Daily Archives: March 5, 2020

Ozdemir will tell viewers about how Exros technology improves the speed, torque and energy efficiency of electric motors

Inc () (OTCMKTS:EXROF) CEO Sue Ozdemir will appear on national television to talk about the firms electric motor technology.

The segment, part of Business TV-News, will air over the weekend on Canadas BNN Bloomberg network and in the US on the Biz Television Network on March 15.

Ozdemir will tell viewers about how Exros technology improves the speed, torque and energy efficiency of electric motors. "Our objective is to tell investors, manufacturers and the public around the world about our remarkable technology, which is now being commercialized," shesaid in a release.

"We want to share this made-in-Canada technology with sectors where electric motors are essential - automotive, wind energy, recreational and last-mile vehicles, agriculture, public transportation and many others.

"Exro unlocks the full potential of electric motors, to make them faster, stronger and greener."

The Vancouver-based company is now commercializing its electric motor technology for the automotive, energy, agricultural and recreational sectors.

Contact Angela at [emailprotected]

Follow her on Twitter @AHarmantas

See original here:

Exro Technologies CEO Sue Ozdemir to appear on Canadian and US television - Proactive Investors USA & Canada

It depends on the way sex is determined in the first place

Mar 7th 2020

WOMEN LIVE longer than men. And, more generally, female mammals live longer than male ones. This might be put down to the fact that males live more dangerous lives than femalescompetition for the affections of those females being an ingrained part of malehood. Such competition leads either to dangerous fights, or to the growing of showy-offy but physiologically expensive and thus life-limiting accoutrements, or both. All of which would make perfect sense were it not also true that male birds, which cede nothing to their mammalian counterparts in the fighting and showing-off departments, nevertheless manage, on average, to outlive their respective females. Male spruce grouse (pictured), for example, live for 13 years; females for five.

A long-standing hypothesis holds the sex chromosomes to blame. Male mammals are, in the jargon, heterogametic. They have X and Y chromosomes, whereas females have a pair of Xs. In birds, it is the females which are heterogametic. In both groups, the sex-determining chromosome is a stubby thing that is missing many of the genes on its counterpart. It therefore cannot cover for its partners genetic deficiencies by providing working copies of genes which are mutated in that partner. (In humans, haemophilia, Duchenne muscular dystrophy and colour-blindness are all caused this way.) As a result, the heterogametic sex is less resilient and dies earlier.

It is a plausible idea. But two sample points (mammals and birds) do not prove it. So Zoe Xirocostas and her colleagues at the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, Australia have looked further. As they describe in Biology Letters, they searched the literature for animals where both the relative longevity of the sexes and the nature of any heterogameticity are known.

Adding reptiles, amphibians, sharks, bony fish, arachnids and insects to the list, they confirmed that the relationship between longevity and heterogameticity does indeed hold up in other groups of animals. But there is a twist. When males are heterogametic the sex difference in lifespan averages 20.9%. Despite extreme examples like the spruce grouse, however, when females are heterogametic the average difference is only 7.1%. These numbers suggest that fighting and showing off are involved in determining longevity differences, too.

This article appeared in the Science and technology section of the print edition under the headline "Which is really the weaker sex?"

Link:

Which really is the weaker sex? - The Economist

By Arhaan Gupta-Rastogi

"Bad workers always blame their tools." I remember the first time I heard this proverb, because it immediately made me think of the debates currently raging around digital technology.

In a recent article published in the MIT Technology Review, for example, we're told that "Screen time might be physically changing kids' brains," and that these changes are not good. The point seems to be that exposure to tech is bad for our brains, and the blame for this damage lies squarely with the tech itself. But what is our responsibility? Are we right to blame our tools?

The question of whether technology is bad or good largely misses the point. As with all tools, context matters. If I use a bicycle to ride to school, this is good. If I use a bicycle to ride into a pedestrian, this is bad. Is any of this the bike's fault?

The same can be said about drugs. If a doctor prescribes a painkiller and it's taken according to the doctor's instructions, then there's no problem. However, if someone buys that same painkiller on the street or takes too much of it, then there can be serious problems. A life-saving medical device in the hands of someone not trained to use it is, by the same logic, a weapon.

It may seem that arguing for the moral neutrality of technology is a pointless exercise. I get this, but it also has important consequences for how we live in the world. By blaming tech, we essentially evade our own responsibility to act ethically and appropriately in the world. The morality of technology, whether by this we mean simple devices like pencils or complex ones like AI, resides with us. How we use technology is who we are. As we work and live in the world, pointing at the evils of technology allows us to feel blameless, even as we do serious (and often unstudied) damage to ourselves and the world around us. It's not us, it's our tools!

What's to be done? The clearest option is probably education. We can have sessions and even classes in school that deal with the moral and neurological impact of digital technology, but we can also invest in humanities courses that help us to think critically and make tough decisions when the correct answer isn't clear. Many kids use fake birth dates to get Apple IDs and Google accounts before they're 13. Is this OK? Probably not, but why is it not OK? There's no rulebook for this, and context matters.

In the end, technology is neither bad nor good. It is for us to decide how to use the tools we create and take responsibility for our use. It is worth remembering that in regulating technology, we're really regulating ourselves.

Menlo Park resident Arhaan Gupta-Rastogi is a seventh grader at a local school.

Link:

Guest opinion: Is there such a thing as bad technology? - The Almanac Online