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Wireless Charging Road for Electric Buses new technology

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The technology behind the wireless charge or inductive load was discovered by Nikola Tesla in the 1890s and uses an electromagnetic field to transfer energy between two objects. In chargers, an induction coil is used to create an electromagnetic field, while a second induction coil in the charging device is used to take the field energy created and convert back into an electric current that charges the battery . All sounds relatively simple, but the inductive load has been difficult to implement, especially with larger objects, moving objects and objects that are farther away from the loader. These limitations would make urban buses, for example, unlikely candidates to use the technology. However, an Israeli company called ElectRoad announced that it has been developing a new technology (Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer - DWPT) that can drive a vehicle in motion without cables from the road. The results of the first tests were good enough to win the company a $ 120,000 gr...

Scientists Have Recorded the Sound of Two Black Holes Colliding, and You Can Hear It Too

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Something happened 3,000 million years ago1 that changed the composition of our prodigious universe forever. Two huge black holes collided, resulting in an intense explosion and forming a solitary object 49 times more massive than our sun. The explosion formed and released energy twice the mass of our sun in a fraction of a second. This sent waves of gravitation so powerful that they altered the structure of space-time itself. A super-massive black hole emerged in the aftermath. Scientists were recently able to detect this cataclysmic collision, and are learning more about black holes and the cosmos as a result. The gravitational wave observatory of the National Science Foundation made these detections. The installation is called the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO). It is led by an international group of scientists, including some from NASA, MIT and Caltech. LIGO has two different locations, one in Hanford, Washington State and the other...

Discovery of Earth’s Oldest Fossil Suggests Life Elsewhere in Our Solar System

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An international team of researchers, led by scientists at University College London (ULC), made a startling discovery that is changing the way we look at the origins of life on Earth. Fossilized bacteria were found in rock features in northern Quebec, Canada, in an area known as Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt (NSB). These rocks contained bacterial microfossils that extend aft measured less than the width of a human hair. Fossils reside in quartz layers between rock formations along the eastern shore of Hudson Bay. The discovery would never have been made without the effects of climate change. The oldest sedimentary rock in the world can be found here.1 These fossilized bacteria are much older than those previously discovered, dating back to 3.77-4.28 million years ago. The Earth itself is 4.6 billion years old. Last August, fossilized bacteria found in rock samples in Greenland became the earliest known microfossils, located in 3.7 billion years. These two discover...

Americans Are Having a Lot Less Sex, Say Researchers. Is Tech to Blame?

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US couples are having sex much less often than before the emergence of smartphones, social media and Netflix, according to a new study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior magazine. Married couples have sex 11 times less each year (from 67 to 56) than in 2002. Before this time, the sexual frequency was relatively static . The study authors examined the possible reasons for the overall decrease in frequency, such as longer hours of work and use of pornography. As it turns out, longer working hours and visualization of pornography were associated with having more, not less, sex. Estimated hours per year American adults had sex, 1989-2014: From the magazine Archive of Sexual Behavior, "Decline in sexual frequency among American adults, 1989-2014" Why the rise of social networks and smartphones coincides with a decline in sex? Although there are many culprits that affect sexual activity, such as depression and declining levels of happiness for Americans...

Are Self-Driving Cars a Motion-Sickness Nightmare Waiting to Happen?

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At first glance, the driverless car sounds great. In 2013 alone, there were 1.25 million car crash deaths worldwide. So auto-driving cars, if they are as safe as we are told, should save many lives a year. There are other benefits. Driving drunk will not be the scourge it once was. A long journey in a study, he found that damage relationships. But maybe if one does not have to drive, they can Skype with their girlfriend, instead. Travelers can avoid traffic-related stress, study, do some work, have a cocktail, or find interesting ways to heat the windows with a fellow passenger. There is an obvious drawback, so far. This is another example of the mechanization of swallowing work. Taxi drivers and long-distance truck drivers have a better backup plan. His days are numbered. Like those of Uber drivers. The problem with widespread adoption of new technology is, there are always unforeseen ramifications. Advances in rocketry for example, brought us missiles and Space Race, ...

You Are Already an Astronaut," Say Sam Harris and David Deutsch

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Astronauts rely on a number of life-supporting technologies to keep them alive in space. At the International Space Station, for example, these technologies include the Environmental Control and Vital Support System, which provides habitable air pressure, oxygen, fresh water, adequate moisture, fire detection and waste management. Relying on such systems might seem alien to non-astronauts at first glance. But is modern life different? That's the idea Sam Harris and David Deutsch explored in an episode of the Waking Up podcast, and it's an idea worth exploring now that both government and private organizations are reaffirming plans to colonize and even build cities on Mars: DD: So we evolved somewhere in East Africa in the Great Rift Valley. That was a particularly fitting environment for us to evolve, and life there was hell for humans. Unpleasant, brutal and short does not begin to describe how horrible it was, but we transformed it ... or rather, not actua...

AI Could Lead to a Dystopian Future. Can We Ensure That Doesn’t Happen?

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"On one side of the equation," says Sairah Ashman, "there is a very utopian vision of what artificial intelligence will bring us." Ashman is COO Global of Wolff Olins, a creative consulting firm. He recently gave a talk of reflection entitled Reproduction of God, a human being at the Collision conference in New Orleans, along with the creation of a related essay to spark debate. After painting a quick picture of a utopian future filled with flying cars and self-healing pods, Ashman turns to a future we may fear. "But on the other side of the equation, there is also a very dystopian view, which is that we will reach a stage where we will become redundant and where artificial intelligence and machines will take over the world. How can we prevent a dystopian future? The future does not happen to us, of course. Our future, especially as it relates to the advance of AI, depends on the decisions we make today in terms of expectations, ethics and regu...