Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Multiband tunable antennas are a critical part of many communication and radar systems. New research by engineers at the University of Bristol has shown significant advances in antennas by using optically induced plasmas in silicon to tune both radiation patterns and operation frequency.

Conventional antenna tuning is performed with diodes or Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) switches. However, these approaches have significant drawbacks as systems become more complex and move to higher frequencies, which is anticipated for 5G systems.

The first paper, published in IET Optoelectronics, co-authored by Dr Chris Gamlath, Research Associate in RF Engineering during his PhD, shows how a silicon superstrate placed over a slotted microstrip patch can be used to tune radiation patterns.

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Biologist Mark Roth, at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, is working with animal subjects, putting them into suspended animation. The idea is that a patient who is in medical crisis could be put into a suspended state like hibernation, until he or she could be stabilized and in this way, get past it.

Though we tend to expire when the oxygen level is low, many animals go into a suspended state in extremely low oxygen environments. In the lab, one must enter into such an environment quickly. Roth is currently working with nematodes—a kind of roundworm—and expects to eventually work up to humans.

A vegetative state is another aspect of what we consider the gray zone between life and death. Medically, this is when sufficient damage to the brain has occurred, where the person isn’t aware of and can’t respond to their surroundings. They may breathe, have a heartbeat, move their eyes, even show reflexes, but they can’t respond to stimuli or interact with the world. Their brain stem is operating normally, but other parts of the brain may be damaged or inoperable. Most patients who enter such a state never leave it.

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Portable hard drives seem like they’re bound to go way of the dinosaur, thanks to the rise of services like Dropbox and Google Drive. But if you wanted to take a large file home with you back in 1985, you didn’t have quite so many options. Your best bet? Maybe this hard drive from Maynard.

“Leave the computer, take the drive!” the ad said in big, bold letters in the July 1985 issue of Byte magazine. And look at just how portable that thing is!

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3D printing has come a long way. In a new study, scientists explore the potential of using bacteria-laced ink to print living materials.

From pizza to urine-based space plastic and even blood vessels, it seems there’s no limit to what can be 3D printed. A new 3D printing platform, created by ETH researchers led by Professor André Studart, head of the Laboratory for Complex Materials, is advancing the process by working with living materials. The specially designed material is actually an ink infused with bacteria. The machine is then able to print living biochemical designs for a wide variety of purposes, which vary depending on the bacteria used. Their research has been published in Science Advances.

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Elon Musk’s Boring Company, which was founded to create tunnels for an underground transportation system in Los Angeles, has released a map illustrating a proposed network for those tunnels.

The Boring Company was i nspired by Musk’s frustrations with LA’s notoriously congested traffic. Operating beneath Interstate 105, the tunnels would hold large electric skates that could transport cars at speeds of up to 150 mph (241 km/h).

Commuters without their own vehicles would be able to travel in communal passenger cars.

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