US mandate average fuel economy of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025
The standards which mandate an average fuel economy of 54.5 miles per gallon for the 2025 model year - will increase the pressure on US auto manufacturers to step up development of electrified vehicles as well as sharply improve the mileage of their mass-market models through techniques like more efficient engines and lighter car bodies.
California to license self-driving cars
Californian senators have passed a bill that looks set to make the state the second in the US to approve self-driving cars on its roads. The bill was passed unanimously by state senators, and now hits the desk of governor Jerry Brown, who's expected to sign it into law. It calls on the California Department of Motor Vehicles to start developing standards and licensing procedures for autonomous vehicles.
Scientists So Close To Malaria Cure
Getting a medically-apporved drug out to market can be a long and tedious process, even when that drug could save millions of lives. This is the obstacle course researchers at the University of Cape Town in South Africa are faced with when developing a pill that can cure malaria in a single dose. This patient and determined medical professionals have gone every single trial needed for approval except for human testing, which is definitely the biggest hurdle of them all.
Will the UK be able to create something to rival Silicon Valley?
The British government is taking certain steps to help East London achieve this goal. Many have claimed that the area will need access to finance; talented teams and a supportive group of successful entrepreneurs. The government has invited the Silicon Valley Investment Bank to open up in London, as well as inviting venture capitalist firms into the area. However, it is yet to be seen if these schemes will actually be good enough to recreate the success of the Valley, which is home to one third of all venture capitalist investment in the United States.
Calorie Restriction May Not Extend Lifespan
Slash your food intake and you can live dramatically longer-at least if you're a mouse or a nematode. But a major study designed to determine whether this regimen, known as caloric restriction, works in primates suggests that it improves monkeys' health but doesn't extend their lives. That outcome contradicts a similar study of monkeys reported 3 years ago.
The Toilet Of The Future
Bill Gates, whose philanthropic efforts have helped bring clean water and resources to developing countries via the foundation founded by him and his wife, Melinda, said on Wednesday that he plans to build a toilet that's better suited to developing countries in an effort to cut down on disease and death in those regions. "The flush toilets we use in the wealthy world are irrelevant, impractical and impossible for 40 percent of the global population, because they often don't have access to water, and sewers, electricity, and sewage treatment systems."
Scientists reverse engineer animal brains to create bionic prosthetic eyes
Utilizing neuroscience, gene therapy, and optogenetics, a pair of researchers from Cornell University have created a bionic prosthetic eye that can restore almost-normal vision to animals blinded by destroyed retinas.
Google's Self-Driving Cars: 480,000 KM Logged, Not a Single Accident
Ever since Google began designing its self-driving cars, they've wanted to build cars that go beyond the capabilities of human-piloted vehicles, cars that are much, much safer. When Sebastian Thrun announced the project in 2010, he wrote, "According to the World Health Organization, more than 1.2 million lives are lost every year in road traffic accidents. We believe our technology has the potential to cut that number, perhaps by as much as half."
Koch Bros study finds Global Warming real and man-made
The results of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project are finished and Richard Muller, the study's director states, 'Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm now going a step further, humans are almost entirely the cause.'
New Pop Music Does All Sound the Same
A study of music from the 50s to the present using the Million Song Data-set has concluded that modern music has less variation than older music and songs today are, on average, 9dB louder than 50 years ago. Almost all music uses just 10 chords, but the way these are used together has changed, leading to fewer types of transitions being used. Variation in timbre has also reduced over the past decades.
Plan to dump iron into oceans to slow global warming
Stimulating the growth of algae in the oceans might be an efficient way of removing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Despite other studies suggesting that this approach was ineffective, a recent analysis of an ocean-fertilization experiment eight years ago in the Southern Ocean indicates that encouraging algal blooms to grow can soak up carbon that is then deposited in the deep ocean as the algae die. Each atom of added iron pulled at least 13,000 atoms of carbon out of the atmosphere by encouraging algal growth which, through photosynthesis, captures carbon.
Many in the US are in a face recognition database
EFF Staff Attorney Jennifer Lynch testified that although "many Americans may not realize it, they are already in a face recognition database." Between Facebook scanning 300 million photos a day and the FBI's nationwide face search, real-time face recognition is coming. "face recognition allows for covert, remote and mass capture and identification of images -- and the photos that may end up in a database include not just a person's face but also how she is dressed and possibly whom she is with. This creates threats to free association and free expression not evident in other biometrics," Jennifer Lynch.
Microsoft reports first ever quarterly loss
Microsoft, posted its first quarterly loss since emerging as a public company in 1986. The company reported a net loss of $492 million as its operating income was wiped out by a $6.2 billion writedown related to its acquisition of advertising company aQuantive in 2007. Microsoft wrote down almost the entire $6.3 billion purchase price.
Packaging, Apple gets it, why doesn't Google?
A montage of frustrated Google Nexus 7 owners struggling to open their new tablets' packaging proves there is at least one thing Apple gets that Google does not: boxes. As the clip below shows, Google's Nexus tablet with its taped sides and fussy plastic takes effort to open, eliciting what some would call "wrap rage," the linguist-approved word for the anger associated with opening a factory sealed product.
Olympic Games For Enhanced Athletes..
Nature has detailed how far science would be able to push human abilities if restrictions on doping were lifted. The article mentions anabolic steroids (up to 38% increase in strength), IGF-1 (4% increase in sprinting capacity), EPO/blood doping (34% increase in stamina), gene doping and various drugs and supplements, as well as more 'extreme' measures such as surgery and prosthesis.
Choice wants Geo-IP Blocking Banned
Annoyed about paying significantly higher prices than Americans for exactly the same software, games and content online, all based on your IP address. This week Australian consumer group Choice called for an Australian ban on geo-IP-blocking, saying it created significant barriers to the free flow of goods and services.
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