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3D metal printing going mainstream
100 times faster, 10 times cheaper: 3D metal printing is about to go mainstream. A Massachusetts company - Desktop Metal - is about to turn manufacturing on its head with a 3D metal printing system that's so much faster, safer and cheaper than existing systems that it's going to compete with traditional mass manufacturing processes. We've been hearing for years about how 3D printing is going to revolutionise manufacturing, but yet it has stayed stuck on the periphery, mostly out of mind and out of reach. Plenty of design studios and even home users run desktop 3D printers, but the only affordable printing materials are cheap ABS plastics. At the higher end, although firms like Airbus and Boeing are making headway with laser-melted metal printing, it's a very slow and expensive process that smaller manufacturers.have been reluctant to try. But Desktop Metal (desktopmetal.com), a New England engineering startup whose founders include researchers from MIT, believes it's got the machines and the technology to take 3D printing into the manufacturing mainstream. Desktop Metal says it can make reliable metal printing up to 100 times faster, with 10 times cheaper initial costs and 20 times cheaper materials costs than existing laser technologies. It's also safe, simple and highly automated, and it's designed to make 3D printing as cost-effective as traditional manufacturing. It could be the tipping point that opens the door to radical 3D-printed design elements in mass market products. The company is putting forward two systems: a studio system aimed at rapid, cheap metal prototyping for engineering groups, and a production system for mass manufacture.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604088/the-3-d-printer-that-could-finally-change-manufacturing/?set
Social media detractors still spending
Attitudes towards social media have shifted over the years. Where many used to praise the supposedly liberatory power of Facebook, Twitter and other digital technologies, now they talk gloomily about its allegedly malign influence. Once seen as a helpmate for cool progressive types like Obama seeking political power, now it's much more associated with the angry populism of a disrupter like Trump. But even its harshest critics can't stay away from it. Even after the recent series of data scandals and after The European Commission fined Google $2.5bn for anti-competitive practices, and Germany passed a new Net Enforcement Law (NetzDG) meaning fines up to 50 million euros can be imposed on social media platforms, even then, European politicians and political groups continued to outdo each other in their spending on social media advertising. According to a review by POLITICO (euro-politics print magazine also online at politico.eu), ad spending by groups ranging from the European People’s Party in the European Parliament to Emmanuel Macon’s La République En Marche, and the far-right Alternative for Germany, all continue to show up unabashed amongst the most generous spenders. In the UK, Labour and the Liberal Democrats remain extremely active on Facebook, and Momentum - the grassroots group backing Jeremy Corbyn - continues to spend heavily on online ads to get their message across.
http://academyofideas.org.uk/events/archive/the_backlash_against_silicon_valley
Everyone's a critic
Once upon a time, book critics were giants. The likes of Gore Vidal, F.R. Leavis, or more recently Eileen Battersby and Michiko Kakutani, were feared and fawned over in equal measure and their pronouncements breathlessly awaited by authors and publishers alike. A thumbs up or down from one of the top flight critics could make or break a writing career. Nowadays though, it sometimes feels as if there are more critics than writers. Everyone's at it - on blogs, online reviews, podcasts, social media, instagram - anyone seeing themselves as a discerning reader and fancying a go at literary criticism can make their opinions public using myriad forms to reach an ever increasing constituency. How many sales they generate is open to question. Despite the current state of book reviewing, the explosion of conversations about books online and on social media, the reduced role of the professional reviewer and the wider availability of critical tools to enrich our reading experience, it's still possible to believe that the biggest influence on the next book buying decision we make is more likely to be directed by a machine than a fellow human being.
http://davidgaughran.com/2018/07/10/the-amazon-algorithm-myth/
Amazing maize - popcorn powered robots
When heated, kernels of dried corn expand more than 10 times in size, change their viscosity by a factor of 10 and transition from a regular shape to an irregular one within a fraction of a second, exerting significant force on any container that confines them. PhD student Stephen Ceron and a team from Cornell University in New York recently authored a paper about this for the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Australia, Katrin explained the goal of the team to construct minimalist robots that can work together in large numbers. "Simple robots are cheap and less prone to failures and wear, so we can have many operating autonomously over a long time", she said. "We are always looking for innovative ideas that offer more functions at less cost - and popcorn power does that". As well as being very cheap, along with its powerful properties when it changes state, it is readily available, sustainable and biodegradable, "Pumps and compressors are expensive, and they add a lot of weight to your robot", said Ceron, the paper’s lead author. "With popcorn, you just need to apply voltage to get the kernels to pop.That takes out all the bulky and expensive parts". Some of the applications Ceron demonstrated use popcorn to power miniature jumping robots. A mixture of hard, unpopped granules and lighter, larger popped granules could replace fluids in soft robotics without, as Ceron said, any need for compressors or air pumps. They can also be used in edible devices that would be suitable for use in some medical applications, he added. One obvious drawback is that a popped kernel can’t be unpopped. However, popped corn is soluble in water, and that could make it possible to reload and go again.
https://techxplore.com/news/2018-07-popcorn-robotics-cornell-team-explored.html
Show off your site
Interested in some free global exposure for your spanky new Web site? Communication Arts magazine - big circulation in print as well as online - is always looking for new sites to profile. It costs nothing but a little of your time and a few button presses and you could get some worldwide exposure for your creative team, your marketing department or your business. It's not only new Web sites that Communication Arts wants to showcase; there are other submission categories covering graphic design and advertising campaigns as well as award competitions in categories for professionals and students. Award competition categories include photography and "Interactive", covering Web sites and other interactive media, social, mobile, tablets and handhelds.
https://www.commarts.com/Submissions
Search engine of the month
A new search engine that aims to connect non-academics with open access research is 'on the launch pad' ready to go within the next few weeks, according to its designers. . Named GetTheResearch, the new query machine will connect users with all the information available in more than 20 million open-access scholarly articles. In partnership with the Internet Archive and the British Library, the site is under construction by the team at Impactstory - the non-profit organisation behind the browser extension tool Unpaywall, which is "dedicated to making scholarly research more open, accessible and reusable". Funded by a $850,000 grant from Arcadia, the GetTheResearch search site will be a place where "we can tell lay readers, "here’s where you can read trustworthy research on any subject you like", said Impactstory co-founder Jason Priem, "Get the peer-reviewed research about anything. All free, all the time. Discover 20 million free-to-read scholarly papers - and even understand them better with our AI-powered Explanation Engine".
http://gettheresearch.org
100 times faster, 10 times cheaper: 3D metal printing is about to go mainstream. A Massachusetts company - Desktop Metal - is about to turn manufacturing on its head with a 3D metal printing system that's so much faster, safer and cheaper than existing systems that it's going to compete with traditional mass manufacturing processes. We've been hearing for years about how 3D printing is going to revolutionise manufacturing, but yet it has stayed stuck on the periphery, mostly out of mind and out of reach. Plenty of design studios and even home users run desktop 3D printers, but the only affordable printing materials are cheap ABS plastics. At the higher end, although firms like Airbus and Boeing are making headway with laser-melted metal printing, it's a very slow and expensive process that smaller manufacturers.have been reluctant to try. But Desktop Metal (desktopmetal.com), a New England engineering startup whose founders include researchers from MIT, believes it's got the machines and the technology to take 3D printing into the manufacturing mainstream. Desktop Metal says it can make reliable metal printing up to 100 times faster, with 10 times cheaper initial costs and 20 times cheaper materials costs than existing laser technologies. It's also safe, simple and highly automated, and it's designed to make 3D printing as cost-effective as traditional manufacturing. It could be the tipping point that opens the door to radical 3D-printed design elements in mass market products. The company is putting forward two systems: a studio system aimed at rapid, cheap metal prototyping for engineering groups, and a production system for mass manufacture.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604088/the-3-d-printer-that-could-finally-change-manufacturing/?set
Social media detractors still spending
Attitudes towards social media have shifted over the years. Where many used to praise the supposedly liberatory power of Facebook, Twitter and other digital technologies, now they talk gloomily about its allegedly malign influence. Once seen as a helpmate for cool progressive types like Obama seeking political power, now it's much more associated with the angry populism of a disrupter like Trump. But even its harshest critics can't stay away from it. Even after the recent series of data scandals and after The European Commission fined Google $2.5bn for anti-competitive practices, and Germany passed a new Net Enforcement Law (NetzDG) meaning fines up to 50 million euros can be imposed on social media platforms, even then, European politicians and political groups continued to outdo each other in their spending on social media advertising. According to a review by POLITICO (euro-politics print magazine also online at politico.eu), ad spending by groups ranging from the European People’s Party in the European Parliament to Emmanuel Macon’s La République En Marche, and the far-right Alternative for Germany, all continue to show up unabashed amongst the most generous spenders. In the UK, Labour and the Liberal Democrats remain extremely active on Facebook, and Momentum - the grassroots group backing Jeremy Corbyn - continues to spend heavily on online ads to get their message across.
http://academyofideas.org.uk/events/archive/the_backlash_against_silicon_valley
Everyone's a critic
Once upon a time, book critics were giants. The likes of Gore Vidal, F.R. Leavis, or more recently Eileen Battersby and Michiko Kakutani, were feared and fawned over in equal measure and their pronouncements breathlessly awaited by authors and publishers alike. A thumbs up or down from one of the top flight critics could make or break a writing career. Nowadays though, it sometimes feels as if there are more critics than writers. Everyone's at it - on blogs, online reviews, podcasts, social media, instagram - anyone seeing themselves as a discerning reader and fancying a go at literary criticism can make their opinions public using myriad forms to reach an ever increasing constituency. How many sales they generate is open to question. Despite the current state of book reviewing, the explosion of conversations about books online and on social media, the reduced role of the professional reviewer and the wider availability of critical tools to enrich our reading experience, it's still possible to believe that the biggest influence on the next book buying decision we make is more likely to be directed by a machine than a fellow human being.
http://davidgaughran.com/2018/07/10/the-amazon-algorithm-myth/
Amazing maize - popcorn powered robots
When heated, kernels of dried corn expand more than 10 times in size, change their viscosity by a factor of 10 and transition from a regular shape to an irregular one within a fraction of a second, exerting significant force on any container that confines them. PhD student Stephen Ceron and a team from Cornell University in New York recently authored a paper about this for the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Australia, Katrin explained the goal of the team to construct minimalist robots that can work together in large numbers. "Simple robots are cheap and less prone to failures and wear, so we can have many operating autonomously over a long time", she said. "We are always looking for innovative ideas that offer more functions at less cost - and popcorn power does that". As well as being very cheap, along with its powerful properties when it changes state, it is readily available, sustainable and biodegradable, "Pumps and compressors are expensive, and they add a lot of weight to your robot", said Ceron, the paper’s lead author. "With popcorn, you just need to apply voltage to get the kernels to pop.That takes out all the bulky and expensive parts". Some of the applications Ceron demonstrated use popcorn to power miniature jumping robots. A mixture of hard, unpopped granules and lighter, larger popped granules could replace fluids in soft robotics without, as Ceron said, any need for compressors or air pumps. They can also be used in edible devices that would be suitable for use in some medical applications, he added. One obvious drawback is that a popped kernel can’t be unpopped. However, popped corn is soluble in water, and that could make it possible to reload and go again.
https://techxplore.com/news/2018-07-popcorn-robotics-cornell-team-explored.html
Show off your site
Interested in some free global exposure for your spanky new Web site? Communication Arts magazine - big circulation in print as well as online - is always looking for new sites to profile. It costs nothing but a little of your time and a few button presses and you could get some worldwide exposure for your creative team, your marketing department or your business. It's not only new Web sites that Communication Arts wants to showcase; there are other submission categories covering graphic design and advertising campaigns as well as award competitions in categories for professionals and students. Award competition categories include photography and "Interactive", covering Web sites and other interactive media, social, mobile, tablets and handhelds.
https://www.commarts.com/Submissions
Search engine of the month
A new search engine that aims to connect non-academics with open access research is 'on the launch pad' ready to go within the next few weeks, according to its designers. . Named GetTheResearch, the new query machine will connect users with all the information available in more than 20 million open-access scholarly articles. In partnership with the Internet Archive and the British Library, the site is under construction by the team at Impactstory - the non-profit organisation behind the browser extension tool Unpaywall, which is "dedicated to making scholarly research more open, accessible and reusable". Funded by a $850,000 grant from Arcadia, the GetTheResearch search site will be a place where "we can tell lay readers, "here’s where you can read trustworthy research on any subject you like", said Impactstory co-founder Jason Priem, "Get the peer-reviewed research about anything. All free, all the time. Discover 20 million free-to-read scholarly papers - and even understand them better with our AI-powered Explanation Engine".
http://gettheresearch.org
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