec is JPEG
- I discovered that all my iPhone photos were now being saved on my phone in the HEIC format, not the universal JPEG format.
- Okay, what the heck is HEIC, and why the change?
- HEIC stands for High Efficiency Image Coding
- Why did Apple make the change? The HEIC format takes less space than JPEG images – so you can store more photos on you iPhone.
- If you run into this problem with your Windows PC, you’ll need to covert the HEIC images to JPEG.
- Search online for HEIC to JPEG online cloud-based or PC-based converters.
- I used a free version of the NCH utility I downloaded to my PC.
- KEY Tip: you can have your iPhone go back to the universal JPEG format. Here’s how:
- Go to your Settings
- Scroll down to “camera”
- Then click “formats”
- Then switch from “high efficiency” to “most compatible”
Story 7: The Air Force Wants to Beam Solar Power from Space Back to Earth
Source: Popular Mechanics Story by Kyle Mizokami
Link: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a29687992/air-force-solar-power-space/
- In today’s war zones, remote outposts are often serviced by fuel convoys.
- The challenge – reduce the number of convoys exposing troops to danger
- The solution: Collect solar power in space and beam it down to military outposts to cover a host of energy needs.
- The Air Force is partnering with defense contractor Northrop Grumman to make it happen.
- By the way, the most efficient place to collect solar power is in space.
- As the Earth’s atmosphere reflects about 30 percent of the sun’s energy back into space.
- Properly positioned, solar power satellites could also be fully exposed to the sun, generating optimal levels of electricity.
- Okay, so How to get the energy from space to the earth surface: The Air Force wants to investigate converting electricity in space into a medium that can be transmitted wirelessly to earth.
- The “medium” solution is radio frequencies.
- The satellites would be paired with receiving stations on the ground that could intercept those radio signals, reconvert them to electricity, and put them to use.
- The system would be powered by a satellite with solar panels twice as big as a football field.
Story 8: MIT and Ford help delivery robots navigate to your doorstep
Source: Engadget Story by Christine Fisher
See video here: https://youtu.be/yVlnbqEFct0
- In order for autonomous delivery robots to drop a package at your doorstep, they’ll need to be able to find the door.
- It’s one thing to just find the address, and another to find your way up to the door front.
- In most cases, that requires highly detailed mapping of a location in advance so that the robot knows exactly where to go.
- But to do that on a large scale is challenging and raises security and privacy concerns.
- Now, a team of engineers from MIT and Ford Motor Company think they might have an answer.
- They’ve created a technique that allows robots to navigate via clues, rather than maps.
- The clues can be described in general terms, like “front door” or “garage.”
- As MIT explains, the robot might be trained to know that a driveway often leads to a sidewalk — which likely leads to the front door.
- The technique uses pre-existing algorithms that look at visual data — and then labels the scene with semantic clues, like “sidewalk.”
- What’s new about their approach is that they allowed the robot to make location-based decisions and determine the most efficient path to a destination.
Story 9: Artificial skin creates first ticklish devices
Source: ScienceDaily
Link https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191020084939.htm
- A new interface developed by researchers at the University of Bristol in partnership with Telecomm ParisTech and Sorbonne University takes touch technology to the next level
- They have created an artificial skin-like membrane to make interactive covers and cases for smartphones, tablets, wearables and computers.
- The so-called Skin-On interface mimics human skin in appearance but also in sensing resolution. Creepy!!!
- The researchers adopted a bio-driven approach to develop a multi-layer, silicone membrane that mimics the layers present in human skin.
- This is made up of a surface textured layer, an electrode layer of conductive threads and a hypodermis layer.
- The key point: the new Skin-On cases can detect a host of gestures made by the end-users.
- As a result, the artificial skin allows devices to ‘feel’ the user’s grasp – to detect interactions such as tickling, caressing, even twisting and pinching
- Why this matters: This is the first research that looks at exploiting realistic artificial skin as a new input method for augmenting devices
Story 10: MIT has a robotic mini-cheetah that can do backflips.
Source: Digital Trends
Link: https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/mit-mini-cheetah-backflip/
- MIT researchers have developed a “Mini Cheetah” robot that’s capable of pulling off some dazzling athletic maneuvers.
- According to its creators, the 20-pound cat-like robot can trot over uneven terrain at speeds around twice as fast as an average person’s walking speed.
- In addition to its backflipping, it can also scoot sideways and backward, rotate its body while moving, hop around, and even prance about in leaves like a cute little over-excited puppy.
- Also, the cheetah-bot can cope handily with being kicked and pushed over.
- When it does get knocked over it’s capable of climbing easily back to its feet.
- That’s a crucial skill if a robot like this would be used for real-world applications such as carrying out inspection tasks, surveillance, or rescue missions.
Story 11: Here’s John Deere’s Cropdusting Drone
Source: Popular Mechanics Story by Caroline Delbert
Link: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a29728347/john-deere-volocopter/
- Volocopter, a drone startup, has partnered with John Deere to announce a cropdusting drone they plan to produce.
- Picture a jumbo drone with a big wheel-like top frame with 18 rotor blades
- Volocopter’s base VoloDrone will be customized with an agricultural trim package to allow more controlled spread of farming chemicals – with potential for less waste
- Volocopter says the electric, remote-controlled craft can carry more than 400 pounds of farming chemicals for about 30 minutes.
- Each drone can be programmed to follow a set path, which saves time and money over manual control. ***My guess – GPS controlled
- No price or availability date stated in the article, or on the company’s website.
Story 12: Teen’s research suggests spinning wing parts might boost aircraft safety
Source: Science News for Students Story by Sid Perkins
- The problem: how to prevent some aircraft stalls and spins.
- Such instabilities underlie one in every 10 small-plane accidents in the United States
- Rylan Gardner, a 14-year-old who lives in Mesa, Ariz., where he attends 9th grade at Franklin Junior High School, has designed a innovative solution as part of a science fair project.
- First some aerodynamic basics to set the stage:
- Air speeds up as it flows over the upper surface of an aircraft’s wing.
- That faster flow lowers the air pressure.
- It’s that pressure difference between the upper and lower surfaces of a wing that generates the lift that keeps an aircraft aloft.
- But there’s another way to generate lift. This alternative is known as the Magnus effect. It develops when air flows past a rotating sphere or cylinder.
- What he did is put a spinning cylinder on the wing’s leading edge.
- On the side of the sphere or cylinder that’s rotating into the wind, the air slows down. Here, air pressure increases.
- On the side where the surface rotates away from the wind, air speeds up. There, air pressure drops.
- The difference in pressure between the two sides creates a push against the cylinder or sphere. This generates lift.
Story 13: Researchers develop AI system with near-perfect seizure prediction
Source: Engadget Story by Devindra Hardawar
Link: https://www.engadget.com/2019/11/15/ai-seizure-prediction-epilepsy/?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000618
- A pair of researchers at teh University of Louisiana at Lafayette have created an AI system that can predict epileptic seizures with 99.6-percent accuracy.
- Even better, it can do so up to an hour before they occur.
- That gives people enough time to prepare for the attack by taking medication.
- Around 50 million people around the world currently have epilepsy, according to the World Health Organization, and 70 percent of those patients can control their seizures with medication.
- Currently, other methods analyze brain activity with an EEG (electroencephalogram) test and apply a predictive model afterwards.
- The new method does both of those things at once, with the help of a deep learning AI algorithm that maps brain activity and another that can predict the electrical channels lighting up during a seizure.
- It’ll still be some time before this technique will be available for widespread use — the team is now working on a custom chip that can help process the necessary algorithms — but it could be life-changing news for patients with epilepsy.
Story 14: Inventor breaks record zooming at 85 mph in jet-powered suit
Source: CNET Story by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper
Link: https://www.cnet.com/news/british-inventor-breaks-record-zooming-at-85-mph-in-jet-powered-suit/
- Iron Man lives! British inventor Richard Browning smashed his own world record Thursday for fastest speed in a body-controlled, jet-engine-powered, wind-guided suit, traveling at 85.06 mph (136.891 kph) over England’s Brighton Pier.
- Browning is the founder of Gravity Industries, which makes the suits.
- He set the previous world record at 32.02 mph (51.53 kph).
- He said the suit has changed completely since he set the last record, and that it now is “entirely 3D-printed, lighter, stronger and much smarter,” and that it gives the flyer the ability to fine-tune the power level mid-flight.
- “That’s just the beginning,” he said. “We can go way faster.”
- He has visions of suits flying at 150-180 mph, but says “we’re going to do that in steady, sensible kind of steps. 85’s pretty good for now.”
Story 15: Japanese students can send a robot to class when they’re sick
Source: UK’s Daily Mail
- A school district 60 miles north of Tokyo has begun a pilot program that will allow sick school children send a robot to the classroom in their place.
- The robot model is called Ori Hime, and is developed by Ory Laboratory.
- The Ori Hime robot is a small bust-sized robot designed to be placed on a countertop or desk.
- It has two flap-like arms and a camera mounted in its head, all of which can be remotely controlled via a touchscreen tablet interface.
- Since the end of October, sick students have each been assigned their own Ori Hime stand in, which is placed on their desk, giving them a live feed of the classroom through the head-mounted camera.
- Remote students will be able to speak into a microphone and the robot will broadcast their voice through built-in speakers.
- Students will also be able to rotate the robot’s head to look at different areas of the classroom, as well as command it to perform simple emotive gestures like waving, pointing, and clapping.