Show Notes 13 December 2024
Story 1: Meet ‘Blackbird’: A flying taxi that spins and moves in any direction thanks to new propulsion system — My add — inspired by the kind of propulsion widely used on tugs and ferries
Source: LiveScience.com Story by Rory Bathgate
See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqDNSV7kqnk
See also: https://www.cyclotech.at/
- A new type of flying car could soon be ferrying passengers through the skies using a novel propulsion technology.
- On Nov. 5, CycloTech, an Austrian company that builds flying car components, unveiled blueprints for its new “BlackBird” demonstrator aircraft — a flying car that uses a custom-made alternative to propellers.
- Dubbed the “CycloRotor,” this all-electric propulsion system is based on the principle of the Voith Schneider propeller — which is frequently used on tugboats and ferries. It’s a circular rotor with small propeller blades inside, which spin around and can be used for both propulsion and steering.
- Side note – The Voith Schneider Propeller is a specialized marine propulsion system manufactured by the Voith Group based on a cyclorotor design. It is highly maneuverable, being able to change the direction of its thrust almost instantaneously.
- By moving the center around which the propeller blades spin, the aircraft can change its airspeed and direction. Each propeller blade can also be angled to produce directional thrust, like the wing of an aircraft, and can be precisely aligned to send the aircraft in specific directions or rotate mid-air.
- The CycloRotors will greatly enhance the BlackBird demonstrator’s maneuverability, enabling it to move or spin in any direction while airborne and also perform sharp corrections to its trajectory with added precision. This can also improve the comfort and safety of passengers on any flight in windy or other inclement weather conditions.
- The Blackbird demonstrator is still in development, but CycloTech released several promotional videos showing the CycloRotor technology being used to levitate and propel scale models.
- Technical Highlights of the BlackBird:
- Six electrically driven 7th generation CycloRotors
- 360-degree maneuverability
- Dimensions: length 4.9 m, width 2.3 m, height 2.0 m
- Maximum take-off weight: 340 kg [that’s about 750 pounds]
- Flight speed: up to 120 km/h [that’s about 75 mph]
- Braking and stopping mid-flight
- Pitch angle in Hover: up to 30°
- Precision landing even in adverse weather conditions
- Landing on inclined surfaces
Story 2: Researchers present the first fully AI-designed wind turbine — it’s 7x more efficient in cities
Source: ZME Science via MSN Story by Mihai Andrei
- Wind energy is a cornerstone of renewable transition. But while scaling wind turbines up has proven effective for large-scale applications, scaling them down for urban environments remains a significant challenge. Wind speeds in cities, often as low as 3–4 meters per second, are about 2–3 times lower than the efficiency sweet spot for conventional turbines. To unlock wind energy’s potential in urban areas, new designs must cater specifically to these lower speeds and turbulent conditions.
- Enter the AI-designed turbine.
- The system takes into consideration the wind conditions of the city where it is meant to be deployed — in this case, Birmingham, UK — and optimizes the design to account for these conditions.
- The new wind turbine, which boasts an unorthodox but efficient design, was developed by a research group at the University of Birmingham. It is also a result of a collaboration with AI design specialists EvoPhase and precision metal fabricators Kwik Fab Ltd. The design involves curved blades spinning around a central point.
- The AI-driven approach proved transformative. It enabled researchers to generate, test, and refine over 2,000 designs in just weeks—an achievement that would have taken way more time and money using traditional methods. The result is a turbine that is up to seven times more efficient than existing designs in Birmingham’s urban environment, according to initial tests.
- The AI-designed wind turbine will now be left in operation in Birmingham to assess real-life performance. Researchers are confident that they can make a wind turbine for every city with ease. The team is already working on a wind turbine tailor-made for the city of Edinburgh in Scotland, which has very different wind conditions to Birmingham.
Story 3: World Labs’ AI can generate interactive 3D scenes from a single photo
Source: TechCrunch Story by Kyle Wiggers
See also: https://www.worldlabs.ai/about
See video demo here: https://www.worldlabs.ai/blog
- Startup World Labs has unveiled its first project: an AI system that can generate video game-like, 3D scenes from a single image.
- Lots of AI systems [such as WonderWorld] can turn a photo into 3D models and environments. But World Labs’ scenes are unique in that they’re interactive — and modifiable.
- World Labs wrote in a blog post “[Our tech] lets you step into any image and explore it in 3D. Beyond the input image, all is generated.”
- The AI-generated scenes, which anyone with a keyboard and mouse can explore in a demo on World Labs’ website, look impressive, if a bit cartoonish. They’re rendered live in the browser and have a controllable camera with an adjustable simulated depth of field. The stronger the depth of field effect, the blurrier background objects appear.
- World Labs’ system is a part of an emerging category of AI called “world models.” Many of these models can simulate games and 3D environments — but with artifacting and consistency issues. For example, startup Decart’s Minecraft-simulating world model, Oasis, has a low resolution and quickly “forgets” the layout of levels.
- In contrast, World Labs’ approach ensures that scenes remain the same once they’re generated and that they obey the basic laws of physics, meaning they have a sense of solidity and depth.
- World Labs’ system can also apply interactive effects and animations to scenes, like changing the color of objects and dynamically lighting backdrops.
- Now, there’s certainly room for improvement. World Labs’ scenes aren’t fully explorable — your movements are limited to a small area. (Try moving outside it, and you’ll hit a boundary.) And there’s the occasional rendering error — for example, objects that blend together in unnatural ways.
- But World Labs says that it’s only an “early preview.”
- Side note, check out this related news…DeepMind, Google’s AI research org, has unveiled a model that can generate an “endless” variety of playable 3D worlds. See: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/deepmind-s-genie-2-can-generate-interactive-worlds-that-look-like-video-games/ar-AA1vgFQw and see: https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/genie-2-a-large-scale-foundation-world-model/
Story 4: 3D-printed hydrogel enables continuous drug delivery via contact lens
Source: MedicalXpress.com Story from University of Waterloo
Link: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-11-3d-hydrogel-enables-drug-delivery.html
See also: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsabm.4c00901
- The next time you need to take a prescription drug, taking it might be as easy as putting on a contact lens, thanks to a new discovery made by University of Waterloo researchers in Ontario, Canada.
- The team of researchers—which spans Waterloo’s Department of Chemistry and its School of Optometry and Vision Science—created a new type of hydrogel that can deliver drugs to patients with various eye issues when 3D printed onto a contact lens.
- The hydrogel, a type of gel that can retain significant volumes of water, is silicone-based and can help control the amount of medication a person would need, continuously delivering it as long as the contact lens is worn.
- Using these hydrogel-loaded contact lenses could help physicians reduce pain and the number of times the patient has to apply the drug, as the medication is delivered during normal contact lens wear.
- Even though silicone can be tricky to 3D print, this new hydrogel is different. It uses a special type of silicone that easily attracts water and is curable with UV light. After curing, the gel is both flexible and durable enough to keep its shape after being stretched and compressed.
- A lead researcher on the University of Waterloo team noted, “Once we knew the hydrogel had good strength and flexibility, we decided to test its ability to hold and release drugs by using amoxicillin, a commonly prescribed antibiotic for ailments related to the eye.”
Honorable Mentions
Story: New Super Stretchy OLED Could Make Cars and Even Clothes More Sci-Fi
Source: CNET Story by Ty Pendlebury
Link: Link: https://www.cnet.com/tech/home-entertainment/lg-display-unveils-super-stretchy-oled-for-auto-and-textiles/
- A new flexible OLED screen can stretch up to 50% and attach to fabric. LG Display, the screen-manufacturing arm of the Korean electronics giant, unveiled the new technology at LG Science Park in Seoul on Nov. 8.
- The 12-inch prototype screen can stretch up to 18 inches and has red, green and blue pixels at a density of 100 pixels per inch. That’s not very high: By comparison, a smart phone typically has between 300 and 500 ppi.
- The company says the new display incorporates contact lens technology as well as a micro-LED light source, which can be repeatedly stretched over 10,000 times, the company said.
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Story: New method uses AI to design artificial proteins
Source: Phys.org Story from Technical University Munich
Link: https://phys.org/news/2024-11-method-ai-artificial-proteins.html#google_vignette
- Protein design aims to create customized antibodies for therapies, biosensors for diagnostics, or enzymes for chemical reactions. An international research team has now developed a method for designing large new proteins better than before and producing them with the desired properties in the laboratory.
- Their approach involves a new way of using the capabilities of the AI-based software Alphafold2, for which the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded in 2024.
- Whether as building blocks, transport systems, enzymes, or antibodies, proteins play a vital role in our bodies. Researchers are, therefore, trying to recreate them or to design so-called de novo proteins that do not occur in nature. Such artificial proteins are designed to bind to certain viruses or transport drugs, for example. Scientists are increasingly using machine learning to design them.
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Story: Whoa, Scientists Made Animal Cells Do Photosynthesis
Source: Popular Science Story by Tim Newcomb
- A first-of-its-kind achievement has implanted photosynthesizing cells in animal cells to make “planimals.”
- This feat could be the first step in crafting lab-grown meat, material for skin grafts, and even artificial human organs.
- The next step—ensuring chloroplasts can survive longer in animal cells.
- We aren’t quite yet to the point of growing all of our meat in a lab—or better yet, entire herds of livestock energized by the sunlight. But that’s the path a new study out of the University of Tokyo—published in Proceedings of the Japan Academy, Series B—wants to send us down. A team of researchers recently incorporated photosynthetically active chloroplasts into cultured animal cells for the first time ever.
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Story: Unique Aussie box-wing eVTOL promises radical efficiency and huge range – powered by hydrogen
Source: NewAtlas.com Story by Loz Blain
Link: https://newatlas.com/aircraft/vertiia-australia-most-efficient-evtol/
See also: https://www.amslaero.com/our-product
- Australian company AMSL Aero is preparing to start flight tests on what it claims will be the world’s most efficient eVTOL design, and one of the most affordable.
- This box-wing beauty, the Vertiia, will travel up to 1,000 km (620 miles) on a tank of hydrogen, carrying five people or 500 kg (1,100 lb) of cargo at a quick cruise speed of 300 km/h (186 mph).
- First emerging from stealth mode late last year, AMSL has a unique design, a prototype nearly ready to fly, and a target date of 2024 to get its aircraft certified and into production.
- Design inspired by Lawrence Hargrave’s box kites. On 12 November 1894 Lawrence Hargrave, Australian inventor, astronomer, explorer and historian, connected four box kites of his own design. Having added a seat, he flew with the kites 16 feet (4.8 meters) off the ground, thus proving to the world that it was possible to build a safe, heavier-than-air flying machine.
- AMSL Aero is now raising another round of funding to finance flight testing and pre-production as it moves toward the certification process.
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