Lifeboat Foundation

This video is the fourth in a multi-part series discussing computing. In this video, weíll be discussing computing performance and efficiency as well as how the computer industry plans on maximizing them.

[0:25–1:55] Starting off we’ll look at, how computing performance is measured and its rate of increase since the mid-1900s.

[1:55–8:05] Following that we’ll discuss, new classical computing paradigms that will push the computer industry forward past 2020. These paradigm shifts are 3D integrated circuits and the use of new materials such as graphene.

Continue reading “Graphene Computing & 3D Integrated Circuits” »

This is a breakthrough.

SodaStream and NGO Plastic Soup are battling plastics in the Caribbean Sea armed with a unique vessel, the “Holy Turtle,” and a coalition of local schoolkids.

If it floats, is it a ‘lifeboat’?

While the oceans fill up with plastic waste, a horrifying crisis unfolds on land.

Scientists from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have demonstrated a surprisingly simple way of flipping a material from one state into another, and then back again, with single flashes of laser light.

The synthetic material is faster to make than natural wood.

Visions for what we can do with future electronics depend on finding ways to go beyond the capabilities of silicon conductors. The experimental field of molecular electronics is thought to represent a way forward, and recent work at KTH may enable scalable production of the nanoscale electrodes that are needed in order to explore molecules and exploit their behavior as potentially valuable electronic materials.

Since the 2003 discovery of the single-atom-thick carbon material known as graphene, there has been significant interest in other types of 2-D materials as well.

For the first time, physicists have built a unique topological insulator in which optical and electronic excitations hybridize and flow together. They report their discovery in Nature.

Topological insulators are materials with very special properties. They conduct electricity or light particles only on their surface or edges, not the interior. This unusual characteristic could provide technical innovations, and topological insulators have been the subject of intense global research for several years.

Physicists of Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany, with colleagues from the Technion in Haifa, Israel, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have reported their discovery in the journal Nature. The team has built the first “exciton-polariton topological insulator,” a topological insulator operating with both light and electronic excitations simultaneously.