This NYC high-rise building cleans the air like trees do

SoHo remains a super-trendy neighborhood in New York City, but a new high-rise in the neighborhood just might make the area smell a little sweeter. 570 Broome, designed by Turkish architect Tahir Demircioglu’s hot boutique architecture firm Builtd, is using a unique combination of two emerging technologies to constantly clean the air around the building — an attractive and welcome feature for a building that is located adjacent to the Holland Tunnel.

First, the façade of 570 Broome is clad in 2,000 square meters of Neolith paneling. This popular building material is composed of three elements: Minerals from granite, quartz, and feldspar that lend the product a powerful rigidity; minerals from glass and silica that lend the paneling chemical stability; and natural oxides that provide chromatic properties. The panels are produced in a press with force and pressure up to 400 bars before being cured in an oven at temperatures exceeding 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

The panels are very hard and clean in the first place but they have also gone through a second process to give them their unique air-cleaning properties. The panels have been treated with a titanium dioxide nanoparticle-based treatment called Pureti, which actively alters the chemical makeup of the surrounding air.

“Pureti’s technology reverses pollution, helps improve air quality, and as an added perk keeps the facade cleaner for longer … It’s a no-brainer for developers in urban places — and for eco-conscious buyers, it’s a wonderful sustainability and wellness feature,” a representative for Pureti told Culture Trip.

The chemical compound is hygroscopic, meaning simply that it directs dirt and water away from the building. However, the Pureti compound is also photo-catalytic, meaning it transforms harmful polluting particles, such as greenhouse gases that contribute to the city’s growing smog problem, into benign nitrates that ultimately end up as minerals, gas, and water. In short, the nasty pollution that bounces off of 570 Broome ends up as nothing more harmful than H2O.

The technique is so effective in fact that one lane mile (or 6,000 square meters) will remove one ton of nitrogen oxide from the air per year, into perpetuity. It’s an effect equivalent to reserving the polluting effect of cars driving 650,000 miles. In terms of the specific number of Pureti-treated surfaces at 570 Broome, it’s equivalent to taking 2,000 cars off of the island of Manhattan for a year.

Demircioglu, who is also actively working on an immersive play experience for children among his other commercial projects, plans to use the new technology on a multi-family development on Long Island. The Luxury apartments at 570 Broome are already on sale, with prices ranging from a cool $1.275 million for a 677-square-foot studio to more than $3.4 million for a 1,200-square-foot, two-bedroom unit.

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Need to cut back on your salt? In-mouth sensor tracks sodium intake in real time

Georgia Institute of Technology

Keeping track of your sodium intake is very important if you’re among the 1 in 3 American adults who suffer from high blood pressure. Physicians will advise you to opt for low-salt options when it comes to choosing and eating food, but keeping track of exactly how much salt is passing your lips isn’t easy. That could soon change, however, thanks to a new electronic sensor developed by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Their stretchable sodium-measuring device could possibly be embedded in a dental retainer, and used to provide highly sensitive, real-time monitoring of sodium intake. The information could then be sent directly to your phone or other mobile device to provide feedback, guidance, and — if necessary — the occasional admonishment.

“The intraoral electronics can measure the amount of sodium from food intake on a daily basis, which is used to control someone’s eating behavior directly related to diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and obesity,” Dr. Woonhong Yeo, whose lab carried out the research, told Digital Trends. “We [have] already developed prototype devices and proved the device functionality with a human study. With the customized Android application, real-time sodium intake from veggie juice, chicken noodle soup, and potato chips was clearly measured and data wirelessly sent to a smartphone or tablet.

In the research team’s prototype version of the sensor, its power source is a rechargeable microcoin battery capable of providing continuous measurements for 12 hours. Since most of us aren’t waking up in the middle of the night to snack on chips (if you are, quit pretending that’s normal), this would be long enough to cover our waking, food-consuming hours. However, the researchers have plans to make it even more efficient and less intrusive.

“The next step is to further miniaturize the device, such that it can be simply laminated on a tooth,” Yeo said. “We are very interested in commercialization of this technology and device. Currently, we are waiting to get contacts from interested companies.”

A paper describing the research, “Wireless, intraoral hybrid electronics for real-time quantification of sodium intake toward hypertension management,” was recently published in the journal PNAS.

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UPS deliveries receive a cartoonish makeover with new electric trucks

UPS

The future is now! Or, at least it is for UPS and its latest announcement. The company recently revealed its latest and greatest fleet of delivery vehicles: A new line of purpose-built, all-electric, compact delivery vans for urban deliveries in London and Paris.

This marks a significant step forward toward reducing the carbon footprint of major entities operating large fleets of motor vehicles in the private sector, in conjunction with major automakers pledging to do the same.

In 2017, both governments of the United Kingdom and France made promises to ban all fossil-fueled vehicles from some of its major cities by 2040 for London, and 2030 for Paris, to curb climate-changing carbon emissions. This, of course, put pressure on anyone who depends on a motor vehicle in these major metropolitan and global cities, requiring many to adapt to these new regulations by ramping efforts to roll out all-electric vehicles.

For UPS, its solution for dealing with deliveries in London and Paris without depending on fossil fuels are these new all-electric zero-tailpipe emissions delivery vans. They are built by a company called Arrival, the first commercial automaker in Europe to manufacturer all-electric vehicles specifically for the application and specifications of UPS delivery vehicles.

“UPS is working with Arrival here in the U.K. because their smart electric vehicles are helping to reduce dependency on fossil fuel. This is a pioneering collaboration that helps UPS develop new ways to reduce our emissions,” Luke Wake, UPS’ international director for automotive engineering in the advanced technology group, said in a statement.

These new fully electric delivery vehicles produce zero tailpipe emissions, are specifically designed to be lightweight, and serve up a full driving range of more than 150 miles. That currently bests the driving ranges of other all-electric delivery vehicles currently active on the road.

UPS’ new vehicles aren’t fully autonomous, which is still quite some time away. So they still need to be driven by a human behind the wheel. Nonetheless, UPS’ new EV delivery vehicles are also catered to care for the delivery drivers throughout their shifts.

For instance, Arrival’s UPS delivery vans come standard with the company’s Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, which exist to improve driver safety and reduce fatigue while on the job. It also comes equipped with a ton of wireless connectivity features so that fleet managers can keep better track of delivery vehicles. This data could then be used to better understand, log, and manage the logistics of all the deliveries and its drivers. This helps improve operating efficiency, which could optimize delivery routes for faster and more dependable delivery times.

UPS says the new fleet of all-electric delivery vans will be active before the end of 2018. The company also said that it is continuing to explore all-electric delivery vehicle fleet options in other major cities, such as New York.

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Potential cocaine breathalyzer uses nanoparticles to look for drug abuse

Researchers from the University at Buffalo, New York, and Fudan University in China have developed a low-cost chip which can reportedly detect the presence of cocaine in only a few minutes. If all goes according to plan, they hope that it will lead to the development of a portable breathalyzer-style device which could be used by law enforcement to reveal whether or not a person has been using the drug.

The new chip uses an especially engineered nanostructure which traps light at the edges of gold and silver nanoparticles. In the event that biological or chemical molecules land on the chip’s surface, part of this captured light interacts with the new molecules and is “scattered” in recognizable patterns, which can reveal which compound is present. In addition to cocaine, the surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) technology could be used to look for opioids and the active ingredients in marijuana. It is able to uncover even tiny traces of these compounds.

“In practical applications, especially for commercial SERS chips, shelf time is usually an important parameter,” researcher Nan Zhang told Digital Trends, explaining why the technology is so promising. “Due to the fragile nanostructure and stability of metal materials, the claimed shelf time for most commercial SERS chips is relatively short. The performance of SERS chip may degrade over time, especially for silver-based structures. [However, our] proposed SERS substrate was demonstrated effective after a 12-month shelf time in an ambient storage environment.”

Zhang noted that the technology is also low-cost. The sensors could be made for just a few dollars, offering a high level of sensitivity with very little in the way of investment.

“We have already got a Chinese patent for this low-cost developed SERS substrate,” Zhang continued. “We are trying to introduce this product into a broad market once we find a proper investor to cooperate with. It has been recognized that a huge market exists if this price can be reduced down to $1 to $5.”

A paper describing the work, “Superabsorbing Metasurfaces with Hybrid Ag-Au Nanostructures for Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy Sensing of Drugs and Chemicals,” was recently published in the journal Small Methods.

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A.I. could help cameras see in candlelight, research suggests

Low-light photography is a balance between blur and noise — but what if artificial intelligence could even out the score? Researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Intel have trained a program to process low-noise images in a room lit with a single candle. By feeding a RAW image processor two identical shots, one a short exposure and one a long exposure, the group managed to get an image with less noise and without the odd color casts alternative methods provide. With additional research, the processing algorithms could help cameras take images with less noise without using a longer shutter speed.

To train what the group calls the See-in-the-Dark data set, the researchers took two different images in limited light. Using a remote app to control the camera without touching it, the group took a properly exposed long exposure image from ten to 30 seconds long. The researchers then took a second image with a short exposure from  0.1 to 0.03 seconds long, which typically created an image that was almost entirely black.

Repeating this process around 5,000 different times, some with a Sony a7S II and some with a Fujifilm X-T2, the researchers then used the paired images to train a neural network. The images were first processed by separating into different color channels, removing the black and reducing the image’s resolution. The data set also used RAW data from the camera sensor, not processed JPEGs.

The algorithms created from the data set, when used on RAW sensor data, created brighter images with less noise compared to other methods of handling the camera data, like demosaicing. The resulting images also had a more accurate white balance than current methods. The results improve on traditional image processing, the researchers said, and warrant more research.

The enhanced processing method could help smartphones perform between in low light, along with enhancing handheld shots from DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, the group suggests. Video could also benefit, since taking a longer exposure isn’t possible while maintaining a standard frame rate.

While the sample images from the program are impressive, the processing was only tested on stationary subjects. Image processing was also slower than current standards — the images took 0.38 and 0.66 seconds to process at a reduced resolution, too slow to maintain the burst speeds on current cameras. The group’s data set was also designed for a specific camera sensor — without additional research on data sets for multiple sensors, the process would have to be repeated for each new camera sensor. The researchers suggested that future research could look into those limitations.

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Scared yet? Boston Dynamics’ humanoid robot can now jog freely

Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot has been untethered and set free, which, for anyone convinced of an imminent robot uprising, is a rather worrying development.

A video posted on YouTube this week shows the humanoid robot running at a fair clip across open land before jumping over a log that it finds in its path.

It’s impressive stuff, and shows just how far bipedal robots have come in a short space of time. For proof, check out this amusing compilation video from a contest in 2015 showing a bunch of similarly designed robots looking as if they’ve spent a night drinking as they simply try to walk, let alone break into a jog à la Atlas.

To be honest, it’s not the most impressive thing we’ve seen Atlas do. Last November, for example, we were treated to a video of the robot performing a perfect backflip. Pretty astonishing for a 5-foot-9-inch, 180-pound machine.

Atlas hasn’t always been so clever, though. Last August, two videos surfaced showing the robot taking a tumble, once on stage when it tripped over a light and again during a shelf-stacking demonstration.

SpotMini goes for a walk

Boston Dynamics also released a video (below) showing its SpotMini “robot dog” navigating a specified route through its office and lab facility. The team said that before the walk, it led the robot along the route manually so it could build up a map of the course using cameras mounted on its front, back, and sides.

“During the autonomous run, SpotMini uses data from the cameras to localize itself in the map and to detect and avoid obstacles,” Boston Dynamics said in notes accompanying the video.

The walk lasted just over six minutes, with the company keen to point out that the QR codes visible in the video are for measuring performance, and are not a navigation aid.

Boston Dynamics has built a stellar reputation in recent years, designing amazingly capable robots, among them BigDog, WildCat, Handle, SpotMini, and Atlas.

The team’s long-term plans for the robots aren’t really clear, but their extraordinary agility and skill means their technologies could one day be applied across a range of industries, possibly sooner rather than later judging by their current abilities. For the time being, Boston Dynamics says it’s keen to continue developing “machines that break boundaries, and work in the real world.”

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DJI’s plush new headquarters will feature a skybridge for drone tests

Currently under construction in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, DJI’s new headquarters is so sci-fi that a video of it looks just like a movie trailer.

The company behind the world’s most popular consumer drones — among them the Mavic Air, Mavic Pro, and Phantom 4 Pro — has teamed up with Foster and Partners to create a design that “defies the traditional idea of office space to form a creative community in the sky.”

When you consider that Foster and Partners deigned Apple’s so-called “spaceship” campus, the sci-fi description makes even more sense. The video showcasing the design, which comes complete with a dramatic soundtrack, features a DJI helicopter on a moving platform, a bunch of flashy cars (belonging to DJI executives?), and, of course, lots of drones, many of which we see buzzing out of the bottom of a skybridge that connects the site’s two, mainly glass, buildings. It all looks very cool indeed.

According to the architect, the construction will combine research and development (R&D) spaces with office space and other areas for public functions.

Floors will be arranged “in floating volumes cantilevered from central cores by large steel megatrusses, creating large, column-free spaces throughout, with unique quadruple-height drone flight testing labs.”

Besides putting each new drone design through its paces, workers will also be able to enjoy a range of facilities outside of work time, including state-of-the-art gymnasiums and “robot fighting rings.”

And just like Apple’s new campus, DJI’s site will include a theater where the company will publicly unveil its future drones, along with any other devices that it releases.

Members of the public will be able to enter the first floor of one of the two buildings to enjoy an exhibition showcasing DJI’s latest products, which besides drones currently include first-person-view drone goggles and camera stabilization devices.

Tech campuses

DJI’s striking design is precisely what you’d expect from a leading tech company building a new headquarters. Besides Apple’s campus, Facebook also has a beautifully designed base in Silicon Valley, California, while Amazon recently opened its “Spheres” space — part office complex, part rainforest — in downtown Seattle, Washington.

In the U.K., meanwhile, Google is currently building its “landscraper” campus in London, a structure so called because it’s far longer than it is tall.

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Forget clocks — this giant robotic sundial is the coolest timepiece ever

Chalk it up to a misspent youth reading way too many steampunk novels if you like, but there’s something inexplicably cool about combining futuristic and past technology to create something fresh. That’s the basis for an innovative project recently shown off at Milan Design Week 2018. Called Sunny Side Up, it’s a fresh take on the sundial, a millennia-old method of telling the time based on where the sun is in the sky.

In order to work, a sundial requires a plate-like dial, a shadow-casting rod called a gnomon and, well, a giant burning ball of gas called the sun. Sunny Side Up updates that idea for the 21st century by keeping the gnomon, but replacing the sun with an artificial light source that circles on a robotic arm. It’s the creation of a Zurich and Marseille, France-based studio called AATB that belongs  to artists Andrea Anner and Thibault Brevet.

“We worked with a Universal Robots robotic arm that we programmed to follow the desired trajectory in space and keep the light pointed in the right direction,” Brevet told Digital Trends. “We also developed an aluminum heatsink that can directly attach to the robot, and an interface circuit board that allows us to control and dim the light directly from the robot’s program. Lastly, we machined and polished an aluminum rod that casts the shadow on the wall.”

While it looks pretty awesome in its own right, Sunny Side Up is intended by its creators to be a comment on our current disconnect from the planet and circadian rhythms, epitomized by a 24/7 culture in which even the sun can be replaced by a robot.

“The project was commissioned for an exhibition about mechanical joints in design,” Anner said. “We were interested by the possibility of defining virtual joints with robotic arms by moving objects in space as if they would be physically linked together. The project raises questions about the value of artificial nature and our growing disconnect with the environment, while proposing a contemplative use of robotics to reflect on space and time.”

Sunny Side Up was designed for Milan Design Week, but its creators say that they are now “actively developing” it as a possible commercial product, which can be installed in public spaces or private settings. We don’t know about you, but we’d totally be interested in pledging some cash for our own version on Kickstarter. Even if it might have to be a whole lot smaller to fit into our apartment!

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Sorry, Spider-Man! Newly developed bio-fiber is even stronger than spider silk

KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Bio-based materials, such as wood and spider silk, can be impressively strong. But not quite as strong as a new cellulose material developed by researchers from Sweden’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology. The new material is stronger than all previous bio-based materials, whether fabricated or natural. That includes previous record holder dragline spider silk fibers, generally considered to be the strongest bio-based material nature has yet created.

“One of the major challenges for anyone working with nanotech materials is how to make use of the properties that we know exist on the nanoscale,” researcher Daniel Söderberg told Digital Trends. “Nature has, through millions of years of evolution, been able to develop routes for this. An example is the wood that is built from the so-called nanocellulose, which trees build from water and carbon dioxide through biosynthesis. During growth, the tree manages to put the nanocellulose together in a controlled, ordered fashion. Nature is pretty good at this, and wood retains some of the properties of the nanocellulose. What we have done is to develop a process where we can make even better use of the strength and stiffness of nanocellulose, compared to the tree, and make a material out of it that could be used to build strong bio-based products.”

The team’s manufacturing process involves suspending nanofibers in very narrow channels, through which deionized and low pH water flows. This helps the cellulose nanofibrils to self-organize into tightlynbundled packages. The finished material is strong and stiff, but also lightweight. Along with spider webs, the nanocellulose fibers are stronger than metals, alloys, and ceramics.

Due to its apparent compatibility with the human body, the new bio-based material could be used for a range of medical applications. It could also be used for building everything from cars and planes to furniture. And because it is a bio-based material, it has the advantage of potentially being biodegradable.

Söderberg said that the team is currently working on scaling up the fabrication process. This involves overcoming several challenges, such as the speed with which the fibers can be made, and the ability to dry them. “Key questions that we are working on is simplification and parallelization — making several fibers at the same time,” he said.

A paper describing the work, “​Multiscale Control of Nanocellulose Assembly: Transferring Remarkable Nanoscale Fibril Mechanics to Macroscopic Fibers,” was recently published in the journal ACS Nano.

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SpaceX makes rocket launches look easy, nails 25th Falcon 9 landing

The fifth and final version of the Falcon 9 rocket has successfully launched and landed. The highly anticipated event suffered a last-minute delay on May 10, but just about 24 hours later, the rocket successfully took the skies, carrying Bangladesh’s very first satellite, the Bangabandhu-1. This satellite will go into Geostationary Transfer Orbit, and should provide broadcast and communications services to folks in Bangladesh. SpaceX is no stranger to launching satellites, having previously helped the Turkmenistan’s TurkmenAlem satellite into space in April 2015, and Bulgaria’s Bulgariasat-1 last June.

However, this is the first time that an enhanced version of the Falcon 9 rocket, known as “Block 5,” has flown. Heralded as the most advanced iteration of the rocket yet, this ought to be SpaceX’s final version — most impressively, the Block 5 should allow SpaceX to complete more than two flights with the same Falcon 9 booster, which could help cut down on costs, as well as the time required between launches.

“Block 5 is capable of at least 100 flights before being retired,” Musk told reporters on a prelaunch conference call. He added that the Block 5 rockets should be able to launch at least 10 times before needing any major work. Eventually, SpaceX is slated to have “30 to 50” of these rockets in its fleets, though the final number “totally depends” on how many “customers insist on launching a new rocket.”

While few details about the Block 5 are available as of yet, Musk says that the rocket has more powerful engines, hardier hardware, less weight, and a more reproducible structure. But even without the Block 5, SpaceX is already slated to have an extremely productive year, with 30 launches on deck for 2018.

Ultimately, the Block 5 will be the rocket SpaceX depends upon to send humans to the International Space Station. And given this precious cargo, Musk noted that the team had to be especially particular about this spacecraft. “There are thousands and thousands and thousands of requirements,” Musk said of the rocket.

Although this maiden voyage was a success, don’t expect to see this particular Block 5 go back into space anytime soon. “Ironically, we need to take it apart to confirm that it does not need to be taken apart,” Musk said. That means that this rocket probably won’t return to the skies for another couple months.

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