Battery Breakthrough We’ve All Been Waiting For
A breakthrough in electro-chemistry at Cambridge university could lead the way to rechargeable super-batteries that pack five times more energy into a given space than today’s best batteries, greatly extending the range of electric vehicles (500 miles on a single charge) and potentially transforming the economics of electricity storage.
Chemistry professor Clare Grey and her team have overcome technical challenges in the development of lithium-air batteries — the only cells theoretically capable of giving electric cars the range of petrol and diesel vehicles without having to carry excessively bulky and heavy battery packs.
If the technology can be turned from a laboratory demonstrator into a commercial product, it will enable a car to drive from London to Edinburgh on a single charge, with batteries that cost and weigh one-fifth of the lithium-ion cells that power today’s electric cars.
Uber-Style Trucking Apps Arrive
Investors are pouring millions of dollars into startups hoping to disrupt the $700 billion U.S. trucking industry, the latest example of Silicon Valley’s efforts to upend the traditional economy.
A series of startups are vying to become an “Uber of trucking,” leveraging truck drivers’ smartphones to quickly connect them with nearby companies looking to ship goods.
The upstarts aim to reinvent a fragmented U.S. trucking industry that has long relied on third-party brokers, essentially travel agents for trucking who connect truckers with customers.
New Detector Can Diagnose Sepsis In Five Hours
Sepsis (blood infection) is one of the most common, and most deadly, killers in hospitals. It is also difficult to diagnose.
Now the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a new technology, developed by T2 Biosystems, for diagnosing sepsis caused by a fungus called Candida (one of the most common bacterial causes).
Several hospitals have begun deploying T2’s Candida-detection system, which is based on the same physical principle behind magnetic resonance imaging. By the end of this year the company aims to have 30 hospitals using the technology.
Sepsis is a destructive reaction to an infection marked by an overwhelming inflammatory response throughout the body. If left untreated, sepsis can cause organ malfunction and death.
Uber-Style Trucking Apps Arrive
Investors are pouring millions of dollars into startups hoping to disrupt the $700 billion U.S. trucking industry, the latest example of Silicon Valley’s efforts to upend the traditional economy.
A series of startups are vying to become an “Uber of trucking,” leveraging truck drivers’ smartphones to quickly connect them with nearby companies looking to ship goods.
The upstarts aim to reinvent a fragmented U.S. trucking industry that has long relied on third-party brokers, essentially travel agents for trucking who connect truckers with customers.
New Detector Can Diagnose Sepsis In Five Hours
Sepsis (blood infection) is one of the most common, and most deadly, killers in hospitals. It is also difficult to diagnose.
Now the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a new technology, developed by T2 Biosystems, for diagnosing sepsis caused by a fungus called Candida (one of the most common bacterial causes).
Several hospitals have begun deploying T2’s Candida-detection system, which is based on the same physical principle behind magnetic resonance imaging. By the end of this year the company aims to have 30 hospitals using the technology.
Sepsis is a destructive reaction to an infection marked by an overwhelming inflammatory response throughout the body. If left untreated, sepsis can cause organ malfunction and death.
It Takes Companies 245 Days To Realise They’ve Been Hacked
Like most statistics touted by the cyber-security industry, such as the supposed annual $575 billion global cost of 90m cyber-attacks, it is little more than a guesstimate. But there is no doubt that criminals and pranksters are thriving by attacking computers and networks and that companies are struggling to cope and that businesses offering answers are charging fat fees.
The penalties for getting cyber-security wrong are steep. Nortel, a Canadian telecoms giant, went bust in part because hackers stole so much of its intellectual property. Target, an American retailer, lost the credit-card details of 40m customers.
TalkTalk, one of the biggest phone and internet companies in Britain, is floundering after an attack last month which leaked customer information—which was apparently stored unencrypted, on a computer accessible through a public website.
Europe Will Use Drones To Sniff Out Shipping Emissions
Europe is turning to a new tool to catch ship operators skirting pollution limits: emissions-sniffing drones.
It is the latest sign of how civilian drones, for now largely the preserve of amateur enthusiasts, are finding a widening array of commercial uses.
The twist in Europe is that its government bodies are among those championing the technology. For the new maritime-emissions proposal, the European Maritime Safety Agency and the European Space Agency are hoping to cooperate in tracking the pollution from ships sailing in some of Europe’s busiest waters: the English Channel, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia, between Sweden and Finland.
Lab In A Briefcase Can Detect Cancers In Five Minutes
UK-based scientists have developed a new diagnostic tool that could greatly assist those taking fighting cancer in developing regions.
Billed as a lab-in-a-briefcase, the low-cost, portable diagnostics tool works similarly to a pregnancy test and can detect cancer biomarkers in as little as 15 minutes.
Around 70 percent of the world’s cancer deaths take place in Africa, Asia, Central and South America. It is with these regions in mind, where the technology isn’t always available to run full laboratories, that scientists from Loughborough University in the UK set out to devise a cheap, portable solution that can be operated with minimal training.
China On Course To Become “World’s Largest Old Peoples Home”
The China Communist Party’s 1979 edict limiting families to one child each, prevented 400 million births, but it now may rob China of the younger generation needed to create growth and to pay for the older people.
China’s sharply aging demographic could even cost the populous nation its much-predicted rise to be the world’s leading superpower.
China has now belatedly reversed its one child policy.
Meanwhile, rapidly-growing India with 1.26 billion people has had no such restriction on births.
#Unintended consequences.
Uber Forces Closure Of London’s Oldest “Knowledge” School
Knowledge Point, London’s oldest and largest training school for black cab drivers is to close this month.
It will be leaving the building it has occupied for 26 years in Islington, north London, blaming the twin pressures of Uber and increased property prices.
Uber, the cut-price taxi app that started in San Francisco, has sparked protests of unfair competition from cab drivers across the world. In May, parts of London were in gridlock following a demonstration by taxi drivers who felt the lack of regulation favoured such “e-hailing” apps.
London cabbies must study “the Knowledge”, learning their way round 25,000 streets as well as all the twists and turns of dead-ends and one-way roads. Before obtaining the green badge, which will license them to pick up fares in London, they will be tested on routes, for example from Manor House to Gibson Square. The school helps aspiring drivers reduce the time — on average about three and a half years — it takes to learn the various routes.
All over.
Toyota To Invest $1 Billion In Silicon Valley R&D Centre
Toyota, the world’s largest car maker, has announced a five-year, $1 billion R&D investment headquartered in Silicon Valley. As it is planned, the compound would be one of the largest research laboratories in Silicon Valley. The focus of the research will be on developing AI (Artificial Intelligence).
Conceived as a research facility bridging basic science and commercial engineering, it will be organized as a new company to be named Toyota Research Institute. Toyota will initially have a laboratory adjacent to Stanford University and another near M.I.T. in Cambridge, Mass.
Toyota’s investment invites comparisons to earlier research initiatives, such as the Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC, created by Xerox in 1970 to help the company compete with IBM.
World’s First Genetically-Modified Fish To Go On Sale
Genetically modified salmon fillets may hit markets in two years, following this week’s approval for the world’s first GM meat.
After a 20-year battle, the US FDA has approved a fast-growing GM salmon for sale to consumers, saying it is safe to eat. Labelling it as a GM food will be optional.
The FDA also said the salmon “would not have a significant impact on the environment of the United States”.
That’s because the adult fish will only be produced at one plant in the mountains of Panama with draconian precautions against the fish escaping.
50% Of U.S. New Businesses Are Based At Home
More than half the businesses registered in the U.S. are now home-based. But few homes are designed and built to accommodate them.
Most contemporary housing is designed solely as living space, without the demands of work in mind. People who work out of their homes are left trying to resolve conflicting needs in a single space: a business that’s open to clients on the same site as a private living area; a noisy workspace in proximity to places where the family needs to study, relax and have down time; potentially dangerous work processes in a place that needs to be safe.