Remember the last post about SpaceX? Well they are at it again!
This time, SpaceX has propelled supplies to International space station on saturday.More so is that they used a verssel that has flown before.
The refurbished Dragon cargo capsule propeled into space annexed to a Falcon 9 rocket at 5:07 pm (2107 GMT) from Cape
Canaveral, Florida.
With a countdown made by NASA spokesman Mike Curie, the rocket blazed a steady vertical path into the clouds.
The last time this particular
spaceship(Dragon) flew to space was in 2014.
The Dragon on present mission is packed with almost
6,000 pounds (2,700 kilograms) of science research, crew supplies and hardware
and should arrive at the Monday(ISS time).
The supplies for special experiments
include live mice to study the effects of osteoporosis and fruit flies for
research on microgravity's impact on the heart.
The spacecraft is also loaded with
solar panels and equipment to study neutron stars.
After about 10 minutes after launch,
SpaceX successfully returned the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket back to a
controlled landing at Cape Canaveral.
The rocket powered its engines and
guided itself down to Landing Zone One, not far from the launch site.
"The first stage is back,"
Curie said in a NASA live webcast, as video images showed the tall, narrow
portion of the rocket touch down steadily in a cloud of smoke.
SpaceX said it marked the company's
fifth successful landing on solid ground. Several of its Falcon 9 rockets have
returned upright to platforms floating in the ocean.
The effort is part of SpaceX's push
to make spaceflight cheaper by re-using costlyrocket
and spaceship components after each launch, rather than ditching them in the
ocean.
The launch was the 100th from NASA's
historic launch pad 39A, the starting point for the Apollo missions to the Moon
in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as a total of 82 shuttle flights.
NASA's Juno spacecraft soared directly over Jupiter's south pole
when JunoCam acquired this image on February 2, 2017 at 6:06 a.m. PT
(9:06 a.m. ET), from an altitude of about 62,800 miles (101,000
kilometers) above the cloud tops. Credit: NASA
NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter, which has
been in orbit around the gas giant since July 4, 2016, will remain in
its current 53-day orbit for the remainder of the mission. This will
allow Juno to accomplish its science goals, while avoiding the risk of a
previously-planned engine firing that would have reduced the
spacecraft's orbital period to 14 days.
"Juno is healthy, its science
instruments are fully operational, and the data and images we've
received are nothing short of amazing," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate
administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
"The decision to forego the burn is the right thing to do—preserving a
valuable asset so that Juno can continue its exciting journey of
discovery."
Juno has successfully orbited Jupiter four times since arriving at
the giant planet, with the most recent orbit completed on Feb. 2. Its
next close flyby of Jupiter will be March 27.
The orbital period does not affect the quality of the science
collected by Juno on each flyby, since the altitude over Jupiter will be
the same at the time of closest approach. In fact, the longer orbit
provides new opportunities that allow further exploration of the far
reaches of space dominated by Jupiter's magnetic field, increasing the
value of Juno's research.
During each orbit, Juno soars low over Jupiter's cloud tops—as close
as about 2,600 miles (4,100 kilometers). During these flybys, Juno
probes beneath the obscuring cloud cover and studies Jupiter's auroras
to learn more about the planet's origins, structure, atmosphere and
magnetosphere.
The original Juno flight plan envisioned the spacecraft looping
around Jupiter twice in 53-day orbits, then reducing its orbital period
to 14 days for the remainder of the mission. However, two helium check
valves that are part of the plumbing for the spacecraft's main engine
did not operate as expected when the propulsion system was pressurized
in October. Telemetry from the spacecraft indicated that it took several
minutes for the valves to open, while it took only a few seconds during
past main engine firings.
"During a thorough review, we looked at multiple scenarios that would
place Juno in a shorter-period orbit, but there was concern that
another main engine burn could result in a less-than-desirable orbit,"
said Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "The bottom line is a burn
represented a risk to completion of Juno's science objectives."
Juno's larger 53-day orbit allows for "bonus science" that wasn't
part of the original mission design. Juno will further explore the far
reaches of the Jovian magnetosphere—the region of space dominated by
Jupiter's magnetic field—including the far magnetotail, the southern
magnetosphere, and the magnetospheric boundary region called the
magnetopause. Understanding magnetospheres and how they interact with
the solar wind are key science goals of NASA's Heliophysics Science
Division.
"Another key advantage of the longer orbit is that Juno will spend less time within the strong radiation belts on each orbit,"
said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from Southwest Research
Institute in San Antonio. "This is significant because radiation has
been the main life-limiting factor for Juno."
Juno will continue to operate within the current budget plan through
July 2018, for a total of 12 science orbits. The team can then propose
to extend the mission during the next science review cycle. The review
process evaluates proposed mission extensions on the merit and value of
previous and anticipated science returns.
The Juno science team continues to analyze returns from previous
flybys. Revelations include that Jupiter's magnetic fields and aurora
are bigger and more powerful than originally thought and that the belts
and zones that give the gas giant's cloud top its distinctive look
extend deep into the planet's interior. Peer-reviewed papers with more
in-depth science results from Juno's first three flybys are expected to
be published within the next few months. In addition, the mission's
JunoCam—the first interplanetary outreach camera—is now being guided
with assistance from the public. People can participate by voting on
which features on Jupiter should be imaged during each flyby.
"Juno is providing spectacular results, and we are rewriting our
ideas of how giant planets work," said Bolton. "The science will be just
as spectacular as with our original plan."
Fulfilling the promise of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate
change—most notably the goal of limiting the rise in mean global surface
temperature since preindustrial times to 2 degrees Celsius—will require
a dramatic transition away from fossil fuels and toward low-carbon
energy sources. To map out that transition, decision-makers routinely
turn to energy scenarios, which use computational models to project
changes to the energy mix that will be needed to meet climate and
environmental targets. These models account for not only technological,
economic, demographic, political, and institutional developments, but
also the scope, timing, and stringency of policies to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions and air pollution.
Credit: David Pilbrow/Flickr
Model-driven energy
scenarios provide policymakers and investors with a powerful
decision-support tool but should not be used as a decision-making tool
due to several limitations. So argues a new study in the journal Energy
and Environment by Sergey Paltsev, deputy director of the MIT Joint
Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and a senior research
scientist for both the Joint Program and the MIT Energy Initiative. The
study shows that overall, energy scenarios are useful for assessing
policymaking and investment risks associated with different emissions
reduction pathways, but tend to overestimate the degree to which future
energy demand will resemble the past.
"Energy scenarios may not provide exact projections, but they are the
best available tool to assess the magnitude of challenges that lie
ahead," Paltsev observes in the study, a unique review of the value and
limits of widely used energy scenarios that range from the International
Energy Agency (IEA) World Energy Outlook, to the Joint Program's own annual Food, Water, Energy and Climate Outlook (which uses the MIT Economic Projection and Policy Analysis model), to a recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report (AR5) presenting 392 energy scenarios aligned with the 2 C climate stabilization goal.
The study points out that because energy scenarios tend to vary
widely in terms of the projections they produce for a given policy and
the degree of uncertainty associated with those projections, it's not
advisable to base an energy policy or investment decision on a single
energy scenario. Taken collectively, however, energy scenarios can help
bring into sharp focus a range of plausible futures—information
decision-makers can use to assess the scale and cost of the
technological changes needed to effect significant transformations in
energy production and consumption. A careful review of multiple energy
scenarios associated with a particular emissions pathway can provide a
qualitative analysis of what's driving the results and the potential
risks and benefits of a proposed policy or investment.
That said, projections in energy scenarios can sometimes be highly inaccurate due to factors that are difficult to anticipate.
For example, according to the study, which compared several energy
scenario projections to historical observations, most energy scenarios
do not account for sudden changes to the status quo. One of the greatest
contributors to uncertainty in energy scenarios is the demand for
low-emitting energy technologies, whose timing and scale of
deployment—dependent on several economic and political factors—is highly
unpredictable. Paltsev notes that the IEA constantly underestimates renewable energy production;
in its 2006 World Energy Outlook, the agency projected for 2020 a level
of wind power generation that the world exceeded as early as 2013.
In addition, while energy scenarios have been largely successful in projecting the quantity of global energy demand
(e.g., the 1994 IEA World Energy Outlook's projection for 2010 was off
by only 10 percent, despite highly disruptive developments such as the
breakup of the Soviet Union, the world recession in 2008, and the
emergence of the shale gas industry), most have been considerably off
the mark when it comes to projecting energy prices (e.g., in 1993
dollars, the 1994 IEA WEO projected $28/barrel in 2010, but the actual
price was $53/barrel).
Recognizing the steep challenge in projecting demand and prices for
different energy sources in the midst of a dramatic energy transition,
Paltsev emphasizes that governments should not try to pick a "winner"—a
single energy technology that seems poised to reduce emissions
singlehandedly—but rather adopt a strategy that targets emissions
reductions from any energy source.
"Governments shouldn't pick the winners, because most likely that
choice will be wrong," he says. "They should instead design policies
such as carbon-pricing and emissions trading systems that are designed
to achieve emissions reduction targets at the least cost."
Another Raspberry Pi launch announcement—and another burst of news items explaining what's new, at what price.
This time it is about the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 (CM3). Trusted Reviews said it comes with 64-bit and multi-core functionality.
"The new Compute Module is based on the BCM2837 processor – the same as found in the Raspberry Pi 3 – running at 1.2 GHz with 1 gigabyte of RAM," said Hackaday.
The Raspberry Pi blog provided the CM3 launch announcement:
"Way back in April of 2014 we launched the original Compute Module
(CM1), which was based around the BCM2835 processor of the original
Raspberry Pi. CM1 was a great success and we've seen a lot of uptake
from various markets, particularly in IoT and home and factory
automation."
Now it has a new CM3 based on the Raspberry Pi 3 hardware. Take
note: It is "providing twice the RAM and roughly 10x the CPU performance
of the original Module," according to the blog. Ars Technica noted that it was the first big upgrade since 2014. That year, said Trusted Reviews, The original module "combined the guts of a first-generation Pi with a small SODIMM-layout module."
The new version, said Joe Roberts in Trusted Reviews, "which uses the same BCM2837, a quad-core 64-bit ARMv8 part, as the Pi 3, brings the Compute Module fully up to date."
There will be two flavors—CM3 and CM3L (lite) —The 'L' version is a
CM3 without eMMC Flash—that is, as described by RS Components,"not
fitted with eMMC Flash and the SD/eMMC interface. But pins are available
for the designer to connect their own SD/eMMC device."
According to the blog, the Lite version "brings the SD card interface to the Module pins so a user can wire this up to an eMMC or SD card of their choice."
Jon Brodkin in Ars Technica said that the Compute Module's
stripped-down form factor makes it more suitable for embedded computing,
as it fits into a standard SODIMM connector. The new Compute Module can
run Windows IoT Core and supports Linux.
The latest version is being used by NEC, said Brodkin, in displays
intended for digital signs, streaming, and presentations. The Raspberry
Pi blog, meanwhile, said that "we're already excited to see NEC
displays, an early adopter, launching their CM3-enabled display
solution."
It stated pricing for the two flavors. The CM3 and CM3L are priced at
$30 and $25, respectively (excluding tax and shipping), and this price
applies to any size order. The original Compute Module is also reduced
to $25. The blog said one can "Head on over to our partners element14
(or Farnell UK) and RS Components" to buy them.
What about backwards compatibility? According to the blog "The CM3 is
largely backwards-compatible with CM1 designs which have followed our
design guidelines."
The blog presented the caveats: The module is 1mm taller than the
original module; "the processor core supply (VBAT) can draw
significantly more current. Consequently, the processor itself will run
much hotter under heavy CPU load, so designers need to consider thermals
based on expected use cases."
Blitab, a tablet with a Braille interface, looks like a
promising step up for blind and low vision people who want to be part
of the educational, working and entertainment worlds of digital life.
A
video of the Blitab Technology founder, Kristina Tsvetanova, said the
idea for such a tablet came to her during her studies as an industrial
engineer. At the time, a blind colleague of hers asked her to sign him
for an online course and a question nagged her: How could technology
help him better?
Worldwide, she said, there are more than 285 million blind and visually impaired people.
She was aware that in general blind and low vision people were coping
with old, bulky technology, contributing to low literacy rates among
blind children. She and her team have been wanting to change that.
There was ample room for improvements. The conventional interfaces
for the blind, she said, have been slow and expensive. She said the
keyboard can range from about $5000 to $8000. Also, she said, they are
limited to what the blind person can read, just a few words at a time.
Imagine, she said, reading Moby Dick, five words at a time.
They have engineered a tablet device with a 14-line Braille display on the top and a touch screen on the bottom.
Part of their technology involves a high performance membrane, and
their press statement said the tablet uses smart micro fluids to develop
small physical bubbles instead of a screen display.
They have produced a tactile tablet, she said, where people with sight loss can learn, work and play using that device.
The user can control the tablet with voice-over if the person wants
to listen to an ebook or by pressing one button, dots will be activated
on the screen and the surface of the screen will change.
Romain Dillet, in TechCrunch: "The magic happens when you
press the button on the side of the device. The top half of the device
turns into a Braille reader. You can load a document, a web
page—anything really—and then read the content using Braille."
Tsvetanova told Dillet, "We're not excluding voice over; we combine
both of these things." She said they offer both "the tactile experience
and the voice over experience."
Rachel Metz reported in MIT Technology Review: "The Blitab's
Braille display includes 14 rows, each made up of 23 cells with six dots
per cell. Every cell can present one letter of the Braille alphabet. Underneath the grid are numerous layers of fluids and a special kind of membrane," she wrote.
Credit: Blitab
At heart, it's an Android tablet, Dillet said, "so it has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and can run all sorts of Android apps."
Metz said that with eight hours of use per day, it's estimated to last for five days on one battery charge.
The tablet team have set a price to this device, at $500.
How they will proceed: First, she said they will sell directly from
their web site, then scale through global distributors, and distribute
to less developed world.
What's next? Dillet said in the Jan.6 article that "the team of 10 plans to ship the tablet in six months with pre-orders starting later this month."
Blitab Technology recently took first place in the Digital Wellbeing category of the 2016 EIT Digital Challenge. EIT Digital is described as a European open innovation organization. They seek to foster digital technology innovation and entrepreneurial talent.
A British-Dutch project aiming to send an
unmanned mission to Mars by 2018 announced Friday that the shareholders
of a Swiss financial services company have agreed a takeover bid.
"The acquisition is now
only pending approval by the board of Mars One Ventures," the company
said in a joint statement with InFin Innovative Finance AG, adding
approval from the Mars board would come "as soon as possible."
"The takeover provides a solid path to funding the next steps of Mars
One's mission to establish a permanent human settlement on Mars," the
statement added.
Mars One consists of two entities: the Dutch not-for-profit Mars One
Foundation and a British public limited company Mars One Ventures.
Mars One aims to establish a permanent human settlement on the Red
Planet, and is currently "in the early mission concept phase," the
company says, adding securing funding is one of its major challenges.
Some 200,000 hopefuls from 140 countries initially signed up for the
Mars One project, which is to be partly funded by a television reality
show about the endeavour.
Those have now been whittled down to just 100, out of which 24 will
be selected for one-way trips to Mars due to start in 2026 after several
unmanned missions have been completed.
"Once this deal is completed, we'll be in a much stronger financial
position as we begin the next phase of our mission. Very exciting
times," said Mars One chief executive Bas Lansdorp.
NASA is currently working on three Mars missions with the European
Space Agency and plans to send another rover to Mars in 2020.
But NASA has no plans for a manned mission to Mars until the 2030s.
This artist’s view shows how the light coming from the surface
of a strongly magnetic neutron star (left) becomes linearly polarised as
it travels through the vacuum of space close to the star on its way to
the observer on Earth (right). …more
By
studying the light emitted from an extraordinarily dense and strongly
magnetized neutron star using ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers
may have found the first observational indications of a strange quantum
effect, first predicted in the 1930s. The polarization of the observed
light suggests that the empty space around the neutron star is subject
to a quantum effect known as vacuum birefringence.
A team led by
Roberto Mignani from INAF Milan (Italy) and from the University of
Zielona Gora (Poland), used ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the
Paranal Observatory in Chile to observe the neutron star RX
J1856.5-3754, about 400 light-years from Earth.
Despite being amongst the closest neutron stars,
its extreme dimness meant the astronomers could only observe the star
with visible light using the FORS2 instrument on the VLT, at the limits
of current telescope technology.
Neutron stars are the very dense remnant cores of massive stars—at
least 10 times more massive than our Sun—that have exploded as
supernovae at the ends of their lives. They also have extreme magnetic
fields, billions of times stronger than that of the Sun, that permeate
their outer surface and surroundings.
These fields are so strong that they even affect the properties of the empty space around the star. Normally a vacuum
is thought of as completely empty, and light can travel through it
without being changed. But in quantum electrodynamics (QED), the quantum
theory describing the interaction between photons and charged particles
such as electrons, space is full of virtual particles that appear and
vanish all the time. Very strong magnetic fields can modify this space so that it affects the polarisation of light passing through it.
Mignani explains: "According to QED, a highly magnetised vacuum
behaves as a prism for the propagation of light, an effect known as
vacuum birefringence."
Among the many predictions of QED, however, vacuum birefringence so
far lacked a direct experimental demonstration. Attempts to detect it in
the laboratory have not yet succeeded in the 80 years since it was
predicted in a paper by Werner Heisenberg (of uncertainty principle
fame) and Hans Heinrich Euler.
This wide field image shows the sky around the very faint
neutron star RX J1856.5-3754 in the southern constellation of Corona
Australis. This part of the sky also contains interesting regions of
dark and bright nebulosity surrounding the …more
"This
effect can be detected only in the presence of enormously strong
magnetic fields, such as those around neutron stars. This shows, once
more, that neutron stars are invaluable laboratories in which to study
the fundamental laws of nature." says Roberto Turolla (University of
Padua, Italy).
After careful analysis of the VLT data, Mignani and his team detected
linear polarisation—at a significant degree of around 16%—that they say
is likely due to the boosting effect of vacuum birefringence occurring
in the area of empty space (some of us already know that empty space don't exist) surrounding RX J1856.5-3754.
Vincenzo Testa (INAF, Rome, Italy) comments: "This is the faintest
object for which polarisation has ever been measured. It required one of
the largest and most efficient telescopes in the world, the VLT, and
accurate data analysis techniques to enhance the signal from such a
faint star."
"The high linear polarisation that we measured with the VLT can't be
easily explained by our models unless the vacuum birefringence effects
predicted by QED are included," adds Mignani.
"This VLT study is the very first observational support for
predictions of these kinds of QED effects arising in extremely strong
magnetic fields," remarks Silvia Zane (UCL/MSSL, UK).
Mignani is excited about further improvements to this area of study
that could come about with more advanced telescopes: "Polarisation
measurements with the next generation of telescopes, such as ESO's
European Extremely Large Telescope, could play a crucial role in testing
QED predictions of vacuum birefringence effects around many more
neutron stars."
"This measurement, made for the first time now in visible light, also
paves the way to similar measurements to be carried out at X-ray
wavelengths," adds Kinwah Wu (UCL/MSSL, UK).
This research was presented in the paper entitled "Evidence for
vacuum birefringence from the first optical polarimetry measurement of
the isolated neutron star RX J1856.5−3754", by R. Mignani et al., to
appear in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
In a light harvesting quantum photocell, particles of light
(photons) can efficiently generate electrons. When two absorbing
channels are used, solar power entering the system through the two
absorbers (a and b) efficiently generates power …more
A
University of California, Riverside assistant professor has combined
photosynthesis and physics to make a key discovery that could help make
solar cells more efficient. The findings were recently published in the
journal Nano Letters.
Nathan Gabor
is focused on experimental condensed matter physics, and uses light to
probe the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics. But, he got interested
in photosynthesis when a question popped into his head in 2010: Why are
plants green? He soon discovered that no one really knows.
During the past six years, he sought to help change that by combining his background in physics with a deep dive into biology.
He set out to re-think solar energy conversion
by asking the question: can we make materials for solar cells that more
efficiently absorb the fluctuating amount of energy from the sun.
Plants have evolved to do this, but current affordable solar cells -
which are at best 20 percent efficient - do not control these sudden
changes in solar power, Gabor said. That results in a lot of wasted
energy and helps prevent wide-scale adoption of solar cells as an energy
source.
Gabor, and several other UC Riverside physicists, addressed the problem by designing a new type of quantum heat engine photocell, which helps manipulate the flow of energy in solar cells.
The design incorporates a heat engine photocell that absorbs photons
from the sun and converts the photon energy into electricity.
Surprisingly, the researchers found that the quantum heat engine
photocell could regulate solar power conversion without requiring active
feedback or adaptive control mechanisms. In conventional photovoltaic
technology, which is used on rooftops and solar farms today,
fluctuations in solar power must be suppressed by voltage converters and
feedback controllers, which dramatically reduce the overall efficiency.
Nathan Gabor's Laboratory of Quantum Materials Optoelectronics
utilizes infrared laser spectroscopy techniques to explore natural
regulation in quantum photocells composed of two-dimensional
semiconductors. Credit: Max Grossnickle and QMO Lab
The goal of the UC Riverside teams was to
design the simplest photocell that matches the amount of solar power
from the sun as close as possible to the average power demand and to
suppress energy fluctuations to avoid the accumulation of excess energy.
The researchers compared the two simplest quantum mechanical
photocell systems: one in which the photocell absorbed only a single
color of light, and the other in which the photocell absorbed two
colors. They found that by simply incorporating two photon-absorbing
channels, rather than only one, the regulation of energy flow emerges
naturally within the photocell.
The basic operating principle is that one channel absorbs at a
wavelength for which the average input power is high, while the other
absorbs at low power. The photocell switches between high and low power
to convert varying levels of solar power into a steady-state output.
When Gabor's team applied these simple models to the measured solar
spectrum on Earth's surface, they discovered that the absorption of
green light, the most radiant portion of the solar power
spectrum per unit wavelength, provides no regulatory benefit and should
therefore be avoided. They systematically optimized the photocell
parameters to reduce solar energy fluctuations, and found that the
absorption spectrum looks nearly identical to the absorption spectrum
observed in photosynthetic green plants.
The findings led the researchers to propose that natural regulation
of energy they found in the quantum heat engine photocell may play a
critical role in the photosynthesis in plants, perhaps explaining the
predominance of green plants on Earth.
Other researchers have recently found that several molecular
structures in plants, including chlorophyll a and b molecules, could be
critical in preventing the accumulation of excess energy
in plants, which could kill them. The UC Riverside researchers found
that the molecular structure of the quantum heat engine photocell they
studied is very similar to the structure of photosynthetic molecules
that incorporate pairs of chlorophyll.
The hypothesis set out by Gabor and his team is the first to connect
quantum mechanical structure to the greenness of plants, and provides a
clear set of tests for researchers aiming to verify natural regulation.
Equally important, their design allows regulation without active input, a
process made possible by the photocell's quantum mechanical structure.
The paper is called "Natural Regulation of Energy Flow in a Green Quantum Photocell.
A breakthrough in solar power could make it cheaper and more
commercially viable, thanks to research at the University of Warwick.
In a paper published in Nature Energy,
Dr Ross Hatton, Professor Richard Walton and colleagues, explain how
solar cells could be produced with tin, making them more adaptable and
simpler to produce than their current counterparts.
Solar cells based on a class of semiconductors known as lead
perovskites are rapidly emerging as an efficient way to convert sunlight
directly into electricity. However, the reliance on lead is a serious
barrier to commercialisation, due to the well-known toxicity of lead.
Dr Ross Hatton and colleagues show that perovskites using tin in
place of lead are much more stable than previously thought, and so could
prove to be a viable alternative to lead perovskites for solar cells.
Lead-free cells could render solar power cheaper, safer and more commercially attractive - leading to it becoming a more prevalent source of energy in everyday life.
This could lead to a more widespread use of solar power, with
potential uses in products such as laptop computers, mobile phones and
cars.
The team have also shown how the device structure can be greatly
simplified without compromising performance, which offers the important
advantage of reduced fabrication cost.
Dr Hatton comments that there is an ever-pressing need to develop renewable sources of energy:
"It is hoped that this work will help to stimulate an intensive
international research effort into lead-free perovskite solar cells,
like that which has resulted in the astonishingly rapid advancement of lead perovskite solar cells.
"There is now an urgent need to tackle the threat of climate change
resulting from humanity's over reliance on fossil fuel, and the rapid
development of new solar technologies must be part of the plan."
Perovskite solar cells are lightweight and compatible with flexible
substrates, so could be applied more widely than the rigid flat plate
silicon solar cells that currently dominate the photovoltaics market, particularly in consumer electronics and transportation applications.
The paper, 'Enhanced Stability and Efficiency in Hole-Transport Layer Free CsSnI3 Perovskite Photovoltaics', is published in Nature Energy,
and is authored by Dr Ross Hatton, Professor Richard Walton and PhD
student Kenny Marshall in the Department of Chemistry, along with Dr
Marc Walker in the Department of Physics.
This photo provided by United Launch Alliance shows a United
Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket carrying GOES-R spacecraft for NASA
and NOAA lifting off from Space Launch Complex-41 at 6:42 p.m. EST at
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., Saturday, Nov. 19, 2016. The
most advanced weather satellite ever built rocketed into space Saturday
night, part of an $11 billion effort to revolutionize forecasting and
save lives. (United Launch Alliance via AP)
The most advanced weather satellite ever
built rocketed into space Saturday night, part of an $11 billion effort
to revolutionize forecasting and save lives.
This new GOES-R spacecraft will track U.S. weather as never before: hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, volcanic ash clouds,
wildfires, lightning storms, even solar flares. Indeed, about 50 TV
meteorologists from around the country converged on the launch
site—including NBC's Al Roker—along with 8,000 space program workers and
guests.
"What's so exciting is that we're going to be getting more data, more
often, much more detailed, higher resolution," Roker said. In the case
of tornadoes, "if we can give people another 10, 15, 20 minutes, we're
talking about lives being saved."
Think superhero speed and accuracy for forecasting. Super high-definition TV, versus black-and-white.
"Really a quantum leap above any satellite NOAA has ever flown," said Stephen Volz, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's director of satellites.
"For the American public, that will mean faster, more accurate
weather forecasts and warnings," Volz said earlier in the week. "That
also will mean more lives saved and better environmental intelligence"
for government officials responsible for hurricane and other
evacuations.
Cell phones light up the beaches of Cape Canaveral and Cocoa
Beach, Fla., north of the Cocoa Beach Pier as spectators watch the
launch of the NOAA GOES-R weather satellite, Saturday, Nov. 19, 2016. It
was launched from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
on a ULA Atlas V rocket. (Malcolm Denemark/Florida Today via AP)
Airline passengers also stand to benefit,
as do rocket launch teams. Improved forecasting will help pilots avoid
bad weather and help rocket scientists know when to call off a launch.
NASA declared success 3 1/2 hours after liftoff, following separation from the upper stage.
The first in a series of four high-tech satellites, GOES-R hitched a
ride on an unmanned Atlas V rocket, delayed an hour by rocket and other
problems. NOAA teamed up with NASA for the mission.
The satellite—valued by NOAA at $1 billion—is aiming for a
22,300-mile-high equatorial orbit. There, it will join three aging
spacecraft with 40-year-old technology, and become known as GOES-16.
After months of testing, this newest satellite will take over for one of
the older ones. The second satellite in the series will follow in 2018.
All told, the series should stretch to 2036.
An Atlas V rocket lifts off from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral
Air Force Station, Fla., Saturday evening, Nov. 19, 2016. The rocket is
carrying the GOES-R weather satellite. The most advanced weather
satellite ever built rocketed into space Saturday night, part of an $11
billion effort to revolutionize forecasting and save lives. (Craig
Bailey/Florida Today via AP)
GOES stands for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite. The first was launched in 1975.
GOES-R's premier imager—one of six science instruments—will offer
three times as many channels as the existing system, four times the
resolution and five times the scan speed, said NOAA program director
Greg Mandt. A similar imager is also flying on a Japanese weather
satellite.
Typically, it will churn out full images of the Western Hemisphere
every 15 minutes and the continental United States every five minutes.
Specific storm regions will be updated every 30 seconds.
Forecasters will get pictures "like they've never seen before," Mandt promised.
An Atlas V rocket lifts off from Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral
Air Force Station, in Fla., Saturday evening, Nov. 19, 2016. The rocket
is carrying the GOES-R weather satellite. The most advanced weather
satellite ever built rocketed into space Saturday night, part of an $11
billion effort to revolutionize forecasting and save lives. (Craig
Bailey/Florida Today via AP)
A first-of-its-kind lightning mapper, meanwhile, will take 500 snapshots a second.
This next-generation GOES program—$11 billion in all—includes four
satellites, an extensive land system of satellite dishes and other
equipment, and new methods for crunching the massive, nonstop stream of
expected data.
Hurricane Matthew, interestingly enough, delayed the launch by a
couple weeks. As the hurricane bore down on Florida in early October,
launch preps were put on hold. Matthew stayed far enough offshore to
cause minimal damage to Cape Canaveral, despite some early forecasts
that suggested a direct strike.
This photo provided by United Launch Alliance shows a United
Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket carrying GOES-R spacecraft for NASA
and NOAA lifting off from Space Launch Complex-41 at 6:42 p.m. EST at
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., Saturday, Nov. 19, 2016. The
most advanced weather satellite ever built rocketed into space Saturday
night, par
(Tech Xplore)—Not all of us park our bodies in a chair in the morning
and cross our legs to do our work. In fact, just think of vast numbers
of workers doing physically demanding or just physically repetitive
tasks including bending and lifting.
Workers
on construction sites, factories and warehouses might cope with aches
and pains brought on by their work. Hopefully, the future will provide
an easy answer for workers to suit up in a suitable way for them to
avoid these aches and pain.
There is a new kid on the block aiming to address such a solution,
and a number of tech watchers have put them in the news this month. A
California-based group aptly called suit-X announced its MAX, which
stands for Modular Agile Exoskeleton. The company designs and makes
exoskeletons.
"MAX is designed to support workers during the repetitive tasks that most frequently cause injury," said a company release.
Will Knight in MIT Technology Review said that this essentially is " a trio of devices that use robotic technologies to enhance the abilities of able-bodied workers and prevent common workplace injuries."
Target users, for example, could include those who carry out ceiling
inspections, welding, installations and repairs. "It's not only lifting
75 pounds that can hurt your back; it is also lifting 20 pounds
repeatedly throughout the day that will lead to injury," said Dr.
Homayoon Kazerooni, founder and CEO, suitX."The MAX solution is designed
for unstructured workplaces where no robot can work as efficiently as a
human worker. Our goal is to augment and support workers who perform
demanding and repetitive tasks in unstructured workplaces in order to
prevent and reduce injuries." Seeker referred to the MAX system as an exoskeleton device that could potentially change the way millions of people work.
Seeker noted its advantages as workplace exoskeletons in
several ways, being lightweight such that the user can walk around
unimpeded. "The exoskeleton units kick in only when you need them, and
they don't require any external power source."
MAX is a product with three modules. You use them independently or in
combination, depending on work needs. The three modules are backX,
shoulderX, and legX.
According to the company, "All modules intelligently engage when you need them, and don't impede you otherwise."
The backX (lower back) reduces forces and torques.
The shoulderX reduces forces; it "enables the wearer to perform
chest-to-ceiling level tasks for longer periods of time." In a video the
company defines shoulderX as "an industrial arm exoskeleton that
augments its wearer by reducing gravity-induced forces at the shoulder complex."
The legX was designed to support knee joint and quadriceps. It
incorporates microcomputers in each leg. They communicate with each
other to determine if the person is walking, bending, or taking the
stairs." Seeker said these communicate via Bluetooth, monitoring spacing and position.
Credit: suitx
Kazerooni spoke about his company and its mission, in Seeker.
"My job is easy. I sit in front of a computer. But these guys work all
day long, put their bodies through abuse. We can use bionics to help
them." He also said he and his team did not create this "because of
science fiction movies. We were responding to numbers from the
Department of Labor, which said that back, knee and shoulder injuries
are the most common form of injuries among workers."
Will Knight meanwhile has reflected on the bigger picture in exoskeleton
developments. Can they help in preventing injury on the job and help
prolong workers' careers? "New materials, novel mechanical designs, and
cheaper actuators and motors have enabled a new generation of cheaper,
more lightweight exoskeletons to emerge in recent years," he wrote. "For
instance, research groups at Harvard and SRI are developing systems
that are passive and use soft, lightweight materials."
Some companies, such as BMW, said Knight, have been experimenting
with exoskeletons. "The MAX is another (bionic) step toward an augmented
future of work."
A bridge that bends in an strong earthquake and not only remains
standing, but remains usable is making its debut in its first real-world
application as part of a new exit bridge ramp on a busy downtown
Seattle highway.
"We've
tested new materials, memory retaining metal rods and flexible concrete
composites, in a number of bridge model studies in our large-scale
shake table lab, it's gratifying to see the new technology
applied for the first time in an important setting in a seismically
active area with heavy traffic loads," Saiid Saiidi, civil engineering
professor and researcher at the University of Nevada, Reno, said. "Using
these materials substantially reduces damage and allows the bridge to
remain open even after a strong earthquake."
Saiidi, who pioneered this technology, has built and destroyed, in
the lab, several large-scale 200-ton bridges, single bridge columns and
concrete abutments using various combinations of innovative materials,
replacements for the standard steel rebar and concrete materials and
design in his quest for a safer, more resilient infrastructure.
"We have solved the problem of survivability, we can keep a bridge usable after a strong earthquake," Saiidi said. "With these techniques and materials, we will usher in a new era of super earthquake-resilient structures."
The University partnered with the Washington Department of
Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration to implement this
new technology on their massive Alaska Way Viaduct Replacement Program,
the centerpiece of which is a two-mile long tunnel, but includes 31
separate projects that began in 2007 along the State Route 99 corridor
through downtown Seattle.
"This is potentially a giant leap forward," Tom Baker, bridge and
structures engineer for the Washington State Department of
Transportation, said. "We design for no-collapse, but in the future, we
could be designing for no-damage and be able to keep bridges open to
emergency vehicles, commerce and the public after a strong quake."
Modern bridges are designed to not collapse during an earthquake, and
this new technology takes that design a step further. In the earthquake
lab tests, bridge columns built using memory-retaining nickel/titanium
rods and a flexible concrete composite returned to their original shape
after an earthquake as strong as a magnitude 7.5.
"The tests we've conducted on 4-span bridges leading to this point
aren't possible anywhere else in the world than our large-scale
structures and earthquake engineering lab," Saiidi said. "We've had
great support along the way from many state highway departments and
funding agencies like the National Science Foundation, the Federal
Highway Administration and the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Washington DOT recognized the potential of this technology and
understands the need to keep infrastructure operating following a large
earthquake."
In an experiment in 2015, featured in a video, one of Saiidi's bridge's
moved more than six inches off center at the base and returned to its
original position, as designed, in an upright and stable position. Using
the computer-controlled hydraulics, the earthquake engineering lab can
increase the intensity of the recorded earthquake. Saiidi turned the dial up to 250 percent of the design parameters and still had excellent results.
"It had an incredible 9 percent drift with little damage," Saiidi said.
The Seattle off-ramp with the innovative columns is currently under
construction and scheduled for completion in spring 2017. After the new
SR 99 tunnel opens, this ramp, just south of the tunnel entrance, will
take northbound drivers from SR 99 to Seattle's SODO neighborhood.
A new WSDOT video describes how this innovative technology works.
"Dr. Saiidi sets the mark for the level of excellence to which the
College of Engineering aspires," Manos Maragakis, dean of the
University's College of Engineering, said. "His research is original and
innovative and has made a seminal contribution to seismic safety around
the globe."
Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a
combination of software and hardware that will allow them to use
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and insect cyborgs, or biobots, to map
large, unfamiliar areas – such as collapsed buildings after a disaster.
"The
idea would be to release a swarm of sensor-equipped biobots – such as
remotely controlled cockroaches – into a collapsed building or other
dangerous, unmapped area," says Edgar Lobaton, an assistant professor of
electrical and computer engineering at NC State and co-author of two
papers describing the work.
"Using remote-control technology, we would restrict the movement of
the biobots to a defined area," Lobaton says. "That area would be
defined by proximity to a beacon on a UAV. For example, the biobots may
be prevented from going more than 20 meters from the UAV."
The biobots would be allowed to move freely within a defined area and
would signal researchers via radio waves whenever they got close to
each other. Custom software would then use an algorithm to translate the
biobot sensor data into a rough map of the unknown environment.
Once the program receives enough data to map the defined area, the
UAV moves forward to hover over an adjacent, unexplored section. The
biobots move with it, and the mapping process is repeated. The software
program then stitches the new map to the previous one. This can be
repeated until the entire region or structure has been mapped; that map
could then be used by first responders or other authorities.
"This has utility for areas – like collapsed buildings – where GPS
can't be used," Lobaton says. "A strong radio signal from the UAV could
penetrate to a certain extent into a collapsed building,
keeping the biobot swarm contained. And as long as we can get a signal
from any part of the swarm, we are able to retrieve data on what the
rest of the swarm is doing. Based on our experimental data, we know
you're going to lose track of a few individuals, but that shouldn't
prevent you from collecting enough data for mapping."
Co-lead author Alper Bozkurt, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State, has previously developed functional cockroach biobots.
However, to test their new mapping technology, the research team relied
on inch-and-a-half-long robots that simulate cockroach behavior.
In their experiment, researchers released these robots into a
maze-like space, with the effect of the UAV beacon emulated using an
overhead camera and a physical boundary attached to a moving cart. The
cart was moved as the robots mapped the area.
"We had previously developed
proof-of-concept software that allowed us to map small areas with
biobots, but this work allows us to map much larger areas and to stitch
those maps together into a comprehensive overview," Lobaton says. "It
would be of much more practical use for helping to locate survivors
after a disaster, finding a safe way to reach survivors, or for helping
responders determine how structurally safe a building may be.
"The next step is to replicate these experiments using biobots, which we're excited about."
An article on the framework for developing local maps and stitching
them together, "A Framework for Mapping with Biobotic Insect Networks:
From Local to Global Maps," is published in Robotics and Autonomous Systems.
An article on the theory of mapping based on the proximity of mobile
sensors to each other, "Geometric Learning and Topological Inference
with Biobotic Networks," is published in IEEE Transactions on Signal and Information Processing over Networks.
Computers that learn for themselves are with us now. As they become
more common in 'high-stakes' applications like robotic surgery,
terrorism detection and driverless cars, researchers ask what can be
done to make sure we can trust them.
There
would always be a first death in a driverless car and it happened in
May 2016. Joshua Brown had engaged the autopilot system in his Tesla
when a tractor-trailor drove across the road in front of him. It seems
that neither he nor the sensors in the autopilot noticed the white-sided
truck against a brightly lit sky, with tragic results.
Of course many people die in car crashes every day – in the USA there
is one fatality every 94 million miles, and according to Tesla this was
the first known fatality in over 130 million miles of driving with
activated autopilot. In fact, given that most road fatalities are the
result of human error, it has been said that autonomous cars should make
travelling safer.
Even so, the tragedy raised a pertinent question: how much do we
understand – and trust – the computers in an autonomous vehicle? Or, in
fact, in any machine that has been taught to carry out an activity that a
human would do?
We are now in the era of machine learning. Machines can be trained to
recognise certain patterns in their environment and to respond
appropriately. It happens every time your digital camera detects a face
and throws a box around it to focus, or the personal assistant on your
smartphone answers a question, or the adverts match your interests when
you search online.
Machine learning is a way to program computers to learn from
experience and improve their performance in a way that resembles how
humans and animals learn tasks. As machine learning techniques become
more common in everything from finance to healthcare, the issue of trust
is becoming increasingly important, says Zoubin Ghahramani, Professor
of Information Engineering in Cambridge's Department of Engineering.
Faced with a life or death decision, would a driverless car decide to
hit pedestrians, or avoid them and risk the lives of its occupants?
Providing a medical diagnosis, could a machine be wildly inaccurate
because it has based its opinion on a too-small sample size? In making
financial transactions, should a computer explain how robust is its
assessment of the volatility of the stock markets?
"Machines can now achieve near-human abilities at many cognitive
tasks even if confronted with a situation they have never seen before,
or an incomplete set of data," says Ghahramani. "But what is going on
inside the 'black box'? If the processes by which decisions were being
made were more transparent, then trust would be less of an issue."
His team builds the algorithms that lie at the heart of these
technologies (the "invisible bit" as he refers to it). Trust and
transparency are important themes in their work: "We really view the
whole mathematics of machine learning as sitting inside a framework of
understanding uncertainty. Before you see data – whether you are a baby
learning a language or a scientist analysing some data – you start with a
lot of uncertainty and then as you have more and more data you have
more and more certainty.
"When machines make decisions, we want them to be clear on what stage
they have reached in this process. And when they are unsure, we want
them to tell us."
One method is to build in an internal self-evaluation or calibration
stage so that the machine can test its own certainty, and report back.
Two years ago, Ghahramani's group launched the Automatic Statistician
with funding from Google. The tool helps scientists analyse datasets
for statistically significant patterns and, crucially, it also provides a
report to explain how sure it is about its predictions.
"The difficulty with machine learning systems is you don't really
know what's going on inside – and the answers they provide are not
contextualised, like a human would do. The Automatic Statistician
explains what it's doing, in a human-understandable form."
Where transparency becomes especially relevant is in applications
like medical diagnoses, where understanding the provenance of how a
decision is made is necessary to trust it.
Dr Adrian Weller, who works with Ghahramani, highlights the difficulty: "A particular issue with new artificial intelligence
(AI) systems that learn or evolve is that their processes do not
clearly map to rational decision-making pathways that are easy for
humans to understand." His research aims both at making these pathways
more transparent, sometimes through visualisation, and at looking at
what happens when systems are used in real-world scenarios that extend
beyond their training environments – an increasingly common occurrence.
"We would like AI systems to monitor their situation dynamically,
detect whether there has been a change in their environment and – if
they can no longer work reliably – then provide an alert and perhaps
shift to a safety mode." A driverless car, for instance, might decide that a foggy night in heavy traffic requires a human driver to take control.
Weller's theme of trust and transparency forms just one of the
projects at the newly launched £10 million Leverhulme Centre for the
Future of Intelligence (CFI). Ghahramani, who is Deputy Director of the
Centre, explains: "It's important to understand how developing
technologies can help rather than replace humans. Over the coming years,
philosophers, social scientists, cognitive scientists and computer
scientists will help guide the future of the technology and study its
implications – both the concerns and the benefits to society."
CFI brings together four of the world's leading universities
(Cambridge, Oxford, Berkeley and Imperial College, London) to explore
the implications of AI for human civilisation. Together, an
interdisciplinary community of researchers will work closely with
policy-makers and industry investigating topics such as the regulation
of autonomous weaponry, and the implications of AI for democracy.
Ghahramani describes the excitement felt across the machine learning
field: "It's exploding in importance. It used to be an area of research
that was very academic – but in the past five years people have
realised these methods are incredibly useful across a wide range of
societally important areas.
"We are awash with data, we have increasing computing power and we
will see more and more applications that make predictions in real time.
And as we see an escalation in what machines can do, they will challenge
our notions of intelligence and make it all the more important that we
have the means to trust what they tell us."
Artificial intelligence has the power to eradicate poverty and
disease or hasten the end of human civilisation as we know it –
according to a speech delivered by Professor Stephen Hawking 19 October 2016 at the launch of the Centre for the Future of Intelligence.
