Daily Archives: December 3, 2021

Image by Getty Images/Futurism

The South African scientist who was first to alert the world to the existence of the new Omicron COVID-19 variant believes that it likely emerged after running rampant through the body of an unvaccinated HIV-positive person.

AsThe Los Angeles Times reports, bioinformatician Tulio De Oliveira has long been on alert for new strains of COVID to begin spreading in South Africa, where a large percentage of the youth population has uncontrolled HIV and many are unvaccinated.

In June, a study conducted by De Oliveira and colleagues focused on a single South African HIV patient who kept testing positive for COVID for 216 days and in that amount of time, scientists detected a total of 13 unique mutations to the virus from her samples. Although the patient was hospitalized early after her initial positive test, she never became critically ill from the coronavirus, and when her antiretroviral medications were replaced about six months into the study, she both cleared her coronavirus infection and got her HIV under control within a few weeks.

Nevertheless, continued study of the patients biosamples revealed a total of 30 genetic changes, including some that could affect how well the virus responds to vaccines or treatments.

And now De Oliveira, who alerted the World Health Organization to the existence of the Omicron variant circulating in South Africa that has since been revealed to be in Europe and the United States, is seeing a similar pattern emerge with this variant.

Prior to the June study, virologists did not believe that people with HIV or AIDS would suffer outcomes any worse than other immunosuppressed people. Since De Oliveiras study, which was mostly overlooked in the West, research suggests that while people with HIV or AIDS are not at that much greater a risk for severe illness than other immunocompromised people, they may, in situations such as South Africas where many people have either undetected or uncontrolled HIV, be host to mutations and variants because the virus can survive longer in their bodies due to their suppressed immune systems.

When the initial research was released over the summer, De Oliveira expressed cautious optimism that these findings could be a golden opportunity to control the HIV epidemic and protect the world from variants.

Now it seems like that outlook was overly sunny, as the US and Europe respond to the rise of the Omicron variant by restricting travel from southern African nations in spite of it having circulated in Europe for weeks prior to De Oliveira raising the alarms to the WHO.

Many questions remain about the Omicron variant itself, much less its relationship to HIV. Though our track record thus far hasnt been great, hopefully De Oliveiras desire for further study on these dueling pandemics will result in advances for both.

READ MORE: Did a collision of COVID-19 and HIV forge the Omicron variant? [The Los Angeles Times]

More on the uselessness of flight bans: Flight bans wont stop Omicron [Popular Science]

Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money (and planet!) you could save by switching to solar power at UnderstandSolar.com. By signing up through this link, Futurism.com may receive a small commission.

More here:
A Disastrous Collision Between COVID and HIV May Have Caused the Omicron Variant - Futurism

This year, millions of Americans across the country lost power at times when they needed it most. As the US power grid deals with an onslaught of heat waves, winter storms, and stronger hurricanes caused by climate change, these kinds of failures are happening more often, taking longer to fix, and harming more people. Power blackouts, which used to be mostly seasonal occurrences, now occur year-round.

But as we head into another winter the season that accounts for the majority of the fuel used by residential customers in the United States the power grid isnt any better prepared for the extreme weather it is likely to face.

Take Texas. In February, a winter storm froze power plants in the state, leaving millions of people without power and killing hundreds who had no way to escape the cold. Despite the toll of those power failures, Texas regulators originally had no intention of mandating winter weather upgrades from most suppliers of natural gas, which powers 40 percent of the states power plants. After overwhelming criticism, the regulators changed their tune on November 30, announcing a new rule that will require more than 19,000 natural gas facilities to invest in those upgrades though they wont need to start making any changes until 2022 at the earliest. That means Texas isnt ready for what might come this winter.

And Texas is by no means the only state unprepared for natural disasters. In June and July, heat waves in Oregon melted power cables and triggered blackouts, contributing to many of the more than 95 heat-related deaths in the state. A couple months later, Hurricane Ida knocked out power for at least 1.2 million homes and businesses across eight states, killing at least 12 Louisianans who had no way to escape the midsummer heat, among other hurricane deaths.

A groundbreaking study from earlier this year linked climate change to extreme weather. The authors of the study wrote they were virtually certain that heat waves had become longer and more frequent since the 1950s due to greenhouse gas emissions. 2021 was the hottest summer on record since the Dust Bowl of 1936, and theres no reason to think 2022 will be any better which means theres no reason to think the crumbling American grid will get a reprieve anytime soon. As extreme weather caused by climate change becomes the new normal, its clear the USs power infrastructure needs fixing more than ever.

So, what will it take? One of the most important fixes would be physically hardening the grid, which means replacing old infrastructure thats vulnerable to extreme weather with stronger, more resilient upgrades. These are the kinds of solutions you might notice if they pop up in your neighborhood, perhaps in the form of swapping out wooden electric poles for wind-resistant steel or concrete ones, moving power lines underground, or lifting ground-level transformers out of the path of potential floods. But these upgrade projects require major investments of time and money, and utility companies are either unable or unwilling to make those kinds of investments at least not at the scale and pace needed to keep up with climate change.

As a stopgap measure, some utility companies are turning to software and artificial intelligence-based solutions that might be able to help reduce failures within the infrastructure that already exists. But AI isnt a magic bullet, according to Romany Webb, a research scholar at Columbia Law who studies the risks climate change poses to utilities. The vast majority of outages are caused by weather events, Webb said. As climate change causes more extreme weather events, those outages will happen more often. No AI can stop the weather it can just try to help us get through it.

Fixing the grid is, to put it lightly, difficult. One positive development is the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill President Biden signed in November, which dedicated $65 billion in funding to improving the grid across the US, and includes $3 billion set aside for technologies like smart meters and advanced communications systems that might finally bring the grid into the 21st century. But exactly what that grid of the future will look like is still up for debate.

Sometimes called the largest machine in the world, the American power grid is a sprawling behemoth of interconnected systems, strung together over thousands of miles, that mishmashes technologies old and new. As Recode explained earlier this year, bringing electricity to American homes involves generating power through renewables or fossil fuels (38 percent of the countrys electricity comes from natural gas); sending that power across high-voltage lines to transformers and substations; and then distributing the electricity to buildings through low-voltage lines.

Its actually kind of magic that the grid works, Kyri Baker, an assistant professor of engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, told Recode. Thats because parts of the grid are very old, with components dating back to the 1940s, and the whole thing was never designed for a world with the energy demands created by smart devices, electric cars, and climate change. When the grid was first being built, most homes only needed enough electricity for a few light bulbs, a refrigerator, and maybe a radio. We have transformers that are 80 years old, and their copper and insulation is breaking down, Baker said. Even without extreme weather battering the grid, those components would need to be replaced soon anyway.

The outdated technology of our grid is at odds with our otherwise interconnected world. Todays grid is a one-way street: Electricity flows from power plants to homes and businesses, and once a month the power company will check electricity meters to bill customers for their usage. This means utility companies know surprisingly little about what happens to the electricity they generate once it leaves a power plant or transformer. In much of the country, utilities only find out about power outages when customers call them in.

Most utilities dont have a way of automatically determining what the consumption in your house is right now, Baker said. Instead, engineers are left to use the few sensors they do have to make inferences about demand at any given time; every five to 15 minutes, grid engineers calculate how much power should be produced at power plants and generators and how it should be distributed through the grid.

That system assumes the energy flowing through the grid is always stable, which makes it difficult to offer clean energy to Americans. Renewable energy is intermittent, said Baker. Solar and wind farms only generate energy when there is enough sun and wind, and grid engineers arent used to working with those types of fluctuations, which means theyre reluctant to make the switch to clean energy. The grid needs to react significantly faster than its reacting right now, said Baker. In other words, the grid should automatically switch to solar and wind power when theyre available, and seamlessly bring in energy from other sources if solar and wind farms arent producing enough power to meet demand.

One way to make that happen, Baker explains, is to make the grid smart. This would allow for the flow of not just electricity but also information between power plants and customers. Sensors along power lines would give engineers a better understanding of how their equipment is working, while internet-connected smart meters would allow utilities to view and account for customers electricity demands in real time. AI-powered systems could use that data to respond quickly to fluctuations and outages, rerouting power and increasing generation automatically instead of waiting for manual input from engineers.

The city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, is a good example of what a connected grid might look like. Chattanooga modernized its grid in 2009, installing smart meters in customers homes and digital controls that allowed the electric utility to monitor and respond to demand and outages in real time. The new technology had an immediate, simple impact: Instead of sending crews out every time a circuit breaker flipped, the smart grid allowed engineers to turn those switches back on from a control room. Power outages in the city were reduced by about 55 percent.

Chattanoogas grid is a powerful indicator of how information can help fix the grid. But Baker thinks the future American grid should go one step further, allowing not just information but electricity to flow from customers to utilities.

A smart grid that allows electricity to flow in both directions (in other words, not just from the power company to the consumer but from the consumer to the power company as well) would open the door for the widespread adoption of microgrids. These self-sufficient systems generate their own power, whether from renewables such as solar panels or from fossil fuel-powered generators, and can separate themselves from the larger grid to operate on their own during a blackout think of hospitals with backup generators that kick in during storms, for example. In the current setup, theres no way for buildings that can generate their own power to share it with others. A smart grid would allow for that kind of electricity sharing.

Grid hardening and building out a smart grid in the US would work hand in hand, and replacing infrastructure to make it more resilient is the ideal opportunity to add the kinds of sensors that could make the smart grid a reality. Were in the Motorola Razr stage of the smart grid transition right now, Baker said. Having the ability to see changes in real time and incorporate clean energy and microgrids into the American grid would be like upgrading from an old-school Razr flip phone to an iPhone 13.

But smart grids and grid hardening, like iPhones, are pricey. Theyre also logistically complicated. Usually, utilities pass the costs of infrastructure investments down to customers, but nobody wants to pay higher electricity bills, especially for long-term investments that might take years to bear fruit. That means utilities are wary of making those investments. The recently passed infrastructure bill and the hotly debated Build Back Better bill, the current iteration of which would include big investments in clean energy, might help close the funding gap. In the meantime, utilities are looking at using AI as a potential stopgap that could help prevent outages even if Americans are stuck depending on the infrastructure that already exists.

Most power outages are the result of one or two factors: weather and trees (which are often knocked down by bad weather). For decades, utility companies have paid weather companies for meteorological models to help them keep track of storms, and tree-cutting crews make routine passes along the paths of power lines to trim branches and cut trees that might be at risk of hitting power lines. But these are blunt instruments: Weather models can tell a utility what kind of weather will affect a region, but they cant translate that data into on-the-ground effects on infrastructure.

Tree-cutting crews, meanwhile, dont account for the different ways various tree species grow. If a neighborhood contains both cottonwoods and red maples, for example, they are all trimmed at the same time which means the faster-growing cottonwoods could grow back before the crews made their next pass, putting power lines at risk, or the slower-growing maples could be cut too aggressively, endangering the trees and the ecosystems that rely on them.

A team at the State University of New York in Albany is attempting to fix the weather-prediction problem with AI. Were trying to develop techniques that will allow us to best match the weather that likely caused the outage with the outage itself, said Nick Bassill, a researcher at SUNY Albanys Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences.

By looking at historical outage data and cross-referencing it with hyperlocal weather data from a state-of-the-art weather monitoring system installed by New York State in 2016, Bassill and his colleagues are training a machine-learning algorithm to try to predict the exact effects of any given weather event on a utility companys infrastructure. These predictions can help companies decide how to deploy crews ahead of time so theyd be in place to respond quickly in case of a blackout.

We know that the Albany area, as a hypothetical, is highly susceptible to icing-over power lines during noreasters because its in a valley, said Kara Sulia, who runs the SUNY Albany lab developing the machine-learning algorithm. If a noreaster a winter storm that arrives from the northeast and tends to bring blizzards to that part of the country looked likely to blow into the region, the algorithm would flag the risk to power lines for meteorologists and engineers at the utility responsible for those power lines. In the long term, Sulia said, the algorithm could help utilities decide where to invest in grid-hardening. In the short term, it would help those utilities better prepare for extreme weather caused by climate change.

Overstory, a Netherlands-based AI company, is doing for trees what Bassill and Sulia are doing for the weather. Utilities across the country spend billions of dollars each year on vegetation management, said Indra den Bakker, CEO of Overstory, but they have very little data on the kinds of vegetation theyre dealing with. Thats because traditional surveys of wooded areas, conducted on foot and by helicopter, can take months or years to complete. Overstory aims to fix that problem by using extremely high-resolution satellite imagery to identify tree species, track their growth, and make recommendations for when and where trees should be cut.

Whats most important is reducing the risk of ignition, said den Bakker, especially as climate change brings drought, drier trees, and a higher risk of wildfires. What happens if a tree touches your power line? If theres lots of dead trees with a lot of fuel load around, that can have massive consequences.

While tools like Overstory and SUNY Albanys machine-learning algorithm can prove very useful in the short term, AI does little to address the root of the problem, said Webb, the Columbia researcher. The vast majority of utility planning is based on historical data, said Webb. Equipment is designed to operate reliably at an average temperature based on historic averages, and as temperatures increase, that infrastructure operates less reliably.

Solutions that focus on responding to outages fail to take the bigger picture into account, and researchers like Webb are concerned utilities tend to over-invest in outage prevention without considering larger investments that will have greater payoffs over time. A utility thats focused on preventing outages might invest in a gas-powered plant thats meant to provide power in an emergency, for example, without taking into account how that plant might be affected by or contribute to climate change which is exactly what happened in Louisiana earlier this year.

Utilities will seek to gold-plate their systems to purportedly limit outages but will really just have limited payback in terms of future climate impacts, said Webb. Customers are inevitably left to pay for technologies that might look and sound useful in the short term but have little long-term benefit.

Instead of focusing on trying to prevent outages at any cost, said Baker, of the University of Colorado Boulder, perhaps customers and utilities should get used to a future where energy is less reliable. Unfortunately, were going to have to get used to more blackouts. Theyre just going to be a function of the aging infrastructure and climate change, Baker said. Most people view electricity as sort of a given. I think that paradigm is going to have to change.

Correction, December 2, 3:30 pm ET: A previous version of this story overstated how often grid engineers make manual decisions about how much power should be produced at power plants and generators. Though they sometimes make these decisions manually, they also rely on automated software to do so.

See the original post:
Extreme weather caused by climate change shows the US needs smart energy grids - Vox

Technology is playing a central role in the Palo Alto JCCs annual Z3 Conference, in more ways than one.

The daylong exploration of Israel-diaspora relations, returning for its seventh year on Dec. 5, has in previous years brought more than 1,000 people together at the Oshman Family JCC. This year it will be a more modest gathering in person, with many more participants joining online.

The event went fully virtual last year, when Covid-19 vaccines had not yet rolled out. This time, the event is capped at 250 in-person attendees, who are required to provide proof of vaccination. Additionally, Z3 2021: Futures Workshop will be streamed live, where participants can join online breakout sessions with other virtual attendees.

Thats not the only way technology is shaking up the conference this year. An acclaimed Gamemaster will craft an interactive simulation [that] will ask our speakers and participants to take part in a plausible futuristic scenario that will impact the relationship between Israel and Diaspora Jewry, the Z3 Project advertises on the registration website.

The goal of this digital experiment is to explore potential ways for diaspora Jewish communities to unite and ensure a continued sense of peoplehood with Israel.

Among the nearly 30 scheduled speakers are Bret Stephens, a Pulitzer Prize-winning op-ed columnist for the New York Times, and Natan Sharansky, former Soviet dissident and former chair of the Jewish Agency.

For information about Z3 2021, visit z3 project.virtual jcc.com. Tickets are $72 in person, $36 virtual and $18 virtual for students and seniors.

Originally posted here:
Palo Alto JCC's Z3 Conference back with 'futuristic' bent J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

Everyone loves a trainwreck Twitter rant, but who in the world has time to read 147 tweets about how non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are the future and also,uh, how theyre causing one guys divorce?

If you hadnt noticed, NFT madness has become one of our top beats here at Futurism, and were pleased to announce that this reporter sifted through all 147 sad, goofy, desperate, and unhinged tweets from a user with the handle DeltaWitherso that you didnt have to.

For those lucky enough to not have come across the many, many jokes and incredulous quote-tweets over Thanksgiving weekend, it can best be summarized as an absolutely bonkers thread in which Twitter user DeltaWither details that their wife is leaving them for taking out a$186,00 loan so they could buy a Lazy Lion NFT.

Theres a whole lot of unknownsto get out of the way before delving into the best bits of the thread that is, in fact, an exhausting 147-tweets long. For instance, while we can assume that the user is a man, they never identify themselves and therefore we dont really know. We also dont know whether or not theyre serious, and at least one person has wondered whether DeltaWither was doing a bit, be it Horse_ebooks-style performance art or a really, really dedicated troll.

The other, and perhaps most important, question the thread raises is whether DeltaWither might be experiencing some form of mental illness. As someone who actually read the whole thing, its clear to this reporter that if this person is serious and not trolling, they are at very least obsessive, given that they repeat lots of phrases over and over and keep interjecting into their own thread to beg their wife Karen another sign that the whole thing might be a dark joke to come back to them.

Whatever the truth is, here are some of the best quotes from this viral rant. If youre curious, you can read it all much more easily via ThreadReader. These are listed chronologically, and each explains the story as it unfolded.

[E]ven my wife is against me. She left to live with her parents, and she has been talking about custody of our two children. I cant believe this. The love of my life may actually be thinking about divorcing me because she can not understand the business of the future. I tried to explain it to her, its not just an image, its an investment. I buy it for 186k, someone else buys it from me for 500k.

But she doesnt understand, this is NOTHING like the tulip mania. If you actually understood what you are talking about, maybe you would see the differences. But she doesnt care. All shes thinking about is divorcing me and getting custody of our children because of my shitty financial decisions.

Look at yourself, are you happy with who you are? Are you happy living for work, living with barely enough money? Look at your surroundings, there are people even less fortunate than you EVERYWHERE. NFTs can solve that problem forever! Dont you see? Just for a few laughs on the internet you steal NFTs, at the cost of the future of humanity.

Once everyone embraces NFTs and there is no poverty, we can all solve climate change TOGETHER. What is so hard to understand? This is not a get rich quick scam, its a way of life, a movement that will change society as we know it.

Make a big pool of ethereum and NFTs, and use it to buy the biggest governments in the world: the United States, the European Union, Russia, China, India, Japan, the UK, Canada, Australia, you get the point. Of course, we are not going to own the entire government, the point is to act in the shadows, like the feared Illuminati.

For hackers who find ways to steal NFTs bypassing the screenshot and right click save prevention mechanisms, we will give them from 10 years to life in prison, unless they delete the stolen NFT and give the owner back as much value as was stolen by paying with other NFTs.

And I am not a tyrant, I will not have my wife imprisoned for not believing in me, its not her fault that she has been brainwashed into believing fiat is better than NFTs. In fact, I will be waiting for her with open arms. One day she will realize this is the work of genius, not insanity, and she will come running at me, asking for forgiveness. Of course, I will forgive her, since Im not a tyrant as I said earlier.

When everyone has finally embraced NFTs, all screenshotters and right click savers have been stopped, fiat has been overthrown, currency has been completely decentralized, and everyone is free and happy, we can just pay scientists to figure out how to stop global warming and how to make NFTs and ethereum more environmentally friendly.

NFTs will NOT be stopped or hindered by anything. Even if blood is shed, even if families are broken, even if the world crumbles because of the downfall of fiat, nothing will stop us.

Please, fiat people, stop. From the bottom of my heart, please, I ask you to stop now. I dont want to hurt anyone, but if you keep stealing NFts you are giving me no other option. If you keep going down this path, maybe I will have to jail you myself in the future for hacking devices to be able to steal NFTs. Please, stop now, realize that what you are doing is wrong and hindering the progress of humanity. Future generations will thank you for understanding.

Please, you are not busting scams, you are busting the currencies of the future, and quite honestly, you are also busting my balls.

Please NFTbros, dont be deceived by their words, especially SomeOrdinaryGamers. Maybe it was him who deceived my wife into believing fiat is better than crypto. That makes sense. She likes to watch youtube sometimes, so maybe thats it. Or maybe it was the kids, they are always watching youtube.

I will show my wife that I am willing to do anything for her. Maybe she doesnt realize it now, but I am trying to save her. She just doesnt understand my intentions. I love her so so so much, and it pains me to watch her being dragged down by the outdated centralized currency mindset.

Theres much, much more madness in the thread, but these highlights and the tome they come from are either the work of a very sad and brainwashed individual or a next-level troll thats playing 4D chess with us all.

Either way, this bonkers thread begs the question:what is it about NFTs that makes people go batshit? And even if the thread is fake, why does it feel so real?

More right-clicker mentality:New Website Shows How Silly NFTs Are by Pirating Them

Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money (and planet!) you could save by switching to solar power at UnderstandSolar.com. By signing up through this link, Futurism.com may receive a small commission.

Read this article:
Crypto Bro Claims They're Losing Their Wife and Kids Because They Bought a Super-Expensive NFT - Futurism

The US is the top generator of plastic waste in the world and environmentalresearchers are ringing the alarm bells.

A new congressionally mandated report for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine paints an ugly picture of the sheer amount of plastic waste the country produces, much of which eventually ends up leaking into the ocean.

An estimated 8 million metric tons of plastic waste enters the worlds ocean each year, the report reads, which is the equivalent of dumping a garbage truck of plastic waste into the ocean every minute.

And the US was a huge contributor. According to the report, the US generated more plastic waste by weight and per capita than any other nation in 2016, producing a staggering 42 million metric tons, with the majority ending up in landfills.

By 2030, 53 million metric tons of plastic could end up in the ocean every year,which is roughly half of the total weight of fish caught from the ocean annually, according to the report.

A lot of this plastic ends up leaking into the environment through a variety of processes including litter, illegal dumping, permitted or unintentional discharges, and the mismanagement of exported plastic waste to other countries, according to the report.

Recycling has also failed to make a meaningful dent in the amount of plastic waste that ends up leaking into the environment. Marine and freshwater life is hit particularly hard. According to the report, scientists documented cases of 914 species getting entangled in or ingesting plastic waste across 747 studies.

Scientists are now calling for the US government to come up with an equitable and effective interventions across the entire plastic life cycle to reduce the US contribution of plastic waste to the environment, including the ocean to be implemented by December 2025.

Other countries have already taken some steps, including restrictions on single-use plastics, deposit-refund systems, and aggressive recycling targets.

Its a dire predicament. Nature is clearly drowning under a crushing global scale deluge of plastic waste that is seemingly everywhere we look, the researchers note in their report.

Exporting extra plastic waste to other countries is also not addressing the problem as more plastic is ending in landfills overseas.

Whether US leadership will step up and implement meaningful change remains to be seen. Oil producers are increasingly relying on producing plastics as climate change concerns are driving them away of refining it for fuel.

We can no longer ignore the United States role in the plastic pollution crisis, one of the biggest environmental threats facing our oceans and our planet today, Christy Leavitt, plastics campaign director for advocacy group Oceana, told The Washington Post.

The finger-pointing stops now, she added.

READ MORE: Deluge of plastic waste: US is worlds biggest plastic polluter [The Guardian]

More on plastic waste: New Technique Turns Plastic Waste Back Into Refinery-Quality Oil

Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money (and planet!) you could save by switching to solar power at UnderstandSolar.com. By signing up through this link, Futurism.com may receive a small commission.

See the original post:
The US Is Filling the Oceans With Shocking Amounts of Disgusting Plastic - Futurism

The idea of a car connected to a digital world is not new. Audi already showcased the technology in the e-tron for the first time at the CES 2019. The way it works is by taking real data like speed, location, steering, and acceleration and matching it with an artificial setting.

That's what WayRay's Holograktor is doing as well. The company wanted to deliver something that would turn every ride into a personalized, immersive experience. Thus, it created an autonomous EV concept capable of learning the passenger's habits and preferences, including the usual routes taken.

Holograktor has a total of eight cameras mounted in key spots that allow for a combined 360-view. If you think that is a lot, the vehicle also sports eight ultrasonic sensors integrated into the front and read bumpers that provide a full picture of the surroundings.

The interior of the car is based on a 2+1 configuration. Since the front seats were designed with more space between them, it allows all occupants to easily see the holographic windshield. Speaking of its windshield, that's not the only gateway to the digital universe. The side window also connects the two worlds.

Through WayRay's proprietary Deep Reality Display technology, which creates multiple planes of virtual images and places them at variable distances based on real-world objects, passengers can enjoy a fully immersive experience.

The Metaverse, a shared virtual reality, combines data from social networks such as upcoming events, friends' locations, and suggestions to transform the world around users into an interactive and customized interface. So, while riding, people may organize their day or learn something new.

They can also customize the in-vehicle infotainment settings according to their liking using the joysticks. Passengers can set what they desire to virtually display around them by changing the True AR presets and apps.

One of the options available is the VR Remote Control service. With this feature, Holograktor can be controlled remotely from a small driving station by a single driver. Thanks to all of the sensors and cameras mounted on the actual automobile, the remote driver gets a first-person POV experience while wearing the VR headset.

Other features included in the Holograktor are the AirKnife system. It's a new technology that works with the air conditioning system to filter the air from potentially harmful bacteria. It acts as a barrier that cleans the air throughout the cabin.

There's no word on the car's speed or range. That's because WayRay focused on offering a new take on what the future of driverless cars might look like. For now, the Holograktor is just a concept. However, Sasha Selipanov, chief designer on the Holograktor project, mentioned that "we always had a production car as our goal." So, we might actually see the EV take shape in the future.

Read the rest here:
Futuristic EV Concept Connects the Virtual and Real Worlds To Deliver an Epic Experience - autoevolution

Sculptor Grigory Orekhov has created an egg-shaped playhouse for his daughter, which also serves as an ideal haven for adults.

A snow-white egg several meters high, standing in the middle of a green lush meadow. This is how sculptor Grigory Orekhov imagines an ideal playhouse for his daughter Agatha.

The concept for this glossy futuristic construction, which looks not unlike an UFO from a sci-fi movie, was born from a search for a childrens playhouse. My daughter has for many years been asking me for a playhouse, but ours is a family of perfectionists, so we cant buy just anything simply to close the matter, Orekhov says.

Playhouses available online seemed ugly and primitive to him and able to last only for a short period of time. He also wanted to make a house that is relevant for grow-ups. Then Orekhov turned to a theme that has been present in his work throughout his career - the ovoid (egg-shaped form).

The ovoid is a perfect architectural form in terms of proportions. It is self-sufficient, there is nothing superfluous in it. I [have] felt an unconscious fascination with it since I was a child. But, it is also an ancient religious symbol, the image of rebirth, of our inner world. I have a work called Ovoid 8, it vividly symbolizes this inner core of a human being, which it is so important not to break, to carry it through ones whole life and not to lose oneself, Orekhov says.

Orekhov created the first sculpture from the My Egg series in 2016. The playhouse too was born out of another of his projects, a quadrangular egg. But I did not conceive it as an art object. On the contrary, I wanted to turn an art object into a functional space, says the sculptor.

The house is made of hundreds of plywood slats stacked on top of each other and sanded. At the same time, its walls are not thicker than 30 mm. There is a window at the top, which also serves as a ventilation valve.

Inside, there is a bench with a soft pillow on one side and a table on the other.

Agatha paints a lot and this is a place where she does her art. Also, it is an interesting place for listening to music because the shape of the room creates an echo, he says.

It is also a refuge for any person who seeks privacy and a respite from the outside world, an allusion to the mothers womb. I myself sometimes feel like going there to read a book or surf the internet. The feeling is similar to what you get when you enter a church which has very little church paraphernalia - as in a place where you can think about elevated things. In our everyday lives, we are always in a hurry, we cannot stop and just think about the eternal. It is a space where you can find this Zen, Orekhov says.

The playhouse (which is located not far from Nikolina Gora outside Moscow) took a year and several hundred thousand rubles to build.

I was experimenting and it pushed the cost up. If I was to make several of these houses, technologically I would do it differently, to make it economically viable, he says, adding that he has been approached by a Spanish tourist company. They loved the house and wanted me to make a similar one for them for an exhibition. But it cannot be done in a few months and Agathas house cannot be transported. If there are a lot of requests, maybe I will make a series of these houses. Although my daughter is opposed to the idea, she believes that only she should have a house like this.

If using any of Russia Beyond's content, partly or in full, always provide an active hyperlink to the original material.

Check your email to confirm the subscribtion

') }, error: function() { $email.val(''); alert('An unknown error occurred. Try later.'); } }); } }); }; initFormSubmit(); $completeButton.on('click', function (evt) { evt.preventDefault(); evt.window.location.reload(); }); }());

See more here:
This UNIQUE futuristic object is actually a playhouse! (PHOTOS) - Russia Beyond the Headlines

The distinctive aroma of cannabis has something in common with eggs, skunk spray, and hops, researchers have discovered.

AsScience News reports, a new study conducted by cannabis industry researchers found for the first time that weed does, in fact, contain sulfur and that a little goes a long, long way.

Using instruments that detect sulfur chemiluminescence, gas chromatography, and mass spectroscopy, chemists at the company Abstrax Tech whose business is producing the scent compounds known as terpenes that characterize fancy weed discovered that the smelliest strains do, in fact, contain sulfur.

Whats more, the researchers also found that the most common sulfur molecule found in loud bud is prenylthiol, the same compound that gives skunked beer its notorious Pep Le Pew-esque scent and taste. Other sulfuric molecules found in the Cannabis sativa that Abstrax studied included some that are structurally similar to garlic, the report noted.

While its unclear why nobody thought to look for sulfur in cannabis before, the relatively small amount found by Abstrax may have to do with it. Analytical chemist Iain Oswald, who worked on the study, told Science News that sulfur can be in very low concentrations on the flower, but still make a huge impact on the smell.

And smell psychologist Avery Gilbert, a person whose job title is as cool as this new finding and who also works with cannabis smells at the Colorado startup Headspace Sensory, told Science News that this research could both help mask the skunky scent of weed or amplify it, depending on the wants and needs of particular consumers.

The spectrum of cannabis odor is just amazing, Gilbert told Science News. I think it beats the pants off of wine.

More canna-science:Gene Sequencing Could Ensure You Get the Kind of Weed You Pay For

Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money (and planet!) you could save by switching to solar power at UnderstandSolar.com. By signing up through this link, Futurism.com may receive a small commission.

See the original post here:
Blaze It! Scientists Finally Discovered What Makes Weed Dank - Futurism