From the Article

>Nuclear fusion reactors around the world are being built to find the best way to control and capture the energy of such reactions.
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>Pioneering inventors, including TAE Technologies in Southern California, are racing to bring this natural process that fuels the sun down to Earth, with terrestrial fusion power plants. It’s an idea that’s been around since the late 1950s, but that has moved forward dramatically in recent years. Commercial fusion power generation is expected by some to roll out in the 2030s — which could give the world a seismic final push to meet the UN’s 2050 climate goals, if implemented broadly and quickly.
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>At COP27 this November, there will be plenty of talk about cutting emissions in half by 2030 to meet targets we’ve set in the Paris Agreement, and the responsibility of more developed nations to assist poorer countries that are already being battered by climate change. Nuclear fusion, however, is unlikely to be a major part of the conversation — but as the drought and heat waves in Europe, the flooding in Pakistan and Nigeria and every other climate catastrophe shows, we need large-scale changes. The transition to nuclear fusion in the coming decade could provide just that.

From the Article

>France, Germany and Italy, the three biggest contributors to the European Space Agency, said Tuesday they have agreed to guarantee the future of the next-generation Ariane 6 and Vega-C rocket launcher systems.

From the Article

>A renewable source of fresh food is essential to future long-term space missions, to avoid astronauts experiencing “food fatigue”, malnutrition and weight loss.
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>Space plants are currently grown in closed boxes with low energy LED lights, porous clay “soil” with water, nutrients and oxygen supplied to roots; high-tech sensors and cameras monitor plant health. Plants did not evolve to grow in a box and use energy and resources in readiness for changes in light, temperature and disease, limiting full growth potential.
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>So there is great opportunity to adapt plant genetics to produce faster-growing “pick and eat” food crops such as tomato, carrot, spinach and strawberry designed to reach their maximum potential in closed, controlled environments.

From the Article

>NASA's successful Moon rocket launch last week will be a boon for private companies, experts tell Axios.
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>Why it matters: As global economic growth slows, space and Moon exploration could become a source of ignition for new ventures and jobs.
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>The successful launch of Artemis I is "opening the door for expanding the lunar economy," says Takeshi Hakamada, CEO of ispace, which is planning to launch its first private mission to the Moon on Nov. 28.
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>Driving the news: NASA's un-crewed Artemis I mission showed companies looking to do business on and around the Moon that they would likely have a major customer there in the coming years.

Which leads to an important question, with the idea of having people living on the moon this decade being the goal for NASA, along with the fact of other countries vying to mine Helium 3 on the Moon are we going to see a scenario of a Moon Industrial Complex and renewal of great power play between the US and China?

From the Article

>A class-action lawsuit filed in a federal court in California this month takes aim at GitHub Copilot, a powerful tool that automatically writes working code when a programmer starts typing. The coder behind the suit argue that GitHub is infringing copyright because it does not provide attribution when Copilot reproduces open-source code covered by a license requiring it.
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>The lawsuit is at an early stage, and its prospects are unclear because the underlying technology is novel and has not faced much legal scrutiny. But legal experts say it may have a bearing on the broader trend of generative AI tools. AI programs that generate paintings, photographs, and illustrations from a prompt, as well as text for marketing copy, are all built with algorithms trained on previous work produced by humans.

From the Article

>SEPTA will soon begin using an artificial intelligence system that can detect people getting on trains and buses with guns.
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>Why it matters: There’s been a dramatic spike in violent crime aboard the public transit system.
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>Robberies and aggravated assault were up 80% from 2019 to 2021, and the agency’s longtime police chief retired suddenly early this year amid ongoing scrutiny over safety.
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>Driving the news: SEPTA is the U.S.’s first major transit system to test out the AI technology, known as ZeroEyes. It’s been deployed by the Pentagon as well as public schools, universities and Fortune 500 companies in more than 30 states, according to a SEPTA statement.

From the Article

>“In war, unexpected things happen all the time. Outliers are the name of the game and we know that current AIs do not do a good job with outliers,” says Batarseh.
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>To trust AIs, we need to give them something that they will have at stake
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>Even if we solve this problem, there are still enormous ethical problems to grapple with. For example, how do you decide if an AI made the right choice when it took the decision to kill? It is similar to the so-called trolley problem that is currently dogging the development of automated vehicles. It comes in many guises but essentially boils down to asking whether it is ethically right to let an impending accident play out in which a number of people could be killed, or to take some action that saves those people but risks killing a lesser number of other people. Such questions take on a whole new level when the system involved is actually programmed to kill.

From the Article

>Lockheed Martin released new renderings showing a manned sixth-generation fighter aircraft as a notional stand-in design for the U.S. Air Force Next Generation Air Dominance program, or NGAD. The images were included in a media briefing about the company’s proposal for the KC-Y competition, the Airbus A330 MRTT-derived LMXT tanker. Interestingly, the images were released only to the media attending the briefing, but not on the company’s website or social medias.

u/OliverSparrow

Where you think shrink wrap derives from ?

>Worldwide, hundreds of industrial processes use particle accelerators -- from the manufacturing of computer chips to the cross-linking of plastic for shrink wrap and beyond.

Electron-beam applications center on the modification of material properties, such as the alteration of plastics, for surface treatment, and for pathogen destruction in medical sterilization and food irradiation. Ion-beam accelerators, which accelerate heavier particles, find extensive use in the semiconductor industry in chip manufacturing and in hardening the surfaces of materials such as those used in artificial joints.

From the Article

>AI is becoming more sophisticated, and some say capable of writing academic essays. But at what point does the intrusion of AI constitute cheating?
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>“Waiting in front of the lecture hall for my next class to start, and beside me two students are discussing which AI program works best for writing their essays. Is this what I’m marking? AI essays?”
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>The tweet by historian Carla Ionescu late last month captures growing unease about what artificial intelligence portends for traditional university assessment. “No. No way,” she tweeted. “Tell me we’re not there yet.”

From the Article

>Kauffman said that his company is primarily concerned with finding sustainable answers to a rising demand for animal protein, especially in the face of a growing global population. On Tuesday, the United Nations announced that the world population surpassed 8 billion.
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>Cultivated meat will offer a cruelty-free, low impact alternative to the current standard of operations in the meat business, according to Kauffman.
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>"I don't see this whole cultured meat industry replacing traditional meat, I think it will assist that industry," he said. "We didn't change the way we raise cattle or how we consume it for millennia. If we can fly to the moon with computers less powerful the iPhone, why won't we produce meat in an up to date way, philosophy-wise?"

From the Article

>According to the study led by Stanford University, a nanoscale 3D printing material, which creates structures that are a fraction of the width of a human hair, will enable to print of materials that are available for use, especially when printing at very small scales.
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>“There’s a lot of interest right now in designing different types of 3D structures for mechanical performance,” says Wendy Gu, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and a corresponding author on the paper.
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>“What we’ve done on top of that is develop a material that is really good at resisting forces, so it’s not just the 3D structure, but also the material that provides very good protection.”

From Article

>“Additive manufacturing can help reduce the size and cost of accelerators, shorten their construction time and enhance their performance. Used at a wider scale, additive manufacturing could make accelerators more affordable for use outside of large scientific laboratories, such as in hospitals for isotope production and cancer treatment, in airports for cargo screening or in laboratories for industrial analysis,” explains CERN’s Maurizio Vretenar, I.FAST project coordinator. “Over 30 000 accelerators are currently in use worldwide, the vast majority of them in healthcare and industry.”

From the Article

>Robots are making their first tentative steps from the factory floor into our homes and workplaces. In a recent report, Goldman Sachs Research estimates a $6 billion market (or more) in people-sized-and-shaped robots is achievable in the next 10 to 15 years. Such a market would be able to fill 4% of the projected US manufacturing labor shortage by 2030 and 2% of global elderly care demand by 2035.
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>GS Research makes an additional, more ambitious projection as well. “Should the hurdles of product design, use case, technology, affordability and wide public acceptance be completely overcome, we envision a market of up to US$154bn by 2035 in a blue-sky scenario,” say the authors of the report The investment case for humanoid robots. A market that size could fill from 48% to 126% of the labor gap, and as much as 53% of the elderly caregiver gap.

From the Article

>As The Robot Report explains, Boston Dynamics is suing Ghost Robotics for allegedly infringing seven patents linked to its Spot quadruped. The Spirit 40 and Vision 60 (shown above) purportedly borrow key technologies from Spot, including systems for self-righting and climbing stairs.
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>Boston Dynamics says it asked Ghost Robotics to review Spot-related patents in July 2020, five months after the launch of the Spirit 40. After that, Boston claims to have sent two cease-and-desist letters asking Ghost to stop marketing its robot canines. Ghost was thus well aware of what it was doing, according to the lawsuit.
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>We've asked Ghost Robotics for comment. In a statement, Boston Dynamics claimed it "welcome[s] competition" but would crack down on companies violating its intellectual property rights. The Hyundai-owned firm is seeking unspecified damages as part of the suit.

From the Article

>India’s plan to get a fifth-generation fighter jet is slowly turning into reality. On 8 October, India Air Force Day, Air Chief Marshal Vivek Ram Chaudhari had said that work on the fifth-generation fighter aircraft program called the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft had progressed and induction of the AMCA was likely to commence 2035 onwards.
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>India’s need for a fifth-generation aircraft has intensified in recent times owing to the growing strength of Chinese and Pakistani air forces.

From the Article

>Researchers have developed a way of printing edible QR codes -- a kind of barcode -- within cookies, meaning that the tag is embedded within the food itself. Crucially, the tag doesn't change the flavor or outer appearance of the cookie, and can be read using a backlight while the cookie remains intact. This new method has great commercial potential for improving food safety and traceability in an environmentally friendly way.

From the Article

>Uganda has gone to space. Despite a fire alarm causing delays on Nov. 6, the country’s first satellite, PearlAfricaSat-1, finally launched successfully into space on the morning of Nov. 7 at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops space flight facility on Wallops Island, Virginia, US.
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>Uganda will be using its new satellite to get more accurate data on weather forecasting, mineral mapping, agri-monitoring, and border security. But on top of this list will be the conducting of healthtech life saving experiments. The Nile Post reports that Uganda will use the microgravity (weightlessness) provided by the satellite to perform advanced 3D biological printing of human tissue in space, including an “investigation into how microgravity influences ovary function.”
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>The satellite which has already landed on the International Space Station (ISS) will be monitored from the Mpoma ground satellite station in the capital Kampala.

From the Article

>Now, a team led by Amir Siraj, a student pursuing astrophysics at Harvard University, have outlined some of the physical parameters of such a mission, including the potential timeline, spacecraft speed, and optimal distance of a flyby.
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>Whereas past studies have mapped out the feasibility of the concept, Siraj and his co-authors, including Loeb, investigated the “requirements for a rendezvous mission with the primary objective of producing a resolved image of an interstellar object” and discuss “the characterization from close range of interstellar objects that, like ‘Oumuamua, don’t have an unequivocally identified nature,” according to a forthcoming study in the Journal of Astronomical Instrumentation that was posted on Sunday to the preprint server arXiv.

From the Article

>The reason for building a humanoid machine, Mr Jackson maintains, is to perform tasks that involve human interaction. With a bit of development Ameca might, for example, make a good companion for an elderly person—keeping an eye on them, telling them their favourite programme is about to appear on television and never getting bored with having to make repeated reminders to the forgetful. To that end, Engineered Arts aims to teach its robots to play board games, like chess. But only well enough so that they remain fallible, and can be beaten.
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>To interact successfully with people, Mr Jackson asserts, a robot needs a face. “The human face is the highest bandwidth communications tool we have,” he observes. “You can say more with an expression than you can with your voice.” Hence Ameca’s face, formed from an electronically animated latex skin, is very expressive.

From the Article

>"Science fiction is awash with explorations of the impact on human society following discovery of, and even encounters with, life or intelligence elsewhere," John Elliot(opens in new tab), a computer scientist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said in a statement(opens in new tab). Elliot is the coordinator of the University of St. Andrews' newly established SETI Detection Hub, the cross-disciplinary organization that will establish the new alien contact protocol.

From the Article

>“The launch of Tesla’s humanoid robot prototype, the “Optimus”, has again sparked debate about the financial opportunities of such innovation. The investment case for humanoid robots is sizable – we estimate that in 10-15 years a market size of at least US$6bn is achievable to fill 4$ of the US manufacturing labor shortage gap by 2030E and 2% of global elderly care demand by 2035,” wrote Goldman Sachs in its report.
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>“Should the hurdles of product design, use case, technology, affordability and wide public acceptance be completely overcome, we envision a market of up to US$152bn by 2035E in a blue-sky scenario (close to that of the global EV market and one-third of the global smartphone market as of 2021), which suggests labor shortage issues such as for manufacturing and elderly care can be solved to a large extent.”

From the Article

>The scientists believe that 3D-food printing technologies could be used to make custom meals for astronauts utilizing these modified yeast cells.
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>Imagine food, rather like sushi or lasagna, where each layer presents a different color, taste and texture. Or a compact protein-like bar that tastes and smells exactly like banana.
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>The innovative food system will also contribute to the circular economy, with the engineered foods leaving little to no waste for space travelers while maximizing food production capabilities off-Earth.

From the Article

>The rapid expansion of commercial space activity, as well as its integration into key government programs and services, represents a leap into uncharted waters. The rise of entrepreneurial “New Space” companies will challenge the capacity of both individual states and the international community to regulate and coordinate private space activity effectively. As the cost of placing payloads in space declines, the political and strategic importance of commercial space flight will only grow. Ensuring space is governed responsibly will be essential.

From the Article

>There are many, many other examples, but the point of nearly all of them is that you’ll have much better dating prospects if you’re forklift certified.
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>But I have bad news for the guys out there in that oh-so-exclusive club of certified operators who are never lonely on Friday night. A recent press release from BMW shows us that the machines want in on the action. Not only are they going to steal your lucrative forklift job at the local warehouse, but they’re probably going to steal your ladies, too.
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>BMW i Ventures has announced its lead investment in Fox Robotics, the world’s first intelligent forklift that can autonomously unload pallets from the trailer to the receiving dock. The oversubscribed funding round raised a total of $20 million from new and existing investors. New investors include Zebra Technologies, Japan Airlines & Translink Innovation Fund, and Foothill Ventures. Existing investors Menlo Ventures, ENIAC Ventures, and SignalFire also participated in the round.