Climate change is driving increasing wildfires, and those burns make up a large share of planet-heating pollution. Now, a company in Berlin uses AI with sensors (传感器) in forests to find minor (微小的) burns before they spread into big fires.

With nose-like sensors, fires can be discovered in their early stages, making it easier to put out them before they become too large or difficult to control. The company Dryad has set up 50 sensors across various locations, from the Middle East to California. Recently, the sensors discovered a small fire in Lebanon within just 30 minutes.

Another way to stop big fires is to set “controlled burns” outside of fire season to clean some trees and grass that may become fuel for fires. These controlled burns are usually carefully planned and monitored by burn managers to make sure that they are safe and do not get out of control.

But to do the work, burn managers need to know how the fire might behave so it doesn’t lose control. “They need to know things like the weather patterns, road conditions and the amount of moisture (水分) in the plants,” says Yolanda Gil, a researcher at the University of Southern California.

After interviewing fire scientists, Gil and their team used AI to create a smart assistant to help burn managers decide where and when to make controlled burns. “It’s kind of like Apple’s Siri. But for burn managers, the technology can help them understand the situation in an area and provide a way to make a safe controlled burn.” Gil says.

Scientists in South Korea have proven that a new technology will cut the time it takes to charge electric cars to just nine seconds. And even those plugging-in at home will have the time reduced from 10 hours to 3 minutes.

The new device uses the laws of quantum (量子) physics to power all of a battery’s cells at once-instead of one at a time-so recharging takes no longer than filling up at the pump. Electric cars were rarely seen on the roads 10 years ago, but millions are now being sold every year and it has become one of the fastest growing industries, but even the fastest superchargers need around 20 to 40 minutes to power their car.

Scientists at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in South Korea have come up with a solution. Co-author Dr Dario Rosa said the consequences could be far-reaching.

The concept of a “quantum battery” was first proposed in a paper published by Alicki and Fannes in 2012. It was theorized that quantum resources can be used to vastly speed up battery charging. The researchers used quantum mechanics to model their super fast charging station with calculations of the charging speed showing that a typical electric vehicle with a battery containing around 200 cells would recharge 200 times faster. The group went further to provide a specific way of designing such batteries. This means charging times could be cut from l0 hours to 3 minutes at home and from around 30 minutes to just a few seconds at stations.

Co-author Dr Dominik said,“Of course, quantum technologies are still in their initial stage and there is a long way to go before these methods can be used in practice. Research findings such as these, however, create a promising direction and can incentivize the funding agencies and businesses to put more money in these technologies. If employed, it is believed that quantum batteries would completely revolutionize the way we use energy and take us a step closer to our sustainable future.”

The walking, park-touring, and dancing robots made by Boston Dynamics have been darlings of the internet for years, as they danced from labs to Softbank and most recently Hyundai, while owners tried to figure out how to get them off the dance floor and into the factory. Michael Graham Richard showed the family of robots doing all kinds of things a few years ago, but this new video that starts off with two Atlas robots is just amazing. It's designed to assist emergency rescue (紧急救援) workers in search-and-rescue operations, performing tasks such as shutting off gas, opening doors, and operating powered equipment in environments where humans cannot survive.

But Atlas has never really been out of the lab. In fact, very few of Boston Dynamics robots have been used for work. But after they were bought by Japanese investor Softbank in 2017, they had to go out and get a real job, and Spot, who also dances in the video is the first commercial offering. There are about 400 of them out in the field now. You can buy one for $75,000 and use it as a platform for many different functions (功能), from checking for gas leaks to working for bomb groups, although that did not work out too well. But with that robotic arm option, it looks like it might be able to bring you coffee.

The last robot to join the dance party was Handle, which looked less impressive because of its use of wheels instead of legs. Now that it has been sold to a real manufacturing company, we can probably expect Hyundai to pay off the money to make real working, instead of dancing robots.