US electric car sales were 1.1% of total US cars sales in November, 2016 The Chevy Bolt and Tesla Model 3 are coming in the next year — as well as significantly updated versions of the Nissan LEAF, BMW i3, Volkswagen e-Golf, Toyota Prius Plug-in/Prime, and Ford Focus Electric, as well as other completely new …
A spacecraft flying past Europa may be able to sample its colossal watery plumes – even if they stopped erupting weeks earlier. A new analysis suggests that jets spewing from Jupiter’s icy moon could produce complex, constantly shifting chemical patterns in its atmosphere, which we could use to figure out what is on, and even …
1. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang just concluded a trip to Latvia, where the 16+1 bloc signed a deal for a high speed railway line between Belgrade and Budapest. One of China’s largest transport firms will be involved. The current line has an end to end journey time of some 8 hours. The vision is for …
Economist, lawyers and sustainable investment studies at the International Institute for Sustainable Development have a paper that looks at the mining industry. They look at how automation will effect mining jobs. Given the fundamental uncertainty and longterm nature of automation technologies, we do not focus on them in this study, instead assessing new technologies that …
The Silicon Valley outpost of Airbus Group aims to redefine the future of flight. The mission A³ is to build the future of flight now, by disrupting Airbus Group and its competitors before someone else does. Project Vahana started in early 2016 as one of the first projects at A³ (pronounced “A-cubed”), the advanced projects …
ALIAS ( ircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System) can fly a military helicopter and then move into another aircraft and fly that too— and ALIAS is not human. Driverless cars may have been making headlines of late, but DARPA’s ALIAS program has also been making great strides in the development of “digital pilot” technology. The brainchild …
Here is a 32 page report on world nuclear energy performance as of 2016 and it has a special Asia update The International Energy Agency 2DS (2°C Scenario, Figure 2) envisages a substantial increase in the contribution from nuclear energy, rising to 7000 TWh by 2050 – enough to supply about 17% of global electricity …
A Chinese firm will start researching and developing a magnetic levitation (maglev) train that can run 600 km per hour, which would be faster than any other maglev train currently in operation. CRRC Corp Ltd, China’s largest rail transportation equipment maker, said it will build a maglev rail line no less than 5 km long …
Bell Helicopter is designing a new tiltrotor drone about the size of the Air Force’s armed MQ-9 Reaper, with similar capabilities, that it hopes the Marines will buy. They call it the V-247 Vigilant, so named because Bell promises that two of the sea-based drones could provide Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) over a given …
Modern radar and communications systems can subtly and quickly change their character, making them harder for U.S. aircraft and other platforms to jam or spoof. That reality is prompting DARPA to lead industry teams to apply artificial intelligence to electronic warfare. It’s called “cognitive EW.” The difference between today’s tech and that of the 1970s …
The EU plans to create a “digital single market” in the EU. Some of the goals are for all European households, rural or urban to have access to superfast connectivity offering download speeds of at least 100 mbps, while all urban areas as well as major roads and railways should have uninterrupted 5G coverage. The …