Architect Asif Khan designed a pavilion for the PyeongChang 2018 Opening Ceremony coated in Vantablack VBx2, a highly coveted pigment which consists of carbon nanotubes that absorb 99% of light, making it difficult to make out shapes and textures on its surface. Khan creates a starry sky effect with the addition of thousands of illuminated rods extending from the facade.
Saudi Vision 2030 is an economic roadmap which will end the Kingdom’s dependence on oil revenue.
The historic vision was developed by the Council of Economic and Development Affairs, which is chaired by Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. It includes a number of goals and reform strategies for the Kingdom’s long-term economic success, including reductions in subsidies, the creation of a sovereign wealth fun, opening Saudi Aramco to private investment through a partial IPO, and reforms to several industries including tourism and defense.
The vision is built around three primary themes: a vibrant society, a thriving economy and an ambitious nation.
In order to achieve a vibrant society, Saudi Arabia will focus on its people and the Islamic faith. This will happen through a series of commitments, including:
In order to achieve a thriving economy, Saudi Arabia will diversify its economy and create dynamic job opportunities for its citizens. This will happen through commitments to education, entrepreneurship and innovation, including:
In order to be an ambitious nation, Saudi Arabia will focus on accountability, transparency and effectiveness in its governing strategy. Sustainable success can only be achieved with solid foundations. In order to realize this potential, the Kingdom will:
The Saudi Vision 2030 plan is the first step towards achieving Saudi Arabia’s economic aspirations and transforming the lives of citizens.
Ubiquitous, mobile supercomputing. Artificially-intelligent robots. Self-driving cars. Neuro-technological brain enhancements. Genetic editing. The evidence of dramatic change is all around us and it’s happening at exponential speed.
Previous industrial revolutions liberated humankind from animal power, made mass production possible and brought digital capabilities to billions of people. This Fourth Industrial Revolution is, however, fundamentally different. It is characterized by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, impacting all disciplines, economies and industries, and even challenging ideas about what it means to be human.
-World Economic Forum
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced the NSW State Infrastructure Strategy, the Future Transport Strategy 2056 and the Greater Sydney Region Plan.
By 2056, Greater Sydney will be a metropolis of ‘three cities’ – an Eastern Harbour City, Central River City and Western Parkland City. Residents will be able to access jobs and services within 30 minutes. Newcastle, Wollongong and Gosford will be important economic hubs with key transport and freight gateways, and strong service-based industries.
To meet the needs of a growing and changing population the vision seeks to transform Greater Sydney into a metropolis of three cities:
• the Western Parkland City
• the Central River City
• the Eastern Harbour City
The vision brings new thinking to land use and transport patterns to boost Greater Sydney’s liveability, productivity and sustainability by spreading the benefits of growth. As the population of Greater Sydney is projected to grow to 8 million over the next 40 years, and with almost half of that population residing west of Parramatta, rebalancing economic and social opportunities will leverage that growth and deliver the benefits more equally and equitably across Greater Sydney. Residents will have quick and easy access to jobs and essential services. Housing supply and choice will increase to meet the growing and changing needs of the community. The environment and precious resources will be protected. Importantly, infrastructure will be sequenced to support growth and delivered concurrently with new homes and jobs.
Having three cities, each with supporting metropolitan and strategic centres, will put workers closer to knowledge intensive jobs, city-scale infrastructure and services, entertainment and cultural facilities. In an inclusive Greater Sydney freedom of expression and creativity will be supported and acknowledged as part of the innovation economy. Managing and retaining industrial land close to centres and transport will ensure critical services are available to support businesses and residents. Green infrastructure such as urban tree canopy, green ground cover, bushland, waterways, parks and open spaces will be valued for its economic, social and environmental benefits and will help to establish the Greater Sydney Green Grid, a network of walking and cycling links that will become increasingly important in daily travel arrangements improving sustainability and the wellbeing of residents.
The vision of A Metropolis of Three Cities will be achieved by collaborations between all tiers of government, and between governments and key stakeholders including the community, interest groups, businesses, industry groups and non government organisations. The Western Sydney City Deal, a partnership of the Australian Government, NSW Government and the local governments of the Blue Mountains, Camden, Campbelltown, Fairfield, Hawkesbury, Liverpool, Penrith and Wollondilly will be instrumental in delivering on the aspirations of the Western Parkland City.
Greater Sydney is already an outstanding global city with a reputation for liveability and cultural diversity that attracts international investment and appeals to visitors.
A Metropolis of Three Cities will build on its social, economic and environmental assets to improve the quality of life for all its residents and to uphold its status as one of the top cities of the world.
This video is a glimpse of our future as a civilisation. Elon Musk and his brilliant team at SpaceX are visionaries and we cannot wait to see where they will take us next!
When Falcon Heavy lifted off, it became the most powerful operational rocket in the world by a factor of two. With the ability to lift into orbit nearly 64 metric tons (141,000 lb)—a mass greater than a 737 jetliner loaded with passengers, crew, luggage and fuel–Falcon Heavy can lift more than twice the payload of the next closest operational vehicle, the Delta IV Heavy, at one-third the cost.
Following liftoff, the two side boosters separated from the center core and returned to landing site for future reuse.
Falcon Heavy put a Tesla Roadster and its passenger, Starman, into orbit around the sun. At max velocity Starman and the Roadster will travel 11 km/s (7mi/s) and travel 400 million km (250 million mi) from Earth.
Its first stage is composed of three Falcon 9 nine-engine cores whose 27 Merlin engines together generate more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, equal to approximately eighteen 747 aircraft. Only the Saturn V moon rocket, last flown in 1973, delivered more payload to orbit. Falcon Heavy was designed from the outset to carry humans into space and restores the possibility of flying missions with crew to the Moon or Mars.
To celebrate International Women’s Day, we’d like to highlight ten of the most powerful female engineers of the modern world.
Peggy Johnson currently serves as Microsoft’s Executive Vice President of Business Development. Before joining Microsoft, she held the position of Executive Vice President and President of Global Market Development at Qualcomm. Johnson holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from San Diego State University
Diane Greene is leading a new team in Google that combines all of the company’s cloud businesses. Google’s goal is make its cloud business bigger than its ad business by 2020. Greene holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Vermont.
Tara Bunch is vice president of AppleCare, Apple’s technical-service and support organization. Bunch joined Apple in 2012 after a 20-year career at Hewlett-Packard, where she was a senior vice president of global customer service and support operations. Bunch graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering.
Barbara Rusinko is president of Bechtel Nuclear, Security & Environmental, Inc. (NS&E). Barbara is a registered professional engineer with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of South Carolina, and a master’s degree in engineering from the University of Alabama – Huntsville. She serves on the corporate partnership council of the Society of Women Engineers.
Jessica McKellar is founder and CTO at Pilot, a bookkeeping service. Prior to founding Pilot, Jessica was director of engineering at Dropbox and a major figure in the world of Python, a popular web-development programming language. McKellar attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and studied computer science and chemistry.
Reates Curry has been at Ford Motor Company since 1995 working with the Driving Simulator Team. Her expertise is in the area of human-machine/computer interaction with an emphasis on developing metrics for safe and efficient in-vehicle technology design and testing of human-machine interfaces (HMIs). Curry has a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Missouri-Columbia, a Master’s in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University, and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Rutgers University where she did her research in the area of Machine Vision.
Sharon Chiarella is the Vice President of Community Shopping at Amazon where she leads the team responsible for iconic Amazon experiences including Customer Reviews and Wish Lists. Prior to joining Amazon in 2007, Ms. Chiarella held leadership positions at Microsoft, Yahoo!, Kodak, and Presto Services. She earned her bachelor’s degree in computer science from Manhattan College and her MBA from Harvard Business School.
Anna Patterson, PhD has been described as one of the most important women in technology. She is currently Founder and Managing Partner at Gradient Ventures and Vice President of Engineering at Google. Patterson received her B.S. in Computer Science and another in Electrical Engineering from Washington University and her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and was a Research Scientist at Stanford University in Artificial Intelligence working with John McCarthy on Phenomenal Data Mining and Carolyn Talcott on theorem provers.
Yanbing Li is senior vice president and general manager of VMware’s Storage and Availability business unit. The group’s products are used by over 7,000 companies, VMware says, and the team has 1000 people in 5 countries. Li has a PhD in electrical engineering and computer engineering.
Noramay Cadena is a cofounder of Make in LA, a startup accelerator focused on hardware projects. Prior to that, spent over 12 years working across multiple business units at The Boeing Company. She led process improvement strategies across large development programs to help the company break the cost curve associated with bringing large programs to market. Noramay holds an MBA, a Master’s in Engineering Systems and a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering – all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Road painting is a natural fit for automation because it requires precise execution according to clear standards. Road painting jobs are can be dangerous and are very labour-intensive. But these automated systems can increase speed, cut cost and improve consistency. It’s definitely the way forward. What do you think?
A key innovation in building the ultimate skyscraper is making the buildings progressively more and more intelligent…
In 100 years, skyscrapers like the Trump Tower have expanded to 1o-storey bricks to 100+storey steel. All of the skyscraper’s weight is eventually transferred down to the ground, this ultimately takes the strain. The buildings of the modern skyscraper begins out of sight, deep below the earth. Today’s skyscrapers can have foundations more than 100-feet deep but the nature of the ground they rest upon is a crucial factor.
But the big change is still to come. We are going to see buildings in the future progressively become more and more intelligent. The next level of technology is going to be 100+ storeys using active control systems. This technology is already well and truly integrated into our cars, anti-lock brake system, traction control etc. It’s just a matter of time before it becomes standard features to our buildings.
In honour of International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we thought we’d highlight ten of the most outstanding women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
Hypatia (355-415 AD)
Hypatia was a mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who lived in a very turbulent era in Alexandria’s history. She is the earliest female mathematician of whose life and work reasonably detailed knowledge exists. She was, in her time, the world’s leading mathematician and astronomer, the only woman for whom such claim can be made. She was also a popular teacher and lecturer on philosophical topics of a less-specialist nature, attracting many loyal students and large audiences.
Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)
German scientist, philosopher, theologian, and composer Hildegard of Bingen devoted half her life to sharing, through her writing, both the insight gained through her visionary experiences and her joy in the Christian faith. Many centuries later, historians still study her texts, and the over 70 chants and hymns she composed continue to be performed and recorded. An influential abbess, Hildegard was considered by historians to be among the most important scientists of her age and perhaps the most significant woman scientist in Medieval Europe. Her written works, which focus on natural history, medicine, and cosmology—a theory about the natural order of the universe—received renewed critical interest in the late twentieth century following a reevaluation of the previously overlooked contributions of female scholarship. In addition to the republication of her many books and letters, a recording of Hildegard’s medieval-styled chants and hymns topped the classical music charts in 1998.
Emily Roebling (1803-1903)
Emily Roebling was American socialite, builder, and businesswoman. She was largely responsible for guiding construction of the Brooklyn Bridge (1869–83) throughout the debilitating illness of its chief engineer, her husband, Washington Augustus Roebling, who had himself taken charge of the project after the death of the bridge’s principal designer, his father, John Augustus Roebling.
Ada Lovelace (1815-1852)
A gifted mathematician, Ada Lovelace is considered to have written instructions for the first computer program in the mid-1800s. The daughter of famed poet Lord Byron, Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace—better known as “Ada Lovelace”—was born in London on December 10, 1815. Ada showed her gift for mathematics at an early age. She translated an article on an invention by Charles Babbage, known as the father of computer and added her own comments. Because she introduced many computer concepts, Ada is considered the first computer programmer. Ada died of uterine cancer on November 27, 1852.
Marie Curie (1867-1934)
Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, in Physics, and with her later win, in Chemistry, she became the first person to claim Nobel honors twice. Born Maria Sklodowska on November 7, 1867, Marie Curie became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the first person—man or woman—to win the award twice. Curie’s efforts, with her husband Pierre Curie, led to the discovery of polonium and radium and, after Pierre’s death, the further development of X-rays. The famed scientist died on July 4, 1934.
Lise Meitner (1878-1968)
Lise Meitner is a renowned scientist from Austria who was a part of the team led by Otto Hahn that discovered nuclear fission in uranium. Her discovery of the phenomenon where the heavier uranium nucleus disintegrates to form lighter nucleus, heralded a new era in the world of nuclear physics. But sadly enough the Nobel committee ignored her contribution in the discovery and the deserving scientist was prevented from receiving the honour. Meitner always believed in herself and was fiercely independent and never would be seen adhering to the stereotypes. At a time when only a handful of women used to pursue higher education, she earned her PhD from the ‘University of Vienna’, thus becoming the second women to achieve the honour.
Edith Clarke (1883-1959)
Edith Clarke was the first woman to earn an Electrical Engineering degree from MIT. Clarke helped build the Hoover Dam, contributing her electrical expertise to develop and install the turbines that generate hydropower there to this day.
Barbara McClintock (1902-1992)
Barbara McClintock was a renowned American scientist who did pioneering work in the field of cytogenetics. Her theories on gene regulation and discovery of “jumping genes” were a major breakthrough for the scientific world. McClintock’s work was revolutionary in that it suggested that an organism’s genome is not a stationary entity, but rather is subject to alteration and rearrangement – a concept that was met with criticism from the scientific community at the time. However, the role of transposons eventually became widely appreciated, and McClintock was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1983 in recognition of this and her many other contributions to the field of genetics.
Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000)
A true innovator, Lamarr is maybe most famous for being a film actress and pin-up girl in the 1930s and 40s. But she was also a pioneer in wireless technologies. Working with George Anthiel, she deveoped a radio guidance system for torpedoes that used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology. The principles of her technology can now be found in modern GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth devices. She was given a special award in 1997 for “trail-blazing development of a technology that has become a key component of wireless data systems.”
Rosalind Franklin (1920-158)
Rosalind Franklin was a British scientist best known for her contributions to the discovery of the molecular structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), a constituent of chromosomes that serves to encode genetic information. Franklin also contributed new insight on the structure of viruses, helping to lay the foundation for the field of structural virology.
The concept of 3D printed houses is nothing new. But as a result of a Freeform Home Design Challenge hosted by a Tennessee-based startup Branch Technology, Curve Appeal, the world’s first Freeform 3D printed house might soon be coming to a suburb near you.
Designed by the competition’s winner – WATG’s Chicago-based Urban Architecture Studio that includes Daniel Caven, Chris Hurst, Miguel Alvarez and Brent Watanabe, this 800-square-foot single-family home will be built in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
According to Branch Technology Founder, Platt Boyd, “Curve Appeal is a very thoughtful approach to the design of our first house. It responds well to the site conditions, magnifies the possibilities of cellular fabrication and pushes the envelope of what is possible while still utilizing more economical methods for conventional building systems integration.”
The design of the house consists of two main components: an interior core and exterior skin. The open and light filled interior living spaces protect occupants from the elements via passive strategies while connecting them to the exterior spaces and nature itself. The exterior skin is derived from simple yet careful calculated archways that ultimately blends with the site leaving an organic presence.