Day's Headlines: The Grand Finale; Sally Salad; 30k Robot Hum; Chatty Warehouse Bots; Easter Egg; and UN Abortion Cuts

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

The Grand Finale; Sally Salad; 30k Robot Hum; Chatty Warehouse Bots; Easter Egg; and UN Abortion Cuts

Space

NASA spacecraft's fiery finale will give us glimpse of Saturn's rings usatoday

Seasoned NASA spaceship Cassini will dive into the gap later this month for an unparalleled research campaign nicknamed the Grand Finale. The name is not hyperbole: Once it has fulfilled its mission, Cassini will plunge into the heart of Saturn, ending 13 years of unprecedented scientific discoveries.

On April 22, the craft, which launched in 1997, will whip by Saturn’s biggest moon Titan, an encounter that will nudge Cassini onto a path so audacious that prominent planetary-science commentator Emily Lakdawalla once said it seemed “totally crazy.” Cassini will hop over Saturn’s rings, which form a gauzy collar of dust and ice around the giant planet, and begin threading the needle between Saturn’s atmosphere and the D ring, which begins only 1,200 miles from the planet itself.

Robots

Meet Sally, the Robot Who Makes Perfect Salads bloomberg

Sally will make you the most perfectly proportioned salad you’ve ever eaten: through science. Sally is a green-and-brown robot, a brand-new creation from Chowbotics Inc. chowbotics (that’s a real name) and a major new player in a potential multi-billion market for food-service robots.

GM Hooking 30,000 Robots to Internet to Keep Factories Humming bloomberg

In the last two years, GM has avoided 100 potential failures of vehicle-assembling robots by analyzing data they sent to external servers in the cloud, Mark Franks, director of global automation, said at a conference in Chicago on Monday. Connectivity is preventing assembly line interruptions and robot replacements that can take as long as eight hours.

LocusBots can now ‘talk’ to each other and collaborate in warehouses techcrunch

Locus Robotics locusrobotics today unveiled a navigational system that makes it possible for their LocusBots to work more effectively together, and alongside humans in crowded, bustling warehouses. The LRAN system, which stands for Locus Robotics Advanced Navigation, debuted at the industry trade show ProMat in Chicago.

Easter

Cadbury Drops an Easter Reference, Entering a Culture War mobile.nytimes

The “storm in an egg cup,” as the network ITV put it, began after the confectionary giant Cadbury cadbury.co.uk decided to omit the word “Easter” from the title of an annual egg hunt it sponsors, calling the event “Cadbury’s Great British Egg Hunt.”

Also see No yolk: Cadbury and National Trust say Easter egg row is nonsense theguardian

Politics

Trump admin cuts off UN agency's funds over abortion concern apnews

The U.N. fund will lose $32.5 million in funding from the 2017 budget, the State Department said, with funds shifted to similar programs at the U.S. Agency for International Development. It wasn't immediately clear whether the U.N. fund would also lose out on tens of millions of additional dollars it has typically received from the U.S. in "non-core" funds.

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