Huawei Announces the P20 and P20 Pro With Triple Leica Cameras, Not Coming to US
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Huawei made the P20 and P20 Pro official this morning, but before you go getting all excited about the potential for triple Leica cameras and top notches, even though there is still enough bezel to place a front-facing fingerprint reader, they aren’t coming to the US.
Both devices are marketed more as cameras, not phones, powered by artificial intelligence. The AI comes from Huawei’s Kirin 970 processor, with the P20 Pro featuring a 6.1? OLED FHD display, 6GB RAM, 128GB storage, three Leica co-developed rear-facing cameras, 4,000mAh battery, and EMUI 8.1 on top of Oreo at launch.
For those cameras, Huawei has apparently spared no expense. Included on this phone is a 40-megapixel RGB sensor (f/1.8 aperture), 20-megapixel Monochrome sensor (f/1.6 aperture), plus an 8-megapixel Telephoto sensor (f/2.4 aperture). To go along with these sensors is a string of AI capabilities baked into the software to help anyone shoot like a pro photographer.
On the P20 there is a dual camera setup, consisting of a 12-megapixel RGB sensor (f/1.8 aperture) and 20-megapixel Monochrome sensor (f/1.6 aperture). Other specs include a 5.8? LCD FHD display, 4GB RAM, and 3,400mAh battery.
As mentioned, US buyers will not find these devices available for purchase anywhere, which is pretty disappointing. Thanks to a lot of recent drama between the US government and China-based tech companies, who knows if we’ll see Huawei make any new pushes in our neck of the woods any time soon.
If the P20 or P20 Pro did come to the US, would you be interested?
Don’t Bother Trying to Outrun This Creepy Spiderbot That Transforms Into a Rolling Wheel
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If the only thing more terrifying to you than a spider is a spider chasing you, you’re not going to want to watch this video of Festo’s latest creation. Using eight reconfigurable legs, the BionicWheelBot can creepily crawl along the ground, but then transform into a wheel and roll at an alarming speed. Someone find me a gigantic rolled up newspaper.
Unlike Boston Dynamic’s creations, such as SpotMini and ATLAS—robots that seem specifically engineered to supplant humanity—Festo’s machines are typically far less intimidating; Robotic flying butterflies and hopping kangaroos are more fascinating than fearsome.
But the BionicWheelBot, inspired by the real-life flic-flac spider that’s known for doing cartwheels to quickly escape a predator, is equal parts technical marvel and terror for anyone who’s uneasy around creepy-crawlies. From a functional point of view, the robot’s ability to transform makes it ideal for tackling various types of terrain. When things get uneven, the BionicWheelBot can slowly tip-toe its way over rocks, debris, and other obstacles with its articulated legs. But when the path ahead is clear, it can convert into a wheel and use two of its legs to quickly propel itself along.
It’s a good thing Mother Nature hasn’t patented any of its inventions.
This is a short video of what appear to be two jetpack samurai doing a little swordplay in midair. Obviously, the jetpacks aren’t real and I assume they’re being hoisted by out-of-frame cranes. Or, who knows, maybe Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was authentic and there is much we have to learn about the magic of martial arts. Whatever the case, I just stabbed myself with my samurai sword trying to bat a little basketball into the hoop on the back of my bedroom door but I can’t tell my mom because she doesn’t know I have the sword. It’s times like this I wish I’d listened to her when she said don’t play with swords. But ONLY times like this, just so we’re clear.
Keep going for a glimpse of futures past.
Thanks to K Diddie, who agrees there’s absolutely no reason why people shouldn’t do this with real jetpacks.
Lots of proteins sit in the membrane or extend completely across it.
A group of bacteria called “gram negative” have an outer membrane that is a pretty serious barrier to antibiotics. But the membrane is also a barrier to bacteria themselves, making it difficult for them to insert proteins into the membrane and interact with the outside world. Now, researchers that were attempting to study how proteins get inserted into this membrane have inadvertently created an antibody that kills the bacteria.
The antibody isn’t therapeutic on its own since it only works in an experimental system. But it could help us design drugs that target the same things it does.
While membranes are made of fatty molecules, there are proteins strewn throughout the membrane that allow the passage of everything from water molecules to entire proteins. Many of these take on a barrel-like configuration, with the central area of the barrel allowing molecules to cross the membrane.
BAM and barrels
In order to attain their proper barrel-folded shapes, these proteins require the services of a special protein-folding machine. First identified in 2012, the folding complex is called BAM, for ?-barrel assembly machine. Depleting it or interfering with its function reduces bacterial viability, so it must be important—and it could be a potential target for new antibiotics. But we don’t really know how it works.
So some scientists at the company Genentech made a bunch of antibodies that stuck to it, to see if the antibodies could be used to help elucidate its function. The idea behind this approach is that some of the antibodies will interfere with BAM’s function; by seeing where on BAM they stick, we can identify key parts of the folding machinery.
After screening thousands of antibodies, they hit on five that bind to and inhibit BAM and go on to characterize one of them. It specifically sticks to a particular site on the E. coli version of BAM—and killed the E. coli in a dose-dependent manner. It reduced the presence of outer membrane proteins, so it seems to prevent BAM from performing its requisite function of folding them. Treatment with the antibody also rendered the membrane more permeable to molecules that it normally wouldn’t let through.
In order to further elucidate BAM’s mechanism of action, they looked at bacteria that had evolved resistance to the antibody. Weirdly, the resistant bugs all had normal BAM, which the antibody could still bind and inhibit. Instead of affecting BAM, the mutations that rescued them were in a gene that affects the structure of the molecules comprising the outer membrane.
Fluid
These mutations make the membrane more rigid, less fluid. Diminishing the membrane’s fluidity by other means, like soaking the bacteria in salt or growing them in the cold, also impaired the antibody’s activity but not its binding. So somehow enhancing membrane rigidity prevented the antibody from inhibiting BAM and killing the bacteria.
This antibody isn’t going to be a useful therapy. The bacteria used in this study were not standard; they had been engineered to have a very minimal outer membrane, which should increase the chances of finding an antibody that interfered with BAM. This antibody doesn’t even work on normal E. coli cells with normal outer membranes—in those cells, the antibody can’t access the BAM machinery to bind to it.
Still, it achieved what it was intended to; it is a valuable research tool that has started to clarify how BAM works. It revealed that there is an unexpected link between BAM’s ability to fold proteins and the properties of the membrane in which those proteins reside. And it does show that blocking BAM can kill cells, so it provides a proof-of-principle that BAM could be a viable target for other types of antibiotics.
Billionaire Terry Gou, chairman of Foxconn Technology Group, holds a “FOXCONN” Wisconsin license plate during an event in Racine, Wisconsin, on Friday, November 10, 2017. The agreement grants the electronics giant $3 billion in tax incentives for a massive manufacturing campus in Southeastern Wisconsin.
Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Foxconn, the famed Taiwan-based manufacturer behind approximately 40 percent of all consumer electronics (including the iPhone), has agreed to purchase Belkin for $866 million in cash.
“FIT is excited to acquire Belkin and its capabilities in the premium consumer products space,” said Sidney Lu, CEO of Foxconn Interconnect Technology (FIT), in a statement released late Monday evening. “Integrating Belkin’s best-in-class capabilities and solutions into FIT, we expect to enrich our portfolio of premium consumer products and accelerate our penetration into the smart home.”
Belkin, which owns the Linksys, Phyn, and Wemo brands, will continue to operate as a Foxconn subsidiary. The California-based company is best known for its Wi-Fi gear, among various newer smart home-related products.
According to Bloomberg, the Hon Hai Precision Industry subsidiary will also now acquire Belkin’s portfolio of more than 700 patents.
Meanwhile, Foxconn is investing heavily in Wisconsin, where it plans to build a $10 billion manufacturing facility. However, Foxconn has been running into some trouble over ongoing recent concerns about the use of eminent domain to acquire land in the village of Mount Pleasant, outside of Milwaukee.
The Taiwanese company, which is receiving a $3 billion tax break from the Badger State, is expected to have its Wisconsin factory fully operational by the end of 2019.
The Junker Race in Norway Where All That Counts Is Fun
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Professional auto racing can be a ridiculously expensive sport, one hard to get into without a billionaire backer, wealthy parents or a fat bank account of your own. But if you lack the cash and still dream of the track, don’t worry. There’s always Norwegian bilcross.
Instead of Ferraris and Astons, drivers race beat-up Volvos and Saabs that might otherwise go to the junkyard, competing for little more than a dinky trophy. “There’s no money behind it,” says Alberto Bernasconi, who photographed a race near Hellvik, Norway last June. “Just fun.”
Bilcross is a cheap version of world rallycross that originated in Finland as “Jokamiehenluokka,” or “Everyman’s Class.” As long as your steed can steer laps around a gravel track, you can participate. Drivers patch up their cars with second-hand parts and roll cages, stripping the interiors of all but the front seat, steering wheel and dashboard. They might hammer out the dents, spray-paint the exterior, and hand-paint on the name of their sponsor on the side, if they have one. But no one sinks too much money into their rides because it’s a short-term investment: Each competition ends with a fixed price auction, where drivers turn in their own vehicles and pay somewhere around $1,200 for someone else’s, minus the seat and dash. “It keeps it affordable for everyone,” Bernasconi says.
Bernasconi discovered the sport while shooting a travel story in southern Norway. He was winding through the hills with his windows down, enjoying the peaceful scenery, when he heard the engines. They were loud—not because they were powerful, but because the curving, 1.5-mile track at the Egersund Motorsportsenter sits in a dusty stone quarry that amplifies the noise. Bernasconi hadn’t planned to stop, but before he knew it, he had forked over the 12-Euro entrance fee and was snapping away.
The competition seemed more a spoof of racing than racing itself. Cars broke down and crashed at unimpressive speeds; others failed to start at all. One driver took several minutes to crawl to the finish line after her shift gear broke, the crowd cheering her on from lawn chairs perched in the surrounding hills. No one took any of it too seriously. “When I was a kid I did races with a go-kart," Bernasconi says. "It’s more or less the same thing."
Bernasconi’s sunny photos capture what’s left when you take the money, speed, and ability out of racing: fun. But maybe that’s what it’s supposed to be about anyway.
Watch Astronauts Answer Your Burning Questions About Space
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Last week, two American astronauts, Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold, and one Russian cosmonaut, Oleg Artemyev, climbed into a giant explosive stick and fired into space, ascending 250 miles before docking with the International Space Station on Friday. As usual, they flew in the storied Soyuz rocket, launched out of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan—the same facility that sent off Sputnik 60 years ago.
The trio, all veteran spacepeople, have left behind political turmoil between the US and Russia for a life in microgravity. Aboard the ISS for over five months, they’ll help run some 250 experiments, testing materials and studying the effects on microgravity on bone marrow (that’d be theirs). NASA has been using the Russian launch facility for ISS flights since the Space Shuttle program shut down in 2011—though in the coming years American astronauts will again fly out of the US as commercial operations spin up.
Now that they’re on board, the astronauts will be getting to work right quick: The two Americans will step out into space for a six-and-a-half-hour walk around the station just five days after arriving. And a little more than a week after their docking, they’ll host a visitor in the form of SpaceX’s Dragon cargo craft, which will bring supplies and scientific equipment.
If that seems like a lot, well, it is. Astronauts are a funny bunch: They have to be OK with rocketing into the cold indifference of space, they have to be in shape, they have to be really smart. Oh, and they have to be cool about climbing into a giant explosive stick, of course. (Some other official requirements from NASA: must have a bachelor’s degree and good eyesight, though glasses are allowed, which means even I could be an astronaut if only I took care of my body.)
We’ve talked to twin astronaut Scott Kelly about how the ISS is like the Harris county jail, biologist astronaut Kate Rubins about how wearing a biosafety hazard suit prepared her for her space ensemble, and badass astronaut Peggy Whitson (holder of the American record for most time in space) about that time her descent back to Earth didn’t go quite so smoothly.
Now, we’ve assembled seven astronauts to prove just how smart and cool they are (they’re comfortably back on Earth, not floating around still) by answering the top 50 Googled questions about space. Can birds fly in space? Can you fire a gun in space? Great questions with great answers in the video above.
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