Chima Wisdom – Lifeboat News: The Blog https://lifeboat.com/blog Safeguarding Humanity Mon, 23 Oct 2023 19:22:25 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.3.2 Living guidelines for generative AI — why scientists must oversee its use https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/living-guidelines-for-generative-ai-why-scientists-must-oversee-its-use https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/living-guidelines-for-generative-ai-why-scientists-must-oversee-its-use#respond Mon, 23 Oct 2023 19:22:25 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/living-guidelines-for-generative-ai-why-scientists-must-oversee-its-use

Establish an independent scientific body to test and certify generative artificial intelligence, before the technology damages science and public trust.

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From a five-layer graphene sandwich, a rare electronic state emerges https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/from-a-five-layer-graphene-sandwich-a-rare-electronic-state-emerges https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/from-a-five-layer-graphene-sandwich-a-rare-electronic-state-emerges#respond Fri, 20 Oct 2023 07:55:08 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/from-a-five-layer-graphene-sandwich-a-rare-electronic-state-emerges

Despite its waif-like proportions, scientists have found over the years that graphene is exceptionally strong. And when the material is stacked and twisted in specific contortions, it can take on surprising electronic behavior.

Now, MIT physicists have discovered another surprising property in graphene: When stacked in five layers, in a rhombohedral pattern, graphene takes on a very rare, “multiferroic” state, in which the material exhibits both unconventional magnetism and an exotic type of electronic behavior, which the team has coined ferro-valleytricity.

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Electronic waste — more recycling needs to be encouraged https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/electronic-waste-more-recycling-needs-to-be-encouraged https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/electronic-waste-more-recycling-needs-to-be-encouraged#respond Fri, 13 Oct 2023 08:22:42 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/electronic-waste-more-recycling-needs-to-be-encouraged

New research conducted by the not-for-profit organisation, Material Focus, has found that half a billion small, cheap electrical everyday items, such as headphones or handheld fans, found their way into landfill in the UK last year.

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$9.5 bn of key metals in overlooked electronic waste: UN https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/9-5-bn-of-key-metals-in-overlooked-electronic-waste-un https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/9-5-bn-of-key-metals-in-overlooked-electronic-waste-un#respond Fri, 13 Oct 2023 08:22:24 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/9-5-bn-of-key-metals-in-overlooked-electronic-waste-un

Consumers discard or possess disused electronic goods containing raw materials critical for the green energy transition and worth almost $10 billion every year, the United Nations said on Thursday.

Toys, cables, , tools, electric toothbrushes, shavers, headphones and other domestic gadgets contain metals like lithium, gold, silver and copper.

Demand is expected to soar for these materials due to their crucial role in rapidly growing green industries such as electric vehicle battery production.

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Sourcing Electronic Components Post-Pandemic https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/sourcing-electronic-components-post-pandemic https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/sourcing-electronic-components-post-pandemic#respond Sun, 01 Oct 2023 15:22:56 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/10/sourcing-electronic-components-post-pandemic

How are independent distributors assisting manufacturers and identifying ways to reduce electronic component costs? By Del Williams.

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Researchers unveil tool to help developers create augmented reality task assistants https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/09/researchers-unveil-tool-to-help-developers-create-augmented-reality-task-assistants https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/09/researchers-unveil-tool-to-help-developers-create-augmented-reality-task-assistants#respond Fri, 29 Sep 2023 10:23:35 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/09/researchers-unveil-tool-to-help-developers-create-augmented-reality-task-assistants

Augmented reality (AR) technology has long fascinated both the scientific community and the general public, remaining a staple of modern science fiction for decades.

In the pursuit of advanced AR assistants—ones that can guide people through intricate surgeries or everyday food preparation, for example—a research team from NYU Tandon School of Engineering has introduced Augmented Reality Guidance and User-Modeling System, or ARGUS.

An interactive visual analytics tool, ARGUS is engineered to support the development of intelligent AR assistants that can run on devices like Microsoft HoloLens 2 or MagicLeap. It enables developers to collect and analyze data, model how people perform tasks, and find and fix problems in the AR assistants they are building.

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Farm robots inspired by ant brains https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/09/farm-robots-inspired-by-ant-brains https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/09/farm-robots-inspired-by-ant-brains#respond Thu, 28 Sep 2023 19:22:42 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/09/farm-robots-inspired-by-ant-brains

With the rapid-paced rise of AI in everyday life, nothing, not even the traditional farmer, is untouched by the technology.

A survey of the latest generation of farm tools provides a taste of just how far modern farming has come.

The Ecorobotix, a seven-foot-wide GPS-assisted “table on wheels” as some have described it, is a solar battery-powered unit that roams crop fields and destroys weeds with pinpoint precision. It boasts a 95% efficiency rate, with virtually no waste.

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Solar cell material can assist self-driving cars in the dark https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/09/solar-cell-material-can-assist-self-driving-cars-in-the-dark https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/09/solar-cell-material-can-assist-self-driving-cars-in-the-dark#respond Thu, 28 Sep 2023 19:22:27 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/09/solar-cell-material-can-assist-self-driving-cars-in-the-dark

Material used in organic solar cells can also be used as light sensors in electronics. This has been shown by researchers at Linköping University, Sweden, who have developed a type of sensor able to detect circularly polarized red light. Their study, published in Nature Photonics, paves the way for more reliable self-driving vehicles and other uses where night vision is important.

Some beetles with shiny wings, firefly larvae and colorful mantis shrimps reflect a particular kind of light known as circularly polarized light. This is due to in their shell that reflect the electromagnetic light waves in a particular way.

Circularly polarized light also has many technical uses, such as satellite communication, bioimaging and other sensing technologies. This is because circularly polarizing light carries a vast amount of information, due to the fact that the around the light beam spirals either to the right or to the left.

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Historic OSIRIS-REx asteroid samples successfully return to Earth https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/09/historic-osiris-rex-asteroid-samples-successfully-return-to-earth https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/09/historic-osiris-rex-asteroid-samples-successfully-return-to-earth#respond Sun, 24 Sep 2023 16:23:23 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/09/historic-osiris-rex-asteroid-samples-successfully-return-to-earth

In the morning hours of Sept. 24, a small capsule containing surface samples from asteroid 101,955 Bennu careened into Earth’s atmosphere after a seven-year journey through space. The landing of this sample capsule is the culmination of NASA’s historic Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) asteroid sample return mission, which is now the first American mission to return samples from an asteroid.

The sample return capsule (SRC) landed within a 14 by 58-kilometer ellipse at a Department of Defense property at the Utah Test and Training Range and Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. Touchdown of the SRC occurred at 8:52 AM MDT (14:52 UTC) — three minutes earlier than planned. Low winds and dry weather was present at Dugway during the landing — optimal conditions for the return and recovery of the SRC.

OSIRIS-REx launched atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on Sept. 8, 2016. Since then, OSIRIS-REx has flown past Earth, rendezvoused with asteroid 101,955 Bennu, orbited the asteroid and extensively imaged/mapped its surface, collected a sample from Bennu, made the journey back to Earth, and now returned its sample. As the SRC was streaking through Earth’s atmosphere, OSIRIS-REx performed a flyby of Earth and began a new mission called OSIRIS-APEX, wherein OSIRIS-REx will fly out and study asteroid 99,942 Apophis. The spacecraft is scheduled to arrive at the asteroid in 2029 if all goes according to plan.

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The world’s northernmost solar farm is about to come online https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/09/the-worlds-northernmost-solar-farm-is-about-to-come-online https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/09/the-worlds-northernmost-solar-farm-is-about-to-come-online#respond Sun, 24 Sep 2023 16:23:10 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2023/09/the-worlds-northernmost-solar-farm-is-about-to-come-online

Norway has installed the world’s northernmost solar farm and battery storage in the Svalbard archipelago, just south of the North Pole.

State-owned energy company Store Norske Energi installed the solar and storage at Isfjord Radio on the island of Spitsbergen, the largest and the only permanently populated island in the archipelago, and the solar farm is expected to come online tomorrow.

Isfjord was built as a radio station in 1933 to provide a communication link between the Svalbard archipelago and Norway’s mainland. It’s still a radio station and a weather station, and now there’s a hotel for tourists and researchers.

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