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Category: transportation – Page 147

Mount Etna enjoyed its first major eruption in 30 years on Sunday, and footage of the busy volcano’s spewing and flowing orange lava against the black and white billowing smoke is stunning. (See video caught by Massimiliano Salfi, posted by Earth42morrow, below).

Europe’s most active volcano caused Sicily’s Catania airport to shut down yesterday after ash covered its runways, according to CNN, but has mostly reopened as of Monday.

People in nearby towns reportedly heard loud booming sounds at the time of the eruption, but no injuries have been reported. Mount Etna’s last eruption of this size was in 1992.

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A team of researchers at Duke University and their collaborators have uncovered the atomic mechanisms that make a class of compounds called argyrodites attractive candidates for both solid-state battery electrolytes and thermoelectric energy converters.

The discoveries—and the machine learning approach used to make them—could help usher in a new era of energy storage for applications such as household battery walls and fast-charging electric vehicles.

The results appeared online May 18 in the journal Nature Materials.

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Seattle-based startup Jetoptera is designing vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) vehicles with bladeless propulsion systems — potentially making the future of urban flight quiet, safer, and faster.

The challenge: The proportion of the global population living in cities is expected to increase from 50% today to nearly 70% by 2050, meaning our already crowded urban streets are likely to become even more congested.

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Self-driving vehicle companies Waymo and Cruise are on the cusp of securing final approval to charge fares for fully autonomous robotaxi rides throughout the city of San Francisco at all hours of the day or night.

Amid the city’s mounting resistance to the presence of AVs, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) published two draft resolutions late last week that would grant Cruise and Waymo the ability to extend the hours of operation and service areas of their now-limited robotaxi services.

The drafts are dated for a hearing June 29, and there’s still room for public comments, which are due May 31. Based on the CPUC’s drafted language, many of the protests raised by the city of San Francisco have already been rejected.

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An exhibition dedicated to the work of British architect Norman Foster has opened at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, showcasing drawings and original models produced by the architect over the last six decades.

The exhibition, which according to the Norman Foster Foundation is the largest-ever retrospective display of Foster’s work, features around 130 of the architect’s projects including the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Headquarters, Hong Kong International Airport and Apple Park.

Designs that informed Foster’s work are also exhibited, including works by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, French painter Fernand Léger, Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi and Italian painter Umberto Boccioni, and even cars, which the architect is passionate about.

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35-year-old Weibao Wang was charged with stealing Apple’s trade secrets for self-driving cars and fleeing to China. Officials say Wang is still at large and if convicted faces ten years in prison for each trade secret violation. NBC News’ Dana Griffin shares the latest.

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Researchers at TU Wien (Vienna) have developed a groundbreaking oxygen-ion battery, which boasts exceptional durability, eliminates the need for rare elements, and solves the problem of fire hazards.

Lithium-ion batteries, while commonplace in today’s world – powering everything from electric vehicles to smartphones – aren’t necessarily the optimal solution for all applications. Researchers at TU Wien have made a breakthrough by creating an oxygen-ion battery that offers several significant advantages. While it may not match the energy density of lithium-ion batteries, its storage capacity doesn’t diminish irreversibly over time, making it capable of an exceptionally long lifespan as it can be regenerated.

Moreover, the fabrication of oxygen-ion batteries doesn’t require scarce elements and involves non-combustible materials. The innovative battery concept has already led to a patent application, filed in collaboration with partners in Spain. These oxygen-ion batteries could provide an outstanding solution for large-scale energy storage systems, such as those required to hold electrical energy from renewable sources.

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Times of 0–60 mph simply aren’t enough when you get into the peak-performance, hypercar segment of electric vehicles. The Rimac Nevera has already done an excellent job demonstrating that it’s one of the highest-performing vehicles on the planet, but any doubt should now be dissolved as the electric hypercar smashed through 23 performance records – in just a single day, a record in it of itself.

Since its founding in Croatia in 2009, Rimac Automobili has been developing some of the most exciting and technologically advanced electric hypercars. Rimac’s first EV, the Concept_One, was introduced in 2016 and is considered one of the world’s fastest production vehicles at the time, although its production consisted of a mere eight vehicles.

Rimac’s Concept_Two debuted in 2018 and eventually evolved into its production form, renamed the Nevera. As EV enthusiasts, the Nevera represents much of the potential of electric hypercars, which can significantly outperform ICE counterparts without any emissions.

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