Month: March 2016

The Nike HyperAdapt 1.0, on sale later this year

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Nike has unveiled its first pair of commercialised self-lacing shoes, the Nike HyperAdapt 1.0. They will go on sale later this year, but pricing hasn't yet been announced (they won't be cheap).

"When you step in, your heel will hit a sensor and the system will automatically tighten,” explained Tiffany Beers, the project’s technical lead. Nike actually refers to the technology as "adaptive lacing" rather than "self lacing" because there are two buttons on the side of the shoe that allow you to tweak how loose or tight the laces are. In the theory, the laces will then be held in that position, preventing your laces from coming undone while running, slam dunking, or otherwise exerting yourself.

Nike originally announced in October 2015 that it would sell some Back to the Future-esque Nike Mags in spring 2016. Sadly, except for a part of the sole that emits a turquoise light, these HyperAdapt shoes don't look much like Marty McFly's Nike Mags.

Imagination Technologies has confirmed plans to axe 350 jobs—a 5 percent reduction in its staff headcount—as it "accelerates" its multi-million pound cost-cutting strategy announced in February.

The beleaguered British semiconductor supplier told the City on Thursday morning that it needed to shave another £12.5 million off its cost base in addition to the £15 million operating costs slash that it revealed last month, when Imagination's long-serving CEO Sir Hossein Yassaie stepped down from the firm.

Apple and Samsung are among Imagination's high-profile customers. However, a recent slump in growth in iPhone sales has hurt the firm. In February it noted that the slowdown in the semiconductor sector was failing to show any immediate signs of recovery.

(credit: Andrew Hart)

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is the most common greenhouse gas produced by the US. It enters the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels, solid wastes, wood, and certain manufacturing processes. The growing abundance of CO₂ in the atmosphere makes it an attractive feedstock for commodity synthesis, which could reduce the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Though scientists have explored this concept before, few have had success due to the difficulty of breaking the carbon-oxygen bond and forming carbon-carbon bonds efficiently. The current approaches require high-energy reagents, which limit the reactions to low volumes, ultimately negating any environmental benefit of drawing down CO₂.

A team of scientists at Stanford recently published a successful route to using CO₂ to produce a highly desirable bio-based feedstock. This particular feedstock can be used to synthesize a renewable polymer that has the potential to replace a pervasive, fossil-fuel derived polymer, polyethylene terephthalate.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket launches NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft in March, 2015, from Florida. (credit: NASA)

The most reliable US rocket company, United Launch Alliance, could not compete with upstart provider SpaceX during a competition in late 2015 for an Air Force payload, a senior engineer with the company said Wednesday. SpaceX was able to offer launch capabilities for as little as one-third the price of what United Launch Alliance could, said Brett Tobey, vice president of engineering for the Colorado-based rocket company.

It does not appear Tobey knew his remarks at a University of Colorado-Boulder seminar were being recorded. But Space News obtained a copy of the audio and posted the revealing, nearly hour-long recording on its website. By Wednesday night Reuters reported that Tobey had resigned from his position at United Launch Alliance, effective immediately.

"The views, positions, and inaccurate statements Mr. Tobey presented at his recent speaking engagement were not aligned with the direction of the company, my views, nor the views I expect from ULA leaders," the company's chief executive, Tory Bruno, said in a statement. Tobey's comments are likely to undermine the efforts of Bruno, who has received kudos within the US spaceflight community for trying to make ULA more competitive and innovative.

Sean Gallagher

The Electron starter kit comes in a storage box with everything you need to turn lights on and off over the Internet.

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A while back, Ars took our first step into building the Internet of Extra Creepy Things (IoECT) with BearDuino, a hardware-hacked Teddy Ruxpin combined with an Arduino Uno and some desktop software. We have not yet turned BearDuino into a cloud-connected, mobile journey down the uncanny valley. But since we've started testing Particle's Electron, a cellular-connected Arduino-like device that wirelessly tethers sensors, servos, lights, and other electronics to a cloud-based service, that goal is within our grasp.

When we first heard about the Electron in February, we were eager to get our hands on a kit to see what was possible. Now that we've tested it out a bit—turning lights on and off across the Internet and diving into the code a bit—we're preparing to push it further. Like many "maker" kits, Electron starts off with a relatively mild learning curve that suddenly becomes more severe as you push toward doing anything practical beyond the tutorial samples. But unlike others we've laid hands on recently, it comes with a well-polished set of tools and services behind it that takes some of the sting off the harder climbing.

The main concern most hardware developers will have, however, is whether the Web-based consoles and services and the one-stop supply of global cellular connectivity is worth it to get locked into Particle's ecosystem—which can also become expensive. That's not something we can effectively answer for everyone based on this test drive. But we can say that if you're looking for a reasonable way to remotely manipulate an animatronic teddy bear wherever it is in the world, Electron is perfectly capable of doing that.