Science

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Raspberry Pi users might soon get access to Sony’s AI technology

 Naomi  0 2 

Sony’s semiconductor branch announced plans to move forward with a “strategic investment” in Raspberry Pi. This is not just out of passion for DIY-centric products, but instead with goals to increase security capabilities via AI integration. Sony Semiconductor Solutions hopes to soon offer its AITRIOS “edge AI sensing technology built around image sensors” for Raspberry Pi 4 devices, according to an official statement on Wednesday. “Our pre-existing relationship encompasses contract manufacturing, and the provision of image sensors and other semiconductor…

Juul will pay $462 million for marketing e-cigs to teens

 Emma  0 11 

E-cigarette maker Juul Labs is paying $462 million in the company’s largest multi-state settlement to date. This payment will go to the six states, New York, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Colorado, as well as the District of Columbia. The lawsuit accuses Juul of directly promoting its products to high school age students, including an instance where a Juul representative “falsely told high school freshmen that its products were safer than cigarettes.” The suit also says that Juul’s advertising…

This online atlas is a goldmine for amateur intelligence sleuths

 Amy  0 13 

In Overmatched, we take a close look at the science and technology at the heart of the defense industry—the world of soldiers and spies. ON THE WEBSITE Soar.Earth, you’ll find a map of the world that at first looks a lot like the one on Google Earth. But zoom in, and rectangles appear. Click on one, and you might find an image from a 1960s spy satellite showing a fresh crater from a nuclear-weapons test. Scoot to different coordinates, and…

Proposed vehicle emissions standards would be America’s toughest yet

 admin  0 15 

This article was originally featured on The Drive. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed Wednesday perhaps its most sweeping changes to vehicle emissions controls in its history, a far-reaching measure that could effectively mandate a tenfold increase in EV sales by the middle of the next decade. Under the proposed plan, electric-car sales would comprise more than two-thirds of overall light-duty new car sales and nearly half of all medium-duty car sales by 2032. The plan would also ratchet up emissions targets…

Watch a robot hand only use its ‘skin’ to feel and grab objects

 Amy  0 16 

Robots can have trouble grasping the concept of “grasping.” It’s so bad that even a toddler’s motor skills are usually far more developed than some of the most advanced bots. For example, as instinctually easy as it is for a human to pick up an egg, robots usually struggle to compute the intricacies of force and manipulation while also not expending too much energy. To solve this issue, researchers at the University of Cambridge recently found a novel solution by…

How a dumpy, short-legged bird could change water bottle designs

 Emma  0 18 

The sandgrouse isn’t considered an elegant-looking bird. In fact, it is described by online database ebird as a “dumpy, short-legged, pigeon-like bird that shuffles awkwardly on the ground.” But it also harbors a special secret: It can carry water weighing around 15 percent of its body weight over short flights. Short in this case is up to 20 miles—enough to travel from a watering hole back to their nest. The key to this ability is the architecture of their belly…

After 2,000 years of debate, Italy’s massive suspension bridge to Sicily may finally happen

 Naomi  0 25 

Boasting 6,637 feet between its two towers, Turkey’s 1915 Çanakkale Bridge officially nabbed the title as world’s longest suspension bridge when it opened to the public on March 18, 2022. Barely a year after earning the crown, however, Italy may be stepping up to construct an even longer engineering feat—one that’s over 2,000 years in the making, no less. However, critics argue that its odds for completion may be as figuratively long as its literal span. As Wired explained on…

In Oregon, a microchip gold rush could pave over long-protected farmland

 Ingle  0 22 

This article originally appeared in Grist. Beyond the fields of berries, grass seed, and wheat at Jacque Duyck Jones’s farm in Oregon, she can see distant plumes of exhaust spewing from factories in Hillsboro, just outside Portland. Years ago, Jones and her family didn’t worry much about industry creeping closer to their land. A 50-year-old state law that restricts urban growth, rare in the United States, kept smokestacks and strip malls away. But a national push to make semiconductors —…

I learned how to drift a car from the pros—here’s what it takes to slide

 Emma  0 25 

Contemporary automotive advertising is filled with so much footage of breathtaking, smoke-filled power slides that you might assume today’s factory hot rods can perform these maneuvers on their own. But while vehicles like the Mk8 Volkswagen Golf R and the new Audi RS3 have unique powertrain modes that are tailored to these stunts, and BMW’s latest M3 has a Drift Analyzer that will actually score your latest sideways exploits, the successful execution of a drift involves more than simply yanking…

Why you shouldn’t charge your phone at a public USB port

 Naomi  0 28 

Public USB ports seem like a convenient way to charge your phone. But, as the FBI’s Denver field office recently tweeted, they may not be safe. With a technique called “juice jacking,” hackers can use public USB ports to install malware and monitoring software on your devices. Theoretically, the kind of tools that can be installed this way can allow hackers to access the contents of your smartphone and steal your passwords, so they can do things like commit identity…

Super-thin ‘mirror membranes’ could lead the way to bigger space telescopes

 Amy  0 31 

It took years of design and engineering toil to successfully get the largest-ever telescope mirror into space. Now, the James Webb Space Telescope’s trademark, 6.5-meter-in-diameter, gold-coated array orbits the sun 1.5 million kilometers above Earth, routinely providing stunning, previously inaccessible views of the universe. As incredible as its results are, however, a new, promising “mirror membrane” breakthrough is already in the works that could one day show scientists space in a new way. According to a recent announcement from Germany’s…

A step-by-step guide to accessing your Popular Science digital subscription

 Emma  0 19 

Can you believe it? Popular Science has been around for 149 years. And we’re about to continue that legacy with an exciting new change. Going forward, you can read (and reread) your quarterly PopSci issues in our desktop, smartphone, and tablet apps. Existing subscribers can follow the steps below to get access to Spring 2021: Calm in high-res on any device. New subscribers can head on over to popsci.com/subscribe to get set up. Go to our subscriber portal at popsci.com/digital…