World

Massive study provided localized advice to boost crop yield and reduce fertilizer usage

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A decade-long study involved 21 million smallholders shows how evidence-based approaches could improve food security. More than 1,000 researchers across China worked with 65,000 bureaucrats and technicians at provincial or county agricultural agencies and with 140,000 representatives from agriculture businesses. The project’s success highlights the importance of the vast social networks, Nature – Millions of …

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China now controls 10% of European port capacity

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Cosco Shipping Ports and China Merchants Port Holdings have gone on a buying cargo terminals in the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Atlantic rim. In January 2018, Cosco finalized the takeover of the terminal in Zeebrugge, Belgium’s second-biggest port, marking the Chinese firm’s first bridgehead in northwestern Europe. Belt and Road project funding …

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Physicist Stephen Hawking has died

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Legendary Physicist Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76. He did ground-breaking work on Black holes, space-time and cosmology. He became well known to the public with the best selling book “A Brief History of Time”. This was made into a movie by Stephen Spielberg. Hawking had a rare early-onset, slow-progressing form of …

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US Army will have VR training and provide drones for every squad

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US Army, marines and special forces will be getting improved training through virtual reality and improved real-world drills and new drones for scouting and air support. In the 1970s there was a revolution in shoulder-launched missiles to kill tanks and planes. Today, the breakthrough lies in small unmanned systems — miniature drones in the near …

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Another Putin Enemy has died

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A Russian exile who was close friends with the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky has been found dead in his London home. Nikolai Glushkov, 68, was discovered by his family and friends late on Monday night. The cause of death is not yet clear. In the 1990s Glushkov was a director of the state airline Aeroflot …

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Google’s Larry Page is getting a two person plane drone hybrid approved as an air taxi

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Kitty Hawk is a flying car funded by Google co-founder Larry Page and it will begin the regulatory approval process required for launching its autonomous passenger-drone system in New Zealand. The firm’s two-person craft, called Cora, is a 12-rotor plane-drone hybrid that can take off vertically like a drone, but then uses a propeller at …

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FAA, NASA, Amazon, Boeing, GE, and Google working together on Drone Air Traffic Management

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Commercial drones in the U.S. are expected to begin limited package deliveries within months, according to federal regulators and industry officials. According to a Federal Aviation Association official at the FAA Symposium, there are 10 times more drones registered in the US than manned aircraft. FAA’s websit describes the Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM) …

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Hypersonic missiles and more advanced ICBMs will require new satellites for continuous tracking

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The US Missile Defense Agency needs orbiting sensors to track hypersonic threats. Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves told the McAleese/Credit Suisse conference that satellites would use mature technology and could perform other surveillance missions to help justify their cost. ICBMs have followed smooth ballistic path trajectories which are easy to track. Increasing use of countermeasures on …

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Rise of robots and automation

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The automation of production is accelerating around the world: 74 robot units per 10,000 employees is the new average of global robot density in the manufacturing industries (2015: 66 units). By regions, the average robot density in Europe is 99 units, in the Americas 84 and in Asia 63 units. Between 2010 and 2016, the …

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