Surface conditions on Venus feature sulfuric acid rains, atmospheric pressure 92 times greater than on Earth, and temperatures topping nearly 900 degrees Fahrenheit — twice as hot as a conventional oven. In such an unforgiving setting, an unprotected spacecraft visiting the planet would be crushed and toasted in a brief matter of time. Researchers at [...]
Researchers at the University of Technology Sydney warn that the broad-spectrum antimicrobial effectiveness of silver is being put at risk by the widespread and inappropriate expansion of nanosilver use in medical and consumer goods. As well as their use in medical items such as wound dressings and catheters, silver nanoparticles are becoming ubiquitous in everyday [...]
From an article by Aengus Collins Practice Lead, Global Risks, World Economic Forum: Any change can be unsettling, but changes as profound as those being unleashed by the current phase of technological development – known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution – are prone to be particularly destabilizing. Technology pulls together the various networks that constitute [...]
China's breakneck economic expansion may be flagging, but the country's ambitions in space show no signs of slowing down. Alongside ongoing efforts to rival NASA by placing robotic landers, and eventually astronauts, on the moon and Mars, China's government is increasingly looking to its burgeoning space sector to rival U.S. companies like Jeff Bezos' Blue [...]
From an article by Maureen Dowd at vanityfair.com: Elon Musk is famous for his futuristic gambles, but Silicon Valley’s latest rush to embrace artificial intelligence scares him. And he thinks you should be frightened too. Inside his efforts to influence the rapidly advancing field and its proponents, and to save humanity from machine-learning overlords. It [...]
From a post by Alex Knapp at forbes.com: There's no shortage of discussion about how artificial intelligence and improved automation will disrupt the job market, with many concerned that it will mean that they're out of a job. But how realistic are these concerns? In the latest episode of The Premise, the Forbes tech podcast, [...]
From an article at phys.org: A team of researchers in Japan has developed a new platform for culturing human pluripotent stem cells that provides far more control of culture conditions than previous tools by using micro and nanotechnologies. The Multiplexed Artificial Cellular Microenvironment (MACME) array places nanofibres, mimicking cellular matrices, into fluid-filled micro-chambers of precise [...]
Rewarded with a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2016, nanomachines provide mechanical work on the smallest of scales. Yet at such small dimensions, molecular motors can complete this work in only one direction. Researchers from the CNRS's Institut Charles Sadron, led by Nicolas Giuseppone, a professor at the Université de Strasbourg, working in collaboration with [...]
Crashing computers or smartphones and software security holes that allow hackers to steal millions of passwords could be prevented if it were possible to design and verify error-free software. Unfortunately, to date, this is a problem that neither engineers nor supercomputers can solve. One reason is that the computing power required to verify the correct [...]
From nanowerk.com: A new material that naturally adapts to changing environments was inspired by the strength, stability, and mechanical performance of the jaw of a marine worm. The protein material, which was designed and modeled by researchers from the Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics (LAMM) in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), [...]
