Now, Building That Alerts Of Damage In Real Time

MIT scientists are developing smart buildings that can sense ambient vibrations and monitor itself for internal signs of damage or mechanical stress in real time. The broader implication is, after an event like an earthquake, we would see immediately the changes of these features, and if and where there is damage in the system. This provides continuous monitoring and a database that would be like a health book for the building, as a function of time, much like a person’s changing blood pressure with age. The team tested its computational model on a 21 story building made in the 1960s using reinforced concrete. In 2010, researchers outfitted the building with 36 accelerometers that record vibrations and movements on selected floors, from the building’s foundation to its roof. But the model uses a lot of assumptions about the building’s material, its geometry, the thickness of its elements, etcetera, which may not correspond exactly to the structure.

Europe's Mars Craft Lost Before Landing

Europe’s second attempt at reaching the Mars surface appeared in peril on 17 October as initial analysis suggested a lander dubbled “Schiaparelli”, a test run for a future rover, may have plummeted to its demise. While holding out faint hope, ground controllers said it seemed the paddling pool-sized lander’s parachute may have been discarded too early, and its fall-breaking thrusters switched off too soon. Schiaparelli fell silent seconds before its scheduled touchdown, while its mothership Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) entered Mars’ orbit as planned – part of a joint European-Russian quest for evidence of life on the red planet, past or present. Further analysis must be done of some 600 megabytes of data Schiaparelli sent home before its signal died, to “know whether it survived structurally or not.” If not, this would be European second failed Mars landing in a row, joining a string of unsuccessful at tempts by global powers to explore our planetary neighbour’s hostile surface. The British built Beagle 2 robot lab disappeared without trace after separating from its mothership, Mars Express, in 2003. Its remains were finally spotted in a NASA photograph last year. Schiaparelli had travelled for seven years and 496 million kilometres onboard the TGO to within a million kilometres of Mars on Sunday, when it set off on its own mission to reach the surface. The pair comprise phase one of the ExoMars mission through which Europe and Russia seek to join the United States in probing the alien Martian surface. The TGO is meant to sniff atmospheric gases potentially excreted by living organisms, while Schiaparelli’s landing was designed to inform technology for a bigger and more expensive rover scheduled for launch in 2020. The six-wheel rover will be equipped with a drill to look for remains of past life, or evidence of current activity, up to a depth of two metres. While life is unlikely to exist on the barren, radiation-blasted surface, scientists say traces of methane in Mars’ atmosphere may indicate something is stirring underground – possible single celled microbes.

Tesla Will Make Cars 100% Auto-Pilot Ready

What this means:

Every new Tesla car, including Model S, Model X, and the forthcoming Model 3, will be loaded with $8,000 worth of gadgets which will allow the vehicles to eventually drive themselves once Tesla perfects the software to make that possible.

What it does not mean:

The car will right now NOT be able to drive themselves. What it does mean is that the cars can be updated easily to go auto-pilot once Tesla has the software ready.

The Tesla self driving package:

1. 8 surrounded cameras for 360 degree visibility around the car at up to 250m range.
2. 12 updated ultrasonic sensors for detection of both hard and soft objects.
3. Forward facing radar with enhanced processing ‘capable of seeing through heavy rain, fog, dust and even the car ahead.’
4. A new onboard computer with more than 40 times the computing power of the previous generation.

Brand Sense:

Tesla is effectively positioning itself as the self-driving car company before it actually rolls out self driving cars. Customers who would prefer an autonomous car when the technology is ready can go for a Tesla right away, and then wait for the technology to arrive.

Auto future:

1. The hardware won’t do much at the moment but, over the next year, Tesla plans to test a more advanced version of its earlier auto-pilot programme.
2. More advanced self driving capabilities in the pipeline for Tesla, although Musk has said ‘it’ll take us some time’ to perfect those.
3. Tesla hopes to demonstrate a car travelling all by itself from Los Angeles to New York, without any driver guidance, by the end of 2017.

Where the tech is at present:

The partially self driving cars being sold now have software, like Tesla’s Autopilot, that hand the controls back to humans when the computer is unsure of what to do.

Scientists Turn Carbon Dioxide Back Into Fuel

Scientists have accidentally discovered a way to reverse the combustion process turning carbon dioxide (CO₂) dissolved in water was turned into ethanol with a yield of 63 to 70%. That means that of all the CO₂ and electricity going into it, you don’t waste much of it. The majority of it ends up converted into ethanol. The researchers are now working to improve the efficiency of the process and find out more about the catalyst’s properties. A process like this would allow us to consume extra electricity when it’s available to make and store as ethanol. This could help to balance a grid supplied by intermittent renewable sources back into a fuel. Researchers used complex nanotechnology techniques to turn the dissolved gas into ethanol. Because the material used is relatively cheap, they believe the process could be used in industrial processes, for example to store excess electricity generated by wind and solar power. The researchers had hoped the techniques would turn carbon dioxide into methanol, but ethanol came out instead. Researchers taking carbon dioxide, a waste product of combustion, and they pushing that combustion reaction backwards with very high selectivity to a useful fuel. We can use ethanol in the current vehicle fleet, right now, with no modifications. Carbon dioxide is a problem right now. If we can use it, then we’re preventing it from going into the atmosphere. The team made a catalyst made from carbon, copper and nitrogen and an electric current was then used to trigger a reaction. They had expected the process to be much more complicated. Researcher discovered somewhat by accident that this material worked. Researchers are trying to study the first step of a proposed reaction when they realized that the catalyst was doing the entire reaction on its own. Ethanol is extremely difficult to go straight from carbon dioxide to ethanol with a single catalyst. The solution of CO