05 Sci-Tech

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Excerpt from www.sciencedaily.com

Researchers from North Carolina State University have demonstrated miniature soft hydraulic actuators that can be used to control the deformation and motion of soft robots that are less than a millimeter thick. The researchers have also demonstrated that this technique works with shape memory materials, allowing users to repeatedly lock the soft robots into a desired shape and return to the original shape as needed.

“Soft robotics holds promise for many applications, but it is challenging to design the actuators that drive the motion of soft robots on a small scale,” says Jie Yin, corresponding author of a paper on the work and an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State. “Our approach makes use of commercially available multi-material 3D printing technologies and shape memory polymers to create soft actuators on a microscale that allow us to control very small soft robots, which allows for exceptional control and delicacy.”

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Excerpt from www.science20.com

Do you believe bees are dying, that GMOs ‘need more study’, modern pesticides cause impotence?If so, I know how you vote, and that you would be a great fit as a humanities academic claiming to be an expert about science. Like historian Dr. Naomi Oreskes, who sees conspiracies everywhere except in her tribe, even if a domestic front group for her political party got a gigantic mysterious off-shore anonymous donation through a donor-advised fund because they routinely promoted Russia Today and Sputnik and oppose American science in Russia’s two largest exports, energy and food.

Dr. Oreskes routinely denied that she takes money from lawyers but when exposed as a liar after a deposition reverted to arguing that she only takes money from lawyers out to sue oil companies since Big Oil was trying to buy off scientists. Because she was a history major she may never have learned logic. If the conspiracy had been on the Big Oil side, they’d have won. She repeatedly claimed Monsanto bought off scientists to get GMOs approved yet her noble cause resisted the money. So trillions of dollars of Big Oil money could not buy off a few hundred climate scientists while tiny Monsanto, with even less revenue than organic store Whole Foods, somehow bought off 500,000 biologists?

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Excerpt from autogear.pt

The European Commission threatens to increase tariffs on imports of electric vehicles from China by the European Union (EU) starting from July 4, after provisionally concluding that Beijing is benefiting Chinese manufacturers with “unfair subsidies, which is causing an economic threat to EU electric vehicle producers”.

In a statement, the community executive indicated that, provisionally, imports of electric vehicles from BYD will be subject to a 17.4% tax, Geely to 20%, and SAIC to 38.1%, these being the brands included in the investigated sample.

Based on the findings of the investigation, the Commission has provisionally established that it is “in the interest of the EU to remedy the effects of the detected unfair trade practices by imposing provisional countervailing duties on imports of electric vehicles from China”.

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Excerpt from amp.majorcadailybulletin.com

Roger Ver, the global cryptocurrency guru nicknamed ‘Bitcoin Jesus’, has taken up residence in Mallorca after being arrested for an alleged 48 million tax fraud in the United States. The investor has hired the services of the prestigious Mallorcan lawyer Jaime Campaner, who has managed to get the National Court to release him, while it is decided whether he is finally extradited to the US or not.

The US Department of Justice had been following the movements of the multimillionaire in his mega yacht for some time and last month he was arrested in the port of Barcelona. He was provisionally imprisoned while his team of lawyers in California began the legal fight to free him. Finally, after hiring Campaner, Judge Santiago Pedraz agreed to release him from jail upon payment of a bail of 150,000 euros.

He withdrew his passport so that he could not leave Spain and ordered him to appear every two days at a court or police station to sign in. Now, according to Bulletin stablemate newspaper Ultima Hora, Roger Ver has been seen in Mallorca, interested in the real estate market as he wants to establish his residence on the island and will soon buy a house in a discreet area whose exact location has not been revealed.

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Excerpt from timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, recently announced plans to train its generative artificial intelligence (AI) models, specifically the Llama language models, using the publicly shared social media content by users in Europe. After receiving some backlash on the same, the company has now detailed how it will use the publically available content on its social media platforms, and pointed out that it is not the first company to do it by saying that Google and Microsoft-backed OpenAI has done the same.

“Meta is not the first company to do this – we are following the example set by others, including Google and OpenAI, both of which have already used data from European users to train AI,” the company said in a blog post.

“Our approach is more transparent and offers easier controls than many of our industry counterparts already training their models on similar publicly available information,” it added.

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Excerpt from

Electric vehicle owners can soon sell surplus battery power back to grids  Business Standard

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Excerpt from www.musicbusinessworldwide.com

In an order issued on Tuesday (May 28), the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said it will hear oral arguments in the case in September.

Under the law signed by President Joe Biden in late April, ByteDance has until January 19, 2025 to sell TikTok, or at least convince the president that the process of selling TikTok is credibly underway, or effectively face a ban on the app. App stores like the Apple Store and Google Play would be forbidden from offering TikTok, and web hosting services would be forbidden from working with the app.

TikTok said the expedited pace of hearings means it may not have to file for an injunction to prevent the law from being enforced, according to a report from Reuters.

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Excerpt from finbold.com

Argentina’s National Securities Commission (CNV) recently met with El Salvador’s National Commission of Digital Assets (CNAD) to gain insights into Bitcoin (BTC) adoption and crypto regulation, according to an official report

This collaboration comes as Argentina’s political and regulatory landscape grows increasingly Bitcoin-friendly under the leadership of President Javier Milei.

On May 23, CNV president Roberto Silva, CNV vice president Patricia Boedo, and CNAD president Juan Carlos Reyes discussed El Salvador’s pioneering role as the first country to adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender in September 2021. Silva emphasized El Salvador’s leadership in crypto assets, stating:

 “El Salvador has emerged as one of the leading countries, not only in the use of Bitcoin, but has also stood out in the world of crypto assets.”

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Excerpt from www.forbes.com

Reducing prescription drug prices has long been a goal of Democrats in Congress and the White House. But in a strange twist, a group of Senate Democrats—along with one Republican—has backed a bill that would increase drug prices by preventing people from challenging weak or invalid patents.

 

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Excerpt from cbsaustin.com

A Senate committee tasked with looking into election security policies gave the green light to ask for records from certain big tech companies, including the potential for subpoenas, in a hearing on Wednesday.

The Senate State Affairs committee, chaired by Sen. Bryan Hughes, R- Mineola, unanimously passed a resolution authorizing subpoenas for Alphabet, the parent company of Google; Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram; TikTok; X, formerly known as Twitter; and “any other relevant company or entity.”

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Excerpt from timesofindia.indiatimes.com

 

NEW DELHI: Chinese astronauts on the Tiangong space station have successfully completed a record-breaking spacewalk, lasting nearly eight hours, to enhance the station’s defenses against space debris, state media reported on Wednesday.
Astronauts Jing Haipeng and Zhu Yangzhu carried out the extravehicular activity (EVA) on Tuesday, surpassing the previous duration record for Chinese spacewalks.The mission involved installing additional equipment and conducting maintenance to improve the station’s ability to withstand impacts from orbital debris, a South China Morning Post report said.

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Excerpt from www.rt.com

Brussels is reportedly considering whether to subject the Russian-made platform to its ‘disinformation’ laws

EU officials are considering listing Telegram as a “very large online platform,” a move that would open the privacy-focused messaging app up to stringent censorship rules, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

Bloomberg’s report cited anonymous sources who claimed that Brussels has reached out to Telegram in a bid to establish how many people regularly use the platform. Telegram claims that it has around 41 million monthly active users, a figure that places it below the EU’s 45-million-user threshold for strict regulation under its Digital Services Act (DSA).

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Excerpt from www.mynbc5.com

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott has allowed a bill into law without his signature that would make so-called “ghost guns” illegal in an effort to close loopholes around firearm background checks.The law, which goes into effect in March 2025, will make it illegal to own a firearm without a serial number. “It prevents people from printing guns off of a 3D printer or buying kits over the internet that are unserialized, so it makes sure they get a background check and get a serial number,” said Sen. Phil Baruth, the Senate President Pro Tem.

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Excerpt from www.cbsnews.com

An archaeological dig in France uncovered over two dozen dead horses and left researchers with a puzzling mystery.

The excavation, located in Villedieu-sur-Indre in Central France, uncovered several buildings, pits, ditches and even a pathway from the early Middle Ages, according to a news release from the country’s National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research. The finds included nine pits containing the remains of horses.

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Excerpt from www.tpusa.com

Denver Police Department Plans to Deploy Drones for 911 Call Responses – TPUSA LIVE  Turning Point USA

Go to Article Excerpt from www.sciencenews.org

Atoms are normally made of a nucleus and electrons. But scientists are proposing a hunt for a new variety of atom without either. Tauonium (sometimes called “ditauonium” or “true tauonium”) would consist of a negatively charged tau lepton, and its positively charged antimatter counterpart, an antitau.

Tau leptons are relatives of electrons. Each tau has about 3,500 times an electron’s mass, making it heavier than a proton. In the 1950s, scientists discovered an atom called positronium, consisting of an electron and its positively charged antiparticle, a positron. Tauonium, if discovered, would be a burlier atom.