Over 200 years after steamships first began crossing the ocean, wind power is finding its way back into seafaring. Global shipping firm Maersk is planning to fit spinning'rotor sails' to one of its oil tankers as a way of reducing its fuel costs and carbon emissions. The company behind the technology, Finnish firm Norsepower, says this is the first retrofit installation of a wind-powered energy system on a tanker. Global shipping firm Maersk is planning to fit spinning'rotor sails' to one of its oil tankers as a way of reducing its fuel costs and carbon emissions The rotor sail was invented by German engineer Anton Flettner. It is effectively a large, spinning metal cylinder that uses something called the Magnus effect to harness wind power and propel a ship.

It's been an uphill battle for the coastal prefecture of Fukushima, Japan, since an earthquake and tsunami devastated the region in 2011, causing a nuclear disaster at its power plant. Six years later, workers are still battling to decommission the plant, where radiation is deadly. Officials expect the cleaning won't be finished for decades. "This is an accident that does not exist in the past tense, but in the present progressive form," Fukushima Gov. Masao Uchibori said earlier in March, criticizing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for not explicitly the disaster in his annual speech. "It's not possible to avoid using the important and significant terms of the nuclear plant accident of nuclear power disaster."

As well as having huge implications for creating more realistic looking (and feeling) robotics, the new lightweight material could have a profound impact on helping amputees. The man behind the graphene skin, Dr Ravinder Dahiya has begun developing his own 3D printed hands, aiming to help provide amputees with affordable and lightweight limbs. Thanks to its lack of batteries and the relatively low price of silicon and graphene, including the hands, these robotics only cost $350 to make. This is significantly cheaper than the standard battery-operated prosthesis -- which typically cost tens of thousands of dollars. Dahiya released a brief video demonstrating the capabilities of a prototype hand, showing the gentle touch in action.

Tokyo Electric said Thursday that it failed to get any photos of potential fuel debris during a five-day probe of the primary containment vessel at reactor 1 of the Fukushima No. 1 power plant. Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc., however, stressed that the investigation was worthwhile because its robot was able to take underwater images in the pool of water at its bottom and gauge its radiation level, which will help it estimate where the melted fuel lies. The monstrous tsunami of March 11, 2011, tipped reactors 1, 2 and 3 into core meltdowns. The molten fuel rods then penetrated their pressure vessels before apparently dropping to the bottom of the giant containment vessels. There is about a 2.5-meter deep water pool at the bottom of the primary containment vessel of reactor 1, and Tepco believes most of its melted fuel rods fell into it.

Honda's revamped Clarity fuel cell sedan is a technological marvel, but hydrogen fuel stations remain scarce. The dogged persistence Honda has shown in its decades-long quest to perfect hydrogen as a zero-emission replacement for gasoline can be seen as quixotic or futile. But the quirky company that makes motorcycles, lawnmowers, jets, humanoid robots, boat engines and a few million cars soldiers on, along with GM, Toyota and Hyundai, in the face of haphazard government support for hydrogen, minimal consumer awareness and withering critics like Elon Musk, a tireless advocate for Tesla's battery-powered cars. All the sweat equity Honda engineers have invested in its fuel cell program, year after year, has yielded a remarkable new version of the Clarity sedan, the most compelling argument yet of the potential of hydrogen cars still hold. Yet for all its technological sophistication, Clarity's fate remains to a skinny network of California hydrogen stations that's expanding slowly, with new headwinds from a Trump Administration that's shown no willingness to aid carbon-cutting technologies.

A robotic hand covered in'electric skin' that can harvest the sun's energy and feel touch better than a human has been developed by scientists. The electric skin is made from graphene - an ultra-thin form of carbon that is only an atom thick, but stronger than steel. The super flexible skin is hypersensitive to touch and may one day be used to make more responsive prosthetics for amputees, or to build robots with the sense of touch. Dr Ravinder Dahiya, pictured, from the University of Glasgow's School of Engineering, developed the hand which is covered in graphene Researchers incorporated photovoltaic cells into the electronic skin of the hand. Photovoltaic cells generate electricity by turning energy of the sun into a flow of electrons.

March 23, 2017 --If some NASA researchers have their way, Mars exploration technology of the future may rely on an art form from the past. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has developed a Pop-Up Flat Folding Explorer Robot (PUFFER) prototype that could change how we explore Mars. The rugged yet portable machine takes its inspiration from the art of origami, which, despite Americans' association with grade-school arts and crafts, is proving to be a cutting-edge design philosophy. Recent developments in the field have led to an explosion of uses ranging from solar panels to bulletproof barriers. What sets PUFFER apart from other rovers is that it folds flat, making its mini-profile even slimmer.

FUKUSHIMA – A radiation level of 11 sieverts per hour has been detected in tainted water inside a reactor containment vessel at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. said Tuesday. The reading was measured in a survey using a robot on Sunday at a point some 30 cm above the bottom of the containment vessel of the plant's reactor 1. This is the highest radiation level detected in water inside the containment vessel. If exposed to this level of radiation, a person likely would die in about 40 minutes. The survey showed accumulation of sandy substances at the bottom, but Tepco said it does not believe they are melted nuclear fuel.

Across enterprises, ever-expanding stores of data remain unstructured and unanalyzed. Few organizations have been able to explore nontraditional data sources such as image, audio, and video files; the torrent of machine and sensor information generated by the Internet of Things; and the enormous troves of raw data found in the unexplored recesses of the "deep web." However, recent advances in computer vision, pattern recognition, and cognitive analytics are making it possible for companies to shine a light on these untapped sources and derive insights that lead to better experiences and decision making across the business. In this age of technology-driven enlightenment, data is our competitive currency. Buried within raw information generated in mind-boggling volumes by transactional systems, social media, search engines, and countless other technologies are critical strategic, customer, and operational insights that, once illuminated by analytics, can validate or clarify assumptions, inform decision making, and help chart new paths to the future. Until recently, taking a passive, backward-looking approach to data and analytics was standard practice. With the ultimate goal of "generating a report," organizations frequently applied analytics capabilities to limited samples of structured data siloed within a specific system or company function. Moreover, nagging quality issues with master data, lack of user sophistication, and the inability to bring together data from across enterprise systems often colluded to produce insights that were at best limited in scope and, at worst, misleading.

The first myth regards the timeline: how long will it take until machines greatly supersede human-level intelligence? A common misconception is that we know the answer with great certainly. One popular myth is that we know we'll get superhuman AI this century. In fact, history is full of technological over-hyping. Where are those fusion power plants and flying cars we were promised we'd have by now?