Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 68

The Ameca robot was first revealed at the end of 2021, and publicly viewable at CES 2022.

The robot was created by Engineered Arts, which displayed it at CES earlier this year. Since then, Ameca has been upgraded with twelve additional actuators in its face, to allow it to realistically recreate more facial expressions than ever before, and fluidly shift between them. Facial expressions for the first generation that was ready in January 2022 include putting on a large smile, appearing thoughtful, angry, or surprised.

It has also been programmed with to pair gestures with various facial expressions to emulate a yawn, shrugging, pointing, waving, being gobsmacked, shushing someone, or indicating they want someone to repeat themselves more loudly. Ameca's construction includes sensors that can track movement throughout a room, cameras in both of its eyes, and a high-resoltuion camera mounted on its chest.

It was only a few days ago that officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warned how dire the situation is around the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant in Energodar.

Competing reports have put the blame for missiles being fired at the nuclear power plant on both sides, with Russians claiming that the Ukrainian military is firing on the plant, and Ukraine officials claiming Russia is firing on the plant. Speaking to Russian media on Tuesday, Vladimir Rogov, local government member in Energodar, said that the Ukrainian military fired "several dozen" heavy projectiles at the plant, with some of them being guided misses that hit "just ten meters from the barrels with spent nuclear fuel".

Rogov warned that if nuclear waste storage is hit, it would contaminate the entire area with hundreds of pounds of nuclear waste, that would be "like a dirty bomb". RT reports that the nuclear reactor at the plant can't be destroyed with typical missiles, and full destruction would require a tactical nuclear weapon. However, the coolant systems and nuclear waste storage are still vulnerable to attacks. Russia has called upon IAEA officials to inspect the facility, but the movement was denied by the UN after Ukraine was unable to guarantee the officials' safety.

Recent reports that cited Elon Musk writing on Twitter that he is looking to purchase the Manchester United soccer team have now been put to bed, with Musk clearing up the confusion.

It's hard to know when Musk is joking on Twitter, with the Tesla CEO constantly putting out new tweets that are both informational and humorous. Musk recently appeared on the Full Send Podcast, where he discussed what he believed to be the most-liked tweet on Twitter at 4.8 million likes, where he said he was going to be purchasing Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in.

Notably, this isn't the most-liked tweet, as the most-liked tweet is from the Chadwick Boseman Twitter account that announced the actor's death and his long battle with bowel cancer. Regarding Musk's Tweets, the SpaceX CEO recently wrote that he was going to be purchasing Manchester United, which was followed up by replied from Musk that cleared the speculative air on the matter. Musk wrote that he wouldn't be purchasing any sports team and that he also wouldn't be buying Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in despite the extreme popularity of such a move.

The US Air Force has shown off its military capabilities with a successful test of its Minuteman III ICBM, demonstrating just how ready American nuclear forces are for a response.

The test was conducted by the Global Strike Command of the Air Force and at 12:49 am Pacific Time on August 16, 2022, the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile was launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base located in California. According to Col. Chris Cruise the 576th Flight Test Squadron Commander, this test was "demonstrative of how our nation's ICBM fleet illustrates our readiness and reliability of the weapon system."

Col Cruise added that scheduled tests such as this one also showcase the expertise and skill of strategic weapons maintenance personnel along with missile crews. As for the missile itself, the reentry vehicle of the ICBM managed to travel 4,200 miles to its designated location in the Marshall Islands' Kwajalein Atoll. The success of the launch confirms the US has reliable ICBM weapons systems that are prepared for a response, which is the nation's nuclear deterrent for other nuclear weapon-wielding countries that are considering pushing that big red button.

A new essay written by SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has detailed the billionaire's plans to get the human race to a new level of existence.

The essay was published for China Cyberspace magazine, which is run by China's central internet censor, the Cyberspace Administration of China, which, according to BusinessInsider, controls and oversees large swaths of data for several companies while also acting as digital security. Musk wrote in the essay that he is pushing for humans to become a multi-planetary species, and to do that, there must be a reduction in the cost of space travel.

Musk writes that SpaceX was created to solve the problem of space travel and bring the cost down to an affordable price while also solving the problem of humans only being on a single planet. Musk details that human civilization is a "faint little candle" or a "shimmering light in the void" that needs to reach another planet to ensure its survival. More specifically, the SpaceX CEO wrote that the "greatest hope" for humans is to create a large self-sustaining colony on Mars.

Elon Musk has taken to his personal Twitter account to share an insight into his busy life running both Tesla and SpaceX.

Musk wears many business hats, with two of his biggest hats being putting out logistical fires at Tesla to keep the production line rolling across multiple factories and working on SpaceX's development of the Starship launch vehicle that's currently approaching its first orbital test flight. Musk recently stated during a podcast that he is spending most of his time on Starship, which was followed by SpaceX conducting multiple static fire tests in preparation for the first orbital test flight that is expected between one and twelve months from now.

Now, Musk has taken to his personal Twitter account to reveal that he has some spare time left over out of his busy day to have a side-hustle, that being standup comedy. As with most of Musk's tweets that have a hint of humor, we can assume that Musk doesn't actually mean he is going to spend his valuable time pursuing standup comedy and that he is most likely referring to his multiple memes posted across his Twitter account.

Many residents across a US state were shocked when their morning coffee was interrupted by a loud boom sound heard from overhead.

Reports from The Desert News indicate that this loud boom was heard at approximately 8:32 am local time across Utah, with quick seismograph reports indicating that no earthquake had occurred. The National Weather Service Salt Lake City issued an update and revealed that there were two red flashes seen in the morning sky.

The debating was quickly put to bed when home security footage sent into officials revealed that there was meteorite had entered Earth's atmosphere, streaking across the morning sky and then exploding - scattering fragments across the landscape. At the moment, there has been no reports of any of these fragments being recovered. However, a NASA volunteer spoke to KSLTV radio and said that its likely fragments could be found in the two areas indicated below.

Google Research has teamed with Everyday Robots to create a new robotics algorithm called PaLm-SayCan, which is helping robots better understand humans through language, whether it's through voice or text.

The joint effort uses Google Pathways Language Model (PaLm) while a helper robot from Everyday Robots is on the physical side, with Google saying the effort is the first implementation that uses a large-scale language model to plan for a real robot.

The new robotics program will help people communicate with robots through voice or text easier than before, while the robots themselves will perform complex tasks thanks to the improved understating of our written and spoken languages.

A paper on radiation and Mars titled "Crewed Missions to Mars: Modeling the Impact of Astrophysical Charged Particles on Astronauts and Assessing Health Effects" has been uploaded to the preprint server arXiv.

The new paper was authored by researchers from an assortment of international universities and institutes, though it has yet to be peer-reviewed. It considers the impact of ionizing radiation originating from the sun and from outside the solar system on the health of astronauts that intend to journey to Mars in the future. Ionizing radiation is one of the main impedances to astronaut health for such a trip, and a spaceship would provide little protection over the estimated 300 days one way.

Planned missions to Mars are expected to have astronauts undergo much longer missions than they currently do to the International Space Station (ISS) or the Moon, the former of which has its astronauts much more protected from radiation thanks to Earth's magnetosphere. Once on Mars, the significantly less substantial atmosphere compared to Earth would provide little protection to astronauts from continued radiation exposure. This risks exposing astronauts to "Acute Radiation Syndrome, damage to the nervous system, and increased cancer risk."

Three new studies have been published on the world record fusion energy achievement in the journals Physical Review Letters and Physical Review E.

Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL's) National Ignition Facility (NIF) yielded over 1.3 megajoules (MJ) of energy on August 8th, 2021, setting a new world record for energy yield for a nuclear fusion experiment. The experiment also marked the first time fusion ignition has been achieved, the point at which a nuclear fusion reaction can sustain itself, generating more heat than it loses.

A new world record for the strongest steady magnetic field has been set at the Steady High Magnetic Field Facility (SHMFF) in Hefei, China.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences set a new record on August 12, 2022, of 45.22 teslas (T, the standard unit of magnetic flux density) using a hybrid magnet. This achievement broke the previous 45 tesla T record set using a hybrid magnet at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory of the United States in 1999. The 45.22 T hybrid magnet comprises a resistive insert housed within a superconducting outer ring with a bore of 32 millimeters (1.3 inches).

The Hefei scientists first developed the hybrid magnet in 2016 and generated a central magnetic field of 40 T, making it the second magnet in the world to pass the 40 T threshold. The hybrid magnet is one of ten magnets operated by the High Magnetic Field Laboratory of Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CHMFL), where SHMFF is located.

A study on a potential nuclear winter titled "Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection" has been published in the journal Nature Food.

Researchers from Rutgers University have estimated that following a full-scale nuclear war between various nations, over 5 billion people would die globally due to hunger. Their study examines the effects of matter that nuclear weapons being detonated would throw into the atmosphere, blocking out sunlight and affecting crop growth. They analyzed six scenarios, with the smallest-scale nuclear war involving Pakistan and India, scaling up to the largest involving the United States and Russia.

In the smallest nuclear scenario, the global average caloric production would decrease by 7% within five years of the conflict. This figure would increase to 90% within three to four years following the largest-scale nuclear war. Mid-high latitude nations would suffer from the most severe declines in crop generation, including nations like Russia and the U.S., which export large amounts. This would likely lead to export restrictions, severely impacting countries reliant on imports in Africa and the Middle East.

Space is the final frontier that humans are yet to explore, and with companies and government space agency's around the world working on getting humans out into space and on to other worlds, there are going to be many dangers they will have to be mindful of.

#1 - Comets.

Space is home to many dangers, but the most terrifying can simply be categorized by their potential to wipe out Earth. Luckily, there are only a few different ways Earth can be completely destroyed by a space event, and one of those is a very large comet's trajectory lining up with Earth's orbit and impacting the surface of our planet. More luckily, NASA confirms that it hasn't found an object of this caliber and that it won't happen for at least the next 100 years.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is 30 years old, and while it's a relic compared to NASA's new James Webb Space Telescope, it can still produce some incredible photographs.

The European Space Agency (ESA) released the new image, which has focused on the Orion Nebula, a colorful nebula that residents within the constellation of Orion and only being about 25 light-years from Earth. The Orion Nebula is so close to Earth that it's visible to the naked eye in the night sky with an apparent magnitude 4.0.

As for the image, Hubble has honed in a colorful region of the Orion Nebula that is home to the Herbig-Haro object HH 505, which are luminous regions around newborn stars that form when stellar streams of the star's wind or jets collide with nearby gas and dust. The ESA states that this image was taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys by astronomers that were looking to study the properties of outflows and protoplanetary discs, which makes the Orion Nebula a worthy candidate as it has plenty of bright young stars.

A video of an alligator being eaten by seemingly giant "sea bugs" went viral back in 2019 and has now received a follow up study detailing the recently discovered species.

The creatures seen in the above video are called Bathynomus yucatanensis, and while they certainly resemble a type of bug, they aren't actually bugs at all - they are isopods. A new study published in the Journal of Natural History in August looked into the Bathynomus yucatanensis and detailed their behavior, with the researchers writing that these isopods don't appear to hunt their prey and behavior more like a scavenger of food.

The researchers write that these strange creatures search for leftover corpses of sea creatures or any other food they can safely get access to. Notably, these isopods are capable of consuming an entire alligator corpse in just 51 days. The study details the location of the Bathynomus yucatanensis, with the researchers writing that they are common in tropical temperature areas in the deep sea. When seen in the ocean, they appear as large floating white pieces as this species can grow up to 1.5 feet in length.

The new bipedal, humanoid robot has been developed by Chinese company Xiaomi and unveiled at a launch event in Beijing.

Named the CyberOne, its reveal followed Xiaomi's presentation for a new foldable phone, thinner than Samsung's and only available in China. The robot joined Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun on stage, walking over to him to hand him a flower. The humanoid robot adds to Xiaomi's growing robotics line-up, known as its Cyber series, which includes the Cyberdog released last year, a robotic dog sharing a similar design to Spot, Boston Dynamics' robot dog.

The CyberOne stands 177 centimeters (5 feet 9.7 inches) with a wingspan of 168 centimeters (66 inches). It supports up to 21 degrees of freedom in motion, which, paired with a response time of 0.5 milliseconds per degree of freedom, allows it to simulate human movements completely. Visually, the CyberOne also shares some strong design similarities with renders of the upcoming Tesla Bot, also known as Optimus.

A paper on Gaia's new data titled "Gaia Data Release 3: Astrophysical parameters inference system (Apsis) I -- methods and content overview" is available on the arXiv preprint server.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has released the third dataset from its Gaia mission, which maps the stars. The mission has identified stars of similar mass and composition to our Sun, which provides insight into the timeline of the Sun. Gaia also captures information about a star's apparent brightness and temperature and can also derive a star's absorption and emission spectra.

When a star's light is split with a prism, the colors of light that separate out correlate to the presence of various elements in the star. Astronomers from the late 19th and 20th centuries realized these spectra could be ordered in a way that correlates with the temperature. Additionally, they discovered the width of the lines along the spectra indicated the star's luminosity and age.

A study on oxygen and magnetism titled "Magnetic phase separation in microgravity" has been published in the journal npj Microgravity.

An international team of researchers has found a new way to produce oxygen in space for astronauts to breathe, such as on the International Space Station (ISS) and other space vehicles. The method NASA currently uses aboard the ISS is to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using an electrolytic cell. The gases have to be removed from that system so they can be utilized, which requires a centrifuge to separate the gases from the electrode and liquid electrolyte of the water electrolyzer system.

However, such a centrifuge is typically large, has a lot of mass, and requires significant power and maintenance. A recent analysis by a NASA Ames researcher indicated that the current infrastructure for creating oxygen in space "wouldn't make any sense to use" for a trip to Mars. Researchers have now found that gas bubbles can be separated from electrode surfaces using simple neodymium magnets in simulated microgravity conditions.

A new report has revealed that TikTok officials kept a "kill list" of staff members they wanted to be pushed out of a TikTok office.

The report from the Financial Times details four anonymous employees that spoke to the publication regarding a list that included the names of several staff members at the London TikTok office, with some of the names on the list only being at the company for a few weeks. Notably, the unnamed employees said that TikTok would sometimes hire replacements before letting the individual go from the company and that senior officials would intentionally create a hostile work environment.

BusinessInsider contacted TikTok for comment and a spokesperson for the company said that if any list such as the one detailed by the employees exists, it would not be "condoned or in accordance with our internal policies on probation and performance management." The Financial Times report also details one employee that stated senior officials singled her out which led her to self doubt about her ability. This employee described the environment as "If they don't like you, they gaslight you or make your job untenable."

A study on tinnitus titled "A randomized single-blind controlled trial of a prototype digital polytherapeutic for tinnitus" has been published in the journal Frontiers in Neurology.

Researchers from the University of Auckland in New Zealand have developed a new smartphone-based therapy for treating tinnitus patients. Their clinical trial involved 61 patients, who were separated into a group of 31 that received the new "digital polytherapeutic" and a group of 30 that used a popular, generic app for producing white noise. After 12 weeks, the group receiving the polytherapeutic treatment showed significant improvement, while those using white noise did not.