Researchers are training robots to perform an ever-growing number of tasks through trial-and-error reinforcement learning, which is often laborious and time-consuming. To help out, humans are now enlisting large language model AI to speed up the training process. In a recent experiment, this resulted in some incredibly dexterous albeit simulated robots.

A team at NVIDIA Research directed an AI protocol powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 to teach a simulation of a robotic hand nearly 30 complex tasks, including tossing a ball, pushing blocks, pressing switches, and some seriously impressive pen-twirling abilities.

[Related: These AI-powered robot arms are delicate enough to pick up Pringles chips.]

NVIDIA’s new Eureka “AI agent” utilizes GPT-4 by asking the large language model (LLM) to write its own reward-based reinforcement learning software code. According to the company, Eureka doesn’t need intricate prompting or even pre-written templates; instead, it simply begins honing a program, then adheres to any subsequent external human feedback.

In the company’s announcement, Linxi “Jim” Fan, a senior research scientist at NVIDIA, described Eureka as a “unique combination” of LLMs and GPU-accelerated simulation programming. “We believe that Eureka will enable dexterous robot control and provide a new way to produce physically realistic animations for artists,” Fan added.

Judging from NVIDIA’s demonstration video, a Eureka-trained robotic hand can pull off pen spinning tricks to rival, if not beat, extremely dextrous humans. 

After testing its training protocol within an advanced simulation program, Eureka then analyzes its collected data and directs the LLM to further improve upon its design. The end result is a virtually self-iterative AI protocol capable of successfully encoding a variety of robotic hand designs to manipulate scissors, twirl pens, and open cabinets within a physics-accurate simulated environment.

Eureka’s alternatives to human-written trial-and-error learning programs aren’t just effective—in most cases, they’re actually better than those authored by humans. In the team’s open-source research paper findings, Eureka-designed reward programs outperformed humans’ code in over 80 percent of the tasks—amounting to an average performance improvement of over 50 percent in the robotic simulations.

[Related: How researchers trained a budget robot dog to do tricks.]

“Reinforcement learning has enabled impressive wins over the last decade, yet many challenges still exist, such as reward design, which remains a trial-and-error process,” Anima Anandkumar, senior director of AI research at NVIDIA’s senior director of AI research and one of the Eureka paper’s co-authors, said in the company’s announcement. “Eureka is a first step toward developing new algorithms that integrate generative and reinforcement learning methods to solve hard tasks.”

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First officially unveiled back in 2019, Tesla’s electric Cybertruck impressed and amused the public with its angular, “Blade Runner-inspired” design and purported features including reinforced glass, stainless steel body, and a lack of door handles. Although originally slated to arrive in reservation holders’ driveways in 2021, the EV release faced numerous delays exacerbated by COVID-19 pandemic supply chain issues. This week, however, Elon Musk said Tesla’s long-delayed Cybertruck will finally roll off the company’s Giga Texas lot on November 30, when Tesla is now scheduled to begin delivery. However, the company’s CEO cautioned investors against early celebrations.

During the company’s Q3 earnings call on October 18, Musk stressed that both customers and shareholders should “temper expectations,” particularly for the Cybertruck’s initial profitability. Tesla faced various challenges with scaling and ramping up production. Musk went as far as to say, “we dug our own grave with Cybertruck” during the vehicle’s multi-year hype campaign.

[Related: Tesla’s Cybertruck is the latest lofty promise in the world of electric pickups.]

“Cybertruck is one of those special products that comes along only once in a long while. And special products that come along once in a long while are just incredibly difficult to bring to market to reach volume, to be prosperous,” Musk opined, as reported by The Verge on Wednesday.

The Cybertruck base model was initially estimated at $39,900 in 2019, but Tesla is expected to announce updated pricings during its November 30 release event. No price ranges are currently available on Tesla’s website, but customers can still put down a refundable $100 deposit for a Cybertruck with the promise to “complete your configuration as production nears.”

In the meantime, multiple companies have released their own electric truck options, including the Ford F-150 Lightning and Rivian’s R1T. During this week’s Tesla earnings call, the company stated that it had the capacity to produce more than 125,000 Cybertrucks annually. Musk said he saw a potential for Tesla to produce 250,000 Cybertrucks in 2025. Musk said that more than one million people have reserved the Cybertruck so far.

[Related: Here is what a Tesla Cybertruck cop car could look like.]

The product may not be ready, but the concept keeps iterating itself. In September, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison teased concept art for a Cybertruck cop car including EV’s recognizable design beneath red and blue emergency lights, a bull bar, and multiple Oracle logos. “Our next generation police car is coming out very soon,” Ellison, a “close friend” of Musk, said during his presentation at the data service giant’s CloudWork conference to audible murmurs in the crowd. “It’s my favorite police car. It’s my favorite car, actually. It’s Elon’s favorite car.”

Musk’s desire to release an electric pickup truck dates as far back as 2012, when he tweeted he “would love make a Tesla supertruck with crazy torque, dynamic air suspension and corners [sic] like its on rails.”

“That’d be sweet…,” he added at the time.

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Back in 2015, the US Department of Energy estimated wind farms could supply over a third of the nation’s electricity by 2050. Since then, numerous wind turbine projects have been green-lit offshore and across the country. However, when it comes to building, it can get tricky, like in the case of a planned wind farm 15 miles off the southeast coast of Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Danish wind farm company Ørsted recently promised to cut New Jersey a $100 million check if the company’s massive Ocean Wind 1 offshore turbines weren’t up and running by the end of 2025. Less than a week after the wager, however, officials in the state’s southernmost county have filed a US District Court lawsuit to nix the 1.1 gigawatt project involving nearly 100 turbines, alleging regulatory sidesteps and ecological concerns.

[Related: The NY Bight could write the book on how we build offshore wind farms.]

According to the Associated Press, Cape May County government’s October 16 lawsuit also names the Clean Ocean Action environmental group alongside multiple seafood and fishing organizations as plaintiffs. The filing against both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management claims that the Ocean Wind 1 project sidestepped a dozen federal legal requirements, as well as failed to adequately investigate offshore wind farms’ potential environmental and ecological harms. However, earlier this year, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management released its over 2,300 page Final Environmental Impact Statement on Ocean Wind 1, which concluded the project is responsibly designed and adequately protects the region’s ecological health.

An Ørsted spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit for PopSci, but related the company “remains committed to collaboration with local communities, and will continue working to support New Jersey’s clean energy targets and economic development goals by bringing good-paying jobs and local investment to the Garden State.”

[Related: A wind turbine just smashed a global energy record—and it’s recyclable.]

Wind turbine farm companies, Ørsted included, have faced numerous issues in recent years thanks to supply chain bottleneck issues, soaring construction costs, and legal challenges such as the latest from Cape May County. Earlier this year, Ørsted announced its US-based projects are now worth less than half of their initial economic estimates.

Other clean energy advocates reiterated their support for the New Jersey wind farm. In an email to PopSci, Moira Cyphers, Director of Eastern Region State Affairs for the American Clean Power Association, described the lawsuit as “meritless.”

“Offshore wind is one of the most rigorously regulated industries in the nation and is critical for meeting New Jersey’s clean energy and environmental goals,” Cyphers continued. “Shore towns can’t wait for years and years for these projects to be constructed. The time to move forward is now.”

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Airborne lead levels in the US have declined an impressive 99 percent since 1980 thanks to Environmental Protection Agency regulations, but leaded gas isn’t gone completely. While large jet aircraft do not use leaded fuel, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, over 220,000 smaller, piston-engine aircraft capable of carrying between two and 10 people still run on leaded aviation gasoline, or “avgas.” 

Today, the EPA took its first step towards attempting to finally phase out air transportation’s lingering lead holdouts with a new endangerment finding announcement highlighting the adverse effects of even minuscule levels of airborne lead. With the new findings, the EPA argues that leaded avgas endangers public health and welfare under the Clean Air Act—and because of this, the US could finally see its first-ever avgas lead limitations.

“The science is clear: Exposure to lead can cause irreversible and life-long health effects in children,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan via the agency’s October 18 announcement. “Aircraft that use leaded fuel are the dominant source of lead emissions in our air.”

[Related: The US can’t get away from lead’s toxic legacy.]

The federal level determination earned support from legislators including House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA). “[The] EPA’s conclusion confirms what constituents in my district and Americans across the country know all too well—emissions from leaded aviation fuel contribute to dangerous lead air pollution,” Lofgren said via the announcement. She also cited the disproportionate exposure to leaded avgas in many poorer and minority communities near general aviation airports.

Lead’s neurotoxic effects have long been understood, especially its dangers to younger children, as it  negatively affects cognitive abilities and slows physical growth. In 2022, the Centers for Disease Control announced a redefinition of “lead poisoning,” lowering the threshold for toxic exposure from 5 micrograms per deciliter of a child’s blood down to just 3.5 mgs per deciliter. Even with the added stringency, however, the EPA reiterated in its October 18 announcement that there is no evidence of any threshold to fully reduce lead exposure’s harmful effects.

[Related: Leaded gas may have lowered the IQ of 170 million US adults.]

The new avgas endangerment finding does not carry any regulatory or legal weight itself. Instead, it opens the door to a future phaseout of avgas for small aircraft. Last year, the FAA and industry leaders announced their “Eliminate Aviation Gasoline Lead Emissions” (EAGLE) program aiming to “achieve a lead-free aviation system” by 2030. The FAA has already approved usage of a 100 octane unleaded fuel capable of being used by piston-engine aircraft, although the EPA notes it is not yet commercially available. A lower octane fuel is also available at an estimated 35 US airports, with plans to “expand and streamline the process for eligible aircraft to use this fuel.”

As The Washington Post notes, however, the EPA’s and FAA’s attempts to phase out avgas come as Congress considers a long-term reauthorization of the FAA that would all but require smaller airports to continue offering leaded avgas.

“While today’s announcement is a step forward, we cannot be complacent,” Lofgren added on Wednesday. “We must finish the job and protect our nation’s children from all sources of lead.”

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After years of hints and false starts, the Internal Revenue Service will be finally testing a free federal direct tax filing pilot program for select citizens in 13 participating states in 2024. The move marks a major moment in a years’ long path towards offering Americans a no-cost federal filing alternative to third-party services such as Intuit TurboTax and H&R Block—an $11 billion industry that has come under increased Federal Trade Commission scrutiny over allegedly predatory practices, deceptive advertising, and privacy concerns.

[Related: How to avoid tax season stress]

In an October 17 announcement, IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel called the pilot stage a “critical step forward” in testing the “feasibility of providing taxpayers a new option to file their returns for free directly with the IRS.” Warfel added that information and data gathered during the 2024 pilot program will help direct future iterations of the Direct File program, as well as help the IRS assess benefits, costs, and operational challenges.

Residents of Arizona, California, Massachusetts and New York are already confirmed to integrate Direct File into their systems for the 2024 tax season, which begins in December. Meanwhile, Alaska, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming “may be eligible to participate” due to their lack of state income taxes. Atop the state-based restrictions, only certain filers will be eligible to participate based on specific types of income, as well as limited credits and adjustments.

[Related: Calling TurboTax ‘free’ is ‘deceptive advertising,’ says FTC]

In September, the FTC ruled Intuit must stop labeling its products as free unless a stringent set of conditions are “clearly and conspicuously” displayed to consumers. But even without proper labeling, security and privacy concerns have long surrounded the private tax filing industry. In 2022, a major investigation uncovered companies including H&R Block, TaxSlayer, and TaxAct all routinely shared customers’ sensitive financial information with third-party advertisers via the Meta Pixel.

The free code, made available via Facebook’s parent company, marks a tiny pixel on participating websites to subsequently track information regarding people’s digital activity. Roughly one-third of the 80,000 most popular websites online utilize Meta Pixel (PopSci included); the tracking cookie ecosystem provides the majority of many online companies’ revenue streams. Many of the companies profiled by the investigation have since ceased using Meta Pixel for such purposes.

But even using a federal e-file program potential requires supplying personal identification information. In 2022, the IRS announced a new policy requiring US citizens to submit a selfie via the popular, controversial third-party verification service, ID.me, to access their tax information. The IRS walked back the policy plan following an outpouring of public criticism. It is unclear if ID.me will be a mandatory component of the forthcoming Direct File program. The IRS did not respond to PopSci regarding the issue at the time of writing.

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Despite decades of innovation, solar powered cars remain comparatively expensive and difficult to mass produce—but that doesn’t mean they aren’t starting to pack a serious punch. At least one prototype reportedly handled an off-road sojourn across the world’s largest non-polar desert at speeds as fast as 90 mph.

Designed by a team of 21-to-25-year-old  college students at the Netherland’s Eindhoven University of Technology, their Stella Terra recently completed a 620 mile (1,000 km) test drive that began in Morocco before speeding through portions of Tangier and the Sahara. While miles ahead of what is currently available to consumers, the army green two-seater could be a preview of rides to come.

[Related: Sweden is testing a semi-truck trailer covered in 100 square meters of solar panels.]

As highlighted by The Guardian on Monday, the aerodynamic, comparatively lightweight (1,200 kg) Stella Terra can travel at least 440 miles on a clear, sunny day without recharging. This is thanks to the car’s solar converter designed in-house by the students, which turns 97 percent of its absorbed sunlight into an electrical charge. For cloudier situations, however, the vehicle also includes a lithium-ion battery capable of powering shorter excursions. For comparison, the most efficient panels available today only sustain roughly 45 percent efficiency, while the vast majority measure somewhere between 15 and 20 percent. According to The Guardian’s rundown, Stella Terra’s panels actually proved a third more efficient than designers expected.

In a September project update, Wisse Bos, Solar Team Eindhoven’s team manager, estimated Stella Terra’s designs are between 5 and 10 years ahead of anything available on the current market. But Bos also stressed their ride is meant to inspire similar experimentation and creativity within the automotive industry.

[Related: Swiss students just slashed the world record for EV acceleration.]

“With Stella Terra, we want to demonstrate that the transition to a sustainable future offers reasons for optimism and encourages individuals and companies to accelerate the energy transition,” Bos said at the time.

While the innovative, army green off-roadster is unlikely to hit American highways anytime soon, the students believe larger auto manufacturers’ could look to Stella Terra to help guide their own plans for more sustainable transportation options. Speaking with CNN on Monday, the team’s event manager, Thieme Bosman, hopes companies such as Ford and Chrysler will take notice of such a vehicle’s feasibility. “It’s up to the market now, who have the resources and the power to make this change and the switch to more sustainable vehicles,” Bosman said.

And if off-roading isn’t your thing, don’t worry: Solar Team Eindhoven’s previous teams have also designed luxury vehicles, self-driving cars, and even mobile tiny homes powered by the sun.

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Niobium can be found in steel, particle accelerators, MRI machines, and rockets, but sourcing it is largely limited to a handful of countries including Brazil and Canada. Earlier this month, however, Chinese news outlets announced the discovery of a never-before-seen type of ore deposit in Inner Mongolia containing potentially vast amounts of the superconductive rare earth element. According to Antonio Castro Neto, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the National University of Singapore speaking with the South China Morning Post, the new resource trove could even be so large that it would make China self-sufficient in its own niobium needs.

The ore found in Inner Mongolia—dubbed niobobaotite—also contains large quantities of barium, titanium, iron, and chlorine, according to a statement from China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) earlier this month.

Discovered in 1801, niobium is named after Tantalus’ daughter Niobe in Greek mythology due to its chemical relationship to tantalum. Almost 85-to-90 percent of all mined niobium in the world goes towards iron and steel processing production. Adding just 0.03-0.05 percent to steel, for example, can boost its strength by as much as 30 percent while adding virtually no extra weight. That prized performance enhancement is comparatively difficult to obtain, however. The element only occurs within the Earth’s crust at a proportion of roughly 20-parts-per-million.

[Related: New factory retrofit could reduce a steel plant’s carbon emissions by 90 percent.]

In addition to its many current uses, niobium is of particular interest to researchers hoping to further the development of niobium-graphene and niobium-lithium batteries. Lithium-ion batteries are currently the most widespread rechargeable power sources, but remain restricted in terms of charge times and lifespans, as well as safety concerns. Earlier this year, researchers working on improving niobium-graphene batteries estimated future iterations of the alternative could fully charge in less than 10 minutes alongside a 30 year lifespan—approximately 10 times longer than current lithium-ion options.

As promising as the discovery may be for China, labor concerns will almost undoubtedly be an issue for outside observers. The nation has a long and troubling history of exploitation within the mining industry. Rare earth mineral mining also generates a wide array of pollution issues.

Brazil is by far the world’s largest exporter of niobium, with Canada trailing far behind in second place. China currently needs to import about 95 percent of its niobium supplies, but the newfound deposits could dramatically shift their sourcing to almost complete independence. Meanwhile, the US is currently working towards opening the Elk Creek Critical Minerals Project in southern Nebraska, which when opened will be the country’s first niobium mining and processing facility.

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The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE is one of the most dramatic natural disasters in recorded history, yet so many of the actual records from that moment in time are inaccessible. Papyrus scrolls located in nearby Pompeii and Herculaneum, for example, were almost instantly scorched by the volcanic blast, then promptly buried under pumice and ash. In 1752, excavators uncovered around 800 such carbonized scrolls, but researchers have since largely been unable to read any of them due to their fragile conditions.

On October 12, however, organizers behind the Vesuvius Challenge—an ongoing machine learning project to decode the physically inaccessible library—offered a major announcement: an AI program uncovered the first word in one of the relics after analyzing and identifying its incredibly tiny residual ink elements. That word? Πορφύραc, or porphyras… or “purple,” for those who can’t speak Greek.

[Related: A fresco discovered in Pompeii looks like ancient pizza—but it’s likely focaccia.]

Identifying the word for an everyday color may not sound groundbreaking, but the uncovery of “purple” already has experts intrigued. Speaking to The Guardian on Thursday, University of Kentucky computer scientist and Vesuvius Challenge co-founder Brent Seales explained that the particular word isn’t terribly common to find in such documents.

“This word is our first dive into an unopened ancient book, evocative of royalty, wealth, and even mockery,” said Seales. “Pliny the Elder explores ‘purple’ in his ‘natural history’ as a production process for Tyrian purple from shellfish. The Gospel of Mark describes how Jesus was mocked as he was clothed in purple robes before crucifixion. What this particular scroll is discussing is still unknown, but I believe it will soon be revealed. An old, new story that starts for us with ‘purple’ is an incredible place to be.”

The visualization of porphyras is thanks in large part to a 21-year-old computer student named Luke Farritor, who subsequently won $40,000 as part of the Vesuvius Challenge after identifying an additional 10 letters on the same scroll. Meanwhile, Seales believes that the entire scroll should be recoverable, even though scans indicate certain areas may be missing words due to its nearly 2,000 year interment.

As The New York Times notes, the AI-assisted analysis could also soon be applied to the hundreds of remaining carbonized scrolls. Given that these scrolls appear to have been part of a larger library amassed by Philodemus, an Epicurean philosopher, it stands to reason that a wealth of new information may emerge alongside long-lost titles, such as the poems of Sappho.

“Recovering such a library would transform our knowledge of the ancient world in ways we can hardly imagine,” one papyrus expert told The New York Times. “The impact could be as great as the rediscovery of manuscripts during the Renaissance.”

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Sam Kreigman and his colleagues made headlines a few years back with their “xenobots”— synthetic robots designed by AI and built from biological tissue samples. While experts continue to debate how to best classify such a creation, Kriegman’s team at Northwestern University has been hard at work on a similarly mind-bending project meshing artificial intelligence, evolutionary design, and robotics.

[Related: Meet xenobots, tiny machines made out of living parts.]

As detailed in a new paper published earlier this month in the Proceedings of the National Journal of Science, researchers recently tasked an AI model with a seemingly straightforward prompt: Design a robot capable of walking across a flat surface. Although the program delivered original, working examples within literal seconds, the new robots “[look] nothing like any animal that has ever walked the earth,” Kriegman said in Northwestern’s October 3 writeup.

And judging from video footage of the purple multi-“legged” blob-bots, it’s hard to disagree:

After offering their prompt to the AI program, the researchers simply watched it analyze and iterate upon a total of nine designs. Within just 26 seconds, the artificial intelligence managed to fast forward past billions of years of natural evolutionary biology to determine legged movement as the most effective method of mobility. From there, Kriegman’s team imported the final schematics into a 3D printer, which then molded a jiggly, soap bar-sized block of silicon imbued with pneumatically actuated musculature and three “legs.” Repeatedly pumping air in and out of the musculature caused the robots’ limbs to expand and contract, causing movement. During testing, the robot could walk half its body length per second—roughly half as fast as the average human stride.

“It’s interesting because we didn’t tell the AI that a robot should have legs,” Kriegman said. “It rediscovered that legs are a good way to move around on land. Legged locomotion is, in fact, the most efficient form of terrestrial movement.”

[Related: Disney’s new bipedal robot could have waddled out of a cartoon.]

If all this weren’t impressive enough, the process—dubbed “instant evolution” by Kriegman and colleagues—all took place on a “lightweight personal computer,” not a massive, energy-intensive supercomputer requiring huge datasets. According to Kreigman, previous AI-generated evolutionary bot designs could take weeks of trial and error using high-powered computing systems. 

“If combined with automated fabrication and scaled up to more challenging tasks, this advance promises near-instantaneous design, manufacture, and deployment of unique and useful machines for medical, environmental, vehicular, and space-based tasks,” Kriegman and co-authors wrote in their abstract.

“When people look at this robot, they might see a useless gadget,” Kriegman said. “I see the birth of a brand-new organism.”

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One e-toy for every person on Earth—that’s the staggering amount of electric trains, drones, talking dolls, R/C cars, and other children’s gadgets tossed into landfills every year. Some of what most consumers consider to be e-waste—like electronics such as computers, smartphones, TVs, and speaker systems—are usual suspects. Others, like power tools, vapes, LED accessories, USB cables, anything involving rechargeable lithium batteries and countless other similar, “nontraditional” e-waste materials, are less obviously in need of special disposal. In all, people across the world throw out roughly 9 billion kilograms (19.8 billion pounds) of e-waste commonly not recognized as such by consumers.

This “invisible e-waste” is the focal point of the sixth annual International E-Waste Day on October 14, organized by Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Forum. In anticipation of the event, the organization recently commissioned the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) to delve into just how much unconventional e-waste is discarded every year—and global population numbers are just some of the ways to visualize the issue.

[Related: People will throw away about 5.3 billion phones this year.]

According to UNITAR’s findings, for example, the total weight of all e-cig vapes thrown away every year roughly equals 6 Eiffel Towers. Meanwhile, the total weight of all invisible e-waste tallies up to “almost half a million 40 [metric ton] trucks,” enough to create a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam stretching approximately 3,504 miles–the distance between Rome and Nairobi. From a purely economic standpoint, nearly $10 billion in essential raw materials is literally thrown into the garbage every year.

“People tend to recognise household electrical products as those they plug in and use regularly. But many people are confused about the waste category into which ancillary, peripheral, specialist, hobby, and leisure products fit and how to have them recycled,” Pascal Leroy, Director-General of the WEEE Forum, said in a statement ahead of International E-Waste Day. The WEEE Forum asks that instead of trashing the e-waste, consumers bring it to “the appropriate municipal collection facility” in their area.

Leroy’s organization states e-waste is the world’s fastest-growing waste stream, and to deal with it properly, many more people need to recognize these “invisible” examples.

“A significant amount of electronic waste is hidden in plain sight,” says WEEE Forum member, Magdalena Charytanowicz, via the announcement. “Sadly, invisible e-waste often falls under the recycling radar of those disposing of them because they are not seen as e-waste. We need to change that and raising awareness is a large part of the answer.”

Charytanowicz cites past informational campaigns that successfully raised awareness about the many issues surrounding plastic pollution, and points to the UN’s treaty on plastics due next year. “We hope the same will occur in the e-waste field,” she adds.

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Artificial intelligence programs’ impressive (albeit often problematic) abilities come at a cost—all that computing power requires, well, power. And as the world races to adopt sustainable energy practices, the rapid rise of AI integration into everyday lives could complicate matters. New expert analysis now offers estimates of just how energy hungry the AI industry could become in the near future, and the numbers are potentially concerning.

According to a commentary published October 10 in Joule, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Business and Economics PhD candidate Alex de Vries argues that global AI-related electricity consumption could top 134 TWh annually by 2027. That’s roughly comparable to the annual consumption of nations like Argentina, the Netherlands, and Sweden.

[Related: NASA wants to use AI to study unidentified aerial phenomenon.]

Although de Vries notes data center electricity usage between 2010-2018 (excluding resource-guzzling cryptocurrency mining) has only increased by roughly 6 percent, “[t]here is increasing apprehension that the computation resources necessary to develop and maintain AI models and applications could cause a surge in data centers’ contribution to global electricity consumption.” Given countless industries’ embrace of AI over the last year, it’s not hard to imagine such a hypothetical surge becoming reality. For example, if Google—already a major AI adopter—integrated technology akin to ChatGPT into its 9 billion-per-day Google searches, the company could annually burn through 29.2 TWh of power, or as much electricity as all of Ireland.

de Vries, who also founded the digital trend watchdog research company Digiconomist, believes such an extreme scenario is somewhat unlikely, mainly due to AI server costs alongside supply chain bottlenecks. But the AI industry’s energy needs will undoubtedly continue to grow as the technologies become more prevalent, and that alone necessitates a careful review of where and when to use such products.

This year, for example, NVIDIA is expected to deliver 100,000 AI servers to customers. Operating at full capacity, the servers’ combined power demand would measure between 650 and 1,020 MW, annually amounting to 5.7-8.9 TWh of electricity consumption. Compared to annual consumption rates of data centers, this is “almost negligible.” 

By 2027, however, NVIDIA could be (and currently is) on track to ship 1.5 million AI servers per year. Estimates using similar electricity consumption rates put their combined demand between 85-134 TWh annually. “At this stage, these servers could represent a significant contribution to worldwide data center electricity consumption,” writes de Vries.

As de Vries’ own site argues, AI is not a “miracle cure for everything,” still must deal with privacy concerns, discriminatory biases, and hallucinations. “Environmental sustainability now represents another addition to this list of concerns.”

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Adjusting to prosthetic limbs isn’t as simple as merely finding one that fits your particular body type and needs. Physical control and accuracy are major issues despite proper attachment, and sometimes patients’ bodies reject even the most high-end options available. Such was repeatedly the case for a Swedish patient after losing her right arm in a farming accident over two decades ago. For years, the woman suffered from severe pain and stress issues, likening the sensation to “constantly [having] my hand in a meat grinder.”

Phantom pain is an unfortunately common affliction for amputees, and is believed to originate from nervous system signal confusions between the spinal cord and brain. Although a body part is amputated, the peripheral nerve endings remain connected to the brain, and can thus misread that information as pain.

[Related: We’re surprisingly good at surviving amputations.]

With a new, major breakthrough in prosthetics, however, her severe phantom pains are dramatically alleviated thanks to an artificial arm built on titanium-fused bone tissue alongside rearranged nerves and muscles. As detailed in a new study published via Science Robotics, the remarkable advancements could provide a potential blueprint for many other amputees to adopt such technology in the coming years.

The patient’s procedure started in 2018 when she volunteered to test a new kind of bionic arm designed by a multidisciplinary team of engineers and surgeons led by Max Ortiz Catalan, head of neural prosthetics research at Australia’s Bionics Institute and founder of the Center for Bionics and Pain Research. Using osseointegration, a process infusing titanium into bone tissue to provide a strong mechanical connection, the team was able to attach their prototype to the remaining portion of her right limb.

Accomplishing even this step proved especially difficult because of the need to precisely align the volunteer’s radius and ulna. The team also needed to account for the small amount of space available to house the system’s components. Meanwhile, the limb’s nerves and muscles needed rearrangement to better direct the patient’s neurological motor control information into the prosthetic attachment.

“By combining osseointegration with reconstructive surgery, implanted electrodes, and AI, we can restore human function in an unprecedented way,” Rickard Brånemark, an MIT research affiliate and associate professor at Gothenburg University who oversaw the surgery, said via an update from the Bionics Institute. “The below elbow amputation level has particular challenges, and the level of functionality achieved marks an important milestone for the field of advanced extremity reconstructions as a whole.”

The patient said her breakthrough prosthetic can be comfortably worn all day, is highly integrated with her body, and has even relieved her chronic pain. According to Catalan, this reduction can be attributed to the team’s “integrated surgical and engineering approach” that allows [her] to use “somewhat the same neural resources” as she once did for her biological hand.

“I have better control over my prosthesis, but above all, my pain has decreased,” the patient explained. “Today, I need much less medication.” 

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The 2018 winner of PopSci’s annual Best of What’s New continues to impress. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is still edging closer to the sun than any other spacecraft has ever achieved, and it’s setting new speed records in the process. According to a recent status update from the space agency, the Parker Solar Probe has broken its own record (again) for the fastest thing ever made by human hands—at an astounding clip of 394,736 mph.

The newest milestone comes thanks to a previous gravity-assist flyby from Venus, and occurred on September 27 at the midway point of the probe’s 17th “solar encounter” that lasted until October 3. As ScienceAlert also noted on October 9, the Parker Solar Probe’s speed would hypothetically allow an airplane to circumnavigate Earth about 15 times per hour, or skip between New York City and Los Angeles in barely 20 seconds. Not that any passengers could survive such a journey, but it remains impressive.

[Related: The fastest human-made object vaporizes space dust on contact.]

The latest pass-by also set its newest record for proximity, at just 4.51 million miles from the sun’s plasma “surface.” In order not to vaporize from temperatures as high as nearly 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, the Parker Solar Probe is outfitted with a 4.5-inch-thick carbon-composite shield to protect its sensitive instruments. These tools are measuring and imaging the sun’s surface to further researchers’ understanding of solar winds’ origins and evolution, as well as helping to forecast environmental changes in space that could affect life back on Earth. Last month, for example, the probe raced through one of the most intense coronal mass ejections (CMEs) ever observed. In doing so, the craft helped prove a two-decade-old theory that CMEs interact with interplanetary dust, which will improve experts’ abilities in space weather forecasting.

Despite its punishing journey, NASA reports the Parker Solar Probe remains in good health with “all systems operating normally.” Despite its numerous records, the probe is far from finished with its mission; there are still seven more solar pass-bys scheduled through 2024. At that point (well within Mercury’s orbit), the Parker Solar Probe will finally succumb to the sun’s extreme effects and vaporize into the solar winds— “sort of a poetic ending,” as one mission researcher told PopSci in 2021.

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Officials from the US Coast Guard confirmed on Tuesday that a salvage mission successfully recovered the remaining debris from the OceanGate Titan submersible. The 22-foot-long vessel suffered an implosion en route to the Titanic almost four months ago. Five passengers died during the privately funded, $250,000-per-seat voyage intended to glimpse the historic tragedy’s remains, including OceanGate’s CEO and Titan pilot, Stockton Rush.

According to the Coast Guard’s October 10 press release, salvage efforts were underway via an agreement with the US Navy Supervisor of Salvage & Diving following initial recovery missions approximately 1,600-feet away from the Titanic wreckage. Searchers discovered and raised the remaining debris on October 4, then transferred them to an unnamed US port for further analysis and cataloging. The US Coast Guard also confirmed “additional presumed human remains” were “carefully recovered” from inside the debris, and have been sent for medical professional analysis.

[Related: OceanGate confirms missing Titan submersible passengers ‘have sadly been lost’.]

OceanGate’s surface vessel lost contact with the Titan submersible approximately 105 minutes into its nearly 2.5 mile descent to the Titanic on June 18. Frantic, internationally coordinated search and rescue efforts scoured over 10,000 square surface miles of the Atlantic Ocean as well as the North Atlantic ocean floor. On June 22, OceanGate and US Coast Guard representatives confirmed its teams located remains indicative of a “catastrophic implosion” not far from the voyage’s intended destination.

Submersible experts had warned of such “catastrophic” issues within Titan’s design for years, and repeatedly raised concerns about OceanGate’s disregard of standard certification processes. In a March 2018 open letter to the company obtained by The New York Times, over three dozen industry experts, oceanographers, and explorers “expressed unanimous concern” about the submersible’s “experimental” approach they believed “could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry.”

“Your [safety standard] representation is, at minimum, misleading to the public and breaches an industry-wide professional code of conduct we all endeavor to uphold,” reads a portion of the 2018 letter.

Although salvage efforts have concluded, the Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation (MBI) plans to continue conducting evidence analysis alongside witness interviews “ahead of a public hearing regarding this tragedy.” A date for the hearing has not yet been announced, although as The Washington Post notes, the Coast Guard could recommend new deep-sea submersible regulations, as well as criminal charges to pursue.

OceanGate announced it suspended “all commercial and expedition operations” on July 6.

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“Are you drinking enough water?”

The question is so ubiquitous that it’s become meme canon in recent years. But what may be an annoying reminder to one person is often a logistical challenge for people dealing with mobility issues like cerebral palsy (CP). After learning about the potential physical hurdles involved in staying hydrated, two undergraduate engineering students at Rice University set out to design a robotic tool to help disabled users easily access their drinks as needed. The result, appropriately dubbed “RoboCup,” is not only a simple, relatively easy-to-construct device—it’s one whose plans are already available to anyone online for free.

According to a recent university profile, Thomas Kutcher and Rafe Neathery began work on their invention after being approached by Gary Lynn, a local Houstonian living with CP who oversees a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness for the condition. According to Kutcher, a bioengineering major, their RoboCup will hopefully remove the need for additional caregiver aid and thus “grant users greater freedom.”

[Related: How much water should you drink in a day?]

RoboCup was by no means perfect from the outset, and the undergraduates reportedly went through numerous iterations before settling on their current design. In order to optimize their tool to help as many people as possible, Kutcher and Rafe spoke to numerous caregiving and research professionals about how to best improve their schematics.

“They really liked our project and confirmed its potential, but they also pointed out that in order to reach as many people as possible, we needed to incorporate more options for building the device, such as different types of sensors, valves and mechanisms for mounting the device on different wheelchair types,” Kutcher said in their October 6 profile.

The biggest challenge, according to the duo, was balancing simplification alongside functionality and durability. In the end, the pair swapped out an early camelback version for a mounted cup-and-straw design, which reportedly is both aesthetically more pleasing to users, as well as less intrusive.

In a demonstration video, Lynn is shown activating a small sensor near his left hand, which automatically pivots an adjustable straw towards his mouth. He can then drink as much as he wants, then alert the sensor again to swivel the straw back to a neutral position.

Lynn, who tested the various versions of RoboCup, endorsed the RoboCup’s ability to offer disabled users more independence in their daily lives, and believes that “getting to do this little task by themselves will enhance the confidence of the person using the device.”

Initially intended to just be a single semester project, Kutcher and Neathery now intend to continue refining their RoboCup, including investigating ways it could be adapted to people dealing with other forms of mobility issues. In the meantime, the RoboCup is entered in World Cerebral Palsy Day’s “Remarkable Designa-thon,” which promotes new products and services meant to help those with CP. And, as it just so happens, voting is open to the public from October 6-13.

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Four-legged robots can pull off a lot of complex tasks, but there’s a reason you don’t often see them navigating “busy” environments like forests or vine-laden overgrowth. Despite all their abilities, most on-board AI systems remain pretty bad at responding to all those physical variables in real-time. It might feel like second nature to us, but it only takes the slightest misstep in such situations to send a quadrupedal robot tumbling.

After subjecting their own dog bot to a barrage of obstacle course runs, however, a team at Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering is now offering a solid step forward, so to speak, for robots deployed in the wild. According to researchers, teaching a quadrupedal robot to reactively retract its legs while walking provides the best gait for both navigating and untangling out of obstacles in its way.

[Related: How researchers trained a budget robot dog to do tricks.]

“Real-world obstacles might be stiff like a rock or soft like a vine, and we want robots to have strategies that prevent tripping on either,” Justin Yim, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign engineering professor and project collaborator, said in CMU’s recent highlight.

The engineers compared multiple stride strategies on a quadrupedal robot while it tried to walk across a short distance interrupted by multiple, low-hanging ropes. The robot quickly entangled itself while high-stepping, or walking with its knees angled forward, but retracting its limbs immediately after detecting an obstacle allowed it to smoothly cross the stretch of floor.

“When you take robots outdoors, the entire problem of interacting with the environment becomes exponentially more difficult because you have to be more deliberate in everything that you do,” David Ologan, a mechanical engineering master’s student, told CMU. “Your system has to be robust enough to handle any unforeseen circumstances or obstructions that you might encounter. It’s interesting to tackle that problem that hasn’t necessarily been solved yet.”

[Related: This robot dog learned a new trick—balancing like a cat.]

Although wheeled robots may still prove more suited for urban environments, where the ground is generally flatter and infrastructures such as ramps are more common, walking bots could hypothetically prove much more useful in outdoor settings. Researchers believe integrating their reactive retraction response into existing AI navigation systems could help robots during outdoor search-and-rescue missions. The newly designed daintiness might also help quadrupedal robots conduct environmental surveying without damaging their surroundings.

“The potential for legged robots in outdoor, vegetation-based environments is interesting to see,” said Ologan. “If you live in a city, a wheeled platform is probably a better option… There is a trade-off between being able to do more complex actions and being efficient with your movements.”

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NASA’s Artemis III astronauts are apparently going to look incredibly fashionable walking the lunar surface. On October 4, the commercial aerospace company Axiom Space announced a new collaboration with luxury fashion house Prada to design spacesuits for the upcoming moon mission currently scheduled for 2025.

According to Wednesday’s reveal, Prada’s engineers will assist Axiom’s systems team in finalizing its Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit while “developing solutions for materials and design features to protect against the unique challenge of space and the lunar environment.” Axiom CEO Michael Suffredini cited Prada’s expertise in manufacturing techniques, innovative design, and raw materials will ensure “not only the comfort of astronauts on the lunar surface, but also the much-needed human factors considerations absent from legacy spacesuits.”

[Related: Meet the first 4 astronauts of the ‘Artemis Generation’.]

NASA first unveiled an early prototype of the AxEMU spacesuit back in March, and drew particular attention to the fit accommodating “at least 90 percent of the US male and female population.” Given the Artemis mission has long promised to land the first woman on the lunar surface, such considerations are vital for astronauts’ safety and comfort.

In Wednesday’s announcement, Lorenzo Bertelli, Prada’s Group Marketing Director, cited the company’s decades of technological design and engineering experience. Although most well known for luxury fashion, Prada is also behind the cutting-edge Luna Rossa racing yacht fleet.

“We are honored to be a part of this historic mission with Axiom Space,” they said. “It is a true celebration of the power of human creativity and innovation to advance civilization.”

Despite Prada’s association with high fashion, the final AxEMU design will undoubtedly emphasize safety and function over runway appeal. After all, astronauts will need protection against both solar radiation and the near-vacuum of the lunar surface, as well as ample oxygen resources and space for HD cameras meant to transmit live feeds back to Earth. According to the BBC earlier this year, each suit will also incorporate both 3D-printing and laser cutters to ensure precise measurements tailored to each astronaut.

Although NASA’s first images of the AxEMU in March showcased a largely black-and-gray color palette with blue and orange accents, Axiom Space’s newest teases hint at an off-white cover layer more reminiscent of the classic Apollo moon mission suits. It might not be much now, but you can expect more detailed looks at the spacesuits in the coming months as the Artemis Program continues its journey back to the moon.

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Wearable sensors can already monitor a variety of important health characteristics. But they are still far short when it comes to detecting hormonal levels, particularly for women. A new device designed by researchers at Caltech, however, is specifically tailored to measure one of women’s most vital and influential hormones. According to the team’s study, recently published in Nature Nanotechnology, their new wearable sensor can detect and assess users’ estradiol levels by just analyzing sweat droplets.

Estradiol, the most potent form of estrogen, is a crucial component in women’s health. Not only is it necessary in regulating reproductive cycles and ovulation, but this hormone’s levels are directly correlated to issues ranging from depression, to osteoporosis, to even heart disease. Currently, estradiol monitoring requires blood or urine samples collected either in-clinic or at-home. In contrast, Caltech’s new sensor, created by assistant professor of medical engineering Wei Gao, only needs miniscule amounts of sweat collected via extremely small automatic valves within its microfluidic system.

[Related: This organ-failure detector is thinner than a human hair.]

The sensor’s reliance on sweat to measure estradiol isn’t only impressive due to its non-invasive nature; according to Caltech’s announcement, the hormone is about 50 times less concentrated in sweat than in blood.

The wearable’s monitoring system utilizes aptamers—short, single-strand DNA capable of binding to target molecules like artificial antibodies. Gao’s team first attached aptamers to a surface imbued with inkjet-printed gold nanoparticles. The aptamers then could bind with targeted molecules—in this case, estradiol. Once binded, the molecule gets recaptured by other titanium carbide-coated gold nanoparticles known as “MXenes.” The resultant electrical signal can be wirelessly measured and correlated to estradiol levels via a simple-to-use smartphone app.

To actually collect the sweat samples, the sensor uses tiny channels controlled by automatic valves to allow only fixed amounts of fluid into the sensor. To take patients’ sweat composition differences into consideration, the device also consistently calibrates via information collected on salt levels, skin temperature, and sweat pH.

This isn’t Gao’s first sweat sensor, either—previous variants also could detect the stress hormone cortisol, COVID-19, as well as a biomarker that indicates inflammation.

“People often ask[ed] me if I could make the same kind of sweat sensor for female hormones, because we know how much those hormones impact women’s health,” Gao said via Caltech’s announcement. With further optimization, the new estradiol sensor could help users attempting to naturally or in vitro conceive children, as well as aid those necessitating hormone replacement therapies. According to Gao, the team also intends to expand the range of female hormones they can detect, including another ovulation-related variant, progesterone.

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It took eight years and the collaborative efforts of over 600 interdisciplinary undergraduate students, but Estonia’s second satellite is finally on track to launch later this week. Once in orbit thanks to a lift aboard one of the European Space Agency’s Vega VV23 rockets, the tiny  8.5 lb ESTCube-2 will test an elegant method to potentially help clear the skies’ increasingly worrisome space junk issue using a novel “plasma brake.”

Designed by Finnish Meteorological Institute physicist Pekka Janhunen, the electric sail (E-sail) technology harnesses the physics underlying Earth’s ionosphere—the atmosphere’s electrically charged outer layer. Once in orbit, Estonia’s ESTCube-2 will deploy a nearly 165-foot-long tether composed of hair-thin aluminum wires that, once charged via solar power, will repel the almost motionless plasma within the ionosphere.

[Related: The FCC just dished out their first space junk fine.]

“​​Historically, tethers have been prone to snap in space due to micrometeorites or other hazards,” Janhunen explained in an October 3 statement ahead of the mission launch. “So ESTCube-2’s net-like microtether design brings added redundancy with two parallel and two zig-zagging bonded wires.”

If successful, the drag should slow down the tiny cubesat enough to shorten its orbital decay time to just a two-year lifespan. Not only that, but it would do so without any physical propellant source, thus offering a lightweight, low-cost alternative to existing satellite decommissioning options.

“It is exciting to see if the plasma break is going to work as planned… and if the tether itself is as robust as it needs to be,” Carolin Frueh, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Purdue University, tells PopSci via email. “The longer a dead or decommissioned satellite is out there, the higher the risk that it runs into other objects, which leads to fragmentation and the creation of even more debris objects.”

According to Frueh, although drag sails have been explored to help with Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites’ end-of-life maneuvers in the past, “the plasma brake technology has the potential to be more robust and more easily deployable at the end of life compared to a classical large solar sail.”

After just seven decades’ worth of space travel, junk is already a huge issue for ongoing private- and government-funded missions. Literally millions of tiny trash pieces now orbit the Earth as fast as 17,500 mph, each one a potential mission-ender. Such debris could also prove fatal to unfortunate astronauts in their path. 

Although multiple international efforts are underway to help mitigate the amount of space junk, even the process of planning such operations can be difficult. Earlier this year, for example, an ESA space debris cleanup pilot project grew more complicated after its orbital trash target reportedly unexpectedly collided with other debris. On October 2, the Federal Communications Commission issued its first-ever orbital littering fine after satellite television provider Dish Network failed to properly deorbit a decommissioned, direct broadcast EchoStar-7 satellite last year.

“As satellite operations become more prevalent and the space economy accelerates, we must be certain that operators comply with their commitments,” Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan A. Egal said at the time.

Estonia’s second-ever satellite is scheduled to launch on October 7 from the ESA’s spaceport in French Guiana.

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AI programs can already respond to sensory stimulations like touch, sight, smell, and sound—so why not taste? Engineering researchers at Penn State hope to one day accomplish just that, in the process designing an “electronic tongue” capable of detecting gas and chemical molecules with components that are only a few atoms thick. Although not capable of “craving” a late-night snack just yet, the team is hopeful their new design could one day pair with robots to help create AI-influenced diets, curate restaurant menus, and even train people to broaden their own palates.

Unfortunately, human eating habits aren’t based solely on what we nutritionally require; they are also determined by flavor preferences. This comes in handy when our taste buds tell our brains to avoid foul-tasting, potentially poisonous foods, but it also is the reason you sometimes can’t stop yourself from grabbing that extra donut or slice of cake. This push-and-pull requires a certain amount of psychological cognition and development—something robots currently lack.

[Related: A new artificial skin could be more sensitive than the real thing]

“Human behavior is easy to observe but difficult to measure. and that makes it difficult to replicate in a robot and make it emotionally intelligent. There is no real way right now to do that,” 

Saptarshi Das, an associate professor of engineering science and mechanics, said in an October 4 statement. Das is a corresponding author of the team’s findings, which were published last month in the journal Nature Communications, and helped design the robotic system capable of “tasting” molecules.

To create their flat, square “electronic gustatory complex,” the team combined chemitransistors—graphene-based sensors that detect gas and chemical molecules—with molybdenum disulfide memtransistors capable of simulating neurons. The two components worked in tandem, capitalizing on their respective strengths to simulate the ability to “taste” molecular inputs.

“Graphene is an excellent chemical sensor, [but] it is not great for circuitry and logic, which is needed to mimic the brain circuit,” said Andrew Pannone, an engineering science and mechanics grad student and study co-author, in a press release this week. “For that reason, we used molybdenum disulfide… By combining these nanomaterials, we have taken the strengths from each of them to create the circuit that mimics the gustatory system.”

When analyzing salt, for example, the electronic tongue detected the presence of sodium ions, thereby “tasting” the sodium chloride input. The design is reportedly flexible enough to apply to all five major taste profiles: salty, sour, bitter, sweet, and umami. Hypothetically, researchers could arrange similar graphene device arrays that mirror the approximately 10,000 different taste receptors located on a human tongue.

[Related: How to enhance your senses of smell and taste]

“The example I think of is people who train their tongue and become a wine taster. Perhaps in the future we can have an AI system that you can train to be an even better wine taster,” Das said in the statement.

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New quadrupedal robots, based on years of research alongside some amphibian inspiration, could one day crawl and shimmy their way into search-and-rescue operations. As detailed in a new paper recently published in Nature Communications, the robotic trio developed by a team at Colorado State University can swim, walk, and crawl depending on their environments’ obstacles—thanks in large part to lightweight artificial muscles that don’t require heavy onboard power sources.

[Related: Four-legged dog robots could one day explore the moon.]

The new systems, which have been in development since 2017, were designed by a team led by CSU Department of Mechanical Engineering professor Jianguo Zhao, and rely on materials that change rigidity depending on temperature.

“Our embedded morphing scheme uses a lightweight artificial muscle similar to a human muscle, and it contracts when electricity is applied,” Zhao explained in the project’s October 2 announcement. “By embedding these artificial muscles in the spine of the robot or in its skin, we can achieve a variety of shape-types. Altogether, this approach offers a promising path towards developing robots that can navigate and work in difficult environments.”

Aside from the electrical properties, the robots owe their movements in large part to frogs—or, rather, frogs’ multiple life stages. “They start as tadpoles with tails for swimming before developing legs that let them jump, crawl or swim,” Zhao continued. “We take inspiration from those transformations, but achieving animal-like embedded shape morphing in robots remains challenging and is something we hope this work will continue to address.”

Judging from the video montage, it’s easy to see the frog analogy. Depending on its surroundings and terrain, the robots can curve their limbs to “swim,” then adjust them accordingly to scale a rocky hurdle that mimics a shoreline. On dry land, Zhao’s robots can “hop” along by repeatedly rotating their limbs 360 degrees to push forward. A third version of the robot can flatten itself to skitter through small openings, as well as hang onto a ledge to help transition across gaps.

For now, however, the robots require remote control, but future iterations could rely on sensor- and camera-based analysis of their environments for navigation, and even morph as needed to handle their surroundings.

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Stories about solar-powered robotic wolves first surfaced back in 2017 after Japanese researchers began testing prototypes to combat wild boars’ devastating encroachment into farmlands. Since then, a company called Wolf Kamuy expanded sales of its sentry products featuring menacing fangs, fur, flashing red LED “eyes,” and a head capable of shaking side-to-side while emitting a 90 decibel howl. But boars aren’t the only problem plaguing rural Japanese communities. According to recent reports, Wolf Kamuy is now offering many of its faux-wolves as bear deterrence.

[Related: How to watch Alaska’s fat bears.]

It turns out the “Super Monster Wolf” isn’t just effective at protecting farmers’ crops—it’s also pretty good at protecting the farmers themselves. As reported October 1 via the BBC, bears are an increasingly difficult, sometimes even deadly nuisance in many areas of Japan thanks to a combination of serious factors, including climate change, deforestation,and urban expansion. What’s more, bear populations in regions such as Hokkaido appear to be actually increasing as Japan faces an aging population and declining birth rates. According to the BBC, some researchers estimate a total of over 22,000 bears located around Hokkaido. Because of all this, the region recorded at least 150 bear attacks over the past six decades—with four fatalities in 2021 alone. Meanwhile, bears continue to wander into more crowded towns and cities bordering wildlife areas.

Enter: the Super Monster Wolf. By installing the guard bots in urban locales, experts hope to deter bears from wandering into populated areas to potentially harm both humans and themselves. Researchers previously estimated that a robo-wolf’s howls effectively deterred bears from encroaching within approximately 1-square-km (about 0.38 square mi) of its installation—arguably better than many electric fence perimeters. With strategic placement, Super Monster Wolves could help elderly communities, and protect the bears.

Of course, humanity cannot solely rely on an army of robot wolves to protect us from bear attacks. Bears (not to mention countless other species) face immense existential threats in the face of ongoing climate change calamities, and it’s not the bears’ fault they are increasingly desperate to find food sources. The best remedy, therefore, is to continue focusing on climate solutions like conservation, renewable energy, and sustainable urban planning, rather than stopgaps like the (admittedly rad) Super Monster Wolf.

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The Federal Communications Commission is officially doling out fines for space polluters, and the popular satellite television provider Dish Network earned the dubious honor of receiving the first ticket. On October 2, the FCC announced it slapped the telecommunications company with a $150,000 penalty after failing to properly deorbit its decommissioned, direct broadcast EchoStar-7 satellite last year. According to the FCC, the fine comes with an admission of liability, as well as an agreement to follow a “compliance plan” to help make way for the thousands of orbital projects in the works around the world.

[Related: FCC slaps voter suppression robocall scammers with a record-breaking fine.]

Space junk is already a huge concern for any industry requiring operations high above the planet, with literal millions of trash bits orbiting Earth at any given moment. In July, NASA director Bill Nelson told the BBC space junk poses a “major problem,” explaining that even something like a small paint chip striking an astronaut during a spacewalk at orbital speed (17,500 mph) “can be fatal.” Experts also worry about humans accidentally initiating a “Kessler cascade” or “Kessler syndrome.” In such situations, orbital space becomes so polluted that debris collisions are impossible to avoid, thus producing an exponentially increasing cycle of more collisions that create more debris. Were this to occur, the future of space exploration and travel could remain stymied until governments and companies begin complicated, costly cleanup efforts. 

Dish Network’s EchoStar-7 satellite launched and achieved geostationary orbit in 2002, and received FCC approval for an eventual orbital mitigation plan in 2012. According to the agreement, the telecoms company committed to eventually boost the satellite roughly 300 km above its operational arc. In February 2022, however, Dish Network revealed the satellite did not have enough remaining propellant to adhere to the original agreement’s altitude. In the end, the EchoStar-7 satellite only retired about 122 km above its geostationary arc—far lower than planned. Last year, the FCC also announced plans to finally begin tighter restrictions on satellites’ lifespans and decommissioning protocols.

[Related: Some space junk just got smacked by more space junk, complicating cleanup.]

“As satellite operations become more prevalent and the space economy accelerates, we must be certain that operators comply with their commitments,” Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan A. Egal said via Monday’s announcement. “This is a breakthrough settlement, making very clear the FCC has strong enforcement authority and capability to enforce its vitally important space debris rules.”

In August, a space debris cleanup pilot project overseen by the European Space Agency quickly turned into a logistical headache after its orbital trash target appeared to collide with another piece of debris. Luckily, the ESA and its partners at Swiss startup ClearSpace-1 stated at the time that their project appears able to progress as planned.

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Back in July, Chipotle revealed the “Autocado”—an AI-guided avocado-pitting robot prototype meant to help handle America’s insatiable guacamole habit while simultaneously reducing food waste. Today, the fast casual chain announced its next automated endeavor—a prep station capable of assembling entrees on its own.

[Related: Chipotle is testing an avocado-pitting, -cutting, and -scooping robot.]

According to the company’s official reveal this morning, its newest robotic prototype—a collaboration with the food service automation startup, Hyphen—creates virtually any combination of available base ingredients for Chipotle’s burrito bowls and salads underneath human employees’ workspace. Meanwhile, staff are reportedly allowed to focus on making other, presumably more structurally complex and involved dishes such as burritos, quesadillas, tacos, and kid’s meals. Watch the robot prototype plop food into little piles in the bowl under the workspace here: 

As orders arrive via Chipotle’s website, app, or another third-party service like UberEats, burrito bowls and salads are automatically routed within the makeline, where an assembly system passes dishes beneath the various ingredient containers. Precise portions are then doled out accordingly, after which the customer’s order surfaces via a small elevator system on the machine’s left side. Chipotle employees can then add any additional chips, salsas, and guacamole, as well as an entree lid before sending off the orders for delivery.

[Related: What robots can and can’t do for a restaurant.]

Chipotle estimates around 65 percent of all its digital orders are salads and burrito bowls, so their so-called “cobot” (“collaborative” plus “robot”) could hypothetically handle a huge portion of existing kitchen prep. The automated process may also potentially offer more accurate orders, the company states. 

Advocates frequently voice concern about automation and its effect on human jobs. And Chipotle isn’t the only chain in question—companies like Wendy’s and Panera continue to experiment with their own automation plans. Curt Garner, Chipotle’s Chief Customer and Technology Officer described the company’s long-term goal of having the automated digital makeline “be the centerpiece of all our restaurants’ digital kitchens.”

For now, however, the new burrito bowl bot can only be found at the Chipotle Cultivate Center in Irvine, California—presumably alongside the Autocado.

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Take it from Tom Hanks—he is not interested in peddling dental plans.

“BEWARE!! [sic] There’s a video out there promoting some dental plan with an AI version of me. I have nothing to do with it,” the actor wrote via an Instagram post to his account over the weekend.

Hanks’ warning was superimposed over a screenshot of the deepfaked dental imposter in question, and subsequently highlighted by Variety on Sunday afternoon. According to Gizmodo, the simulated celebrity appears to be based on an image owned by the Los Angeles Times from at least 2014.

The latest example of generative AI’s continued foray into uncharted legal and ethical territories seems to confirm the Oscar-winning actor’s fears first voiced barely five months ago. During an interview while on The Adam Buxton Podcast, Hanks explained his concerns about AI tech’s implications for actors, especially after their deaths.

[Related: This fictitious news show is entirely produced by AI and deepfakes.]

“Anybody can now recreate themselves at any age they are by way of AI or deepfake technology. I could be hit by a bus tomorrow and that’s it, but performances can go on and on and on and on,” Hanks said in May. “Outside the understanding of AI and deepfake, there’ll be nothing to tell you that it’s not me and me alone. And it’s going to have some degree of lifelike quality. That’s certainly an artistic challenge, but it’s also a legal one.”

Hanks’ warnings come as certain corners of the global entertainment industry are already openly embracing the technology, with or without performers’ consent. In China, for example, AI companies are now offering deepfake services to clone popular online influencers to hawk products ostensibly 24/7 using their own “livestreams.”

According to a report last month from MIT Technology Review, Chinese startups only require a few minutes’ worth of source video alongside roughly $1,000 to replicate human influencers for as long as a client wants. Those fees alongside an AI clone’s complexity and abilities, but often are significantly cheaper than employing human livestream labor. A report from Chinese analytics firm iiMedia Research, for example, estimates companies could cut costs by as much as 70 percent by switching to AI talking heads. Combined with other economic and labor challenges, earnings for human livestream hosts in the country have dropped as much as 20 percent since 2022.

[Related: Deepfake videos may be convincing enough to create false memories.]

Apart from the financial concerns, deepfaking celebrities poses ethical issues, especially for the families of deceased entertainers. Also posting to Instagram over the weekend, Zelda Williams—daughter of the late Robin Williams—offered her thoughts after encountering deepfaked audio of her father’s voice.

“I’ve already heard AI used to get his ‘voice’ to say whatever people want and while I find it personally disturbing, the ramifications go far beyond my own feelings,” wrote Williams, as reported via Rolling Stone on October 2. “These recreations are, at their very best, a poor facsimile of greater people, but at their worst, a horrendous Frankensteinian monster, cobbled together from the worst bits of everything this industry is, instead of what it should stand for.”

AI is currently a major focal point for ongoing labor negotiations within Hollywood. Last week, the Writers Guild of America reached an agreement with industry executives following a five-month strike, settling on a contract that offers specific guidelines protecting writers’ livelihoods and art against AI outsourcing. Meanwhile, members of the Screen Actors Guild remain on strike while seeking their own guarantees against AI in situations such as background actor generation and posthumous usages of their likeness.

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Five mech suits capable of morphing between robotic and vehicular modes are now available for pre-order from a Japanese startup overseen by 25-year-old inventor Ryo Yoshida. At nearly 15-feet-tall and weighing in around 3.5 tons, one of Tsubame Industries’  “Archax” joyrides can be all yours—if you happen to have an extra $3 million burning a hole in your pocket.

News of the production update came courtesy of Reuters on Monday, who spoke with Yoshida about their thought process behind constructing the futuristic colossus, which gets its name from the famous winged dinosaur archaeopteryx. 

[Related: Robotic exoskeletons are storming out of sci-fi and onto your squishy human body.]

“Japan is very good at animation, games, robots and automobiles so I thought it would be great if I could create a product that compressed all these elements into one,” he said at the time. “I wanted to create something that says, ‘This is Japan.’”

To pilot the steel and iron-framed Archax, individuals must first climb a small ladder and enter a cockpit situated within the robot’s chest. Once sealed inside, a system of nine cameras connected to four view screens allows riders to see the world around them alongside information such as battery life, speed, tilt angle, and positioning. Depending on a user’s desire, Archax can travel upwards of 6 mph from one of two setups—a four-wheeled upright robotic mode, and a more streamlined vehicle mode in which the cockpit reclines 17 degrees as the chair remains upright. Meanwhile, a set of joysticks alongside two floor pedals control the mech suit’s movement, as well as its controllable arms and hands

Unlike countless other robotic creations on the market, however, Archax currently isn’t designed for rigorous real world encounters. It’s currently meant to be, per the company’s own description, “cool.” 

But that doesn’t mean Yoshida and his team at Tsubame aren’t hopeful to build future Archax models better equipped for real world uses. According to the inventor, he hopes such pilotable robotic suits could find applications within search-and-rescue operations, disaster relief, and even the space industry. For now, however, Tsubame sounds perfectly satisfied with its luxury toy status.

“Arcax is not just a big robot that you can ride inside. A person can climb into the cockpit and control the vehicle at will. Each part moves with sufficient speed, rigidity, and power,” reads the product’s description.

“And it’s cool,” Tsubame Industries reiterates.

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The Environmental Protection Agency is releasing guidelines to more clearly define what is considered a truly “zero-emission” building. Unveiled on September 28 at the Greenbuild International Conference and Expo, the nation’s largest annual gathering for sustainable architecture, the EPA’s new outline is reportedly based on a “three pillar” approach. These pillars include no on-site emissions, the use of 100 percent renewable energy, and adherence to strict energy efficiency guidelines.

The news, first revealed via White House National Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi speaking to The Washington Post on Thursday morning, arrives as the Biden administration attempts to standardize concepts for an industry that generates nearly a third of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions every year.

“Getting to zero emissions does not need to be a premium product. We know how to do this,” Ali Zaidi said during the interview. “It just has to get to scale, which I think a common definition will facilitate.”

[Related: Power plants may face emission limits for the first time if EPA rules pass.]

A truly “zero-emission” building is actually harder to define than it may first appear. Currently, the global green standard is generally considered Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. Developed by the US Green Building Council, an environmental nonprofit, and currently in its fifth iteration, LEED certification provides a comprehensive, tiered rating system for neighborhood developments, homes, and cities. However, it lacks the authority that could be granted by a major US federal department such as the EPA.

Lacking concise federal regulations, the US currently includes countless state and local benchmarks to meet their own ideas of eco-friendly urban planning—from California’s “zero net energy” standard for all new constructions by 2030, to reduced emission targets for 2030 and 2050 in New York. For California, a zero net energy project is defined as an “energy-efficient building where, on a source energy basis, the actual annual consumed energy is less than or equal to the on-site renewable generated energy.” Meanwhile, New York’s Local 97 law from 2019 sets carbon emission caps based on building sizes, along with multiple avenues to offset such emissions.

Although the EPA’s new definitional framework is not legally binding, the standardization could still prove incredibly attractive for real estate developers involved in projects across multiple states seeking a streamlined process.

“​​A workable, usable federal definition of zero-emission buildings can bring some desperately needed uniformity and consistency to a chaotic regulatory landscape,” Duane Desiderio, senior vice president and counsel for the Real Estate Roundtable, explained via WaPo’s rundown of the reveal.

Multiple projects in recent years have attempted to improve upon sustainable building practices in order to meet climate change’s steepest challenges. One such promising avenue is creatively incorporating recycled materials, such as diaper materials, to actually strengthen concrete mixtures for low-cost housing alternatives.

Meanwhile, termite mounds—the world’s tallest biological structures—are beginning to inspire eco-friendly cooling and heating systems, while fungi growth is providing the architectural underpinnings for a new generation of durable and sustainable building materials.

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Solar sails that leverage the sun’s photonic rays for “wind” are no longer the stuff of science fiction—in fact, the Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 practical demonstration was deemed a Grand Award Winner for PopSci’s Best of What’s New in 2019. And while countless projects continue to explore what solar sails could hold for the future of space travel, a new study demonstrates just how promising the technology could be for excursions to Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor, and beyond.

According to a paper recently submitted to the journal Acta Astronautica, detailed computer simulations show tiny, incredibly lightweight solar sails made with aerographite could travel to Mars in just 26 days—compare that to conventional rocketry time estimates of between 7-to-9 months. Meanwhile, a journey to the heliopause (the demarcation line for interstellar space where the sun’s magnetic forces cease to influence objects) could take between 4.2 and 5.3 years. For comparison, the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes took a respective 35 and 41 years to reach the same boundary.

[Related: This novel solar sail could make it easier for NASA to stare into the sun.]

The key to such speedy trips is the 1 kg solar sails’ 720g of aerographite—an ultra-lightweight material with four times less density than most solar sail designs’ Mylar components. The major caveat to these simulations is that they involved an extremely miniscule payload weight, something that will most often not be the case for major interplanetary and interstellar journeys.

“Solar sail propulsion has the potential for rapid delivery of small payloads (sub-kilogram) throughout the solar system,” René Heller, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and study co-author, explained to Universe Today earlier this month. “Compared to conventional chemical propulsion, which can bring hundreds of tons of payload to low-Earth orbit and deliver a large fraction of that to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, this sounds ridiculously small. But the key value of solar sail technology is speed.”

Another issue still that still needs addressing is deceleration methods needed upon actually reaching a destination. Although aerocapture—using a planet’s atmosphere to reduce velocity—is a possible option, researchers concede more investigation will be needed to determine the best, most efficient way to actually stop at a solar sail-equipped spacecraft’s intended endpoint. Regardless, the study only adds even more wind in the sails (so to speak) for the impressive interstellar travel method.

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The dark side of the moon, despite its name, is a perfect vantage point for observing the universe. On Earth, radio signals from the furthest depths of space are obscured by the atmosphere, alongside humanity’s own electronic chatter, but the lunar far side has none of these issues. Because of this, establishing an observation point there could allow for unimpeded views of some of cosmic history’s earliest moments—particularly a 400 million year stretch known as the universe’s Dark Ages when early plasma cooled enough to begin forming the  protons and electrons that eventually made hydrogen.

After years of development and testing, just such an observation station could come online as soon as 2026, in part thanks to researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.

[Related: Watch a rocket engine ignite in ultra-slow motion.]

The team is currently working alongside NASA, the US Department of Energy, and the University of Minnesota on a pathfinder project called the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Night (LuSEE-Night). The radio telescope is on track to launch atop Blue Ghost, private space company Firefly Aerospace’s lunar lander, as part of the company’s second moon excursion. Once in position, Blue Ghost will detach from Firefly’s Elytra space vehicle, then travel down to the furthest site ever reached on the moon’s dark side. 

“If you’re on the far side of the moon, you have a pristine, radio-quiet environment from which you can try to detect this signal from the Dark Ages,” Kaja Rotermund, a postdoctoral researcher at Berkeley Lab, said in a September 26 project update. “LuSEE-Night is a mission showing whether we can make these kinds of observations from a location that we’ve never been in, and also for a frequency range that we’ve never been able to observe.”

More specifically, LuSEE-Night will be equipped with specialized antennae designed by the Berkeley Lab team to listen between 0.5 and 50 megahertz. To accomplish this, both the antennae and its Blue Ghost transport will need to be able to withstand the extreme temperatures experienced on the moon’s far side, which can span between -280 and 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Because of its shielded lunar location, however, LuSEE-Night will also need to beam its findings up to an orbiting satellite that will then transfer the information back to Earth.

“The engineering to land a scientific instrument on the far side of the moon alone is a huge accomplishment,” explained Berkeley Lab’s antenna project lead, Aritoki Suzuki, in the recent update. “If we can demonstrate that this is possible—that we can get there, deploy, and survive the night—that can open up the field for the community and future experiments.”

If successful, LuSEE-Night could provide data from the little known Dark Ages, which breaks up other observable eras such as some of the universe’s earliest moments, as well as more recent moments after stars began to form.

According to Berkeley Lab, the team recently completed a successful technical review, and is currently working on constructing the flight model meant for the moon. Once landed, LuSEE-Night will peer out into the Dark Age vastness for about 18 months beginning in 2026. 

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The Central Intelligence Agency confirmed it is building a ChatGPT-style AI for use across the US intelligence community. Speaking with Bloomberg on Tuesday, Randy Nixon, director of the CIA’s Open-Source Enterprise, described the project as a logical technological step forward for a vast 18-agency network that includes the CIA, NSA, FBI, and various military offices. The large language model (LLM) chatbot will reportedly provide summations of open-source materials alongside citations, as well as chat with users, according to Bloomberg. 

“Then you can take it to the next level and start chatting and asking questions of the machines to give you answers, also sourced. Our collection can just continue to grow and grow with no limitations other than how much things cost,” Nixon said.

“We’ve gone from newspapers and radio, to newspapers and television, to newspapers and cable television, to basic internet, to big data, and it just keeps going,” Nixon continued, adding, “We have to find the needles in the needle field.”

[Related: ChatGPT can now see, hear, and talk to some users.]

The announcement comes as China’s make their ambitions to become the global leader in AI technology by the decade’s end known. In August, new Chinese government regulations went into effect requiring makers of publicly available AI services submit regular security assessments. As Reuters noted in July, the oversight will likely restrict at least some technological advancements in favor of ongoing national security crackdowns. The laws are also far more stringent than those currently within the US, as regulators struggle to adapt to the industry’s rapid advancements and societal consequences.

Nixon has yet to discuss  the overall scope and capabilities of the proposed system, and would not confirm what AI model forms the basis of its LLM assistant. For years, however, US intelligence communities have explored how to best leverage AI’s vast data analysis capabilities alongside private partnerships. The CIA even hosted a “Spies Supercharged” panel during this year’s SXSW in the hopes of recruiting tech workers across sectors such as quantum computing, biotech, and AI. During the event, CIA deputy director David Cohen reiterated concerns regarding AI’s unpredictable effects for the intelligence community.

“To defeat that ubiquitous technology, if you have any good ideas, we’d be happy to hear about them afterwards,” Cohen said at the time.

[Related: The CIA hit up SXSW this year—to recruit tech workers.]

Similar criticisms arrived barely two weeks ago via the CIA’s first-ever chief technology officer, Nand Mulchandani. Speaking at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit, Mulchandani contended that while some AI-based systems are “absolutely fantastic” for tasks such as vast data trove pattern analysis, “in areas where it requires precision, we’re going to be incredibly challenged.” 

Mulchandani also conceded that AI’s often seemingly “hallucinatory” offerings could still be helpful to users.

“AI can give you something so far outside of your range, that it really then opens up the vista in terms of where you’re going to go,” he said at the time. “[It’s] what I call the ‘crazy drunk friend.’” 

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Bill Gates is a staunch advocate for nuclear energy, and although he no longer oversees day-to-day operations at Microsoft, its business strategy still mirrors the sentiment. According to a new job listing first spotted on Tuesday by The Verge, the tech company is currently seeking a “principal program manager” for nuclear technology tasked with “maturing and implementing a global Small Modular Reactor (SMR) and microreactor energy strategy.” Once established, the nuclear energy infrastructure overseen by the new hire will help power Microsoft’s expansive plans for both cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

Among the many, many, (many) concerns behind AI technology’s rapid proliferation is the amount of energy required to power such costly endeavors—a worry exacerbated by ongoing fears pertaining to climate collapse. Microsoft believes nuclear power is key to curtailing the massive amounts of greenhouse emissions generated by fossil fuel industries, and has made that belief extremely known in recent months.

[Related: Microsoft thinks this startup can deliver on nuclear fusion by 2028.]

Unlike traditional nuclear reactor designs, an SMR is meant to be far more cost-effective, easier to construct, and smaller, all the while still capable of generating massive amounts of energy. Earlier this year, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a first-of-its-kind SMR; judging from Microsoft’s job listing, it anticipates many more are to come. Among the position’s many responsibilities is the expectation that the principal program manager will “[l]aise with engineering and design teams to ensure technical feasibility and optimal integration of SMR and microreactor systems.”

But as The Verge explains, making those nuclear ambitions a reality faces a host of challenges. First off, SMRs demand HALEU, a more highly enriched uranium than traditional reactors need. For years, the world’s largest HALEU supplier has been Russia, whose ongoing invasion of Ukraine is straining the supply chain. Meanwhile, nuclear waste storage is a perpetual concern for the industry, as well as the specter of disastrous, unintended consequences.

Microsoft is obviously well aware of such issues—which could factor into why it is also investing in moonshot energy solutions such as nuclear fusion. Not to be confused with current reactors’ fission capabilities, nuclear fusion involves forcing atoms together at extremely high temperatures, thus producing a new, smaller atom alongside massive amounts of energy. Back in May, Microsoft announced an energy purchasing partnership with the nuclear fusion startup called Helion, which touts an extremely ambitious goal of bringing its first generator online in 2028.

Fission or fusion, Microsoft’s nuclear aims require at least one new job position—one with a starting salary of $133,600.

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A new high-tech surveillance drone developed by a California-based startup Skydio will include infrared sensors, cameras capable of reading license plates as far as 800 feet away, and the ability to reach top speeds of 45 mph. Skydio hopes “intelligent flying machines”–like its new drone X10–will become part of the “basic infrastructure” supporting law enforcement, government organizations, and private businesses. Such an infrastructure is already developing across the country. Meanwhile, critics are renewing their privacy and civil liberties concerns about what they believe remains a dangerously unregulated industry.

Skydio first unveiled its new X10 on September 20, which Wired detailed in a new rundown on Tuesday. The company’s latest model is part of a push to “get drones everywhere they can be useful in public safety,” according to CEO Adam Bry during last week’s launch event. Prior to the X10’s release, Skydio has reportedly sold over 40,000 other “intelligent flying machines” to more than 1,500 clients over the past decade, including the US Army Rangers and the UK’s Ministry of Defense. Skydio execs, however, openly express their desire to continue expanding drone adoption even further via a self-explanatory concept deemed “drone as first responder” (DFR).

[Related: The Army skips off-the-shelf drones for a new custom quadcopter.]

In such scenarios, drones like the X10 can be deployed in less than 40 seconds by on-the-scene patrol officers from within a backpack or car trunk. From there, however, the drones can be piloted via onboard 5G connectivity by operators at remote facilities and command centers. Skydio believes drones like its X10 are equipped with enough cutting edge tools to potentially even aid in stopping high-speed car chases.

To allow for this kind of support, however, drone operators are increasingly required to obtain clearance from the FAA for what’s known as beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) flights. Such a greenlight allows drone pilots to control fleets from centralized locations instead of needing to remain onsite. BVLOS clearances are currently major goals for retail companies like Walmart and Amazon, as well as shipping giants like UPS, who will need such certifications to deliver to customers at logistically necessary distances. According to Skydio, the company has already supported customers in “getting over 20 waivers” for BVLOS flight, although its X10 announcement does not provide specifics as to how. 

Drone usage continues to rise across countless industries, both commercial and law enforcement related. As the ACLU explains, drones’ usages in scientific research, mapping, and search-and-rescue missions are undeniable, “but deployed without proper regulation, drones [can be] capable of monitoring personal conversations would cause unprecedented invasions of our privacy rights.”

Meanwhile, civil rights advocates continue to warn that there is very little in the way of such oversight for the usage of drones among the public during events such as political demonstrations, protests, as well as even simply large gatherings and music festivals.

“Any adoption of drones, regardless of the time of day or visibility conditions when deployed, should include robust policies, consideration of community privacy rights, auditable paper trails recording the reasons for deployment and the information captured, and transparency around the other equipment being deployed as part of the drone,” Beryl Lipton, an investigative researcher for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, tells PopSci.

“The addition of night vision capabilities to drones can enable multiple kinds of 24-hour police surveillance,” Lipton adds.

Despite Skydio’s stated goals, critics continue to push back against claims that such technology benefits the public, and instead violates privacy rights while disproportionately targeting marginalized communities. Organizations such as the New York Civil Liberties Union cites police drones deployed at protests across 15 cities in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd.

[ Related: Here is what a Tesla Cybertruck cop car could look like ]

Skydio has stated in the past it does not support weaponized drones, although as Wired reports, the company maintains an active partnership with Axon, makers of police tech like Tasers. Currently, Skydio is only integrating its drone fleets with Axon software sold to law enforcement for evidence management and incident responses.

Last year, Axon announced plans to develop a line of Taser-armed drones shortly after the Uvalde school shooting massacre. The news prompted near immediate backlash, causing Axon to backtrack less than a week later—but not before the majority of the company’s AI Ethics board resigned in protest.

Update 09/26/23 1:25pm: This article has been updated to include a response from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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YOU ARE NEVER going to beat the world’s best chess programs. After decades of training and studying, you might manage a checkmate or two against Stockfish, Komodo, or another formidable online foe. But if you tally up every match you ever play against an artificial intelligence, the final score will land firmly on the side of the machine.

Don’t feel bad. The same goes for the entire human race. Computer vs. chess master has been a losing prospect since 1997, when IBM’s Deep Blue beat legendary grandmaster Garry Kasparov in a historic tournament. The game is now firmly in artificial intelligence’s domain—but these chess overlords can also improve your game by serving as digital coaches.

That’s where Learn Chess with Dr. Wolf comes into play. Released in 2020, the AI program from Chess.com is a remarkably effective tutor, able to adapt to your skill level, offer tips and hints, and help you review past mistakes as you learn new strategies, gambits, and defenses. It’s by no means the only chess platform designed to teach—Lichess, Shredder Chess, and Board Game Arena are all solid options. Magnus Carlsen, a five-time World Chess Championship winner, even has his own tutoring app, Magnus Trainer.

Dr. Wolf, however, approaches the game a bit differently. “The wish that we address is to have not just an [AI] opponent, but a coach who will praise your good moves and explain what they’re doing while they’re doing it,” says David Joerg, Chess.com’s head of special projects and the developer behind Dr. Wolf.

The program is similar to the language-learning app Duolingo in some ways—it makes knowledge accessible and rewards nuances. Players pull up the interface and begin a game against the AI, which offers real-time text analysis of both sides’ strategies and movements.

If you make a blunder, the bot points out the error, maybe offers up a pointer or two, and asks if you want to give it another shot. “Are you certain?” Dr. Wolf politely asks after my rookie mistake of opening up my undefended pawn on e4 for capture. From there, I can choose either to play on or to take back my move. A corrected do-over results in a digital pat on the back from the esteemed doctor, while repeated errors may push it to course-correct.

“The best teachers in a sport already do [actively train you], and AI makes it possible for everyone to experience that,” Joerg says. He adds that Dr. Wolf’s users have something in common with professional chess players too—they use AI opponents in their daily training regimens. Experts often rely on the ChessBase platform, which runs its ever-growing algorithms off powerful computers, feeding them massive historical match archives. Dr. Wolf, however, isn’t coded for grandmasters like Carlsen or Hikaru Nakamura; rather, it’s designed to remove amateur players’ hesitancy about diving into a complex game that’s become even more imposing thanks to AI dominance.

“I see it not as a playing-field leveler as much as an on-ramp,” says Joerg. “It makes it possible for people to get in and get comfortable without the social pressure.” While machines may have a permanent upper hand in chess, Dr. Wolf shows us, as any good challenger would, that it all comes down to how you see the board in front of you.

Read more about life in the age of AI: 

• Will we ever be able to trust health advice from an AI?
• Why AI could be a big problem for the 2024 presidential election
• The logic behind AI chatbots is surprisingly basic
• The first AI started a 70-year debate

Or check out all of our PopSci+ stories.

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Lego is abandoning an attempt to make its colorful, iconic building pieces from recycled plastic bottles just two years after first announcing one of the central facets of its ongoing sustainability push. Despite the setback, the Denmark-based company reiterated its commitment to reduce its overall environmental impact, and per the Associated Press, still aims to make Legos from sustainable materials by 2032.

Speaking with CNN on Monday, a Lego spokesperson claimed the company’s extensive testing had revealed that replacement requires additional production steps and investment into new equipment would actually produce more pollution than Lego’s current operations. The PET alternative also reportedly proved not as durable or safe as existing acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) blocks, and didn’t properly match Lego blocks’ trademark “clutch power.”

[Related: ​​Super Glue could make it easier to recycle plastic.]

The popular toymaker first announced a new block prototype based on a recycled plastic bottle compound called polyethylene terephthalate (PET) in 2021—part of a project to transition away from oil-based plastics which began in 2018. Even in the prototype’s reveal, however, the company cautioned it would be “some time” before builders could expect a more eco-friendly recycled brick to appear on store shelves. The formula reportedly required further testing and development before moving into a “pilot production phase” expected to take “at least a year.”

Unfortunately, this pilot phase appears to not only take longer than expected, but ultimately fail to produce a viable replacement for the oil-based bricks. According to AP News, Lego states it is “currently testing and developing Lego bricks made from a range of alternative sustainable materials, including other recycled plastics and plastics made from alternative sources such as e-methanol.” Made from hydrogen and captured carbon dioxide, e-methanol (aka green methanol) employs renewable energy to split water molecules during its energy production.

“We believe that in the long-term this will encourage increased production of more sustainable raw materials, such as recycled oils, and help support our transition to sustainable materials,” the company said via AP.

The backtracking comes barely a week after Lego CEO Niels B. Christiansen issued a statement ahead of the UN General Assembly reaffirming their company’s commitment to climate sustainability. The pledge included an aim to make the company carbon neutral by 2050 alongside a $1.4 billion investment in “sustainability-related activities.” The funding is reportedly earmarked for projects such as carbon neutral buildings, increasing renewable energy production and capacity across Lego stores, offices, and factories, as well as partnering with suppliers to “collectively reduce environmental impact.”

But while Lego’s PET project appears to have hit a significant hurdle, the company confirmed that a sustainable, sugarcane-derived version of polyethylene called bio-polypropylene made from sugarcane will still be used for certain parts of Lego sets, mainly accessory items such as trees and leaves.

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ChatGPT has a voice—or, rather, five voices. On Monday, OpenAI announced its buzzworthy, controversial large language model (LLM) can now verbally converse with users, as well as parse uploaded photos and images.

In video demonstrations, ChatGPT is shown offering an extemporaneous children’s bedtime story based on the guided prompt, “Tell us a story about a super-duper sunflower hedgehog named Larry.” ChatGPT then describes its hedgehog protagonist, and offers details about its home and friends. In another example, the photo of a bicycle is uploaded via ChatGPT’s smartphone app alongside the request “Help me lower my bike seat.” ChatGPT then offers a step-by-step process alongside tool recommendations via a combination of user-uploaded photos and user text inputs. The company also describes situations such as ChatGPT helping craft dinner recipes based on ingredients identified within photographs of a user’s fridge and pantry, conversing about landmarks seen in pictures, and helping with math homework—although numbers aren’t necessarily its strong suit.

[Related: School district uses ChatGPT to help remove library books.]

According to OpenAI, the initial five audio voices are based on a new text-to-speech model that can create lifelike audio from only input text and a “few seconds” of sample speech. The current voice options were designed after collaborating with professional voice actors.

Unlike the LLM’s previous under-the-hood developments, OpenAI’s newest advancements are particularly focused on users’ direct experiences with the program as the company seeks to expand ChatGPT’s scope and utility to eventually make it a more complete virtual assistant. The audio and visual add-ons are also extremely helpful in terms of accessibility for disabled users.

“This approach has been informed directly by our work with Be My Eyes, a free mobile app for blind and low-vision people, to understand uses and limitations,” OpenAI explains in its September 25 announcement. “Users have told us they find it valuable to have general conversations about images that happen to contain people in the background, like if someone appears on TV while you’re trying to figure out your remote control settings.”

For years, popular voice AI assistants such as Siri and Alexa have offered particular abilities and services based on programmable databases of specific commands. As The New York Times notes, while updating and altering those databases often proves time-consuming, LLM alternatives can be much speedier, flexible, and nuanced. As such, companies like Amazon and Apple are investing in retooling their AI assistants to utilize LLMs of their own. 

OpenAI is threading a very narrow needle to ensure its visual identification ability is as helpful as possible, while also respecting third-parties’ privacy and safety. The company first demonstrated its visual ID function earlier this year, but said it would not release any version of it to the public before a more comprehensive understanding of how it could be misused. OpenAI states its developers took “technical measures to significantly limit ChatGPT’s ability to analyze and make direct statements about people” given the program’s well-documented issues involving accuracy and privacy. Additionally, the current model is only “proficient” with tasks in English—its capabilities significantly degrade with other languages, particularly those employing non-roman scripts.

OpenAI plans on rolling out ChatGPT’s new audio and visual upgrades over the next two weeks, but only for premium subscribers to its Plus and Enterprise plans. That said, the capabilities will become available to more users and developers “soon after.”

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Tesla’s Cybertruck isn’t even available to the public yet, but concept art for a Cybertruck cop-car made its appearance in Las Vegas on Wednesday. During a presentation by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison at the data service giant’s CloudWork conference, a massive screen showed off the EV’s recognizable, angular design beneath red and blue emergency lights, as well as a bull bar and multiple Oracle logos.

But as Inside EVs noted on September 21, the rendering features misplaced bumper lights and rear wheels, while also missing the vehicle’s single, massive windshield wiper. Although this could indicate the project is early on in its development, Ellison promised its imminent debut.

“Our next generation police car is coming out very soon,” Ellison said to audible audience murmurs. “It’s my favorite police car. It’s my favorite car, actually. It’s Elon’s favorite car.” 

[Related: What TikTok’s deal with Oracle could mean for user security.]

“Among other things, it’s very safe, very fast, it’s got a stainless steel body, and we don’t have to add a screen or cameras to it because we can actually use their existing cameras and existing screen to put our application on it,” Ellison continued.

Both Oracle and Tesla already work alongside law enforcement, providing cloud support software and electric vehicles, respectively, for forces in Wisconsin, California, and elsewhere. Ellison has also called Musk a “close friend” in the past, and previously sat on Tesla’s board of directors. According to Ellison’s presentation, the first Oracle-integrated police cars already include voice-activated, retrofitted third-party “Tesla-like” screens, but the company plans to leverage the Cybertruck’s existing camera systems and monitors. 

First unveiled in 2019 and promised to arrive in 2021, Tesla has since delayed the Cybertruck multiple times while also increasing its estimated price tag. At last check, production and delivery were slated to begin by the end of 2023, although that deadline now appears dubious. During the EV’s debut event, Tesla vehicle designer Franz von Holzhausen threw metal balls at a prototype Cybertruck to demonstrate its “Armor Glass” windows, causing the driver side windows to shatter.

“The ball didn’t make it through,” Musk joked at the time.

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At first glance, everything seems solid. Then, a small rip begins to spread across the middle of the structure as its siding expands. The module suddenly bursts apart, spraying debris in every direction as engineers cheer on from the safety of their control room. The sudden destruction—and the fifth such explosion—of a module intended for the International Space Station’s successor may not sound like the desired outcome, but, scientists say, it’s all part of the plan.

In Sierra Space’s September 20 progress update, the Colorado-based company released video of the explosion. The company aims to supply habitat spaces for Orbital Reef, Blue Origin’s NASA-backed space station project. During a recent Ultimate Burst Pressure (UPB) test, the engineering team essentially amped up the pressure within a one-third-scale LIFE module prototype until it popped. Said “pop” is certainly a sight to behold:

Unlike ISS construction materials, the LIFE modules are largely composed of “softgoods” such as Vectran, an incredibly strong and durable synthetic fiber spun from liquid-crystal polymers. When inflated, the LIFE module’s softgood design becomes rigid enough to withstand the low-earth orbit’s extreme environmental stresses. According to Sierra Space, the latest results offered a 33 percent margin over a full-scale LIFE module’s certification standard, nearly 20 percent better than the previous test design.

What makes the most recent UPB test especially impressive is that it was the first module prototype to include a steel “blanking plate” that acted as a cheaper stand-in for essential design features like windows.

[Related: NASA is spending big on commercial space destinations.]

“Inclusion of the blanking plate hard structure was a game-changer because this was the first time that we infused metallics into our softgoods pressure shell technology prior to conducting a UBP test,” Shawn Buckley, Sierra Space’s Senior Director Engineering and Product Evolution, said in the company’s announcement. “With this added component, once again, we successfully demonstrated that LIFE’s current architecture at one-third scale meets the minimum 4x safety factor required for softgoods inflatables structures.”

As Space.com notes, this marks the third UPB test for the module prototypes. Sierra Space has also overseen two “creep tests” in December 2022 and February 2023, during which the LIFE designs were subjected to higher-than-usual pressures for extended periods of time. With the latest success, Sierra Space says it’s now ready to move onto the next development phase—testing on full-scale LIFE module prototypes. If all goes as planned (a big “if,” given such endeavors’ complexities), future LIFE module iterations will be some of Orbital Reef’s central structures. Orbital Reef is currently intended to start construction in 2030.

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On Tuesday, Elon Musk’s controversial brain-computer interface startup Neuralink announced it received an independent review board’s approval to begin a six-year-long human clinical trial. Neuralink’s application for quadriplegic volunteers, particularly those suffering from spinal column injuries and ALS, is now open. Less than a day later, however, a Wired investigation revealed grisly details surrounding the deaths of the monkeys used in Neuralink’s experiments–deaths that Elon Musk has denied were directly caused by the implants. 

Almost simultaneously a medical ethics organization focused on animal rights filed a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission urging SEC to investigate Neuralink for alleged “efforts to mislead investors about the development history and safety of the device.” In Thursday’s email to PopSci, the committee urged potential Neuralink volunteers to reconsider their applications.

[Related: Neuralink is searching for its first human test subjects]

“Patients should have serious concerns about the safety of Neuralink’s device,” wrote Ryan Merkley, director of research advocacy for the committee, which was founded in 1985 and has over 17,000 doctor members. “There are well-documented reports of company employees conducting rushed, sloppy experiments in monkeys and other animals.”

According to Merkley and Wired’s September 20 report, Neuralink experiments on as many as 12 macaque monkeys resulted in chronic infections, paralysis, brain swelling, and other adverse side effects, eventually requiring euthanasia. The FDA previously denied Neuralink’s requests to begin human clinical trials, citing concerns regarding the implant’s electrodes migrating within the brain, as well as perceived complications in removing the device without causing brain damage. FDA approval was granted in May of 2023.

[Related: Neuralink human brain-computer implant trials finally get FDA approval]

Elon Musk first acknowledged some Neuralink test monkeys died during clinical trials on September 10, but denied their deaths were due to the experimental brain-computer interface implants. He did not offer causes of death, but instead claimed all monkeys chosen for testing were “close to death already.”

Wired’s investigation—based on public records, as well as interviews with former Neuralink employees and others—offers darker and often horrific accounts of the complications allegedly suffered by a dozen rhesus macaque test subjects between 2017 and 2020. In addition to neurological, psychological, and physical issues stemming from the test implants, some implants reportedly malfunctioned purely due to the mechanical installation of titanium plates and bone screws. In these instances, the cranial openings allegedly often grew infected and were immensely painful to the animals, and some implants became so loose they could be easily dislodged.

In his email to PopSci, Merkley reiterated the FDA’s past concerns regarding the Neuralink prototypes’ potential electrode migrations and removal procedures, and urged Musk’s company to “shift to developing a noninvasive brain-computer interface, where other researchers have already made progress.”

As Wired also notes, if the SEC takes action, it would be at least the third federal investigation into Neuralink’s animal testing procedures. Reuters detailed “internal staff complaints” regarding “hack job” operations on the test pigs in December 2022; last February, the US Department of Transportation opened its own Neuralink investigation regarding allegations of the company unsafely transporting antibiotic-resistant pathogens via “unsafe packaging and movement of implants removed from the brains of monkeys.”

During a Neuralink presentation last year, Musk claimed the company’s animal testing was never “exploratory,” and only focused on fully informed decisions. Musk repeatedly emphasized test animals’ safety, stressing that Neuralink is “not cavalier about putting devices into animals.” At one point, he contended that a monkey shown in a video operating a computer keyboard via Neuralink implant “actually likes doing the demo, and is not strapped to the chair or anything.”

“We are extremely careful,” he reassured his investors and audience at the time.

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Researchers have coaxed common silkworms to spin a more durable, eco-friendlier spider silk—all it took was a few genetic modifications and hundreds of thousands of silkworm egg microinjections.

Synthetic commercial fabrics like nylon are notoriously harmful to the environment because of the carbon footprint from their production processes, as well as their tendency to shed microplastics during wash cycles. Although natural alternatives such as spider silk are incredibly attractive, farming spiders at an industrial scale is difficult given their comparatively low production rates, as well as their tendency to eat one another.

But what if another creature could produce ostensibly the same material in bulk, without all the cannibalism? Junpeng Mi’s team at Donghua University in Chinadid are moving towards that outcome using a combination of CRISPR gene editing and guided egg alterations, creating silkworms that spin silk identical to arachnids. As detailed in their paper recently published in Matter, the team’s breakthroughs have produced fibers which scientists claim are already six times tougher than bulletproof Kevlar.

[Related: A new kind of Kevlar aims to stop bullets with less material.]

In recent years, researchers have improved upon traditional silk’s durability, as well as created artificial spider silk. Even so, the latter’s manufacturing procedures weren’t great at applying a vital surface layer of lipids and glycoproteins to help the silk hold up to sunlight and humidity.

Mi’s team is the first to create silkworms whose excretions are ostensibly identical to spiders’ web material.

“Spider silk stands as a strategic resource in urgent need of exploration,” Mi said in a September 20 statement. “The exceptionally high mechanical performance of the fibers produced in this study holds significant promise in this field. This type of fiber can be utilized as surgical sutures, addressing a global demand exceeding 300 million procedures annually.”

[Related: Silkworm-inspired weaving techniques can produce better nanofibers.]

To create their silkworm-spider fibers, Mi and their fellow researchers first implanted spider silk protein genes from Araneus ventricosus, an East Asian orb-weaving spider, into silkworm DNA. From there, the team further modified the genetic makeup to ensure the transplanted proteins cooperated with silkworm glands to produce properly spun fibers.

The results went above and beyond the team’s hopes, offering a mix of high tensile strength and toughness alongside far more flexibility than anticipated. According to Mi’s team, the new silk manufacturing methods could boost advancements in biomedical engineering, aerospace technology, military capabilities, and other smart materials.

“This concept of ‘localization,’ introduced in this thesis, along with the proposed minimal structural model, represents a significant departure from previous research,” Mi said in their statement. “We are confident that large-scale commercialization is on the horizon.”

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Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface startup, is seeking human volunteers to participate in its first clinical trial. In a September 19 announcement, the company says its Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface (PRIME) Study will test a “groundbreaking investigational medical device” in test subjects already suffering from quadriplegia due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or cervical spinal cord injuries.

Once implanted via surgical robot using ultra-fine, flexible wiring, the preliminary BCI device reportedly will wirelessly transmit data to an external computer to decode patients’ movement intentions. Neuralink’s ultimate goal for the (PRIME) Study is to grant its volunteers the ability to wirelessly control a computer mouse or keyboard with their brains.

The company faced numerous setbacks leading up to the study’s final approval by an independent institutional review board and its first hospital site. Despite promises from Musk as far back as 2019 regarding the technology’s imminent arrival, Neuralink reportedly only first sought the FDA’s approval for human clinical testing approval in 2022. The regulatory body denied Neuralink’s request at the time, citing concerns over potential brain injuries resulting from BCI devices’ faulty wiring and overheating, as well as complications regarding its removability. In May, the FDA finally granted Neuralink an investigatory device exemption (IDE).

[Related: Neuralink’s request for human trials of brain implants was reportedly rejected by the FDA.]

But even before its applications to begin human clinical trials, Neuralink repeatedly drew ire from critics and watchdogs concerning its treatment of test animals. In a December 2022 Reuters exposé, “internal staff complaints” concerning animal welfare issues described “hack job” procedures resulting in over 1,500 dead test subjects since 2018. The report also revealed the employees’ accounts prompted the US Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General to launch a probe into the matter. Since then, the USDA’s investigation received its own share of criticism over bias and conflicts of interest.

Neuralink has so far demonstrated successful BCI integration with rats, as well as shared footage of a macaque monkey playing Pong via a wired prototype brain implant. Meanwhile, similar BCI devices have been in various development stages for years—some of which already achieve and surpass the goals for Neuralink’s PRIME Study. Earlier this year, researchers at Stanford University demonstrated devices that successfully translated an ALS patient’s thoughts to words to aid in communication. Meanwhile, another company backed by Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates announced in February 2023 that its researchers successfully implanted a “neuroprosthesis” device in four human subjects.

During a public Neuralink presentation in December 2022, Musk expressed hopes that human trials would begin within six months’ time.

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The International Criminal Court revealed malicious actors illegally accessed its computer systems late last week, posing potentially dangerous ramifications for the world’s only permanent war crimes tribunal. 

“The International Criminal Court’s services detected anomalous activity affecting its information systems,” the ICC said Monday in a statement posted to X, formerly Twitter. “Immediate measures were adopted to respond to this cybersecurity incident and to mitigate its impact.” These measures are reportedly ongoing, and include assistance from authorities in the Netherlands, where the ICC is based.

As Reuters notes, “highly sensitive documents” under the ICC’s purview could potentially include protected witnesses’ identities, and detailed criminal evidence of war crimes. The ICC has not offered detail on what system areas and information may be potentially compromised.

[Related: Hackers prove it doesn’t take much to hijack a dead satellite.]

Established in 2002 in The Hague to hold world leaders and countries accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity, the ICC is currently investigating multiple allegations across Afghanistan, the Philippines, Uganda, Venezuela, and Ukraine. In March, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin on charges of illegally deporting Ukrainian children. Although neither Ukraine nor Russia are ICC members, Kyiv granted the ICC the right to prosecute crimes committed within the territory. At the time, Russian authorities declared the arrest warrant “null and void.”

In an August article for the quarterly publication, Foreign Policy Analytics, ICC lead prosecutor Karim Khan announced in August the court would commit to investigating cybercrimes potentially violating the Rome Statute. First adopted in 1998, the legal treaty grants the ICC authority to prosecute war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. As of 2019, 123 nations are party to the agreement.

[Related: Why government agencies keep getting hacked.]

“Cyber warfare does not play out in the abstract. Rather, it can have a profound impact on people’s lives,” Khan wrote in August. “Attempts to impact critical infrastructure such as medical facilities or control systems for power generation may result in immediate consequences for many, particularly the most vulnerable. Consequently, as part of its investigations, my Office will collect and review evidence of such conduct.”

This isn’t the first time the ICC’s cybersecurity has been compromised. In 2011, a controversial Kenyan journalist was accused and arrested by the ICC for allegedly leaking protected witnesses’ identities online. He was later released.

PopSci has reached out to the ICC for comment, and will provide updates to this story as they become available.

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A massive industrial plant in Belgium using 2,240 parabolic mirrors to harvest sunlight to create green heat is officially open. At 5,540 square meters (roughly 18,175 square feet), the site’s Concentrated Solar Thermal (CST) platform and six-module thermal storage unit is the largest of its kind in Europe, according to manufacturing company Avery Dennison.

In basic terms, the facility takes sunlight, reflects it into heat-absorbing oil, and then utilizes the oil to help supply the plant’s thermal energy needs.

Over half of the entire world’s energy consumption stems directly from manufacturing industries—meaning that these companies must adopt sustainable infrastructures to avert climate change’s worst outcomes. The European Union, in an attempt to spur such reforms, passed legislation in 2021 which set net-zero emissions targets across all its industries by 2050. As such, Avery Dennison’s new attempt at progressing towards that goal leverages direct sunlight as a substitute for fossil fuel heating systems.

The installation generates the same thermal power that can be achieved using 2.3 GWh of gas consumption, but is expected to reduce the facility’s overall emissions by an estimated 9 percent annually. During the warmer summer months when less heat is needed, however, the new system is expected to offer 100 percent of any necessary demand.

[Related: Could aquifers store renewable thermal energy?]

To convert solar rays into heating fuel, the CST platform’s curved mirrors first reflect light towards a collector tube filled with an absorption liquid such as thermal oil. This heated oil is then stored within a specialized installation similar to a giant thermos, whose heat is distributed as needed and on demand like a battery. Scaling up to six “battery” modules totalling 5 MWh of thermal power storage ensures the system can emit high temperature heat whenever required.

Among other products, Avery Dennison manufactures adhesive tapes and labels for uses across the automotive, medical device, personal care, and construction industries. According to the company, most of the vast array’s generated heat will be directed into drying ovens used during the coating process of pressure-sensitive adhesive products.

“We have big ambitions to tackle climate change and achieve net zero by 2050,” Mariana Rodriguez, general manager of Avery Dennison Performance Tapes Europe, said via the company’s announcement. “To meet these goals we will look across our industrial processes and identify opportunities to implement new technologies that decarbonize and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.”

Thermal power storage is showing increasing promise as a cheap, sustainable way to meet industries’ heating needs. In recent years, new research indicates methods such as utilizing silica sand and even underwater aquifer water could offer effective means for housing thermal energy.

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One of the world’s most powerful lasers can soon begin peering deeper into the atomic world thanks to recent, cutting-edge X-ray upgrades. Stanford’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has announced improvements to the X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) component of the Linac Coherent Light Source-II (LCLS-II) allowing “unparalleled capabilities” for examining quantum materials—a milestone over 13 years in the making.

“This achievement marks the culmination of over a decade of work,” said LCLS-II Project Director Greg Hays via the September 18 statement. “It shows that all the different elements of LCLS-II are working in harmony to produce X-ray laser light in an entirely new mode of operation.”

[Related: How to make an X-ray laser that’s colder than space.]

Despite its “laser” classification, LCLS-II can be thought of more as a massive microscope than a device generating bright pinpoints of light. When powered up, an XFEL creates extremely bright X-ray light pulses so quickly they can capture behavioral details of electrons, atoms, and molecules on their natural timescales. SLAC built the world’s first physical XFEL, which began operating in 2009 by firing electrons via a particle accelerator through a room temperature copper pipe at 120 pulses per second.

LCLS-II’s XFEL, however, offers as many as a million X-ray pulses per second—roughly 8,000 times more often, as well as 10,000 times brighter, than its progenitor. LCLS-II’s record-shattering abilities hinge upon a state-of-the-art superconducting accelerator that uses 37 cryogenic modules to cool its environment down to an astonishing -456 F; that’s even colder than the vacuum of outer space, and only a few degrees’ shy of absolute zero.

Scientists intend to use the LCLS-II upgrades to study quantum materials’ interactions, as well, something pivotal to accurately examine their “unusual and often counter-intuitive properties,” according to SLAC’s announcement. A better understanding of these attributes could lead to ultrafast data processing, more energy efficient devices, quantum computers, as well as a host of other technological breakthroughs. “From the intricate dance of proteins to the machinery of photosynthesis, LCLS-II will shed light on biological systems in never-before-seen detail,” reads SLAC’s rundown.

[Related: Physicists take first-ever X-rays of single atoms.]

PopSci has followed the progress of LCLS-II’s underlying superconductor tech for decades now. “Far down on the temperature scale near absolute zero (−459°F) lies a strange world of ‘electrical perpetual motion’—or ­superconductivity—where electric currents, once set in motion, flow forever,” PopSci first described in 1967. “With new developments in materials and the methods for cooling them, truly fantastic devices are taking shape in laboratories across the country.”

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UPDATE: Sept. 18, 2023, 6:50 p.m. ET: On Monday night, the Joint Base Charleston released a statement on X, formerly Twitter, stating: “Personnel from Joint Base Charleston and @MCASBeaufortSC, in close coordination with local authorities, have located a debris field in Williamsburg County. The debris was discovered two hours northeast of JB Charleston. We would like to thank all of our mission partners, as well as local, county, and state authorities, for their dedication and support throughout the search and as we transition to the recovery phase.”

The US military is asking you to help them find their very expensive, very missing jet. According to Joint Base Charleston’s public statement posted on September 17 to Facebook, officials are still searching for an F-35B Lightning II stealth fighter jet after a “mishap” resulted in its pilot safely ejecting somewhere near South Carolina’s Lake Moutrie. Talking with The Washington Post, Joint Base Charleston spokesperson Jeremy Huggins explained the jet’s transponder, usually employed to find aircraft in such situations, has malfunctioned “for some reason that we haven’t yet determined… that’s why we put out the public request for help.”

[Related: Air Force declares F-35 ready for combat.]

Although it is certainly possible one of the military’s most expensive and high tech jets has crashed, Huggins confirmed to NBC News that the pilot (who is in “stable condition”) left their plane in autopilot mode before ejecting—meaning it could actually still be airborne.

“How in the hell do you lose an F-35?” Rep. Nancy Mace posted to X, formerly Twitter Sunday night.

Although the missing plane’s exact cost isn’t confirmed, estimates put a single F-35B Lightning’s worth at somewhere around $78 to $81 million. (The F-35 also comes in an A variant for the Air Force and a C variant for the Navy.) The F-35B is first-and-foremost a stealth craft, featuring different “coatings and designs” that make it much more difficult to detect than standard planes,” according to Huggins. An F-35B can also take off and land vertically, thus requiring much shorter runways than those aboard aircraft carriers. According to Lockheed-Martin’s official description, an F-35B equipped with a full weapons load capacity of 15,000 lb clocks in at Mach 1.6 (around 1,200 mph) while also pulling upwards of 7 G’s during flight. It is currently used within the US Marine Corps, as well as the UK and Italian Air Forces.

The USMC finally declared the F-35B “operational” in 2015 after a decades’ long funding and development saga. At the time, a squadron of 10 jets were estimated to cost somewhere between $1.04 billion and $1.34 billion.

“The public is asked to cooperate with military and civilian authorities as the effort continues,” Joint Base Charleston’s Facebook post explains, adding that any information that could help them be relayed to the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing Public Affairs Office at 252-466-3827.

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Rocket ignitions are always impressive, but they’re not the easiest to look at with the naked eye for pretty obvious reasons—you can’t be anywhere near their incinerating temperatures, and their brightness is generally blinding. Thanks to popular YouTubers’ high-speed video capabilities, however, curious minds can take a look at a recent test firing to see the complex, beautiful, and perhaps terrifying ignition in action.

The new footage comes courtesy of The Slow Mo Guys, a team of videographers specializing in… well, you can connect the dots. The YouTubers were given a front row seat at a test ignition for one of Firefly Aerospace’s Reaver engines, but unlike previous excursions, this project required quite a bit of preplanning. First off, The Slow Mo Guys only had one chance to nab the shot, since rockets traditionally use up huge amounts of fuel and resources—a single SpaceX Falcon9 rocket, for example, uses tens of thousands of gallons of kerosene and liquid oxygen. 

That single attempt also needed to be positioned, rigged, and timed to begin filming at enough of a distance that wouldn’t injure anything, or anyone. According to Slow Mo Guy Gav Free, a special enclosure capable of withstanding the intense heat and vibrations needed to house their slow-motion camera, while also calibrating the equipment to handle the explosion’s brightness. In the end, Free and his companions settled on exposing their film well over 40 percent darker than usual to account for the luminosity.

All that prep work definitely paid off, judging from the footage. At 2,000 frames-per-second (80 times slower than real time), viewers may be surprised to see an initial, bright green flame. This is produced as a rocket fuel mixture called triethylaluminium-triethylborane (TEA-TEB) combusts upon coming into contact with oxygen and air. After the initial green burst comes the yellow and orange flames—but with such a slow framerate, you can actually see those flames responding to the shockwaves generated by the engine thrust. According to Free, a rocket engine can generate upwards of 45,000 lbs of thrust in a vacuum at temperatures as high as 5,500 F.

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Electrical power and battery arrays remain go-to routes for juicing up robots, but sometimes old school explosives can still do the trick. A team at Cornell University recently demonstrated just that idea via a new tiny robot that relies on small-scale actuators ostensibly fueled by miniature internal-combustion engines. Even at minuscule levels, the bug-sized quadrupedal bot’s design allows it to launch to heights nearly as high as many leaping insects, while also carrying and walking with a load 22 times its own weight.

As detailed in a paper published on September 14 in Science, researchers created a propulsion unit via assembling a 3D-printed combustion chamber with an inflatable elastomeric membrane, electrodes, as well as teeny fuel injection tubing. When the electrodes introduce a small spark, the membrane balloons in just half a millisecond with 9.5 newtons of force. The process can then be repeated as quickly as 100 times per second.

“The high frequencies, speeds, and strengths allow [the] actuators to provide microrobots with locomotion capabilities that were previously available only to much larger robots,” writes Northwestern University Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Ryan Truby in a related essay within Science.

[Related: This small, squishy robot is cuter than its cockroach inspiration.]

But as IEEE Spectrum explains, even the smallest explosions can wear down or damage materials over time. Knowing this, the engineering team designed the elastic membrane using flame-resistant material alongside an integrated flame arrestor to control the timing and size of each little kaboom. The results are an extremely durable propulsion unit that the team estimates can continuously operate for over 750,000 cycles (roughly 8.5 hours for the robot) before any noticeable performance degradation. In video demonstrations, the team showcased their 29 mm long, 1.5 g robot vertically leaping 59 centimeters, even while carrying comparably massive amounts of weight. To “walk,” the robot fires its actuators at breakneck speed, and turns via selectively engaging the same engines.

Moving forward (so to speak), the team wants to hone their bot’s ability to actually slow its actuators to allow for more precise movement, as well as the ability to “run.” The robot is also currently tethered via power cables, so creating wireless iterations would be integral to deploying the device in a real-world scenario, such as a disaster zone or other hard-to-reach environments.

“One idea we want to explore in the future is using aggregates of these small and powerful actuators as large, variable recruitment musculature in large robots,” Robert F. Shepherd, head of Cornell’s Organic Robotics Lab and study co-author, told IEEE Spectrum. “Putting thousands of these actuators in bundles over a rigid endoskeleton could allow for dexterous and fast land-based hybrid robots.”

Explosive robot muscles—what could go wrong?

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The jury may still be out on plant-based meat alternatives’ economic and environmental viability, but experts largely agree that the seafood industry in its current form is untenable. Overfishing presents countless ecological problems, including plastic pollution and the potential for a wholesale collapse of marine biodiversity. Researchers have been experimenting with seafood alternatives for years, but one company is finally ready to bring its offering to market—and it represents a major moment within the industry.

Austrian-based food-tech startup Revo Foods announced this week that its 3D-printed vegan fish filet “inspired by salmon” is heading to European grocery store shelves—a first for 3D-printed food. According to the company’s September 12 press release, the arrival of “The Filet” represents a pivotal moment in sustainable food, with 3D-printed consumables ready to scale at industrial volumes. Revo Foods’ Filet is likely to be just the first of many other such 3D-printed edible products to soon hit the market.

[Related: Scientists cooked up a 3D printed cheesecake.]

“Despite dramatic losses of coral reefs and increasing levels of toxins and micro plastic contaminating fish, consumer demand for seafood has paradoxically skyrocketed in recent decades,” the company announcement explains. “One promising solution to provide consumers with sustainable alternatives that do not contribute to overfishing is vegan seafood. The key to success of these products lies in recreating an authentic taste that appeals to [consumers].”

The Filet relies on mycoprotein made from nutrition-heavy filamentous fungi, and naturally offers a meat-like texture. Only another 12 ingredients compose Revo’s Filet, such as pea proteins, plant oils, and algae extracts. With its high protein and Omega-3 contents, eating a Revo Filet is still very much like eating regular salmon—of course, without all the standard industrial issues. And thanks to its plant-based ingredients, the Filet also boasts a three-week shelf life, a sizable boost from regular salmon products.

“With the milestone of industrial-scale 3D food printing, we are entering a creative food revolution, an era where food is being crafted exactly according to the customer’s needs,” Revo Foods CEO Robin Simsa said via this week’s announcement.

While Revo’s products are currently only available for European markets, the company says it is actively working to expand its availability “across the globe,” with Simsa telling PopSci the company hopes to enter US markets around 2025. Until then, hungry stateside diners will have to settle for the Revo Salmon dancehall theme song… yes, it’s a real thing.

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A tiny racing car completely designed and driven by university students has set a new Guinness World Record for fastest acceleration in an electric vehicle. Earlier this month, the miniscule speedster rocketed from 0 to 100 km/h (roughly 62 mph) in just 0.956 seconds, traveling a total distance of 12.3 meters (40.35 feet). The new benchmark time is over a third faster than the previous record set almost exactly a year ago in September 2022 by a team of student designers at Germany’s University of Stuttgart.

Months of design work and testing took place thanks to the members of Academic Motorsports Club Zurich (AMZ), a student organization that has built a new race car every year since its founding in 2006. After three vehicles running on internal-combustion engines, AMZ switched over to completely electric designs in 2010. They’ve adhered to the eco-friendly alternative ever since.

“Working on the project in addition to my studies was very intense. But even so, it was a lot of fun working with other students to continually produce new solutions and put into practice what we learned in class,” Yann Bernard, AMZ’s head of motor, said in the team’s announcement on September 12. “And, of course, it is an absolutely unique experience to be involved in a world record.”

[Related: How Formula E race cars are guiding Jaguar’s EV future.]

The AMZ team’s newest iteration, dubbed mythen [sic], were entirely designed and optimized by the university students. Among its many impressive attributes, mythen boasts a carbon and aluminum frame that keeps the vehicle’s entire weight at just under 309 pounds. Specialized four-wheel hub motors alongside a novel powertrain combined to boost the race car via around 326 hp.

From an aerodynamic standpoint, mythen is so fast and lightweight that it even needed some backup additions to keep it on the race track. Two wings—one in both the front and rear—helped push the car towards the ground. Students meanwhile also designed and installed a “kind of vacuum cleaner” to help hold the vehicle on the road via suction, according to the team’s announcement.

“[P]ower isn’t the only thing that matters when it comes to setting an acceleration record,” said Dario Messerli, AMZ’s head of aerodynamics in a statement, “Effectively transferring that power to the ground is also key.”

Before this month, AMZ set the world acceleration record for electric cars twice already—once in 2014, and two years’ later in 2016. Given how quickly these cars seem to run, as well as how frequently they are redesigned and tested, it stands to reason that the team will probably be fending off competitors in the very near future.

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The Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Google is finally underway, and its results could reshape how consumers access the internet. In particular, the D.C. District Court judge’s verdict may particularly affect how users search the web on a daily basis.

To understand what’s at stake in what may be the biggest tech monopoly trial since the DOJ went after Microsoft over two decades ago, it’s important to focus specifically on what prosecutors are alleging. During Tuesday’s opening remarks, DOJ lead lawyer Kenneth Dintzer argued the tech giant violated anti-monopoly law through multiple, years’ long exclusive agreements with browser and phone makers. Via contracts with companies such as Apple, Google’s search engine became the default for programs like Safari browser, while similar contracts with phone makers ensured products came preinstalled with various Google apps. In doing so, the DOJ argues Google left little-to-no market room for rival search engine makers, aka created an illegal monopoly.

Google’s legal team’s defense is that, ostensibly, it’s a testament to the company’s popularity that businesses and consumers utilize products like Chrome more than any other option to peruse the web. Additionally, everyone is still free to use alternatives if they want.

[Related: DOJ accuses Google of buying its position as a default search engine.]

As The Verge reports, Dintzer at one point went so far as to allege Google has illegally maintained its monopoly since around 2010—implying the monopoly in question existed well before that date. When pressed by the judge, Dintzer also estimated that as much as 50 percent of all Google searches originate via one of the company’s paid-for defaults.

The big question, of course, is what happens if federal judge Amit Mehta sides with the DOJ. If Mehta rules against Google, the government could set a new precedent on how it approaches the most powerful tech businesses regarding antitrust and industry monopoly violations. Specifically for Google, however, this could entail new restrictions on its business practices, and potentially break up certain parts of its overall empire. This would hypothetically clear the way for new companies’ innovative products that would otherwise face difficulty attempting to gain any kind of foothold in a digital ecosystem ostensibly overseen and guided by Google. A loss for Google would also set a precedent for the DOJ to pursue similar cases against companies like Meta and Amazon.

If the court dismisses the DOJ’s claims, however, Google leaders could feel emboldened to reaffirm their place atop the industry. But as NBC News notes, such a loss could be spun into evidence for Congress to pursue modernized antitrust laws aimed squarely at tech giants.

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This post has been updated.

A new NASA-commissioned independent study report recommends leveraging NASA’s expertise and public trust alongside artificial intelligence to investigate unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) on Earth. As such, today NASA Director Bill Nelson announced the appointment of a NASA Director of UAP Research to develop and oversee implementation of investigation efforts.

“The director of UAP Research is a pivotal addition to NASA’s team and will provide leadership, guidance and operational coordination for the agency and the federal government to use as a pipeline to help identify the seemingly unidentifiable,” Nicola Fox, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, said in a release.

Although NASA officials repeated multiple times that the study found no evidence of extraterrestrial origin, they conceded they still “do not know” the explanation behind at least some of the documented UAP sightings. Nelson stressed the agency’s aim to begin minimizing public stigma surrounding UAP events, and begin shifting the subject “from sensationalism to science.” In keeping with this strategy, the panel report relied solely on unclassified and open source UAP data to ensure all findings could be shared openly and freely with the public.

[Related: Is the truth out there? Decoding the Pentagon’s latest UFO report.]

“We don’t know what these UAP are, but we’re going to find out,” Nelson said at one point. “You bet your boots.”

According to today’s public announcement, the study team additionally recommends NASA utilize its “open-source resources, extensive technological expertise, data analysis techniques, federal and commercial partnerships, and Earth-observing assets to curate a better and robust dataset for understanding future UAP.”

Composed of 16 community experts across various disciplines, the UAP study team was first announced in June of last year, and began work on their study in October. In May 2023, representatives from the study team expressed frustration with the fragmentary nature of available UAP data.

“The current data collection efforts regarding UAPs are unsystematic and fragmented across various agencies, often using instruments uncalibrated for scientific data collection,” study chair David Spergel, an astrophysicist and president of the nonprofit science organization the Simons Foundation, said at the time. “Existing data and eyewitness reports alone are insufficient to provide conclusive evidence about the nature and origin of every UAP event.”

Today’s report notes that although AI and machine learning tools have become “essential tools” in identifying rare occurrences and outliers within vast datasets, “UAP analysis is more limited by the quality of data than by the availability of techniques.” After reviewing neural network usages in astronomy, particle physics, and other sciences, the panel determined that the same techniques could be adapted to UAP research—but only if datasets’ quality is both improved and codified. Encouraging the development of rigorous data collection standards and methodologies will be crucial to ensuring reliable, evidence-based UAP analysis.

[Related: You didn’t see a UFO. It was probably one of these things.]

Although no evidence suggests extraterrestrial intelligence is behind documented UAP sightings, “Do I believe there is life in the universe?” Nelson asked during NASA’s press conference. “My personal opinion is, yes.”

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Origami has inspired yet another robot—in this case, one that dynamically changes its shape after dropping from drones in order to glide through the air while collecting environmental data. As detailed via a new study published in Science Robotics, researchers at the University of Washington relied on the traditional Miura-ori folding method (itself inspired by leaves’ geometric patterns) to underpin their new “microfliers.”

According to study co-senior author Vikram Iyer, an UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering, the microfliers first fall “chaotically” from drones in an unfolded, flat state, much akin to an elm leaf’s descent. Using tiny onboard pressure sensors to measure altitude, alongside timers and Bluetooth signals, the robots then morph midair to change airflow’s effects on its new structure. This allows it a more stable descent such as those seen within maple leaves.

[Related: Foldable robots with intricate transistors can squeeze into extreme situations.]

“Using origami opens up a new design space for microfliers,” Iyer said in the University of Washington’s announcement. “This highly energy efficient method allows us to have battery-free control over microflier descent, which was not possible before.”

Because of the microfliers’ light weight—about 400 milligrams, or roughly half as heavy as a nail—the robots can already span the length of a football field when dropped from just 40 meters (131 feet) in the air. Battery-free, solar-fueled actuators kick into gear at customizable times to control how and when their shapes interact with surrounding air, thus controlling directional descents. Researchers believe unfurling the bots at different times will allow for greater areas of distribution, and at just 25 milliseconds to initiate folding, the timing can be extremely precise. Although the current robots only transition in a single direction, researchers hope future versions will do so in both directions, allowing for more precise landings during turbulent weather.

The team believes such microfliers could be easily deployed as useful sensors during environmental and atmospheric surveying. The current models can transmit air temperature and pressure data via Bluetooth signals as far as 60 meters (196 feet) away, but researchers think both their reach and capabilities could be expanded in the future.

Origami is increasingly inspiring new, creative robots.  Earlier this year, researchers at UCLA developed flexible “mechanobots” that can squeeze their way into incredibly narrow environments. Meanwhile, the folding art’s principles are showing immense potential within engineering and building advancements, such as MIT’s recent developments in origami-inspired plate lattice designs for cars, planes, and spacecraft.

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Despite ample evidence to the contrary, heat pumps are still considered by some to be inferior to traditional gas and fossil fuel installations. A new study published on September 11 in Joule, however, offers even more credence to adopting the eco-friendly alternative, while also debunking some of the more persistent myths surrounding heat pumps. Even in extreme cold environments, heat pumps perform as much as three times better than fossil fuel options, the latest study found.

To understand how heat pumps work, imagine the opposite of a refrigerator—instead of a fridge sucking up its ambient interior heat and pumping that outside the container via its compressor, a home’s heat pump sucks in warmth for later use. Heat pumps’ sources generally either come from ambient outside air, or underground, such as via geothermal heat. The principle is largely the same as AC units, which operate on the same principles but in reverse. Either way, a team of Oxford University researchers working alongside the independent think tank, Regulatory Assistance Project, have ample evidence that pumps are much more preferable to pollutant-heavy standards.

[Related: Energy-efficient heat pumps will be required for all new homes in Washington.]

As The Guardian explains, the study aggregated data from seven field studies across the US, Canada, China, Germany, Switzerland, the UK. After analyzing the numbers, the team found that heat pumps operated two-to-three times more efficiently than gas and oil heaters at below zero temperatures. According to the findings, this makes heat pumps perfectly suited—if not superior—for homes across the globe, including in Europe and the UK.

Speaking with Canary Media, Duncan Gibb, study co-author and a senior advisor at the Regulatory Assistance Project, argued that the study supports their belief that “there are very few—if any—technical conditions where a heat pump is not suitable based on the climate,” at least in Europe.

That’s not to say that consumers wouldn’t benefit from switching to heat pumps in the US—far from it, actually. According to the team’s field studies, even some of the nation’s coldest regions in Alaska and Maine still offered more efficient heat pump performance than fossil fuel counterparts. Extrapolate that to the country’s generally warmer areas, and heat pumps generate even more bang for their buck.

The new information presents a stark counter to recent dismissals of the technology, which are often financed by those with vested interests in the fossil fuel industry. “Even though heat pump efficiency declines during the extreme cold and back-up heating may be required, air-source heat pumps can still provide significant energy system efficiency benefits on an instantaneous and annual basis compared with alternatives,” the study’s authors argue in the paper’s introduction. And from their new data, they have the numbers to prove it.

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Apple’s latest event included a ton of new products and features for iPhones, Apple Watches, and… whatever this thing was. Here’s the PopSci rundown of the latest and most interesting takeaways—yes, including the much anticipated USB-C port switch. 

iPhone 15, 15 Plus, 15 Pro, and 15 Pro Max

Apple is finally completing the USB-C transition with the new iPhone 15 line after over 10 years of Lightning cables (and all their associated dongles). During the company’s September 12 “Wonderlust” event, Apple confirmed the long-rumored shift, thus likely simplifying daily gadgetry for new iPhone purchasers while simultaneously inducing headaches (yet again) for owners of older generation products.

Apple first adopted some USB-C functionality via its 2015 MacBook, followed by the next year’s MacBook Pro upgrade. But apart from its laptops, the company has stayed quiet on plans to roll out similar changes for iPhones. That day has finally come, however, thanks in no small part to the European Union. Last year, EU legislators passed regulation ordering electronics manufacturers to adopt the USB-C charger as a universal port in the majority of their products by the end of 2024. Apple clearly is getting a headstart on the phaseout with its new iPhone 15 offerings.

iPhone 15 models are also getting a Dynamic Island bar at the top of screens boasting Super Retina XDR using OLED Super Retina tech with Dolby Vision support. Screens also include 2,000 nits of outdoor brightness across the 6.1- and 6.7-inch displays. Not much is changing within the smartphones’ actual physical designs, however, which come in pink, yellow, green, blue, and black with a textured matte back finish and ceramic shield screens.

[Related: The iPhone has a new (old) charging port—here are the best accessories.]

Meanwhile, Apple’s newest high-end iPhone models, 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max, are powered by an A17 silicon chip, and encased in Grade 5 titanium (as seen on the Mars Perseverance rover) at the same sizes as 15 and 15 Plus. An Action Button is replacing the longstanding silence switch located on iPhone’s left side, and can be customized for a variety of actions including voice memo, live speech, shortcuts, photo and video. Being their most advanced models available, the 15 Pro and Pro Max are tailored more for professional videographers and photographers, thanks to souped-up multi-camera systems led by a 48 megapixel main camera.

The iPhone 15 and 15 Plus are open for preorder on September 15, and will be available online and in-store on September 22 at a starting price of $799 and $899.

Apple Watch

Apple Watch Series 9 also got its official announcement, and will rely on an S9 SiP (System in Package) featuring 5.6 billion transistors alongside a 30 percent faster GPU and two times’ faster neural engine. Siri requests will remain on device, reportedly allowing for faster and more secure interactions such as accessing users’ health data. Meanwhile, dictation is up to 25 percent more accurate, and WatchOS 10 (coming September 18) can employ Name Drop and more precise haptic and audible feedback while finding their iPhones. At 2000 nits, Series 9 boasts double the brightness as its predecessor model, while also being able to dim as low as 1 nit.

Series 9 is also rolling out a new hand gesture for users’ watch hands—a double tap using the thumb and index fingers to answer and end calls, start and stop timers, control music and AppleTV, silence alarms, as well as open Apple Watch while also scrolling through widgets. The new hand gesture will be available on Apple Watches next month. Series 9 will be available in aluminum, scarlet, silver, midnight, and Product Red, as well as premium gold, silver, and graphite aluminum cases.

Apple Watch Series Ultra 2, its new outdoor-oriented model, will make the most of the watchface, including automatic night mode. The smartwatch includes an expanded altitude resilience of -500 to 9,000 meters, and Bluetooth-enabled accessory capabilities for activities such as cycling. Even with the boosted performance, Series 2 Ultra still maintains a standard 36-hour battery life alongside a 72-hour timeframe in low power mode. The frame is made from 95 percent recycled titanium, and users can choose from an expanded line of trail, alpine, and diving watch bands.

Apple Watch Series 2 is open for preorder on September 15, and will be available online and in-store on September 22 at a starting price of $399. The Apple Watch Ultra 2 is available for preorder and in-store on the same dates for $799.

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Multiple companies around the world now offer robotic security guards for property and event surveillance, but Ascento appears to be only one, at least currently, to sell mechanical patrollers boasting eyebrows. On September 12, the Swiss-based startup announced the launch of its latest autonomous outdoor security robot, the Ascento Guard, which puts a cartoon-esque spin on security enforcement.

[Related: Meet Garmi, a robot nurse and companion for Germany’s elderly population.]

The robot’s central chassis includes a pair of circular “eye” stand-ins that blink, along with rectangular, orange hazard lights positioned as eyebrows. When charging, for example, an Ascento Guard’s eyes are “closed” to mimic sleeping, but open as they engage in patrol responsibilities. But perhaps the most unique design choice is its agile “wheel-leg” setup that seemingly allows for more precise movements across a variety of terrains. Showcase footage accompanying the announcement highlights the robot’s various features for patrolling “large, outdoor, private properties.” Per the company’s announcement, it already counts manufacturing facilities, data centers, pharmaceutical production centers, and warehouses as clients.

According to Ascento co-founder and CEO, Alessandro Morra, the global security industry currently faces a staff turnover rate as high as 47 percent each year. “Labor shortages mean a lack of qualified personnel available to do the work which involves long shifts, during anti-social hours or in bad weather,” Morra said via the company’s September 12 announcement. “The traditional approach is to use either people or fixed installed cameras… The Ascento Guard provides the best of both worlds.”

Each Ascento Guard reportedly only requires a few hours’ worth of setup time before becoming virtually autonomous via programmable patrol schedules. During its working hours, the all-weather robots are equipped to survey perimeters at a walking speed of approximately 2.8 mph, as well as monitor for fires or break-ins via thermal and infrared cameras. On-board speakers and microphones also allow for end-to-end encrypted two-way communications, while its video cameras can “control parking lots,” per Ascento’s announcement—video footage shows an Ascento Guard scanning car license plates, for example.

While robot security guards are nothing new by now, the Ascento Guard’s decidedly anthropomorphic design typically saved for elderly care and assistance, is certainly a new way to combat potential public skepticism, not to mention labor and privacy concerns espoused by experts for similar automation creations. Ascento’s reveal follows a new funding round backed by a host of industry heavyweights including the European Space Agency incubator, ESA BIC, and Tim Kentley-Klay, founder of the autonomous taxi company, Zoox.

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Space tourism is already becoming so commonplace that Virgin Galactic’s second private astronaut flight on September 8 went off without much fanfare. And although a brief press announcement only announced the names of its three-man passenger list after the trip, the recap didn’t mention Galactic 03’s historic “first” cargo—fossilized bones from two of humanity’s closest ancestors.

According to Tim Nash’s Virgin Galactic biography, the “entrepreneur, adventurer, conservationist and member of the Hubbard Council of The National Geographic Society,” carried with him the clavicle of a nearly 2-million-year-old Australopithecus sediba, as well as a roughly 250,000-year-old thumb bone from Homo naledi. Both hominid remains were previously discovered within the Cradle of Humankind UNESCO World Heritage Site outside Johannesburg, South Africa—sebedi is considered one of the potential candidates that presaged humanity’s Homo genus.

The initiative’s organizers, including researchers at the University of Witwatersrand, Johnnesburg, intended the gesture to represent “humankind’s appreciation of the contribution of all of humanity’s ancestors and our ancient relatives,” said Lee Berger, a National Geographic Explorer in Residence, Carnegie Fellow and Director of the Centre for the Exploration of the Deep Human Journey. “Without their invention of technologies such as fire and tools, and their contribution to the evolution of the contemporary human mind, such extraordinary endeavors as spaceflight would not have happened.”

[Related: Virgin Galactic’s second commercial flight sent three tourists to space’s edge.]

Berger’s son, Matthew, discovered the sebida clavicle in 2008 when he was 9 years old during an expedition alongside his father within the Cradle of Humankind heritage site. Matthew Berger traveled last week to Virgin Galactic’s Spaceport America in New Mexico to hand deliver the bones to Nash, a conservationist involved with human origins research. Caretakers stored both bone fragments within a carbon fiber container prior to their suborbital excursion.

“These fossils represent individuals who lived and died hundreds of thousands of years ago, yet were individuals who likely gazed up at the stars in wonder, much as we do,” Berger said in a September 8 statement via the University of Witwatersrand.

“The magnitude of being among the first civilians going into space, and carrying these precious fossils, has taken a while to sink in, during all of the preparations for the flight,” Nash said via the University of Witwatersrand statement, “But I am humbled and honored to represent South Africa and all of humankind, as I carry these precious representations of our collective ancestors, on this first journey of our ancient relatives into space.”

Nash, alongside Las Vegas real estate entrepreneur Ken Baxter and British engineer and racecar company founder Adrian Reynald, purchased their Virgin Galactic seats as far back as 2004 from company founder and multibillionaire Richard Branson. Tickets for the few minutes’ worth of suborbital weightlessness alongside views of the Earth’s curvature reportedly cost between $250,000 and $450,000.

“We sincerely hope it brings further awareness of the importance of our country and the African continent to understanding the journey of humankind that has led to this historic moment where commercial spaceflight is possible,” says Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site CEO Matthew Sathekge said via University of Witwatersrand’s announcement.

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If all goes according to plan, a tennis ball-sized robot modeled after a children’s toy will soon briefly explore the moon’s surface as part of Japan’s first soft lunar landing. As recently highlighted by Space.com, the Japanese space agency, JAXA, is currently overseeing its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) probe mission, which launched on September 6 alongside the country’s XRISM X-ray satellite payload. Unlike more powerful launches, it will take less than 9-foot-wide SLIM between three and four months to reach lunar orbit, after which it will survey the roughly 1000-foot-wide Shioli Crater landing site from afar for about another month.

Afterwards, however, the lander will descend towards the moon, and deploy the Lunar Excursion Vehicle 2 (LEV-2) once it reaches around six-feet above the surface. The probe’s sphere-shaped casing will then divide into two halves on either side of a small camera system. From there, LEV-2 will begin hobbling atop the SLIM landing site and surrounding area for around two hours, until its battery reserve is depleted.

[Related: India’s successful moon landing makes lunar history.]

Per JAXA’s description, LEV-2 was developed by its Space Exploration Innovation Hub Center associate senior researcher Hirano Daichi. Daichi collaborated with a team from Doshisha University as well as the toy manufacturer TOMY to create the tiny space explorer. Meanwhile, Sony provided the two cameras that will survey the moon. According to Daichi, the team turned to children’s toys for their “robust and safe design… which reduced the number of components used in the vehicle as much as possible and increased its reliability.”

“This robot was developed successfully within the limited size and mass using the downsizing and weight reduction technologies and the shape changing mechanism developed for toys by TOMY,” continued Daichi.

If successful, JAXA engineers hope the soft lunar landing method can be adapted to larger craft in the future, including those piloted by human astronauts. “By creating the SLIM lander humans will make a qualitative shift towards being able to land where we want and not just where it is easy to land, as had been the case before,” reads JAXA’s project description. “By achieving this, it will become possible to land on planets even more resource scarce than the moon.”

Beyond just this project, it’s been an active time for lunar exploration. In August, India completed the first successful lunar landing at the moon’s south pole via its Chandrayaan-3 probe. Last year, NASA’s Artemis-1 rocket also kickstarted the space agency’s long standing goal towards establishing a permanent moon base.

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Intuit’s TurboTax services are anything but “free,” even though its allegedly deceptive ad campaigns claimed otherwise for years. According to a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) judge’s ruling, the popular tax filing service must stop labeling any of its products as no-cost unless a rigorous set of conditions are “clearly and conspicuously” displayed to users, per the FTC’s announcement on September 8.

Consumers are bombarded with third-party service advertisements every year during tax season, many of which tout supposedly free options to most users. Regulatory scrutiny in recent years, however, has made it clear that a large portion of these claims are inaccurate at best, or otherwise intentionally misleading. Last week’s initial decision from the FTC’s Administrative Law Judge D. Michael Chappell, although subject to an automatic full commission review, makes it clear that regulators aim to clamp down on the predatory bait-and-switches.

[Related: Major tax-filing sites routinely shared users’ financial info with Facebook.]

“[T]he evidence proves that Intuit engaged in deceptive advertising in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act,” reads a portion of Chappell’s 242-page ruling. “[Intuit] advertised to consumers that they could file their taxes online for free using TurboTax, when in truth, for approximately two-thirds of taxpayers, the advertised claim was false.”

The immediate halt to advertising “free” TurboTax filing options can only lift if Intuit adheres to a detailed set of FTC guidelines. Any solely visual or audio communication (i.e. radio ads), for example, must include disclosures in the same medium as the ad is presented. Television ads, meanwhile, must include disclosures in both audio and visual methods. Online advertisements, face-to-face communications, and product labels also include comparably stringent disclosure requirements if Intuit wishes to boost “free” services.

As Ars Technica reported last week, Intuit announced in its own response statement that it plans to appeal the “groundless and seemingly predetermined decision,” and the company “and is confident that when the matter ultimately returns to a neutral body Intuit will prevail, as it has previously in this matter.” Intuit representatives are possibly referring to an April 2022 federal court decision denying an FTC motion for a preliminary injunction regarding TurboTax “free” filing ads. The following month, Intuit agreed to a $141 million restitution penalty for nearly 4.4 million filers misled by TurboTax’s Free Edition claims between 2016 and 2018.

[Related: A free IRS e-filing tax service could start rolling out next year.]

The latest regulatory pressure comes as the federal government and IRS are reportedly moving towards testing a free e-filing system for taxpayers beginning in January 2024. According to anonymous sources speaking with The Washington Post at the time, the IRS is developing the program with help from the White House’s technology consulting agency, the US Digital Service. If launched publicly, the universal free filing portal would add the US alongside nations providing similar services, including Australia, Chile, and Estonia.

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Once considered prohibitively expensive and inefficient, hydrogen fuel-powered planes are finally beginning to literally and figuratively take off around the world. Last week, the Germany-based startup H2FLY achieved a major industry milestone—completing the world’s first piloted electric aircraft flights fueled entirely by liquid hydrogen.

“This achievement marks a watershed moment in the use of hydrogen to power aircraft. Together with our partners, we have demonstrated the viability of liquid hydrogen to support medium and long-range emissions-free flight,” H2FLY co-founder Josef Kallo said in a statement on September 7.

According to the company’s official announcement, H2FLY completed a total of four flights using liquid hydrogen, one of which boasted over three hours of airtime. Unlike past tests, however, the company’s HY4 prototype aircraft this time around utilized liquified, cryogenically stored hydrogen (LH2) instead of pressurized gaseous hydrogen (GH2). The fuel source alteration reportedly allows for significantly lower fuel tank volumes and weights, thus boosting the aircraft’s range, as well as the amount of space that can be dedicated for payloads.

[Related: Hydrogen-powered flight is closer to takeoff than ever.]

Even with only four test flights completed, LH2 fuel shows incredible promise in powering more-sustainable planes. Thanks to the strategic fuel shift, the company’s HY4 aircraft can hypothetically double its maximum range from 750 km to 1,500 km (466 to 932 miles), making it much more viable for medium- and long-haul commercial, carbon-emissions free flights. For comparison, a flight from New York City to Columbus, Ohio, is around 765 km; a flight from NYC to Tallahassee, Florida, is about 1,470 km.

As Electrek notes, H2FLY engineers boast a string of achievements over the years when compared to similar zero-emission aviation companies. The HY4 aircraft completed its maiden flight in 2016, and set new records when it achieved an altitude of over 7,000 during a 77-mile test run in 2022.

Atop the impressive test results, H2FLY explains its latest HY4 flights “marks the culmination” of Project HEAVEN, “a European-government-supported consortium assembled to demonstrate the feasibility of using liquid, cryogenic hydrogen in aircraft.” Apart from various business consortium partners, the project included funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, the German Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport, and the University of Ulm.

Moving forward, H2FLY aims to begin work on commercialization of its aircraft and fuel technologies. This will include the development of new fuel cell systems capable of providing full power ranges for emissionless flights achieving altitudes as high as 27,000 feet. Next year, the company also plans to open a Hydrogen Aviation Center at Germany’s Stuttgart Airport.

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Decontaminating water is as vital an endeavor as ever as pollution issues continue to flood the planet. Knowing this, researchers at the University of California San Diego just created the latest mind-bending tool to aid in future clean-up projects: a 3D-printed “engineered living material” made of seaweed polymers and genetically altered bacteria that breaks down organic pollutants in water.

As detailed via a new paper published in Nature Communications, the remarkable creation comes courtesy of a team working within the University of California San Diego’s Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC). According to the project announcement, the team first hydrated a seaweed-derived polymer known as alginate. Meanwhile, the researchers genetically engineered a waterborne, photosynthetic bacteria called cyanobacteria to produce laccase, an enzyme capable of neutralizing organic pollutants like antibiotics, dyes, pharmaceutical drugs, and BPAs. The ingredients were then combined and passed through a 3D printer to produce a grid-like design whose surface area-to-volume ratio allowed the bacteria optimal access to light, gasses, and nutrients.

[Related: The US might finally regulate toxic ‘forever chemicals’ in drinking water.]

“This collaboration allowed us to apply our knowledge of the genetics and physiology of cyanobacteria to create a living material,” School of Biological Sciences faculty member Susan Golden said in a statement. “Now we can think creatively about engineering novel functions into cyanobacteria to make more useful products.”

To test their creation, the engineers introduced their decontaminator to water polluted by indigo carmine, a blue dye often used within denim textile manufacturing. The team’s grid-like, living tool managed to safely and effectively decolorize the water solution over the course of multiple days.

However, that still leaves the alginate-cyanobacteria mixture within the water. Replacing one foreign pollutant with foreign, synthesized bacteria doesn’t necessarily solve the larger problem of contamination. To solve this, the UC San Diego team further engineered their version of cyanobacteria to adversely respond to theophylline, a molecule similar to caffeine found in many teas and chocolates. Whenever the decontamination substance comes into contact with the molecule, the bacteria subsequently produces a specific protein to break down and destroy its own cells, thus getting rid of the substance.

“The living material can act on the pollutant of interest, then a small molecule can be added afterwards to kill the [cyanobacteria],” Jon Pokorski, a professor of nanoengineering and research co-lead, said in the announcement. “This way, we can alleviate any concerns about having genetically modified bacteria lingering in the environment.”

As useful as this living filer could already be in decontamination projects, the team hopes to eventually take their substance a step further by designing it to self-destruct without the need for additional outside chemicals.

“Our goal is to make materials that respond to stimuli that are already present in the environment,” Pokorski explained.

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Human bodies can reject organ transplants at any time—sometimes even years after the procedure itself. When this occurs, time is of the essence to potentially save not only the organ’s viability, but the life of a patient. Unfortunately, noticeable symptoms of organ rejection can show up late, but a tiny new medical device is showing immense promise in offering dramatically earlier detection times.

As detailed in a new study published September 8 in the journal Science researchers at Northwestern University have developed an ultra-thin, soft implant that adheres directly to a transplanted organ’s surface to monitor its health. In small animal clinical trials involving kidney transplants, rejection warning signs were identified as much as three weeks earlier than current methods.

[Related: The first successful pig heart transplant into a human was a century in the making.]

“I have noticed many of my patients feel constant anxiety—not knowing if their body is rejecting their transplanted organ or not. They may have waited years for a transplant… [t]hen, they spend the rest of their lives worrying about the health of that organ,” Lorenzo Gallon, a transplant nephrologist at Northwestern Medical who led the study’s clinical portion, said in a statement. “Our new device could offer some protection, and continuous monitoring could provide reassurance and peace of mind.”

According to John A. Rogers, a bioelectronics expert who led device development for the project, identifying rejection earlier can allow physicians to administer various therapies to prevent a patient from losing the organ, or even their lives.

“In worst-case scenarios, if rejection is ignored, it could be life threatening,” Rogers said via Friday’s statement. “The earlier you can catch rejection and engage therapies, the better. We developed this device with that in mind.”

At 0.3 cm wide, 0.7 cm long, and just 220 microns thick, the new sensor is thinner than a single human hair and smaller than your pinky fingernail. The device’s tininess is key to its ability to adhere, slipping beneath a kidney’s fibrous renal capsule layer to rest directly against the organ. Once positioned, the device’s extremely sensitive thermometer measures kidney temperature fluctuations as miniscule as 0.004 degrees Celsius. A miniature coin cell battery currently powers the device alongside Bluetooth capabilities to wireless stream data results to researchers.

Since tissue inflammation is often an early sign of complications, researchers were alerted much faster to potential problems than currently available detection methods like creatine and blood urea monitoring. Due to normal body fluctuations, those existing options are also far less reliable and sensitive than the new device.

“Bodies move, so there is a lot of motion to deal with. Even the kidney itself moves,” Rogers continued, explaining that the organ’s soft tissue isn’t ideal for suturing. “These were daunting engineering challenges, but this device is a gentle, seamless interface that avoids risking damage to the organ.”

Moving forward, the team intends to begin larger animal trials, along with potentially expanding to test on organs such as livers and lungs. They also hope to integrate new power sources capable of externally recharging the device’s battery, thus offering a more permanent monitoring solution.

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Researchers at MIT have designed a new underwater communication system that employs 70-year-old technology while also requiring one-millionth the energy needed for existing arrays. Not only that, but the team’s design allows for transmissions that can travel 15 times farther than current devices.

“What started as a very exciting intellectual idea a few years ago—underwater communication with a million times lower power—is now practical and realistic,” Fadel Adib, director of MIT Media Lab’s Signal Kinetics group and an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, said in a September 6 announcement. “There are still a few interesting technical challenges to address, but there is a clear path from where we are now to deployment.”

The key to their long-range, efficient Van Atta Acoustic Backscatter (VAB) can be found within the system’s name. As The Register explains, Van Atta arrays, first designed over seven decades ago, are composed of connected nodes capable of both triangulating and reflecting signals back towards their source instead of simply reflecting them outwards in all directions. This makes them not only more efficient, but capable of making much farther transmissions.

[Related: Why the EU wants to build an underwater cable in the Black Sea.]

Backscattering, meanwhile, refers to what occurs when signals such as sound waves reflect back to their point of origin. The phenomenon underpins technology such as ultrasounds, as well as mapping sea floors. Configure Van Attay arrays to boost backscattering capabilities, and you get the MIT team’s new VAB technology.

“We are creating a new ocean technology and propelling it into the realm of the things we have been doing for 6G cellular networks,” Adib said, via MIT’s announcement. “For us, it is very rewarding because we are starting to see this now very close to reality.”

With additional refinement and experimentation, researchers hope their VAB will soon be able to “map the pulse of the ocean,” reports Interesting Engineering. According to one of the team’s forthcoming studies, installing underwater VAB networks could help continuously measure a variety of oceanic datasets such as pressure, CO2, and temperature to refine climate change modeling, as well as analyze the efficacy of certain carbon capture technologies.

“Our design introduces multiple innovations across the networking stack, which enable it to overcome unique challenges that arise from the electro-mechanical properties of underwater backscatter and the challenging nature of low-power underwater acoustic channels,” reads a portion of one of their studies’ abstracts. “By realizing hundreds of meters of range in underwater backscatter, [we present] the first practical system capable of coastal monitoring applications.”

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A comprehensive data privacy assessment of 25 major automakers’ vehicle tech deems cars “the official worst category of products for privacy” that the Mozilla Foundation has ever reviewed. For a bit of context here, every car company analyzed by Mozilla’s security experts failed crucial benchmark safeguards, compared to 63 percent of mental health apps they reviewed this year (which often come with their own serious security risks).

“While we worried that our doorbells and watches that connect to the internet might be spying on us, car brands quietly entered the data business by turning their vehicles into powerful data-gobbling machines,” Mozilla’s researchers explained in their findings announcement earlier this week. Because of this, they warn, vehicles’ “brag-worthy bells and whistles” now possess “an unmatched power to watch, listen, and collect information about what you do and where you go in your car.”

The companies boasting abysmal ratings include pretty much any automaker you can imagine—including Ford, Subaru, Jeep, BMW, Honda, Acura, Chevy, and Nissan, among others—with Tesla ranked dead last on the list. According to the experts, nearly 85 percent of surveyed automakers “share” car owners’ data to data brokers and other businesses. In total,19 of the 25 companies actually sell your personal data to third-parties, while over 55 percent of the carmakers’ Privacy Policies allow them to share your information to government and law enforcement authorities. Such data deliveries can be facilitated via a simple “request” instead of a legal warrant or court order.

[Related: Mental wellness apps are basically the Wild West of therapy.]

If all that weren’t enough, an additional creepy layer further worsens matters. According to Mozilla, at least two companies—Nissan and Kia—include Privacy Policy data categories explicitly labeled “sexual activity” and “sex life.” Exactly what kind of data this entails isn’t clear, but new cars often come equipped with microphones and cameras. Even if this data is somehow anonymized and aggregated, chances are those in the market for a new vehicle might want to take a closer look.

In an email provided to PopSci, a Kia spokesperson explains, “The privacy of consumers is important to Kia… Whether certain information is collected by us depends on the context in which a consumer interacts with us,” before clarifying that, “Kia does not and has never collected ‘sex life or sexual orientation’ information from vehicles or consumers in the context of providing the Kia Connect Services.”

Per Kia’s privacy policy page, “sex and gender information,” as well as “health, sex life or sexual orientation information” may be collected.

A spokesperson for Nissan tells PopSci the company complies “with all applicable laws and provide[s] the utmost transparency,” while stating “Nissan does not knowingly collect or disclose consumer information on sexual activity or sexual orientation.”

“Our privacy policy is written as broadly as possible to comply with federal and state laws, as well as to provide consumers and employees a full picture of data privacy at Nissan,” the spokesperson continues. “Some state laws require us to account for inadvertent data collection or information that could be inferred from other data, such as geolocation. For employees, some voluntarily disclose information such as sexual orientation, but it is not required and we do not disclose it without consent.”

What’s particularly infuriating these findings is that, as Mozilla explains, there simply isn’t much everyday car owners can do about it. Each individualized review of the 25 carmakers includes a section entitled “Tips to protect yourself,” which includes suggestions such as to avoid using a car’s app and limiting its permissions on your phone.

“But compared to all the data collection you can’t control, these steps feel like tiny drops in a massive bucket,” concedes Mozilla researchers. In response, the Mozilla Foundation has launched a petition asking companies to overhaul their massive, apparently unparalleled data collection programs.

Update 9/07/23 1:26 PM: This article now includes statements from both Kia and Nissan.

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The Federal Aviation Administration has cleared UPS to operate its growing delivery drone fleet beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) of pilots. Per the FAA’s August 6 announcement, the freight and shipping company’s UPS Flight Forward subsidiary can now begin deploying its Matternet M2 drones to much further distances, thus expanding their range of potential customers. This means human operators will simply monitor routes and deliveries from a centralized location.

As the industry term implies, BVLOS means that human monitors are not required to maintain literal eyes on drones as they travel between their hubs and destinations. Approval for BVLOS operations is a natural end goal for most drone delivery services, with companies such as Amazon and FedEx vying to kickstart their own programs. Just last month, Wing—a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, Inc.—announced its own partnership with Walmart to test a drone delivery system within a six mile range around the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. According to Walmart, approximately 60,000 homes fall within the drone fleet’s range, which promises deliveries in under 30 minutes. To accomplish the speedy deadlines, Wing’s drones reportedly will travel as fast as 65 mph.

As The Verge notes, however, not all drone services are faring as well. In May, Amazon’s Prime Air project only made an estimated 100 deliveries between its California and Texas locales. Although more current figures aren’t available, Amazon previously hoped to complete 10,000 deliveries by the end of the year. Only days after announcing its lofty goal, however, Amazon also confirmed a significant number of layoffs within its Prime Air workforce.

[Related: Walmart and Wing join forces for drone deliveries in Texas.]

Although labor and automation issues are serious concerns during the expansion of drone delivery systems, their environmental benefits remain promising. According to one study in 2022, using quadcopter drones to handle small, lightweight packages during figurative “last-mile” deliveries could reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by respectively up to 94 and 84 percent per package. That said, most drones can only currently delivery one package at a time, meaning that efficiency could have its caveats.

Meanwhile, the usage of drones to deliver potentially life-saving medical equipment and treatments—such as blood transfusions or defibrillators—shows immense promise, according to a study from the European Heart Journal. 

FAA regulators, recognizing the industry’s increasing demand and capabilities, formed a Beyond the Visual Line of Sight Committee in 2021 to standardize laws ensuring operations became “routine, scalable and economically viable.” The FAA is currently reviewing the committee’s final report.

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The Department of Energy is providing a nearly $400 million loan to a startup aimed at scaling the manufacturing and deployment of a zinc-based alternative to rechargeable lithium batteries. If realized, Eos Energy’s utility- and industrial-scale zinc-bromine battery energy storage system (BESS) could provide cheaper, vastly more sustainable options for the country’s burgeoning renewable power infrastructure.

According to the DOE’s recent announcement, Eos Energy’s project could annually produce as much as 8 gigawatt hours (GWh) of storage capacity by 2026—enough to instantly power over 300,000 US homes, or meet around 130,000 homes’ annual electricity requirements.

Because renewable sources like wind and solar produce power intermittently, storage solutions are necessary to house the energy for later use. For years, lithium battery systems’ prices have decreased as their efficiencies increased, but the metal’s comparative rarity presents a challenging hurdle for scaling green energy infrastructure.

[Related: How an innovative battery system in the Bronx will help charge up NYC’s grid]

Unlike lithium-ion and lithium iron phosphate batteries, alternatives such as the Eos Z3 design rely on zinc-based cathodes alongside a water-based electrolyte, notes MIT Technology Review. This important distinction both increases their stability, as well as makes it incredibly difficult for them to support combustion. Zinc-bromine batteries meanwhile also boast lifespans as long as 20 years, while existing lithium options only manage between 10 and 15 years. What’s more, zinc is considered the world’s fourth most produced metal.

Per MIT, Eos’s semi-autonomous facility in Pennsylvania currently produces around 540 megawatt-hours annually, although it doesn’t operate at full capacity. The DOE’s conditional commitment loan—disbursed only after certain financial, technical, and other operating stipulations are met—could boost the Eos’ factory towards full-power.

[Related: How the massive ‘flow battery’ coming to an Army facility in Colorado will work]

“Today’s energy storage market is nascent but rapidly growing and is dominated by lithium-ion and lithium iron phosphate battery technologies, which typically serve short-term duration applications (approximately 4 hours),” the DOE explained in its announcement. “… Eos’s technology is also specifically designed for long-duration grid-scale stationary battery storage that can assist in meeting the energy grids’ growing demand with increasing amounts of renewable energy penetration.”

The DOE also notes that “over time,” Eos expects to source almost all of its materials within the US, thus better insulating its product against the market volatility and supply chain issues. While the DOE previously issued similar loans to battery recycling and geothermal energy projects, last week’s announcement marks the first funding offered to a manufacturer of lithium-battery alternatives.

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Travelers within Lagos, Nigeria, can finally board a light-rail line connecting two busy regions of the world’s worst metropolis for traffic. Although construction on Lagos’ Blue Line Rail began in 2009, years of funding issues delayed officials’ intended 2011 launch date by over a decade. Now, however, an estimated 150,000 commuters each day will be able to travel the 8-mile route in under 25 minutes—a stark improvement from the sometimes three hour long journey the same distance takes on Lagos roadways.

With over 24 million residents, Lagos has long suffered from notorious traffic issues. The Nigerian city’s infrastructure problems, greenhouse emissions, and overall dissatisfaction with roadways repeatedly earned it the moniker of the world’s worst region to travel—even when compared to similarly congested cities such as Los Angeles and Delhi.

[Related: A high-speed rail line in California is chugging along towards 2030 debut.]

According to Quartz, aspirations for a light rail line within Lagos date as far back as 1983, but decades of funding and civic issues prevented the project from moving forward. Meanwhile, the Lagos-based Danne Institute of Research estimates traffic congestion annually results in a loss of over $5.2 billion due to lost work hours from commuters spending a cumulative 14.1 million hours on the road per day. The World Bank estimates Lagos residents spend more of their household budgets on transportation costs than any other major African city.

Construction for the $132 million endeavor finally completed earlier this year, with official service starting on August 4. For the first two weeks, the Blue Line Rail will run 12 trips per day before upping the daily total to 76. A separate phase of the line will extend the total track line to roughly 17 miles, while Lagos intends to complete a Red Line Rail connecting eastern and western sections of the city by the year’s end. According to Lagos Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu speaking via Bloomberg, the second line is already 95 percent ready.

“A mega city cannot function without an effective metro line,” said Adetilewa Adebajo, chief executive of Lagos-based CFG Advisory, told Bloomberg on August 5. “However, Lagos needs not just the metro line. It has to develop waterways too, being a coastal city. It needs an integrated transport system. Those are what will be able to relieve the congestions in the city.”

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An ongoing smart apparel project overseen by US defense and intelligence agencies has received a $22 million funding boost towards the “cutting edge” program designing “performance-grade, computerized clothing.” Announced late last month via Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), the creatively dubbed Smart Electrically Powered and Networked Textile Systems (SMART ePANTS) endeavor seeks to develop a line of “durable, ready-to-wear clothing that can record audio, video, and geolocation data” for use by personnel within DoD, Department of Homeland Security, and wider intelligence communities.

“IARPA is proud to lead this first-of-its-kind effort for both the IC and broader scientific community which will bring much-needed innovation to the field of [active smart textiles],” Dawson Cagle, SMART ePANTS program manager, said via the August update. “To date no group has committed the time and resources necessary to fashion the first integrated electronics that are stretchable, bendable, comfortable, and washable like regular clothing.”

Smart textiles generally fall within active or passive classification. In passive systems, such as Gore-Tex, the material’s physical structure can assist in heating, cooling, fireproofing, or moisture evaporation. In contrast, active smart textiles (ASTs) like SMART ePANTS’ designs rely on built-in actuators and sensors to detect, interpret, and react to environmental information. Per IARPA’s project description, such wearables could include “weavable conductive polymer ‘wires,’ energy harvesters powered by the body, ultra-low power printable computers on cloth, microphones that behave like threads, and ‘scrunchable’ batteries that can function after many deformations.”

[Related: Pressure-sensing mats and shoes could enhance healthcare and video games.]

According to the ODNI, the new funding positions SMART ePANTS as a tool to assist law enforcement and emergency responders in “dangerous, high-stress environments,” like crime scenes and arms control inspections. But for SMART ePANTS’ designers, the technologies’ potential across other industries arguably outweigh their surveillance capabilities and concerns. 

“Although I am very proud of the intelligence aspect of the program, I am excited about the possibilities that the program’s research will have for the greater world,” Cagle said in the ODNI’s announcement video last year.

Cagle imagines scenarios in which diabetes patients like his father wear clothing that consistently and noninvasively monitors blood glucose levels, for example. Privacy advocates and surveillance industry critics, however, remain incredibly troubled by the invasive ramifications.

“These sorts of technologies are unfortunately the logical next steps when it comes to mass surveillance,” Mac Pierce, an artist whose work critically engages with weaponized emerging technologies, tells PopSci. “Rather than being tied to fixed infrastructure they can be hyper mobile and far more discreet than a surveillance van.”

[Related: Why Microsoft is rolling back its AI-powered facial analysis tech.]

Last year, Pierce designed and released DIY plans for a “Camera Shy Hoodie” that integrates an array of infrared LEDs to blind nearby night vision security cameras. SMART ePANTs’ deployment could potentially undermine such tools for maintaining civic and political protesters’ privacy.

“Wiretaps will never be in fashion. In a world where there is seemingly a camera on every corner, the last thing we need is surveillance pants,” Albert Fox Cahn, executive director for the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, tells PopSci.

“It’s hard to see how this technology could actually help, and easy to see how it could be abused. It is yet another example of the sort of big-budget surveillance boondoggles that police and intelligence agencies are wasting money on,” Cahn continues. “The intelligence community may think this is a cool look, but I think the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.”

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Nuclear fuel cells the size of poppy seeds could power NASA’s Artemis lunar base once it begins operations around 2030. Designed by researchers at Bangor University’s Nuclear Futures Institute in the UK, the miniscule power source—dubbed “Trisofuel”—is intended to run on a micro nuclear generator roughly the size of a small car created by Rolls Royce. According to a report in the BBC, engineers intend to begin fully testing their new fuel within the next few months. If successful, Trisofuel’s uses could even extend far beyond the moon’s surface.

Momentum is quickly building towards establishing a permanent human presence on the moon, likely near its south pole where scientists hope to find water-based ice to help support habitation. NASA’s ongoing Artemis project is making progress towards its proposed end-of-decade base construction, most recently with its first successful mission in November 2022. Last month, India made history as the fourth nation to land a probe on the moon via its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, as well as the first to do so at the lunar south pole.

[Related: India’s successful moon landing makes lunar history.]

Given its size and relative power, a resource like Trisofuel could be vital to lunar bases’ success. With its portability, however, the new nuclear fuel cell could easily be adapted to a range of other scenarios, both here on Earth and beyond.  Phylis Makurunje, a researcher involved Trisofuel testing, explained to the BBC that the tiny fuel pellets could be used to power rockets that one day take humans to Mars. “It is very powerful—it gives very high thrust, the push it gives to the rocket. This is very important because it enables rockets to reach the farthest planets,” Makurunje explained.

Trisofuel may be so strong, in fact, that it could nearly halve the time it takes to reach the Red Planet—from an estimated nine months down to between four-to-six months. “Nuclear power is the only way we currently have to provide the power for that length of space travel,” Bangor University professor Simon Middleburgh said in a release. “The fuel must be extremely robust and survive the forces of launch and then be dependable for many years.”

At a much more localized level, researchers believe that micro generators running Trisofuel could also be deployed to disaster zones with compromised electrical grids.

Having a reliable, powerful fuel source is one thing—having structures to house such systems is another hurdle altogether. Of course, researchers are currently hard at work optimizing construction options for proposed lunar base designs. Potential building materials could even be drawn from the moon itself, using lunar regolith to reinforce 3D-printed bricks to compose base structures.

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Two self-driving taxis blocked an ambulance on its way to a hospital, potentially contributing to the patient’s death, according to a San Francisco Fire Department report obtained by Forbes. The incident involving two Cruise vehicles occurred on August 14, just four days after state regulators approved 24/7 public availability of autonomous cab services in the city.

[Related: “Cruise’s self-driving taxis are causing chaos in San Francisco.”]

Emergency responders arrived around 10:45 PM at the scene of an accident involving a critically-wounded pedestrian, the report states. While there, however, the Cruise autonomous taxis occupied two lanes of a four-lane, one-way street, forcing a police vehicle in a separate lane to move to make space for the ambulance to leave. 

“The [patient] was packaged for transport with life threatening injuries, but we were unable to leave the scene initially due to the Cruise vehicles not moving,” reads a portion of the official report. “This delay, no matter how minimal, contributed to a poor [patient] outcome… The fact that Cruise autonomous vehicles continue to block ingress and egress to critical 911 is unacceptable.”

Cruise representatives dispute the SFFD report, instead claiming the fleet vehicles did not hamper medical treatment in any way. “The ambulance behind the [autonomous vehicle] had a clear path to pass the AV as other vehicles, including another ambulance, proceeded to do,” a Cruise spokesperson told PopSci. “As soon as the victim was loaded into the ambulance, the ambulance left the scene immediately and was never impeded from doing so by the AV.” In footage provided to The NY Times, EMS maneuvered around a Cruise vehicle roughly 90 seconds after loading the victim into the ambulance.

Public documents obtained by Forbes detail over 70 instances since April 2022 of autonomous vehicles allegedly obstructing a variety of emergency responses—including fires, and restoring electrical services. Despite months of pushback from many residents and city officials, California regulators approved the public usage of autonomous taxi services like Cruise and Waymo in San Francisco last month. Within days of the greenlight, however, the autonomous vehicles reportedly ran stop signs, produced lengthy traffic jams, and recklessly swerved to avoid pedestrians.

Update 09/05/23 12:50 PM: This article has been updated to include a statement from Cruise.

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Wednesday, October 4, 2023, at approximately 2:20 PM Eastern Daylight Time—you’ve been warned. Or, rather, you will be. But don’t take it personally. Pretty much everyone in the U.S. will receive the same message.

That’s the date the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Federal Communications Commission are scheduled to test their National Wireless Emergency Alert System, which will issue to every television, cellphone, and radio. The runthrough will actually consist of two parts, the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA). The former will transmit to radios and TVs, while the latter will issue to all consumer cell phones, according to FEMA’s announcement earlier this month.

Individuals with phones in range of a cell tower will receive a message to the effect of, “THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed.” Meanwhile, phones set to Spanish will receive the same bulletin in users’ default language. Television and radio broadcasts will be interrupted for approximately one minute with a message stating, “This is a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System, issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, covering the United States from 14:20 to 14:50 hours ET. This is only a test. No action is required by the public.”

[Related: Hurricane-powered wildfires sweep across Maui.]

October 4 will mark the seventh instance of the EAS test beamed out to radios and televisions, while it will only be the second nationwide WEA test. Despite their frequency, its organizers’ hopes that the bulletins will only ever need to remain as tests, and not deployment for a real emergency.

Speaking with The New York Times on August 30, Jeff Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, explained that, while there are “very few circumstances where you will notify the entire country about something,” they remain important since, “Speaking generally, alerts are only effective if people know what they are and they know what to do with them.”

The NY Times went on to cite the recent, deadly fires in Maui, Hawaii, during which the region’s emergency management agency decided against sounding sirens to alert residents. In January 2018, however, Hawaii did receive an emergency alert regarding a supposed incoming ballistic missile attack—only to get a follow-up 38 minutes later chalking the message up to an accident.

Correction (September 25, 2023): The story previously stated that the alert would go out on October 4 at 2:20 Eastern Standard Time. It should be Eastern Daylight Time.

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Europe’s seven largest commercial truck manufacturers agreed in 2020 to cease producing diesel vehicles within two decades’ time, and have been aggressively working towards meeting that goal ever since. On August 31, one of those companies announced its latest potential tool in the emissions-heavy industry’s transition towards a more sustainable future. Instead of revolutionizing what’s underneath a semi-truck’s hood, however, Sweden’s Scania aims to take advantage of all the free real estate surrounding the tons of cargo in transit on roadways.

Per a release from Scania, the company recently partnered with Uppsala University and the energy company Midsummer to develop a 560-horsepower plug-in hybrid semi-truck prototype whose 60-foot-long trailer is wrapped in 100 square meters of solar panels. According to CleanTechnica, the additional solar powered boost could supply the truck with an additional annual driving range of up to 5,000 kilometers in Sweden—a promising figure, given the prototype’s location.

The Scandinavian nation isn’t exactly known for its endless days of sunshine. July in Stockholm, for example, only experiences clear skies a little over half the month on average—and that’s the highest rate for the entire year. November, by contrast, is cloudy nearly 75 percent of the month. But in this case, the overcast skies’ regularity works to the project’s advantage.

[Related: Does Hyundai’s rooftop solar panel change the fuel-economy equation?]

“We specifically wanted to see if it made sense in Sweden, because if you go to places such as Southern Europe, Australia or North Africa, there’s obviously a lot more sunshine,” explained Eric Falkgrim, a Technology Leader at Scania’s Research and Innovation department and the solar-powered truck’s project manager, in the August 31 announcement. “If it can work here in the less sunny and somewhat darker conditions then that would confirm the widespread validity of the project.”

Falkgrim noted that although the concept of slapping solar panels atop a semi-truck trailer may initially seem relatively simple, the logistics were anything but easy. “It’s a little bit of a wild and crazy idea because it comes with a lot of new hardware and software systemization and development, to make it safe to handle the transfer of power, and to handle [design] faults,” he continued.

Generally speaking, solar panels aren’t optimized for near-constant traveling. As such, it’s “fairly involved from a technical point of view,” said Falkgrim. Despite only recently starting prototype testing on Sweden’s public roads, he explained the project is “about seeing if the solution makes sense, and so far we believe it does.” Although such a design isn’t expected to become widespread on roadways for a few years, Scania’s initial testing shows the tech is not only feasible, but promising.

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A multi-legged robot inspired by everyday bugs could soon come to your aid in a literal and figurative pinch. In a new study published via Advanced Intelligent Systems, University of Colorado Boulder researchers recently unveiled their Compliant Legged Articulated Robotic Insect, aka CLARI. The cute, modular bot is lighter than a ping pong ball and small enough that multiple units can fit in your hand. But don’t let its size and weight fool you—CLARI is optimized to squeeze into tight spaces via an extremely malleable body structure. The bug-like bot shows immense promise as an exploratory tool for small areas such as within jet engines, as well as even during search and rescue missions.

[Related: This bumblebee-inspired bot can bounce back after injuring a wing.]

According to assistant professor of mechanical engineering and study co-author Kaushik Jayaram, CLARI’s inspiration is owed largely to the everyday cockroach. As a graduate student, Jayaram engineered a robot capable of compressing to just half its height, much like roaches fitting through tiny crevices in buildings.

“We were able to squeeze through vertical gaps, but that got me thinking: That’s one way to compress. What are others?” said Jayaram in an August 30 statement.

Fast forward a few years to CLARI, a new iteration that builds upon previous soft robotic advancements. In its standard shape, CLARI resembles a square with four articulating legs, each controlled by its own dual actuators and circuitry. When encountering a difficult environment, however, the team’s robot can narrow from 1.3 inches wide to just 0.8 inches narrow. With more refinement, Jayaram’s team believes future CLARI robots could become even more malleable.

“What we want are general-purpose robots that can change shape and adapt to whatever the environmental conditions are,” Jayarm said. He likens the ultimate version to an amoeba “which has no well-defined shape but can change depending on whether it needs to move fast or engulf some food.”

Instead of dining opportunities, however, CLARI bots could use their unique structures and various leg configurations to traverse disaster zones in search of missing victims, or inspect the innards of machinery without needing to take apart the entire product. Right now, CLARI still requires wired connections for both power and controls, but Jayaram’s team hopes to eventually create wireless models capable of independent movement and exploration.

“Most robots today basically look like a cube,” Jayaram said. “Why should they all be the same? Animals come in all shapes and sizes.”

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By year’s end, NASA will begin testing a fridge-sized laser communications upgrade aboard the International Space Station. It’s a major relay system demonstration for the ISS, and one which could chart a path forward for how humans communicate not just in low-orbit, but on the lunar surface and beyond. 

Although radio has long served as both piloted and unpiloted missions’ primary communications method, as Space.com notes, laser communication arrays boast a number of benefits. From a purely logistical standpoint, the equipment is both cheaper and lighter-weight than radio devices. Meanwhile, lasers’ shorter wavelengths ensure far more information can be transferred at one time compared to radio waves.

Once launched aboard a forthcoming SpaceX commercial resupply services mission, NASA’s Integrated LCRD Low Earth Orbit User Modem and Amplifier Terminal (ILLUMA-T) will work alongside the agency’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) launched in December 2021. ILLUMA-T will use infrared light to send and receive laser communications at a higher data rate than previously available. Once installed, these transmissions’ higher rates will allow for more videos and images to transmit back to Earth, all at around 1.2 gigabits-per-second—comparable to a solid internet connection here on Earth.

[Related: NASA is testing space lasers to shoot data back to Earth.]

“Laser communications offer missions more flexibility and an expedited way to get data back from space,” said Badri Younes, former deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program. “We are integrating this technology on demonstrations near Earth, at the Moon, and in deep space.”

After installation, ILLUMA-T will first beam data to-and-from the LCRD satellite hovering 22,000 miles above Earth in geosynchronous orbit. Meanwhile, the LCRD will transmit data back to Earth at two stations in California and Hawaii—spots chosen for their comparatively low cloud cover, which often impedes laser transmissions.

“ILLUMA-T is not the first mission to test laser communications in space but brings NASA closer to operational infusion of the technology,” NASA wrote in a recent statement,  In 2022, a small CubeSat in low Earth orbit began testing laser communications as part of the TeraByte InfraRed Delivery System. Before that, the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration also transferred data to-and-from lunar orbit during 2014’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer mission. Still, NASA explains that all of these tests combined will further help advance aerospace communications between Earth, the moon, Mars, and beyond.

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Scar tissue, also known as fibrosis, is the scourge of medical device implants. Even when receiving potentially life saving drug treatments, patients’ bodies often form scarring around the foreign object, thus eventually forcing the implant to malfunction or fail. This reaction can drastically limit a procedure’s efficacy, but a new breakthrough combining soft robotics and artificial intelligence could soon clear the troublesome hurdle.

According to a new study published with Science Robotics, a collaboration between researchers at MIT and the University of Galway resulted in new medical device tech that relies on AI and a malleable body to evade scar tissue buildup. 

“Imagine a therapeutic implant that can also sense its environment and respond as needed using AI,” Rachel Beatty, co-lead author and postdoctoral candidate at the University of Galway, said in a statement. “This approach could generate revolutionary changes in implantable drug delivery for a range of chronic diseases.”

The technology’s secret weapon is its conductive, porous membrane capable of detecting when it is becoming blocked by scar tissue. When this begins to occur, a machine learning algorithm kicks in to oversee an emerging treatment known as mechanotherapy, in which soft robotic implants inflate and deflate at various speeds and sizes to deter scar tissue formation.

[Related: A micro-thin smart bandage can quickly heal and monitor wounds.]

Ellen Roche, an MIT professor of mechanical engineering and study co-author, explains that personalized, precision drug delivery systems could greatly benefit from responding to individuals’ immune system responses. Additionally, such devices could reduce “off-target effects” while ensuring the right drug dosages are delivered at the right times.

“The work presented here is a step towards that goal,” she added in a statement.

In training simulations, the team’s device could develop personalized, consistent dosage regimes in situations involving significant fibrosis. According to researchers, the new device’s AI could effectively control drug release even in a “worst-case scenario of very thick and dense scar tissue,” per the August 31 announcement.

According to Garry Duffy, the study’s senior author and a professor of anatomy and regenerative medicine at the University of Galway, the team initially focused on using the new robot for diabetes treatment. “Insulin delivery cannulas fail due to the foreign body response and have to be replaced often (approx. every 3-5 days),” told PopSci via email. “If we can increase the longevity of the cannula, we can then maintain the cannula for longer with less changes of the set required by the person living with diabetes.”

Beyond diabetes, they envision a future where the device can be easily adapted to a variety of medical situations and drug delivery regimens. According to Duffy, the advances could soon “provide consistent and responsive dosing over long periods, without clinician involvement, enhancing efficacy and reducing the need for device replacement because of fibrosis,” he said in the August 31 statement.

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In the months following the 2016 presidential election, mounting evidence suggested YouTube’s video recommendations could send viewers down rabbit holes of extremist and hateful content. The heated criticism culminated in YouTube issuing a public statement in early 2019 announcing changes to its content algorithms in an effort to reduce “recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways.” Since then, Youtube claimed its augmentations resulted in at least 50 percent less watch time for racist, sexist, and otherwise prejudiced content via users’ recommendation feeds.

Little empirical evidence is publicly available to back up the assertion, but new research confirms at least some positive improvements to YouTube’s algorithms. That said, experts caution such positives don’t negate the harm that radicalizing content continues to inflict on users and the public.

According to a study conducted by a team of researchers from City University of New York, Stanford, Dartmouth, Northeastern University, and University of Exeter, YouTube algorithmic recommendations do not necessarily funnel users through radicalizing rabbit holes, “possibly due to changes that the company made to its recommender system in 2019.”

[Related: OpenAI’s newest ChatGPT update can still spread conspiracy theories.]

The team’s findings, published August 30 in the journal Science Advances, utilized a US public opinion survey alongside voluntarily offered browsing data from 1,181 respondents between July and December 2020. 

Instead, exposure to extremist and antagonistic content was largely focused on a much smaller subset of already predisposed users. Still, the team argues the platform “continues to play a key role in facilitating exposure to content from alternative and extremist channels among dedicated audiences.” Not only that, but engagement with this content still results in advertising profits.

“[The] study confirms that platforms like YouTube can, and should, do much more to restrict the reach of extremist content to the dedicated audiences that seek it out,” Science Advances editor Aaron Shaw writes in an accompanying piece. “YouTube and its parent Alphabet should divest from revenue generating activities related to content that contradicts their public commitments to reduce the spread of hate speech, harassment, and harmful conspiracy theories.”

“In a time where social media platforms are backsliding in their efforts to curb hate and misinformation, YouTube should take this and other recent research as an encouraging sign and continue to invest in solutions to make it a safe platform for all consumers and society,” Millican continues.

Julie Millican, vice president of Media Matters, a nonprofit dedicated to monitoring far-right misinformation, believes YouTube deserves credit for improving its algorithms to better limit the proliferation of extremist content. “However, the fact remains that hateful, bigoted and conspiracy content remains rampant on the platform and too easily found for those seeking it,” she tells PopSci. “Even if only a smaller portion of users become radicalized by content on the platform, we have seen over and over that this radicalization can have deadly consequences.”

While continued work on YouTube’s recommendation system is vital and admirable, the study’s researchers echoed that, “even low levels of algorithmic amplification can have damaging consequences when extrapolated over YouTube’s vast user base and across time.” Approximately 247 million Americans regularly use the platform, according to recent reports. YouTube representatives did not respond to PopSci at the time of writing.

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California authorities will begin accepting electric train manufacturers’ Request for Qualifications  proposals (RFQs) by the end of the year, the latest stage of the state’s long-gestating, high-speed rail line. Although voters approved initial funding back in 2008, the decades’ long project has since encountered repeated setbacks and financial issues. Construction sites finally began making headway in 2015, and nearly 422 miles between the Los Angeles Basin and the Bay Area have since been “environmentally cleared for the project,” the Los Angeles Times recently reported.

Once selected and constructed, the high-speed trains would be tested at maximum speed of 242 mph while traversing a 171-mile starter segment connecting Central Valley’s Bakersfield and Merced. Rail authorities will select the final manufacturer during the first quarter of 2024, with an eye to debut a pair of functioning prototypes by 2028 for trials. According to the High-Speed Rail Authority’s announcement, whoever is chosen to provide the train cars will also agree to oversee train set maintenance for 30 years.

[Related: Texas could get a 205-mph bullet train zipping between Houston and Dallas.]

In a statement, Board Chair Tom Richards described the latest phase “allows us to deliver on our commitment to meet our federal grant timelines to start testing,” adding that, “This is an important milestone for us to deliver high-speed rail service in the Central Valley and eventually into Northern and Southern California.”

California’s high speed rail project is one of several in development across the US, each facing their own logistical and funding issues. Earlier this month, Amtrak announced a partnership with Texas Central to begin seeking grants for a bullet train line that could travel between Houston and Dallas in under 90 minutes. Similar high-speed train routes are underway to connect Las Vegas and Los Angeles, as well as San Francisco and LA. Both of those projects have also encountered significant delays. Such projects could greatly help transition the US towards greener public transport methods—Amtrak’s proposed Texas project, for example, could save as much as 65 million gallons of fuel per year, cut greenhouse gas emissions by over 100,000 tons annually, and remove an estimated 12,500 cars per day from the region’s I-45 corridor.

Over 30 construction sites along Central Valley’s high-speed railway are currently active. Although backers hope the project will begin public service by the end of the decade, a recent progress report notes delays could push completion as far as 2033.

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Over 62 percent of American adults use an AI voice assistant like Siri or Alexa in their everyday lives. Statistically speaking, some of those roughly 160.7 million individuals will probably encounter a person suffering a health emergency in the near future. And while asking Siri how to properly perform CPR may not be the first thought in such a stressful scenario, it hypothetically could open up an entirely new area for AI assistance. Unfortunately, new research indicates these products aren’t equipped to help out in life-threatening situations—at least, for now.

According to a study published via JAMA Network on Monday, less than 60 percent of voice assistant responses across Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, and Microsoft Cortana include concise information on CPR when asked. Of those same services, only around a third gave any sort of actionable CPR instructions.

Speaking with CNN on August 28, lead study author Adam Landman, Mass General Brigham’s chief information officer and senior vice president of digital, as well as an attending emergency physician, explained researchers found that CPR-related answers from “AI voice assistants… really lacked relevance and even came back with inconsistencies.”

To test their efficacy, the team asked a series of eight CPR instructional questions to the four major AI assistant programs. Of those, just 34 percent provided verbal or textual instructions, while 12 percent offered only verbal answers. Less than a third of responses suggested calling emergency medical services.

[Related: CPR can save lives. Here’s how (and when) to do it.]

Even when CPR instructions are provided, however, voice assistant and large language model text responses varied greatly by product. Of 17 instructional answers, 71 percent described hand positioning, 47 percent described depth of compression, and only 35 percent offered a suggested compression rate.

There is at least one silver-lining to AI’s middling performance grade: researchers now know where, specifically, improvement is most needed. Landman’s study team believes there is ample opportunity for tech companies to collaborate on developing standardized, empirical emergency medical information to everyday AI assistant users in times of crisis.

“If we can take that appropriate evidence-based content and work with the tech companies to incorporate it, I think there’s a real opportunity to immediately improve the quality of those instructions,” Landman told CNN.

The study authors suggest that technology companies need to build CPR instructions into the core functionality of voice assistants, designate common phrases to activate CPR instructions, and establish “a single set of evidence-based content items across devices, including prioritizing calling emergency services for suspected cardiac arrest.”

Until then, of course, a bystander’s best bet is to still call 911 in the event of suspected cardiac events. Brushing up on how to properly provide CPR is never a bad idea, either.

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Despite witch hazel plants’ various medicinal uses, a closer inspection of their propagation techniques more resembles cannonfire than convalescence. As witch hazels’ woody seed capsules dry and warp, they split open and build pressure against the seeds themselves. Eventually, the pressure ejects the seeds from their pods in an impressive display of force for something so small. Getting a detailed look at that process, however, is difficult to do with the naked eye.

“If you blink you’ll miss it,” Justin Jorge, a Duke University biomechanical engineering graduate student, explained in a statement earlier this month.

As detailed in a paper recently published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, training high-powered cameras on witch hazel seed launches is providing a better glimpse at how the delicate plants can exert so much comparative force. In time, their findings could influence a new generation of leaping robots.

[Related: Leaping robots take physics lessons from grasshoppers.]

The witch hazel deep dive comes courtesy of senior author and Duke University professor of biology Sheila Patek, who Jorge worked alongside as part of their PhD thesis. According to the study, Patek’s team first trained a high-speed, 100,000 frames per second video camera on three varieties of seed-bearing witch hazel plants collected from Duke Gardens and Duke Forest. Researchers then waited for the plants to propagate, and examined their speeds and velocities. The playbacks proved both impressive, and surprising.

Upon review, witch hazel seeds accelerate upwards of 30 feet-per-second within just half a millisecond of leaving their pods. What’s more, the speed is largely uniform across plant breeds, regardless of seed sizes ranging from as light as just 15 milligrams, to seeds 10 times as massive.

“We found that the launch speeds were all roughly the same,” continued Jorge. “Given the order of magnitude difference in seed masses, I was not expecting that at all.”

Further investigation revealed that witch hazel plant varieties’ seed capsules are proportional to the size of the seeds themselves—heavier seeds mean larger pods, thus a greater reserve of elastic energy. This ensures that, regardless of plant or seed size, the rapidfire launch speed remains consistent.

Jorge explained that while most people may associate springiness with coils, rubber bands, or archery bows, biology allows for “all these weird, complex shapes.” It stands to reason, then, that these unique designs could improve synthetic springs, such as those found within certain small jumping robots.

“People ask me all the time, ‘why are you looking at seed-shooting plants?’” said Jorge. “It’s the weirdness of their springs.”

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The purpose of a secretive land development project encompassing tens of thousands of acres northeast of San Francisco has been uncovered: a new, high-tech city proposal backed by some of the world’s wealthiest people. The New York Times and Bloomberg report that investors include prominent venture capitalists, LinkedIn’s co-founder, as well as the originators of e-payment company Stripe. All of the investors have recently contributed to the over $800 million plans of Flannery Associates, a low-profile company founded by a 36-year-old former Goldman Sachs trader, whose motives previously remained mysterious for years.

According to a Flannery Associates spokesperson speaking with The NY Times, investors are composed of “Californians who believe that Solano County’s and California’s best days are ahead.” Flannery Associates reportedly will soon begin meeting with local residents, elected officials, and representatives of the nearby Travis Air Force Base to discuss the proposed project—a complicated, far-reaching urban plan that could face steep regulatory, political, and local opposition, according to Bloomberg. California zoning and development laws require complicated legal maneuvering—especially when much of the purchased acreage is currently allotted for wind power and agriculture.

Behind-the-scenes planning for the endeavor reportedly first as early as 2017, according to a pitch obtained by The NY Times. “[T]his effort should relieve some of the Silicon Valley pressures we all feel—rising home prices, homelessness, congestion etc.,” billionaire venture capitalist Michael Moritz wrote in an email to an unnamed potential investor at the time.

[Related: Why the tech billionaires can’t save themselves.]

Although the plans remain nebulous, Bloomberg describes them as including “novel methods of design, construction and governance” encompassing over 52,000 acres. Last week, local residents reportedly began receiving text and email opinion polls allegedly gaging their stances on politics, urban planning, and employment opportunities. A potential future ballot initiative described an urban undertaking including “a new city with tens of thousands of new homes, a large solar energy farm, orchards with over a million new trees, and over 10,000 acres of new parks and open space.” A spokesperson told Bloomberg the project intends to provide “affordable housing,” although the meaning of the descriptor is not concretely defined.

State Representative John Garamendi, whose district includes Travis Air Force Base, told Bloomberg that Flannery Associates has kept him and other local politicians in the dark about the project. Instead of simply buying up land, Garamendi argues the group should have “spent four years working with local community interests to develop a proposal that is beneficial to the communities and the state.”

Plans such as those brewing for Flannery Associates’ investors are just some of several ambitious urban goals recently pursued by Silicon Valley’s wealthiest leaders. Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported Elon Musk’s plans for a new town outside Tesla’s new Austin, Texas, headquarters that would include subsidized housing for company employees, with construction already underway. Multibillionaire PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel has previously invested in still theoretical seasteading projects that would see networks of artificial islands built in tax-free, politically autonomous international waters.

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Preserving coral reef ecosystems is absolutely vital to ensuring a stable, healthy ocean environment. Sadly, ongoing climate crises continue wreaking havoc on experts’ efforts to avert the worst effects of die-offs and coral bleaching. With new advancements, however, one potential solution could involve cryopreservation–collecting and containing coral samples at temperatures as low as -321 degrees Fahrenheit.

According to a recent study in Nature Communications, a team at Texas A&M University has developed a novel cryopreservation technique called “isochoric vitrification.” First, fragments of coral are actually strategically bleached in a lab using a combination of menthol and light. Then, coral fragments’ temperatures are quickly lowered to -196 degrees Celsius, or nearly -321 degrees Fahrenheit inside special aluminum containers. But despite the low temperatures, the coral is cooled without immediate injury.

Although any kind of bleaching often removes symbiotic algae crucial to coral photosynthesis, not doing so ahead of isochoric vitrification results in the formation of deadly ice pockets. By removing the algae ahead of vitrification, however, fragments could be preserved in a “glassy state” via submerging the coral in a chemical solution in aluminum containers cooled using liquid nitrogen. Later, the coral could be revived by slowly warming samples with the reintroduction of filtered seawater.

[Related: Mass coral reef bleaching in Florida as ocean temperatures hit 100 degrees.]

“It’s this collaborative marriage of fundamental thermodynamic advancements and fundamental advancements in coral biology and husbandry that have enabled our breakthrough success in whole coral cryopreservation,” Matthew Powell-Palm, the project’s lead author and an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, explains in a statement.

Although the team notes that coral cryopreservation has already been used in the past, the methods require collecting samples during coral reproduction cycles. Such breeding periods only occur a few days a year, often in difficult-to-reach areas. In contrast, isochoric vitrification allows researchers to harvest and preserve coral regardless of time of year. What’s more, the new method is vastly simpler than alternative cryopreservation techniques.

“Compared to other emergent vitrification techniques—which frequently require lasers, electromagnetic implements or other high-tech laboratory equipment—our isochoric vitrification approach… requires no moving parts or electronics, and the protocol can be implemented by a field technician with no background in thermodynamics,” Powell-Palm continues in their statement. “This is essential to the practicality of any conservation technique because when this is deployed in real marine field stations, the high-tech lab infrastructure common to many laboratories will not be available.”

“From a purely technological perspective, the technique is simple, rugged and ready for the field,” Powell-Palm explained via the announcement.

After honing their new technique, researchers tested the isochoric vitrification process on coral fragments at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology. Currently, coral samples’ post-thaw lifespans post-thaw only lasted less than 24 hours, but the team believes reducing the procedure’s overall stress effects will extend the method’s viability.

“Coral reefs are essential to the baseline health of our oceans, and cryo-conservation of endangered coral species can help to ensure that these invaluable and marvelous organisms do not go extinct,” wrote Powell-Palm.

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The US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against SpaceX on Thursday for allegedly refusing to consider hiring asylum seekers and refugees. According to a DOJ statement, Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company “routinely discouraged” applicants because of their citizenship status from at least September 2018 to May 2022, thus violating the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

The DOJ argues SpaceX, in multiple job postings and public statements, “wrongly claimed” that federal “export control law” regulations forced the company to only hire US citizens and green card holders. The allegedly willful misinterpretation of the law was repeatedly and publicly echoed by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. In June 2020, for example, Musk posted to X (formerly Twitter) that “U.S. law requires at least a green card to be hired at SpaceX, as rockets are advanced weapons technology.”

But as the DOJ’s announcement notes, the jobs in question weren’t only advanced engineering and tech roles, but a “variety of other positions, including welders, cooks, crane operators, baristas, software engineers, marketing professionals, and more.” According to the DOJ, SpaceX falsely claimed to be legally prohibited from hiring refugees in a total of 14 job postings, public announcements, and other online recruiting communications.

According to the INA, employers cannot discriminate against hiring asylees or refugees unless a specific executive order, government contract, law, or other federal regulation prevents them. “In this instance no [such situation] required or permitted SpaceX to engage in the widespread discrimination,” argues DOJ representatives.

[Related: SpaceX’s Starship launch caused a ‘mini earthquake’ and left a giant mess.]

Musk, however, has already doubled down on his and fellow employees’ previous assertions via an August 24 post to X, claiming SpaceX was “told repeatedly” that hiring non-permanent US residents would violate international arms trafficking laws. “This is yet another case of weaponization of the DOJ for political purposes,” added Musk, who purchased the social media platform formerly known as Twitter in October 2022. Lawyers like Rebecca Bernhard, a partner at Dorsey & Whitney specializing in employment-related issues involving work visas and immigration challenges, doubt the validity of Musk’s defense.

“While it is lawful for an employer to refuse to provide employer-sponsorship to a potential employee (for example, by not sponsoring the individual for an H-1B), it is not lawful to require that the employee be a US citizen,” she explains via email. Bernhard argues that while, “There are other classes of immigrants who have work authorization in the US and do not need employer sponsorship… To require someone be a US citizen would discriminate against these individuals.”

One potential exception, however, are employers subject to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) or the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). Bernhard notes that, “it appears the DOJ is claiming SpaceX fraudulently relied on this exception.” 

“While I cannot comment on whether SpaceX is subject to ITAR or EAR, I can state that the DOJ takes the anti-discrimination provisions of the INA very seriously, aggressively enforces them, and interprets the ITAR and EAR exceptions very narrowly,” adds Bernhard.

The DOJ filing seeks fair consideration and back pay for those affected by the alleged discriminatory practices.

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Treated radioactive water reserves near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are now slowly dispersing into the Pacific Ocean. The initial release is the first part of a decades’ long plan to handle the hundreds of millions of gallons accumulated since the 2011 meltdown disaster. Although numerous scientific organizations and experts deem the project extremely safe—the treated waters actually contain tritium isotope levels far below global contamination standards—residents near the nuclear plant have continuously voiced concerns about potential reputational damage to the local fishing industries.

These worries are not unfounded. On Thursday, China announced a wholesale ban on the import of all “aquatic products” from Japan, effective immediately. According to the Associated Press on Friday, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) president Tomoaki Kobayakwa stated the utility provider is preparing to compensate business owners affected by the ban.

[Related: Japan’s plan to release treated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant is actually pretty safe.]

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida reiterated his plea for China to reconsider its import ban, urging them to consider the treatment plan’s numerous safety assessments. “We will keep strongly requesting that the Chinese government firmly carry out a scientific discussion,” Kishida added earlier this week, per the AP.

Final preparations for the controlled release project started on August 22, when one ton of treated water was transferred to a dilution tank containing 1,200 tons of seawater. Experts repeatedly tested the combined waters over the next two days to ensure safety. Then, experts ran 460 tons of the mixture into a mixing pool for discharge. From there, the decontaminated waters traveled an estimated 30 minutes through a 1-kilometer-long undersea tunnel, exiting into the Pacific Ocean.

In a news conference on Thursday, a Tepco spokesperson confirmed that the released water’s Becquerels per liter measurement was just 1,500 bq/L. The Becquerel is a standard unit for measuring radioactivity, and references one atomic nucleus decaying per second. Japan’s national safety standard is 60,000 bq/L.

As the AP reports, Tepco intends to release 31,200 tons of treated water into the Pacific Ocean by March 2024, barely 10 of the roughly 1,000 tanks awaiting treatment. Despite the seemingly large amount, that number is a literal and figurative drop in the bucket compared to how much irradiated water is stored near the Fukushima plant—currently filled to 98-percent of their 1.37-million-ton total capacity. The entirety of those storage containers must be cleaned and emptied in order to make way for the facilities necessary to decommission the larger power plant. The treated wastewater is expected to finish dispersing around 2035.

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Having already done a decent job of it here on Earth, humans are well on their way to polluting the skies just beyond our atmosphere. After nearly 70 years of modern rocketry and satellite projects, there are literally millions of centimeter-and-larger discarded objects orbiting the planet—alongside an estimated 130 million tinier bits of space trash. Cleaning up all that debris is already presenting a challenge for experts and legislatorsReportedly, it’s gotten so bad that pilot projects can’t even get off the ground without being forced to recalibrate their objectives.

According to the European Space Agency working alongside Swiss startup ClearSpace, project planners will need to alter their proof-of-concept “derelict object” removal mission currently scheduled for 2026. The reason? It appears the space junk intended for capture and controlled deorbiting has been hit by another piece of space junk. ESA and ClearSpace representatives estimate the most likely cause is a “hypervelocity impact of a small, untracked object” that slammed into their 113kg, two-meter-wide rocket debris target first jettisoned during a 2013 ESA mission. Although the collision appears to have resulted in a “low-energy release of new fragments,” the team’s preliminary assessment indicates a “negligible” increase in collision risks for future missions.

[Related: “How harpoons, magnets, and ion blasts could help us clean up space junk.”]

The ClearSpace-1 mission team is currently continuing as planned as more data is collected on their slightly banged-up target, while a full analysis isn’t expected for at least “several weeks.” Until then, ClearSpace and the ESA are treating the new complication as a fine example of why such projects are already so necessary.

“This fragmentation event underlines the relevance of the ClearSpace-1 mission. The most significant threat posed by larger objects of space debris is that they fragment into clouds of smaller objects that can each cause significant damage to active satellites,” ESA reps explained. “To minimize the number of fragmentation events, we must urgently reduce the creation of new space debris and begin actively mitigating the impact of existing objects.”

As Universe Today also notes, fast-tracking these projects is incredibly important in order to avoid what is known as the “Kessler cascade” or “Kessler syndrome.” In these scenarios, the orbital space above Earth becomes so junky that debris collisions are essentially impossible to avoid, thus producing more debris, which begets more collisions, and so forth. Like our other pollution-based problems here on Earth, it’s difficult to estimate a time frame for an exact tipping point—but suffice to say, agencies like the ESA will know it when they see it. Barring additional orbital shenanigans, here’s to hoping projects like ClearSpace-1 will achieve their goals and get much-needed space cleanup underway.

Update August 25, 2023 9:17am: In a statement provided to PopSci, P.J. Blount, Cardiff University law lecturer and executive secretary for the International Institute of Space Law wrote:

“Space debris is an increasing problem that puts the benefits we receive from space at risk. Reducing the overall amount of debris will be critical to avoiding the onset Kessler syndrome. This will need to be a global effort, which will require coordination and cooperation of the major space powers. In the near term, it is unlikely that we will see new international law emerge to help address this issue. National level legislation, might help to alleviate some pressures operators face but will not be able to sufficiently address the debris problem without a global effort.”

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The largest cryptological survey of Loch Ness in over 50 years is scheduled to take place this weekend, featuring technology never before used to search for the elusive, still unproven Loch Ness Monster. Affectionately known by many as “Nessie,” no physical evidence of the cryptid—a creature whose existence isn’t proven by science or biology—has ever been found. The expedition is sponsored by the “independent and voluntary research team,” Loch Ness Exploration (LNE), an organization that is currently seeking additional help from the public in conducting a “giant surface watch” of the loch’s waters. Although an “overwhelming” demand has already resulted in sold out in-person spots, those who can’t make it over to Scotland can still tune in to LNE’s official 24/7 live stream to help out organizers.

“Since starting LNE, it’s always been our goal to record, study and analyze all manner of natural behavior and phenomena that may be more challenging to explain,” Alan McKenna, LNE founder, said in a statement earlier this month. “It’s our hope to inspire a new generation of Loch Ness enthusiasts and by joining this large scale surface watch… to personally contribute towards this fascinating mystery that has captivated so many people from around the world.”

[Related: New DNA evidence may prove what the Loch Ness Monster really is.]

Alleged sightings of the supposed lake monster (or monsters) in Loch Ness date back centuries, but the tales particularly rose to global attention after the famous 1934 “Surgeon’s Photo.” Although the iconic silhouette was later proved a hoax, folklore surrounding a large aquatic creature lurking within the loch remains strong. In 2019, samples taken from the nearly 22-square-mile body of water indicated the prevalence of eel DNA, potentially providing an explanation for at least some of visitors’ sightings over the decades. The collected DNA, however, did not indicate an eel’s size, thus adding little support to a “giant eel” theory. Of course, many still hold out hope for the possibility of a somehow still undiscovered pod of plesiosaurs calling Loch Ness home.

On August 26 and 27, however, the LNE team will deploy at least a few new tools in hopes of uncovering evidence of something strange. According to the event’s announcement page, drones will traverse the loch while taking thermal imaging of the waters via infrared cameras, potentially “identifying any mysterious anomalies.” Meanwhile, researchers will repeatedly deploy an underwater hydrophone to listen in on any “Nessie-like calls.”

“The weekend gives an opportunity to search the waters in a way that has never been done before, and we can’t wait to see what we find,” said Loch Ness Centre general manager, Paul Nixon. 

Of course, the odds aren’t exactly in Nessie volunteers’ favor following decades of debunks, hoaxes, and misattributed sightings. Still, it’s probably as nice a time of the year as any to get out onto the loch and enjoy the Scottish summer.

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A bimanual robot controlled by a new artificial intelligence system responds to real-time tactile feedback so precisely that it can pick up individual Pringles chips without breaking them. Despite the delicacy required for such a feat, the AI program’s methodology allows it to learn specific tasks solely through simulated scenarios in just a couple of hours.

Researchers at University of Bristol’s Bristol Robotics Laboratory detailed their new “Bi-Touch” system in a new paper published on August 23 via IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. In their review, the team highlights how their AI directs its pair of robotic limbs to “solve tasks even under unexpected perturbations and manipulate delicate objects in a gentle way,” lead author and engineering professor Yijiong Lin said in a statement on Thursday.

What makes the team’s advancements so promising is its leveraging of two robotic arms, versus a single limb as usually seen in most tactile robotic projects. Despite doubling the number of limbs, however, training only takes just a few hours. To accomplish this, researchers first train their AI in a simulation environment, then apply the finalized Bi-Touch system to their physical robot arms.

[Related: This agile robotic hand can handle objects just by touch.]

“With our Bi-Touch system, we can easily train AI agents in a virtual world within a couple of hours to achieve bimanual tasks that are tailored towards the touch,” Lin continued. “And more importantly, we can directly apply these agents from the virtual world to the real world without further training.”

Bi-Touch system’s success is owed to its reliance on Deep Reinforcement Learning (Deep-RL), in which robots attempt tasks through copious trial-and-error experimentation. When successful, researchers give AI a “reward” note, much like when training a pet. Over time, the AI learns the best steps to achieve its given goal—in this case, using the two limbs each capped with a single, soft pad to pick up and maneuver objects such as foam brain mold, a plastic apple, and an individual Pringles chip. With no visual inputs, the Bi-Touch system only relies on proprioceptive feedback such as force, physical positioning, and self-movement.

The team hopes that their new Bi-Touch system could one day deploy in industries such as fruit-picking, domestic services, and potentially even integrate into artificial limbs to recreate touch sensations. According to researchers, the Bi-Touch system’s utilization of “affordable software and hardware,” coupled with the impending open-source release of its coding, ensures additional teams around the world can experiment and adapt the program to their goals.

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The ancient Japanese art of paper folding and cutting known as kirigami has increasingly inspired a new generation of engineering materials, resulting in strikingly beautiful and resilient designs. The latest iteration, courtesy of researchers at MIT, adds attributes found in both honeycomb and human bones to further strengthen advanced architectural materials, as well as potentially boost the resilience of certain airplanes, spacecraft, and robots.

As detailed in a new paper to be presented at American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ upcoming Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, the team at MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA) developed a novel method to manufacture plate lattices—high-performance materials useful in automotive and aerospace designs. “This material is like steel cork. It is lighter than cork, but with high strength and high stiffness,” explains Neil Gershefeld, the paper’s senior author and lead researcher at MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA).

To achieve their breakthrough, engineers altered a traditional origami Miura-ori crease already used in creating plate lattices for “sandwich structures,” which place a corrugated core between two flat plates. Although standard plate lattice sandwich structures are often made with slow, costly, and difficult adhesive and welding, the team modified a Miura-ori design’s sharp angles into facets, allowing for plate attachments via rivets and bolts. This altered design can be further customized via different creasing patterns and shapes to hone specific stiffness, flexibility, and strength—much like cellular shapes found within bones and honeycombs.

[Related: Origami-inspired robot can gently turn pages and carry objects 16,000 times its weight.]

According to the team’s findings, the kirigami-augmented plate lattices withstood three times as much force as standard aluminum corrugation designs. Such variations show immense promise for lightweight, shock-absorbing sections needed within cars, planes, and spacecraft.

“Plate lattices’ construction has been so difficult that there has been little research on the macro scale,” explained Alfonso Parra Rubio, a co-lead author of the paper and a research assistant in the CBA. “We think folding is a path to easier utilization of this type of plate structure made from metals.”

To demonstrate both the kirigami-inspired structural and artistic capabilities, some of the team’s graduate students even designed a trio of large, three-dimensional sculptures currently on display in the MIT Media Lab. “At the end of the day, the artistic piece is only possible because of the math and engineering contributions we are showing in our papers,” said Parra Rubio. “But we don’t want to ignore the aesthetic power of our work.”

For the time being, the new plate lattice manufacturing method remains difficult to model ahead of construction. Going forward, however, the team intends to build user-friendly CAD tools to streamline and simplify the kirigami lattice design process. According to MIT’s announcement on Tuesday, they also hope to investigate ways to reduce the computational costs that go into simulating designs ahead of production.

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Humans are predicted to go through nearly 175 million bags of coffee over the next year, totalling over 23 billion pounds of spent coffee grounds. For decades, most of that waste has been generally destined for landfills, the transport of which results in large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. It stands to reason that these spent coffee grounds (after a cup of joe or two) offer a massive, untapped recyclable resource opportunity—and researchers at Australia’s RMIT University have potentially figured out just what to do with them.

According to findings recently published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, engineers have developed concrete that is almost 30 percent stronger than existing standards after mixing in coffee-derived biochar. To create the new, charcoal-like additive, the team employed a low-energy process known as pyrolysis, in which organic waste is heated to 350 degrees Celsius without oxygen to avoid generating carbon dioxide. Roughly 15 percent of sand used in traditional concrete was then swapped for the coffee biochar, offering not only a more resilient building material, but one that could take care of a massive food waste obstacle.

[Related: Dirty diapers could be recycled into cheap, sturdy concrete.]

“Our research is in the early stages, but these exciting findings offer an innovative way to greatly reduce the amount of organic waste that goes to landfill,” Shannon Kilmartin-Lynch, a postdoctoral fellow and joint lead author, said in a statement.

Speaking with The Guardian on August 22, Kilmartin-Lynch explained although coffee biochar is structurally finer than sand, its porous qualities allows the cement to actually better bind to the organic material. While in its early testing stages, the coffee-concrete is showing immense engineering promise.

Replacing at least some of traditional concrete’s sand also offers a major additional bonus to the team’s innovation. According to the university, 50 billion metric tons of natural sand is annually used in construction projects across the globe—resulting in a huge stress on ecosystems such as riverbeds and banks. Minimizing sand mining in favor of recycled coffee grounds therefore offers an additional, positive environmental effect.

If further research and finetuning goes according to plan, essentially all spent coffee ground waste could be put towards new concrete projects.The research team now intends to explore practical implementation standards, as well as field trials in collaboration with outside industry leaders. Perhaps joining forces with both the diaper concrete engineers is in order.

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While the planet continues to endure scorching, unprecedented temperatures, a 60-square-foot shipping container is serving as a testing ground for passive, sustainable cooling solutions. As detailed in a new study published in the research journal Energies, an engineering team at Washington State University is utilizing the space to find and improve upon ancient cooling methods that don’t generate any forms of greenhouse gas—including water evaporation atop repurposed wind towers.

Buildings require roughly 60 percent of the entire world’s electricity, almost 20 percent of which is annually earmarked to keep those structures cool and comfortable. As society contends with climate change’s most ravaging effects, air conditioning systems’ requirements are only expected to rise in the coming years—potentially generating a feedback loop that could exacerbate carbon emission levels. Finding green ways to lower businesses’ and homes’ internal temperatures will therefore need solutions other than simply boosting wasteful AC units.

[Related: Moondust could chill out our overheated Earth, some scientists predict.]

This is especially vital as rising global populations require new construction, particularly within the developing world. According to Omar Al-Hassawi, lead author and assistant professor in WSU’s School of Design and Construction, this push will be a major issue if designers continue to rely on mechanical systems—such as traditional, electric AC units. “There’s going to be a lot more air conditioning that’s needed, especially with the population rise in the hotter regions of the world,” Al-Hassawi said in a statement.

“There might be [some] inclusion of mechanical systems, but how can we cool buildings to begin with—before relying on the mechanical systems?” he adds.

By retrofitting their shipping container test chamber with off-the-grid, solar powered battery storage, AL-Hassawi’s team can heat their chamber to upwards of 130 degrees Fahrenheit to test out their solutions while measuring factors such as air velocity, temperature, and humidity. The team is particularly focused on optimizing a passive cooling method involving large towers and evaporative cooling that dates as far back as 2,500 BCE in ancient Egypt. In these designs, moisture evaporates at the tower’s top, which turns into cool, heavier air that then sinks down to the habitable space below. In the team’s version, moisture could be generated via misting nozzles, shower heads, or simply water-soaked pads.

“It’s an older technology, but there’s been an attempt to innovate and use a mix of new and existing technologies to improve performance and the cooling capacity of these systems,” explained Al-Hassawi, who also envisions retrofitting smokestacks in older buildings to work as new cooling towers.

“That’s why research like this would really help,” he adds. “How can we address building design, revive some of these more ancient strategies, and include them in contemporary building construction? The test chamber becomes a platform to do this.”

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Despite long hours, physical demands, and often unhygienic working conditions, the average salary of a janitor in the United States is less than $34,000. Somatic, a robotic cleaning service for commercial buildings founded in 2020, offers a robot that can do the job for barely a third of that wage.

“We aim for customers to walk in and not be able to tell if a person or a robot cleaned the bathroom,” Somatic CEO Michael Levy tells PopSci.

In time-lapsed video footage recently highlighted by New Atlas and elsewhere, a Somatic bathroom bot can be seen roaming the halls of a medical facility, entering both single and multi-stall restrooms, as well as attending to tasks like spraying disinfectant and vacuuming the floor. According to Levy, “Less frequent tasks like restocking consumables (paper towels, toilet paper, and soap) and taking the trash out still require local staff input.”

[Related: The germiest places you might not be cleaning.]

But although Levy assures customers—and laborers—that its line of semi-autonomous machines first unveiled in 2020 are meant as an aid alongside sanitation workers, others aren’t so sure.

For Paris Marx, a longtime tech industry critic and host of the podcast, Tech Won’t Save Us, Somatic’s robots are another  example of an engineering team believing they can understand and automate tasks when “they really have no idea what a janitor (in this case) really does.”

Marx notes the more pressing concerns in many automation drives are the scare tactics employed by managers, who often use the threat of new technologies to force workers into accepting lower wages, worse conditions, and consent to surveillance technologies on the job.

Meanwhile, those within the janitorial and service industries echoed their concern about the rise of automated products like those offered by Somatic.

“As we have seen during the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes this summer, every industry is experiencing technological changes that may impact workers’ lives,” a spokesperson for Service Employees International Union (SEIU) said. “Whether it’s actors, writers, or janitors, what is important is for employers to negotiate with workers through their unions how these technologies will be employed to ensure the best outcomes—for consumers, workers, their families, and our communities.”

[Related: Study shows the impact of automation on worker pay.]

According to Marx, the current onslaught of AI-powered and robotic labor products are reminiscent of tech companies’ and media’s job doomsday prophecies from the mid-2010s. “[T]he reality was that while robots were trialed in everything from elder care to food service, very few of them actually stuck around because they simply didn’t do the job as well as a human,” says Marx. “A decade later, we’re repeating a similar cycle with generative AI and robots like Somatic’s bathroom cleaning robot, but I don’t expect the outcome to be any different than last time.”

“When you watch their demonstration video, the robot is only going over clean bathrooms—it never shows us how it handles a real mess,  says Marx, noting the robot appears slow, and doesn’t seem to provide a deep clean most people might expect for a public restroom.

According to Levy, each initial setup of their bathroom bots is done virtually from Somatic’s office. “We ‘play the worst video game ever,’” he says. “We clean the bathroom one time using software we built. That cleaning plan is then pushed to the robot via an [over the air] update.”

For Marx, however, there’s room for improvement. “I also didn’t see it touch the sinks,” they note.

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A massive cargo ship retrofitted with a pair of nearly 125-foot-tall “wing sails” has set out on its maiden voyage, potentially providing a new template for wind-powered ocean liners. Chartered by shipping firm Cargill, the Pyxis Ocean’s journey will take it from China to Brazil in a test of its two, rigid “WindWings” constructed from the same material as wind turbines. According to the BBC on Monday, the design harkening back to traditional boat propulsion methods could reduce the vessel’s lifetime emissions by as much as 30 percent.

Per an official announcement on August 21, Pyxis Ocean’s WindWings can save 1.5 tonnes of fuel per wing, per day. Combined with alternative fuel sources, that number could rise. During its estimated six week travels, the cargo ship’s sails will be closely monitored in the hopes of scaling the technology across both Cargill’s fleet, as well as the larger shipping industry. Speaking with BBC, one project collaborator estimated a ship using four such wings could save as much as 20 tonnes of CO2 every day.

[Related: These massive, wing-like ‘sails’ could add wind power to cargo ships.]

“Wind is a near marginal cost-free fuel and the opportunity for reducing emissions, alongside significant efficiency gains in vessel operating costs, is substantial,” explained John Cooper, CEO of project collaborator, BAR Technologies.

In addition to being a zero emission propulsion source, wind power is both a non-depleting resource as well as predictable. Such factors could prove extremely promising in an industry responsible for around 2-3 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions—around 837 million tonnes of CO2 per year. Less than 100 cargo ships currently utilize some form of wind-assisted technology, a fraction of the over 110,000 operational vessels throughout the world. Depending on Pyxis Ocean’s performance, the massive WindWings could help spur increased green tech retrofitting, as well as new builds already coming equipped with the proper systems.

Elsewhere, similar wind-based vessel projects are already underway. Earlier this year, the Swedish company Oceanbird began construction on a set of 40-meter high, 200 metric ton sails to be retrofitted on the 14-year-old car carrier, Wallenius Tirranna. According to the trade publication Offshore Energy, one of Oceanbird’s sails could cut down emissions by 10 percent, saving around 675,000 liters of diesel per year.

“The maritime industry is on a journey to decarbonize—it’s not an easy one, but it is an exciting one,” said Jan Bieleman, president of Cargill’s ocean transportation business.

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Thousands of students heading into the new school year will arrive in classrooms from kindergarten to highschool alongside a new tutoring assistant: a large language model. 

As CNN noted today, the education nonprofit service Khan Academy, is expanding its Khanmigo AI access to over 8,000 educators and K-12 students as part of its ongoing pilot program for the new technology. According to Khan Academy’s project description, Khanmigo is underpinned by a version of OpenAI’s GPT-4 large language model (LLM) trained on Khan Academy’s own educational content. Additional parameters are encoded into the product to tailor Khanmigo’s encouraging response tone, while also preventing it from too easily divulging answers for students.

But despite past controversies regarding the use of AI chatbots as stand-ins for various historical figures, Khanmigo reportedly embraces the concept. In its current iteration, users can interact with chatbots inspired by real people like Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cleopatra, and George Washington, alongside fictional characters such as Hamlet, Winnie the Pooh, and Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. And instead of glossing over difficult topics, AI invoking complex figures purportedly do not shy away from their onerous pasts.

“As Thomas Jefferson, my views on slavery were fraught with contradiction,” Khanmigo reportedly told a user. “On one hand, I publicly expressed my belief that slavery was morally wrong and a threat to the survival of the new American nation… Yet I was a lifelong slaveholder, owning over 600 enslaved people throughout my lifetime.”

But despite these creative features, Khanmigo is still very much a work in progress—even when it comes to straightforward math. Simple concepts such as multiplication and division of integers and decimals repeatedly offer incorrect answers, and will even sometimes treat students’ wrong inputs as the correct solutions. That said, users can flag Khanmigo’s wrong or problematic responses. Khan Academy representatives still refer to the software as a “beta product,” and reports continue to describe the pilot period as a “test.” Another 10,000 outside users in the US agreed to participate as subjects while paying a donation to Khan Academy for the service, CNN adds. 

[Related: “School district uses ChatGPT to help remove library books”]

As access to generative AI like Khanmigo and ChatGPT continue to expand, very little legislation currently exists to regulate or oversee such advancements. Instead, the AI tools are already being used for extremely controversial ends, such as school districts employing ChatGPT to assist in screening library books to ban. 

Although they believe AI could become a “pretty powerful learning tool,” Kristen DiCerbo, Khan Academy’s Chief Learning Officer conceded to CNN on Monday that, “The internet can be a pretty scary place, and it can be a pretty good place. I think that AI is the same.”

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Spotify’s campaign into the podcast industry has been a rocky ride, at best. On the one hand, its 2019 purchase of Anchor resulted in as much as 44 percent of all podcasts being hosted on the production app. Other, more controversial investments have created plenty of issues for the music streaming company. Spotify executives have since searched for ways to save much needed cash—even if that means curbing the very podcasts that might help ease their stress.

According to internal documents reviewed by Bloomberg on August 17, the audio streaming giant recently considered pulling the plug on some of its most popular white noise and ambient noise podcasts in a bid to boost annual gross profits by $38 million. While that might seem counterintuitive at first glance, the reasoning resides within Spotify’s algorithmic foundations.

[Related: Spotify wants to understand your body on music.]

As Bloomberg notes, white noise podcasts reportedly can rack up an estimated 3 million daily consumption hours on Spotify. This thanks in large part to their classification as “talk” content, instead of music. Earlier this year, it was revealed producers of such ambient series can earn as much as $18,000 a month via their ventures—very little of which apparently ended up in Spotify’s pockets. To solve their predicament, the internal documents apparently floated the idea of simply removing such shows altogether from the platform’s talk feed, banning all future uploads of similar content, and steering listeners towards “comparable programming.”

What programming could be considered “comparable” was not specified in the documents, although as Engadget explains, it’s likely could entail redirection to “other types of content meant to induce and improve sleep, as well as to help calm anxiety.” In theory, this could generate greater ad revenue for Spotify, although customers likely may be less than thrilled at their favorite chill playlists’ sudden disappearance.

Although a Spotify spokesperson confirms the potential strategic shift “did not come to fruition,” some ambient and white noise podcasters recounted recent issues with their own episodes on Spotify. In one instance, an upload disappeared for about three weeks, costing the creator around 50,000 downloads per day. Another, similar 10-day situation for a separate upload sank their listenership by 20,000 downloads each day. The creator argues they have yet to recover the lost audience numbers after both occurrences.

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It’s relatively easy to collect water via harvesting fog—in fact, only a few square meters of meshing can collect upwards of several hundred liters of liquid per day. In many cities, however, these reservoirs of water are often contaminated by atmospheric pollution, thus rendering them unfit for cooking or drinking. 

Instead of relying on additional, and in many cases costly, cleaning methods, researchers recently considered the feasibility of an all-in-one fog moisture harvester and purifier. What resulted is an extremely promising, effective, and simple creation that not only offers users potable water, but potentially could clean up power plants’ steam emissions.

As detailed on August 16 in Nature Sustainability, a team of scientists has designed a closely knit metal lattice coated with a mix of polymers and titanium dioxide. The slick polymer component ensures water droplets can quickly collect and trickle down the net, while the titanium dioxide serves as a chemical catalyst to break down organic pollutant molecules.

[Related: Urban water crises often boil down to classism.]

To test out their design, the team artificially generated fog within a laboratory in Zurich which housed the new meshing. According to their measurements, their installation collected 8 percent of the ambient air’s moisture, while the titanium dioxide neutralized roughly 94 percent of added organic compounds. These extra pollutant molecules included both diesel droplets, as well as bisphenol A (BPA), a hormonally active agent most commonly found in everyday plastics.

“Our system not only harvests fog but also treats the harvested water, meaning it can be used in areas with atmospheric pollution, such as densely populated urban centers,” Ritwick Ghosh, an interdisciplinary social scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research and one of the project’s researchers, said in a statement.

As an added bonus, the technology requires ostensibly zero maintenance or artificial power source. Instead, UV light reactivates the titanium oxide in a process known as photocatalytic memory. According to researchers, approximately 30 minutes of exposure to sunlight is enough to keep the titanium oxide activated for a full 24 hours—an important time ratio, given areas of extreme fog (unsurprisingly) don’t experience much sunlight.

The team’s new mesh isn’t limited to smaller scale use—researchers, including project lead Thomas Schutzius, envision installing the technology in power plants’ cooling towers. “In the cooling towers, steam escapes up into the atmosphere. In the United States, where I live, we use a great deal of fresh water to cool power plants,” Schutzius explained. “It would make sense to capture some of this water before it escapes and ensure that it is pure in case you want to return it back to the environment.” The researchers’ design performed equally as well at both small settings, as well as within a pilot plant environment, implying both personal and large scale solutions are possible in the future.

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The social media platform formerly known as Twitter is facing an exodus of users (despite what its CEO may be saying). According to a major new survey from Nature published on August 16, it’s clear one demographic is taking a particularly major hit in numbers: scientists.

Out of nearly 9,200 researchers recently polled, over half reported they have decreased their usage of X over the last six months, with nearly seven percent stating they have left the site altogether. Around 46 percent have since moved onto alternative platforms including Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, and TikTok. Conversely, less than 10 percent of those surveyed believe they are spending more time on the app.

The reasons given for their departures likely come as little surprise. According to Nature’s report, many cited Elon Musk’s “management of the platform,” while others remarked on the rise in fake accounts, trolls, and unchecked hate speech that now runs rampant across the website.

[Related: Elon Musk says Twitter will delete inactive users’ accounts.]

According to experts interviewed by Nature, such a sustained and unequivocal decline in use goes far beyond mere inconvenience. Once solid online scientific communities now face fragmentation and disorganization across multiple platforms, leaving a vacuum of reliable, verified information in their wake. This is particularly true, Nature explains, for those who are traditionally underrepresented in their fields, such as female-identifying scientists and researchers of color.

In recent years, social media platforms like Twitter have been vital to BIPOC communities for communication, organization, and information sharing. As Nature noted in the past, ecosystems like Twitter helped dramatically boost Black scientist voices while also serving as a way to improve industry accountability and fight against harassment.

“People would just go to that hashtag and they’d see everyone who was talking about a very particular interest,” recounted Inger Mewburn, an education and technology researcher at the Australian National University in Canberra. “It’s just hard to [now] know where people are hanging out.”

[Related: Twitter’s latest bad idea will kill vital research and fun bot accounts.]

Another deterrent in remaining on X is its recent content restrictions. Musk’s X tenure has included paywalling the platform’s formerly free application program interface (API) access. The decision particularly affects researchers focused on online social cultures, disaster response, and misinformation, who relied upon the API to pull extremely useful datasets for their own work.

Unfortunately, there is no clear consensus on where scientific communities go from here. The social media schisms formed within researchers continue to evolve, and as Nature notes, it may take some time before anything rivaling X’s scope emerges—if ever. One thing appears certain, however: most appear to agree remaining on X isn’t tenable.

“Twitter has always been not so nice, let’s say,” said one survey participant. “But it is a mess right now.”

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On Wednesday, The Associated Press released its first official standards regarding its journalists’ use of artificial intelligence—guidelines that may serve as a template for many other news organizations struggling to adapt to a rapidly changing industry. The directives arrive barely a month after the leading global newswire service inked a deal with OpenAI allowing ChatGPT to enlist the AP’s vast archives for training purposes.

“We do not see AI as a replacement of journalists in any way,” Amanda Barrett, VP for Standards and Inclusion, said in an blog post on August 16. Barrett added, however, that the service felt it necessary to issue “guidance for using generative artificial intelligence, including how and when it should be used.”

[Related: School district uses ChatGPT to help remove library books.]

In short, while AP journalists are currently prohibited from using generative content in their own “publishable content,” they are also highly encouraged to familiarize themselves with the tools. All AI content is to be treated as “unvetted source material,” and writers should be cautious of outside sourcing, given the rampant proliferation of AI-generated misinformation. Meanwhile, the AP has committed to not use AI tools to alter any of its photos, video, or audio.

Earlier this year, the Poynter Institute, a journalist think tank, called AI’s rise a “transformational moment.” They stressed the need for news organizations to not only create sufficient standards, but share those regulations with their audiences for the sake of transparency. In its coverage published on Thursday, the AP explained it has experimented with “simpler forms” of AI over the past decade, primarily for creating shorter clips regarding corporate earning reports and real time sports score reporting, but that the new technological leaps require careful reassessment and clarifications.

[Related: ChatGPT’s accuracy has gotten worse, study shows.]

The AP’s new AI standards come after months of controversy surrounding the technology’s usage within the industry. Earlier this year, Futurism revealed CNET had been utilizing AI to generate some of its articles without disclosing the decision to audiences, prompting widespread backlash. A few AI-generated articles have appeared on Gizmodo and elsewhere, often laden with errors. PopSci does not currently employ generative AI writing.

“Generative AI makes it even easier for people to intentionally spread mis- and disinformation through altered words, photos, video or audio…,” Barrett wrote in Wednesday’s AP blog post. “If journalists have any doubt at all about the authenticity of the material, they should not use it.”

According to Barrett, a forthcoming AP committee dedicated to AI developments could be expected to update their official guidance policy as often as every three months.

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If you think of Pink Floyd’s classic track “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 1),” chances are you will instantly hear that iconic, dronelike chorus hook in your head. Its plodding melody is a key component to Roger Waters’ prosody—the vocal variations like intonation, stress, rhythm, and accent that make human speech sound… well, human. Getting a text-to-speech program to recite “We don’t need no education,” however, usually produces a very different, mechanical kind of monotone. But what if such tools could not only understand your mind’s inner voice, but more accurately recreate your intended prosody features, as well?

Thanks to new breakthroughs from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, experts are closer than ever to making that a reality.

[Related: This AI-powered brain scanner can paraphrase your thoughts.]

According to findings published on August 15 via PLOS Biology, a team of neuroscientists have reconstructed an audio clip of—you guessed it—Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” using only electrical activity recorded from listeners’ brains. As UC Berkeley’s announcement notes, this marks the first time researchers have successfully recreated a song’s instrumentation, rhythm, and vocal melodies from just brain scans.

The impressive feat was over a decade in the making. Between 2008 and 2015, researchers enlisted 29 epilepsy patients already scheduled as part of their treatments to receive sets of nail-like electrode brain implants. These arrays granted the team an opportunity to easily record their brain activity. From there, researchers set about matching areas of neuroactivity to individual audio frequency bands—128 of them, to be exact. As The New York Times noted on August 15, this meant training 128 separate computer models to decode the data, which when combined, offered a striking recreation of Pink Floyd’s song.

[Related: The science is clear: Metal music is good for you.]

“It’s a wonderful result,” study co-author Robert Knight, a neurologist and professor of psychology at UC Berkeley said in a statement. “As this whole field of brain machine interfaces progresses, this gives you a way to add musicality to future brain implants for people who need it,” such as those suffering from ALS or similar speech-compromising conditions.

“It gives you an ability to decode not only the linguistic content, but some of the prosodic content of speech, some of the affect. I think that’s what we’ve really begun to crack the code on,” added Knight. In addition to their promising advancements in audio recreation, Knight’s team also could finally confirm that a brain’s right side is more equipped for music than its left cortex.

As for why researchers landed on “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 1)” of all songs is less symbolic than practical. The epilepsy patients skewed older, and most already enjoyed the song. Speaking with The NY Times, one researcher reasoned their data would be less reliable or useful, “if [participants] said, ‘I can’t listen to this garbage.’”

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Some of the most expensive and difficult-to-source materials found in smartphone screens and solar cells may soon be phased out for a cheaper, exponentially more common substitute. This substitute isn’t a new find—it is actually most often associated with kitchen appliances and motorcycles.

Whenever a company’s fridge, tool, or other item is advertised as “stainless steel,” they have chromium to thank. Manufacturers have long valued the hard, shiny metal’s anticorrosive properties, and adding it into steel allows it to resist degradation and tarnishing. Meanwhile, electroplating a thin layer of chromium atop another metal produces what is commonly known as chrome plating—think Harley-Davidson motorcycles, or hot-rod cars. Chrome can reflect as much as 70 percent of visible spectrum light, as well as 90 percent of infrared radiation.

According to findings recently published in Nature Chemistry from a team at Switzerland’s University of Basel, carefully substituting chromium into catalysts and luminescent materials also works nearly as well as their traditional noble metal components, osmium and ruthenium, but for a fraction of the cost. What’s more, chromium is 20,000 times more common within the Earth’s crust than either noble meta—both of which are nearly as rare as gold or platinum.

[Related: Solar panels are getting more efficient, thanks to perovskite.]

As The Independent explained on August 14, the team first inserted chromium atoms next to hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen within a stiff molecular framework. In this array, chromium was much more reactive than its noble metal counterpoints, while simultaneously keeping energy loss at a minimum during molecular vibrations.

When irradiated by a red lamp, the chromium compound also stored energy within its molecules for potential later use, much like a plant’s photosynthesis. “Because of this, there’s also the potential to use our new materials in artificial photosynthesis to produce solar fuels,” Oliver Wenger, research lead and a professor within the University of Basel’s department of chemistry, said in a recent statement.

Although previous research into noble metal alternatives investigated the potential of using iron and copper to some success, chromium initially appears to perform much better than either option. That said, Wenger concedes that “it seems unclear which metal will ultimately win the race when it comes to future applications in luminescent materials and artificial photosynthesis.”

Going forward, Wenger’s team hopes to scale their research to be tested in other applications, which could allow molecules to glow across the color spectrum to include red, green, and blue hues. Additionally, optimizing its catalytic attributes could further push it towards a viable alternative material to use in solar power arrays.

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The Japanese art of paper cutting and folding known as kirigami has provided a wealth of inspiration for ingenious robotic designs, but the latest example might be the most versatile and impressive yet. As first detailed earlier this month in Nature Communications, a team at North Carolina State University recently developed a new soft robot gripper sensitive enough to handle water droplets and turn book pages, but strong enough to achieve a 16,000 payload-to-weight ratio. With additional refinements, engineers believe the gripper could find its way into a wide array of industries—as well as into human prosthetics.

“It is difficult to develop a single, soft gripper that is capable of handling ultrasoft, ultrathin, and heavy objects, due to tradeoffs between strength, precision and gentleness,” study author Jie Yin, an NC State associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, said in a statement. “Our design achieves an excellent balance of these characteristics.”

[Related: Foldable robots with intricate transistors can squeeze into extreme situations.]

While previous soft grippers have been developed using elements of kirigami, the researchers’ tendril-like structures distribute their force in such a way as to be delicate and precise enough to help zip certain zippers and pick up coins. As New Scientist recently also noted, the shape and angling allows the 0.4 gram grippers to hold objects as heavy as 6.4 kilograms—a payload-to-weight ratio 2.5 times higher than the previous industry record. 

Because the grippers’ abilities derive from their design and not the materials themselves, the team also showcased additional potential by building iterations from plant leaves. The potential for biodegradable grippers could prove extremely useful in situations where they are only temporarily necessary, such as handling dangerous medical waste like needles.

If all that weren’t enough, the NC State team went yet one step further by experimenting with attaching their grippers to a myoelectric prosthetic hand controlled via muscle activity in a user’s forearm. “The new gripper can’t replace all of the functions of existing prosthetic hands, but it could be used to supplement those other functions,” said Helen Huang, paper co-author and NC State’s Jackson Family Distinguished Professor in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering. “And one of the advantages of the kirigami grippers is that you would not need to replace or augment the existing motors used in robotic prosthetics. You could simply make use of the existing motor when utilizing the grippers.”

Yin, Huang, and their colleagues hope to eventually collaborate with robotic prosthetic makers, food processing companies, as well as electronics and pharmaceutical businesses to develop additional usages for their soft grippers.

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Investing in carbon capture technology will be necessary for a sustainable future, but environmental advocates frequently stress that this alone is not a cure-all for pollutants. The DOE, for example, estimates between 400 million and 1.8 billion tons of CO2 will need annual sequestration to meet the nation’s net-zero goal by 2050. Meanwhile, critics are concerned fossil fuel companies could use carbon capture projects as an excuse to continue with business-as-usual—and a recent announcement may do little to ease their worries.

Last week, the US Department of Energy announced up to $1.2 billion in funding for the nation’s first commercial-scale carbon capture facilities designed to pull harmful greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere for underground storage. The two locations near Corpus Christi, Texas, and Lake Charles, Louisiana, will be the largest direct air capture (DAC) plants ever constructed. The facilities are estimated to annually remove over 2 million metric tons of CO2 emissions from the atmosphere—roughly equivalent to taking 445,000 gas-guzzling cars off the road.

[Related: Carbon capture could keep global warming in check—here’s how it works.]

Unlike other carbon capture equipment that pulls CO2 directly from pollution-emitting machinery and facilities, DAC setups are specifically designed to offset gasses generated by vehicles and airplanes, as well as remove legacy emissions. As Ars Technica noted on Monday, legacy emissions are those already released into the atmosphere over the last century or so and still greatly contribute to the planet’s current eco crisis.

Carbon dioxide emissions that last anywhere from 300 to 1,000 years in the atmosphere often originate from the operations of corporations like Occidental, a hydrocarbon and petrochemical manufacturer long considered to be one of 100 companies responsible for an estimated 71 percent of global emissions. In 2020, Occidental (often referred to by its stock symbol abbreviation, Oxy) announced the formation of 1PointFive, a subsidiary tasked with developing carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technologies.

“1PointFive’s mission is to reduce atmospheric CO2 and help curb global temperature rise to 1.5°C by 2050 in alignment with Paris Agreement targets,” reads Oxy’s fast facts sheet for the company.

And according to the Biden administration’s August 11 announcement, 1PointFive will help oversee the development and implementation of the new carbon capture facility in Kleberg County, Texas. When completed, the South Texas DAC Hub reportedly will remove upwards of 1 million metric tons of CO2 alongside an “associated saline geologic CO2 storage site.” While undoubtedly a positive development in carbon sequestration efforts, 1PointFive’s origins illustrate the complicated landscape governments and climate advocates must deal with in the face of such steep environmental stakes.

[Related: Judge sides with youth activists in groundbreaking climate change lawsuit.]

The DOE did not respond to a request for comment at the time of writing. When asked to comment on Oxy’s role in the planet’s climate crisis, a spokesperson directed PopSci to two previous press releases—one from last week regarding the DOE announcement, and one from 2022 concerning 1PointFive’s early role in the project.

“We are one of the largest oil producers in the US,” reads Occidental’s description in each press release, adding that, “We are committed to using our global leadership in carbon management to advance a lower-carbon world.”

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Against a nationwide backdrop of book bans and censorship campaigns, Iowa educators are turning to ChatGPT to help decide which titles should be removed from their school library shelves in order to legally comply with recent Republican-backed state legislation, PopSci has learned.

According to an August 11 article in the Iowa state newspaper The Gazette, spotted by PEN America, the Mason City Community School District recently removed 19 books from its collection ahead of its quickly approaching 2023-24 academic year. The ban attempts to comply with a new law requiring Iowa school library catalogs to be both “age appropriate” and devoid of “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act.” Speaking with The Gazette last week, Mason City’s Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Bridgette Exman argued it was “simply not feasible to read every book and filter for these new requirements.”

[Related: Radio host sues ChatGPT developer over allegedly libelous claims.]

“Frankly, we have more important things to do than spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to protect kids from books,” Exman tells PopSci via email. “At the same time, we do have a legal and ethical obligation to comply with the law. Our goal here really is a defensible process.”

According to The Gazette, the resulting strategy involved compiling a master list of commonly challenged books, then utilizing a previously unnamed “AI software” to supposedly provide textual analysis for each title. Flagged books were then removed from Mason City’s 7-12th grade school library collections and “stored in the Administrative Center” as educators “await further guidance or clarity.” Titles included Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and Buzz Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights.

“We are confident this process will ensure the spirit of the law is enacted here in Mason City,” Exman said at the time. When asked to clarify what software Mason City administrators harnessed to help with their decisions on supposedly sexually explicit material, Exman revealed their AI tool of choice: “We used Chat GPT [sic] to help answer that question,” says Exman, who believes Senate File 496’s “age-appropriateness” stipulation is “pretty subjective… [but] the depictions or descriptions of sex acts filter is more objective.”

[Related: ChatGPT’s accuracy has gotten worse, study shows.]

According to Exman, she and fellow administrators first compiled a master list of commonly challenged books, then removed all those challenged for reasons other than sexual content. For those titles within Mason City’s library collections, administrators asked ChatGPT the specific language of Iowa’s new law, “Does [book] contain a description or depiction of a sex act?”

“If the answer was yes, the book will be removed from circulation and stored,” writes Exman.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is arguably the most well-known and popular—as well as controversial—generative AI program currently available to the public. Leveraging vast quantities of data, the large language model (LLM) offers users extremely convincing written responses to inputs, but often with caveats regarding misinformation, accuracy, and sourcing. In recent months, researchers have theorized its consistency and quality appears to be degrading over time.

Upon asking ChatGPT, “Do any of the following books or book series contain explicit or sexual scenes?” OpenAI’s program offered PopSci a different content analysis than what Mason City administrators received. Of the 19 removed titles, ChatGPT told PopSci that only four contained “Explicit or Sexual Content.” Another six supposedly contain “Mature Themes but not Necessary Explicit Content.” The remaining nine were deemed to include “Primarily Mature Themes, Little to No Explicit Sexual Content.”

[Related: Big Tech’s latest AI doomsday warning might be more of the same hype.]

Regardless of whether or not any of the titles do or do not contain said content, ChatGPT’s varying responses highlight troubling deficiencies of accuracy, analysis, and consistency. A repeat inquiry regarding The Kite Runner, for example, gives contradictory answers. In one response, ChatGPT deems Khaled Hosseini’s novel to contain “little to no explicit sexual content.” Upon a separate follow-up, the LLM affirms the book “does contain a description of a sexual assault.”

Exman tells PopSci that, even with ChatGPT’s deficiencies, administrators believe the tool remains the simplest way to legally comply with new legislation. Gov. Kim Reynolds’ signed off on the new bill on May 26, 2023, giving just three months to comply.

“Realistically, we tried to figure out how to demonstrate a good faith effort to comply with the law with minimal time and energy… When using ChatGPT, we used the specific language of the law: ‘Does [book] contain a description of a sex act?’ Being a former English teacher, I have personally read (and taught) many books that are commonly challenged, so I was also able to verify ChatGPT responses with my own knowledge of some of the texts. After compiling the list, we ran it by our teacher librarian, and there were no books on the final list of 19 that were surprising to her.

For now, educators like Exman are likely to continue receiving new curriculum restrictions from politicians hoping to advance their agendas. Despite the known concerns, the rush to adhere to these guidelines could result in continued utilization of AI shortcuts like ChatGPT.

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The global commercial fishing industry is a major contributor to Earth’s environmental crises and ecological destruction, but you’re unlikely to find many sustainable or vegan seafood alternatives next to the synthetic beef and chicken in grocery stores. That lack of options may soon change, however, thanks to 3D printers, mung beans, and microalgae.

At the American Chemical Society’s fall meeting this week, a team from the National University of Singapore presented the results of a newly synthesized mock seafood that could one day find its way into restaurants. After designing an ink composed of legume and microalgae proteins, alongside plant-based oils containing omega-3 fatty acids, researchers loaded their paste into a food-grade 3D printer, which then churned out small, calamari-shaped rings. The team then tossed their faux-seafood into an air fryer, and taste-tested their results. According to researchers, the end product is showing incredible promise for a new, healthy alternative to commercial seafood options.

[Related: Scientists cooked up a 3D printed cheesecake.]

Although some fishy plant-based alternatives are available to consumers right now, they frequently do not boast the same nutritional content as seafood. “Plant-based seafood mimics are out there, but the ingredients don’t usually include protein,” explains principal investigator and professor of food science and technology, Dejian Huang. “We wanted to make protein-based products that are nutritionally equivalent to or better than real seafood and address food sustainability.”

To improve their imitations, Huang’s team programmed their 3D printer to assemble their imitation calamari rings in concentric layers, thus allowing for a combination of different textures ranging from fatty and smooth, to chewy. This layered approach results in a more accurate mouth feel to their squid source material.

But calamari alternatives are only as good as they are sustainable, of course. Luckily, Huang’s new mock seafood is designed specifically with that in mind: Microalgae is nutritious, often “fishy” in taste, and extremely sustainable to farm. Mung bean protein, meanwhile, can easily be harvested from the waste product of starch noodle manufacturing. Although Huang’s team still wants to improve their creation before they begin consumer taste tests, they believe the results are already a promising step towards green seafood alternatives.

For Poornima Vijayan, a graduate student involved in the project, it’s a vital end goal. “I think it’s imminent that the seafood supply could be very limited in the future,” she says. “We need to be prepared from an alternative protein point of view, especially here in Singapore, where over 90 percent of the fish is imported.”

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