Lifeboat Foundation

Over the past decade, digital cameras have been widely adopted in various aspects of our society, and are being massively used in mobile phones, security surveillance, autonomous vehicles, and facial recognition. Through these cameras, enormous amounts of image data are being generated, which raises growing concerns about privacy protection.

Some existing methods address these concerns by applying algorithms to conceal sensitive information from the acquired images, such as image blurring or encryption. However, such methods still risk exposure of sensitive data because the raw images are already captured before they undergo digital processing to hide or encrypt the sensitive information. Also, the computation of these algorithms requires additional power consumption. Other efforts were also made to seek solutions to this problem by using customized cameras to downgrade the image quality so that identifiable information can be concealed. However, these approaches sacrifice the overall image quality for all the objects of interest, which is undesired, and they are still vulnerable to adversarial attacks to retrieve the sensitive information that is recorded.

A new research paper published in eLight demonstrated a new paradigm to achieve privacy-preserving imaging by building a fundamentally new type of imager designed by AI. In their paper, UCLA researchers, led by Professor Aydogan Ozcan, presented a smart camera design that images only certain types of desired objects, while instantaneously erasing other types of objects from its images without requiring any digital processing.

The world is highly dependent on fossil fuels to power its industry and transportation. These fossil fuels lead to excessive carbon dioxide emission, which contributes to global warming and ocean acidification. One way to reduce this excessive carbon dioxide emission that is harmful to the environment is through the electroreduction of carbon dioxide into value-added fuels or chemicals using renewable energy. The idea of using this technology to produce methane has attracted wide interest. However, researchers have had limited success in developing efficient catalysts for methane.

A Soochow University research team has now developed a simple strategy for creating cobalt copper alloy catalysts that deliver outstanding methane activity and selectivity in electrocatalytic carbon dioxide reduction. Their research is published in Nano Research.

Over the past 10 years, scientists have made notable progress in advancing their understanding of catalysts and applying the knowledge to their fabrication. But the catalysts that have been developed have not been satisfactory for use with methane, in terms of selectivity or current density. Despite the great insights scientists have gained, the strategies they have attempted in creating catalysts for methane are just too costly to be useful in practical applications.

Canada-based Tyromer is building a pilot factory in Arnhem to bring its circular rubber products to the European market. Specializing in the devulcanization of rubber from scrap tires, Tyromer will fine-tune and exhibit its recycling technology at its new Dutch facility in order to sell the process to third parties. The company is one of the first in the Netherlands to give this hard-to-process residual product a high-quality new life, making it a valuable addition to the Dutch circular economy.

Located at Kleefse Waard Industrial Park (IPKW) in Arnhem, the factory is currently being set up. “We expect to be able to start early in the summer [of 2021],” said Jos van Son, managing director of Tyromer Europe. Tyromer will employ approximately 12 people in Arnhem.

“Tyromer has a unique solution to a major problem: mountains of car tire rubber that cannot be reused. Companies such as Tyromer, which have solutions for societal challenges with smart technologies, are a welcome addition to the East Netherlands ecosystem. The fact that Tyromer is establishing itself at IPKW, where many companies are involved with energy and circularity issues, is good news for the activity in our region,” added René Brama, investment manager of Tech at Oost NL.

I’ll admit that I didn’t see this one coming: Retraction Watch is reporting that the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Center (CCDC), the world’s main repository of small-molecule crystal data, is on the way to pulling nearly a thousand deposited crystal structures because they appear to have been faked. A preprint from earlier this year from David Bimler flagged what seems to be a paper-mill operation flooding out bogus papers on metal-organic frameworks: hundreds and hundreds of weirdly worded manuscripts on nonexistent MOFs and their imaginary applications, full of apparently randomly selected “references” to the rest of the literature. And these things depositited crystal data with the CCDC, which is the step that I really didn’t expect.

After all, anyone who studies the scientific literature has (especially in recent years) seen these auto-generated papers full of crap. But faked crystal structure files? That’s nasty. The record of these papers shows a sudden jump in 2020 and 2021, leading Bimler to wonder:

The dates paint a picture of accelerating publication, as if a small-scale cottage industry had been scaled up to a production line with a larger staff. One can imagine crystallographers initially ghostwriting manuscripts as a favour for friends, moonlighting from their day job, and becoming progressively more professional, though this must remain speculation.

Steven PostrelIrwin Allen called…

When producer Irwin Allen’s popular television series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea debuted its second season on ABC in September, 1965, viewers would note some exciting changes and additions to the show. Voyage was now broadcast in color, the nuclear submarine Seaview had been modified into a sleeker, four-windowed look, and the show would feature an important new star: the Flying Sub, a vehicle that flies through the air at incredible speeds and submerges to travel underwater at great depths.

The Flying Sub (also referred to as the FS-1) quickly became a signature element of the show, featured in almost every episode not only as a quick transport from the Seaview to land, but as an underwater exploration and defense vehicle that could dock at underwater research laboratories or on other submarines, and do battle with the menagerie of undersea monsters that threatened the Seaview. With its upswept, manta ray-like shape, vivid yellow-and-blue paint scheme, twin stabilizer fins, upper and lower hatches, gleaming headlights and the large forward windows that allowed viewers to actually see Admiral Nelson and Captain Crane (or at least miniature figures of them) at the controls of the craft, the Flying Sub became one of the most familiar and unique sights on ABC television in the 1960s, adding action and excitement to a TV show already overflowing with visual wonders.

Continue reading “Flying Sub Deluxe Edition” »

Motors are ubiquitous in our everyday lives — from cars to washing machines, even if we rarely notice them. A futuristic scientific field is working on the development tiny motors that could power a network of nanomachines and replace some of the power sources we currently use in electronic devices.

Researchers from the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin created the first ever solid-state optical nanomotor. All previous iterations of these light-driven motors reside in a solution of some sort, which limited their potential for the majority of real-world applications. This new research was published recently in the journal ACS Nano.

Continue reading “Tiny Motors Take a Big Step Forward: First-Ever Solid-State Optical Nanomotor” »

The vehicles we’ll see on the roads in a decade’s time will be radically different from what we have at present. Design language will change a lot, as hinted by the concepts and prototypes put together by big names and budding automotive designers.

The focus definitely will be on personal mobility in the most sustainable manner possible. Compact vehicles that will trade off the greatest of luxuries for a more sensible method of commuting will be the norm. This boomerang-shaped two-seater vehicle with multiple use-case scenarios is different from what we’ve seen so far. Even in the automotive landscape dominated by some really bizarre vehicle concepts.

Designer: Artem Smirnov

China search engine giant Baidu Inc said on Monday it has obtained permits to operate fully driverless robotaxi services on open roads from two Chinese cities, the first of their kind in the country.

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