Sky to show Drone racing on Sky Sports Mix channel
Sky has announced it has invested $1 million in the Drone Racing League (DRL) and agreed on a deal that will bring the new sport of drone racing to the Sky Sports Mix channel. Sky Sports Mix is free for all Sky TV customers and shows a mixture of live football, golf, cricket, tennis and more.
Drone racing sees pilots fly identical drones around 3D racecourses and all shot in first person view (FPV). Races will be shown across ten, one hour episodes, with a final race that will crown the overall champion. Races will be shown on the Sky Sports Mix channel from October this year.
Sky Sports and DRL have also said one of the races will be held at an “iconic venue” in London.
DRL CEO Nicholas Horbaczewski said: “This is an incredible exciting day for DRL. Our team has worked tirelessly to develop the technology, racecourses, and sporting rules needed to deliver the most elite, competitive, and thrilling drone racing league on the planet. We can’t wait to share it with fans around the world”.
Proterra’s electric bus can travel 350 miles before recharging
A startup called Proterra has been working on electric buses for years, and its latest model has a pretty impressive range. Its Catalyst E2 Series buses can drive up to 350 miles on a single charge, which means it can go a quite a bit further than Tesla’s top-tier Model S that already boasts a 300-plus-mile range. The vehicle can also outlast its predecessor that can only go for 258 miles. As Wired notes, electric buses might even be better than cars, since they don’t need a huge network of charging stations. They drive a set route, so cities can simply install some where they’re bound to pass — the E2 might not even need to recharge until the end of the day. Further, not everyone can afford an electric vehicle, but most people can afford to ride a bus.
The Catalyst E2 Series buses are powered by two gargantuan batteries the size of mattresses that can store up to 660 kWh. Its lightweight frame, along with its regenerative breaking system, also helps it achieve that impressive range. The only thing that might hold cities and companies back from purchasing E2 is that one will set them back $799,000, over twice the amount of a typical diesel bus. Proterra is probably hoping that government subsidies, coupled with the fuel and maintenance savings they’ll get, can convince them to buy the vehicle. If you’re in Los Angeles, you might be able to ride one of the first E2 buses scheduled to hit the road in 2017.
Source: Wired, Proterra
Futuretown’s modular platform turns VR into simulator rides
When we last met Futuretown’s CEO Johan Yang back in February, his startup appeared to be merely a virtual reality game studio, with its popular title Cloudlands: VR Minigolf currently owning 30 percent of the HTC Vive market share. Today, the company is entering the hardware space by announcing its 5D Totalmotion at the Tokyo Game Show. This aptly-named device is a cylindrical motion feedback machine that can fit any module on top to simulate different types of scenarios, such as riding, standing and seated experiences. To demonstrate these, Futuretown also announced four new VR games: Whiteout: Ski VR, Infinity Rider: Motorcycle VR, Wave Breaker: Surf VR and Stallion Adventures: Horse Riding VR.
Even though Futuretown — backed by former HTC CEO Peter Chou — started off as a studio dedicated to the HTC Vive platform, its 5D Totalmotion is open platform and supports two other VR systems out of the box: Oculus Rift and 3Glasses from China. In fact, the company’s using the Rift for its 5D Totalmotion demos at the Tokyo Game Show, in order to maximize the amount of usable space at the booth. CTO Justin Liebregts explained that if all the games ran on the Vive, his team would need to set up partitions between each setup due to potential interference from the passive Lighthouse trackers, whereas the Rift doesn’t have this issue since it uses active trackers that are plugged into the PC.
Yang said he’s aiming to launch the 5D Totamotion within the first half of 2017. That said, all four of the aforementioned titles were playable at the show. I started off with Wave Breaker: Surf VR which got me surfing from a fast-flowing river all the way to the big waves on the sea. It was, to my surprise, physically intense. I wrongly assumed that I wouldn’t need the handlebar, but eventually I learned that I needed to do a lot of twisting, which is a good thing that the standing module comes with shoe bindings à la snowboards. I was also given a Woojer haptic sensor vest to put on in order to simulate the sensation of rush, which Sure, I kept missing the balloons, but it was still fun and proved to be great way to work out. I was already sweating a bit after just this one game.
I was then given a chance to recover by riding on a horse and an eagle in Stallion Adventures: Horse Riding VR. Admittedly, I freaked out a little when the first cheetah briefly chased me, but it turned out that the horse and the eagle were on a fixed track due to the game’s early-stage development. The only control I had over was the horse’s speed: I simply had to tug the riding module’s rope and bob in sync with the horse’s movement to accelerate, and then pull the rope back to slow down. Hopefully the final game will allow more freedom to explore the virtual world.
Later on I checked out Whiteout: Ski VR which let me ski down a mountain in any way I wanted (and also knock out other virtual skiers for a laugh). While I’m no expert in skiing, I wish the game had a dedicated module that would allow my feet to move separately like in real life, rather than using the same module I used for surfing earlier. But that’s not to say it wasn’t fun.
Last but not least, I hopped on the motorcycle module for Infinity Rider: Motorcycle VR. I appreciated how this module offered a realistic handlebar with brake handles and acceleration grip on the right, but the overall body didn’t provide enough tilt for turning (Chou assured me that this will be addressed in an upcoming iteration of hardware). Also, for some reason, I quickly felt sick and had to hop off as soon as the game ended. My guess is it was to do with a combination of visual delay and motion delay, but there was also the possibility of me not getting enough rest after the three previous games. Hopefully Futuretown can fix these issues, as this particular ride has a lot of potential — just imagine riding a speeder bike in a Star Wars VR game.
It’ll obviously be a while before we see the 5D Totalmotion in public places. While there are already other types of VR rides in malls and arcades across Asia, Chou, who also serves as the Honorary Chairman at Futuretown, claims the 5D Totalmotion is already more compelling — even more so than those at Tokyo’s VR Zone, according to feedback he received — and is also much easier to deploy. He isn’t worried about being comparatively late nor potentially being copied by others. “We have soul. People who copy have no soul… By the time we ship the products, they will be so much better [than others].”
Drone racing is coming to Sky Sports next month
Drone racing’s rise to prominence is hardly a surprise. The sport combines a new, rapidly improving technology with skilful pilots and bombastic, three-dimensional courses. If you’ve ever watched a heat, either in person or online, you’ll know it’s an exhilarating spectacle. With this in mind, it’s no bombshell to hear that Sky has made an investment in the Drone Racing League (DRL), a professional outfit backed by Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross. As part of its $1 million cash injection, Sky will be showing the entire tournament on its new Sky Sports Mix channel in the UK.
The DRL season consists of four “level” races and a winner takes all World Championship. Pilots earn points throughout the year in the hope of qualifying for the final race, which will take place in a yet to be revealed location. Each contestant has an identical drone, which is hand built and “custom designed” for the tournament. In short, the DRL is a test of the pilots’ abilities, rather than their construction skills. They monitor and control their lightweight quadcopter from a first-person perspective, using a VR-style headset and onboard camera. The same feed is, unsurprisingly, what makes the sport so fascinating to watch both online and on TV.
Sky is planning 10, one-hour episodes for the current season, starting next month. The broadcaster will also be working with London & Partners to bring an official DRL race — the “first professional drone race in the UK,” it claims — to the capital. If you think you’ve got what it takes to compete, best start practising those flips and barrel rolls in your local park.
Source: Sky
Future heart defibrillators could save lives with light pulses
Scientists think that beams of red light could restore normal heartbeat functions in humans, replacing the use of painful electric shocks. Researchers have already tested this on animals and hope to make — incredibly — an optical defibrillator. Biomedical engineering professor Natalia Trayanova, based at John Hopkins University said that with this tech, “light will be given to a patient who is experiencing cardiac arrest, and we will be able to restore the normal functioning of the heart in a gentle and painless manner.”
Typical defibrillators use electric pulses that can damage heart tissue — light would be a safer (not to mention gentler) way of tackling a patient’s irregular heartbeat. The science is based around optogenetics, where light-sensitive proteins are attached to living tissues. When light hits these proteins, they can modify the electrical activity inside your cells.
A team from Germany’s University of Bonn tested mouse hearts whose cells had been genetically engineered to produce proteins that could be triggered by light. One-second light pulses were all that was needed to restore a regular heartbeat.
Scientists at John Hopkins then designed a human heart sim, noting that the blue light used by the German team on the smaller mouse hearts wasn’t strong enough for human heart tissue. Red light, with a longer wavelength, was more effective — at least according to their computer simulation. Optical defibrillators aren’t coming any time soon; it will still take around five to ten years before the technology is ready for human patients.
Source: Futurity
iPhone 7 Plus Camera ‘Ideal for Shooting Outdoor Adventures’
Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller tweeted a link to an Outside article this morning titled “The Year’s Best New Adventure Camera? The Apple iPhone 7 Plus”, which features 17 images shot with the device in various rugged outdoor environments.
The new series of photos were taken by photo journalist and associate editor of Outside Magazine Jakob Schiller, during an outdoor adventure up rivers, down dusty bike trails, through woods, and into classic New Mexico burrito joints, leaving him particularly impressed by the versatility of the 5.5-inch handset’s dual-lens setup.
Over four days of in-the-field testing, I’ve found it to be the best small, lightweight camera you can get for the money, ideal for shooting outdoor adventures when you don’t want to lug around pounds of heavy equipment.
I immediately noticed that the 7 does a much better job capturing details in the shadows and highlights than the 6s, and the color is much more accurate and vivid.
The 12-megapixel sensors that come in the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus aren’t the best for capturing billboard-size advertisements. But Apple does a nice job marrying the sensor to its proprietary software, which helps maximize the camera’s capabilities. The resolution will be plenty high enough for printing off 11-inch x14-inch pictures.
The photographer notes that the new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus can shoot in RAW using third-party apps like Lightroom. RAW files aren’t compressed like JPEGs, so users get more detailed files that are easier to tone and crop. Check out the article for more pictures and commentary.
On Monday, Apple CEO Tim Cook followed up some iPhone 7 pictures taken at a Titans-Vikings game shared over the weekend with a group of photos offering a few examples of low-light photography.
iPhone 7 pre-order customers have been receiving shipment notifications regarding their incoming orders, which should be landing this Friday, September 16.
Related Roundup: iPhone 7
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Robots can perform surgery inside your eyeballs
Doctors at Oxford University made medical history recently by successfully completing the first robot-assisted intraocular surgery. Robert MacLaren, Professor of Ophthalmology at the university, and his team managed to gently peel off a 1/1000th millimeter membrane from the inside of a patient’s eye. To do so, the team relied on a cutting-edge medical device known as the Robotic Retinal Dissection Device, or R2D2.
The R2D2, developed by Dutch medical robotics firm Preceyes BV, is designed to perform keyhole surgery, entering and exiting the eyeball through a single, sub-millimeter hole. What’s more, it’s built to be exceedingly steady, especially given the tight tolerances within which it works. It employs a series of seven, independently computer controlled motors to navigate within the eye and can move as little as 1/1000th of a millimeter at a time. This is done to eliminate any semblance of tremors in the surgeon’s hands — including even the most minute tics like those generated by the doctor’s own heartbeat.
“Current technology with laser scanners and microscopes allows us to monitor retinal diseases at the microscopic level, but the things we see are beyond the physiological limit of what the human hand can operate on,” Dr. MacLauren told the BBC. “With a robotic system, we open up a whole new chapter of eye operations that currently cannot be performed.”
In this case, the surgical team was tasked with exorcising a tiny growth of membrane that had contracted around the patient’s retina and distorted his vision to resemble the hall-of-mirrors scene from Enter the Dragon. The existing method calls for doctors to time their movements between heartbeats but with the help of the joystick-controlled R2D2, that procedure can be completed in a fraction of the time.
For the record, this is not how it’s supposed to go.
The R2D2 is still undergoing clinical trials. In fact, this was the first of 12 such tests, each being more complex than the last. However, should the device gain government approval, it could become, as MacLauren states, “a vision of eye surgery in the future.”
Source: Oxford University
Researchers produce healthy mice without using fertilized eggs
A mammal needs fertilized egg cells to have children, right? Not so fast. University of Bath scientists report that they’re the first to successfully breed healthy mice without any fertilized eggs, instead relying on inactive embryos. The team first doused eggs in strontium chloride, which prevents them from going into a state of arrest while they’re turned into embryos — previous attempts to fool the eggs saw them die within a few days. Researchers then inserted sperm nuclei that reprogrammed the embryos, readying them for the wombs of their surrogate mothers.
The university isn’t sure exactly how the reprogramming works, so there’s still plenty to discover. Also, there’s no certainty that you’d see the same result in humans. It’s probable but not guaranteed, lead researcher Tony Perry explains to Gizmodo.
At a minimum, this is a breakthrough for our understanding of mammalian reproduction: it demonstrates that sperm don’t need an egg to mature and create a living child. However, it also has far-reaching implications for human reproduction. Gay men wanting children would only need women as surrogate mothers, and couples could sometimes overcome seemingly intractable infertility issues. Assuming technology permits this in humans in the first place, society may need to hold an ethical debate to decide whether or not it wants children conceived without conventional fertilization.
Via: Gizmodo
Source: Nature
Latest ‘Guccifer 2.0’ leak drops Tim Kaine’s phone number
The hacker that pillaged the DNC’s computers known as “Guccifer 2.0” has released another collection of documents at a cybersecurity conference in London. While it doesn’t contain private emails this time around, it has what appears to be several members’ personal info, including the cellphone number of vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine. The collection also includes the amounts donated by the party’s donors, along with their phone numbers and addresses. Take note, though, that this latest cache was uploaded on a file-sharing service instead of on Guccifer 2.0’s website or on Wikileaks, and the documents haven’t been verified yet. Wikileaks’ Twitter account shared the link where you can download the 670MB file, though, along with its password.
Interim DNC Chair Donna Brazile put the blame on the Russian government and its quest to influence the presidential elections in the US. According to Politico, she also said that if there’s anyone who’ll benefit from all these leaks, it’s Donald Trump, who has “embraced Russian President Vladimir Putin” and “publicly encouraged further Russian espionage to help his campaign.”
Guccifer 2.0 got his name from the original Guccifer, who broke into Hillary Clinton’s private email server to steal and distribute her digital missives, medical and financial information. Unlike the first Guccifer who was already sentenced to a little over four years in prison, we’re still not sure who 2.0 really is. Security experts believe, however, that the persona is just a front for Russian cyberspies carrying out government-sanctioned attacks.
678.4 MB of new “DNC documents” from @Guccifer_2https://t.co/zJhERxABiv
use 7zip to unpack
password: GuCCif3r_2.0— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) September 13, 2016
Source: NBC News, Politico, WikiLeaks (Twitter)
A cartoon frog is this week’s presidential campaign topic
If you were wondering what stage the 2016 Presidential Campaign had reached, the answer is politicized meme explanations. Social media and the internet have taken on a bigger role than ever in this race, and now the Clinton campaign posted an article breaking down the use of “Pepe” by the opposition. Featured in images reshared recently by Donald Trump and surrogates including his son, the cartoon frog has shifted from random 4chan symbol to an “alt-right” favorite.
http://mattfurie.tumblr.com/post/125974284172
The Daily Beast explored the growing link between Pepe and symbols of internet bigots back in May, citing a self-proclaimed white nationalist saying the movement wanted to reclaim it from the “normies.” Since its appearance in internet posts responding to Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment last week, Pepe and what it means has suddenly become a hot topic in political conversation. In an interview with The Atlantic, artist and Pepe creator Matt Furie called the current usage of the meme a “phase” and said he focuses on the positive aspects of its usage.
A scan of Trump’s tweets from today does not reveal any comment on this meme, the Clinton campaign post or any reference to Crying Jordan, dog avatars, anime avatars, Dat Boi, the This is (not) Fine dog or even a quick trollface. At this point, if Slender Man doesn’t come up as a debate question we’ll have to wonder if the moderators are even trying.
Source: Know Your Meme, The Atlantic
