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Archive for the ‘sustainability’ category: Page 12

Dec 2, 2023

New study finds bots and fraud farms responsible for 73% of web traffic

Posted by in categories: food, robotics/AI, sustainability

The report found that bot attacks increased by 167 percent in the first half of the year, with a staggering 291 percent increase in intelligent bots.


Eakarat Buanoi/iStock.

73 percent of all web and app traffic was malicious in Q3 2023.

Continue reading “New study finds bots and fraud farms responsible for 73% of web traffic” »

Dec 1, 2023

Advancing Power Resilience: UC Santa Cruz’s AI Innovation in Microgrid Technology

Posted by in categories: information science, policy, robotics/AI, sustainability

A recent study published in IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems discusses how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to control microgrids in the event of a long-term power outage caused by natural disasters or human error. This study was conducted by a team of researchers at UC Santa Cruz and holds the potential to improve power restoration techniques, which are traditionally controlled by local utility companies. One benefit of microgrids is they can function to power a small area, such as a town, until the primary utility source comes back online.

“Nowadays, microgrids are really the thing that both people in industry and in academia are focusing on for the future power distribution systems,” said Dr. Yu Zhang, who is an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Santa Cruz and co-author on the study.

For the study, the researchers used an AI-based approach to develop a novel method where microgrids could draw power from renewable energy sources while being disconnected from the primary utility source, known as “islanding mode”, but can also function while being connected to the source, as well. This new method, which they refer to as constrained policy optimization (CPO), uses a machine learning algorithm that learns from outside input, such as real-time changes in environmental or power conditions, and makes the best-informed decisions on what to do next.

Dec 1, 2023

Ocean Conservation Unveiled: The Scuba Diver’s Perspective on MPAs in California

Posted by in category: sustainability

“People come from around the state and around the world to dive the Channel Islands, drawn by playful sea lions, underwater cathedrals of emerald kelp forests and giant sea bass weighing four times more than the divers themselves,” said Molly Morse.


Can marine protected areas (MPAs) have a positive effect on the scuba diving industry? This is something a recent study published in Marine Policy hopes to find out as a team of researchers led by the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) highlighted the potential benefits that MPAs could have on ecotourism in California’s Channel Islands, specifically for scuba divers.

For the study, the researchers used data collected between 2016 and 2022 from an onboard vessel location system known as Automatic Identification System (AIS)—which boat captains use during scuba diving tours—and interviewed for-hire vessel captains with the goal of ascertaining the location of these ecotours with respect to MPAs and their corresponding borders of protection. In the end, the team found that the ecotours vessels favored MPAs for their activities, specifically for lobster fishing and scuba diving, and that 38 percent of the most popular ecotourism diving locations were within MPAs, with 45 percent of diving activities occurring within MPAs, as well.

Continue reading “Ocean Conservation Unveiled: The Scuba Diver’s Perspective on MPAs in California” »

Dec 1, 2023

Materials-predicting AI from DeepMind could revolutionize electronics, batteries, and solar cells

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, solar power, sustainability

Company releases database with hundreds of thousands of potential new materials.

Dec 1, 2023

Detroit’s newest road can charge electric cars as they travel on it

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

Detroit is now home to the country’s first stretch of road that can wirelessly charge an electric vehicle (EV), whether it’s parked or moving.

Why it matters: Wireless charging on an electrified roadway could remove one of the biggest hassles of owning an EV: the need to stop and plug in regularly.

Dec 1, 2023

How one national lab is getting its supercomputers ready for the AI age

Posted by in categories: government, robotics/AI, supercomputing, sustainability

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the government-funded science research facility nestled between Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains and Cumberland Plateau that is perhaps best known for its role in the Manhattan Project, two supercomputers are currently rattling away, speedily making calculations meant to help tackle some of the biggest problems facing humanity.

You wouldn’t be able to tell from looking at them. A supercomputer called Summit mostly comprises hundreds of black cabinets filled with cords, flashing lights and powerful graphics processing units, or GPUs. The sound of tens of thousands of spinning disks on the computer’s file systems, and air cooling technology for ancillary equipment, make the device sound somewhat like a wind turbine — and, at least to the naked eye, the contraption doesn’t look much different from any other corporate data center. Its next-door neighbor, Frontier, is set up in a similar manner across the hall, though it’s a little quieter and the cabinets have a different design.

Yet inside those arrays of cabinets are powerful specialty chips and components capable of, collectively, training some of the largest AI models known. Frontier is currently the world’s fastest supercomputer, and Summit is the world’s seventh-fastest supercomputer, according to rankings published earlier this month. Now, as the Biden administration boosts its focus on artificial intelligence and touts a new executive order for the technology, there’s growing interest in using these supercomputers to their full AI potential.

Nov 30, 2023

Toyota tempers expectations for solid-state battery adoption

Posted by in categories: chemistry, sustainability, transportation

It really is impressive how many unknowns there are about the next decade in transportation. Sure, there have always been innovations and surprises, but to be unsure what most vehicles will even be powered by in 10 years, nor who — or what — will be in the driver’s seat, is astounding. Battery-electric vehicles are the leading contender to usurp internal combustion, eventually, though the road to that outcome is full of hurdles. Solid-state batteries (SSB) are seen as one of the key innovations to get there, various makers saying they’ll have at least one product with a solid-state battery on the market by the end of the decade. The overall numbers of SSB-powered vehicles might remain surprisingly low well into the 2030s, though. In Toyota’s internal news outlet, Toyota Times, the automaker wrote, “In the [SSB] mass production phase anticipated for 2030 and beyond, the companies are looking to boost capacity to several thousand tonnes (several tens of thousands of vehicles) in line with Toyota’s product plans.”

The “companies” referred to are Toyota and Japan’s petrochemical conglomerate Idemitsu Kosan, which formalized collaboration on SSBs this year. Right now, Toyota and Idemitsu are working on the development times for solid electrolyte and resulting quality and cost. When those are locked in, the firms will work on a pilot facility for commercialization. Initial commercial effort will take two years of testing and validation before wider production commences in 2030.

The “several tens of thousands of vehicles” appears to have gone through at least one revision after publication. In Jalopnik’s writeup, the capacity was quoted as “over ten thousand vehicles.” Even at the larger sum, that’s considerably less than onlookers expected, but that might be because onlookers expected too much, not because Toyota overpromised. The automaker’s talked big numbers for BEV sales, but has talked just as bigly about what kinds of electrified powertrains those sales will entail: At least four kinds of battery technologies, plus hydrogen, and hybrids. In 2021, Toyota said it expected to have an SSB ready by 2025. In 2022, a Toyota engineer said the first product to get an SSB would be a hybrid on go on sale in the first half of the decade.

Nov 30, 2023

Chery and Huawei brand Luxeed shakes up EV market with 855 km range S7, starting at $35k

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

Luxeed – a young, premium EV brand developed between Chery Automobile and Chinese tech giant Huawei, has shared new details of its flagship sedan, the S7. In a matter of months since first teasing the Tesla Model S competitor, followed by an influx of pre-orders, Chery and Huawei have now shared trim variants, pricing, and of course, range – which tops out at an impressive 855 km.

Luxeed is a new all-electric brand in China and when we say “new,” we mean we didn’t even know the official name of the joint effort between China’s Chery and Huawei until about four months ago.

In that time, we’ve seen Huawei tease its first model, learned its core specs from a regulatory filing in China, and saw the S7 sedan’s first unveiling three weeks ago, ahead of an official launch that took place today.

Nov 30, 2023

Tesla Cybertruck delivery event: everything Elon revealed about the EV pickup

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, media & arts, sustainability, transportation

With dubstep as the soundtrack and neon lighting as the backdrop, Elon Musk handed the first Cybertrucks over to a select group of customers that included Reddit co-founder and VC fund Seven Seven Six founder Alexis Ohanian and Trousdale Ventures founder and CEO Phillip Sarofim.

The live streamed portion of the Tesla Cybertruck delivery event was a short affair — around 30 minutes. But the event still had all the traditional trappings one has come to expect from Tesla: the pomp and pumpy music, VIP guests and of course, Musk.

The Tesla Cybertruck deliveries come at least six years since Musk first tweeted about building a truck and four years since he debuted the futuristic-looking pickup.

Nov 30, 2023

Google DeepMind researchers use AI tool to find 2mn new materials

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, solar power, sustainability

Google DeepMind researchers have discovered 2.2mn crystal structures that open potential progress in fields from renewable energy to advanced computation, and show the power of artificial intelligence to discover novel materials.

The trove of theoretically stable but experimentally unrealised combinations identified using an AI tool known as GNoME is more than 45 times larger than the number of such substances unearthed in the history of science, according to a paper published in Nature on Wednesday.

The researchers plan to make 381,000 of the most promising structures available to fellow scientists to make and test their viability in fields from solar cells to superconductors. The venture underscores how harnessing AI can shortcut years of experimental graft — and potentially deliver improved products and processes.

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