Story 1: Intel is planning to build a huge research lab in Hillsboro, Oregon to help make data centers more environmentally friendly
Source: Oregonian Newspaper Story by Mike Rogoway
Link: https://enewspo.oregonlive.com/
Additional source: Intel Newsroom
Link: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/key-investments advance-data-center-sustainability.html
• Late last week Intel announced plans to build a $700 million, 200,000 square foot research center at its Jones Farm campus in Hillsboro, Oregon.
• The new lab will conduct research aimed at ways to make data centers operate more efficiently, primarily by reducing their heating, cooling, and water needs.
• A data center refers to a large group of networked computer servers typically used for the remote storage, processing, or distribution of large amounts of data.
• Data centers use about 4% of the world’s energy, and more than a third of that energy is used just to cool the high-performance computers with energy hungry conventional air chillers.
• Intel’s new research facility will test a design for “immersion liquid cooling”, which submerges computers into a liquid that doesn’t conduct electricity, but absorbs heat generated by a data center’s computers.
• Intel’s data center immersion liquid cooling solution [which has the potential to reduce a data center’s carbon footprint by nearly half] will be offered to the world as the industry’s first open, easy-to-deploy and easily scalable total cooling solution for data centers.
Story 2: Scientists now say gravity signals could detect giant earthquakes at the speed of light
Source: Science.org Story by Zach Savitsky
Link: https://www.science.org/content/article/gravity-signals-could-detect-earthquakes speed-light
• First, we need to set the stage for this news:
• Today devices called seismometers are used to detect earthquakes by monitoring ground vibrations called seismic waves.
• The amount of advance warning seismometers can provide depends on the distance between the earthquake and the seismometers, and the speed of the seismic waves, which travel less than 6 kilometers per second.
• On the positive side, current seismometer networks can provide seconds or even minutes of advance warning.
• But here’s the problem — Seismometers work well for relatively small earthquakes, but beyond magnitude 7, an earthquake’s ground vibration waves can saturate or overwhelm seismometers.
• Recently a team of European and US researchers announced they have found a new alternative solution for detecting big earthquakes beyond magnitude 7 that measures gravitational waves instead of ground vibrations.
• And this new technology more accurately detects earthquake size estimates faster, by using computer algorithms to identify the wake from gravitational waves that shoot from a fault at the speed of light.
• Earthquakes result in large shifts in mass, and those shifts give off gravitational effects that deform both existing gravitational fields and the ground beneath seismometers.
• By measuring the difference between the existing gravitational fields and the ground beneath seismometers the researchers realized they could create an entirely new kind of earthquake early warning system.
• Reality Check:
o But the technology isn’t operational yet, as it first needs to be tested on a giant earthquake in real time.
o To accomplish this, the new detection technology model is being deployed in Japan to monitor a specific fault zone with a history of generating major earthquakes.
Source: Newsweek Story by Michael Leidig for Zenger News
Link: https://www.newsweek.com/tiny-bots-could-deep-clean-teeth-say-experts 1708384
• Scientists at the Indian Institute of Science and a startup called Theranautilus have developed microscopically small robots measured in nanometers than can be guided using a magnetic field to help kill bacteria deep inside teeth.
o And remember a nanometer is one billionth of a meter! So, these robots are super tiny!
• One goal for these microscopic robots is to help ensure the success of root canal treatments.
• Root canal treatments involve removing the infected soft tissue inside the tooth, called the pulp, and flushing the tooth with antibiotics or chemicals to kill the bacteria that cause infection.
• But the challenge is getting to bacteria in the Dentin tubules, which are very small, hollow microscopic channels that travel from the inside of the tooth (where the pulp is) out through the dentin, ending right beneath the enamel.
• Current anti-bacterial treatments can’t go all the way inside the dentin tubules to find and kill the bacteria.
• To reach within the dentin tubules the researchers designed helical [meaning spiral shaped] nanobots made of silicon dioxide coated with iron, which can be controlled using a device that generates a low-intensity magnetic field.
• These microscopic nanobots can then be injected into dentin tubules and their magnetically guided precise movement is then tracked using a microscope.
• This new nano bot technology will soon enter clinical trials.
Story 4: NASA recently previewed plans to send two astronauts to the surface of Mars
Source: Futurism.com Story by Victor Tangermann
Link: https://futurism.com/nasa-plans-crewed-mission-mars
• Recently Kurt Vogel, NASA’s director of space architectures, previewed what a future 30-day manned mission to the surface of Mars could eventually look like.
• While many years if not decades away NASA’s vision calls for a habitat spacecraft to make the months long journey to Mars.
• Once in orbit above Mars, two crew members would remain in orbit while two astronauts would be deployed to the surface of Mars.
• Once on the surface of Mars, the two astronauts would have access to supplies sent to the surface beforehand via a 25-ton Mars lander.
• The 25-ton Mars lander would also provide surface power and mobility, as well as a crew ascent vehicle to return the astronauts back into orbit later.
• To spend up to an Earth month on the desolate Martian surface, NASA’s Vogel suggests the two crew members could live inside a large, pressurized mobile rover that would provide habitation and allow them to complete scientific objectives as well.