Super Cows, Cold Water Therapy and Autonomous Cars

February 16

This week we will find out what happens to the brain after you immerse yourself in cold water (spoiler alert, it is very good for your brain). We also discover some Super Cows being bred in China and we investigate the latest developments in Autonomous Vehicles. Finally what ever happened to the Tesla that Elon Musk fired into space?

The change in the Brain after cold water shock

A team at the University of Portsmouth have observed the changes that occur in the brain after we immerse ourselves in cold water. The team claims that this explains why most people feel more upbeat and alert after dunking ourselves in cold water.

A group of healthy volunteers were given an initial functional MRI (fMRI) scan prior to bathing and a second one immediately after bathing in cold water. The participants spent 5 minutes in water at 20C. ECG and respiratory equipment measured the physiological responses, the second MRI showed the change in brain activity.

The major changes occurred in the connectivity between the medial prefrontal cortex and the parietal cortex. These are the parts of the brain that control out emotions and help us stay attentive and make decisions. This is consistent with participants saying that they felt more alert, excited and generally better after their cold bath.

The team will now investigate the wiring and interactions between parts of the brain for people with mental health conditions. The medial prefrontal cortex and the parietal cortex have different wiring when people have conditions such as depression and anxiety. Learning how the connectivity it different for people with these conditions may in the long term lead to alternative treatments.

When you go to the gym tomorrow, make sure you jump into the cold plunge pool or have a long cold shower. It is highly likely that you will feel much better for it.

Super Cows

A group of Chinese scientists have successfully cloned three “Super Cows”. When fully grown these calves will produce 50% more milk than the average dairy cow.

A team at NorthWest University of Agricultural and Forestry Science and Technology in Shaanxi, China sampled tissues from a range of cows across China. They then used the somatic cell nuclear transfer method to create embryos which were placed inside surrogate mothers.

The calves were born in January 2023 and are 55 kilos and 2 feet 6 inches tall. An average calf weights between 30 and 40 kilos at birth. The calves have the same shape and skin pattern as their parents. The calves will produce 18 tons of milk per year or 100 tons over their lifetime (compared to 12 tons of milk per year from an average dairy cow in the US).

China imports approximately 70% of their dairy cows from other countries. The newborn calves will be used as the basis for a larger herd of super cows. This new breed will help reduce China’s reliance on imports.

Driverless Car Updates

It seems that the promised future of driverless cars is still a long way off. This week we will look at a few recent developments that might give us an indication of when we will see them on our roads.

Zoox

Amazon bought self driving car startup, Zoox in 2020. The firm was originally founded by Australian Tim Kently-Klay. Last week they began the roll out of their electric autonomous robotaxi in Northern California.

The cube like vehicle is loaded with sensors however it does not have a steering wheel. The initial launch is very limited. It will drive on public roads but only carry Amazon employees between the company’s two main buildings in Foster City, California (about 3 kilometers apart). The route includes right and left hand turns, several traffic lights, pedestrians, bicyclists and parking lots.

Zoox tests its’ self driving capabilities on a wider range of Californian public roads by using Toyota Highlanders. Cruise is already providing overnight robotaxi services in a limited area of San Francisco, Austin and Phoenix. Waymo (Google) is launching their robotaxi service in Phoenix later this year. WalMart has already competed about 20,000 curbside deliveries in self drive delivery vehicles in Phoenix. Several companies are operating robotaxis in China.

Later than many expected and with very limited driving areas and weather conditions, the self driving rollout has begun.

Compact, Non-mechanical LiDAR

Some of the limitations of self driving cars are caused by the operational effectiveness of LiDAR (the system that the cars use to see) in various weather conditions. Poorly reflective objects are more difficult to see in fog, heavy rain and other visibility limiting circumstances.

A team from Kyoto University have developed a non-mechanical 3D LiDAR system which uses the conventional beam scanning LiDAR systems combined with a new 3D approach called Flash LiDAR. The new system fits in the palm of your hand and can measure the distance and motion of poorly reflective objects.

LiDAR systems map objects by illuminating those objects with laser beams and then calculating the distance of those objects by measuring the reflected beams’ time of flight. Current systems are bulky (the big system you see on the roof of most self driving car prototypes) expensive and unreliable in certain conditions

The new system is possible thanks to a unique light source the team developed. Called a dually modulated photonic-crystal laser, the name comes from the chip based light source. The light source allows both flash and scanning illumination without any moving parts or bulky external optical elements. New software enables automatic tracking of the motion of poorly reflective objects.

This development may lead to the development of an on-chip all-solid-state 3D LiDAR system (making it much cheaper and smaller and therefore useful in a much wider range of situations and products).

The next step is to demonstrate the system in practical applications such as autonomous robots and self driving cars.

A Fourth Light on Traffic Lights

Universally there are currently there are 3 colored lights on Traffic Lights; red, yellow and green. Although in Japan they call the green light, blue. This is despite the fact that most of the lights are actually green (there are some blue lights in more remote locations and some are a strange blue green). The use of blue instead of green to name traffic light colors is due to the evolution of the language. Originally there were only 4 words for colors, black, white, red and blue. Green objects were called blue until the word midori (Japanese for green) evolved, the word originally meant sprouts however it became to be used for green objects. Green is still considered a shade of blue (they appear next to each other on the spectrum). Japanese customs can be slow to change. Even though the word for green first appeared in the Japanese language about 1,000 years ago, green traffic lights are still called blue.

A team of self driving car researchers at North Carolina State University have proposed a 4th white light which would be used to enable self driving cars to help control traffic flow. In simulations the team found that the new system significantly improves travel time through intersections and reduces fuel consumption.

The white light will tell the autonomous vehicle (AV) what is happening with the lights and it will tell the human driving the car behind to follow the car in front of them. The white light concept relies on the fact that the autonomous vehicle to communicate wirelessly with other AVs and with the computer controlling the traffic signal. When enough AVs approach the intersection this would activate the white light. The white light is a signal that AVs are coordinating their movement to facilitate the flow of traffic through the intersection. Any vehicle driven by a person would simply follow the car in front of them. If that car drove off, the human can follow, if the car stops, the human stops their car.

When too many vehicles controlled by humans are approaching the intersection the lights revert to the standard red, yellow and green. Giving control of the traffic flow to AVs and the computers controlling traffic lights allows for a much more efficient flow of traffic (eventually when all cars are autonomous there will only be traffic lights to allow pedestrians to walk across the road and those lights will only be visible to the pedestrian as the cars will be communicated with wirelessly by the traffic lights).

The team’s simulations found several things. Firstly AVs improve traffic flow regardless of the presence of the white light concept (see here for the experiment carried out in Japan with autonomous cars and human drivers on a race track). Secondly when only 10% to 30% of the cars at an intersection were autonomous there was a small improvement in traffic flow however as the percentage of AVs increased so did the benefits in terms of traffic flow.

Where is Elon’s Starman?

I am sure that many of you will remember that 5 years and 9 days ago, Elon Musk sent one of his Teslas into space with a dummy called Starman at the wheel. It was part of a test launch for SpaceX and their missions to Mars. So where are they now?

The Tesla and Starman are both happily orbiting the earth in an elliptical orbit (the green line above). Starman has completed 3.2 orbits around the sun since launch and is currently over 325,000,000 kilometers away from earth. To date the car has travelled 4,074,000 kilometers or 70,317 times longer than its’ warranty. You can find the current position of the Tesla here. We have no update on the condition of the Tesla after such a long time in space.

Paying it Forward

If you have a start-up or know of a start-up that has a product ready for market please let me know. I would be happy to have a look and feature the startup in this newsletter. Also if any startups need introductions please get in touch and I will help where I can.

If you have any questions or comments please comment below.

I would also appreciate it if you could forward this newsletter to anyone that you think might be interested.

Till next week.