America's Energy Department runs a research lab in Idaho — and this week announced successful results from a ground-breaking experiment. "This is the first time in history that chloride-based molten salt fuel has been produced for a fast reactor," says Bill Phillips, the lab's technical lead for salt synthesis. He calls it "a major milestone for… Read More »
What triggered that Airbus emergency software recall? The BBC reports that Airbus's initial investigation into an aircraft's sudden drop in altitude linked it "to a malfunction in one of the aircraft's computers that controls moving parts on the aircraft's wings and tail." But that malfunction "seems to have been triggered by cosmic radiation… Read More »
An anonymous reader shared this report from Autoblog: Imagine walking out to your car, pressing the start button, and getting absolutely nothing. No crank, no lights on the dash, nothing. That's exactly what happened to hundreds of Porsche owners in Russia last week. The issue is with the Vehicle Tracking System, a satellite-based security… Read More »
Nuclear engineer Lonnie Johnson worked on NASA's Galileo mission, has more than 140 patents, and invented the Super Soaker water gun. But now he's working on "a potential key to unlock a huge power source that's rarely utilized today," reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. [Alternate URL here.] Waste heat... The Johnson… Read More »
Phys.org republishes this article from The Conversation: On average, managers spend 23 hours a week in meetings. Much of what happens in them is considered to be of low value, or even entirely counterproductive. The paradox is that bad meetings generate even more meetings... in an attempt to repair the damage caused by previous ones... A 2015… Read More »
Friday six European Union countries "asked the European Commission to water down an effective ban on the sale of internal combustion engine cars slated for 2035," reports Reuters The countries have asked the EU Commission to allow the sale of hybrid cars or vehicles powered by other, existing or future, technologies "that could contribute to the… Read More »
AI is the second-largest major at M.I.T. after computer science, reports the New York Times. (Alternate URL here and here.) Though that includes students interested in applying AI in biology and health care — it's just the beginning: This semester, more than 3,000 students enrolled in a new college of artificial intelligence and… Read More »