Month: February 2017

How would you deal with the likelihood that robots and automation will likely lead to many people losing their jobs? For Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the answer is straightforward: tax the robots. In an interview with Quartz, Gates argues that taxing worker robots would offset job losses by funding training for positions where humans are still needed, such as child and senior care. It could even slow automation to a more manageable rate, if necessary.

Gates is well aware of potential pitfalls — he knows that taxation could ultimately slow innovation by making worker robots prohibitively expensive. However, he’s convinced that governments should be "figuring [policy] out" so that they’re ready when there’s a sudden glut of unemployed workers.

He can’t expect much sympathy from Europe for his ideas, though. The European Parliament has rejected a proposed robot tax, and is instead interested in crafting regulation that guides the ethics behind creating and deploying robots, including liability when something goes wrong. Officials don’t want to leave these guidelines to "third countries," according to a statement. Robot makers will undoubtedly be happy (they were concerned a tax would hamper growth), but the move won’t please those who want a safety net in place when the machines arrive in force.

Source: Quartz

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The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is finally ready to take a picture of Sagittarius A*. From April 5th to 14th this year, the virtual telescope that’s been in the making for the past two decades will peer into the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy. EHT is actually an array of radio telescopes located in different countries around the globe, including the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile.

By using a technique called very-long-baseline interferometry, the EHT team turns all the participating observatories into one humongous telescope that encompasses the whole planet. We need a telescope that big and powerful, because Sagittarius A* is but a tiny pinprick in the sky for us. While scientists believe it has a mass of around four million suns, it also only measures around 20 million km or so across and is located 26,000 light-years away from our planet. The EHT team says it’s like looking at a grapefruit or a DVD on the moon from Earth.

To prepare the participating observatories, the team equipped them with atomic clocks for the most precise time stamps and hard-drive modules with enormous storage capacities. Since the scientists are expecting to gather a colossal amount of data, they deployed enough modules to match the capacity of 10,000 laptops. Those hard drives will be flown out to the MIT Haystack Observatory, where imaging algorithms will make sense of EHT’s data, once the observation period is done.

The researchers said it could take until the beginning of 2018 before we see humanity’s first photo of a black hole. As for what they’re expecting to see, it’ll be something like what their simulation yielded last year:

Based on Einstein’s theory of general relativity, we’re supposed to see a crescent of light surrounding a black blob. That light is emitted by gas and dust before the black hole devours them, while the dark blob is the shadow cast over that mayhem. But what if we see something else altogether? Team leader Sheperd Doeleman from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told BBC:

"As I’ve said before, it’s never a good idea to bet against Einstein, but if we did see something that was very different from what we expect we would have to reassess the theory of gravity."

[Image credit: NASA/UMass/D.Wang et al., IR: NASA/STScI / Feryel Ozel (event horizon simulation)]

Via: ScienceAlert

Source: BBC

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The Apollo 11 space capsule was displayed around the country in 1970 and 1971, shortly after it safely brought Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins back from their iconic 1969 moon trip. Since then, the command module has lived in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. Over the next few years, though, the spacecraft will get some fresh air as it embarks on its first national tour in nearly half a century.

The traveling exhibit, called "Destination Moon: The Apollo 11 Mission," will reach four US cities in 2018 and 2019, the lunar mission’s 50th anniversary year. All told, the display will include the space capsule, along with other "one-of-a-kind artifacts." The exhibition’s locations and dates are as follows:

• Space Center Houston — October 14, 2017 to March 18, 2018
• St. Louis Science Center — April 14, 2018 to September 3, 2018
• Senator John Heinz History Center, Pittsburgh — September 29, 2018 to February 18, 2019
• The Museum of Flight, Seattle — March 16, 2019 to September 2, 2019

Once the module is off the road, it will return to its home at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. There, it will be part of a permanent "Destination Moon" exhibit, which opens in 2020 and will explore humanity’s relationship with lunar travel from ancient times to today.

The space capsule isn’t exactly easy to transport or host: Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service project director Kathrin Halpern told NPR that the module weighs over 13,600 pounds. She added that for these and other reasons, this tour is "likely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" to see this historic spacecraft outside of Washington, DC. So enjoy it while you can, since it’s not a giant leap to say it will be awhile before Apollo 11 leaves the Smithsonian museum again.

Via: NPR

Source: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

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Climate change is such an urgent issue that despite problems with radioactive waste, nuclear power is once again viable until renewable solutions like solar and wind are more widely adopted. The ocean is a good source of uranium fuel, but it exists in such small quantities that extracting it hasn’t been economically feasible. However, Stanford researchers have developed a new technique that can capture up to three times more, meaning we might soon get a new source of uranium that could help keep CO2 in check.

A surprising amount of uranium exists in the ocean in the form of positively charged uranyl ions (no jokes please). The total is estimated at 4.5 billion tons, enough to power current plants for around 6 millenia. However, there’s only around a grain of salt per quart (three parts per billion) and so far, it’s been too time-consuming and expensive to extract it in decent quantities.

The best way to get uranium out of salt water is to dip plastic fibers coated with an organic chemical called amidoxime into seawater. The uranyl ions stick to the amidoxime, and can later be extracted and refined into uranium fuel. The key to its practicality is how quickly ions can be capture, how much sticks and how often the fibers can be reused.

Researcher Chong Liu examines a carbon-amidoxime electrode (Linda A. Cicero/Stanford News)

The Stanford team came up with a conductive hybrid carbon and amidoxime fiber prototype that’s better in all three of those areas. By sending electric pulses down the fiber, it was able to absorb up to nine times as much uranyl as previous fibers without becoming saturated. Over an 11-hour test at Half Moon Bay, the team captured three times as much uranium and the fibers had thrice the lifespan of standard amidoxime.

In 2012, a Japanese team estimated that their seawater extraction technique, using previous tech, could be developed for about $300 per kilogram. That was about three times the commercial price at that point, but right now, the price is around half of that. "We have a lot of work to do still, but these are big steps toward practicality," said the paper’s co-author, Li Cui. "For much of this century, some fraction of our electricity will need to come from sources that we can turn on and off. I believe nuclear power should be part of that mix."

Source: Stanford

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Even though Samsung has established a cause for those Galaxy Note 7 flare-ups, the device’s story is not over. Korean outlet Hankyung reports that the company will sell the "refurbished" phones, but with smaller, less-explodey batteries inside. It doesn’t sound like the devices will be returning to US or European markets (it’s tough to imagine regulators reversing course on bans after the first recall and reissue), but they could be sold in India or Vietnam instead.

According to the report, Samsung has some 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7s left over after using 20,000 or so up in testing to determine the cause of the problem. The refurbished devices will have new cases, and batteries with a capacity between 3,000 and 3,200mAh (the phones initially contained a 3,500mAh battery). Reuters reported last month that the sale of refurbs is a possibility, and ZDNet Korea says it will also help the company avoid trouble with the government over junking all of the unused and returned phones.

Source: ZDNet Korea, Hankyung

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Just because true 5G wireless is edging closer doesn’t mean that 4G’s peak speeds can’t improve in the meantime. Qualcomm has unveiled a new LTE modem, the Snapdragon X20, that promises 1.2Gbps download speeds on mobile devices. That’s 20 percent faster than the company’s previous best, and enough to make even landline services like Google Fiber seem a bit pokey. The X20 manages the feat through more aggressive carrier aggregation (which bonds carrier frequency ranges) that lets it download 12 unique data streams of up to 100Mbps each. Upload speeds are healthy, too, at 150Mbps.

There are a few other party tricks. Qualcomm’s new chip supports the 3.5GHz airspace used by Citizens Broadband Radio Service in the US, which opens the door to private LTE networks. It can also handle high-quality LTE phone calls on dual SIM phones, which is particularly handy in China and other countries where dual-line phones are relatively commonplace.

Unfortunately, you’re going to have to wait to see what this modem can do. Samples of the X20 are available to device makers now, but the first shipping products aren’t expected until the first half of 2018. It’s just as well, though, when the most advanced LTE networks tend to stop at ‘just’ hundreds of megabits per second these days. And of course, the likelihood of hitting 1.2Gbps on a compatible carrier will be small unless you’re close to an uncongested cell tower. It’s better to think of this as laying groundwork for a transition — Qualcomm will be ready to tide you over with breakneck LTE speeds while you wait for meaningful 5G coverage.

Source: Qualcomm

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Boeing is known for building huge, high-end satellites that cost roughly $150 million each, but that could change in the future. The aerospace corporation plans to adopt new production practices that involve the use of modular 3D-printed parts and far fewer workers than it’s used to, according to The Wall Street Journal. Its current procedures that require customized manual assembly cost too much and take far too long — apparently, you can count the number of satellites it builds in a year on two hands. Boeing’s satellite business chief Paul Rusnock told the WSJ that the company can’t continue what it’s been doing and remain competitive.

Companies that maker smaller, cheaper satellites are already using modular components to save costs and pump out as many as possible. Airbus and a startup called OneWeb (a venture founded by Richard Branson’s Virgin and Qualcomm), for instance, are in the midst of building an automated assembly line in Florida. It’ll be capable of cranking out hundreds of small satellites a year that cost roughly $500,000 each.

Boeing likely won’t be able to achieve the same level of productivity since it’s working on bigger satellites, but it’ll be able to build a lot more units in a year. Rusnock says there’s nothing stopping the company from "realizing huge reductions in production schedules." Its ultimate goal is to find a way for its spacecraft business to replicate its aircraft division’s speed: it only takes the company 11 days to build a whole 737.

The private space corporation has already begun implementing 3D printing and some of its other new manufacturing processes in its Los Angeles facility. It’s now looking for ways to use them for select commercial projects, and it’s also working on adapting them for its different models. The downside to modular satellites is that they can only last around 7 to 8 years, half the 15-year lifespan of their highly customized hand-assembled counterparts. However, that might not exactly be a bad thing: Boeing’s clients are already talking about launching new satellites with upgraded technologies more regularly. The cheaper, modular versions will give them the opportunity to reach that goal.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

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