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Category: innovation – Page 114

China claims ‘revolutionary breakthrough’ in cooling power plants

The technology system will enable the Yanghuopan Power Station in Yulin City, Shaanxi, to save 24,500 tonnes of coal and cut 54,100 tonnes of carbon emissions annually, claims Chinese media.

China claims the “world’s first” power plant equipped with a “natural direct cooling” (NDC) system is now connected to the grid in the Shaanxi Province of the country.

“The technology, described as ‘a revolution in industrial air cooling’ by local newspaper Shaanxi Daily, makes use of the natural airflow in the plant to guide the heat to the air condenser,” said the report.

PNK Photo/iStock.

This marks a “breakthrough” in power plant cooling technology for China, according to a report published by the state-run China Global Television Network (CGTN) on Friday.

Tomorrows World Today

https://youtube.com/tomorrowsworldtoday/

Tomorrow’s World Today presents a cutting-edge approach to exploring concepts in science and technology that are changing lives today and making a difference tomorrow. The series introduces innovative pioneers from around the world who are forming new ways to utilize natural and technological resources to create a more sustainable society. Field Reporters Greg Constantino and David Carmine join host George Davison to explore innovation and sustainability across the world.

2022: The Year Of AI Hopes And Horrors

2022 has been an interesting year with incredible developments, both positive and negative in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Many international leaders have consistently expressed concerns on the hopes or horrors that AI can unleash if humans are not careful in applying ethical AI practices, and also fundamentally thinking harder about the use cases and the societal impacts that AI could have on human civilization.

According to a Gartner study, the revenue from AI in 2022 will reach $62 billion. This is an increase of roughly a 21.3% increase from 2021. Despite the dynamics of the market, AI is continuing to evolve, grow and many outstanding AI innovations are advancing the betterment of human kind — giving us much hope.

The Brief History of Artificial Intelligence: The World Has Changed Fast—What Might Be Next?

Cotra’s work is particularly relevant in this context as she based her forecast on the kind of historical long-run trend of training computation that we just studied. But it is worth noting that other forecasters who rely on different considerations arrive at broadly similar conclusions. As I show in my article on AI timelines, many AI experts believe that there is a real chance that human-level artificial intelligence will be developed within the next decades, and some believe that it will exist much sooner.

Building a Public Resource to Enable the Necessary Public Conversation

Computers and artificial intelligence have changed our world immensely, but we are still at the early stages of this history. Because this technology feels so familiar, it is easy to forget that all of these technologies that we interact with are very recent innovations, and that most profound changes are yet to come.

Disney Researchers Make Wireless Power Transfer Breakthrough

Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and… breakthroughs in wireless power transfer? Yep, scientists at a branch of the Walt Disney Company called Disney Research have found a way to charge devices on a room-scale without using any wires.

Wireless power is an idea that goes back to the 19th century, with Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla perhaps being its most famous proponent. But getting it to work has been a bit of a problem, with the extent of modern wireless power coming mostly in the form of electric toothbrushes or flat charging pads for phones.

A team at Disney Research, though, showed how they were able to transmit power in an entire room, powering a variety of devices while remaining relatively safe for humans. They published their findings in the journal PLOS ONE.

Giant laser from ‘Star Trek’ to be tested in fusion breakthrough

The breakthrough came in an impossibly small slice of time, less than it takes a beam of light to move an inch. In that tiny moment, nuclear fusion as an energy source went from far-away dream to reality. The world is now grappling with the implications of the historic milestone. For Arthur Pak and the countless other scientists who’ve spent decades getting to this point, the work is just beginning.

Pak and his colleagues at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are now faced with a daunting task: Do it again, but better—and bigger.

That means perfecting the use of the world’s largest laser, housed in the lab’s National Ignition Facility that science-fiction fans will recognize from the film “Star Trek: Into Darkness,” when it was used as a set for the warp core of the starship Enterprise. Just after 1 a.m. on Dec. 5, the laser shot 192 beams in three carefully modulated pulses at a cylinder containing a tiny diamond capsule filled with hydrogen, in an attempt to spark the first fusion reaction that produced more than it took to create. It succeeded, starting the path toward what scientists hope will someday be a new, carbon-free power source that will allow humans to harness the same source of energy that lights the stars.