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Archive for the ‘sustainability’ category: Page 579

Feb 1, 2016

World’s first ‘robot run’ farm to open in Japan

Posted by in categories: food, robotics/AI, sustainability

A Japanese firm said Monday it would open the world’s first fully automated farm with robots handling almost every step of the process, from watering seedlings to harvesting crops.

Kyoto-based Spread said the indoor grow house will start operating by the middle of 2017 and produce 30,000 heads of lettuce a day.

It hopes to boost that figure to half a million lettuce heads daily within five years.

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Feb 1, 2016

The world’s largest floating solar power plant is being built in Japan

Posted by in categories: solar power, sustainability

As solar power becomes a bigger and bigger part of the overall energy landscape, engineers around the world are busy working out how to build plants that are large and efficient enough to keep up with demand. Now Japanese electronics giant Kyocera is starting construction on what it says will be the largest floating solar power plant (in terms of overall capacity) in the world.

It’s the fourth such floating plant Kyocera has worked on so far, but this one promises to be the most impressive yet: the facility is going to be built on the Yamakura Dam reservoir to the south-east of Tokyo in Japan, and will pump out 13.7 megawatts (MW) of power once it’s completed in March 2018. Some 51,000 photovoltaic panels will be stitched together to cover around 180,000 square metres (about 44.5 acres) of space.

That’s roughly the same area as 18 soccer pitches, so you get a sense of the sort of scale we’re talking about here. Kyocera says the new plant will provide enough power for 4,970 average households and offset around 7,411 tonnes of CO2 emissions every year that it’s in operation (equivalent to 19,000 barrels of oil).

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Jan 31, 2016

Robot-Run Farm Will Open In Japan Next Year

Posted by in categories: food, robotics/AI, sustainability

My parents love their farm life, etc. However, as they are get older, and they need a way to maintain their land, etc. Maybe robots are the perfect solution. Certainly worth looking into.


Japan plans to open the first farm run completely by robots growing vegetables.

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Jan 31, 2016

Elon Musk identifies electric aircraft, genetics and neuron scale brain computer interfaces as high potential technologies

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, cyborgs, Elon Musk, genetics, neuroscience, space travel, sustainability

Elon Musk, CEO of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Tesla Motors, Inc, was at Startmeup Hong Kong and talked about what he thought were areas of technological opportunity.

At 37 minutes into this video Elon Musk talks about high potential technology like Hyperloop which he currently does not have time to address electric aircraftgenetics is thorny but is our best shot at many tough diseasesbrain computer interfaces at the neuron level has potential for intelligence augmentationNeural Lace was mentioned.

Scientists from China and the US have found a pioneering way to inject a tiny electronic mesh sensor into the brain that fully integrates with cerebral matter and enables computers to monitor brain activity.

Continue reading “Elon Musk identifies electric aircraft, genetics and neuron scale brain computer interfaces as high potential technologies” »

Jan 30, 2016

Tesla Model 3 will be unveiled in March, with budget Model Y CUV to follow

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, sustainability, transportation

Hope it is a success; he will need it.


Tesla Model 3 will be unveiled in March, with budget Model Y CUV to followReports claim that the Tesla Model 3, the Palo Alto automaker’s long-awaited electric car for the masses, will be unveiled in March. Better yet, the company also has a Model Y compact crossover planned for the future, though details on this vehicle are largely limited to the type of vehicle it would be.

March’s Model 3 launch will focus exclusively on the new EV – an electric sedan like the Model S, but this time sold at a more affordable price point. Tesla CEO and founder Elon Musk called the vehicle “probably the most profound car that we make” and a “very compelling car at an affordable price,” and that only adds to the hype of a car that’s expected to drive Tesla sales to 500,000 in 2020, from a mere 50,000 in 2015.

Continue reading “Tesla Model 3 will be unveiled in March, with budget Model Y CUV to follow” »

Jan 30, 2016

Elon Musk: SpaceX to make trip to Mars

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, space travel, sustainability

In less than 9 yrs.


HONG KONG, Jan. 30 (UPI) — SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he plans to send humans to Mars by 2025.

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Jan 30, 2016

Google’s Project SkyBender aims to beam 5G internet from solar-powered drones

Posted by in categories: business, drones, habitats, internet, mobile phones, solar power, space, sustainability

Google is working in secret at a spaceport in New Mexico to build and test solar-powered internet drones in a new initiative codenamed Project SkyBender, according to a report from The Guardian today. The company is reportedly renting 15,000 square feet of hangar space from Virgin Galactic — the commercial spaceflight outfit of business mogul Richard Branson — at the privately owned Spaceport America located near a town called Truth or Consequences. The lynchpin of Project SkyBender appears to be cutting-edge millimeter wave technology, which can transmit gigabits of data every second at speeds up to 40 times faster than modern 4G LTE.

Millimeter waves are thought to be the future of high-speed data transmission technology, and may form the backbone of 5G mobile networks. Aereo founder Chet Kanojia’s new startup Starry announced earlier this week it would use millimeter wave tech to bring gigabit internet speeds to people’s homes via Wi-Fi. Millimeter waves have much shorter range than current smartphone signals and are easily disrupted by weather conditions like rain, fog, and snow. Using what’s called a phased array, however, Google and others could potentially focus the transmissions over greater distances.

Google is currently testing the technique with a new solar-powered drone called Centaur and other units made by a division known as Google Titan, which the company formed after it acquired drone maker Titan Aerospace in 2014. The company has a deal with the FCC to continue testing until July, according to The Guardian. It’s also paying Virgin Galactic about $1,000 a day to use its hanger, as well as an additional $300,000 to Spaceport America to construct installations with servers, millimeter wave transceivers, and other tech onsite.

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Jan 29, 2016

France to pave 1,000km of road with solar panels

Posted by in categories: solar power, sustainability

Not mentioned is that the roads become easier to replace instead of having to repave them.


The minister told a conference of transport authorities last week that the tenders for the “Positive Energy” initiative had already been issued and the tests on the panels would begin in the spring.

According to France’s Agency of Environment and Energy Management, 4m of solarised road is enough to supply one household’s electricity needs, apart from heating, and one kilometre will light a settlement with 5,000 inhabitants.

Continue reading “France to pave 1,000km of road with solar panels” »

Jan 29, 2016

Tesla’s home battery is finally rolling out. First stop: Australia

Posted by in categories: habitats, solar power, sustainability

According to Nick Pfitzner, the Tesla Powerwall is “a thing of beauty.”

Pfitzner, who lives in Sydney’s Hills District, was one of the first homeowners in Australia to have the highly anticipated energy storage battery installed at his home on Thursday.

Tesla announced in September it would be bringing the Powerwall to Australia, with a spokesperson telling Mashable Australia the country had been “prioritised as a market” due to its high number of solar energy users.

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Jan 29, 2016

Biotechnology, synthetic biology keys to humans colonizing other planets

Posted by in categories: alien life, biotech/medical, food, genetics, particle physics, space travel, sustainability

Over the last 12,000 years or so, human civilization has noticeably reshaped the Earth’s surface. But changes on our own planet will likely pale in comparison when humans settle on other celestial bodies. While many of the changes on Earth over the centuries have been related to food production, by way of agriculture, changes on other worlds will result, not only from the need for on-site production of food, but also for all other consumables, including air.

As vital as synthetic biology will be to the early piloted missions to Mars and voyages of exploration, it will become indispensable to establish a long-term human presence off-Earth, namely colonization. That’s because we’ve evolved over billions of years to thrive specifically in the environments provides by our home planet.

Our physiology is well-suited to Earth’s gravity and its oxygen-rich atmosphere. We also depend on Earth’s magnetic field to shield us from intense space radiation in the form of charged particles. In comparison, Mars currently has no magnetic field to trap particle radiation and an atmosphere that is so thin that any shielding against other types of space radiation is negligible compared with the protection that Earth’s atmosphere affords. At the Martian surface, atmospheric pressure never gets above 7 millibars. That’s like Earth at an altitude of about 27,000 m (89,000 ft), which is almost the edge of space. And it’s not like the moon is a better option for us since it has no atmosphere at all.

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