New Florence. New Renaissance.

The future of weddings

What has been standard wedding etiquette for a long time is going to go out the window. The age of couples getting married is older and older. The majority of couples today live together before they get married and have both parts of the couple working. They’re living on their mobile devices. Couples today have no time for etiquette do’s and don’ts. Increasingly we’ll see brides proposing to grooms. We already see brides proposing to brides. We’ll see more couples book their wedding venues that they love before they’re even officially engaged. And they’ll start designing their save-the-date before they get engaged. They’ll prefer coordinating their wedding planners and their florists and their honeymoons over a mobile interface that allows them to both chat with these coordinators as well as take action from images of weddings that they see on their phones. They’ll probably be doing this while they’re watching TV or hanging out together. People will send [thank-you notes] whenever they feel like, and not be bound by etiquette there. Today, couples are very pragmatic, they’re very busy, and they want to lock in the venue that they love on the date that they want to get married. This tradition of, you have to wait until the bended knee is something that people no longer feel is as important.

WSJ (sub required)

 

 

 

AI and Invisibility Cloaks?

Good news from Pohang, S Korea for Harry Potter fans

Metamaterials are artificial materials engineered to have properties not found in naturally occurring materials and they are best known as materials for the 'invisibility cloak' often featured in SF novels or games. By precisely designing artificial atoms that are smaller than the wavelength of light and controlling the polarization and spin of light, new optical properties are made that are not found in nature. However, the current process require numerous trial and failures until the right material is obtained. It is not only time consuming but also compromise efficiency. And AI is expected to provide a solution for this problem.

The research group of Prof. Junsuk Rho, Sunae So and Jungho Mun of Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Chemical Engineering at POSTECH developed a design with a higher degree of freedom which allows to choose materials and to design photonic structures arbitrarily by using Deep Learning.

EurekAlert

 

 

 

 

PVs for electricity - and water

Previous methods – which use, for example, salinity gradient and thermoelectrical conversions – reduced the efficiency of producing electricity, says Peng Wang from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.

To address this, he and colleagues developed a three-stage device that captures and recycles the heat generated by photovoltaic (PV) solar panels to produce clean water using multi-stage membrane distillation.

Cosmos

 

The vid below shows solar technology which goes even further - turns thin air into water

 

 

Carbon hungry trees

While each acre of most tree species can capture and store 1.1 to 9.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year, an acre of empress trees can absorb 103. “The tree has a very Jack and the Beanstalk energy to it,” says Wendy Burton, whose 17-year-old Mesa, Ariz.-based timber company, World Tree, has planted more than 1,000 acres of empress.

Farmers are using non-invasive varieties of the tree, which is otherwise known as a pest in some parts of the world. Once the trees reach maturity, farmers harvest their wood for use in houses or musical instruments. World Tree investors share in the profits. The trees can regrow easily from the stumps after they’ve been harvested. Says Cathy Key, the company’s chief operating officer: “It’s a tree that grows like grass.”

Bloomberg

Here is another, Bill Gates backed carbon capture concept

 

Undersea Oil and Gas drone

Operating in deep-sea waters with intense pressure and plentiful debris remains a costly challenge for the oil and gas industry—one with potential consequences for the rest of us, who have to live with the aftermath of a spill. Keeping platform equipment running and working properly in these environments is a constant battle, requiring regular inspections that can last as long as four months. In Brazil and Italy, scientists have designed a solution: the FlatFish, a 12-foot-long, 3-ton autonomous sub powered by batteries and artificial intelligence.

The FlatFish contains a ton of buoyancy foam and is propelled by six thrusters. It’s designed to function in waters as deep as 10,000 feet for as long as a year and packed with gear that can withstand the attendant pressure, including laser-line projectors, sonars, and cameras that collect high-definition 3D images, helping it detect and evade underwater debris.

Bloomberg

 

 

 

Anatomy of a cashierless store

The WSJ has broken down some of the technology several retailers are trying out in response to the Amazon Go concept - see my blog post in Jan 2018 

How many are experimenting?

"A global survey of about 400 retailers conducted in June by research and advisory firm International Data Corp. found that 28% are testing or piloting cashierless systems, said Leslie Hand, vice president of IDC’s Retail Insights division."

 

 

Locast - latest battleground for cable cord cutters

If you’re one of the many people who have cut the cord and moved from cable to streaming TV, you’ve probably lost access to most, or all, of your local stations. And your options (unless you want to reattach that cable box) are limited. You can buy a separate antenna in order to access these stations, but your reception may be limited by how strong the signals are and whether they are blocked by nearby structures. So what do you do?

There is currently at least one service that is trying to fill the gap. Locast is a relatively recent streaming service that offers access to local broadcasting.

How can Locast do this? Unlike Aereo, a commercial service which provided local programming until it was shot down by the Supreme Court in 2014, Locast has registered as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit advocacy group (under the auspices of the Sports Fan Coalition). According to its FAQ, since it doesn’t get any “direct or indirect commercial advantage” from the transmissions, it has the right to broadcast local stations.

The FAQ also cites Locast’s ability to charge a fee “necessary to defray the actual and reasonable costs” of providing the service. Technically, Locast doesn’t charge a fee — it asks for contributions of at least $5 per month.

The Verge

Last week, all four major broadcasters (ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox) filed a copyright suit against Locast.... The best way to understand the history of this approach is through the lense of Aereo, a similar service that was sued out of existence in 2014. Broadcast is free to anyone with an antenna, so Aereo allowed users to rent an antenna and a DVR in Aereo’s warehouse, which got better broadcast reception than many homes. Users could then record and stream broadcast content over the internet. Broadcasters sued Aereo, that the service violated their copyrights. As Public Knowledge’s John Bergmayer noted at the time of the Aereo lawsuit, it doesn’t make any more sense for Aereo to be violating copyright by renting out antennas than it does for Radio Shack to be in violation for selling those antennas out of its storefront.

Public Knowledge

 

 

 

Smart Cricket Ball

The chip inside the core transmits information from the ball back to a smartwatch, phone or tablet app. So a bowler will be able to derive a lot of information about the delivery as soon as the ball is bowled. It promises to give not only fundamental information like the speed or degree of turn but minute details like the revvs the bowler has imparted (in case he is a spinner), besides speed at the time of release, when it’s pitching and after it has pitched. As of now, the speed-guns can only measure the speed at which the ball lands and not the momentum it gains or losses after it has bounced. The smart-ball would, according to the makers, give the exact degree of bounce, drift, swing, and dip. Currently, there is one speed and revolution figure that is used when a ball is bowled — and that comes from a fixed stationary radar that sees a speed reading recorded at the same point regardless of the height of the bowler or their delivery plane. Such details would considerably help data analytics and coaching, besides enhancing the viewer experience.

The manufacturers believe that it could benefit the umpires as it could register even the faintest of nicks. Though Snicko and Hotspot are commonly used, there have been instances of the Snicko not registering any spike despite apparent deviation and vice versa. Another contentious issue pertains to low catches, where even the ultra-magnifier can’t definitively clarify whether the catcher had his fingers wrapped under the balls or has grassed it.

Indian Express

 

 

 

Out There

Great PopSci issue which looks at the edge of everything - in space, under our oceans, the poles of our planet and elsewhere.

We know so little - so much more to explore

Construction tracking robots

The company was born out of frustration, “of not having the tools to build what we designed in the office,” says co-founder Stuart Maggs, whose background is in construction and architecture. “You spend a lot of time in the office, creating this vision of what you wanted, that you thought was right, but ultimately, it came down to a guy in the field with just a tape measure and a piece of chalk that will put things pretty much however he felt on that day.”

Their robots have been deployed in various construction sites around the world, including Dura Vermeer in the Netherlands and Kier in the U.K. Maggs says he found it surprisingly easy to convince the construction industry of the robot’s value — arguing there’s a real need for what it delivers: High-resolution comparison of the digital model to the on-the-ground build site that helps build managers keep close track of progress and spot problems before they can scale into costly expenses.

TechCrunch