The New York State Administration for the Elderly (NYSOFA) has decided to distribute 800 companion robots to the elderly. The devices are called ElliQ. They will not be able to help with some physical tasks (for example, cleaning at home or going to the pharmacy), but they will help you monitor your health and medication, and if a person is bored, they will entertain them with a conversation.

The problem of social isolation and loneliness among the elderly population of the United States is now acute: about 14 million Americans over 65 live alone. And their number is projected to grow over the next 10 years. However, studies have shown that prolonged loneliness is just as harmful to human health as smoking.

NYSOFA director Greg Olsen notes that ElliQ, created by the Israeli firm Intuition Robotics, can help solve this problem. “We were attracted to ElliQ by a lot of features – it is a proactive tool. It focuses on what is important for people: memories, communication with friends and family, and promotes better health.”Olsen said. The robot remembers the key moments of the user’s life and adapts to his character. For example, ElliQ will joke more if the user tends to laugh a lot.

ElliQ consists of two parts attached to a single base. The first is a lamp-shaped “face” with a microphone and speakers that lights up and turns to face the people it’s talking to. The second is a touch screen tablet. It is used to display pictures, additional information and make video calls.

The Alfa-Bank team began to warn users of the mobile application on the iOS platform about the upcoming shutdown of outdated versions.

As reported in the Alfa-Bank application, it will stop working from May 27, 2022. We are talking about application users who did not have time to upgrade to version 12.13 and higher. Now the update will no longer work, because the application has been removed from the App Store.

The explanation says the following:

Your version of the app is out of date and you can’t update it yet. Manage money in Alfa-Online – just like in the application.

According to representatives of Alfa-Bank, the notification was sent to “a small part of customers who did not have time to upgrade.” Version 12.13 and later will continue to work correctly.

Recall that the Alfa-Bank application was removed from Google Play and the App Store due to sanctions in April 2022.

US engineers have come up with a new way to cool semiconductor products, which does not involve the use of a thermal interface. Conformal coating in laboratory conditions has demonstrated its high efficiency in comparison with traditional methods of heat removal.

Electronic devices heat up during operation, and the greater the power, the stronger the heating, all other things being equal. This problem is especially acute with the miniaturization of devices. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have come up with a new efficient way to remove heat from semiconductor products.

Usually, a radiator is connected to the hottest places of the microcircuit through a thermal interface. For example, thermal paste. Instead, American scientists proposed to cover the entire device with a thin layer of polymer insulator, and “fill” it with a layer of copper on top, completely repeating the shape of the device. This conformal coating is in close contact with the device and effectively removes heat from it.

“We compared our coatings to standard heat dissipation methods. It turned out that our method dissipates 740% more power per unit volume.one of the researchers explained.

It is expected that in the future this invention will make electronic devices, including telephones and computers, more powerful and compact.

The US National Space Reconnaissance Office announced the largest ever contracts worth “billions of dollars” for the purchase of satellite imagery from commercial companies. There are three such companies – BlackSky, Maxar and Planet.

“These contracts, which are valued in the billions of dollars and will run for the next 10 years, represent a historic expansion of commercial imagery purchases by the National Space Intelligence Agency.”the agency said in a statement.

The exact amount of contracts is not called. It is noted that they are concluded for five years with the possibility of an additional extension until 2032.