A new Commerce Department report highlighted the severity of a global shortage that has hobbled manufacturing and fueled inflation for more than a year, and that defies easy solutions.
Tesla appears to have finally agreed to walk back one feature of its controversial yoke steering wheel, as it will now provide a regular horn.
When Tesla unveiled the new Model S with the “yoke” butterfly steering wheel, it was controversial. Some were worried about the actual shape of the wheel being problematic, while others were concerned about the lack of drive stalk to choose the drive mode.
As for the former, we thought that the automaker wouldn’t risk bringing the controversial yoke steering wheel to market without a nonlinear steering curve enabled by a steer-by-wire system – especially knowing that Tesla has been developing a steer-by-wire system.
“Penske Truck Leasing and National Grid are among the first companies adding preproduction E-Transit vans to their fleets for a variety of uses, including testing the BlueOval™ Charge Network, America’s largest public charging network, plus depot fleet charging tools that monitor and help manage energy usage,” Ford explained.
Maybe The US Postal Service Will Electrify After All
That brings us to the US Postal Service, owner of a fleet of 231,541 vehicles of various types. USPS expects to roll up to 165,000 new vehicles into the fleet under a 10-year contract signed last spring with the firm Oshkosh Defense, a subsidiary of Oshkosh Corporation.
The earthen tone of this off-grid holiday home in Northern Mexico was selected to match the rock formations of the nearby Cumbres de Majalca National Park, which is known for its dramatic landscapes.
OAX Arquitectos completed this remote home as a vacation getaway for a large family. It is located within a national park in Mexico’s Chihuahua State, just south of the American border.
“As part of the development of the park, a section was reserved to house cottages, but because of its remote location lacks services,” said OAX Arquitectos, which is based in Monterey.
“Entanglement forging essentially enables you to cut up a larger circuit into smaller circuits that we can execute on smaller hardware,” IBM Quantum platform lead Blake Johnson said in a statement.
“Smaller circuits aren’t just easier to execute. They’re also able to tolerate a lot more noise just by virtue of being smaller.”
Meanwhile, progress continues on enlarging quantum systems. IBM’s 27-qubit Falcon processor dates from 2019, and has since been surpassed by larger systems, including IBM’s own 127-qubit Eagle last year. As detailed at the time, IBM intends to use that design to scale to a 433-qubit processor called Osprey this year, and a 1,121-qubit processed called Condor in 2023.
Japan’s government is expanding a quasi-state of emergency aimed at containing the coronavirus. Infections are surging nationwide at an unprecedented pace, largely fueled by the Omicron variant.
Officials confirmed more than 60,000 new cases on Tuesday. The figure is a record high. A total of 444 people are in serious condition, up five from the day before.
More than half of Japan’s 47 prefectures reported record case counts, including Tokyo.
Yakir Aharonov and David Bohm proposed the effect that now bears their name in 1959, arguing that while classical potentials have no physical reality apart from the fields they represent, the same is not true in the quantum world. To make their case, the pair proposed a thought experiment in which an electron beam in a superposition of two wave packets is exposed to a time-varying electrical potential (but no field) when passing through a pair of metal tubes. They argued that the potential would introduce a phase difference between the wave packets and therefore lead to a measurable physical effect – a set of interference fringes – when the wave packets are recombined.
Seeking a gravitational counterpart
In the latest research, Mark Kasevich and colleagues at Stanford University show that the same effect also holds true for gravity. The platform for their experiment is an atom interferometer, which uses a series of laser pulses to split, guide and recombine atomic wave packets. The interference from these wave packets then reveals any change in the relative phase experienced along the two arms.
Winemakers must pay close attention to their soil, the rain, the heat, and the sunlight. But rodents like gophers and mice can wreak havoc on a vineyard. Rather than turning to rodenticides to deter pests, graduate students at Humboldt State University in California are testing a more natural approach by using owls.
The experiment is part of a long-term research study under the direction of professor Matt Johnson of the university’s Department of Wildlife. The current cohort, including students Laura Echávez, Samantha Chavez, and Jaime Carlino, has placed around 300 owl nest boxes sporadically through vineyards in Napa Valley. They are documenting the impact of relying on owls to deter and remove pests rather than rodenticides.
The researchers have surveyed 75 wineries in Napa Valley, and four-fifths now use the owl nest boxes and notice a difference in rodent control. The barn owls have a four-month nesting season, during which they spend about one-third of their time hunting in the fields. A family of barn owls may eat as many as 1,000 rodents during the nesting season or around 3,400 in a single year.
British startup Urban-Air Port (UAP) has announced plans to open 200 flying taxi and cargo drone hubs in 65 cities globally over the next five years. The announcement comes following a significant investment from Supernal, a division of Hyundai Motor Group, to deliver on the company’s shared vision of integrating advanced air mobility (AAM) into existing transit networks and creating a seamless passenger journey.
UAP’s vertiport sites will provide essential infrastructure to help enable mass adoption of eVTOL aircraft – such as cargo drones and air taxis – as public acceptance grows and will transform the way goods and people are transported around urban areas. The world’s first fully operational hub for eVTOLs, Air-One, will open for public visitation in Coventry City Centre in April.
The demonstration will show how AAM can help unlock the potential of sustainable mobility and how the industry will work to help reduce congestion, cut air pollution and decarbonize transport.
China’s artificial sun reached 158 million degrees Fahrenheit for 17 minutes and 36 seconds. (Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
China set a ground-breaking record with its “artificial sun,” which superheated plasma to temperatures five times hotter than the sun. The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) nuclear fusion reactor reached 158 million degrees Fahrenheit for 1,056 seconds (17 minutes, 36 seconds). This latest breakthrough brings the country one step closer toward its goal for unlimited clean fusion energy.
China’s EAST surpassed France’s Tore Supra tokamak record, set in 2003 when it superheated plasma in its coiling loop to identical temperatures for 390 seconds. Also, in May 2021, EAST set another record by running at 216 million F for 101 seconds. The fusion reactor achieved a peak temperature of 288 million Fahrenheit for 20 seconds during this experiment. In comparison, the sun’s core reaches approximately 27 million Fahrenheit.
