Tech That Is New

[Nodack]

After years of doubts, hopes grow that nuclear fusion is finally for real and could help address climate change
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/12/22/ ... te-change/
DEVENS — It’s been compared to everything from a holy grail to fool’s gold: the ultimate solution to clean, readily available energy or an expensive delusion diverting scarce money and brainpower from the urgent needs of rapidly addressing climate change.

For decades, scientists have been trying to harness the energy that powers stars, a complex, atomic-level process known as nuclear fusion, which requires heating a plasma fuel to more than 100 million degrees Celsius and finding a way to contain and sustain it. In theory, fusion could yield inexpensive and unlimited zero-emissions electricity, without producing any significant radioactive waste, as fission does in traditional nuclear power plants.

range of daunting scientific and engineering hurdles has long made that possibility, at best, a distant promise. But now, after breakthroughs this year at MIT and elsewhere, scientists — and a growing number of deep-pocketed investors — insist that fusion is for real and could start sending power to electricity grids in about a decade.

[Nodack]

Autonomous trucker TuSimple logs first no-human road test
https://apnews.com/article/technology-b ... c4223700ba
NEW YORK (AP) — A semitruck completed an 80-mile route in Arizona with no human on board and no human intervention during the trip using technology developed by TuSimple, the company said Wednesday.

The San Diego company says it’s the first successful fully-autonomous run by a class 8 vehicle, or semi, on open public roads with no human intervention.

TuSimple says that drivers represent about 40% of all trucking operational costs and that its virtual driver “can be operated for significantly less.” It also estimates that its technology saves about 10% on fuel-related costs compared to human-driven trucks.

Founded in 2015, TuSimple says it has 70 autonomous trucks globally and two million miles of road testing completed.

[Nodack]

This sounds important

Airlines warn of 'catastrophic' crisis when new 5G service is deployed
https://thehill.com/policy/transportati ... service-is
In a letter to Biden administration officials, executives of major carriers wrote that C-band 5G causes disruptions to airplanes’ instruments that could make “huge swaths” of the U.S. fleet unusable. They noted that by Wednesday’s deadline, most of the nation’s large airports will be under 5G-related flight restrictions from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The executives urged U.S. officials to prevent 5G from being implemented within 2 miles of affected airports until the FAA figures out a way for affected airplanes to fly safely or risk a “catastrophic disruption” to passenger flights and the global supply chain.

“Immediate intervention is needed to avoid significant operational disruption to air passengers, shippers, supply chain and delivery of needed medical supplies,” they wrote in a letter to White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, FAA Administrator Steve Dickson and Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.

[Indy]

This sounds important

Airlines warn of 'catastrophic' crisis when new 5G service is deployed
https://thehill.com/policy/transportati ... service-is
In a letter to Biden administration officials, executives of major carriers wrote that C-band 5G causes disruptions to airplanes’ instruments that could make “huge swaths” of the U.S. fleet unusable. They noted that by Wednesday’s deadline, most of the nation’s large airports will be under 5G-related flight restrictions from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The executives urged U.S. officials to prevent 5G from being implemented within 2 miles of affected airports until the FAA figures out a way for affected airplanes to fly safely or risk a “catastrophic disruption” to passenger flights and the global supply chain.

“Immediate intervention is needed to avoid significant operational disruption to air passengers, shippers, supply chain and delivery of needed medical supplies,” they wrote in a letter to White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, FAA Administrator Steve Dickson and Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.

You would think, but 5G service has been deployed around the world where all these US planes already fly, and no disruptions to date. I am not sure why they are pushing this. I mean the bands do not overlap, and even have a gap between them. The only way it could interfere is if the planes/airlines/cargo carriers are not complying with the wavebands they have already been allotted.

[Nodack]

They make it sound like you can’t have 5G within 2 miles of any airport or you will have disruptions. How are they handling that in Europe or is it not really a thing?

[Nodack]

Europe Has 5G. Here Is Why It Hasn’t Messed Up the Airlines.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/5g-eur ... 1641398766
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Europe has 5G and air travel and cargo shipments continue safely. It hasn’t wreaked the havoc Airlines for America warned about.

Why the difference? There could be a number of factors at play, experts told Barron’s.

One thing is for sure: a green light for 5G in Europe doesn’t come from a lack of caution among regulators. After all, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) last month warned about the potential risk of interference from 5G near airports—in the U.S.

The EASA said at the time that “no risk of unsafe interference has been identified in Europe.” Instead, the regulator cited the Federal Aviation Administration, which saw specific risk in the U.S. due to the implementation of potentially higher 5G ground station power emissions early this year.

The source of more wariness in the U.S. may stem from the guts of the radio technology itself.

The issue at hand is whether signals from 5G radio bands—intended for devices—could interfere with aircraft altimeters, which are crucial instruments that tell pilots the altitude of their plane. Radar altimeters are close neighbors to 5G in the radio spectrum.

This potential problem is most pronounced upon landing when 5G stations on the ground are emitting close to an altimeter, or 5G smartphones are transmitting within the plane. This explains why regulators are focused on the safety impact around airports.

George Holmes, the chair and CEO of Resonant (RESN) a 5G industry player, told Barron’s that the difference between the U.S. and Europe stems from allocated frequencies for 5G, and their proximity to the defined band for altimeters.

Resonant is a Nasdaq-listed company that designs radio frequency filters, which are used to isolate signals from the right band while blocking unwanted noise from elsewhere in the radio spectrum. These filters are critical in 5G applications.

In the U.S., 5G is allocated to a range of between 3.7GHz and 3.98GHZ, which is closer to the 4.2GHz-4.4GHz frequency for altimeters than in Europe, which has allocated the 3.4GHz-3.8GHz range for 5G. Holmes said that in Europe altimeter filters will be better at stopping 5G signals, which will result in less potential interference.

“We are dealing with very low probabilities but extremely devastating consequences,” Holmes said. “We are still in the early stages of 5G deployments and usage, so this interference problem remains a potential for the future.”


5G interference could cause Boeing 787s to run off the runway, the US’ FAA warns
https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/01/1 ... -faa-warns
In a notification to airlines, the FAA said that Boeing 787s operated by over 80 international airlines including Air France, British Airways, KLM, LOT, and holiday operator TUI could be affected by interference when landing at airports in the United States.

Why is 5G different?
The issue the FAA is talking about relates to the part of the wireless frequency spectrum given over to 5G, particularly in the US.

Most countries around the world have dedicated a portion of the C-Band radio frequency to 5G. In Europe, this falls in the 3.3-3.8 GHz segment of the wireless spectrum, but in the US, the 5G network due to be switched on this week will operate at 3.7-3.9 GHz.

The radio altimeters in aircraft operate at a frequency of 4.2-4.4 GHz, bringing the 5G signal uncomfortably close, as far as the air safety regulator is concerned.

European regulators have also voiced worries about 5G interference, leading some countries to act.

France's aviation safety authority, the DGAC, issued a notice in February last year stating that altimeter errors could have a "significant adverse impact on flight safety" and recommending that 5G-enabled devices should not be used inflight.

The FAA has also taken a leaf out of France's book, putting buffer zones in place around 50 major airports where mobile network operators will have to turn off 5G towers or work to limit their potential to interfere with aircraft.

This buffer zone will be wide enough to cover the final 20 seconds of flight before landing, the FAA said. That compares to the 96-second buffer zone in force in France, where 5G antennas are also angled downwards in order to reduce the risk of interference.

[Indy]

So basically the US-based altimeters are more noisy and susceptible to near-band interference, and the airlines don't want to fix it.

[Nodack]

That would mean replacing every altimeter in every Boeing 787 around the globe. Maybe that’s feasible.

[Indy]

I don't think it is replacing them. It is making sure they operate in the range they are allotted, and don't have interference at other close bands. And it looks like they sold less than 900 total.

[In2ition]

MIT Engineers Create the “Impossible” – New Material That Is Stronger Than Steel and As Light as Plastic
TOPICS:Chemical EngineeringMaterials ScienceMITNanotechnology
By ANNE TRAFTON, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY FEBRUARY 3, 2022
https://scitechdaily.com/mit-engineers- ... s-plastic/

The new substance is the result of a feat thought to be impossible: polymerizing a material in two dimensions.

Using a novel polymerization process, MIT chemical engineers have created a new material that is stronger than steel and as light as plastic, and can be easily manufactured in large quantities.

The new material is a two-dimensional polymer that self-assembles into sheets, unlike all other polymers, which form one-dimensional, spaghetti-like chains. Until now, scientists had believed it was impossible to induce polymers to form 2D sheets.

Spoiler: show/hide

Such a material could be used as a lightweight, durable coating for car parts or cell phones, or as a building material for bridges or other structures, says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and the senior author of the new study.

“We don’t usually think of plastics as being something that you could use to support a building, but with this material, you can enable new things,” he says. “It has very unusual properties and we’re very excited about that.”

The researchers have filed for two patents on the process they used to generate the material, which they describe in a paper published in Nature on February 2, 2022. MIT postdoc Yuwen Zeng is the lead author of the study.

Two dimensions
Polymers, which include all plastics, consist of chains of building blocks called monomers. These chains grow by adding new molecules onto their ends. Once formed, polymers can be shaped into three-dimensional objects, such as water bottles, using injection molding.

Polymer scientists have long hypothesized that if polymers could be induced to grow into a two-dimensional sheet, they should form extremely strong, lightweight materials. However, many decades of work in this field led to the conclusion that it was impossible to create such sheets. One reason for this was that if just one monomer rotates up or down, out of the plane of the growing sheet, the material will begin expanding in three dimensions and the sheet-like structure will be lost.

However, in the new study, Strano and his colleagues came up with a new polymerization process that allows them to generate a two-dimensional sheet called a polyaramide. For the monomer building blocks, they use a compound called melamine, which contains a ring of carbon and nitrogen atoms. Under the right conditions, these monomers can grow in two dimensions, forming disks. These disks stack on top of each other, held together by hydrogen bonds between the layers, which make the structure very stable and strong.

“Instead of making a spaghetti-like molecule, we can make a sheet-like molecular plane, where we get molecules to hook themselves together in two dimensions,” Strano says. “This mechanism happens spontaneously in solution, and after we synthesize the material, we can easily spin-coat thin films that are extraordinarily strong.”

Because the material self-assembles in solution, it can be made in large quantities by simply increasing the quantity of the starting materials. The researchers showed that they could coat surfaces with films of the material, which they call 2DPA-1.

“With this advance, we have planar molecules that are going to be much easier to fashion into a very strong, but extremely thin material,” Strano says.

Light but strong
The researchers found that the new material’s elastic modulus — a measure of how much force it takes to deform a material — is between four and six times greater than that of bulletproof glass. They also found that its yield strength, or how much force it takes to break the material, is twice that of steel, even though the material has only about one-sixth the density of steel.

Matthew Tirrell, dean of the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, says that the new technique “embodies some very creative chemistry to make these bonded 2D polymers.”

“An important aspect of these new polymers is that they are readily processable in solution, which will facilitate numerous new applications where high strength to weight ratio is important, such as new composite or diffusion barrier materials,” says Tirrell, who was not involved in the study.

Another key feature of 2DPA-1 is that it is impermeable to gases. While other polymers are made from coiled chains with gaps that allow gases to seep through, the new material is made from monomers that lock together like LEGOs, and molecules cannot get between them.

“This could allow us to create ultrathin coatings that can completely prevent water or gases from getting through,” Strano says. “This kind of barrier coating could be used to protect metal in cars and other vehicles, or steel structures.”

Strano and his students are now studying in more detail how this particular polymer is able to form 2D sheets, and they are experimenting with changing its molecular makeup to create other types of novel materials.

Reference: “Irreversible synthesis of an ultrastrong two-dimensional polymeric material” by Yuwen Zeng, Pavlo Gordiichuk, Takeo Ichihara, Ge Zhang, Emil Sandoz-Rosado, Eric D. Wetzel, Jason Tresback, Jing Yang, Daichi Kozawa, Zhongyue Yang, Matthias Kuehne, Michelle Quien, Zhe Yuan, Xun Gong, Guangwei He, Daniel James Lundberg, Pingwei Liu, Albert Tianxiang Liu, Jing Fan Yang, Heather J. Kulik and Michael S. Strano, 2 February 2022, Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04296-3

The research was funded by the Center for Enhanced Nanofluidic Transport (CENT) an Energy Frontier Research Center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, and the Army Research Laboratory.

[Nodack]

That sounds huge. Much lighter buildings that can go higher? Airplanes that are lighter and stronger?
Coatings on cars that block out rust?

[In2ition]

The article had a video of a phone that you couldn't crack the screen. I thought that was a small application and agree that much bigger applications are possible. You could build buildings 2 miles high. Feels like they are endless if the manufacturing process is feasible.

[Nodack]

We’ll see. I was all excited about Graphene when they announced it was the next big thing and then a decade goes by and nothing.

[Nodack]

What is Graphene Being Used for Now?
https://minseal.com/what-is-graphene-be ... kBEALw_wcB
For the last fifteen years graphene has been the buzz in the material science community. It has an impressive list of properties within five critical physical categories:

Mechanical Strength – one of the strongest known materials (stronger than diamond), extremely light (lighter than aluminum), flexible (more elastic than rubber), and highly impermeable.
Electric – high electrical conductivity (higher than copper)
Optical – absorbs 2.3% of white light, which can be used for solar applications (due to it’s high efficiency of absorption for a single-atom layer material), or conversely for transparency applications (since most white light passes through).
Thermal – high thermal conductivity
Chemical – chemically inert, but can absorb atoms and molecules in order to change electronic properties
The Problem

Given the list above it is clear to see why graphene gets the amount of attention that it does. But if you do a Google search on how graphene is being used today you will notice a very particular pattern. First, you will see words like “potential”, “possible”, and “hopeful” being used to describe everyday applications for this incredible material. You also notice that much of the graphene being sold is for research. There are graphene products for everyday use (face masks, jackets, smart pillows, protective spray for painted surfaces, cycling jerseys, etc…) but they are not the game-changers that the graphene community is hoping for.

Since graphene’s discovery in 2004 researchers have been trying to find ways to utilize it, but graphene use has not grown as expected. It is hindered by expensive production costs, coupled with the challenge of having to outperform what is already in use. In fact, graphene cannot simply outperform existing materials, it must greatly outperform them in order to justify its production costs. Nonetheless, graphene is being used. Here are a couple of examples…

[In2ition]

I thought this was interesting.

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NASA ‘holoported’ a doctor to the International Space Station
https://thehill.com/changing-america/en ... e-station/
Holoportation is a type of capture technology that NASA says allows for high-quality 3D models of people to be reconstructed, compressed and transmitted live anywhere in real time. When it’s combined with Microsoft’s Hololens, it allows users to see, hear and interact with people remotely in 3D — as if they were actually present in the same space.

“Imagine you can bring the best instructor or the actual designer of a particularly complex technology right beside you wherever you might be working on it. Furthermore, we will combine augmented reality with haptics. You can work on the device together, much like two of the best surgeons working during an operation. This would put everyone at rest knowing the best team is working together on a critical piece of hardware,” said Schmid.

[Nodack]

NASA’s Mars helicopter will continue flying on red planet
https://thehill.com/changing-america/en ... ng-on-red/
“Less than a year ago we didn’t even know if powered, controlled flight of an aircraft at Mars was possible,” Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement.
“Now, we are looking forward to Ingenuity’s involvement in Perseverance’s second science campaign. Such a transformation of mindset in such a short period is simply amazing, and one of the most historic in the annals of air and space exploration.”

[In2ition]

Probably can't be qualified as New, but it's new tech to me.

[Superbone]

Plus, you always feel really mellow and nothing bothers you when you live in a cannabis home.