New Florence. New Renaissance.

Digital Toys "R" Us

In its mission to claw its way back from bankruptcy and reestablish itself in the hypercompetitive toy market, the brand has a new high-tech angle. Toys “R” Us, or rather Tru Kids (the company that is helping to manage the brand names left in the wake of the liquidation last year), has teamed up with b8ta, a software company that specializes in immersive retail experiences, and will each own 50% of the new endeavor. According to CNBC, the company hopes to open 10 stores around the U.S. in 2020 and may even bring back its New York City flagship.

FastCompany

 

 

 

Tech to combat the Burmese python

Evolution gave the Burmese python a nearly infallible camouflage, but technology is catching up.

A new camera developed by University of Central Florida researchers and the non-profit company Imec uses a special wavelength of light to expose the snake as an ethereal slither against black, a ghostly coil in the river of grass.

Because pythons are cold-blooded and adopt the temperature of their surroundings, thermal imaging proved useless in hunting the invasive species.

But the camera uses a near infrared 850 nanometer wavelength (humans see between 400 and 700 nanometers) to detect the snakes, which reflect light at that level differently than the flora and waterways of South Florida.

“This is a game-changer,” said Orges, noting that they also are working on mounting the camera on drones. “The way the hunters operate now, they drive the roads and look out the sides, so having a drone system would allow them to cover a bigger area.”

Palm Beach Post

 

 

 

Flying cars will arrive before autonomous cars?

German flying carmaker Lilium has announced a major milestone in the development of its Lilium Jet today, reports CNBC. The company says it has successfully completed more than a hundred tests of the vehicle flying at speeds of up to 62 mph in the last six months.

Fast Company

 

Flying Lab

Rolls-Royce took delivery of the “Queen of the Skies” airplane at AeroTEC’s flight test center in Moses Lake, Wash., US, after it flew from Qantas’ home port of Sydney, Australia. During an extensive two-year transformation, AeroTEC engineers and technicians will convert the Boeing 747-400 from a commercial aircraft with 364 passenger seats to a state-of-the-art flying testbed equipped with extensive instrumentation and systems to take sophisticated measurements of engine performance in flight.

AeroTEC

 

 

Protein Degraders

The new drugs, dubbed protein degraders, could be one of the most significant advances in drugmaking technology in decades. Unlike specialized gene therapies, treatments based on protein degraders could be mass-produced in pill form. There could be a range of applications, from vanquishing drug-resistant tumors to clearing clusters of disease-causing proteins from the brains of Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s sufferers. “No other technology has the potential to have such a broad impact,” says Nello Mainolfi, founder and president of Kymera Therapeutics, a biotech that attracted $70 million in funding in May from Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. to use protein degraders to tackle undisclosed specialty diseases.

Bloomberg

 

 

 

 

Shapeshifting

In its purest form, the “Inner Expanse Infinity Coat” is a pink ankle-length puffer coat, with a purple waterproof trench coat layer on top of it, and it’s topped off with a large puffer hood. In campaign images, a woman is wearing the $998 coat in a wheat field at sunset as if it were a gown, with the puffer billowing gloriously behind her.

Thanks to subtle, hidden buttons and zippers, the Infinity Coat can be transformed in 26 different ways. Among its many variations, it can be flipped inside out to reveal a purple puffer exterior, or the sleeves can be removed to create a vest. And to make it even more convenient, the puffer can be neatly packed into a little pouch in one of the pockets, making it easy to throw into your luggage.

Fast Company

 

 

 

More indoor farming

In a vacant lot next to one of the last remaining steel mills in Braddock, Pennsylvania, a town just south of Pittsburgh, a massive new indoor farm is taking shape. The farm, from a startup called Fifth Season, will begin selling spinach, lettuce, and other leafy greens early next year, using a robot-based system that the founders say is cost-competitive with growing and transporting the same crops from a traditional farm.

It’s more affordable, they argue, than some others in the vertical farming industry. “We looked at vertical farming and realized that the industrywide struggle to make the economics work was a huge factor, and something that would really prevent the industry from truly taking off,” says Austin Webb, cofounder and CEO of Fifth Season, which incubated its first farm at Carnegie Mellon University.

Fast Company

AI in the oil patch

While Aker BP got the help it needed from a small Austin, Texas-based AI software firm, SparkCognition, some bigger oil-and-gas companies are working with giants in the tech industry. Exxon Mobil Corp. in February started a partnership with Microsoft Corp. to deploy AI programs to optimize its operations in the Permian, or West Texas Basin. The oil giant also recently installed an AI program to gain insights from data coming from millions of sensors that monitor its global refineries. Total SA, meanwhile, is linking up with Google Inc. to better interpret seismic data, and is set to increase its investment in AI to squeeze more hydrocarbons from existing assets.

WSJ

A talk by Amir Husain, CEO of SparkCognition

 

 

Precision Farming in Italy

A PANTHEON project robot moves through the orchard, stops and uses its camera to take images

Determining the individual needs of each plant would take humans too much time and effort, so that’s where robots could help. This prototype is being developed to move around a hazelnut orchard autonomously, taking measurements of the trees.

Renzo Fabrizio Carpio is a robotics engineer at Roma Tre University:

“We collect data with a laser scanner for 3D geometric reconstruction, and we use cameras to take multi-spectral and high-resolution images to assess the physical or health status of each tree.”

Euronews

Transhumanism

No, these are,” he said, opening a cabinet with four shelves stocked with neatly organized containers: kelp, gamma E, policosanol, super K, acetyl-L-carnitine, DHA, pomegranate extract, and so on. A different cabinet held the nighttime capsules. He has learned to gulp them by the fistful.

Transhumanism is a patchwork of beliefs about how technology will enhance the human condition, maybe radically so. There are Extropians and brain uploaders, artists keen to paint in virtual worlds, and do-it-yourself biohackers ready to have electronic chips implanted in their bodies. One common thread, though, is the hope for super-longevity.

MIT Technology Review