#Facebook solar-powered Aquila, Internet-beaming drone, ready for real-world testing In its latest announcement, Facebook reveals to have completed building its first full-scale drone, Aquila, that aims at providing Internet access
to the most remote parts of the world. The drone is now ready for real-world testing
and the company said it will test it in the United states later this year. Aquila is powered a solar unmanned plane that beams down internet connectivity from the sky.
It has the wingspan of a Boeing 737, but weighs less than a car and can stay in the air for months at a time.
Facebook has announced also what it call a reakthroughin laser communications technology. The company claims to have tested successfully a new laser that can transmit data at 10 gigabits per second. hat ten times faster than any previous system,
and it can accurately connect with a point the size of a dime from more than 10 miles away,
Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. The plane will weigh about 880 pounds (400 kg),
said Yael Maguire, the company engineering director of connectivity. It will hover between 60,000 feet and 90,000 feet (20 and 30 km), above the altitude of commercial airplanes,
so that it is affected not by problematic weather. ur mission is to connect everybody in the world,
said Jay Parikh, vice president of engineering. his is going to be a great opportunity for us to motivate the industry to move faster on this technology.
The drone, which was built in 14 months, is able to fly in the air for 90 days at a time,
Helium balloons will be attached to the plane and float it up into the air. The drones have a wingspan of 42 meters (46 yards.
Because the planes must constantly move to stay aloft, they will circle a three-km (two-mile) radius,
and at night will drift down to 60,000 feet (20 km) to conserve energy. The programme Aquila is geared towards the 10 percent of the population that does not have any Internet access.
Separately, Facebook a year ago launched Internet. org, an initiative to provide Internet access to the two-thirds of the world that do not have a reliable connection including India.
Parikh said Facebook is not planning to sell the drones but will use them to expand Internet access.
Although Facebook does not immediately face policy or legal hurdles in testing its drone in the United states,
#Facebook solar-powered Aquila, Internet-beaming drone, ready for real-world testing In its latest announcement, Facebook reveals to have completed building its first full-scale drone, Aquila, that aims at providing Internet access
The drone is now ready for real-world testing and the company said it will test it in the United states later this year.
Aquila is powered a solar unmanned plane that beams down internet connectivity from the sky. It has the wingspan of a Boeing 737,
but weighs less than a car and can stay in the air for months at a time. Facebook has announced also
what it call a reakthroughin laser communications technology. The company claims to have tested successfully a new laser that can transmit data at 10 gigabits per second. hat ten times faster than any previous system,
and it can accurately connect with a point the size of a dime from more than 10 miles away,
Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. The plane will weigh about 880 pounds (400 kg),
said Yael Maguire, the company engineering director of connectivity. It will hover between 60,000 feet and 90,000 feet (20 and 30 km), above the altitude of commercial airplanes,
so that it is affected not by problematic weather. ur mission is to connect everybody in the world,
Helium balloons will be attached to the plane and float it up into the air. The drones have a wingspan of 42 meters (46 yards.
Because the planes must constantly move to stay aloft, they will circle a three-km (two-mile) radius,
and at night will drift down to 60,000 feet (20 km) to conserve energy. The programme Aquila is geared towards the 10 percent of the population that does not have any Internet access.
Separately, Facebook a year ago launched Internet. org, an initiative to provide Internet access to the two-thirds of the world that do not have a reliable connection including India.
Parikh said Facebook is not planning to sell the drones but will use them to expand Internet access.
Although Facebook does not immediately face policy or legal hurdles in testing its drone in the United states,
#Facebook solar-powered Internet drone Aquila is now ready for real-world testing In its latest announcement,
Facebook reveals to have completed building its first full-scale drone, Aquila, that aims at providing Internet access to the most remote parts of the world.
The drone is now ready for real-world testing and the company said it will test it in the United states later this year.
Aquila is powered a solar unmanned plane that beams down internet connectivity from the sky. It has the wingspan of a Boeing 737,
but weighs less than a car and can stay in the air for months at a time. Facebook has announced also
what it call a reakthroughin laser communications technology. The company claims to have tested successfully a new laser that can transmit data at 10 gigabits per second. hat ten times faster than any previous system,
and it can accurately connect with a point the size of a dime from more than 10 miles away,
Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. The plane will weigh about 880 pounds (400 kg),
said Yael Maguire, the company engineering director of connectivity. It will hover between 60,000 feet and 90,000 feet (20 and 30 km), above the altitude of commercial airplanes,
so that it is affected not by problematic weather. ur mission is to connect everybody in the world,
The drone, which was built in 14 months, is able to fly in the air for 90 days at a time,
Helium balloons will be attached to the plane and float it up into the air. The drones have a wingspan of 42 meters (46 yards.
Because the planes must constantly move to stay aloft, they will circle a three-km (two-mile) radius,
and at night will drift down to 60,000 feet (20 km) to conserve energy. The programme Aquila is geared towards the 10 percent of the population that does not have any Internet access.
Separately, Facebook a year ago launched Internet. org, an initiative to provide Internet access to the two-thirds of the world that do not have a reliable connection including India.
Parikh said Facebook is not planning to sell the drones but will use them to expand Internet access.
Although Facebook does not immediately face policy or legal hurdles in testing its drone in the United states,
#India diabetes rate has jumped 123 %since 1990 A global health survey showed that rates of diabetes among Indians has grown at an alarming rate since the early years of the country emergence as a world power.
Between 1990 and 2013, India saw instances of diabetes grow by 123, %with researchers attributing this to the way lifestyles have changed over that time.
The study looked at 301 acute and chronic diseases and injuries in 188 countries, finding that developing nations like India and China are now mimicking a trend that had began earlier in Western nations.
The biggest increase the researchers observed was in Type 2 diabetes the most common form of the disease which is linked most often to obesity.
Endocrinologist Anoop Misra told Times of India that diabetes was an escalating problem in India
and had major socioeconomic dimensions. apid dietary changes coupled with decreased level of physical activity have resulted in increasing obesity and diabetes in rural and semi-urban areas,
Dr Misra said. Diabetes did no feature in the top 10 of India diseases in 1990,
whereas it is the country eighth-biggest killer. Maggi case should begin new era of food vigilancea leading food safety official has urged India government to view the recent Maggi noodles affair as the beginning of a new era of food safety vigilance.
Thuppil Venkatesh a senior government advisor and expert in lead poisoning, said the ublic clamourthat followed after a state testing allegedly found monosodium glutamate
and lead in Maggi noodles should initiate a campaign against unhealthy food in general. He also called for greater self-regulation by manufacturers and better awareness among the public about how much food safety testing takes place behind the scenes. he heated discussion on the presence of lead in food products,
kicked off by the Maggi fiasco, should go on, Venkatesh said, adding that Maggi research could achieve
what it would take the authorities 20 years to do. ducate school teachers, who will educate the students.
Then, the children will educate the family members, who will in turn educate society. niform packaging standards on the horizonindia will soon get uniform food packaging standards in a bid to increase
and simplify exports. According to Fnb News, the commerce ministry ordered the Indian Institute of Packaging (IIP) to lay out new standards,
particularly to cover fruit and vegetables. n a recent meeting with exporters, it was concluded that there is a need to have a standardisation on packaging of food products
the IIP chief told the website. The guidelines are being finalised with the help of the Agricultural and Processed food Products Export Development Authority.
Once complete, they will be submitted to the commerce ministry for approval and implementation r
#High altitude cooking boosts flavour say Nestlé researchers The team led by Dr Candice Smarrito of the Nestlé Research Centre in Lausanne examined the effects of low pressure such as that found at high altitude on the sensory profile
of vegetable broth. They found flavours and vegetable yields were enhanced at lower pressure creating a richer broth without additives.
The researchers said the effect could be explained by the lower boiling point of water at high altitude
and by a panel of tasting experts to see how the different combinations of pressures
preparations. estlé said the research was part of ongoing work to enhance the flavour appearance and nutrition of food without using artificial additives and enhancers.
Sous-vide which involves vacuum sealing the food in plastic pouches and immersing them in a water bath at 65-85°C and cook-vide in
and minerals although further study was needed. Source: Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistrypublished online ahead of print.
Alice Mougin Olivier Mauroux Walter Matthey-Doret Eugenia Maria Barcos Fernand Beaud Ahmed Bousbaine Florian Viton and Candice Smarrito-Menozz i
and Hebrew-uses sugar, rather than artificial or alternative sweeteners, consumers'taste expectations are satisfied and there are no aftertaste issues. ee not about reformulation.
In medicine you talk of drug delivery-we do flavour delivery."."The sensory profile of Douxmatok is literally the same as sugar."
This quisweetnesshas been confirmed by independent panels from UK consumer research agency Sensory Dimensions while its only taste constraint is a slight reduction in bitterness.
Despite reducing the calorie content, Douxmatok's food technologists found a way to retain the same energy content-an important factor for consumers. obody ever says really tired I need some aspartame for energy!
so we kept that as well, aid the CEO. But while taste is essential for consumers,
and Douxmatok responds to both these needs. e come out below the price of sugar and this is a very important issue for the industry. f youe the same price as sugar all you get is compliments and nothing else.
Taste for taste but not weight for weightfor the moment, weight is Douxmatok biggest limitation.
says EVT (Eye Vision Technology) as it launches the Eyescan 3d for its image processing software.
The intelligent sensors come with a three-dimensional eye which works with a robot on a manufacturing floor to carry out tasks by itself.
In this case, the robot is being used in the bakery sector to decorate gingerbread. Michael Beising, CEO, EVT,
and Nestlé, told Foodproductiondaily, the sensors apply to 3d and thermal inspection as an addition to the firm standard products. he thermography is used for example,
to detect wrong particles in chocolate or 3d to determine the outline of a package,
he said. he technology is sold as components with a sensor and software as a ready-to-use system
which can be integrated into the production line. e still see China, as one of the biggest markets for vision systems, production quantities there are high and many of the QS tasks
which are done right now by cheap labour, have to be done by vision systems, because they need a 100%inspection,
and this can only be done by machine vision technology, never by humans. ith the Eyescan 3d, data evaluation is carried out with the Eyevision image processing software with a drag-and-drop programme.
For the robotguidance the 3d-positioning of the measuring object and its geometrical characteristics are detected.
and the corrected data is forwarded to the robot system. The Eyescan 3d can inspect the surface of the objects,
VT develops machine vision software and sensor systems for different industries. Our products read codes e g.
and place or to fill the right candies at the right position in a candy box. he next project for EVT is developing sensor fusion,
which Beising said will give the customer much more powerful technology in many areas of inspectionombining a Bolometer with a 3d sensor and a grey camera means,
which saves energy but at the same time also resources, because the part can be eliminated from the rest of the production run. eising said demand for inspection systems is rising. e see there is a lot more to do
The EVT Training and Qualification Center offers users of all levels training opportunities. The next one is on Friday, June 26, from 10am-5pm in Karlsruhe, Germany
on-GMO ot treated with growth hormone o added preservatives Our 35%obesity rate in the US,
Food producers, and the innovators amongst them, perhaps didn know that chemically enriched, grown, stored and produced food would be unhealthy.
which approved the first GMO in 1980. Unhealthy, or even unsafe, became collateral damage in the ar on Poverty Ironically,
today war on poverty is a proxy war on obesity. Consumers are demanding better food
Chipotle shed or, more accurately, never adopted the volume-optimization processes of its onetime largest shareholder Mcdonald.
and process because its prices are twice as high as that of Mcdonald. The big challenge we face is enacting change without changing prices.
Eliminating the need for expensive real-estate is a step in that direction. Optimizing the last-mile delivery for perishable food is another step.
And a third step is using data to make better decisions. A similar story played out in the retail space as Amazon used data, scale
and an online business model to become the most convenient, but also the lowest priced retailer in the world t
For sensitive beverages like juice, tea, milk-based mixed drinks, beverages with solid-fruit or cereal constituents,
At the same time, however, the mechanical stress on the products needs to be kept as low as possible,
designed so as to ensure that the product is passed gently along the tank walls, as soon as it comes into contact with the deaeration tank specially designed cover.
the juice thus forms a very thin film over the tank walls. Utilising the tank entire surface area,
including the cover, enables the tank volume to be reduced by more than a third. So this design not only saves space,
it also ensures energy economies, since thanks to the lesser volume needing to be evacuated smaller vacuum pumps can be installed.
For producing fruit beverages with solid constituents like pulp or fruit chunks, Krones is unveiling a new and affordable option for aseptic production of beverages with a solids content.
Krones is thus offering a space-saving solution with an attractive price-performance ratio for bottlers who want to try out new beverages with a solids content on test markets, for example.
Krones has upgraded its corporate capabilities in terms of process technology for producing juice and milk. HST designs and manufactures homogenisers and piston pumps for the food and beverage industries,
and will be represented with its products at the fair r
#Farmlogs Is Now Able To Alert Farmers About Crop Threats Farm management software company Farmlogs is used by over 20%of the farms in the U s. with over $15 billion in crops under management.
Now Farmlogs has launched the only crop health monitoring service in the industry that can pinpoint the exact location in the part of the field that needs attention.
If a problem is detected in the field that causes a risk of losing yield during the growing season,
Farmlogs users will automatically receive actionable maps. Farmlogs monitors crop health by utilizing multi-spectral satellite imagery to build performance baselines from over five years of field-specific crop health data.
The crop health is tracked throughout the season against the performance baseline to detect subtle cues
and stress signals that is otherwise invisible to the human eye. The crop health monitoring imagery utilized by Farmlogs shows information that is actionable
and eliminates guesswork so that farmers can fix problems before yield is reduced. If Farmlogs detects crop health anomalies,
then it will alert farmers by pinpointing the exact location of the threats. Farmlogsmobile app will even guide farmers to the location that needs to be monitored.
As a gift to its users, Farmlogs is offering the crop monitoring feature for free this year.
Based in Ann arbor, Michigan Farmlogs launched about three years ago and participated in the Y Combinator startup accelerator program.
Farmlogs raised $10 million in Series B about six months ago, bringing its total institutional funding to $15 million thus far.
Farmlogs is used by farmers in all 50 states and internationally in over 130 countries across six continents.
Farmlogs currently has 30 employees and the farm management software company plans to double its staff count this year.
Farmlogsgrowth does not come as a surprise because the agriculture technology (gtech space is thriving.
For example, Monsanto acquired Climate Corporation for nearly $1 billion in 2013. And agriculture technology companies received $2. 36 billion of investments across 264 deals last year alone
according to Agfunder News. That was higher than the financial technology sector ($2. 1 billion) and the clean technology sector ($2 billion.
ee seen how impactful data can be in helping farmers optimize their production. At the same time, we are always looking for ways to minimize the work our users have said to do
Farmlogs CEO and cofounder Jesse Vollmar in an interview. sing remote sensing technology to monitor the health of fields made perfect sense as a feature that would do both things.
Every row crop farm in America stands to gain from this sort of actionable information. Vollmar was named in the 0 Under 30:
Energy & Industryforbes list last year
#China's Climate Pledge Will Include New Commitment To Forests Look for China to make new investments in forestry
and deeper cuts in carbon intensity when it delivers its tardy climate pledge to the United nations oon,
a Chinese official said in Chicago Tuesday. When Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Obama signed a climate agreement last November,
China pledged to peak carbon emissions by 2030 and to increase its use of non-fossil-fuel energy sources to 20 percent.
But that was only half of China climate strategy, said Zou Ji, deputy director general of China National Center for Climate change Strategy and International Cooperation,
at a U s.-China Forum Tuesday at the University of Chicago. e have announced two targets already:
one is a peaking year around 2030nd we will make our effort to make it happen as early as possiblend the other one is the share of non-fossil-fuel energy,
Zou said. he other two, we are working very hard for the moment. hose two, according to Zou, will be:
1. Deeper reductions in carbon intensity. Carbon intensity is a measure of carbon emissions per dollar of gross domestic product,
a metric that allows China to demonstrate movement away from carbon-emitting fuels even as total emissions continue to rise with economic growth.
At the Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009, China pledged to reduce carbon intensity 40-45 percent by 2020.
China has submitted not emissions data to the UN since 2005, but on Tuesday, Madame Fu Ying, chairperson of the foreign affairs committee of China National People Congress, said China had reduced already carbon intensity 33.8 percent by 2014.2.
Greater carbon sink from forestry. Expect China to expand forests in a land that has been deforested for millennia
and to tinker with existing forests so they more effectively capture atmospheric carbon. China pledged in 2009 to expand its forests by 40 million hectares and forest-stock volume by 1. 3 billion cubic meters by 2020.
According to the World bank, China forest cover has increased since then from 21.7 percent of land area in 2009 to 22.6 percent in 2012, the most recent year for
which the bank has data. China reforestation program was ambitious even before the Copenhagen summit,
but some observers have questioned its long-term success because China has relied on fast-growing species that are nonnative and unlikely to thrive.
All four goals will be included in China ntended Nationally Determined Contribution or INDC, the pledge submitted to the United nations Framework Convention on Climate change ahead of the UN December summit in Paris,
Zou said. Chinese officials had promised the pledge would be submitted in the first quarter of 2015,
but it has appeared not yet in the UN portal t
#BRETT The Robot Learns To do New Things Just Like A Kid Does UC Berkeley researchers have come up with new algorithms to help robots learn like humans do through trial and error.
The trouble with developing artificial intelligence is just how much programming is involved in spelling out every aspect of a task.
Then, if a robot or software program doesn encounter that task in the real world exactly as it was programmed to,
it usually can adapt. To get around this, researchers are working on a number of ways to help machines learn,
learning by trying and failing. hat wee reporting on here is a new approach to empowering a robot to learn,
said Professor Pieter Abbeel of UC Berkeley Department of Electrical engineering and Computer sciences, in a statement from the university. he key is that
when a robot is faced with something new, we won have to reprogram it. The exact same software,
which encodes how the robot can learn, was used to allow the robot to learn all the different tasks we gave it.
used this deep learning algorithm to complete a number of tasks, including putting a clothes hanger on a rack,
All of which was accomplished without programming the ot with details about its surroundings. ost robotic applications are controlled in environments where objects are in predictable positions,
director of the Berkeley Vision and Learning Centre. he challenge of putting robots into real-life settings,
like homes or offices, is that those environments are constantly changing. The robot must be able to perceive
Deep learning is a relatively new branch of AI research loosely based on human neural circuitry and how our brains perceive
Previously, programmers attempted to pre-programme robots to handle all possible scenarios a gargantuan task
or create simulated environments for the robot to work in. To emulate our minds, deep learning algorithms create eural nets in
which layers of artificial neurons process raw sensory data like sound waves or image pixels and then try to interpret patterns
and categories in the data it receiving. Simpler versions of deep learning can be found in programs we use every day, like Siri on the iphone or Google street view
which utilise the significant advances that have been made in speech and vision recognition. But using deep learning for motor tasks is a far more challenging prospect. oving about in an unstructured 3d environment is a whole different ballgame,
said Ph d. student Chelsea Finn. here are labelled no directions, no examples of how to solve the problem in advance.
There are no examples of the correct solution like one would have in speech and vision recognition programs.
The team used BRETT, a Willow Garage Personal Robot 2, in experiments much like the play of small children
such as placing blocks into matching openings or stacking up Lego bricks. The algorithm helps to control BRETT learning by including a reward function that provides the robot with a score based on how well it doing,
like the praise of a parent. BRETT watches what it doing with its arms and hands via a camera and the algorithm scores its movements with real-time feedback to teach the robot which movements are better for the task at hand.
With this approach, along with the relevant coordinates for the beginning and end of the task, BRETT could master something new in around ten minutes.
If the robot has no location information learning took a bit longer at around three hours. ith more data,
you can start learning more complex things, Abbeel said. e still have a long way to go before our robots can learn to clean a house or sort laundry,
but our initial results indicate that these kinds of deep learning techniques can have a transformative effect in terms of enabling robots to learn complex tasks entirely from scratch.
In the next five to ten years, we may see significant advances in robot learning capabilities through this line of work.
These developments are going to be presented in full on Thursday May 28 at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) by Abbeel, Darrell, Finn and postdoc researcher Sergey Levine l
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