Lifeboat Foundation

Circa 2010

Light has been put to work generating the same force that makes airplanes fly, a study appearing online December 5 in Nature Photonics shows. With the right design, a uniform stream of light has pushed tiny objects in much the same way that an airplane wing hoists a 747 off the ground.

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For the first time, a gas station has converted its business model to 100% electric vehicle charging. The Takoma Park, Maryland, gas station conversion was funded by the Electric Vehicle Institute and Maryland government.

A quasi-particle that travels along the interface of a metal and dielectric material may be the solution to problems caused by shrinking electronic components, according to an international team of engineers.

“Microelectronic chips are ubiquitous today,” said Akhlesh Lakhtakia, Evan Pugh University Professor and Charles Godfrey Binder Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, Penn State. “Delay time for signal propagation in metal-wire interconnects, electrical loss in metals leading to temperature rise, and cross-talk between neighboring interconnects arising from miniaturization and densification limits the speed of these chips.”

These electronic components are in our smartphones, tablets, computers and security systems and they are used in hospital equipment, defense installations and our transportation infrastructure.

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in France has observed a phase transition in an artificially created flock. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the group describes how they created their artificial flock and the events that led to a phase transition.

Scientists trying to understand crowd behavior generally create computer models meant to mimic human behavior under crowded conditions—but such simulations are limited by the parameters that are used to create them. Most in the field agree on the need to recreate crowd or flocking behavior physically in a lab. In this new effort, the researchers have built on prior work with an artificial crowd, and have found that under certain conditions it underwent a phase transition similar to water freezing to an ice state.

Working on a prior effort, some of the team members created an artificial crowd consisting of millions of beads suspended in a liquid between two plates of glass. The plates were joined in a way that allowed the beads to move around the outer edges of an oval—similar to cars on a partially three-dimensional race track. The beads were forced to move in one direction by applying an electric field—the Quincke effect spun the beads, which pushed them through the liquid in the same direction. Also, due to a dipole effect, the beads did not adhere to one another—instead, they moved around the track, seemingly of their own accord. The prior team showed that increasing density of the beads could set off a Vicsek-like transition in which randomly moving particles exhibit flock-like behaviors. In this new effort, the researchers used the same setup with the beads to create a flock and then watched what would happen as density was increased.

Most EV attention focuses on cars and SUVs, but medium and large electrified trucks for local and regional deliveries are coming to market, too, including from Volvo.

Boston Dynamics is announcing this morning that Spot, its versatile quadruped robot, is now for sale. The machine’s animal-like behavior regularly electrifies crowds at tech conferences, and like other Boston Dynamics’ robots, Spot is a YouTube sensation whose videos amass millions of views.

Now anyone interested in buying a Spot—or a pack of them—can go to the company’s website and submit an order form. But don’t pull out your credit card just yet. Spot may cost as much as a luxury car, and it is not really available to consumers. The initial sale, described as an “early adopter program,” is targeting businesses. Boston Dynamics wants to find customers in select industries and help them deploy Spots in real-world scenarios.

A paint so impractical (and cool) — think matte black squared — you know some idiot will have to try it on a street car, even though it doesn’t like being left outside, or washed. This nanotube coating reflects just 0.036 percent of light.

Get your self-lacing Nikes ready, because its time to shred up the streets on your very own real hover board! After decades of waiting, the hoverboards seen in Back To The Future will now be available for your personal enjoyment. This is heavy, Doc.

$10,000.

The tool instrumental to the exploits of Michael J. Fox’s time-traveling Marty McFly would have ended on more than one occasion if not for the help of the futuristic skateboard.

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