The idea that autonomous cars, even in small numbers, can increase fuel efficiency, travel times and safety for all cars on the road will be put to the test on routes around Nashville, Tennessee, later this year. Benedetto Piccoli at Rutgers University, New Jersey, and his colleagues previously used a Read more…
China christened a remarkable new 290-foot ship last week — the world’s first semi-autonomous drone carrier. It’ll carry, launch, recover and co-ordinate the actions of more than 50 other autonomous aerial, surface and underwater vehicles. The Huangpu Wenchong Shipyard began construction on the Zhu Hai Yun last July in Guangzhou. Read more…
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have now demonstrated a low-cost gel film that can pull many liters of water per day out of even very dry air. The gel is made up of two main ingredients that are cheap and common — cellulose, which comes from the Read more…
Scientists have created genetically edited tomatoes, each containing as much provitamin D3 — the precursor to vitamin D — as two eggs or a tablespoon of tuna. Outdoor field trials of the tomatoes are expected to begin in the UK next month, and if successful, could provide an important new Read more…
The AI world is still figuring out how to deal with the amazing show of prowess that is DALL-E 2’s ability to draw/paint/imagine just about anything but OpenAI isn’t the only one working on something like that. Google Research has rushed to publicize a similar model it’s been working on Read more…
New York City removed its last public payphone on Monday. The boxy enclosures were once an iconic symbol across the city. But the rise of cellphones made the booths obsolete. The effort to replace public pay telephones across the city kicked off in 2014 when the de Blasio administration solicited Read more…
Drone delivery has been a long time coming, but its actual implementation has largely arrived in fits and starts. Some companies (Alphabet’s Wing) have made decent headway, while others (Amazon) have struggled. There are still plenty of issues to contend with ahead of any sort of mainstream adoption, from regulation Read more…