Tag: china

These baby monkeys are first cloned primates created using the Dolly method

Enlarge / Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua (credit: Qiang Sun, Mu-ming Poo, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences) More than 20 years after Dolly comes Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua. The twin long-tailed macaque monkeys are the first primates cloned using the same method that created the world’s most famous sheep in 1996—a method called somatic cell nuclear transfer, or SCNT. The twins’ genetic blueprints were swiped from fetal cells of another monkey. Researchers then popped the DNA into egg cells that they had also cleared of their DNA-containing nuclei. With a dash of compounds that spur embryo development, the reprogrammed cells developed into healthy baby monkeys in surrogate mother monkeys. The two were born about seven weeks ago in China and are developing normally so far, researchers reported Wednesday in the journal Cell . Though the overall SCNT method is the same as what was used for Dolly, researchers struggled for years to tweak it to work in primates. The procedure is delicate and required a lot of optimization—not to mention DNA-swaps. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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These baby monkeys are first cloned primates created using the Dolly method

Linux 4.15 Becomes Slowest Release Since 2011

An anonymous reader shares a report: Linus Torvalds has decided that Linux 4.15 needs a ninth release candidate, making it the first kernel release to need that much work since 2011. Torvalds flagged up the possibility of an extra release candidate last week, with the caveat that “it obviously requires this upcoming week to not come with any huge surprises” after “all the Meltdown and Spectre hoopla” made his job rather more complicated in recent weeks. Fast-forward another week and Torvalds has announced “I really really wanted to just release 4.15 today, but things haven’t calmed down enough for me to feel comfy about it.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Linux 4.15 Becomes Slowest Release Since 2011

Apple Gives Employees $2,500 Bonuses After New Tax Law

Apple told employees that it’s issuing a bonus of $2, 500 of restricted stock units, following the introduction of the new U.S. tax law. “The iPhone maker will begin issuing grants to most employees worldwide in the coming months, ” reports Bloomberg. Apple also announced today that it would bring back most of its cash from overseas and spend $30 billion in the U.S. over the next five years. From the report: Apple confirmed the bonuses in response to a Bloomberg inquiry Wednesday. The Cupertino, California-based company joins a growing list of American businesses that have celebrated the introduction of corporate-friendly tax law with one-time bonuses for staff. AT&T, Comcast, JetBlue, and Wal-Mart also said they were giving bonuses. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Apple Gives Employees $2,500 Bonuses After New Tax Law

When Designers Can’t Get Their Way: Photographs of a Mega-Library in China

In Tianjin, China is this massive Tianjin Binhai Library, designed by Dutch architecture firm MVRDV and the Tianjin Urban Planning and Design Institute. Photograph by Ossip van Duivenbode Photograph by Ossip van Duivenbode The massive structure is some 363, 000 square feet and houses over a million books. Photograph by Ossip van Duivenbode Photograph by Ossip van Duivenbode The sphere you see in the center of the space is an auditorium. Photograph by Ossip van Duivenbode Photograph by Ossip van Duivenbode The structure is intended to serve not only as a library, but as a social and cultural community center. Photograph by Ossip van Duivenbode The five-level building contains extensive educational facilities, arrayed along the edges of the interior and accessible through the main atrium space. The public program is supported by subterranean service spaces, book storage, and a large archive. Photograph by Ossip van Duivenbode Photograph by Ossip van Duivenbode One thing you’ve got to be wondering is how the heck the patrons access those books on the upper tiers.  Photograph by Ossip van Duivenbode Photograph by Ossip van Duivenbode The designers came up with a clever way to do this, but, disappointingly, the idea could not be realized due to time constraints: The library is MVRDV’s most rapid fast-track project to date. It took just three years from the first sketch to the opening…. The tight construction schedule forced one essential part of the concept to be dropped: access to the upper bookshelves from rooms placed behind the atrium. This change was made locally and against MVRDV’s advice and rendered access to the upper shelves currently impossible. The full vision for the library may be realised in the future, but until then perforated aluminium plates printed to represent books on the upper shelves. Photograph by Ossip van Duivenbode Fake upper books aside, it’s still a magnificent structure! Via PetaPixel

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When Designers Can’t Get Their Way: Photographs of a Mega-Library in China

Opera Software Changes Name To Otello Corporation

Opera Software has changed its name to Otello Corporation, it said in a statement on Monday. From a report: Otello owns companies that develop software for advertising, telecoms, games and other online business. The name changes does not affect Opera Software AS or the Opera and Opera Mini internet browsers, all of which Otello sold in 2016, Opera Software AS said in a separate statement. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Opera Software Changes Name To Otello Corporation

Toyota plans to offer more than 10 EV models by the early 2020s

Toyota recently hinted that it was finally ready to embrace pure electric cars , and now we have a better sense of what that commitment entails. The automaker has outlined its goals for low- and zero-emission cars in the next decade, and it expects to field “more than 10” EVs worldwide by the early 2020s, starting with China before spreading to markets like Europe, Japan and the US. And by 2025, every Toyota and Lexus will either be EV-only or have an electrified option like a hybrid or hydrogen fuel cell . Not that the company’s goals are especially ambitious. It hopes to have sold somewhere over 1 million zero-emission cars (either pure EVs or hydrogen models) by 2030, and 5.5 million with some kind of electric powerplant. That sounds like a lot, but it’s fairly modest in practice. Ford has said that it wants at least 10 percent of its sales to be EVs by 2020, while GM hopes to have 20 EVs on the market by 2023. And of course, Tesla may well beat Toyota’s numbers far in advance. There were roughly half a million Model 3 reservations by August , and that’s not including other EV models. Nonetheless, the targets are important. Even though Toyota is hedging its bets by making hydrogen a part of its future, it’s treating EVs as a significant part of its lineup. And when Toyota is clearly one of the world’s largest car brands, that’s bound to make an impact on what people drive. You may at least consider an electrified car where it wasn’t an option before. Source: Toyota

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Toyota plans to offer more than 10 EV models by the early 2020s

Uber orders up to 24,000 Volvo SUVs for its self-driving fleet

Uber has just taken another big step from a ride-sharing service to a transportation provider. It announced that it will buy up to 24, 000 Volvo XC90s, marking the first major vehicle fleet purchase by a ride-hailing service. Uber will take delivery of the SUVs between 2019 and 2021, then equip them with its own sensors and tech, allowing it to do fully autonomous, driver-free passenger rides . “This new agreement puts us on a path toward mass-produced, self-driving vehicles at scale, ” Uber’s Jeff Miller told Bloomberg . The XC90 starts at $47, 000, so this could be a pretty substantial purchase — over $1 billion worth of cars, to be exact. Uber and Volvo previously signed a $300 million pact, and Volvo, based in Sweden but owned by China’s Geely Auto , is using the proceeds to develop its own driverless cars. It has been working with Uber for nearly three years to develop a base vehicle with core autonomous tech, which the ride-sharing company could then customize as it sees fit. Uber has also made deals with Ford and Daimler. Uber aims to eventually give driver-free passenger rides, which is the only way such a service would be economically feasible. “It only becomes a commercial business when you can remove the vehicle operator from the equation, ” Miller told Reuters . However, Uber and everyone else are still far from that goal. Uber has been offering autonomous car rides in Ford Fusion and other vehicles for over a year in Pittsburgh. However, earlier this year, it admitted that human drivers had to take the wheel at least once every mile . City dwellers are also reportedly tired of the tests, as they haven’t provided the promised jobs and other benefits. On top of all that, Uber is embroiled in a lawsuit with Google’s Waymo, which accused it of stealing key self-driving tech. Source: Bloomberg

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Uber orders up to 24,000 Volvo SUVs for its self-driving fleet

Ford will build EVs with Chinese automaker in $765 million deal

Over the last few months, China has been making plans and deals to wean its country’s cars off fossil fuels. In July, Daimler agreed to pair up with Chinese automaker BAIC to invest $735 million in EV infrastructure. Ford just entered its own venture, a 50-50 partnership with manufacturer Zotye Auto for a combined investment of $756 million to produce electric cars. Once the Chinese government approves the deal, the enterprise will build a manufacturing facility in the Zhejiang province to produce EVs under its new brand, Zotye Ford. As CNET points out, both parent companies signed an agreement back in August that paved the way for this partnership. “Zotye Ford will introduce a new brand family of small all-electric vehicles, ” Ford group VP Peter Fleet said in the statement . “We will be exploring innovative vehicle connectivity and mobility service solutions for a new generation of young city-dwelling Chinese customers.” While China hasn’t set a specific deadline to ban fossil fueled cars, as France and UK expect to phase out by 2040, the clock is ticking. Foreign automakers have two choices: Pay a hefty 25 percent import tax on vehicles or partner with a local company to produce cars in the country. This gives manufacturers like Zotye experience (though that company in particular already produces electric and battery-powered vehicles) while granting outside conglomerates access to Chinese markets. Companies are making deals to get a slice of the country’s EV pie ahead of time because, while its ratio of car owners is low (one in five people), China’s 1.4 billion-person population means nearly 300 million vehicles currently on its roads. Source: CNET

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Ford will build EVs with Chinese automaker in $765 million deal

Jellyfish-inspired e-skin glows when it’s in ‘pain’

Artificial skin stands to have a variety uses, with potential applications in everything from robots to prosthetics. And in recent years, researchers have been able to instill sensory perception, like touch and pressure, into artificial skin. However, while those sorts of senses will be incredibly important in engineered skin, they’ve so far been rather limited. For example, while current versions can be quite sensitive to light touch, they don’t fare so well with high pressures that could cause damage. So researchers at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China set out to fix that problem and they drew their inspiration from jellyfish. The Atolla jellyfish can sense pressure in its surroundings and emits bright flashes of light when attacked. To mimic that and combine visual signals with pressure sensing, the researchers placed small silver wires within a stretchy material, which was able to produce electrical signals when light pressure was applied to it. In between two layers of that material, the researchers added an additional layer, which was embedded with phosphors — particles that can luminesce — that lit up when strong pressure was applied. As increasing amounts of pressure were applied to the layered electronic skin , the phosphors lit up more and more and overall the skin was able to register a much wider range of pressure than other versions have been able to achieve. In the image below, you can see the phosphors light up when a transparent “W”-shaped slab is pressed into the activated electronic skin. The high pressures registered by the phosphors are around the levels that become painful to humans, meaning the luminescent material can play the role of pain sensors found in real human skin and create a visual representation of “pain.” Further, the full range of pressure that this skin can sense more closely matches what real human skin can feel. And as the researchers point out, this capability makes this particular electronic skin a promising potential component to human-machine interfaces and intelligent robots . The work was recently published in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces . Image: American Chemical Society Source: ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces

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Jellyfish-inspired e-skin glows when it’s in ‘pain’

China Shuts Down Tens Of Thousands Of Factories In Widespread Pollution Crackdown

Buildings in China are shrouded in smog. From a report: China has implemented an unprecedented pollution crackdown in recent months as the country shuts down tens of thousands of factories. The effort is part of a national effort to address China’s infamous pollution and has affected wide swaths of China’s manufacturing sector. In total, it is estimated that 40 percent of all China’s factories have been shut down at some point in order to be inspected by environmental bureau officials. As a result of these inspections over 80, 000 factories have been hit with fines and criminal offenses as a result of their emissions. Safety officials have been moving from province to province (30 in total so far) shutting down factories as well as electricity and gas as they inspect the factories for meeting emissions requirements. This has resulted in late and missed orders, increased costs, and could ultimately result in higher prices on US shelves. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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China Shuts Down Tens Of Thousands Of Factories In Widespread Pollution Crackdown