Тhe world's fastest self-driving cars AUDI RS goes to the market ... by "themselves"

Two Audi RS7 performance sedans raced around a track in northern Germany. The car without a driver won this matchup by five seconds.

In its effort to bring autonomous-driving technology to the streets, Volkswagen AG’s Audi is testing unmanned vehicles at speeds as fast as 305 km/h. In these experiments, the car decides for itself the best way to take the corners in its race against human drivers.

The map the car gets “just contains the left and right boundaries of the track,” Peter Bergmiller, an Audi technician, said Tuesday during a test on a track in Oschersleben (193 kilometres west of Berlin) with a vehicle named Bobby. “The car starts to think about it and generates its optimal line.”

Auto makers from Mercedes-Benz to Tesla Motors Inc. are developing systems to ease the strain of driving by letting cars park themselves and even take over the wheel in stop-and-go traffic. By showing that computers are able to push cars to their limits on race tracks, Audi is aiming to convince regulators that the technology can be safe in the real world.

If authorities open the door to self-driving features, “the first systems for piloted driving could come to market in a few years,” Audi development chief Ulrich Hackenberg said in a presentation of the brand’s autonomous-driving technology.

There’s a lot at stake in getting cars equipped with these features on the road. Technology for self-driving cars is forecast to become an $87 billion market by 2030, according to Boston-based Lux Research.

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/news/industry-news/audi-puts-driverless-race-car-to-the-test-and-it-wins/article21104181/

Green Line - The Third Line of Sofia Subway is put into service. 550 000 passengers use the Sofia underground railway at 2018

The 16 km long third line is planned to connect Ovcha Kupel neighbourhood (in southwest Sofia) and Vasil Levski neighbourhood (in northeast Sofia), with 19 stations in total, including two transfer stations in the city centre, with both of the already operational lines. According to the Municipality, they estimate the line will be put into service by 2018.

There will be 8 overground and 11 underground stations. The project design contract was awarded to the Czech company Metroprojekt Praha a.s.

In March 2014, a tender for construction of the central section of the line was announced. The section is 7 km long and includes 7 stations, two of them transfer to lines 1 and 2. With the announcement of the tender it became clear, that the initial plans for 19 stations had been partly amended and 2 of the stations will be not be built, one at Doyran boulevard and another at Shipka street. The tunnel of the central section shall be excavated by a TBM, while the construction of stations shall be awarded to other companies. The construction of the section shall be completed within 45 months.In January 2015, a tender for 20 trains, that shall serve the central section of the line, was announced. Driverless train operation, with Grade of Automation 3 (GoA 3), and platform screen doors will ensure the safety of the passengers.

The Sofia subway will be used by 550 000 passengers in 2018, according to Stoyan Bratoev, Executive Director of municipality-owned company Metropoliten EAD.

In a Sunday interview for the Focus news agency, he said that the Sofia subway was being used by 80 000 a 300 000 passengers and their number was to reach 550 000 with the completion of the main part of the third subway line.

He said that the subway stations on the route to Sofia Business Park in the Mladost residential district and to Sofia Airport were being built, adding that their launch in 2014 was expected to boost the number of passengers by around 90 000 to a total of 380 000.

Bratoev noted that the third subway line was to bring 170 000 new passengers in 2018, provided that it was built in its entirety, or 110 000 extra passengers, provided that only the central part was built. …

Photo of the year: First Detailed image of a Black Hole - Milky way's core

A supermassive black hole lurks at the center of our galaxy, but we’ve never seen it. We know it’s there, and that it has the mass of about 4 million suns, and that the stars in our galaxy revolve around it. But no one could tell you exactly what it looks like.
In fact, astronomers have never been able to snap a direct image of any black hole, ever. That’s because although the black holes at the center of galaxies are supermassive, they’re really far away. It’s akin to trying see a grapefruit, DVD, or bagel on the surface of the moon. You’d need a supermassive telescope, 1000 times the size of Hubble, to spot one.
Or, maybe, just eight telescopes working together. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which is actually a network of eight radiofrequency observatories around the world, switched on for the first time on April 5. Between now and April 14, the observatories hope to gather enough data to piece together our first snapshot a black hole’s event horizon—the “point of no return” threshold after which nothing can escape the black hole’s gravity.
These telescopes will collect radio waves emitting from the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, as well as the neighboring galaxy Messier 87, and stitch them together into visual images. The EHT’s resolution is said to be about as good as being able to count the stitches on a baseball from 8,000 miles away.
Over at Nature, Davide Castelvecchi explains that instead of using just one very big mirror or antenna dish, the technique (called very-long-baseline interferometry) works by merging multiple observatories into “one virtual telescope—with an effective aperture as big as the distance between them.”
Heino Falcke, an astrophysicist at Radboud University in the Netherlands, told Popular Science that this project wouldn’t have been possible just a few years ago. The Atacama Large Millimeter Array, which has been fully operational since 2013, “adds a lot of sensitivity and image quality,” he says. “Also, we need to record and store an enormous amount of data—almost half a petabyte per telescope. That wasn’t feasible a few years ago.”
EHT’s goal isn’t just to see what our friendly neighborhood black hole is up to. The team, lead by astrophysicist Sheperd Doeleman at Harvard University, thinks that “seeing” a black hole for the first time could help lead to a theory of everything, uniting the laws that govern very small quantum mechanical physics with the laws that govern very big things in the universe.
The project also aims to learn more about how these gravitational anomalies pull in matter, and how they generate huge jets of plasma. It could also shed light on Stephen Hawking’s hypothesis that information that falls into a black hole must somehow leak back out.
After analyzing the vast amounts of data that will be generated by this experiment—about 2 petabytes for each of the four or five nights of observation—the EHT team hopes to have a picture ready in 2018.

Source: https://www.popsci.com

European cars automatically call emergency services after a crash via the eCall system

The European Union has approved plans to install an emergency call feature in all cars and light vans from March 31st, 2018. The system, known as eCall, automatically contacts emergency services in the event of a crash, as determined by in-car sensors, such as those triggering the vehicle’s airbags. eCall establishes an audio connection with emergency operators and automatically transmits basic data including the vehicle's type, location, and the time of the crash. Passengers and witnesses will also be able to activate eCall manually by pressing an in-car button.

"The European Parliament has repeatedly stressed that reducing deaths and the severity of injuries on the roads is its priority," said Czech MEP Olga Sehnalova, the legislation's lead negotiator, in a statement. She added that the system will be "a public service, free of charge for all citizens, irrespective of the type of vehicle or its purchase price." Installing eCall is estimated to cost manufacturers €100 ($109) per car, although drivers wanting to retrofit it could expect to pay more. Sehnalova stressed that eCall will be completely dormant until the moment a crash occurs, telling BBC News that data is only transmitted once a car's airbags are triggered.

Last year, there were 25,700 fatalities on EU roads and motorways. eCall is expected to reduce emergency response time by 40 percent in built-up areas and 50 percent in the country, and it's believed the system could save as many as 2,500 lives each year. Sehnalova said eCall would also benefit tourists in the EU, because "when you cross a border you have a language problem and often do not even really know where you are." The vehicle's location is established using satellite navigation systems such as Galileo — the European equivalent of GPS.

Despite the potential benefits of eCall, some EU member states have objected to making it compulsory for all manufacturers. "The benefit of making eCall mandatory in all new cars does not justify the cost of implementing it," said Claire Perry, the UK's former transport minister, last December. "There was a view that, given the increasing responsiveness of our road network ... we did not feel that it was appropriate for the UK." However, even manufacturers disagree. Erik Jonnaert, head of the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association, welcomed the law, saying: "The industry feels that the final text strikes a good balance between saving lives and protecting data."

Source: http://www.theverge.com/

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Bill Gates' Nano Membrane Toilets start helping people in Africa to access clean water and generate energy from human waste

Five years after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation first challenged the world to design a sustainable and inexpensive toilet, researchers from Cranfield University may have a viable contender. It’s known as the Nano Membrane Toilet, and it was funded by the Gates Foundation in September 2012 for US $710,000.

March 22 is World Water Day, an appropriate time to highlight the grim fact that more than 2.4 billion people around the world still live in unsanitary conditions. Without access to clean running water, these at-risk communities face life-threatening sanitation-related diseases.

The Nano Membrane toilet’s design is meant to offset this scarcity. It’s waterless, easy to use, and provided it receives additional funding for field tests, could very well be part of the future of sanitation.

Alison Parker, a lecturer in International Water and Sanitation at Cranfield Water Science Institute, says her team’s new design is meant to serve poor urban areas, as those will be easiest to accommodate.

"It will be very hard to carry out the scheduled maintenance" in remote areas, Parker tells Tech Insider, mostly because the toilet needs maintenance every six months at a minimum to replace certain parts. "Instead, the toilet will be used in dense urban areas where a number of factors make providing good sanitation very challenging, but where it would be possible to facilitate visits from a maintenance technician."

The toilet’s actual design is rather complex.

After a person has done their business and closed the lid, the rotating toilet bowl turns 270 degrees to deposit the waste in a vat underneath. A scraper tool then wipes off any residual waste from the bowl.

The solid waste stays on the bottom while the liquid rises to the top.

Extremely thin fibres, known as nanofibres, are arranged in bundles inside the chamber. They help move the water vapour that exists as part of the liquid waste into a vertical tube in the rear of the toilet.

Next, water passes through specially designed beads that help condense the vapour into actual water, which flows down through the tube and settles in a tank at the front of the toilet.

As for the solid waste that’s left behind, a battery-powered mechanism lifts the remaining matter out of the toilet and into a separate holding chamber. There it’s coated in a scent-suppressing wax and left to dry out.

Every week, a local technician visits the community to remove the solid waste and water, and replace the toilet’s batteries if needed. Residents can then use the water for tending to their plants, cleaning their homes, cooking, and bathing. The solid waste ends up at a thermo-processing plant to be turned into energy for the community.

According to Parker, one toilet can accommodate up to 10 people for no more than $0.05 per day, per user - in line with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s original criteria for the prize. Field testing will begin later this year, Parker says.



One challenge moving forward, which other designs have run into, is scalability.

While many designs work in theory, actually getting the toilets to the countries that need them isn’t easy.

Local communities have to create jobs specifically so that the toilets are safely and effectively maintained, and that training process can take time. Some scientists have spent years working on their designs, and they still aren’t perfect.

Parker admits the problem of toilet paper is still one the Nano Membrane Toilet has yet to resolve, as users have no choice but to toss the paper into a nearby waste bin.

In the future, the team hopes to devise a way for that paper to be burnt. It’s not the most environmentally friendly disposal method, but if it means adding years onto people’s lives, it could be a winning solution.

Source: http://www.sciencealert.com/