Lifeboat Foundation

A major Japanese machinery company said Friday that it has succeeded in transmitting energy wirelessly, marking a step toward making solar power generation in space a reality.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries said it used microwave technology to send 10 kilowatts of power—enough to run a set of conventional kitchen appliances—through the air to a receiver 500 metres (1,640 feet) away.

Wireless power transmission is currently under development as the core technology to tap the vast amount of solar energy available in space and use it on Earth.

One more of these; we may see government step in at the consumer’s urging.

Nobody was killed or even injured. But a minor accident involving a Tesla Model S running on Autopilot in China is again raising questions about exactly how the feature works.

The electric car company said Wednesday that it is investigating the Aug. 2 incident. The driver’s Tesla sideswiped a Volkswagen that was parked halfway in the lane of a busy Beijing highway. The company said Autopilot was engaged and the driver was not holding the steering wheel.

Continue reading “Another Tesla Autopilot Crash, This Time in China” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ndpxuf-uJHE

Commercial space travel is about to become a reality brought about by many private companies bent on taking their earthbound successes into space. The FAA is now open to granting permits to private companies to travel into space. It is hoped that this activity will lead to the colonization of Mars.

Elon Musk of SpaceX has the goal of beginning the colonization of Mars in the next decade. He plans to make commercial space travel and colonization a reality in his lifetime, according to The Washington Post. Mr. Musk is the mastermind behind both Tesla and SpaceX. He is one of the most brilliant minds of our time. An innovator and businessman, Elon has a track record of making dreams a reality and turning his plans into tangible results. Comparing his project to the colonization of America, Mr. Musk explains why he thinks people will agree to move to mars.

Continue reading “Commercial Space Travel And Colonization: SpaceX, NASA, And NextSTEP Make Preparations For Lift Off” »

Interesting.

Although E. coli bacteria is often considered as a bad bug, laboratory-adapted E. coli that do not harm human beings and can multiply fast have been commonly used for various research purposes.

The same property allows the bacteria to rebuild into the smallest of factories when their chemical producing ability is utilized. E. coli possesses the ability to crank out pharmaceuticals, biofuels, and various other useful products.

Continue reading “Researchers Use E.coli to Engineer Improved Biofuels” »

Scientist looks to tap the sun to power adjustable contact lenses, other medical devices.

The upconversion of photons allows for a more efficient use of light: Two photons are converted into a single photon having higher energy. Researchers at KIT now showed for the first time that the inner interfaces between surface-mounted metal-organic frameworks (SURMOFs) are suited perfectly for this purpose — they turned green light blue. The result, which is now being published in Advanced Materials (“Photon Upconversion at Crystalline Organic–Organic Heterojunctions”), opens up new opportunities for optoelectronic applications such as solar cells or LEDs.

Photon upconversion: energy transfer between the molecules is based on electron exchange (Dexter electron transfer). (Image: Michael Oldenburg)

In the blackland prairie of Texas, an ocean is thousands of miles away. But Benjamin Blumenthal, co-founder and chief executive officer of SunToWater Technologies, says we’re all standing under the sixth ocean — the one that’s above our heads.

The Carrollton startup makes an appliance that unlocks that water supply. The company’s water generators — each about the size of a central air conditioning unit — use air, salt and solar power to produce gallons of drinkable water. They could bring water to rural communities without a municipal water supply, regions stricken by drought or developing countries with water contamination.

But the company will target a higher-end market first: Homeowners with large lawns to water and swimming pools to fill. Blumenthal said SunToWater is focusing on customers in California and Texas, two states that have coped with an unpredictable, and often limited, water supply and the water restrictions and high utility bills that come with it.

Continue reading “With new water generators, Carrollton startup can unlock the ocean above your head” »

The often-maligned E. coli bacteria has powerhouse potential: in the lab, it has the ability to crank out fuels, pharmaceuticals and other useful products at a rapid rate. A research team has discovered a new way to remove a major stumbling block in the process, and boost biofuel production from E. coli.

“It’s not a thing on the roof, it’s the roof,” says Musk.