Apple shows off three new iPhones and smartwatch to detect heart problems

 

Apple has launched a trio of iPhones and upgraded smartwatches that can detect heart problems at its annual product launch event in Cupertino on Wednesday.

SEE THIS: BMW to Deploy 40 Self-Driving Cars in US, Europe.

BMW Group announced Wednesday it would deploy 40 self-driving vehicles for tests in the United States and Europe

The German auto group made the announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas jointly with US computer chip giant Intel and the Israeli-based auto technology firm Mobileye.

READ: NASA Announces Two Missions To Study Early Solar System.

The US space agency NASA on Wednesday announced two unmanned missions to asteroids designed to study one of the earliest eras in the history of the solar system.

They have been dubbed Lucy and Psyche, and NASA hopes to launch them in 2021 and 2023, respectively.

The period NASA wants to learn more about is an era less than 10 million years after the birth of the sun.

TECH: UNILORIN Produces Automobile Speed Limiter.

                                 

The University of Ilorin (UNILORIN) has produced an automobile speed limiter that could be used by any vehicle including jeep, car, bus and truck.

Prof. AbdulGaniyu Ambali, the Vice-Chancellor of the institution, disclosed this on Tuesday in Ilorin while speaking with newsmen.

Ambali noted that the feat was in response to the challenge thrown at institutions of higher learning in the country by the National Universities Commission.

TELECOMS: Subscribers Want hitch-free Telephony Services in 2017.

Subscribers have passionately called on telecommunications service providers in the country to offer them efficient services.Those who spoke with The Guardian bemoaned the state of telecommunications services in 2016, which they adjudged below expected performance.
 
As at October 2016, the country connected 226 million lines, with 153 million being active telephone users in the country. The country’s teledensity currently stands at 109 per cent.
 
Meanwhile, telecommunications operators under the aegis of the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) urged subscribers to be optimistic in 2017. 

TECHNOLOGY: All Eyes On D.Trump Over Mars

The year 2016 has seen a rekindling of the human desire to conquer Mars, with public and private interests openly vying to take the first step on the Red Planet, possibly with a stopover on the Moon.

Space-faring nations are mostly united in viewing Mars as the next frontier with many still pooling their money and expertise to make the dream a reality, despite souring relations between them.

But the election of Donald Trump -- with inevitable impacts on science policy, budgets and diplomatic relations -- has cast doubts on the future of space exploration.

Space bosses and investors are waiting on tenterhooks for the US president-elect to spell out his plans for NASA -- and to see whether the future will be one of cooperation or competition.

On the campaign trail in the space industry state of Florida, Trump said in October he wanted to "free Nasa from the restriction of serving primarily as a logistics agency for low-orbit activity".

He did not go into details, but low-orbit programmes include the International Space Station (ISS), the Hubble Space Telescope and Earth-observation satellites.

Among them are NASA science orbiters for climate monitoring, a programme Trump has also threatened to stifle.

He told crowds in Sanford that NASA's core mission will be space exploration, and promised: "America will lead the way into the stars".

This could be good news for pursing Martian ambitions.

Outgoing president Barack Obama already set the goal of a round-trip mission to the fourth rock from the Sun by the 2030s, with the "ultimate ambition" of creating a settlement there.

That is also the ambition of entrepreneur and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who launched an ambitious plan in September to establish a colony on Mars -- sending 100 humans at a time -- starting in 2024.

Dutch company Mars One, similarly, plans to send explorers to Mars by 2031, funded partly by a related television reality show.

The route to Mars may very well be via the Moon, analysts say, with the European Space Agency mooting plans for a lunar village -- a stopover for spacecraft to destinations further afield.

Going to Mars, said John Logsdon of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, "depends on how quickly the international effort to go back to the Moon can be assembled, how much budget the US spends on that, what the level of the NASA budget is.

"And all those are unknown right now."

- New Space Race? -
Following years of multinational cooperation, "the current trend is for space-faring nations to strengthen and increase national autonomy in achieving success in space", says a European Space Policy Institute document.

Countries want their own rockets and launchpads in case "unfavourable geopolitical developments" place their programmes at risk.

Since the US-Soviet space race launched the first human into Earth orbit in 1961 and placed the first man on the Moon in 1969, the trend has been towards galactic teamwork.

A high point has been the ISS, a joint project -- continuously inhabited since 2000 -- of America, Europe, Russia, Japan and Canada.

With only Russia able to ferry astronauts to the orbiting science lab today, countries work together on sending cargo.

There are also joint deep-space experiments, such as the European-Russian ExoMars rover planned for 2020.

"It used to be the US and the Soviet Union that had the capability to go into space. Now India can do it, Japan can do it," Sa'id Mosteshar, director of the London Institute of Space Policy and Law told AFP.

Only China is not party to any big international projects, mainly due to its complicated diplomatic relationship with the United States.

But Beijing was nonetheless spending "a significant amount" on space, said Mosteshar.

It has an orbiting space lab, plans for a manned space station by 2022, and could become the second country to place a human on the moon. The last was an American in 1972.

But observers say there is no race, as such -- countries, even private corporations, are unlikely to ever have enough money to go it alone.

Most feel space cooperation will continue -- as it did even at the height of the American-USSR cold war -- in spite of what politicians do on Earth.

Trump is seen as likely to be closer to Russia under Vladimir Putin than Obama had been, but has already incurred the diplomatic wrath of China.

"International collaborative space projects are by nature long-term commitments," said Mosteshar.

"If in the midst of a project there are political differences that arise between the countries involved, it's difficult to stop the ongoing experiment or other activity."

TECHNOLOGY: Ford Studies Using Drones To Guide Self-Driving Cars.

                           

Ford Motor Co. is studying a system to use drones to help guide self-driving vehicles, including on off-road adventures, company officials said.

Drones launched from an autonomous vehicle would help guide it by mapping the surrounding area beyond what the car’s sensors can detect. Vehicle passengers can control the drone using the car’s infotainment or navigation system.

“At some point, people are going to want to take their autonomous vehicle into the woods or off road where the drone could guide them,” said Alan Hall, spokesman for Ford’s in-house technology department.

Hall told AFP the drones also could prove useful in areas beyond the digital maps of urban and suburban areas and inter-city highways.

The idea for using drones came out of a “brainstorming” session of researchers and engineers working on Ford’s autonomous vehicle, Hall said.

Tony Lockwood, Ford manager, virtual driver system, autonomous vehicle development, said, “Ultimately, customers benefit as we open ourselves to new ideas and advance mobility using emerging technologies.”

Lockwood was granted a patent for the idea along with fellow Ford employee Joe Stanek.

– Digital mapping key –
Pieter Gillegot-Vergauwen, vice president of product, management for TomTom, the Amsterdam-based mapping company heavily involved in the development of self-driving cars, said digital mapping is one of keys to building autonomous vehicles.

“We’ve actually looked at using drones for guidance,” he said during a visit to Detroit for a seminar sponsored by Microsoft.

Earlier this year, Ford, along with China-based maker of sophisticated drones DJI, held a competition for programmers to see if they could teach a drone to fly from and return to a moving vehicle.

The idea was to see if a drone could use its cameras to guide a vehicle into and out of a disaster area where communications and roads have been destroyed or disrupted, Hall said.

The plan was to create drone-to-vehicle communications using Ford Sync, the automaker’s car-based wireless connection, or other similar systems as a means to inspect areas in an emergency.

Only one of the 10 participants actually succeeded, with a drone launched from a moving Ford F-150 pick-up truck which returned after completing the assigned task.

Similar technology uses cameras or infra-red systems to help vehicles see around blind corners or terrain where the mapping is incomplete, Hall noted.

“It was a really cool challenge.”

Hall said Ford has joined forces with a team of researchers in the Silicon Valley Research Center in Palo Alto, California, working with the idea of find way drones could help autonomous vehicles solve future navigation problems.