Tag: Commercial

Food Delivery Apps Are Drowning China In Plastic

“The astronomical growth of food delivery apps in China is flooding the country with takeout containers, utensils and bags,” writes Raymond Zhong and Carolyn Zhang for The New York Times. “And the country’s patchy recycling system isn’t keeping up. The vast majority of this plastic ends up discarded, buried or burned with the rest of the trash, researchers and recyclers say.”…

NASA Announces First Commercial Partner For A Space Station Orbiting The Moon

“NASA has chosen its first commercial partner for a proposed space station, known as the Lunar Gateway, to be built near the Moon,” reports Ars Technica: On Thursday, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Maxar Technologies would build the first component of the Gateway — the power and propulsion element. Like the name suggests, it will provide electricity to the Gateway and…

China Unveils 373 MPH Maglev Train Prototype

China has unveiled a new floating bullet train capable of hitting speeds of about 372 mph (600 km/h). CNN reports: On Thursday, the body prototype for the country’s latest high-speed magnetic-levitation (maglev) train project rolled off the assembly line in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao. Developed by the state-owned China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC) — the world’s largest supplier…

Lunar gold rush is about to start—and we could exhaust the solar system in less than 500 years

The US president, Donald Trump, has stuck to his plan to send humans back to the moon in the next five years, recently giving the project a US$1.6 billion shot in the arm. Whether he succeeds or not, the first successful landing on the lunar far side by China, the European Space Agency’s recent “lunar village” concept and a myriad of…

How the World’s First Digital Circuit Breaker Could Completely Change Our Powered World

This week the world’s first and only digital circuit breaker was certified for commercial use. The technology, invented by Atom Power, has been listed by Underwriters Laboratories (UL), the global standard for consumer safety. This new breaker makes power easier to manage and 3000 times faster than the fastest mechanical breaker, marking the most radical advancement in power distribution since Thomas…

Astrobee’s first robot completes initial hardware checks in space

NASA astronaut Anne McClain performs the first series of tests of an Astrobee robot, Bumble, during a hardware checkout. To her right is the docking station that was installed in the Kibo module on the International Space Station on Feb. 15. Bumble, and another robot named Honey, launched to the space station on Apr. 17, aboard Northrop Grumman’s eleventh commercial resupply…

Hundreds Are Alreadying Using Waymo’s Driver-less Taxis In Arizona

The commercial rollout of Waymo’s driver-less taxi service in Chandler, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix with a population of 260,000 people, has more than a thousand customers already signed up — including the mayor, reports Forbes: Each of the several hundred Waymo One vans in Chandler arrives with a safety driver at the wheel. But that may be more about public…

Lush underwater forests … in the Arctic

Did you know that there are hidden underwater forests of large brown seaweeds (kelps) in the Arctic? As temperatures warm, the forests are expanding. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/underwater-kelp-seaweed-forests-arctic…

Facebook Shuts Down An Israeli Firm’s Effort To Influence Politics In West Africa

Facebook today said it detected dozens of Facebook accounts that were engaging in election interference and other forms of public manipulation via news and social media, directed primarily at West African countries. What’s especially noteworthy about this announcement is the source. Israeli commercial entity Archimedes Group was behind the behavior. The Verge reports: The goal ostensibly was to have some type…