Lifeboat Foundation

Combinatorial problems often arise in puzzles, origami, and metamaterial design. Such problems have rare collections of solutions that generate intricate and distinct boundaries in configuration space. Using standard statistical and numerical techniques, capturing these boundaries is often quite challenging. Is it possible to flatten a 3D origami piece without causing damage? This question is one such combinatorial issue. As each fold needs to be consistent with flattening, such results are difficult to predict simply by glancing at the design. To answer such questions, the UvA Institute of Physics and the research center AMOLF have shown that researchers may more effectively and precisely respond to such queries by using machine learning techniques.

Despite employing severely undersampled training sets, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) can learn to distinguish these boundaries for metamaterials in minute detail. This raises the possibility of complex material design by indicating that the network infers the underlying combinatorial rules from the sparse training set. The research team thinks this will facilitate the development of sophisticated, functional metamaterials with artificial intelligence. The team’s recent study examined the accuracy of forecasting the characteristics of these combinatorial mechanical metamaterials using artificial intelligence. Their work has also been published in the Physical Review Letters publication.

The attributes of artificial materials, which are engineered materials, are governed by their geometrical structure rather than their chemical makeup. Origami is one such metamaterial. The capacity of an origami piece to flatten is governed by how it is folded, i.e., its structure, and not by the sort of paper it is made of. More generally, the clever design enables us to accurately regulate a metamaterial’s bending, buckling, or bulging. This can be used for many different things, from satellite solar panels that unfurl to shock absorbers.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing the world. Emerging technologies on a daily basis in AI capabilities have lead to a number of innovations including autonomous vehicles, self-driving flights, robotics, etc. Some of the AI technologies feature predictions on future and accurate decision-making. AI is the best friend to technology leaders who want to make the world a better place with unfolding inventions.

Whether humans agree or not, AI developments are slowly impacting all aspects of the society including the economy. However, some technologies might even bring challenges and risks to the working environment. To keep a track on AI development, good leaders head the AI world to ensure trust, reliability, safety and accuracy.

Intelligent behaviour has long been considered a uniquely human attribute. But when computer science and IT networks started evolving, artificial intelligence and people who stood by them were on the spotlight. AI in today’s world is both developing and under control. Without a transformation here, AI will never fully deliver the problems and dilemmas of business only with data and algorithms. Wise leaders do not only create and capture vital economic values, rather build a more sustainable and legitimate organisation. Leaders in AI sectors have eyes to see AI decisions and ears to hear employees perspective.

For the past two centuries, humans have relied on fossil fuels for concentrated energy; hundreds of millions of years of photosynthesis packed into a convenient, energy-dense substance. But that supply is finite, and fossil fuel consumption has tremendous negative impact on Earth’s climate.

“The biggest challenge many people don’t realize is that even nature has no solution for the amount of energy we use,” said University of Chicago chemist Wenbin Lin. Not even photosynthesis is that good, he said: “We will have to do better than nature, and that’s scary.”

One possible option scientists are exploring is “artificial photosynthesis”—reworking a plant’s system to make our own kinds of fuels. However, the chemical equipment in a single leaf is incredibly complex, and not so easy to turn to our own purposes.

Vertical axis turbines missed their moment in the 1980s, but they are back, and they are getting bigger. That may come as a surprise. The technology was confined to niche applications and all but written off just a few years ago. Now they are poised for a new growth spurt in the rooftop field, and they are even heading out to sea.

The Long Road To Vertical Axis Wind Turbines

For those of you new to the topic, vertical axis wind turbines are engineered to make curved blades rotate around a central, upright pole. The US Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratory was experimenting with a scaled up design that resembled an egg beater back in the 1980s, as depicted in the photo at the top of this article.

Our start-up on its way to a scale-up is looking for new team members.

Plant-e, founded in 2013, generates electricity with living plants and is the only known company in the world that generates carbon-negative electricity. It doesn’t get any more sustainable than this!

Spark of Nature. It is Plant-e’s mission to provide a high-tech, nature-based solution by generating electricity with living plants.

He’s hoping that his plastic orbs, which rest between 15 and 36 feet below the ocean’s surface and hold about 528 gallons of air, will provide a water-conserving, overall sustainable alternative to on-land agricultural operations, particularly helping dry coastal nations grow more food without having to desalinate more water — a costly and resource-intensive process. The plants require just a small bit of starter water, but from there, they’re self-sustaining. Sunlight heats the submerged spheres, which contain humid air that naturally condenses into freshwater on the walls and drips back into the soil.

“Since the underwater farm needs an external source of water only for the start-up of plants growing,” reads the company’s site, “our system could be useful for those locations far from the bodies of water available.”

Climate change delegates traveling aboard private jets known to release more carbon dioxide emissions have added to the controversy surrounding the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

Hundreds of environmental activists stopped private jets from taking off from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport the day before the conference started last week.

The SisAl Pilot project produces solar-grade silicon from Spanish quartz without using coal and with zero CO₂ emissions. The company behind the project claims that the process is cheaper and more sustainable.

Organic photovoltaics, solar energy devices based on organic semiconductors, have so far achieved very promising results in experimental settings, both in terms of efficiency and stability. However, engineers have not yet devised reliable strategies to fabricate these devices on a large-scale at a reasonable cost.

Researchers at Wuhan University in China have recently identified an approach that could facilitate the rapid fabrication of photoactive layers for organic solar cells, without compromising the cells’ efficiency and stability. Their proposed strategy, introduced in a paper published in Nature Energy, is based on sequential deposition, a method often used to deposit organic semiconductors and perovskite films on substrates.

“To realize the commercialization of organic photovoltaics (OPVs), the golden triangle of power conversion efficiency (PCE), stability, and cost should be considered simultaneously,” Jie Min, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore.