Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: engineering – Page 112

Nairobi, Kenya - Opibus has just introduced the first all-electric bus in Kenya as well as the first African designed electric bus ever. This is the first major step in the company’s vision to provide a locally designed and developed electric bus that can be mass-produced for the pan-African market, by the end of 2023. This is a step towards realizing Opibus goal of electrifying Africa’s public transport system, deploying products tailored for the local use case. The bus is designed and developed in-house with local engineering talent, while at the same time utilizing local manufacturing partners.

The key to the technology is the Opibus proprietary electric vehicle platform, which is modular and can be the foundation for several types of vehicles. This enables the creation of a bus that is suitable for the African use case, in its reliability, durability and price point. This also means local and global contract manufactures can be used to create a globally competitive product, with a rapid scale-up.

Read more | >

Bernard Kress, principal optical architect on Microsoft’s HoloLens team, has left the company to take on the role of Director of XR Engineering at the recently formed Google Labs. A report by The Verge maintains Google is also now gearing up to produce an AR headset that could directly compete with similar offerings from the likes of Apple and Meta.

Before joining Microsoft in 2015, Kress worked as principal optical architect behind Google Glass, the company’s smartglasses that found marked success in the enterprise sector after a rocky reception by consumers in 2013.

At Microsoft, Kress continued his work—principally focused on micro-optics, wafer scale optics, holography and nanophotonics—as partner optical architect on the HoloLens team, overseeing the release of both HoloLens and HoloLens 2.

Read more | >

What if plants could tell us when pests are attacking them, or they’re too dry, or they need more fertilizer. One startup is gene engineering farm plants so they can communicate in in fluorescent colors. The result: a farmer’s phone, drone, or even satellite imagery can reveal what is happening in hundreds of acres of fields …

That leads to better food, fewer crop failures, and more revenue for farmers.

In this TechFirst with John Koetsier we meet Shely Aronov, CEO and founder at InnerPlant, and chat about what plants say, and how farmers can understand their messages.

Links:
Innerplant: https://innerplant.com.

Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/
Buy $SMRT to join a community focused on tech for good: the emerging world of smart matter. Access my private Slack, get your name in my book, suggest speakers for TechFirst… and support my work.

TechFirst transcripts: https://johnkoetsier.com/category/tech-first/

Continue reading “Engineering plants to talk via bioluminescence” | >

They claim that more than 100,000 passengers could be affected in a single day. 🤔

#engineering

Several high-profile executives of U.S. airlines warned on Monday, January 17, of an oncoming “catastrophic” aviation crisis that will take hold by Wednesday should AT&T and Verizon activate their new 5G services, a report from Reuters reveals.

In a letter obtained by Reuters, the CEOs of several passenger and cargo airlines in the United States, including Delta, United, and Southwest Airlines, warned that signals from the two companies’ new C-Band 5G cell towers could interfere with navigation and safety equipment on their planes.

US airline executives claim the public will be grounded by 5G services

“Unless our major hubs are cleared to fly, the vast majority of the traveling and shipping public will essentially be grounded,” the executives stated in their letter, which was sent to various government organizations, including the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the White House Economic Council. “Immediate intervention is needed to avoid significant operational disruption to air passengers, shippers, supply chain and delivery of needed medical supplies.”

Continue reading “US Airlines Warn of a ‘Catastrophic’ Crisis Caused by New 5G Services” | >

A University of Melbourne-led team has perfected a technique for embedding single atoms in a silicon wafer one-by-one. Their technology offers the potential to make quantum computers using the same methods that have given us cheap and reliable conventional devices containing billions of transistors.

“We could ‘hear’ the electronic click as each atom dropped into one of 10,000 sites in our prototype device. Our vision is to use this technique to build a very, very large-scale quantum device,” says Professor David Jamieson of The University of Melbourne, lead author of the Advanced Materials paper describing the process.

His co-authors are from UNSW Sydney, Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), Leibniz Institute of Surface Engineering (IOM), and RMIT Microscopy and Microanalysis Facility.

Read more | >

Policy experts and scientists are coming together to stop such experimentation.

Back in March of 2021, we brought you news of a study from the Bill Gates-backed Harvard University Solar Geoengineering Research Program which aimed to evaluate the efficacy of blocking sunlight from reaching our planet’s surface in order to delay the effects of climate change.

Now, more than 60 policy experts and scientists have come together to claim that these kinds of geoengineering initiatives are very dangerous for humanity, according to Phys.org.

“Solar geoengineering deployment cannot be governed globally in a fair, inclusive and effective manner,” said the researchers in a letter that was further supported by a commentary in the journal WIREs Climate Change.

“We, therefore, call for immediate political action from governments, the United Nations and other actors to prevent the normalization of solar geoengineering as a climate policy option.”

Turns out geoengineering is not all it’s cracked up to be, and experts say that it could be dangerous to play with it.

Read more | >

Anyone able to find the sources? 🤔

Antigravity is the concept of a technology that, when applied to an item or a place, allows it to “cancel” gravity rather than compensate for it, as in the case of an aircraft.

Since November 2020, a group of experts from NASA, DARPA, MIT, and the Air Force has met on Zoom on a monthly basis to explore future propulsion technology, including the possible “antigravity.” Given that this technology now exists only in science fiction or in the thoughts of a few dreamer thinkers, this is a remarkable occurrence.

The Alternative Propulsion Engineering Conference (APEC) was founded to allow experts to explore forbidden (and even crazy) concepts that go beyond the boundaries of current contemporary science.

Read more | >

As of Jan. 8, 2022, NASA’s (Washington D.C., U.S.) James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) team fully deployed its 21-foot, gold-coated primary mirror, successfully completing the final stage of all major spacecraft deployments (including the 70-foot sunshield) since its Dec. 25 launch, to prepare for science operations. The telescope makes ample use of composite materials.

A joint effort with the European Space Agency (ESA) and Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the Webb mission will explore every phase of cosmic history, from within our solar system to the most distant observable galaxies in the early universe.

“NASA [has] achieved another engineering milestone decades in the making. While the journey is not complete, I join the Webb team in breathing a little easier and imagining the future breakthroughs bound to inspire the world,” says NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “The James Webb Space Telescope is an unprecedented mission that is on the precipice of seeing the light from the first galaxies and discovering the mysteries of our universe. Each feat already achieved and future accomplishment is a testament to the thousands of innovators who poured their life’s passion into this mission.”

Read more | >

The design team was inspired by the orange gantry cranes at the freight terminal.

It’s no surprise that we love architecture and engineering marvels. In the past, we have brought you lists of architectural marvels that seem to defy the laws of science and the most interesting engineering designs around the world.

Now, we are bringing you an incredible creation from MAD Architects, led by Ma Yansong, in collaboration with the China Academy of Building Research (CASR). Together these organizations have won an international competition for the design of the Cuntan International Cruise Centre in Chongqing, China and its execution is a sight to behold.

What is this marvel of architecture? It’s a 66,000 216,535 square feet (square meter) cargo terminal located in Chongqing’s Liangjiang New Area within the Cuntan Port area that allows access to the Yangtze River.

Full Story:

The architecture looks like a city that seems to arrive from elsewhere and that could perhaps head somewhere else once again someday.

Continue reading “Architects Design Ferry Terminal That Resembles an Alien World” | >

It’s rare that faster can also equate to greener in the aerospace industry, but that’s the goal of Australian startup Hypersonix has in sight.

The company has developed a new hypersonic satellite launch system that will make launches more accessible and also more sustainable. The technology could one day also help develop hypersonic airliners capable of crossing the Atlantic in a little over an hour.

“At Mach 5 and above, friction caused by molecules flowing over the hypersonic aircraft can generate temperatures in excess of 2,000˚C (3,632˚F),” the company says in a press statement. “Suffice to say that Brisbane-based aerospace engineering start-up, Hypersonix Launch Systems, is choosing its materials to cope with these extremes.”

Read more | >