Lifeboat Foundation

Why do we take so many selfies? Because we are afraid of dying, say psychologists.

Many of us have phones filled with selfies documenting everything from holidays to duvet days.

But what’s behind the modern fascination with taking photos of ourselves?

Continue reading “Psychologists reveals the morbid reason we take so many selfies” »

Researchers at Tohoku University have successfully increased the capacity, lifetime durability, and cost-effectiveness of a capacitor in their pursuit of a more power-efficient future. The research is published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

A capacitor is a device used as part of a circuit that can store and release energy, just like a battery. What makes a capacitor different from a battery is that it takes much less time to charge. For example, your cellphone battery will power your phone instantly, but charging that battery back up to 100% when it dies is far from instantaneous.

While this makes capacitors sound like the superior choice, they have some big drawbacks that need to be overcome. First, their capacity is much smaller than batteries, so they cannot store large amounts of energy at once. Second, they can be quite expensive.

For the Artemis 3 mission, we will be able to reach astronauts up to 2 kilometers away from the lander.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on Saturday that T-Mobile US Inc. TMUS subscribers in the U.S. will get direct to mobile phone internet with the help of Starlink satellites first and other telecom service providers later.

What Happened: “Starlink direct to mobile phone Internet is exclusively with Tmobile in the US for the first year, then other carriers thereafter,” Musk wrote on X. “We are starting off working with one carrier in each country, but ultimately hope to serve all carriers.”

Musk’s comment comes on the heels of SpaceX launching 26 Starlink satellites with direct-to-cell capabilities to low-Earth orbit on Saturday.

Bioacoustic technology detects early tuberculosis, transforming remote healthcare.

Google partners with Salcit Technologies to bring AI-powered disease detection to smartphones using 300 million audio samples.

TAMPA, Fla. — Verizon is launching satellite-enabled emergency text and location services this fall for compatible Android smartphones in the United States at no extra cost for customers.

The telecoms giant announced a partnership Aug. 28 to deliver the service with Skylo, which has developed ground infrastructure enabling L-band geostationary satellites to reach devices using the latest standards-based chipsets.

Google’s family of Pixel Pro devices and the Samsung Galaxy S25 are set to be among the first to get access to Skylo’s partner satellites, enabling emergency narrowband connectivity when cell towers are out of reach.

A team of electrical and computer engineers at Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, working with one colleague from City University of Hong Kong and another with Fudan University, has developed a new two-dimensional, low-power-consumption field-effect transistor (FET) that could allow smartphones to need recharging less often.

In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes how they overcame problems with high gate leakage and low dielectric strength that have stymied other researchers looking to create smaller and thinner computer chips. Two of the team members (Ziao Tian and Zengfeng Di) have published a Research Briefing, summarizing their work in the same journal issue.

Over the past several years, computer engineers have been searching for new materials that will allow further miniaturization of silicon field-effect transistors. This will enable the addition of more features in phones and other devices without making them bigger. It is also a necessity for the development of 5G devices that will come with AI applications that are still in development.

For the past decade, disordered rock salt has been studied as a potential breakthrough cathode material for use in lithium-ion batteries and a key to creating low-cost, high-energy storage for everything from cell phones to electric vehicles to renewable energy storage.

A new MIT study is making sure the material fulfills that promise.

Led by Ju Li, the Tokyo Electric Power Company Professor in Nuclear Engineering and professor of materials science and engineering, a team of researchers describe a new class of partially disordered rock salt cathode, integrated with polyanions—dubbed disordered rock salt-polyanionic spinel, or DRXPS—that delivers high energy density at high voltages with significantly improved cycling stability.

Everybody is talking about Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is in our computers, services and even our mobile phones. The AI composes our messages, predicts our moves and even takes photos for us. Are we – humans – going to become “obsolete” in a matter of years?! Maybe there is a last chance – Intelligence Amplification (IA).

While an AI needs to be developed from scratch, we humans, already have great intelligence thanks to countless years of evolution. A modern human’s brain is an awesome tool!

Among us, there are some geniuses, but imagine if everybody can become one. And not just a genius, but a super-genius. Smarter than every person who has ever lived before! This is the idea behind Intelligence Amplification. To use our intelligence as a base and to add computers to make us smarter beyond our imagination. A hybrid, a work of art!