Lifeboat Foundation

Founded in 2005 as an Ohio-based environmental newspaper, EcoWatch is a digital platform dedicated to publishing quality, science-based content on environmental issues, causes, and solutions.

While the electric vehicle market expands, some drivers remain hesitant to switch to a fuel-free car or truck because of range anxiety, or the fear that the battery of their EV won’t have enough power to get to another charging station. But researchers have found a way that could give EV batteries a pretty substantial boost, extending the vehicle range more than 10 times.

It may not offer infinite range, but it’s close. The new Oceanvolt ServoProp saildrive has a regeneration feature that efficiently charges up an electric boat’s batteries while sailing.

Many people think of sailboats as being purely wind powered. While smaller sailboats usually are, most decently sized sailboats have a motor for maneuvering in a marina or when the winds die down.

Saildrive motors are an innovative propulsion system commonly found on modern sailboats, offering a compact and efficient alternative to traditional shaft-driven inboard engines.

Stirling converters could allow deep space missions to massively reduce their reliance on potentially scarce solar energy.

China’s Shenzhou-15 mission crew aboard the China Space Station (CSS) has reportedly completed testing on a free-piston Stirling thermoelectric converter, according to a report from state-owned media in China.

Continue reading “China’s space agency reportedly tested a Stirling converter in orbit” »

The idea of a Tesla makes sense now that the company has started manufacturing and delivering its heavy-duty battery electric truck: the Semi. The Tesla Semi’s availability on the market hints that Tesla has solved certain constraints—including battery constraint issues—that prevented it from delivering heavy-duty vehicles.

In its Master Plan Part 3, Tesla notes that its electric bus will use 300 kWh battery packs using LFP cells.

Tesla’s Master Plan Part 3 teases a new direction for the company with its next-generation platform. Tesla’s new adventure will likely feature some challenging obstacles and more meme-worthy moments from Elon Musk. And more fun for Tesla investors and supporters.

Year 2022

We figured this was inevitable, as this Tesla owner has been keeping the world apprised of his Model S mileage over the years. What an epic achievement.

Bootprints have not been left on the Moon since the early 1970s, but that will soon change. With NASA’s Artemis and China’s CLEP programs both scheduled to return humans to the Moon before 2030, the two superpowers are apparently in a “race” to the Lunar surface. But this time, who gets there “first” matters little. Instead, this race is about building a sustainable human presence on the Moon.

Here is how China’s and America’s approaches differ, and what it means for the future of spaceflight and human progress.

A comparison of the hardware China and the US are developing to return humans to the Moon.

New battery developed by researchers in US could provide ‘thousand mile’ range for EVs and open up new possibilities for long-haul transport and electric planes.

In the adult brain, synapses are tightly enwrapped by lattices of the extracellular matrix that consist of extremely long-lived molecules. These lattices are deemed to stabilize synapses, restrict the reorganization of their transmission machinery, and prevent them from undergoing structural or morphological changes. At the same time, they are expected to retain some degree of flexibility to permit occasional events of synaptic plasticity. The recent understanding that structural changes to synapses are significantly more frequent than previously assumed (occurring even on a timescale of minutes) has called for a mechanism that allows continual and energy-efficient remodeling of the extracellular matrix (ECM) at synapses. Here, we review recent evidence for such a process based on the constitutive recycling of synaptic ECM molecules. We discuss the key characteristics of this mechanism, focusing on its roles in mediating synaptic transmission and plasticity, and speculate on additional potential functions in neuronal signaling.

An increasing number of studies are showing that synaptic function is strongly influenced by their local environment, including the molecules or cellular components in their vicinity. As a result, the classical synaptic framework (consisting of the pre-and postsynaptic compartments only) has gradually been extended to include the neighboring astrocytic processes (the “tripartite synapse”; Araque et al., 1999) and, ultimately, also the surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM; the “tetrapartite synapse”; Dityatev et al., 2006). Nowadays, the synaptic ECM is recognized to play an essential role in physiological synaptic transmission as well as in plasticity, and its dysregulation has been linked to synaptopathies in a wide variety of brain disorders (Bonneh-Barkay and Wiley, 2009; Pantazopoulos and Berretta, 2016; Ferrer-Ferrer and Dityatev, 2018).

10 SpaceX Starships are carrying 120 robots to Mars. They are the first to colonize the Red Planet. Building robot habitats to protect themselves, and then landing pads, structures, and the life support systems for the humans who will soon arrive.

This Mars colonization mini documentary also covers they type of robots that will be building on Mars, the solar fields, how Elon Musk and Tesla could have a battery bank station at the Mars colony, and how the Martian colony expands during the 2 years when the robots are building. Known as the Robotic Age of Mars.

Continue reading “THE FIRST 2 YEARS ON MARS (Prequel) Timelapse” »