“Our Field’s metal-epoxy composite can become as flexible as latex rubber or as stiff as hard acrylic, over 1,000 times more rigid, just by heating it up or cooling it down,” lead author Trevor Buckner said. “Long fibers of this material can be sewn onto a fabric to give it a supportive skeleton that we can turn on and off.”

In addition, the team developed a liquid-based sensor to detect changes, either with the wearer or in the surrounding environment, that can be literally painted onto the fabric. They also embedded specially-formed shape-memory alloy wires — which bend themselves into preprogrammed shapes when exposed to current — throughout the material, enabling it to take and hold its proper form. Imagine a pair of smart pants that can help the elderly stand or sit with ease from even the deepest of couch cushions.

Well, the material probably won’t be used for smart pants because the research was funded by the Air Force Office of Science Research which hopes to use the stuff in everything from wearable tourniquets and smart cargo netting to self-deploying tents.

Upon observing an area that’s around 75,000 square kilometers in size, they found locations that reflected those signals back in a way that indicates the presence of water trapped underneath a kilometer of ice. The main lake, the one discovered back in 2018, measures 30 kilometers or 19 miles across, while each of the three smaller lakes surrounding it are a few kilometers across.

While the scientists’ findings are promising, some experts still believe we won’t find lakes on the red planet at all. Jack Holt, a planetary scientist part of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter program, doesn’t believe there’s enough heat flow under the surface of the planet for water to remain liquid. And even if we do find liquid water under Martian ice, that won’t automatically mean we’ll also find life. See, the lakes have to be very salty to remain liquid, but their salt content must not exceed five times that of seawater to be able to support life. As John Priscu, an environmental scientist at Montana State University, told Nature:

“There’s not much active life in… briny pools in Antarctica. They’re just pickled. And that might be the case [on Mars].”

The App Drivers and Couriers Union (ACDU) has “cautiously” welcomed the decision, but believes London mayor Sadiq Khan should take further action and limit the number of licensed drivers on the platform. “Such reductions, achieved through attrition, are necessary to ensure Uber can comfortably meet its compliance obligations including worker rights whilst giving TfL the breathing space necessary so that it can comfortably meet its responsibilities to ensure that Uber drivers and the travelling public are protected,” the union said in a press release.

The two organisations have been at loggerheads since September 2017. Transport for London refused to reissue Uber’s licence — which had initially run for five years — because it wasn’t happy with some of the company’s actions and procedures. The regulator didn’t like how Uber reported criminal offences and conducted driver checks, for instance. It was also unimpressed with the company’s use of ‘Greyball’ software which helped drivers evade the authorities by tagging known officials and serving them ghost cars. Uber argued that it had never used Greyball software in the UK, however, and filed an appeal one month later.

Uber was allowed to operate as usual while the legal challenge was settled. In June 2018, the court ruled that Uber could continue operating on a 15-month licence, but only if it met Tranport for London’s conditions. These included a bi-yearly assurance report, appointing three non-executive directors to its board, and giving at least one month’s notice for any major changes to its business model. Then, in September 2019, Transport for London decided to renew Uber’s licence — but only for two months. The regulator accepted that Uber had made some improvements to its culture and governance, but wanted to review “additional material” before committing to a longer licence.

It was later revealed that “issued” had emerged late in the company’s application process. Transport for London noted these in November 2019, when it decided not to renew the company’s licence. “A key issue identified was that a change to Uber’s systems allowed unauthorised drivers to upload their photos to other Uber driver accounts,” the regulator explained. “This allowed them to pick up passengers as though they were the booked driver, which occurred in at least 14,000 trips – putting passenger safety and security at risk.” Transport for London did accept that Uber had taken steps to close these loopholes. But it also wasn’t convinced that the company could prevent similar problems from occurring in the future.

Uber has taken further steps to address the regulators concerns. In April, for instance, the company introduced random driver checks via facial recognition. It’s also introduced ‘Programme Zero,’ an initiative designed to ensure that the company never breaks any of Transport for London’s conditions.

According to Verdict, Uber admitted that “mistakes were made” during the hearing. It also argued that it was a different business to the one from 2017. Tim Ward QC, the representative for Uber, argued that only 24 drivers had exploited the photo-related glitch. He said the problem was “not endemic or widespread,” and that all of the issues highlighted by the regulator had been resolved. The regulator’s argument though, was based on the company’s entire history. Marie Dimitriou, the representative for Transport for London, reportedly said in court: “You will have to look at the entire picture and ask yourself: is that good enough, or does that pattern of breaches reveal a problem, namely, an ongoing risk to passengers?”

The judge sided with Uber. The decision reflects how far the company has come since Dara Khosrowshahi took on the role of chief executive in August 2017. Critics won’t be pleased, but many London passengers will be.

“Next year we will launch the first battery-electric M car in the performance segment, based on the i4, as something to confirm. Then we’re working on hybrid electrified performance and high-performance cars, but it is too early to disclose which ones it is going to be.”

As CarAdvice noted, it likely means that the vehicle will be sportier than the standard i4 but won’t be able to match the division’s “high-performance” models, such as the BMW M3 and M4. Flasch explained that current battery technologies still don’t have the capability to power its high-performance cars and that it will take more time to design one that can. The company still has to figure out a few more things to be able to develop a full-blown M EV, as well: “[T]he biggest question to answer is,” he said, “how to handle weight of a battery electric car and still offer M-specific, or M-style, dynamics.”

The CEO didn’t have a lot of details to share about the car, but if it’s a sportier i4, then we can probably expect better specs than the standard version. BMW previously revealed that the i4 will have a 390 kW motor that can accelerate from zero to 60 miles per hour in about four seconds. It will have a max speed of 124 miles per hour and an 80 kWh battery that will give it the capability to run for approximately 373 miles on a single charge. The standard i4 is expected to be available in 2022, which means you may have to wait more than a couple of years before the M version comes out.

Workman

Excerpted from How to Astronaut: An Insider’s Guide to Leaving Planet Earth by Terry Virts (Workman). © 2020.

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For all the emergency training I went through as an astronaut, I never expected to be holed up in the Russian segment of the ISS, the hatch to the US segment sealed, with my crew waiting and wondering—would the space station be destroyed? Was this the end? As we floated there and pondered our predicament, I felt a bit like the guy in the Alanis Morissette song “Ironic,” who was going down in an airplane crash, thinking to himself, “Now isn’t this ironic?” This is how we ended up in that situation.

Every space station crew trains for all types of emergencies—computer failures, electrical shorts, equipment malfunctions, and more serious fire and air leak scenarios. However, on the International Space Station, the most dangerous of all is an ammonia leak. In fact, our NASA trainers used to tell us, “If you smell ammonia, don’t worry about running the procedure, because you’re going to die anyway.” That sure instilled confidence.

A few months after arriving in space, we were having a typical day. My crewmate Samantha Cristoforetti and I were each in our own crew quarters, going through email and catching up with administrative work, when the alarm went off. The sound of the ISS alarm is exactly what you would think a proper space alarm should sound like—a cross between a Star Trek alarm and a sci-fi B-movie klaxon. When it goes off, there is no doubt that something significant is happening. Sam and I both popped our heads out of our respective quarters and glanced at the alarm panel.

When I saw the ATM alarm lit up, my first thought was, “Atmosphere— there must be an atmosphere leak.” The ISS had occasionally had an air leak false alarm over its fifteen-year history, and I thought it must be one of those. However, that is not what ATM means—it stands for toxic atmosphere, most probably from an ammonia leak. Significantly, this alarm was going off for the first time in ISS history. My brain couldn’t believe it, so I said to Samantha, “This is an air leak, right?” To which she immediately responded “NO—ammonia leak!”

Jolted back to reality, we jumped into action. Gas masks on. Account for everyone; we didn’t want anyone left behind. Float down to the Russian segment ASAP and close the hatch between the US and Russian segments. The US segment uses ammonia as a coolant, but the Russian segment doesn’t, so the air should be safe there. Remove all clothes in case they’re contaminated. Nobody smelled ammonia, so we skipped this step! Close a second hatch to

keep any residual ammonia vapors on the American segment. Get out the ammonia “sniffer” device to make sure there isn’t any of that deadly chemical in the atmosphere on the Russian segment. All clear. Then, await word from Houston. . . .

Fifteen long, suspense-filled minutes later, we got the news—it was a false alarm. We let out a collective sigh of relief; the station wouldn’t be dying today! Whew. Similar to frequent fire alarms and rare air leaks, ammonia leak was just added to the collection of ISS false alarms. We put away the ammonia detector, floated back to the US segment, and started to clean up the mess that we had left floating in midair when that alarm went off.

Then we received an urgent call. “Station, Houston, execute ammonia leak emergency response, I say again, execute emergency response, ammonia leak, this is not a drill!” Pretty unambiguous. Only this time the warning had come via a radio call, not via electronic alarm. After the false alarm I knew that an army of NASA engineers were in mission control, poring over every piece of data they had, trying to determine if this had been a false alarm or the real thing. Now that mission control had confirmed that it was an actual leak, there was no doubt in my mind that this thing was real. No way all those NASA engineers got this call wrong. Having worked in mission control for nearly a decade myself, I had complete confidence in our flight director and flight control team. When they said, “Execute ammonia response,” I put the mask on, shut the hatch, and asked questions later.

It was like a scene out of European Vacation—“Look kids! Big Ben!”—or maybe Groundhog Day. Oxygen masks activated—check. US segment evacuated with nobody left behind—check. Hatch between US and Russian segments closed and sealed—check. Get naked—nope. No ammonia in the Russian atmosphere—check.

By this point, we had run the ISS ammonia leak procedures twice within an hour of each other. We had a quick debrief as a crew to discuss how we handled the emergency, what checklist steps were missed, what could have been done better, and what we needed to report to Houston. By this point, it was very obvious that there would be a lot of meetings happening in Houston and Moscow and that everybody in the NASA chain of command would be aware of our predicament.

Very quickly the gravity (pun intended) of the situation hit us. Using ammonia as the coolant for the American half of the ISS had worked well for decades, but we were acutely aware of its danger. Thankfully, the engineers who designed the station did a great job making a leak extremely unlikely, but the possibility was always there. On the other hand, the Russian glycol-based coolant is not dangerous, which is why the whole station crew would safe haven there in the event of an ammonia leak.

Besides the danger of the crew breathing in toxic fumes, there was a risk to equipment. The ISS has two ammonia loops, a series of tanks and pipes that carry heat from the station’s internal water loops to the external radiators. If one leaked out to space, there would still be a second available to cool equipment. It would be a serious loss of redundancy for the station, especially given that there is no longer a space shuttle to restock the station with the massive ammonia tanks needed to fill a loop. It would be ugly, but survivable.

What is not survivable, however, is having that ammonia leak to the inside of the American segment. First of all, if the entire contents of an ammonia loop came inside the station, it would probably overpressurize and pop the aluminum structure of one or more of the modules, like a balloon being overfilled with air. Mission control could avert this problem by venting the ammonia to space—we would lose the cooling loop, but it would prevent the station from popping. Months after returning to Earth, I learned that Houston had been seriously considering that option during our emergency, and it was only averted because of a tough—and ultimately correct—call by our flight director. That’s why those guys get paid the big bucks—they are some of the smartest and most competent people I have ever worked with. However, even if you averted a catastrophic “popping” of structure, there would still be the problem of ammonia in the US segment.

If even a small amount of ammonia were present in the atmosphere, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to remove. The only scrubber we had was our ammonia masks, so theoretically you could have an astronaut sit in a contaminated module, breathing the contaminant out of the air and into the mask filter, and over time enough of this scrubbing would lower the ammonia concentration, but as the poor astronaut sat there cleaning the air he would also be covered in ammonia, and convincing his fellow crewmates on the Russian segment to allow him back to their clean air would be problematic, to say the least. There would need to be some sort of shower and cleaning system to completely clean him up, which of course doesn’t exist in space. It would be a similar situation to soldiers in a chemical warfare environment, or the Soviet soldiers in the recent miniseries Chernobyl. Dealing with a toxic environment on Earth is difficult enough, but in space it would be nearly impossible. The reality is that an actual leak into the American segment would make a significant portion of the ISS uninhabitable, and if there were no crew there when the equipment broke down, there would be nobody to fix it.

A real ammonia leak would eventually lead to the slow death of the US half of the ISS, which would then lead to the end of the entire station. We knew this and spent our afternoon staring at each other, wondering out loud how long it would be before they sent us home, leaving the space station uninhabited and awaiting an untimely death.

Later that evening, we received a call from Houston. “Just kidding, it was a false alarm.” That was a huge false alarm. It turned out that some cosmic radiation had hit a computer, causing it to kick out bad data regarding the cooling system, and it took Houston hours to sort out what was really happening. Because that call from Houston had told us that it was a real leak, we all believed it—we knew that the folks in mission control were some of the best engineers in the world and that they would be 100 percent sure before making a call like that. So we were very relieved to get that call.

Once OSIRIS-REx has landed, a robotic sampling arm will perform Touch-And-Go (TAG) collection. The mission is to collect at least two ounces, or 60 grams, of rocky material. If the first TAG attempt in October does not collect enough material, OSIRIS-REx has onboard nitrogen charges to power two more attempts.

The spacecraft is scheduled to depart Bennu in 2021. It will deliver the collected sample to Earth on September 24th, 2023. While that’s still two years away, NASA has already made useful discoveries through OSIRIS-REx. For instance, NASA has spotted water on the asteroid, and we now know that Bennu is spewing particles into space. The team has also produced some of the highest resolution images of a planetary body ever. 

NASA is also trying to get its hands on some lunar dirt from the Moon, but for that, the agency will turn to private companies.

In a press release, E1’s organizers said they’ll be using the vessel as a “floating paddock.” Teams will have two RaceBirds — one based in Europe, and the other on the competition’s roaming headquarters — so they can effectively compete in races that are located near cities and the same “stunning remote locations” used by Extreme E. It’s not clear if the aquatic competition will be ready by January 23rd, though — the first scheduled Extreme E event, which is meant to take place in Lac Rose, Senegal.

The aquatic motorsport is being co-developed by SailGP, a league dedicated to sailboat racing. It’s also been approved by the UIM, the international governing body of powerboating. Pilots will need to be fast, according to E1, but also strategic. Unlimited charging will be allowed during testing and qualifying, however teams will be restricted to a finite amount during the knockout stages. That could make the sport more exciting and, like Extreme E, also help to highlight environmental issues. “We believe this series will engage not only the sporting public, and boating and tech enthusiasts around the world, but also ocean conservationists who care about the future of our planet,” Agag said.

E1

The founder of Formula E and Extreme E is a busy man, so he’ll only be a non-executive chairman for E1. The CEO role will instead fall to Rodi Basso, a former aerospace engineer who has worked with NASA, Ferrari and Red Bull in Formula 1, as well as Magneti Marelli and McLaren Applied Technologies. Basso and Egag came up with the concept in London during the lockdown. “The sea for me is something very important as an expression of nature and somewhere I always go to re-charge my batteries, so this project is the perfect way to celebrate that,” Basso explained.

Unsurprisingly, Apple disagreed. The company’s appeals were initially unsuccessful, however. In 2016, it started transferring money into an escrow account that would only be emptied once a final decision was made. By September 2018, the company had all of its unpaid taxes, plus interest, in that holding account. Apple hasn’t given up on its legal defence, however, and won a remarkable decision this year. The General Court said the Commission couldn’t prove that Apple was given preferential treatment and, as a result, the deal can’t be declared as state aid. The Commission is desperate to win the case, however, to bring more taxes back into the EU market, which is currently grappling with a pandemic-fuelled downturn.

“If Member States give certain multinational companies tax advantages not available to their rivals, this harms fair competition in the European Union in breach of State aid rules,” Vestager said. “We have to continue to use all tools at our disposal to ensure companies pay their fair share of tax. Otherwise, the public purse and citizens are deprived of funds for much needed investments – the need for which is even more acute now to support Europe’s economic recovery.”

Apple thinks differently. “The General Court categorically annulled the Commission’s case in July and the facts have not changed since then,” a spokesperson for the company said. “This case has never been about how much tax we pay, rather where we are required to pay it. We will review the Commission’s appeal when we receive it, however it will not alter the factual conclusions of the General Court, which prove that we have always abided by the law in Ireland, as we do everywhere we operate.”

Don’t panic, nobody’s coming to take your car. As Newsom’s executive order outlining the new rules notes, existing internal combustion vehicles will still be perfectly legal to own, operate, buy, and sell within the state. The new rules only apply to new vehicle sales. That includes cars, minivans and SUVs. The California Air Resources Board will also be tasked with drafting regulations to do the same with medium- and heavy-duty vehicles by 2045. Newsom’s office notes that transportation accounts for roughly half of the state’s carbon emissions and estimates that these new rules will reduce those emissions by 35 percent.

The move is the first of its kind for a US state, however it’s not an entirely unique idea. A dozen countries including the UK, Germany and India have all passed legislation to phase out gas-powered vehicles by 2030 while Canada and France have established a goal of 2040.

Microsoft is looking beyond flash storage and hard drives to handle the seemingly unstoppable demand for cloud storage. Yesterday at its Ignite conference, the company announced Project HSD (via ZDNet), a new research initiative that’s exploring how holographic storage could eventually be used for the cloud. And while it may sound far-fetched, the notion of holographic storage has been around since the 1960’s. But now, Microsoft thinks it may be possible to use the medium effectively thanks to the rise of smartphone cameras.

As the video above explains, holographic storage works by writing and reading data from an optical crystal. Since it’s a three-dimensional storage medium, it allows you to store a large variety of data sets within one crystal. Afterwards, it can be wiped clean with UV light and reused. Technically, this is a better solution than flash storage, which has limited read and write capabilities, and hard drives which are prone to mechanical failure.