Latest news with #engineers
South China Morning Post
15 hours ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Springtime for China's engineers and scientists. In US, not so much
Out of curiosity, I asked ChatGPT which side is winning the chip war. It replied that it was too early to say, characterising it as 'a complex and ongoing situation with no clear winner yet'. Impressive! Advertisement But while that may be true at a competitive national level, it seems pretty clear that individually, engineers and researchers in chips and other related tech fields have received a great boost in career and prestige in China, likewise the firms and research institutes that hire them. It's rather different in the United States. The situation is not an accident, but rooted in the respective national or state policies of Beijing and Washington. Consider the technical or industrial responses of China to Washington's chip war. They involve increased domestic production in the semiconductor industry to achieve self-sufficiency; reducing reliance on foreign technology, especially from the US; massive resource commitment to advanced chip research and manufacturing; strategic state subsidies; and ramping up even legacy and less advanced chips. The latter is necessary both to try to squeeze the most computing power out of older chips – in the absence of the most advanced ones – and to counter US restrictions that now target even less powerful chips and software. China therefore needs more and more engineers and researchers. Contrast that with US chip policy, which focuses on trade restrictions, sanctions and regulations, not to mention the White House's crackdowns on elite universities. Advertisement They aim to deny China's access to advanced chips, technology, and manufacturing equipment, and are being applied not only to US firms but those of allied countries such as the Netherlands, Japan and South Korea. As a result, they severely hamper their business in the world's biggest chip market, as well as their ability to fund future research and development. The latest trade restriction against China will reportedly cover chip design software, also known as electronic design automation. Germany's Siemens, a big player in this specialised field, will be affected.
Gizmodo
2 days ago
- General
- Gizmodo
NASA Switches to Backup Fuel Line After Psyche Thruster Glitch
Less than two years after launch, NASA's Psyche spacecraft experienced a glitch in its propulsion system that's now jeopardizing its mission to explore a unique metallic asteroid in the main belt. NASA engineers, ever resourceful, implemented a fix for the spacecraft's unexpected drop in pressure by switching to a backup line—one they hope will help Psyche reach its namesake asteroid. Earlier in April, the team of engineers with the Psyche mission detected an unexpected decrease in fuel pressure in the spacecraft's propulsion system. The issue needed to be resolved before mid-June, otherwise it would have affected the spacecraft's trajectory towards the Psyche asteroid. After investigating, the team recently switched from the primary propellant line to a backup that NASA says is identical. The Psyche spacecraft remains on course to rendezvous with the asteroid in August 2029. Psyche's thrusters, powered by two large solar arrays, ionize and expel xenon gas to gently propel the spacecraft, according to NASA. The spacecraft began firing its thrusters in May 2024, but just over a year later, engineers detected a pressure drop in the line that delivers xenon gas to the thrusters—from 36 pounds per square inch (psi) to about 26 psi, according to NASA. After the sudden drop in pressure, the team paused the four electric thrusters as they investigated the issue. NASA's engineers ran extensive tests and diagnostic work and found that a part inside one of the valves, which opens and closes to manage the flow of propellant, stopped functioning the way it was designed to. As a result, the glitchy valve was obstructing the flow of xenon to the thrusters. The team then switched to the backup fuel line and will command the spacecraft's thrusters to resume firing by mid-June. The mission's engineers will keep the backup line's valve in the open position to 'ensure propellant flow and avoid any potential mechanical issues in the future,' NASA wrote. The mission is scheduled for a Mars flyby in spring 2026, using the planet's gravity to slingshot the spacecraft toward the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. If all goes well, the spacecraft will enter asteroid Psyche's orbit in late July 2029 and begin its mission in August of the same year. Psyche launched in October 2023, beginning a 2.2 billion-mile journey to a metal-rich asteroid located in the main belt. Its journey has been a long time in the making, and had run into issues even before its liftoff. The mission was originally scheduled to launch in 2022, but an issue with the spacecraft's flight software delayed the mission until its next launch window the next year. The spacecraft's flight software controls its orientation and trajectory, as well as its ability to send and receive data to Earth. A week before its original launch date on October 5, 2023, engineers discovered an issue with the Psyche spacecraft's thrusters that could have caused it to overheat during its eight-year mission. As a result, the mission's liftoff date was delayed by one week as the team resolved the issue. Psyche is a 140-mile-wide (226-kilometer) asteroid that may be the stripped-down core of a shattered planetesimal, one of the building blocks that come together to form a planet. If the mission manages to reach the asteroid, it will become the first to explore an asteroid of its kind. We're rooting for you, Psyche.
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- General
- Daily Mail
Blackmailed by a computer that you can't switch off... THIS is the shocking new threat to humanity - and the fallout will be more devastating than a nuclear war: CONNOR AXIOTES
Imagine this: a powerful and capable artificial intelligence is required by its creators to shut itself down. Worryingly, the model decides to not just reject the request, but to blackmail the human to stop it being manually turned off. All without being trained or told to do so. This is no longer the stuff of science fiction. When engineers at Anthropic – a pioneering artificial intelligence company – tried to switch off their new Claude Opus 4 model, prior to its launch this month, they discovered a chilling bug in the system.
BBC News
2 days ago
- Climate
- BBC News
Power cuts plunge parts of Penzance into darkness
Hundreds of buildings have lost power in a Cornish seaside town following two separate Grid said a power outage was reported just before 19:55 BST in several areas of Penzance town centre including Market Jew Street and New Street which left 712 properties without company added a second outage had been reported just after 20:00 which affected 175 properties on streets including Adelaide Street, Leskinnick Terrace and Penare said engineers were working to restore power supplies and apologised for any inconvenience caused. In an update at about 20:50, National Grid said 371 properties had power restored.
The Verge
3 days ago
- Automotive
- The Verge
Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 first drive: hype meets hyperspeed
Back in March, we brought you an exclusive look into how Chevrolet's engineers tuned and tweaked, sculpted and simulated to turn the eighth-generation Corvette into a 233-mph missile, the 1,064-horsepower ZR1. But while I'm a racing simulator fan through and through, there's nothing like driving a real car on a real track, and this past week it was time to do exactly that. That track, the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, Texas, is as real as it gets. Host of the Formula One United States Grand Prix since 2012, it's three and a half miles of sinuous asphalt with enough turns to see just how well those engineers sorted the car's handling, plus a long back straight just perfect for letting that big motor really sing. Staying stuck COTA is also the perfect place to test out the ZR1's downforce, something that wasn't so much of a factor leading up to the car's record-breaking 233-mph run. More downforce means more grip, which is always nice, but it usually comes with the penalty of aerodynamic drag. That's one reason why there's actually two different ZR1s. First is the base model, with just the (relatively) petite spoiler on the back of the trunk lid. Then there's what Chevy calls the ZTK trim with the Carbon Fiber Aero Package. This includes the massive rear wing you see here, plus numerous other aerodynamic bits and pieces. In exchange for a lower top speed (you'll need the base car if you want to go 233 mph) you get a whopping 1,200 pounds of downforce. To balance out the wing, an effective scoop up front replaces the frunk found in lesser models of the Corvette. On the ZR1, air is ducted upward through the hood and over the windshield. This helps keep the nose stuck at speed, which in turn helped me accelerate quickly. Terminal velocity Before I really got on the power, I took just a single familiarization lap of the track in a ZTK-equipped ZR1. That was enough to warm up the tires and myself before I really got into it. On the next lap, I hit 175 mph on COTA's back straight, then pulled more than 1.5 Gs of deceleration when I hit the brakes. Those are world-class performance figures. Braking that hard feels like someone's turned the world upside down — or at least spun it 90 degrees. The forces while cornering are nearly as violent. The seemingly endless sequence of right-hand corners toward the end of a lap really test your fitness in the ZR1. Pulling over 1.3 G in the corners means your neck is going to get a real workout. By the way, these are all numbers that I verified using the in-car Performance Data Recorder, which not only captures a high-definition view forward of your on-track antics but overlays numerous points of telemetric data and also embeds all that data for later analysis, just like the pros. Approachable performance The numbers on that telemetry and the feelings I got inside the car confirm that this is a level of performance unlike any Corvette before. Despite that, it's still very much a Corvette in that all its performance is approachable. It only took one lap to get comfortable diving into the corners, routinely pushing past the tires' limits and quickly recovering to make the next turn without too much drama. The advanced traction, stability, and ABS systems on the ZR1 are a big part of that. Far from the fun-killing electronic aids we're used to on the track, these systems worked to make me faster, really only letting themselves be known by the occasional blinking light on the dashboard. Even with the aids on, I could still kick the tail out when coming out of the slower turns before launching down the subsequent straights. There is one big disappointment in the new ZR1, though: It ships first as a 2025 model, which means it comes with Corvette's old interior, including the unfortunate row of buttons that awkwardly bisects the cabin. 2026 Corvettes feature a thoroughly revised and improved layout, including a new triple-screen layout. The ZR1 will get that new interior, but not until the 2026 cars appear later this year. So, if you have the $174,995 to get yourself into a ZR1, I'd suggest waiting until the second model year, hard as that may be.
