Christopher Field – Lifeboat News: The Blog https://lifeboat.com/blog Safeguarding Humanity Sat, 03 Dec 2022 23:22:54 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 Technology reveals the secrets of ancient Egyptian tattoos https://lifeboat.com/blog/2022/12/technology-reveals-the-secrets-of-ancient-egyptian-tattoos Sat, 03 Dec 2022 23:22:54 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2022/12/technology-reveals-the-secrets-of-ancient-egyptian-tattoos

Anne Austin/University of Missouri-St. Louis, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology (2022).

Because the second mummy was still wrapped, researchers analyzed it via infrared photography. It’s worth noting that archaeologists do not unwrap mummies at this point in time. The mummy turned out to be of a middle-aged woman and featured a different tattoo — a wedjat, or eye of Horus, and again an image of the god Bes, but now with a crown of feathers. The scientists also spotted a zigzag line below the other figures that probably depicted a marsh, which was associated with cooling waters used to relieve pain from menstruation or childbirth, as the researchers deduced from ancient medical texts. They propose that the two tattoos were essentially a request by the wearer for protection during childbirth.

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Zinc-cerium redox flow battery for renewable energy storage https://lifeboat.com/blog/2022/10/zinc-cerium-redox-flow-battery-for-renewable-energy-storage Sat, 08 Oct 2022 06:22:45 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2022/10/zinc-cerium-redox-flow-battery-for-renewable-energy-storage

“The Ce electrolyte is highly oxidative, which poses a challenge towards the stability of anion membrane,” Daoud said. “Thus, the stability and selectivity of anion membrane require further improvement.”

The device achieved a voltage plateau of 2.3 V at 20 mA cm − 2, energy efficiency of 71.3% at 60 mA cm − 2, and a record average Coulombic efficiency of 94% during cycling.

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Aerial Photos Document the Expansive Greenhouses Covering Spain’s Almería Peninsula https://lifeboat.com/blog/2022/03/aerial-photos-document-the-expansive-greenhouses-covering-spains-almeria-peninsula Tue, 29 Mar 2022 17:02:19 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2022/03/aerial-photos-document-the-expansive-greenhouses-covering-spains-almeria-peninsula

A follow-up to his series focused on the glow of LED-lit greenhouses, Tom Hegen’s new collection peers down on the landscape of Spain’s Almería peninsula. The German photographer is broadly interested in our impact on the earth and gears his practice toward the aerial, offering perspectives that illuminate the immense scale of human activity.

In The Greenhouse Series II, Hegen captures the abstract topographies of the world’s largest agricultural production center of its kind, which stretches across 360-square kilometers of rugged, mountainous terrain in the southern part of the country. The sun-trapping structures house plants like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and watermelons that provide fresh produce to much of Europe year-round.

While 30 times more productive than typical farmland in the region, the facilities also function at a cost to the local ecosystems. “Groundwater is being polluted with fertilisers and pesticides. Some 30,000 tons of plastic waste are created each year,” Hegen tells Colossal, noting that the greenhouses are made almost entirely of plastic foil, which is shredded and discarded nearby once it’s no longer useful. “From there, wind and erosion transport it to the (Mediterranean Sea).”

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DaVinci-Style Drone With 600-Year-Old Screw Rotor Design Actually Flies https://lifeboat.com/blog/2022/02/davinci-style-drone-with-600-year-old-screw-rotor-design-actually-flies Thu, 03 Feb 2022 04:22:36 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2022/02/davinci-style-drone-with-600-year-old-screw-rotor-design-actually-flies

DaVinci penned the aerial screw design in the 1400s, way before air travel was a thing. Now, it’s being put to action with this student-built drone.


Drones aren’t anything new —multi-rotor aircraft are becoming a bigger part of people’s lives every day. From the latest batch of up-and-coming urban air mobility companies to hobby applications, electric aircraft with four or more motors are commonplace, and generally, they use conventional multi-bladed propellers to keep themselves aloft. That’s not what’s going on with this particular drone developed by engineering students at the University of Maryland, though.

Assembled for a student design competition hosted by the Vertical Flight Society, it’s a mixture of old and new. With rotors reminiscent of Leonardo DaVinci’s aerial screw illustrations from the late 1490s, it flies like any other drone would, all while looking extremely bizarre and having interesting flight characteristics.

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Nuclear Bomb Simulation Shows How Devastating Nukes Can Be in a Major City https://lifeboat.com/blog/2022/01/nuclear-bomb-simulation-shows-how-devastating-nukes-can-be-in-a-major-city Tue, 25 Jan 2022 04:22:21 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2022/01/nuclear-bomb-simulation-shows-how-devastating-nukes-can-be-in-a-major-city

What would happen if a nuclear bomb 100 times the size of the one dropped on Hiroshima hit a city of 4 million people?

#Engineering


The impact of a nuclear bomb dropped in a big city has been simulated by Neil Halloran and the Nobel Peace Prize committee. Watch the video to see it.

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