Lifeboat Foundation

Alpha Centauri seems almost within grasp as promising research soars into reality.

Lightsails were once a thing of science fiction, evolving through several variations over the last 40 years. Now, science fiction is becoming reality. Advances in laser technology and new ultrastrong, ultralight materials open up the possibility of venturing beyond our solar system in the not-too-distant future.

Researchers from UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania recently published two papers outlining various shapes and heat-dissipating materials they tested to evaluate lightsails beyond previous limits. The research was conducted in conjunction with the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, a project with the goal of sending a microchip-sized probe to the Alpha Centauri system, which, at just over 4 light-years away, is the closest and possibly most habitable neighboring star system. Breakthrough Starshot plans to use a high-powered laser array to propel tiny lightsail probes through space at a top speed of some 20 percent the speed of light. Incorporated into the sails would be minuscule scientific instruments, such as cameras, magnetometers, and communicators that could beam information back to Earth as they fly through the Alpha Centuari system.

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Engineers have discovered a way to more than double the lifespan of batteries used in smartphones and electric cars.

The battery breakthrough was successfully demonstrated by researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia, who increased the lifespan of a lithium-ion (li-ion) battery from several hundred charge/ discharge cycles, to more than 1,000.

“Our process will increase the lifespan of batteries in many things, from smartphones and laptops, to power tools and electric vehicles,” said Professor Lianzhou Wang from the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology.

The majority of commercial chemicals that enter the market in the United States every year have insufficient health and safety data. For pesticides, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency uses a variety of techniques to fill data gaps in order to evaluate chemical hazard, exposure and risk. Nonetheless, public concern over the potential threat that these chemicals pose has grown in recent years, along with the realization that traditional animal-testing methods are not pragmatic by means of speed, economics or ethics. Now, researchers at the George Washington University have developed a new computational approach to rapidly screen pesticides for safety, performance and how long they will endure in the environment. Moreover, and most importantly, the new approach will aid in the design of next-generation molecules to develop safer pesticides.

“In many ways, our tool mimics computational drug discovery, in which vast libraries of chemical compounds are screened for their efficacy and then tweaked to make them even more potent against specific therapeutic targets,” Jakub Kostal, an assistant professor of chemistry at GW and principal investigator on the project, said. “Similarly, we use our systems-based approach to modify pesticides to make them less toxic and more degradable, while, at the same time, making sure they retain good performance. It’s a powerful tool for both industry and regulatory agencies that can help design new, safer analogs of existing commercial agrochemicals, and so protect human life, the environment and industry’s bottom line.”

Using their model, the team analyzed 700 pesticides from the EPA’s pesticide registry. The model considered a pesticide’s likely persistence or degradation in the environment over time, its safety, and how well it performed at killing, repelling or controlling the target problem.

China’s exclusive Alder Lake chip targets internet cafes.

Intel’s elusive ‘Black Edition’ Core i5-12490F is a China exclusive, but we snagged a chip we found overseas and put it through our benchmark suite.

Computer scientists at the University of California San Diego are showing how soil microbes can be harnessed to fuel low-power sensors. This opens new possibilities for microbial fuel cells (MFCs), which can power soil hydration sensors and other devices.

Computer scientists at the University of California San Diego are showing how soil microbes can be harnessed to fuel low-power sensors. This opens new possibilities for microbial fuel cells (MFCs), which can power soil hydration sensors and other devices.

Led by Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) Assistant Professor Pat Pannuto and Gabriel Marcano, a Ph.D. student working with Pannuto, this research was presented today at the first Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) Workshop on No Power and Low Power Internet of Things.

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The two storage companies will jointly develop and promote zoned storage technologies.

It’s not the end of the GPU shortage, but it’s a promising sign.

Back in January during their CES 2022 keynote, NVIDIA teased the GeForce RTX 3,090 Ti, an even more powerful version of NVIDIA’s flagship card for the high-end gaming and content creation markets. At the time, NVIDIA told us to expect more information later in January, only for January (and February) to come and go without further mention of the card. But now, in the waning days of March, the GeForce RTX 3,090 Ti’s day has come, as NVIDIA is launching their new flagship video card today.

So what is the RTX 3,090 Ti? In short, it’s every last bit of performance that NVIDIA can muster out of their Ampere architecture – the swan song for an architecture that has carried NVIDIA through the last 18 months. Whereas the original RTX 3,090 left a bit of performance on the table for yield or performance reasons, such as a couple of SMs or keeping TDPs to just 350 Watts, RTX 3,090 Ti leaves all of that behind. It’s all the Ampere that Ampere can be, with a fully-enabled GA102 GPU, better GDDR6X memory, and few (if any) limits on performance.

But Ampere unconstrained is going to cost you. While the original RTX 3,090 launched at an already high $1499, RTX 3,090 Ti ratchets that up further to $1999. And ongoing market distortions (i.e. the chip crunch) will likely compound that further, judging from RTX 3,090 prices. But regardless, the RTX 3,090 Ti isn’t priced to be competitive; it’s priced to be elite. NVIDIA never did produce a true Titan card for this generation, so the RTX 3,090 Ti is set to be the next best thing.