Propose

A gas pump displays the price of fuel at a gas station in McLean, Virginia, June 10, 2022.Photo: Saul Loeb / AFP (Getty Images)President Joe Biden will ask Congress to suspend the federal gasoline tax for three months in a speech on Wednesday afternoon, according to a new report from the New York Times. The nationwide average for a gallon of gas recently topped $5.00, though the average in some states like Calfornia is more like $6.38 per gallon, according to the L.A. Times.The U.S. federal government currently taxes fuel…

The proposed space bubbles could deflect some of the Sun’s rays. Image: MIT Senseable CityA team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology believe that we can mitigate the worst of climate change with… space bubbles. They’ve outlined a strategy in which a huge raft of bubbles, carefully positioned between Earth and the Sun, would deflect sunlight (and thus heat) to stop further global warming.01:57Rainn Wilson’s First Fandoms: Star Trek And D&DYesterday 4:32PM“Geoengineering might be our final and…

Congress is pressing ahead with legislation that could rewrite the rules for American companies investing abroad, proposing the screening of investments in countries like China seen as adversaries to protect U.S. technologies and rebuild critical supply chains. The measure, part of broader legislation to bolster U.S. competitiveness with China, would require American companies and investors to disclose certain new outbound investments and authorize the executive branch to form a new…

Machine learning models are increasingly augmenting human processes, either performing repetitious tasks faster or providing some systematic insight that helps put human knowledge in perspective. Astronomers at UC Berkeley were surprised to find both happen after modeling gravitational microlensing events, leading to a new unified theory for the phenomenon. Gravitational lensing occurs when light from far-off stars and other stellar objects bends around a nearer one directly between it and the observer, briefly…

Here's how it works.High Rise BatteryResearchers have come up with an ingenious idea to tackle our renewable energy storage woes — effectively turning skyscrapers into massive gravity-powered batteries.A team from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria suggest to take advantage of the vertical height of tall buildings, a system they've dubbed the Lift Energy Storage Technology (LEST).The idea is to have autonomous robots load heavy ballasts into existing elevators when demand for power…

A diagram of the arrangement of components and the operating principle of the glasses. Light at the top enters the waveguide from a laser, exits the waveguide and strikes the spatial light modulator, where it is manipulated by the liquid crystals and sent back to the waveguide, and a portion of light makes it out the waveguide again to pass through the geometric phase lense to the pupil of the eye. Kim et al., 2022By using a narrow waveguide sandwiched to the modulator, and the geometric phase lens, the…

With the growing pace of development, researchers have been experimenting with various artificial intelligence technologies through devices and products. However, implementing artificial intelligence in electronic device requires customised hardware, which in turn result in high power consumption. It has been a challenge for researchers to solve issues related to high power consumption that limits the integration of AI and electronic devices. In a recent breakthrough, scientists at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science…

Apple’s AirTag seems like a great idea in concept, but following numerous reports of the devices at the center of stalking cases, three U.S. states have proposed new legislation for the tags. Pennsylvania proposed a bill in January that seeks to “prohibit Apple AirTags from being used outside of their intended use as a locator for misplaced personal items” and now Ohio and New Jersey have followed the state’s lead. Both Ohio and New Jersey have brought new bills to their respective tables over the past week looking…

The race for space exploration is unfolding at an unprecedented speed. Private companies have forayed into this sector with commercial ventures, and the US and China have set their eyes on landing humans on Mars by the next decade. While this ambition is laudable, it presents significant technological and logistical challenges. For instance, a mission to the Red Planet can only be launched once every 26 months, when Earth and Mars are at their closest point. Even then, it would take up to nine months to reach Mars from…