Delphi will test its self-driving taxi service in Singapore

Take me to work, car.

Uber may be talking about it, but automotive technology parts supplier Delphi is doing it. Today the company announced a partnership with Singapore to start a pilot program for an on-demand autonomous taxi service.

Before you think you can just jump in an autonomous car next time you're in Singapore, there are a lot of caveats.First, there are only six vehicles in the autonomous fleet. Second, the fleet will only be available along a four-mile route in a business park on the western edge of the city.

The pilot program will last three years with the first year dedicated to laying out the technological groundwork. The vehicles will be deployed on during the second year. Passengers will be chosen to test the system from a cross-section of the Singapore population. The system will work similar to ride-hailing services like Lyft and Uber.

Glen DeVos, VP of Delphi's Services Business Unit said that the company is hoping to come up with a "last mile" solution by building out the entire ecosystem including the car, communications system between vehicles and the infrastructure, transactions, cloud services and security. " When the pilots done, we had completed the definition and the deployment that whole automated mobility on demand ecosystem," DeVos told Engadget.

Singapore and Delphi hope to transition the pilot into a operational service that launches in 2022. That's still a pretty far away, but it's another step to have fully autonomous vehicles on the road not just in Asia but around the globe.

Hyperloop One opens its first manufacturing plant

Engineers are beginning to construct the components of DevLoop ready for 2017.

Hyperloop One has announced that it's opening its first manufacturing plant to build the future of high-speed transportation. Metalworks is a 105,000 square foot facility in the city of North Las Vegas where components for DevLoop, the first testbed for the platform, will be constructed. As well as housing the company's new propulsion lab, the location will also be used to solve some of the more practical engineering challenges the technology faces. Employees will work to design and build supporting columns, cradles and the joints that keep everything held tightly together.

The announcement will also help to bolster the credentials of North Las Vegas, which is becoming a big tech hub for promising new transportation firms. As well as Hyperloop One, officials have snagged investment from Faraday Future to build its new electric supercar factory in the region. In fact, Nevada is becoming a key battleground for transport businesses, since Tesla's Gigafactory is being established seven hours up the road outside Reno.

Of course, Hyperloop One is putting a brave face on while it suffers from a little bit of internal strife. Co-founder Kevin "Brogan Bam Brogan" Brogan has sued the firm, citing harassment and a potential death threat from the brother of co-founder Shervin Pishevar. The company has filed a counter-suit, saying that Brogan was responsible for causing internal strife and launching a "coup," to grab control of the company. Although, as co-founder, you'd think he already had control of the company, wouldn't you?
Watch the video here...

Source: Hyperloop One

NASA's new satellite will look for Earth-sized planets nearby

It will blast off in 2017 or 2018.

The Kepler mission scopes out stars and galaxies thousands of light-years away to find exoplanets. NASA's upcoming planet hunter, however, will keep an eye on solar systems closer to home.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite or TESS will find planets by observing stars and looking out for shadows cast by transiting planets. It will be programmed to compute for a planet's size and the time it takes to orbit its star, because those are the information astronomers need to determine if it's habitable. Since Earth- and even super-Earth-sized planets are tiny, though, TESS will observe small bright dwarf stars only hundreds of light-years away.

The satellite is slated to blast off to space in 2017 or 2018 and is expected to observe 200,000 stars within its two-year lifespan. It has the power to detect other celestial bodies and cosmic phenomena, though, so NASA will also use it to observe supernovae, binary stars and even supermassive black holes.

Source: NASA

CBS and Showtime have two million internet-only subscribers

The number is 'about evenly split' among the two.

While CBS is busy licensing content to Netflix for display outside of the US and Canada, here its own streaming services are off to a good start. On today's earnings call, execs said CBS All Access and the streaming version of Showtime have combined to reach more than two million subscribers, with the number "about evenly split" between the two.

Read CBS Tweets here...

This is all well ahead of the upcoming All Access-exclusive Star Trek series, and in response to questions, the company stated that its service is helping to reach customers who get their TV only over the internet. The demographic is apparently "younger, skews slightly female...and consumes double the amount of content" as traditional viewers. The CBS digital news channel wasn't included in those numbers, but still had "record" views in June. CEO Les Moonves claimed Star Trek: Discovery will be profitable "even before it launches," which makes it less likely we'll see any changes made to the current strategy.

Kanye West wants Apple and Tidal to stop fighting over exclusives

He'd really like to have a sit-down with Jay-Z and Tim Cook.

Kanye West may be best known on Twitter for starting feuds, but now he's trying to end one... and it's even a rivalry he helped create. In a flurry of four tweets, the rapper griped that the competition between Apple and Tidal over streaming music exclusives is nothing but a "dick swinging contest" that's "fucking up the music game." Yes, that's right -- the man who released his latest album as a Tidal exclusive (if only temporarily) now wants peace. He's even suggesting a meeting with Jay-Z, Tim Cook and other bigwigs to make it happen, and wishes that Apple would just buy Tidal to end the fighting once and for all.

It's just talk at the moment, and there's certainly no guarantee that Apple or Tidal will pull a Taylor Swift and bend over backwards to listen to what Kanye has to say. However, this still represents a big-name artist rebelling against the all-too-common trend of releasing albums through just one service, however briefly. It's not hard to see why he's changing his tune. Kanye's own The Life of Pablo saw a huge surge in demand the moment he ditched his Tidal exclusive, making it clear that fans wouldn't automatically follow him anywhere he went. He and other musicians may have little choice but to bite the bullet and go where the listeners are.

Read Kanye Wests tweets here...

HBO's 'Westworld' sci-fi series arrives October 2nd

You'll soon see how JJ Abrams and crew take on the Western-themed robot theme park.

JJ Abrams' and Jonathan Nolan's TV adaptation of Westworld hit its share of snags on the way to release (it was originally supposed to debut in 2015), but it's nearly here. HBO has confirmed that the robot-theme-park-gone-wrong show will debut on October 2nd at 9PM (both Eastern and Pacific). As before, the TV series isn't really a thriller in the vein of Michael Crichton's 1973 movie. Instead, it's more of a philosophical investigation into both simulated experiences and artificial intelligence. If you can do anything you want in a robotic world, what does that say about you? And how does AI grapple with questions of consciousness and self-awareness?
It's far from certain that the show will be a hit. However, it will at least have well-known producers and a big-name cast that includes Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, Evan Rachel Wood and Thandie Newton, among others. More importantly, it's clear that Abrams, Nolan and HBO are taking the concept seriously -- it's a high-minded drama, not just an excuse to remake a classic sci-fi story.

Watch the official trailer here...

Google teams up with GSK to develop 'bioelectronic medicines'

Galvani Bioelectronics' first project will look into the treatment of type 2 diabetes.

By forcing startups like Google X, Fiber and Nest to behave like companies and take financial accountability, Alphabet believes that its subsidiaries are more likely to invest in projects that will ultimately make it money. Being in the expensive healthcare business, Verily -- formerly Google Life Sciences -- often needs to speculate to accumulate, but for its latest venture, the company is dreaming big. It's teaming up with British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to develop bioelectronic medicines that can "harness electrical signals in the body to treat chronic disease."

Under the agreement, both companies will invest up to £540 million ($715 million) to form a new company, Galvani Bioelectronics. It's named after Luigi Aloisio Galvani, an 18th century Italian scientist who was one of the early pioneers of bioelectricity (he was also the guy who found that frogs legs twitch when exposed to an electric current). According to GSK's press release, it'll be headquartered in the UK, with a second research hub in San Francisco, and will primarily focus on the "research, development and commercialization" of bioelectronics.
GSK believes that biomedicines can treat conditions like arthritis and asthma, but one of Galvani Bioelectronics' first projects will focus on the development of "miniaturised precision devices" that can help remedy "inflammatory, metabolic and endocrine disorders" including type 2 diabetes. GSK will fuse its drug discovery and development prowess with Verily's expertise in developing tiny low power electronics. Initially, Galvani will employ 30 scientists, engineers and clinicians, who will utilise treatments developed by both parent companies, academic institutions and other R&D companies. They'll have to wait until the deal is approved by competition regulators before they do, but both parties expect that to happen before the end of the year.

Jack White's label played a vinyl record at 94,000 feet

It required some clever tech to keep playing on its ascent to the stratosphere.

Jack White's Third Man Records label is no stranger to using technological feats to draw publicity, but its latest feat is something truly special. The company recently teamed up with Students and Teachers in Near Space to become the first to play a vinyl record, the Carl Sagan-sampling "A Glorious Dawn," at the edge of space -- to be exact, in the stratosphere at 94,413 feet. As you might gather from the video (skip to 1:21:20 to see the maximum ascent), it involved a lot more than strapping a turntable to a high-altitude balloon. Key designer Kevin Carrico explains that there were quite a few technical considerations needed to keep the record spinning for as long as possible on its journey.

The biggest challenge may have been protecting the record itself. The stratosphere's very low air levels were certain to reduce the vinyl's insulation from extreme heat -- Carrico had to use both gold plating (a bit like Voyager 1's golden record) and a heat sink-like platter to keep the record distortion-free. He also need a flight computer that would stop playing the record when things got rough, in much the same way as a PC's hard drive stops when it detects a sudden drop. Even the phono cartridge and stylus had to be tough enough to survive the trip.

If you ask White, this wasn't so much a label promo as a bid to "inject imagination and inspiration" into the minds of music fans. Even if you don't believe him, though, the stunt could still serve as a helpful reminder that we humans frequently take Earth's creature comforts for granted. The only way you can enjoy many luxuries in space (or on less forgiving worlds) is to recreate familiar atmospheric conditions.

watch video here...

Deep space travel might play havoc with your heart

A study finds that Apollo astronauts have been more likely than most to die of heart disease.

Traveling deeper into space may carry some unanticipated health risks. Scientists have published a study noting that Apollo astronauts have died of heart disease at an unusually high rate -- of the 7 that passed away during the study, 43 percent fell to cardiovascular conditions. Only 11 percent of those deceased astronauts who stopped at low Earth orbit succumbed to heart disease, which is about on par with the 9 percent rate on the ground. There's a concern that the increased dose of radiation in deep space, however brief, is intense enough to mess with the functioning of cells that line blood vessels.

Before you ask: yes, the researchers are aware that the study is only covering a handful of people. It may take many more astronauts to reach a definitive conclusion. However, the outcome parallels what the team saw when subjecting mice to the same levels of radiation you'd get on a trip to the Moon. The irradiated rodents were disproportionately likely to suffer heart problems as they aged, just on a much shorter time scale.
This doesn't mean that humans will have to stay near Earth to avoid a premature death. The findings challenge the all-clear message from earlier studies, though, and may give space agencies a reason for pause as they prepare for human travel to Mars. Spacecraft and spacesuits may need extra protection to ensure that crews lead long, healthy lives.

Scientists turn CO2 into fuel with solar power

Which could spell the end for traditional gasoline production.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago believe that they've perfected the art of photosynthetic solar cells. It's a technology that mimics a plant's ability to inhale carbon dioxide and, with water, convert it into glucose and oxygen. This system is capable of drawing in carbon dioxide and processing it into a synthetic fuel that could be used to power vehicles. Theoretically, this device could create a virtuous cycle where climate-altering carbon could be removed from the atmosphere and pumped back into cars.

The artificial leaf contains a pair of solar cells that power an infinitely more complex version of the electrolysis you learned about in high school science. Energy from the sun is used to catalyze a reaction with various obscure compounds like nanoflake tungsten diselenide (which is a transition metal dichalcogenide). Synthetic gas comes out of the other side, which can either be used directly by vehicles that can take it, or converted further into diesel.

But this isn't the first time we've seen artificial photosynthesis being used as a potential weapon in the war on climate change. Early last year, we saw a team from Berkeley using a similar process, albeit with genetically-modified E. coli bacteria at the heart of the system. That version didn't output synthetic gas but acetate, a building block of several compounds like biofuel, anti-malaria drugs and biodegradable plastics. Should UIC's newer process prove to be cost-effective, it could spell the end of traditional gasoline production as we know it. Instead, a network of these cells would be installed at a solar farm, creating fuel and reducing the quantity of atmospheric carbon dioxide at the same time. The only downside is that we'd still be re-releasing the deadly gas back into the atmosphere, but it's a decent stop-gap while we work on reducing our carbon emissions more permanently.