Nano Engines; Animal Truckin'; High-Speed Organ Printing; Printing Offices; Pepper n' Pizza; Fire Fighting HUD; About Face; United in Apostasy

Today's a heavy on the tech side, though there's also an article on more religious uniting - this time the Church of England and Scotland brought together by homosexuality.

Nanotechnology

Powering nanotechnology with the world's smallest engine phys.org

...we have now produced nano-engines that can be operated with beams of light to work pistons, pumps and valves. Made from gold nanoparticles bound together by a heat-sensitive chemical, our machines are strong, fast and simple to operate, making them extremely practical for future applications.

Automated Vehicles

Self-driving truck acts like an animal phys.org

Chalmers researcher Ola Benderius, the team leader, explains that the traditional – and clearly dominating – way of developing vehicles is to constantly base progress on earlier vehicle models and gradually add new functions. He says that this method might not work when developing the autonomous vehicles of the future.

His team of researchers have instead chosen to regard the self-driving vehicle as a completely new type of vehicle. A vehicle that is more like an animal, a biological organism, than a technical system.

3D Printing

Israeli firms team up for high-speed 3D stem cell printing bioportfolio

Israeli 3D printer firm Nano Dimension has successfully lab-tested a 3D bioprinter for stem cells, paving the way for the potential printing of large tissues and organs, the company said on Wednesday.

World's first 3D-printed office building completed in Dubai gizmag

A very large 3D printer measuring 20 x 120 x 40 ft (6 x 36 x 12 m) did most of the work, printing the building by extruding a cement mixture layer by layer, in a similar method by which WinSun's 3D-printed homes were made (WinSun is involved in this project too). There were also some additional smaller mobile 3D-printers used too, however.

Robotics

Pepper the robot’s next job is Pizza Hut cashier techcrunch v

Thanks to a commerce partnership between Softbank and MasterCard, Pepper will working as a cashier in select Pizza Hut locations in the Asia-Pacific region by the end of the year.

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality for firefighters phys.org v

An EPFL team is working on a smart visor that, combined with a thermal imaging camera, will help firefighters see what's around them in real time, even at night and in smoke.

AI

Terrorist or pedophile? This start-up says it can out secrets by analyzing faces washingtonpost

Faception said it’s already signed a contract with a homeland security agency to help identify terrorists. The company said its technology also can be used to identify everything from great poker players to extroverts, pedophiles, geniuses and white collar-criminals.

“The evidence that there is accuracy in these judgments is extremely weak,” said Alexander Todorov, a Princeton psychology professor whose research includes facial perception. “Just when we thought that physiognomy ended 100 years ago. Oh, well.”

Unity

Church of Scotland passes landmark unity pact with Church of England christiantoday

The Columba Declaration has been discussed for the past 15 years and officially ties the two churches, which have been seperate since the 16th century Reformation. It was passed at the Scottish Church's general assembly on Wednesday. The CoE's general synod passed the measure in February.