Unbound: No 126
10 VR Games & Apps Perfect For Newcomer
by Kyle Melnick | VR Scout
Many of these titles are on sale at the time of this writing, so you’ll want to move quickly.
The holidays have finally arrived and with VR company’s offering killer deals on headsets like Meta Quest 2 and HTC Vive more people than ever are about to experience the magic of VR.
The following are 10 VR games and apps perfect for those jumping into VR for the very first time. We did our best to include software available on popular VR devices, such as Meta Quest 2, PC VR, and PlayStation VR headsets.
Ford used a quantum computer to find better EV battery materials
by HARRY GUINNESS | Popular Science
Quantum researchers at Ford have just published a new preprint study that modeled crucial electric vehicle (EV) battery materials using a quantum computer. While the results don’t reveal anything new about lithium-ion batteries, they demonstrate how more powerful quantum computers could be used to accurately simulate complex chemical reactions in the future.
In order to discover and test new materials with computers, researchers have to break up the process into many separate calculations: One set for all the relevant properties of each single molecule, another for how these properties are affected by the smallest environmental changes like fluctuating temperatures, another for all the possible ways any two molecules can interact together, and on and on. Even something that sounds simple like two hydrogen molecules bonding requires incredibly deep calculations.
But developing materials using computers has a huge advantage: the researchers don’t have to perform every possible experiment physically which can be incredibly time consuming. Tools like AI and machine learning have been able to speed up the research process for developing novel materials, but quantum computing offers the potential to make it even faster. For EVs, finding better materials could lead to longer lasting, faster charging, more powerful batteries.
Is A Portable EV Charger Delivered To Your Doorstep The Solution To Range Anxiety?
by Carolyn Fortuna | Cleantechnica
Buying a fully electric car or pickup truck presents a whole new world of possibilities, like never needing to pump a single gallon of fuel. It also raises many questions, like where and how to charge your electric vehicle, including beyond your home or office. Proving that EVs can power a typical trip is an important psychological hurdle to overcome for range anxiety — that drivers’ fear of being stranded with an out-of-charge vehicle before reaching their destinations or the closest available charging station.
Cleantech can help. Whether it is getting comfortable with charging apps or trying out the newest portable EV charger, tools out there can offset range anxiety through planning and know-how.
There are currently more EVs on the road than ever before. Global EV sales reached a record-high of 6.9 million in 2021, a 107% increase from 2020. It is the first time since 2012 that the global EV sales doubled in one year.
Of the vehicles sold, 98% were light duty vehicles and 2% were heavy duty vehicles. EVs are becoming more affordable, with a whole slew of tax credits soon to be available due to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Yet some people do still experience range anxiety, particularly in areas where the number of EVs on the road is growing rapidly, where public charging infrastructure might lag behind, or where charging is concentrated in areas such as cities or along motorways.
🌙 NASA - Best Photo from Last Week
Space Station Snaps Hawaii’s Volcanoes
Hawaii's big island and its two major volcanoes Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa rest under a partly cloudy sky on Feb. 8, 2022, in this view from the International Space Station.
Mauna Loa, the world’s largest active volcano had been quiet for nearly 40 years. However, in 2022, the volcano began to stir, showing increased numbers of small earthquakes and subtle swelling of certain land surfaces in September. On Nov. 27, fountains of lava began spurting from the mountain’s Northeast Rift Zone and streams of molten rock flowed to the north.
Ten days into the eruption, a NASA aircraft conducted its first flight over the erupting volcano. The aircraft carried NASA’s Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar system, which was used to map the volcano’s topography in fine detail with a Ka-band instrument called GLISTIN-A. Teams from NASA and the United States Geological Survey used data from that sensor to map the thickness of those flows.
Image Credit: NASA
Last Updated: Dec 22, 2022
Editor: Monika Luabeya
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