Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers design aqueous battery that stores solar energy better than current lithium technology.

Batteries based on water that can store the electricity that we generate from solar technology? It can now be done.

Researchers at Ohio State University have designed a device with an aqueous flow battery that is based on water as opposed to the standard lithium design of your average rechargeable batteries. It is the first aqueous flow battery to work with a solar cell and it is 20 percent more efficient than the lithium design.

There are many theoretical models to explain such aspects of high energy physics as dark matter, theory of inflation, bariosynthesis, the Higgs mechanism, etc. The discovery of universal expansion is accelerating, precise measurements of characteristics of the cosmic microwave background, and indirect confirmations of the existence of dark matter have significantly advanced observational and theoretical cosmology. The connection between cosmological processes in the early universe and physics of elementary particles is getting clearer. Theories with additional compact measurements (multidimensional gravity) have contributed to the explanation of a series of phenomena in cosmology and the physics of elementary particles including inflation, baryon asymmetry, black holes and dark matter. Multidimensional gravity may become one of the basics of fundamental theoretical physics.

The development of colliders led to the discovery of a number of new particles, which was a great confirmation of the Standard Model ℠ of particle physics. The real SM triumph was the discovery of the Higgs boson in LHC experiments in CERN. However, despite the success of SM in high-energy physics, there is a series of questions and problems that can’t be explained by it—for example, baryon asymmetry, the origin of the Higgs field, the production of the early quasars, etc.

A theoretical direction, which is based on the idea of multidimensional gravity, is being developed at the MEPhI Department № 40 under the supervision of Professor S.G. Rubin. For the past several years, interesting results have been obtained on the basis of this research. In a thesis by Alexey Grobov titled “Effects of extra spaces in particle physics and cosmology,” multidimensional gravitational models contribute to better understanding of connections between astrophysics and microphysics phenomena.

Continue reading “Scientists study effects of extra space dimensions in particle physics and cosmology” »

No shock to me.

Diamandis claimed that we are gearing towards a future possible of “interface mind-machine, where in human brain’s consciousness could be uploaded to computer and then transferred to a new body—probably a cultured in the lab. He estimates that it will just take 20–30 years to be realized.

The reality of extended life longevity to almost immortality is actually not too hard to believe these days. After all science and technology never failed to amuse us to make the once impossible possible.

Continue reading “We Might Be Getting Closer To ‘Immortality’ Through Medical Nanotechnology” »

China has unveiled plans for a futuristic $1.5-billion theme park with links to its high-altitude balloon project that could one day take tourists on leisurely rides to near-space.

http://www.unz.com/akarlin/sinotriumph/

Nothing illustrates China’s meteoric rise as some well chosen numbers.

By the end of the 1990s, China had come to dominate the mainstays of geopolitical power in the 20th century – coal and steel production. As a consequence, it leapt to the top of the Compositive Index of National Capability, which uses military expenditure, military personnel, energy consumption, iron and steel production, urban population, and total population as a proxy of national power. Still, one could legitimately argue that all of these factors are hardly relevant today. While Germany’s fourfold preponderance in steel production over Russia may have been a critical number in 1914, China’s eightfold advantage in steel production over the US by 2014 is all but meaningless in any relevant comparison of national power. The world has moved on.

Continue reading “China Overtakes US in Scientific Articles, Robots, Supercomputers” »

The future frontier for hackers is synthetic biology.

Landmark scientific projects such as the Human Genome Project can encourage international cooperation and bring nations together. However, when security interests and defence research align with the prestige of a landmark project—international competition is all but assured. Synthetic biology is a scientific discipline less than a decade old, and the potential defence and security applications may create a new space race, this time between the USA and China.

The larger concern is not that this race may happen, but that if it does it will politicise and militarise an ethically sensitive area of the life sciences at a time when this frontier technology is critical to maintaining a sustainable world.

Continue reading “The Science of a New Space Race” »

Micro-manufacturing is perfecting quality control.

Biology is the world’s greatest manufacturing platform, according to MIT spinout Ginkgo Bioworks.

The synthetic-biology startup is re-engineering yeast to act as tiny organic “factories” that produce chemicals for the flavor, fragrance, and food industries, with aims of making products more quickly, cheaply, and efficiently than traditional methods.

Continue reading “MIT News: Hacking microbes” »

Hackers new weapon.

Professor John Parrington, from Oxford University, warns that the security services, including the FBI, are increasingly concerned about the spread of gene editing technology by biohackers.

Scientists from the University of Southampton have reengineered the fundamental process of photosynthesis to power useful chemical reactions that could be used to produce biofuels, pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals.

Photosynthesis is the pivotal biological reaction on the planet, providing the food we eat, the oxygen we breathe and removing CO₂ from the atmosphere.

Photosynthesis in plants and algae consists of two reactions, the light-reactions absorb light energy from the sun and use this to split water (H₂O) into electrons, protons and oxygen and the dark-reactions which use the electrons and protons from the light reactions to ‘fix’ CO₂ from the atmosphere into simple sugars that are the basis of the food chain. Importantly, the light reactions have a much higher capacity than the dark reactions resulting in much of the absorbed light energy being wasted as heat rather than being used to ‘fix’ CO₂.