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Major power outages caused chaos on mass transit systems in both New York and San Francisco Friday, with parts of both cities’ systems still suffering ongoing outages or delays into the pre-weekend afternoon commute. Los Angeles also had a major power outage shortly after San Francisco and New York. Some have worried that the power outages were a cyberattack, but it is only ongoing incompetence allow infrastructure to become old (over 50 years old and sometimes over 100 years old) and fragile rather than an evil attack. In the movies, disaster requires an evil and smart opponent but reality has

The New York Times reports that members of armed bands who have become key enforcers for President Nicolás Maduro as he attempts to crush a growing protest movement against his rule. The groups, called collectives or colectivos in Spanish, originated as pro-government community organizations that have long been a part of the landscape of leftist Venezuelan politics. Civilians with police training, colectivo members are armed by the government, say experts who have studied them. These groups seem similar to the Nazi era Brown shirts or to the little green men that Russia used in the war with Ukraine. Colectivos control

AeroMobil is offering the first flying cars. The company’s first edition will be limited to 500 units, but the first 25 Flying Cars ordered will receive special “Founders Edition” perks, including an “expanded benefits package.” The price for such luxury? Somewhere between $1.2 and $1.6 million, depending on the specifications. Pre-orders placed now won’t ship until 2020, since AeroMobil expects to ramp up to full production over the next few years and deliver starting then. The AeroMobil does sound impressive on paper, however: It transforms from car mode to air in less than 3 minutes. It has around 434 miles

Google’s latest chip has only six qubits, but they are arranged in a two-by-three configuration that Martinis says shows the company’s technology still works when qubits are nestled side by side, as they will be in larger devices. The six-qubit chip is also a test of a manufacturing method in which the qubits and the conventional wiring that controls them are made on separate chips later “bump bonded” together. That approach, a major focus of Google’s team since it was established just over two years ago, is intended to eliminate the extra control lines needed in a larger chip, which

Two drugs have been found that have a protective effect on the brain and are already safely used in people. Prof Giovanna Mallucci, from the MRC Toxicology Unit in Leicester, wants to start human clinical trials on dementia patients soon and expects to know whether the drugs work within two to three years. When a virus hijacks a brain cell it leads to a build-up of viral proteins. Cells respond by shutting down nearly all protein production in order to halt the virus’s spread. Many neurodegenerative diseases involve the production of faulty proteins that activate the same defenses, but with

Blockchain, the technology that underpins Bitcoin, may be poised to inspire solutions to key societal challenges, offering help with everything from trading carbon emissions to maintaining health records. But only if the companies and developers involved can agree on things. The blockchain on which Bitcoin is built serves as a distributed, cryptographically signed ledger that makes it possible track and verify payments without any centralized authority. The ledger is maintained by computers performing computations that eventually generate more bitcoins. The same distributed cryptographic approach can be used to verify all sorts of transactions. Among other projects, Hyperledger has been helping

Saturn’s moon Enceladus has a subsurface ocean covered by a layer of ice. Some liquid escapes into space through cracks in the ice, which is the source of one of Saturn’s rings. In October 2015, the Cassini spacecraft flew directly through the plume of escaping material and sampled its chemical composition. They found that the plume contains molecular hydrogen, H2, a sign that the water in Enceladus’ ocean is reacting with rocks through hydrothermal processes. This drives the ocean out of chemical equilibrium, in a similar way to water around Earth’s hydrothermal vents, potentially providing a source of chemical energy.

Between April and September 2017, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will undertake a daring set of orbits that is, in many ways, like a whole new mission. Following a final close flyby of Saturn’s moon Titan, Cassini will leap over the planet’s icy rings and begin a series of 22 weekly dives between the planet and the rings. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will make its final close flyby of Saturn’s haze-enshrouded moon Titan this weekend. The flyby marks the mission’s final opportunity for up-close observations of the lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbons that spread across the moon’s northern polar region, and the

The Lilium Jet successfully completed its maiden test flight series in the skies above Bavaria. The 2-seater Eagle prototype executed a range of complex maneuvers, including its signature mid-air transition from hover mode to wing-borne forward flight. Lilium has invented a completely new aircraft concept for the modern age. While vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) itself is not new – after all, quadcopters, tilt rotors and tilt wings are well-known concepts – they did not want to accept the compromises inherent to these configurations. Quadcopters excel with their simplicity but are highly inefficient in cruise flight. Transition aircraft can fly

The more credible scenarios are that North Korea could inflict up to 1 million casualties on South Korea and possibly land a few missiles into Japan if the North Korea went into a inflict maximum damage mode. South Korea and the USA would be able to beat down and contain North Korea. The situation would then transition into a prolonged Iraq-Afghanistan. North Korea also has thousands of tons of chemical weapons. The US should be able to strike and rapidly cripple any medium and long range missile strike launch sites. The US could use stealth fighters and stealth bombers to

Three-dimensional printing allows extremely small and complex structures to be made even in small series. A method developed at the KIT for the first time allows also glass to be used for this technique. As a consequence of the properties of glass, such as transparency, thermal stability and resistance to acids, the use of this material in 3D-printing opens up manifold new applications in production and research, such as optics, data transmission, and biotechnology. The scientists mix nanoparticles of high-purity quartz glass and a small quantity of liquid polymer and allow this mixture to be cured by light at specific

ASML expects to ship 20 to 24 extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography tools next year as the industry continues edging closer to production deployment of the oft-delayed next-generation lithography technology. Peter Wennink, ASML’s president and CEO, told analysts following the company’s first quarter financial report Wednesday that the company continues to make progress toward its goals for EUV of 125 wafers per hour productivity and 90 percent light-source availability. Wennik alluded to presentations at the recent SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference from Intel, Samsung and TSMC showing their latest results with EUV systems and the status of the EUV infrastructure. EUV is

A research team led by UCLA electrical engineers has developed a new technique to control the polarization state of a laser that could lead to a new class of powerful, high-quality lasers for use in medical imaging, chemical sensing and detection, or fundamental science research. Think of polarized sunglasses, which help people see more clearly in intense light. Polarizing works by filtering visible light waves to allow only waves that have their electric field pointing in one specific direction to pass through, which reduces brightness and glare. Like brightness and color, polarization is a fundamental property of light that emerges

Germany pays over three times as much for electricity as the USA and Canada. Other countries in Europe tend to pay double per kwh. Germany could go to four times the price of US electricity by 2020. There is misleading article on Bloomberg that discusses the planned elimination of coal usage in five European countries. However, those countries only represent 10% of coal usage in Europe.

In 2015, Maj. Park Sung-man of the South Korean military said the United States estimates between 6,000 and 8,000 subterranean facilities have been built in North Korea. In 2012, the US intelligence community estimated over 10,000 potential underground facilities exist worldwide, with the majority of them unidentified and the expectation that their numbers will continue to increase dramatically over the next decade. Countries across the world increasingly recognize the benefit underground facilities provide in protecting and securing strategic assets. These facilities are becoming “ubiquitous,” able to conceal resources, capabilities, and intent. High on the list of nations making significant investments

The latest upgrade of a 1970s CH-53 helicopter design is called the CH-53K King Stallion. That’s enough lift to carry two armored Humvees or a LAV-25 light armored vehicle. The aircraft, designated the CH-53K, will be capable of lifting 27,000 pounds (12,246 kilograms.) It will be the same size as its predecessor, the Super Stallion, but able to haul triple the cargo. It can carry Humvees, two 20,000 pound pallets, or infantry internally. The helicopter has new gearbox technologies that took more than 10 years to develop, introducing delays and adding to the cost significantly. King Stallion also features fly-by-wire

A US carrier strike group (with the Carl Vinson aircraft carrier) completed military exercises — and would now head north and would be in the area of North Korea for weeks. The USS Carl Vinson’s crew is getting an extra month at sea as the strike group sails toward the Korean peninsula following much confusion over its initial orders. The announcement by the group’s commander, Rear Adm. James Kilby, came after photos showed the aircraft carrier and its fleet of warships were nowhere near the divided peninsula as tensions over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program reached a peak. “Our deployment

A new device can produce nearly 3 liters of water per day for every kilogram of spongelike absorber it contains, and researchers say future versions will be even better. That means homes in the driest parts of the world could soon have a solar-powered appliance capable of delivering all the water they need, offering relief to billions of people. This is the real life version of the Star Wars Moisture Vaporator on Tantooine. The book Dune on the planet Arrakis had windtraps which were a facility designed to reclaim the moisture in the air and funnel it to large catchbasins

capping liquids with graphene, an ultrathin sheet of pure carbon, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their colleagues have revitalized and extended a powerful technique to image surfaces. The graphene lids enable researchers for the first time to easily and inexpensively image and analyze liquid interfaces and the surface of nanometer-scale objects immersed in liquids. The new capability has the potential to advance the development of batteries, highly charged capacitors for power-grid technology, and new catalysts such as those used in the chemical industry. In the imaging technique, known as photoemission electron microscopy (PEEM), ultraviolet

NIST launched the 5G mmWave Channel Model Alliance to accelerate the development and use of accurate measurements and models for next-generation communications technology. By bringing together researchers from multiple stakeholders—including communications technology companies, academia and government—NIST is accelerating 5G innovation. NIST’s establishment of the alliance has brought together more than 130 participants, including representatives from Qualcomm, Intel, Samsung, Keysight and Echostar, to solve the most pressing modeling and measurement challenges facing the deployment of 5G wireless communications. The widespread use of 5G technologies is expected to produce $3.5 trillion in output and 22 million jobs globally by 2035. However, technical

With an increased interest in spin logic devices compatible with the existing semiconductor technology, manipulating electron spins in nonmagnetic semiconductors has been one of the most active research directions in spintronics, promising smaller, faster, less power-consuming information-processing and communication devices. However, several technical challenges have to be overcome in semiconductor spintronics, such as efficient spin injection, long spin lifetime, and efficient spin transport, manipulation, and detection. A particularly important goal is to generate a controllable electronic spin polarization that can have a long lifetime, using all-electric approaches that are free from magnetic material Three-dimensional (3D) topological insulators (TIs) represent a

Material scientists have predicted and built two new magnetic materials, atom-by-atom, using high-throughput computational models. The success marks a new era for the large-scale design of new magnetic materials at unprecedented speed. Although magnets abound in everyday life, they are actually rarities—only about five percent of known inorganic compounds show even a hint of magnetism. And of those, just a few dozen are useful in real-world applications because of variability in properties such as effective temperature range and magnetic permanence. The relative scarcity of these materials can make them expensive or difficult to obtain, leading many to search for new

Metro Skyways, a subsidiary of Israel’s Urban Aeronautics company is set to embark on a five-year development of the CityHawk – an optionally-autonomous flying car. They plan to fund the current flight demonstrator phase, or the entire five-year program, that will result in the completion design, development, and testing of a VTOL aircraft built exclusively for civilian use in the personal aerial vehicle, Air-Taxi and Air-Rescue sectors. The CityHawk design will fully comply with civil aviation safety certification standards for land and air mobility. MSL plans to complete the development in five years. The vehicle will initially be piloted and

Technology Review summarizes some of the arguments for and against geoengineering. Alan Robock, a professor of environmental sciences at Rutgers, has published a list of 27 risks and concerns raised by the technology, including its potential to deplete the ozone layer and to decrease rainfall in Africa and Asia. Ultimately, Robock worries that geoengineering may simply be too risky to ever try. “We don’t know what we don’t know,” he says. “Should we trust the only planet known to have intelligent life to this complicated technical system?” Robock ignores the fact that the case for geoengineering is that the world

Many view Europe as a spent force in global politics. Conventional wisdom states that world politics today is unipolar, with the United States as the sole superpower. Or perhaps it is multipolar, with China, India, and the rest rising to challenge Western powers. Either way, Europe’s role is secondary — and declining. The European Union, it is said, is too weak to avoid withering away in the face of Russian subversion, mass migration, right-wing revolt, British plans to leave, slow growth, and anemic defense spending. Foreign Policy makes the case that Europe rivals or surpasses the United States and China

Members of the Cognitive Science Team at the Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center, or NSRDEC, are helping Soldiers to keep it real — and then some. The team is investigating how augmented reality, or AR, may help Soldiers improve their mission-planning skills. “Our goal is to evaluate mobile AR as a promising candidate technology to improve mission-planning operations,” said Aaron Gardony, an NSRDEC research psychologist. “Soldiers are members of a team, but they are also multi-faceted individuals with unique preferences and aptitudes. For example, some may easily visualize three-dimensional environments from two-dimensional maps, but others may learn better

China’s economy had higher growth for a second-straight quarter as investment picked up, retail sales rebounded and factory output strengthened amid robust credit growth and further strength in property markets. Gross domestic product increased 6.9 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, compared with a 6.8 percent median estimate in a Bloomberg survey. It was the first back-to-back acceleration in seven years. China, which produces half the world’s steel, churned out a record quantity in March as production of crude steel expanded 1.8 percent from a year earlier. Coal production rebounded in March after the government said it

Russia has made a humanoid robot which can shoot a handgun from each arm. FEDOR stands six foot tall, weighs between 106-160 kg depending on extra equipment – and can lift up to 20 kg of cargo. Its creators claim that teaching them to shoot will help improve their motor skills and decision-making abilities. Russia will also use the robot to fly a new unmanned spacecraft.

Russia’s new hypersonic anti-ship Zircon missile has reached eight times the speed of sound (about 6100 mph) during the test, a source with Russia’s defense sector told TASS. The source noted that Zircon missiles can be launched from universal launching platforms 3C14 which are also used for the Onyx and Caliber missiles. It is expected that the new missiles will be installed at the heave nuclear-powered cruisers Peter the Great and Admiral Nakhimov. The expected range with a new type of fuel is about 1000 km (600 miles) at Mach 5-6. The export version will be limited to 400 kilometers

A theorist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has shown that, if quantum computer are fully realized, there may be fewer limits to their speed than previously put forth. The findings—described as a “thought experiment” by NIST’s Stephen Jordan—are about a different aspect of quantum computing speed than another group of NIST researchers explored about two years ago. While the previous findings were concerned with how fast information can travel between two switches in a computer’s processor, Jordan’s new paper deals with how quickly those switches can flip from one state to another. The rate of flipping

A NIST-led research team spent more than 18 months collecting data from four different smartphone models to facilitate the development of indoor navigation apps. The data, which includes smartphone sensor readings, radio frequency (RF) signal strengths and GPS fixes, should help developers create better apps to assist users in finding their way inside unfamiliar buildings. Such “indoor localization” tools could help emergency responders find victims—or each other—when seconds count. They also could assist with locating specific works of art in large museums or misplaced equipment in hospitals, factories, or warehouses. In the future, if you ask your smartphone where you

Arxiv- Half Petabyte Simulation of a 45-Qubit Quantum Circuit Near-term quantum computers will soon reach sizes that are challenging to directly simulate, even when employing the most powerful supercomputers. Yet, the ability to simulate these early devices using classical computers is crucial for calibration, validation, and benchmarking. In order to make use of the full potential of systems featuring multi- and many-core processors, we use automatic code generation and optimization of compute kernels, which also enables performance portability. We apply a scheduling algorithm to quantum supremacy circuits in order to reduce the required communication and simulate a 45-qubit circuit on

Star Wars had its 40th anniversary. There was a five minute tribute to Carrie Fisher who died at the age of 60. Mark Hamill’s Tribute to Carrie Fisher Panel FULL – Star Wars Celebration 2017 Orlando Fans remember her not only as their princess or general, but as part of the Star Wars Celebration family. Join Mark Hamill as he remembers the talent, humor and enduring legacy of one of the Star Wars galaxy’s most luminous beings, Carrie Fisher. From Star Wars Celebration Orlando 2017.

The world’s oldest person has died in Italy at the age of 117, reports say. Emma Morano was born on 29 November 1899 in the Piedmont region of Italy. She was officially the last person born in the 1800s still living. She had attributed her longevity to her genetics and a diet of three eggs a day, two of them raw. Ms Morano was the oldest of eight siblings, all of whom she has outlived. She died at her home in the northern city of Verbania. Her life not only spanned three centuries but also survived an abusive marriage, the

There are reports that Kris Marshall will be the new Doctor Who. There has been a lot of speculation about who will take on the role of the 13th Doctor after Peter Capaldi announced he was quitting the show. Kris’s representatives have refused to comment. Bookies Ladbrokes stopped taking bets on him becoming the next Time Lord after a huge rush from punters. Ladbrokes spokesman Alex ­Donohue admitted: “A surge of punters have backed Marshall so we’ve had no choice but to close the book.” However, a BBC Spokesperson said: “No casting decisions have yet been made on series 11.”

A report compares directed-energy and railgun weapons systems with hypersonic systems in terms of technical readiness, investment strategies, and plausible applications of these systems by the separate armed services. These weapon systems may not be sufficient by themselves to accomplish a revolutionary change in American military operations, but they indicate whether such changes are possible and perhaps necessary to facilitate a third offset strategy. A preliminary appraisal of one of those technologies—hypersonic weapons systems—frequently nominated as a “gamechanging” capability that might serve as the centerpiece of and a pathway toward a more complex and complete offset strategy. The US seeks

A new NASA NIAC funded proposal seeks to develop a new type of soft robotic spacecraft which is specifically designed to move efficiently on the surface of, and in proximity to, rubble pile asteroids. These new spacecraft are termed Area-of-Effect Soft-bots (AoES) as they have large surface areas which enable mobility that is especially effective at small asteroids. The surface mobility is enabled by using adhesion between the soft robot and the asteroid surface. The adhesive forces also allow the AoES to anchor themselves in order to liberate material from the asteroid and launch it off the surface for collection

Optical mining of Asteroids will provide affordable space mission consumables and radiation shielding. An exciting program of human exploration beyond LEO might include an outpost at the top of the Earth-Moon gravity well or on the surface of the Moon; human exploration of Near Earth Objects in their natural orbits; and/or a series of human missions to the Mars system. Water, oxygen, propellant, and shielding can be made in space from resources known to be plentifully available in asteroids and probably in the Martian moon Deimos. Optical Mining technology is a breakthrough approach to harvesting these materials from asteroids, boulders,

Final Frontier Medical Devices was announced the highest performing team and received $2.5 million for their achievement and Dynamical Biomarkers Group received $1M for 2nd place. Both teams exceeded the competition requirements for user experience, nearly met the challenging audacious benchmarks for diagnosing the 13 disease states, and with their prototypes, have taken humanity one step closer to realizing Gene Roddenberry’s 23rd century sci-fi vision. XPRIZE congratulates Final Frontier Medical Devices and Dynamical Biomarkers Group on their amazing achievements. In celebration of efforts that inspire others to take risks and strive for “moonshots”, even if ultimately they do not win

Seth Baum makes the statement that colonizing the galaxy is the highest good. People are currently concerned with global disasters and pollution and other problems. We can learn to overcome all of these problems which are caused by old and inferior technology and processes. Air and water pollution are mostly from 18th century coal and oil for energy and dirty industrial processes. We can convert to closed cycle nuclear fission and solar power. Closed cycle nuclear fission is where we use up all of the uranium and plutonium with onsite or offsite reprocessing or with new nuclear reactor designs. Nuclear

The Star Wars: Episode 8: The Last Jedi will come out this Christmas 2017.

China has revealed the first known images of an indigenous scramjet test that it says was successfully conducted at speeds up to Mach 7 and altitudes up to 30 km, in December 2015. Credit: National Natural Science Foundation of China. Studies of a folding-wing hypersonic boost-glide vehicle designed for deployment from a launcher at Mach 5 and 30-km altitude show dramatic changes in the center of pressure on release. Credit: China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology Tests of a magneto-hydrodynamic heat shield system showed performance could be boosted by seeding the flow with potassium particles. Credit: College of Aerospace Science

InnovaSea Systems has raised $15 million to develop an all-in-one system for farming fish in the open ocean. They plan to bring the product to market in 2018. They will test its technology at fish farms in Panama and Mexico.

These are three primary reasons why it is important for NASA to develop better ways to locate and characterize Near Earth Objects (NEOs). 1. NEOs are an impact hazard to the Earth and Congress has mandated that NASA find 90% of all the objects over 140 meters by the end of 2020. NASA will fail to meet this mandate because of the high cost of current asteroid survey approaches. 2. Measuring the NEO population distributions in space will unlock the answers to critical questions dealing with the formation and evolution of the solar system. 3. NEOs are exciting candidates as

Two veteran NASA missions are providing new details about icy, ocean-bearing moons of Jupiter and Saturn, further heightening the scientific interest of these and other “ocean worlds” in our solar system and beyond. The findings are presented in papers published Thursday by researchers with NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn and Hubble Space Telescope. In the papers, Cassini scientists announce that a form of chemical energy that life can feed on appears to exist on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, and Hubble researchers report additional evidence of plumes erupting from Jupiter’s moon Europa. “This is the closest we’ve come, so far, to identifying

Japan’s PD Aerospace and China’s Kuang-Chi Science are among Asia’s homegrown private firms planning to offer spaceflight services to civilians. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have a dominant global presence in the New Space Industry. Shuji Ogawa, CEO of PD Aerospace, acknowledges that it’s unlikely Asian companies can rival SpaceX, Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin, but he said there’s more than enough demand to go around. PD Aerospace is developing a reusable sub-orbital space plane featuring a propulsion system that alternates between jet and rocket mode. It’s expected to carry eight people —

A sensor package that “floats” just above the surface of Phobos, suspended by a tether from a small spacecraft operating at the Mars/Phobos Lagrange 1 (L1) Point would offer exciting opportunities for science (SMD), for human exploration (HEOMD) and for advancements in space technology (STMD). Detailed information on the Martian moon Phobos is limited even though it is considered an important destination for near term human exploration. A PHLOTE spacecraft would perform fixed point station keeping at the Mars/Phobos L1 point to allow a tethered sensor package to “float” just above the moon’s surface and also park instruments on the