Lifeboat Foundation

Created by Russian engineer Nikita Chen-yun-tai, the new Apis Cor 3D printer is powerful enough to print a building in one day, yet small enough to be moved with minimal preparation and transportation costs. This portability allows users to print a building in one location and easily move the Apis Cor the next day to another spot. It promises to revolutionize the use of 3D printers in construction, especially in developing nations where low-cost, efficient printing is critical.

The 3D printing of houses is not a new idea — companies have been using the tenets of additive manufacturing for years. What makes the compact Apis Cor printer unique is the unit’s small size — it measures 16.4 ft by 5 ft, weighs 2.5 tons and can be assembled within 30 minutes. As a result, the Apis Cor can be moved easily without the need for an expensive method of transportation and setup. It requires no site preparation and no testing before use, which means it can be dropped on site and deployed right away after assembly.

Related: A Chinese company assembled this 3D-printed home in just three hours.

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Remote driving could be a good halfway step to fully autonomous vehicles, but it feels pretty weird.

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In the drive to miniaturize electronics, solenoids have become way too big, say Rice University scientists who discovered the essential component can be scaled down to nano-size with macro-scale performance.

The secret is in a spiral form of atom-thin graphene that, remarkably, can be found in nature, according to Rice theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and his colleagues.

“Usually, we determine the characteristics for materials we think might be possible to make, but this time we’re looking at a configuration that already exists,” Yakobson said. “These spirals, or screw dislocations, form naturally in graphite during its growth, even in common coal.”

Continue reading “Graphene nano-coils are natural electromagnets” »

The first attempt at using gene therapy to prevent regular aging allegedly happened last month in what could spell the beginning of a new era in do-it-yourself genetic modification.

CEO and founder of BioViva Sciences USA Inc, Liz Parrish, claims she underwent gene therapy at an undisclosed location in Latin America where she received two forms of treatment, including muscle mass enhancement and therapy to increase the length of the telomeres, the DNA caps which protect the chromosome from deterioration and are associated with longer life span.

Parrish announced in a Reddit AMA that she had gone through the therapy and if successful she plans to roll out a public offering in three to five years despite neither treatment being FDA approved. The results of the therapy are yet unknown and she says she feels no different so far but believes it will be months before any changes occur. If successful her body, in theory, should begin to de-age.

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Music: Hans Zimmer — Mountains (Interstellar Soundtrack)
Lyrics: «Do not go gentle into that good night» by Dylan Thomas.

Voice: Anthony Hopkins.

Continue reading “Cinema Space Tribute” »

Bigger isn’t always better, but in this case it might be. Research has found that a large hippocampus gives you a memory boost and may shield you from dementia.

The hippocampus is rooted deep in the brain and deals with a range of things, but it’s also a major seat of neurogenesis; making new brain cells. The seahorse shaped structure plays a leading role in translating your experiences to long term memory and it’s made up of two sides. The left helps you record language, and the right hippocampus deals with spatial memory, like an interior google map.

The seat of memory?

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Electrocorticography (ECoG) was pioneered in the early 1950s by Wilder Penfield and Herbert Jasper, neurosurgeons at the Montreal Neurological Institute. The two developed ECoG as part of their groundbreaking Montreal procedure, a surgical protocol used to treat patients with severe epilepsy. The cortical potentials recorded by ECoG were used to identify epileptogenic zones – regions of the cortex that generate epileptic seizures. These zones would then be surgically removed from the cortex during resectioning, thus destroying the brain tissue where epileptic seizures had originated. Penfield and Jasper also used electrical stimulation during ECoG recordings in patients undergoing epilepsy surgery under local anesthesia. This procedure was used to explore the functional anatomy of the brain, mapping speech areas and identifying the somatosensory and somatomotor cortex areas to be excluded from surgical removal. This week we learned that Google has filed a patent relating to this medical field titled “Microelectrode Array for an Electrocorticogram.”

Google’s patent FIG. 6 noted above shows an application of the microelectrode array 1 according to the invention when recording an electrocorticogram of a human being. The microelectrode array is wirelessly connected to an electronic control device 10, which comprises in particular an amplifier for the electrode signals and a data acquisition system. The microelectrode array, implanted e.g. below the patient’s scalp, has an energy receiving coil 60 and an antenna 61 for bidirectional data transfer between the microelectrode array 1 and the electronic control device. It is also possible for the energy receiving coil simultaneously to be used as an antenna, such that no separate antenna is required.

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In physics there are two broad ways to look at the world. One is the classical realm of Newton and Einstein, where objects have definite form and interact in clearly determinate ways. The other is the quantum realm, where objects seem nebulous, with a strange mix of particle-like and wave-like behavior. The classical view gives us a wonderfully accurate description of everything from planets to baseballs. The quantum view is necessary to accurately describe the behavior of light and atoms. The classical world dominates on the scale of our daily lives, but nature seems to be rooted in quantum theory at its most basic level.

While both the classical and quantum approach are extremely accurate in their respective regimes, what happens in the intersection of the two regimes is still unclear. We don’t have a rigorous theory combining our classical and quantum models. We also don’t have certain key observational evidence, particularly in the nexus of quantum theory and gravity. But as quantum experiments increasingly study more massive objects and gravity experiments become increasingly sensitive, we’re approaching the point where “quantum gravity” experiments could be made. That’s the goal of a recently proposed experiment.

Continue reading “A New Experiment May Determine Whether Gravity Is Quantized” »

“Tens of billions of dollars have been spent in the past 60 years, entire careers have been invested, but the ability to produce a commercially viable nuclear fusion reactor remains undemonstrated.”

For 60 years the world’s been waiting for cheap, clean, safe, sustainable power from nuclear fusion. Are we there yet?

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