An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Tesla is known to be working on designing new battery modules that also work as structural elements, but the California automaker is fashioning those structural modules out of traditional cylindrical cells. There's a more elegant approach to the idea, though, and a group at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden led by professor Leif Asp has just made a bit of a breakthrough in that regard, making each component of the battery out of materials that work structurally as well as electrically. The structural battery combines a carbon-fiber anode and a lithium-iron phosphate-coated aluminum foil cathode, which are separated by a glass fiber separator in a structural battery electrolyte matrix material. The anode does triple duty, hosting the lithium ions, conducting electrons, and reinforcing everything at the same time. The electrolyte and cathode similarly support structural loads and do their jobs in moving ions.

The researchers tested a couple different types of glass fiber -- both resulting in cells with a nominal voltage of 2.8 V -- and achieved better results in terms of battery performance with thinner, plain weave. The cells using this construction had a specific capacity of 8.55 Ah/kg, an energy density of 23.6 Wh/kg (at 0.05 C), a specific power of 9.56 W/kg (at 3 C), and a thickness of 0.27 mm. To put at least one of those numbers in context, the 4680 cells that Tesla is moving to have an energy density of 380 Wh/kg. However, that energy density figure for the cylindrical cells does not include the mass of the structural matrix that surrounds them (when used as structural panels). Speaking of structural loads, the greatest stiffness was also achieved with plain glass fiber weave, at 25.5 GPa. Again, to put that number into context, it's roughly similar to glass fiber-reinforced plastic, whereas carbon fiber-reinforced plastic will be around 10 times greater, depending on whether it's resin transfer molding or woven sheets pre-impregnated with resin (known as pre-preg). Professor Asp's group is now working to see if swapping the cathode's aluminum foil for carbon fiber will increase both stiffness (which it should) and electrical performance. The group is also testing even thinner separators. He hopes to reach 75 Wh/kg and 75 GPa, which would result in a cell that is slightly stiffer than aluminum (GPa: 68) but obviously much lighter.

A robot armed with virus-killing ultraviolet light is being tested on Swiss airplanes, yet another idea aiming to restore passenger confidence and spare the travel industry more pandemic pain. Reuters reports: UVeya, a Swiss start-up, is conducting the trials of the robots with Dubai-based airport services company Dnata inside Embraer jets from Helvetic Airways, a charter airline owned by Swiss billionaire Martin Ebner. Aircraft makers still must certify the devices and are studying the impact their UV light may have on interior upholstery, which could fade after many disinfections, UVeya co-founder Jodoc Elmiger said. Still, he's hopeful robot cleaners could reduce people's fear of flying, even as COVID-19 circulates.

Elmiger's team has built three prototypes so far, one of which he demonstrated inside a Helvetic jet at the Zurich Airport, where traffic plunged 75% last year. The robot's lights, mounted on a crucifix-shaped frame, cast everything in a soft-blue glow as it slowly moved up the Embraer's aisle. One robot can disinfect a single-aisled plane in 13 minutes, start to finish, though larger planes take longer. Dnata executives hope airplane makers will sign off on the robots -- Elmiger estimates they'll sell for $15,930 or so -- as governments require new measures to ensure air travelers don't get sick.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is asking clients to accept higher prices as it ramps up investment to deal with a "structural and fundamental increase" in chip demand. Nikkei Asia reports: C.C. Wei, TSMC's CEO, told clients in a letter seen by Nikkei Asia that the world's biggest contract chipmaker plans to invest $100 billion over the three years through 2023 in advanced semiconductor technologies, according to the letter. TSMC this year announced record high capital expenditure of up to $28 billion for this year alone. "We are seeing a structural and fundamental increase in underlying demand driven by key long-term growth megatrends including 5G and high-performance computing," Wei said in the letter. The Covid-19 pandemic has also transformed the global economy, changing how people work, learn and live, the CEO added.

Wei told clients that TSMC will also "suspend wafer price reductions starting December 31" this year, for four quarters. "We believe that this modest action is the least disruptive option to supply chains so that TSMC can deliver our mission of providing leading semiconductor technologies and manufacturing capability to you in a sustainable manner," Wei said. "The increased capacity will improve supply certainty and help protect complex global supply chains that rely on semiconductors," he said. "We ask for your patience as we expedite the building of new fabs and capacity."

Apple said Wednesday that it will build a battery-based renewable energy storage facility in Central California near a solar energy installation that already provides energy for all of its facilities in the state. From a report: Apple said the project will store 240 megawatt-hours of energy, or enough to power more than 7,000 homes for one day. It is located next to the California Flats solar installation in southeastern Monterey County, about 100 miles southeast of Apple's Cupertino, California headquarters. The site sends 130-megawatts of electricity directly to Apple's California facilities during daylight hours but does not provide power during dark hours. Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, told Reuters in an interview the company intends to develop what it believes will be one of the largest battery-based storage systems in the United States.

"The challenge with clean energy -- solar and wind -- is that it's by definition intermittent," Jackson told Reuters. "If we can do it, and we can show that it works for us, it takes away the concerns about intermittency and it helps the grid in terms of stabilization. It's something that can be imitated or built upon by other companies."

ArsTechnica: Today marks the start of retail availability for Intel's 2021 gaming CPU lineup, codenamed Rocket Lake-S. Rocket Lake-S is still stuck on Intel's venerable 14 nm process -- we've long since lost count of how many pluses to tack onto the end -- with features backported from newer 10 nm designs. Clock speed on Rocket Lake-S remains high, but thread counts have decreased on the high end. Overall, most benchmarks show Rocket Lake-S underperforming last year's Comet Lake -- let alone its real competition, coming from AMD Ryzen CPUs. Our hands-on test results did not seem to match up with Intel's marketing claims of up to 19 percent gen-on-gen IPC (Instructions Per Clock cycle) improvement over its 10th-generation parts. It shouldn't come as an enormous surprise that Core i9-11900K underperforms last year's Core i9-10900K in many multithreaded tests -- this year's model only offers eight cores to last year's 10. On the plus side, Intel's claims of 19% gen-on-gen IPC are largely borne out here, mostly balancing the loss out in Passmark and Geekbench. This year's Core i5 makes a much better showing than its Core i9 big sibling. In Cinebench R20, Core i5-11600K almost catches up with Ryzen 5 5600X, and it easily dominates last year's Comet Lake i5 equivalent. It doesn't catch up to its Ryzen competitor in Passmark or Geekbench multithreaded tests, but it outpaces last year's model all the way around.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Interesting Engineering: In a world-first, a team of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology has developed a small, 3D-printed rectifying antenna that can harvest electromagnetic energy from 5G signals and use it to power devices, in a way turning 5G networks into "a wireless power grid," according to a press release by the university. As explained in the Jan.12 issue of the journal Scientific Reports, the flexible Rotman lens-based rectifying antenna, in other words, rectenna, system can perform millimeter-wave harvesting in the 28-GHz band. Commonly used in radar surveillance systems to see multiple directions without moving the antenna system, the Rotman lens is especially important for beamforming networks. However, larger antennas, which unfortunately have a narrowing field of view, are needed to harvest enough power to supply devices, and this limits the usage.

The researchers solved this problem by using a system that has a wide angle of coverage. The Rotman lens provides 6 levels of view at the same time in a pattern shaped like a spider. By enabling this structure to map a set of selected radiation directions to an associated set of beam-ports, the lens is used as an intermediate component between the antennas and the rectifiers. This way, the electromagnetic energy collected by the antenna arrays from one direction is combined and fed into a single rectifier. This maximizes efficiency, enabling a system with both high gain and large beamwidth. The system achieved a 21-fold increase in harvested power compared with a referenced counterpart in demonstrations. It was also able to maintain identical angular coverage.

The Apple Watch can accurately determine a user's "frailty," according to the findings of a recently-published study from Stanford University. MacRumors reports: Frailty can be determined using a six-minute walking test (6MWT), and the metric is a general standard used to evaluate the functional mobility and exercise capacity of a patient. Higher scores indicate "healthier cardiac, respiratory, circulatory, and neuromuscular function," according to Apple. Conducted by Stanford University researchers and funded by Apple, the study provided 110 Veterans Affairs patients with cardiovascular disease with an iPhone 7 and Apple Watch Series 3. Patients conducted regular at-home six-minute walking tests, which were then compared to their standard in-clinic 6MWT performance.

The study found that an Apple Watch was able to accurately assess frailty with a sensitivity of 90 percent and specificity of 85 percent when supervised in a clinical setting. When assessed in an unsupervised setting at home, the Apple Watch was able to accurately assess frailty with a sensitivity of 83 percent and specificity of 60 percent. The findings indicate that passive activity data gathered by the Apple Watch is an accurate predictor of in-clinic 6MWT performance.

Volkswagen accidentally posted a press release on its website a month early on Monday announcing a new name for its U.S. operations, Voltswagen of America, emphasizing the German automaker's electric vehicle efforts. CNBC reports: The release called the change a "public declaration of the company's future-forward investment in e-mobility." It said Voltswagen will be placed as an exterior badge on all EV models with gas vehicles having the company's iconic VW emblem only. To "preserve elements of Volkswagen's heritage," the release said the company planned to retain the dark blue color of the VW logo for gas-powered vehicles and use light blue to differentiate "the new, EV-centric branding."

The release said Voltswagen of America would remain an operating unit of Volkswagen Group of America and a subsidiary of Volkswagen AG, with headquarters in Herndon, Virginia. Volts are the derived units for electric potential, also known as electromotive force, between two points. General Motors previously used Volt for a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle between 2010 and 2019. The VW press release was incomplete, citing the need for an additional quote and photography from the automaker's plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
UPDATE: VW later said the name change was an April Fool's Day prank which had leaked early.

It can't do back flips like Atlas the humanoid robot, nor can it dance or open doors for its friends, like Spot the robotic dog can. Instead, Boston Dynamics' new robot, named Stretch, is going straight to work in a warehouse. Wired: Rolling around on a wheeled base, it's basically a large robotic arm that grabs boxes using vacuum power, and it's designed for tasks like unloading trucks or stacking pallets. If Spot and Atlas are the show-offs in the family, Stretch is the straight-up workhorse. But while these machines all look and move in wildly different ways, they actually share a lot of DNA. Stretch may seem familiar to you, because it's a sort of descendant of another machine that debuted a few years back: Handle. That robot had a similar suction arm, but it balanced on two wheels, like a Segway scooter. Handle would grab a box, scoot backward, turn 90 degrees, and roll away to stack the box somewhere else. It looked neat on video, but in practice the robot needed a lot of room to operate. It could manage unloading boxes from a truck, sure. "But it took a long time," says Kevin Blankespoor, lead of warehouse robotics at Boston Dynamics. "The truck is a pretty confined space. And so for Handle, every time it grabbed the box, it would need to roll back into some space where it could rotate freely without collisions."

Which is all to say: If Handle were a human, it'd be let go. So Boston Dynamics pivoted (sorry) to a new form factor for Stretch that slapped a similar robotic vacuum arm on a base with four wheels. Each wheel can move independently, so the robot can shift side to side or forward and backward to orient itself in, say, the back of a truck. This new base granted Stretch two powers. For one thing, resting on four wheels is a whole lot more energy efficient than trying to constantly balance on two. The same is true for animals: A dog or cat is inherently more stable than a human. (Stretch will get 8 hours of battery life, and clients will have the option to upgrade to a double battery that holds 16 hours of charge.) The second advantage is that Stretch's arm can now pivot around its base, while Handle had to pivot its whole body to turn. Stretch can shift up to 800 boxes an hour.

"Fans of science fiction learned last week that the word 'robot' was first used in 1920 — a full three years earlier than originally thought," according to a blog post at Archive.org. They call it "a major SciFi discovery hiding in plain sight": The "massively important yet obvious" change in date was confirmed with a search of the Internet Archive, which has a digitized first edition of the Czech play, R.U.R. Rossum's Universal Robots, published in 1920. There on the title page, hiding in plain sight in an English-language subtitle to the work, is the earliest known use of the word "robot."

This important piece of information is one of many little-known facts captured in the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction. The project was completed this year by historian Jesse Sheidlower, who credits two things that enabled him to publish this project, decades in the making. "One, we had a pandemic so I had a lot of enforced time at home that I could spend on it," explained Sheidlower. "The second was the existence of the Internet Archive. Because it turns out the Internet Archive has the Pulp Magazine collection that holds almost all the science fiction pulps from this core period...."

The comprehensive online dictionary includes not only definitions, but also how nearly 1,800 sci-fi terms were first used, and their context over time...

The project began nearly twenty years ago at Oxford English Dictionary as the Science Fiction Citations Project.

Solar is becoming the cheapest option for new electricity in the world, but there's still room to improve. According to a new cost-reduction target announced today, the U.S. Department of Energy aims to cut utility-scale solar power plant costs by 60% by 2030. CleanTechnica reports: So, how does the DOE intend to help cut solar power costs so much by 2030? First of all, the U.S. DOE's Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) sees two materials used in solar cells as critical to this brighter solar future perovskites and cadmium telluride (CdTe). The department is [spending] $63 million to try to help with these solar cell innovation goals. In the DOE's own words:

- $40 million for perovskite R&D: Perovskites are a family of emerging solar materials that have potential to make highly efficient thin-film solar cells with very low production costs. DOE is awarding $40 million to 22 projects that will advance perovskite PV device and manufacturing research and developmentâ"as well as performance through the formation of a new $14 million testing center to provide neutral, independent validation of the performance of new perovskite devices.
- $3 million Perovskite Startup Prize: This new prize competition will speed entrepreneurs' path to commercializing perovskite technologies by providing seed capital for their newly formed companies.
- $20 million for CdTe thin films: The National Renewable Energy Laboratory will set up a consortium to advance cheaper CdTe thin-film solar technologies, which were developed in the United States and make up 20% of the modules installed in this country. This consortium will advance low-cost manufacturing techniques and domestic research capabilities, increasing opportunities for U.S. workers and entrepreneurs to capture a larger portion of the $60 billion global solar manufacturing sector.

"Today's announcement also supports several concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP) projects," the department notes. Here are details from the DOE:

- $33 million for CSP advances: The new funding opportunity also includes funding for improvements to the reliability and performance of CSP plants, which can dispatch solar energy whenever it is needed; identifies new solar applications for industrial processes, which contribute 20% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions; and advances long-duration thermal-energy storage devices. Long-duration energy storage is critical to decarbonizing the electricity sector and couples well with CSP plants, but the cost must fall by a factor of two to unlock deployment.
- $25 million to demonstrate a next-generation CSP power plant: Sandia National Laboratories will receive funding to build a facility where researchers, developers, and manufacturers can test next-generation CSP components and systems and advance toward DOE's 2030 cost target of 5 cents/kWh for CSP plants.

Apple is considering launching an Apple Watch with a rugged casing aimed at athletes, hikers and others who use the device in more extreme environments, according to people familiar with the matter. Bloomberg reports: The Cupertino, California-based technology giant has internally discussed introducing such a Watch variation later in 2021 or 2022 at the earliest, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private matters. If Apple goes ahead this time, the rugged version would be an additional model similar to how Apple offers a lower-cost option called the Apple Watch SE and special editions co-branded with Nike and Hermes International. Sometimes dubbed the "Explorer Edition" inside Apple, the product would have the same functionality as a standard Apple Watch but with extra impact-resistance and protection in the vein of Casio's G-Shock watches.

Long-time Slashdot reader RockDoctor writes: A project to create a working example of [english mathematician and computer pioneer Charles Babbage's] original "steampunk computer," referred to by Babbage as the "Analytical Engine 30," is continuing. The update comes via a "Spring 2021 report" to the Computer Conservation Society.

The main news is that a new series of plans, dating from about 1857 have been found and are being examined for incorporation into the final design. "One remarkable feature is the extension of the Store to 1000 registers, and most intriguingly various methods of mechanically addressing the store contents," reads the update. This would compare well with electronic processor design... not that anyone is expecting this machine, when built, to be blisteringly fast.

Could a steam-powered Analytical Engine support backup DNS services in a post-apocalyptic world? Is this Cloudflare's ultimate plan?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Australian households with rooftop solar panels could be charged for exporting electricity into the power grid at times when it is not needed under proposed changes to the national electricity market. The recommendation is included in a draft deliberation by the Australian Energy Market Commission that is designed to prevent "traffic jams" of electricity at sunny times that could destabilize the network.

The commission, which makes the rules for the electricity system, said the change was necessary to allow more household solar systems and batteries to be connected to the grid and make the system fairer for all electricity users. Benn Barr, the commission's chief executive, said it was expected an average solar household with a system of between 4 and 6 kilowatts would still save about $900 a year on power bills after the change, about $70 less than currently. He said it would reduce bills for the 80% of households who do not have solar as they would no longer have to pay for solar export services they were not using.

Samsung has unveiled a new RAM module that shows the potential of DDR5 memory in terms of speed and capacity. Engadget reports: The 512GB DDR5 module is the first to use High-K Metal Gate (HKMG) tech, delivering 7,200 Mbps speeds -- over double that of DDR4, Samsung said. Right now, it's aimed at data-hungry supercomputing, AI and machine learning functions, but DDR5 will eventually find its way to regular PCs, boosting gaming and other applications. Developed by Intel, it uses hafnium instead of silicon, with metals replacing the normal polysilicon gate electrodes. All of that allows for higher chip densities, while reducing current leakage.

Each chip uses eight layers of 16Gb DRAM chips for a capacity of 128Gb, or 16GB. As such, Samsung would need 32 of those to make a 512GB RAM module. On top of the higher speeds and capacity, Samsung said that the chip uses 13 percent less power than non-HKMG modules -- ideal for data centers, but not so bad for regular PCs, either. With 7,200 Mbps speeds, Samsung's latest module would deliver around 57.6 GB/s transfer speeds on a single channel.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: In a mind-bending development, a team of researchers in China have managed to treat brain tumors in mice by delivering drugs to the tissues using microscopic robots. The robots jumped from the mice's bloodstreams into their brains by being coated in E. coli, which tricked the rodents' immune systems into attacking them, absorbing the robots and the cancer-fighting drugs in the process. The team's research was published today in the journal Science Robotics. It comes on the heels of previous research by members of the same team, which saw liquid-coated nanorobots remotely propelled through the jelly-like fluid of the eye. Besides being an obvious recipe for an episode of "The Magic School Bus," the research had obvious applications for ophthalmological research and medical treatments.

The crafts are magnetic, and the researchers use a rotating magnetic field to pull them around remotely. On microscales -- we're talking incremental movements about 1% the width of a hair -- the researchers were able to make the hybrid bio-bots wend paths like in the video game Snake. They're dubbed "neutrobots" because they infiltrate the brain in the casing of neutrophils, a type of white blood cell. It ultimately took Wu's team eight years to actualize the microscopic robot swarms capable of bridging the gap between the rodent bloodstream in the animal's tail, where the bots were injected, and its brain, where gliomas -- tumors that emerge from the brain's glial cells -- resided. Part of the issue is that the mice's white blood cells didn't dig the flavor of the magnetic robots. To overcome that issue, Wu's team coated the bots in bits of E. coli membrane, which the white blood cells easily recognize as a unwelcome invader. That made the robots much more palatable, and the white blood cells enveloped them. From inside those cells, the robots were then able to roll the cells toward the brain; a Trojan horse for the 21st century (in this case, one that benefits the residents of Troy). The neutrobots made it into the brains and were able to deliver the drug directly to the targeted tumors.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Intel made several big announcements about its 7nm tech at this week's Intel Unleashed: Engineering the Future event and divulged that it expects that the majority of its products in 2023 to still be produced in-house using its own manufacturing technology. But there's a caveat: Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said the company will also release "leadership CPU products" in 2023 with CPU cores that are fabricated with an unspecified process node from third-party foundry TSMC, and those CPUs will come to both the client and data center markets. This development comes on the heels of Intel's announcement last year that its 7nm process was delayed, possibly forcing it to do the unthinkable -- turn to external foundries to produce its core logic, like CPUs and GPUs, for the first time in the company's history.

The newest announcements mean that, in addition to the 7nm Meteor Lake desktop chips and Granite Rapids data center processors that Intel will produce with its own process technology in 2023, the company will also release other lines of CPUs in 2023 that will use CPU cores with an as-yet-unspecified process node from TSMC. Intel noted that the chips that utilize TSMC's third-party process tech will power Intel's "CPU leadership" products for both the client and data center markets, suggesting a split product stack. Intel says that the majority of its products in 2023 will come manufactured with its own process technology. Still, it's important to note that Intel hasn't specified that the majority of the newly-released 2023 products will come with its own 7nm process. Naturally, Intel will still have plenty of chip production volume centered on its 14nm and 10nm process tech in that timeframe, and even older nodes that still ship in large volumes. Further reading: Intel To Spend $20 Billion To Build Two New Chip Fabs In Arizona.

Samsung is reportedly working on a double-folding phone to add to its lineup, according to Nikkei Asia. From the report: According to the article, the phone would fold into three segments using two hinges and could be announced "as early as the end of this year." The phone would be a third option in Samsung's foldable lineup, joining the Galaxy Z Fold and Z Flip, both of which are also expected to appear in new versions this year. According to the report, the design is still being finalized, but Nikkei's sources say its screen could have a more standard 16:9 or 18:9 aspect ratio, making it easier for app makers to design for than the 25:9 screen found on the Z Fold. [...] It's possible that Samsung is introducing the new type of foldable to ease its power users into a transition to the form factor. Samsung says it might be skipping a new Galaxy Note this year but wasn't exactly clear on why. There was talk of streamlining its phone offerings and of the global chip shortage, but this could be a test to see if Note users are ready for the fold. By giving customers three foldable options to choose from, Samsung could be trying to make it as likely as possible that people will find one that works for them.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The size of the Army is to be reduced to 72,500 soldiers by 2025 as part of a move towards drones and cyber warfare. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said "increased deployability and technological advantage" meant greater effect could be delivered by fewer people. He set out plans for new capabilities such as electronic warfare and drones in a command paper in the Commons. Labour has warned that "size matters" when it comes to defence.

Announcing a major overhaul of the armed forces, Mr Wallace said it marked a shift from "mass mobilization to information age speed," insisting they must be able to "seek out and understand" new threats to the country's security. A cut to the size of the Army had been anticipated -- with a reduction of 10,000 widely trailed. What Defence Secretary Ben Wallace announced was a cut to the target for the number of fully trained people in the Army, from 82,040 today to 72,500 in 2025. The changes set out in the paper -- titled Defence in a Competitive Age -- include 3 billion pounds for new vehicles, long-range rocket systems, drones, electronic warfare and cyber capabilities. The UK is putting more resources into cyber warfare via the creation of the National Cyber Force based in the North West of England. It's also putting more resources ($6.6 billion for research and development) into space that may function similarly to the U.S. Space Force.

U.S. cloud services provide Box is exploring a sale amid pressure from hedge fund Starboard Value over its stock performance, Reuters citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: Redwood City, California-based Box has discussed a potential deal with interested buyers, including other companies and private equity firms, the sources said, cautioning that no sale of the company is certain. Reuters reported last month that Starboard was preparing to launch a board challenge against Box unless it took steps to boost value for shareholders. It has privately expressed disappointment that the company has failed to capitalize on the work-from-home trend during the COVID-19 pandemic, as many of its cloud computing peers have done.