Here are today’s Top 5 News & Events from Around the World. Take a look!
#5
WORLD’S FIRST FLYING TAXI REVEALED, COULD BE LAUNCHED BY 2025
Germany-based startup Lilium is looking to set up a fleet of 5-seat electric aircraft which can carry passengers in pilot or drone mode. These vehicles will be at least 5 times faster than standard cars and produce no emissions. The company which has already secured $100 million in funds said that it looks to launch the flying taxis by 2025.
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#4
SOLAR CELLS COULD BECOME MORE EFFICIENT, AFFORDABLE AS SCIENTISTS DEVELOP NEW MATERIAL
Solar cells, which are touted as the biggest game changers in the energy space, could soon become more affordable and efficient as scientists are looking to use a new material called perovskite for the same. A professor at the University of Toledo, US said that a team is working on producing new kinds of solar cells that can solve the world energy crisis by offering an efficiency of 23% compared to the 18% efficiency of today’s cells.
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#3
YOU MAY SOON TRANSLATE SPEECH INTO SPEECH IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE AS GOOGLE DEVELOPS NEW FEATURE
This Friday, Google unveiled “Translatotron”, it is the first speech-to-speech translation system which can convert voiced content in one language into another without affecting the voice and tempo. Ron Weiss and Ye Jia, software engineers at the company’s Artificial Intelligence division said that the system is based on a sequence-to-sequence network which takes the visual representation of frequencies as input and converts the same into the target language.
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#2
FINTECH STARTUPS, NASSCOM WANT CRYPTOCURRENCIES UNDER RBI’S AMBIT
Startups and industry lobby groups have urged the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to include cryptocurrencies under the regulatory sandbox that’s been proposed by the central bank for the fintech industry. Trade body Nasscom said that since virtual currencies and tokens play a key role in the blockchain technology, the decision to keep them out of the “Draft Enabling Framework for Regulatory Sandbox” is unclear and must be mulled over.
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#1
VR HEADSET OCULUS QUEST TO RECEIVE YOUTUBE VR AT LAUNCH
Top streaming platform YouTube said that its VR app will be one of the launch titles for the much-awaited VE headset Oculus Quest and that it looks to actively push the content for the headset. The product itself will be a first in the industry for being fully wireless and offering a high-quality experience albeit at the price $399.