Lifeboat Foundation

Owners hope the world’s first “wind-assisted chemical tanker” will help the shipping industry change tack for a greener future.

Science Fiction has long contemplated the idea that alien life not based on carbon chemistry such as silicon might exist on distant and strange worlds, or might be made to exist advanced biological engineering. What would such life be like?

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While supporting actors are often overlooked, without their contribution, a story’s main characters would lose context and resort to isolated monologues.

The same is true for neurons — the top-billing stars of cognition — when firing in the brain. Without cells called glia, which form the bulk of brain matter, neurons would stop communicating with each other, as seen in neurodegeneration. These supporting glial cells play countless critical roles in the nervous system such as maintaining the chemical environment of neurons and modulating their activity.

Although neurons still rightfully garner A-lister attention when it comes to developing brain therapies, Jeffrey Goldberg, MD, PhD, professor and chair of ophthalmology and the Blumenkranz Smead Professor, believes a young, underexplored class of therapies called gliotherapeutics, which target and harness glia, will ultimately provide important new directions for treatment.

A combination of battery technology and catalysis opens new avenues for cheap, high-capacity batteries. Lithium-sulfur batteries can potentially store five to 10 times more energy than current state-of-the-art lithium-ion batteries at much lower cost. Current lithium-ion batteries use cobalt oxide as the cathode, an expensive mineral mined in ways that harm people and the environment. Lithium-sulfur batteries replace cobalt oxide with sulfur, which is abundant and cheap, costing less than one-hundredth the price of cobalt.

But there’s a catch: Chemical reactions, particularly the sulfur reduction reaction, are very complex and not well understood, and undesired side reactions could end the batteries’ lives well before those of traditional batteries.

Now, researchers led by UCLA chemists Xiangfeng Duan and Philippe Sautet have deciphered the key pathways of this reaction.

Using spent lead acid batteries, Chinese researchers have achieved two goals in one move, finding a way to recycle them and fix CO₂ at the same time.

To synthesize potential drugs or natural products, you need natural substances in specific mirror-image variants and with a high degree of purity. For the first time, chemists at the University of Bonn have succeeded in producing all eight possible variants of polypropionate building blocks from a single starting material in a relatively straightforward process. Their work has now been published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Polypropionates are natural products that can help save lives. They are needed to make reserve antibiotics, compounds that are only ever used to treat infections caused by drug-resistant bacteria. In nature, chiral compounds exist in two different variants that share the same molecular formula but are mirror images of each other, like a right and a left hand. Chemists call this “chirality,” which literally means “handedness.”

“What’s interesting is that the mirror-image forms can have very different properties,” explains Professor Andreas Gansäuer from the Kekulé Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Bonn. “One well known example is undoubtedly carvone. The dextro-, or ‘right-handed,’ form of this molecule smells of caraway, while its levo-, or ‘left-handed,’ form is what gives peppermint its distinctive odor.”

Researchers discovered dopamine plays a crucial role in adapting decisions to changing situations. Using PET and fMRI scans, they found dopamine increases in the brain’s reward center during task changes, aiding learning from mistakes.

The optic nerve has been partly regenerated in mice, raising hopes for treating blindness caused by conditions such as glaucoma.

By Michael Le Page

Ultimate fact presents top 15 Weapons Of The Future Will Blow Your Mind. We’ve come a long way since sticks and stones, and it’s almost inconceivable that only a few hundred years ago, Man was still waging war with bows, arrows, cannons, and muskets. Modern militaries are constantly in the process of developing new weapons, some of which will definitely make some mouths drop. We thought it would be fun to take a closer look at the most amazing offensive and defensive weapons currently in the works.
Autonomous weapons.
These are robotic vehicles, under development, that search and destroy enemy troops and equipment on the ground or in the air, without risk to friendly troops – theoretically.
Onboard computers interpret sensor data to identify and target hostile forces with built-in weapons. Robots may query human controllers at remote sites for the go-ahead to fire, and friendly forces may carry transponders that identify them as “friends”
High-energy lasers.
These are powerful energy beams that travel through air or space in straight lines. They travel at the speed of light and can strike over distances of thousands of kilometres. Large mirrors focus powerful laser beams onto a small spot on the target.
Space-based weapons.
Space is the ultimate high ground, so weapons in orbit would have the ability to see and zap anything on the ground, in the air, or nearby in space. The main mission of space-based weapons would be to defend against ballistic missiles fired at targets on Earth.
Hypersonic aircraft.
Launched from a standard runway, a hypersonic aircraft could fly faster than Mach 5 to strike anywhere in the world within two hours. It would also have enough thrust to deliver a satellite to low-Earth orbit. To get off the ground from a runway, a hypersonic plane would either hitch a ride on a conventional plane, or have its own conventional jet engine.
Active Denial System.
Millimetre-wave or microwave beams supposedly make people flee without injuring them. They might typically be powered by a generator fitted to a Humvee, in crowd control situations.
A 2-metre antenna and mobile generator produce and aim a beam of 95-gigahertz (3-millimetre) radiation.
Nuclear missiles.
Nuclear missiles are able to deliver unmatched destructive power anywhere in the world, making them the ultimate level of military power. One or more nuclear warheads are mounted on a ballistic missile, and launched vertically.
Stun guns (Tasers)
Tasers disable people with bursts of high-voltage electricity, allowing police to subdue them without lasting injury. A special gun fires darts on wires. These deliver a pulse of electricity that temporarily disrupts control of voluntary muscles.
E-bombs.
A rapid increase in electromagnetic field strength during a pulse, induces surges of electric current in conductors. This burns out electrical equipment – semiconductor chips are particularly vulnerable.
Layered missile defence.
Layered missile defence offers the best chance to shoot down attacking ballistic missiles.
Multiple anti-missile systems are deployed to target ballistic missiles during different stages of the attacking missile’s flight: Each phase, or layer, of defence increases the chance of successful destruction of the missile.
Information warfare.
This technique interferes with the flow of information vital to enemy operations, while defending friendly channels of communication. Information warfare specifically targets communication networks and computers.
‘Hyper Stealth’ or ‘Quantum Stealth’
Using naturally occurring metamaterials, scientists have been designing lightwave-bending materials that can greatly reduce the thermal and visible signatures of a target.
Electromagnetic Rail Guns.
EM rail gun launchers use a magnetic field rather than chemical propellants (e.g., gunpowder or fuel) to thrust a projectile at long range and at velocities of 4,500 mph to 5,600 mph. nautical miles using 32 megajoules.
The extended velocity and range of EM rail guns provides several benefits both in offensive and defensive terms, from precision strikes that can counter even the most advanced area defense systems to air defense against incoming targets.
Space Weapons.
Despite international pressure against the weaponization of space, major countries continue to explore technologies that would turn the sky above us into the next battleground.
Hypersonic Cruise Missiles and ‘Prompt Global Strike’
Had hypersonic cruise missiles existed in the mid-1990s, the U.S. might have rid itself of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden much earlier than it did, and would have accomplished the feat in Afghanistan rather than in Pakistan.
Sentient’ Unmanned Vehicles.
Perhaps the single-most important development in the defense industry in the past decade is the emergence of unmanned vehicles.
Among this which one seems most terrible to you let us know in the comment section.
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