Lifeboat Foundation

Supersonic air travel is back. 15 years after the Concorde was grounded, everyone from aerospace companies to NASA to small startups is working to bring back ultrafast civilian aircraft. We take a look at the engineering challenges that make supersonic flight so difficult, and try to figure out what’s different about this new generation of planes.

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Continue reading “Supersonic air travel is finally coming back” »

Hydrogels are physical and chemical polymer networks capable of retaining large quantities of liquid in aqueous conditions without losing their dimensional stability. They are used in a whole host of applications, and in combination with other components and they acquire specific properties such as electrical conductivity. The Materials + Technology research group in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Environment of the UPV/EHU’s Faculty of Engineering selected a biopolymer that had not previously been used for applications of this type: starch. “One of our lines of research focuses on starch, and we regard it as having biological, physical and chemical properties suitable for producing hydrogels,” said Kizkitza Gonzalez-Munduate, a member of the group.

QUT chemistry researchers have discovered cheaper and more efficient materials for producing hydrogen for the storage of renewable energy that could replace current water-splitting catalysts.

Professor Anthony O’Mullane said the potential for the chemical storage of renewable energy in the form of hydrogen was being investigated around the world.

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Elon Musk wants humans to make it to Mars. With his company SpaceX at his back, he’s pushed forward with some incredibly bold claims about what is possible for mankind on the Red Planet. He’s shown off concepts for Mars settlements and even called out scientists who say climate engineering on the planet is impossible.

Now, in an interview with HBO’s Axios, Musk doubles down on one of the more off-the-wall claims he’s made during his years in the spotlight. Mars, he says, will be his eventual home, and he estimates his odds of moving to the planet at a generous 70%.

Twenty years ago today, construction began on the greatest international science and engineering project in human history — the International Space Station. In case you missed it, we celebrated the occasion by talking to the crew currently living and working in space. Take a look: https://go.nasa.gov/2qVKqt9 #SpaceStation20th

A team of researchers from the Earthquake Research Institute, Department of Civil Engineering and Information Technology Center at the University of Tokyo, and the RIKEN Center for Computational Science and RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project in Japan were finalists for the coveted Gordon Bell Prize for outstanding achievements in high-performance computing. Tsuyoshi Ichimura together with Kohei Fujita, Takuma Yamaguchi, Kengo Nakajima, Muneo Hori and Lalith Maddegedara were praised for their simulation of earthquake physics in complex urban environments.

Researchers from the Departments of Chemistry and Engineering Science at the University of Oxford have found a general way of predicting enzyme activity. Enzymes are the protein catalysts that perform most of the key functions in Biology. Published in Nature Chemical Biology, the researchers’ novel AI approach is based on the enzyme’s sequence, together with the screening of a defined ‘training set’ of substrates and the right chemical parameters to define them.

Multinational engineering and electronics giant Bosch recently highlighted a new device connectivity method which will work with the Iota marketplace, among other things, for real-time IoT (Internet of Things) data collection and sales.

Data Collection for the IOTA Marketplace

In a recent blog post the firm opened with a quote from 1999 from Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman extolling the virtues of anonymously transferring funds on the internet, way before cryptocurrencies were even conceived. It continued to elaborate on the Iota ecosystem, its advantages over Bitcoin, and why it has been chosen as a partner.

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The write up provides few sources but the phone interview with Mitchell on Fox News is good…

The Sixth Man to walk on the Moon – Edgar Mitchell made fainting claims about alien life when he stated that the existence of the alien visitors is kept a secret from the public, not due to fear of widespread disbelief, rather, a fear that the monetized interests of big business could go into a state of irrelevance if we were given a chance to harbor the technology.

Continue reading “Apollo Astronaut claims Aliens PREVENTED a NUCLEAR WAR on Earth to ensure our existence” »