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https://www.theengineer.co.uk/...

Shit, better tell Boeing before the first takeoff. I bet they never thought of that. Milled parts aren't strong enough either, that's why they're casted and heat-treated in all kinds of ways... Every heard of single-crystal turbine blades?

https://www.theengineer.co.uk/...

So the 3D printed part is just a "blank" that gets toasted. It's probably easier to get all the holes in there that way.

I'm sure the P/W ratio for today's bipedal autonomous robots is lower than that of humans. But the Wikipedia article on the ratio cites 20W/kg for human cyclists as a 5-second maximum, and 174W/kg for a Tesla Roadster -- and that's the whole freaking car, motors, batteries, chassis, body, upholstery, the works.

Batteries still are, and will probably remain, a strong limiting factor. But not motors -- for example, Siemens announced a 50kg electric aircraft motor that delivers 260kw continuous output power. That's five KILOWATTS per kg. Without active cooling, that motor would melt quickly at full power, but scale it down to a 5kg "leg muscle" delivering 26kw impulse power, and yeah, you're heavily outperforming a human leg muscle.

At least, I think so. Disclaimer: I'm no biomechanical engineer.

It would be impossible. Even if your code is technically "bug-free", your compiler or assembler will have bugs. Even firmware and microprocessors have bugs in them.

As the authors of the book Transaction Processing point out, all bugs are in software. All bugs are in software. All bugs are in software because we know how to overcome hardware flaws by having the proper software setup (in essence, certain forms of redundancy).

In fact, it's been done. It took an entire year to verify each 250 lines of code, even with automation. So it is labor intensive, but if an OS can be verified, an assembler (that one's easy) or a compiler can be done (and Intel actually uses formal verification to ensure an ever growing portion of their chips are correct). So don't believe it's not doable.

This might help once its out in the wild, http://www.theengineer.co.uk/p.... It'll make all vehicles lighter and probably easier to manufacture bring down weight and costs.

Are you really sure of that?

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/medical-and-healthcare/news/bone-conducting-implant-could-help-deaf-people-hear-normally/1015171.article

It seems to depend on how and why a person went deaf.

What the hell is electric landing gear? The wheels on the plan are unpowered and spin freely. All of the propulsion for moving around is provided by the engines. You can't keep the engines off until you're on the runway unless you're being towed. Also the engines need to be started using an external device so you'd need to drag that along so that it could spin up the engine and then start it.

The fact that the wheels are unpowered and free spinning is the issue, the only propulsion comes from the engines. They've been working on electric nose wheels that drive the aircraft as opposed to using the engines: http://www.theengineer.co.uk/news/electric-nose-wheel-could-reduce-aircraft-emissions/1007378.article

You don't need an external device to start the engines, aircraft have their own APU.

Our sensitive microelectronics is very vulnerable to being wrecked by electromagnetic pulses, whether natural or set off by human enemies.

Regarding the huge "Carrington Event" solar flare of September 1, 1859, NASA reports that "Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set the telegraph paper on fire." The Engineer goes further and says, "The Carrington Storm caused fires and electrocuted workers at telegraph stations".

Good one! The moon has water.

More over Mars has a CO2 atmosphere. Also on Mars is Magnesium that will burn in a CO2 atmosphere. You move CO2 and processed Metals that will burn in the presence of CO2 in to orbit. And you have a refueling station.

Given robots go first and make fuel lift it with to a space station for refueling. This way we get the fuel on sight, out of the gravity well. This fuel can be used for landing, blastoff and return. Getting the mass of the fuel, on site and all set up, before we commit people to the flight. This is simply good economy, and safety.

Patents aren't always welcome by inventors. The Brompton folding bike isn't patented because they don't want people to copy their design.

The patent is a weird concept... in defining in technical detail what your patent is, you’re effectively just giving it away.
- Will Butler-Adams

See: http://www.theengineer.co.uk/in-depth/interviews/brompton-managing-director-will-butler-adams/1007592.article

You missed this quote

'My aorta was dilating all through that period,' said Golesworthy. 'When you've got the scalpel of Damocles hanging over your sternum, it motivates you into making things happen and so they do...to me it seemed like a ridiculously obvious solution. The only way to do this was with CAD and RP. It shouldn't have taken an engineer to realise that, but it did.'

Read more: http://www.theengineer.co.uk/in-depth/analysis/uk-engineer-develops-own-life-saving-implant/1006877.article#ixzz1CE3SD5am

That's really putting your life on the line, you don't see bravery like that very often.

I also quite like the code which took the quote and links back to the original article with a standard copy and paste

Fuck POPSCI, here's the link to the original article (Warning: graphic photographs)

I wonder if this analysis took into account CFL's poor power factor. Cheap CFLs usually have a power factor of around 0.5, which causes substantial electrical losses compared to Incandescent bulbs, which are purely resistive (and therefore have a power factor of 1.0). LEDs, on the other hand, have a pretty good power factor. http://www.theengineer.co.uk/opinion/led-is-the-answer/299821.article

Another company, d3o Labs, has developed a similar substance, but they've been adapting it to sports applications -- ski racing suits, hockey pads, and sneakers.

Must be a slow news day for NewScientist...

This is not news of course and smart people have been working on the issue for a number of years. Two interesting links:
A short writeup of the issue (PDF alert)...
A recent breakthrough announcement...