Lifeboat Foundation

Throughout the history of human civilization, energy has been holding an imperative role in humanity’s progress¹. Especially in the past few centuries, innovations in the harnessing of power have catalyzed humanity’s rapid growth². Energy remains a key driver of human development³, with each revolution in industry and agriculture highlighting human’s reliance on it. Revolution in the eighteenth century was a turning point. The development of steam engines powered by fossil fuels led to significant technological progress⁴. Electricity has then opened new possibilities for the future⁵. Humanity has grown at a compound annual rate of 2.43% from 1965 to 2020, demonstrating our continued increasing demand for and consumption of energy^6,7. However, the pace at which human being can progress as a civilization in the future remains uncertain.

While mankind was establishing its identity in the universe, insatiable human curiosity over the realm of civilization peaked in the 1960s⁸, which led to deeper cogitation of the concept of civilization. Providing that some of the extraterrestrial civilizations are highly likely million years more advanced than mankind, Soviet astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev proposed a scale to classifies a civilization’s technological development based on its energy consumption⁹, which was later known as the Kardashev Scale. The scale initially categorized civilizations into three types. Type 1 is known as the planetary civilization, which features the capability of harnessing and utilizing all forms of energies that can be reached on the host planet, such as wind, solar, and geothermal power; Type 2 and 3, known as the stellar and galactic civilizations, respectively, are capable of extracting and utilizing all energy created by their respective systems⁹. Yet, such a scale proved lackluster in the quantitative presentation of the civilization types. Subsequently, Carl Sagan furthered the Kardashev Scale with data extrapolation, and proposed a continuous function quantifying the Kardashev Scale in index K¹⁰

$$K=\frac{.

In what promises to be a revolutionary breakthrough in treatment of various neurological illnesses, Brainstorm is a European project using tiny magnets to restore damaged neurons.

Increasing evidence suggests that acupressure, a complementary and alternative medicine approach involving applying pressure to specific areas of the body, known as acupoints, can effectively mediate symptoms experienced by cancer patients. Recent studies have shown that acupressure can control cancer-related nausea, fatigue, sleep disruption, and pain.

Most of the growing body of literature promoting the benefits of acupressure involves treatments administered by trained acupuncturists. However, we lack an understanding of the effectiveness of performing acupressure on yourself, a process known as self-acupressure. To address the potential benefits of self-acupressure, a team of researchers conducted a systemic review of published data on self-acupressure for symptom management in cancer patients. The review appears in a recent issue of the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management.

The researchers searched electronic databases for peer-reviewed studies exploring self-acupressure for cancer-related symptoms. The search identified 11 studies to include in the review.

Bond, a new startup in New York City, has created robots that can learn your handwriting and convert digital notes into personalized letters.
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New, ground-breaking wind technology for the maritime industry has the potential to decarbonise large cargo vessels, which are currently responsible for about 2% of global emissions.

Pyxis Ocean retrofitted with WindWings setting sail for its maiden voyage, August 2023. Credit: Cargill.

Continue reading “Wind-powered cargo ship sets sail” »

According to Hugo de Garis, we will build (and/or become) artilects: Intelligent beings hugely (bazillions of times) smarter than humans.

In their jiggles and shakes, red giant stars encode a record of the magnetic fields near their cores.

Have we found the smoking-gun evidence for modified gravity? Were Einstein and Newton both wrong about gravity?

#gravity #breakthrough #physics.

Continue reading “Have Physicists Proved Gravity is Breaking Down” »

Creating novel materials by combining layers with unique, beneficial properties seems like a fairly intuitive process—stack up the materials and stack up the benefits. This isn’t always the case, however. Not every material will allow energy to travel through it the same way, making the benefits of one material come at the cost of another.

Using cutting-edge tools, scientists at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) User Facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the Institute of Experimental Physics at the University of Warsaw have created a new layered structure with 2D materials that exhibits a unique transfer of energy and charge. Understanding its material properties may lead to advancements in technologies such as solar cells and other optoelectronic devices. The results were published in the journal Nano Letters.

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are a class of materials structured like sandwiches with atomically thin layers. The meat of a TMD is a transition metal, which can form chemical bonds with electrons on their outermost orbit or shell, like most elements, as well as the next shell. That metal is sandwiched between two layers of chalcogens, a category of elements that contains oxygen, sulfur, and selenium.