| From: Julius Wong | 9/12/2022 9:13:41 AM | | | | | | A breakthrough discovery in carbon capture conversion for ethylene production
Abstract illustration of atoms passing through water and an electrified membrane under a shining sun. Credit: Meenesh Singh
A team of researchers led by Meenesh Singh at University of Illinois Chicago has discovered a way to convert 100% of carbon dioxide captured from industrial exhaust into ethylene, a key building block for plastic products.
Their findings are published in Cell Reports Physical Science.
While researchers have been exploring the possibility of converting carbon dioxide to ethylene for more than a decade, the UIC team's approach is the first to achieve nearly 100% utilization of carbon dioxide to produce hydrocarbons. Their system uses electrolysis to transform captured carbon dioxide gas into high purity ethylene, with other carbon-based fuels and oxygen as byproducts.
The process can convert up to 6 metric tons of carbon dioxide into 1 metric ton of ethylene, recycling almost all carbon dioxide captured. Because the system runs on electricity, the use of renewable energy can make the process carbon negative.
According to Singh, his team's approach surpasses the net-zero carbon goal of other carbon capture and conversion technologies by actually reducing the total carbon dioxide output from industry. "It's a net negative," he said. "For every 1 ton of ethylene produced, you're taking 6 tons of CO2 from point sources that otherwise would be released to the atmosphere."
Previous attempts at converting carbon dioxide into ethylene have relied on reactors that produce ethylene within the source carbon dioxide emission stream. In these cases, as little as 10% of CO2 emissions typically converts to ethylene. The ethylene must later be separated from the carbon dioxide in an energy-intensive process often involving fossil fuels.
In UIC's approach, an electric current is passed through a cell, half of which is filled with captured carbon dioxide, the other half with a water-based solution. An electrified catalyst draws charged hydrogen atoms from the water molecules into the other half of the unit separated by a membrane, where they combine with charged carbon atoms from the carbon dioxide molecules to form ethylene.
Among manufactured chemicals worldwide, ethylene ranks third for carbon emissions after ammonia and cement. Ethylene is used not only to create plastic products for the packaging, agricultural and automotive industries, but also to produce chemicals used in antifreeze, medical sterilizers and vinyl siding for houses.
Ethylene is usually made in a process called steam cracking that requires enormous amounts of heat. Cracking generates about 1.5 metric tons of carbon emissions per ton of ethylene created. On average, manufacturers produce around 160 million tons of ethylene each year, which results in more than 260 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide.
In addition to ethylene, the UIC scientists were able to produce other carbon-rich products useful to industry with their electrolysis approach. They also achieved a very high solar energy conversion efficiency, converting 10% of energy from the solar panels directly to carbon product output. This is well above the state-of-the-art standard of 2%. For all the ethylene they produced, the solar energy conversion efficiency was around 4%, approximately the same rate as photosynthesis.
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| From: Frank Sully | 9/13/2022 8:32:19 AM | | | | | | Metaverse Market Size is Projected to Grow at a CAGR of 40.07% During 2022-2027 | Nvidia Corporation, Facebook Inc.
Metaverse Market Size Report
The rising number of gaming zones in commercial areas is also bolstering the global metaverse market.
SHERIDAN, WY, USA, September 13, 2022 / EINPresswire.com/ -- According to IMARC Group’s latest report, “Metaverse Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2022-2027”, offers a comprehensive analysis of the industry, which comprises insights on the metaverse market size. The report also includes competitor and regional analysis, and contemporary advancements in the market. The global metaverse market is expected to exhibit a CAGR of 40.07% during 2022-2027.
What is the metaverse market?
A metaverse refers to a digital reality that usually incorporates social media platforms, online gaming, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and cryptocurrencies to enable users to interact virtually. It is self-sufficient, infinite, persistent, interoperable, and provides real-time live experiences. Consequently, the metaverse is gaining extensive traction across various countries.
COVID-19 Impact:
We are regularly tracking the direct effect of COVID-19 on the market, along with the indirect influence of associated industries. These observations will be integrated into the report.
Request to Get the Sample Report: imarcgroup.com
Market Trends and Drivers:
The escalating demand for online games, on account of the emerging trend of digitization, the increasing penetration of high-speed internet connectivity, the growing sales of smartphones, etc., is primarily driving the metaverse market. Additionally, the rising number of gaming zones in commercial areas is also bolstering the global market. Besides this, the inflating popularity of virtual goods and digital currencies is propelling the utilization of the metaverse in non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which is acting as another significant growth-inducing factor.
Moreover, the widespread adoption of the metaverse in small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) that allows individuals to have real-time interactions and experiences, owing to the introduction of numerous cloud-based solutions and remote working models, is further catalyzing the market growth.
Apart from this, the metaverse is used in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) industry to minimize the interaction between agents and customers as well as streamline operations. Furthermore, the elevating consumer inclination towards online shopping apps is expected to fuel the metaverse market in the coming years.
Competitive Landscape with Key Players:
The competitive landscape of the global metaverse market has been studied in the report with the detailed profiles of the key players operating in the market.
Key Players Included in Global Metaverse Market Research Report:
• Alibaba Group Holding Limited
• Decentraland, Electronic Arts Inc.
• Facebook Inc.
• Nextech AR Solutions Inc.
• Nvidia Corporation
• Roblox Corporation
• The Sandbox and Unity Technologies
Key Highlights of the Market Segmentation:
The report has segmented the global metaverse market on the basis of material, application and region.
Breakup by Component:
• Hardware
• Software
• Service
Breakup by Technology:
• Blockchain
• Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality
• Mixed Reality
• Others
Breakup by Application:
• Gaming
• Online Shopping
• Content Creation and Social Media
• Events and Conference
• Digital Marketing
• Testing and Inspection
• Others
Breakup by Industry Vertical:
• BFSI
• Retail
• Media and Entertainment
• Education
• Aerospace and Defense
• Automotive
• Others
Breakup by Region:
• North America
o United States
o Canada
• Asia-Pacific
o China
o Japan
o India
o South Korea
o Australia
o Indonesia
o Others
• Europe
o Germany
o France
o United Kingdom
o Italy
o Spain
o Russia
o Others
• Latin America
o Brazil
o Mexico
o Others
• Middle East and Africa
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| From: Frank Sully | 9/13/2022 10:15:04 AM | | | | | | The Countdown Begins! Humans Have 30 Years to be Overrun by AI
by Jayanti
September 13, 2022
Super-powered AI
Humans risk being overrun by artificial superintelligence in 30 years
While AI experts don’t concur on many things, they all accord on one thing AI and MLtechnology is going to have gigantic effects on society and business. Google CEO Sundar Pichai comments artificial intelligence is “one of the overriding things humanities is working on,” and is more profound than our development of electricity or fire.
AI is when we provide machines (software and hardware) with human-like abilities. It means we offer machines the ability to mimic human intelligence. Machine learning (ML) means machines are trained to see, hear, speak, move, and make decisions. The dissimilarity between artificial intelligence and traditional technology is that AI has the potential to make predictions and learn on its own. Humans configure AI to achieve a goal. After that, they are taught data so it learns how best to achieve that goal. Once it grasps well enough, we turn artificial intelligence loose on fresh data, which it can then use to achieve goals on its own without any direct instruction from a human. AI carries out all this by making predictions. Artificial intelligence analyzes data, then uses that data to make (nearly) accurate predictions. The benefit of using AI is that it can perform the same tasks as humans but at a much faster rate, with lesser mistakes. There are generally three forms of modern AI: Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), and Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI). There are many potential benefits of more advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning. The medical field, for example, would widely benefit from having robotic doctors as proficient as humans.
But, as every coin has two faces, there are risks involved in AI and ML. Namely, if an AI program infinitely smarter than us became malevolent, there would be virtually no plan to stop it. While it could provide societal benefits, a malevolent Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) program keeps the potential to terminate mankind and should not be created or developed. AI researchers and technology executives like Elon Musk openly expressed their deep concern about human extinction caused by machine learning. Some other experts also believe “a machine with human-level intelligence could be generated in the coming 30 years and could represent a threat to life on Earth.”
Present and future threats
According to Dr. Lewis Liu, CEO of an AI-driven company called Eigen Technologies, some artificial have already “gone dark” by this time. “Even the ‘dumb, non-conscious models we have presented may contain ethical issues around inclusion,” Dr. Liu conveyed to The US Sun. “That kind of mischief stuff is already happening today. “Research from Johns Hopkins University thinks that artificial intelligence algorithms tend to show biases that could discriminate against targeting people of color and women while executing their operations. The American Civil Liberties Union also expressed their concern that AI could “deepen racial inequality” as huge selective processes like hiring and housing are automated. “General AI or AI Superintelligence is just going to perform at a much broader scale, larger propagation of these problems,” Dr. Liu showed his concern. The all-out, Terminator-style war of man versus machine does not seem to be an impossibility either. A poll in futurist Nick Bostrom’s book Superintelligence reveals that almost 10% of experts believe a computer with human-level artificial Super Intelligence strives for a life-threatening crisis for humanity. A giant misconception about AI is that it’s restricted to its black box that can just be unplugged if it intends to hurt us. Some experts accept that the threat landscape should be taking sentient artificial intelligence into account because we are not sure when it will come online, or how it will react to humans.
Preventing Judgement Day
Dr. Liu sadly conveyed “it’s going to be a pretty s***y world” if we achieve artificial superintelligence with the existing lax style of technology regulation. He commented that the development of oversight where the data that powers AI models is scoured for partiality. If the data training a model is sourced from the public, then programmers should have to achieve users’ consent to apply it. Regulation in the US is short of emphasizing “a human check on the outputs” but current developments in China have begun to highlight keeping artificial intelligence under human control.
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| From: Frank Sully | 9/13/2022 12:49:40 PM | | | | | | Truck Platooning Market to Hit USD 13 Billion by 2030: Global Market Insights Inc.
Global Market Insights Inc.
Sep 13, 2022
Major truck platooning market players include AB Volvo, Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems LLC, Continental AG, Daimler AG, Hino Motors, Ltd., IVECO S.p.A, NVIDIA Corporation, Omnitracs, Peloton Technology, ZF Friedrichshafen AG, and others.
SELBYVILLE, Del., Sept. 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The truck platooning market is expected to record a valuation of USD 13 billion by 2030, according to the latest research study by Global Market Insights Inc.
A growing demand for advanced automotive solutions to reduce operating costs and fuel consumption will boost the industry trends. Platooning systems utilize autonomous driving support and networking technologies to operate two or more commercial vehicles together as convoys, which allows for maintaining a predefined distance between each other on highways.
Truck Platooning Market
The technology has gained recognition across vehicle manufacturers and transportation service providers that are seeking new cost-effective solutions. With proximity as close as 12 meters apart, platooning services enable effective airflow around the fleet, thereby reducing overall fuel consumption.
Increasing dependence on next-generation technology is a key factor that could restrain truck platooning market growth. Truck platooning heavily relies on intelligent transportation, which consists of IoT-connected apps, smart mobility, and a fully equipped infrastructure of transportation networks. Current road systems in most countries fail to support the construction of potential routes that can accommodate long-haul truck platoons.
The fully autonomous segment in the truck platooning market is poised to witness a more than 35% growth rate through 2030. This advanced platooning technology involves the integration of a wide range of sensors and complex communication systems which together form a fully autonomous convoy of trucks that can effectively communicate and control vehicles. The technology enables smooth operation of larger fleets, whilst ensuring higher fuel and operational efficiency.
The vehicle-to-vehicle (V to V) communication technology segment is anticipated to reach USD 5 billion by 2030. With the growing use of adaptive cruise control systems which help enhance truck speed autonomously, V to V communication technology is likely to gain momentum in the coming years. This form of communication allows sharing of messages between vehicles to deliver information associated with speed and traffic conditions.
In 2021, the truck platooning market from the blind spot warning (BSW) segment surpassed USD 125 million. There is a high demand for BSW systems in customized luxury vehicles and heavy-duty trucks. These systems monitor the areas along the full length of the truck trailer and can detect vehicles in the blind spot and show a warning in the side-view mirror. Industry players are increasingly focusing on technological development and innovation of blind spot detection systems. The technology can be used to capture the rear view of large commercial vehicles to mitigate collisions while reversing.
Latin America truck platooning market is projected to register USD 490 million by 2030. The region has a solid footprint of automotive component manufacturers that are signing long-term partnerships with the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). There is an imposition of stringent regulations and frameworks with respect to the automotive and freight industries in recent years. The growing focus on enhancing the safety of domestic consumers will benefit truck platooning solution providers in the region.
Key companies operating in the truck platooning market are Daimler AG, Hino Motors, Ltd., IVECO S.p.A, NVIDIA Corporation, Omnitracs, AB Volvo, Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems LLC, Continental AG, Peloton Technology, Robert Bosch GmbH, Scania, TomTom International BV., TuSimple, and ZF Friedrichshafen AG. These leaders are seeking to add advanced features to enhance product portfolio and drive innovation.
prnewswire.com |
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| From: Frank Sully | 9/13/2022 1:11:31 PM | | | | | | Amazon Is Using ‘Acquisition’ Of Robotic Companies for Autonomous Growth
by Market Trends
September 13, 2022
Amazon is attempting to scale up with initiatives such as salary hikes, mergers and acquisitions, and partnerships with third partiesAmazon, the eCommerce giant and a warehouse company, is not new to acquiring robotic companies. Starting with the acquisition of Kiva Systems in 2012 for $775 million has come a long way with the recent acquisition of iRobots for a whopping $1.7 billion. And recently it acquired Cloostermans, a Belgian Robotics company, it has been using the services since 2019 for eCommerce operations and scaling up its R&D and deployment operations. “We’re thrilled to be joining the Amazon family and extending the impact we can have at a global scale. Amazon has raised the bar for how supply chain technologies can benefit employees and customers, and we’re looking forward to being part of the next chapter of this innovation”, said Frederik Berckmoes-Joos, CEO of Cloostermans, in a statement for a blog post published by Amazon. Around 200 Cloostermans’ employees would join Amazon’s workforce. Without disclosing the financial terms of the deal, it revealed that operations for the acquired Belgium-based company will continue from its base, located in Hamme after the deal concludes.
Prima facie, might seem like a normal business merger and acquisition initiative which probably is for very valid reasons, but reports point out that it has been ramping up robotics acquisitions to meet the demands that arise out of its ever-expanding business operations. A leaked internal memo, reported by Recode, warns of severe staff shortage, which may put Amazon’s service quality, reputation, and growth plans at risk. Since the last decade, it has been expanding its operations, including in Europe, all while ramping up its hiring initiative all over the world. Experts are of opinion that Amazon’s workplace culture which is focused on “customer obsession” – which made Amazon a convenient work model the world has not seen before – is responsible for the surge in expansion and hence the acquisitions.
Cloostermans, going by its antecedents, strikes as a well-established company. Set up in 1884, it was largely a privately run family business held by the last six generations. Given the fact that Amazon is one of Cloostermans’ biggest customers, the deal might have gone through seamlessly. Apparently, Amazon is attempting to scale up its operations using a mixed bag of initiatives such as salary hikes, mergers and acquisitions, and partnerships with third parties, which Cloosterman was part of, providing robots for packaging and moving operations. “We have more than 5,20,000 robotic drive units, and have added over a million jobs, worldwide. We have more than a dozen other types of robotic systems in our facilities around the world, including sort centers and air hubs. From the early days of the Kiva acquisition, our vision was never tied to a binary decision of people or technology. Instead, it was about people and technology working safely and harmoniously together to deliver for our customers. That vision remains today”, asserts Amazon in one of its blog posts. Clearly, Amazon is turning adversity into an opportunity to not only expand its operations but become self-dependent, and it reflects in its statement to TechCrunch, “We have a vision for a future where people work alongside robotics to further improve safety and the workplace experience” when it acquired Canvas Tech in 2019.
analyticsinsight.net |
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| From: Frank Sully | 9/13/2022 1:26:20 PM | | | | | | Google Gave Its Helper Robots AI Language Skills to Better Work With Humans
Edd Gent
People have been dreaming of robot butlers for decades, but one of the biggest barriers has been getting machines to understand our instructions. Google has started to close the gap by marrying the latest language AI with state-of-the-art robots.
Human language is often ambiguous. How we talk about things is highly context-dependent, and it typically requires an innate understanding of how the world works to decipher what we’re talkingabout. So while robots can be trained to carry out actions on our behalf, conveying our intentions to them can be tricky.
If they have any ability to understand language at all, robots are typically designed to respond to short, specific instructions. More opaque directions like “I need something to wash these chips down” are likely to go over their heads, as are complicated multi-step requests like “Can you put this apple back in the fridge and fetch the chocolate?”
In contrast, a new breed of massive language models inspired by Open AI’s groundbreaking GPT-3 are capable of some impressive linguistic feats. By training on enormous amounts of written material scraped from the web, these AI systems are able to generate high-quality prose, power convincing chatbots, and answer complicated questions about text.
Google has attempted to combine the two in a new project aimed at boosting robots’ ability to understand us. By combining its PaLM large language modelwith robots made by Ever yday Robots—a spinoff from Alphabet’s “moonshot factory,” X—they’ve built prototype mechanized butlers that can do a human’s bidding around the house.
The robots, which roll around on wheels and feature a single robotic arm and a sensor-packed head, were first trained to carry out a variety of basic actions by human operators who remotely controlled them through a series of tasks.
Engineers then created new control software that taps into PaLM’s language skills to translate spoken or written commands from a human into the actions required to achieve it. The software takes advantage of an approach called “chain of thought prompting” that Google unveiled earlier this year, which enables models to break down problems into a series of intermediate steps.
It uses this to divide requests into smaller sub-problems that it can solve with its pre-trained suite of actions. For instance, “get me a Coke” might be converted into “go to the kitchen, open the fridge, pick up a Coke, and return to the living room.”
The robots were given 101 instructions by human users and were able to come up with a sensible response 84 percent of the time, and actually pull them off seamlessly 74 percent of the time.
That represented a 14 percent and 13 percent improvement, respectively, when compared to robots using a less powerful language model than PaLM, Google’s head of robotics Vincent Vanhoucke said in a blog post. The robots powered by PaLM also saw a 26 percent boost in their ability to carry out complicated multi-step requests.
This is still very much a work in progress, though, and the robots can still be thrown off by things as simple as a change in lighting or moving objects out of their familiar positions, according to Wired.It’s not clear whether the language comprehension problem is really more pressing than actually getting robots to successfully carry out tasks in the ever-changing real world.
But the researchers hope the benefits could run in the other direction too, by giving large language models a way to interact with the physical world. While it isn’t yet clear how this project could be used to actually retrain these models, it could be one way to start grounding AI’s language skills in the real world.
So whether or not this line of research ever leads to robotic butlers becoming a reality, it seems likely to push the fields of both robotics and AI towards new and powerful capabilities.
Image Credit: Everyday Robots
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