Lifeboat Foundation

Your smartwatch screen may soon be rather more impressive: This 4.7-inch organic LCD display is flexible enough to wrap right around a wrist.

Produced by FlexEnable from the UK, the screen squeezes a full-color organic LCD onto a sheet that measures just one hundredth of an inch thick, which makes it highly conformable. The company claims that it can easily run vivid colour and smooth video content, which is a sight better than most wearables.

It’s not the first flexible display, of course. LG already has an 18-inch OLED panel that has enough flexibility to roll into a tube that’s an inch across. But this concept—which, sadly, is all it is right now—is the first large, conformable OLCD designed for wearables that we’ve seen.

Continue reading “This 4.7-Inch Organic LCD Wraps Right Around Your Wrist” »

We’ve just wrapped up the second day of Mobile World Congress, the annual mobile technology conference in Barcelona. We’ve seen smartphones, VR headsets, and some batshit crazy stuff (see photo above)—and almost all of it has been awesome. Here are some of our favorites:

UC Berkeley engineers, in collaboration with colleagues at Taiwan’s National Chiao Tung University, have developed a 3D printing process for creating basic electronic components, such as resistors, inductors, capacitors, and integrated wireless electrical sensing systems.

As a test, they printed a wireless “smart cap” for a milk carton that detected signs of spoilage using embedded sensors.

New technology could take us to Mars in as fast as 3 days.

These underground farms could feed 9 billion people, using 1/3 the space of Hawaii.

The VR system from HTC and Valve comes with greater sticker shock, but also includes more stuff.

“There are real wolves out there. I happen to believe my computer model when it says that the End-Of-The-World-As-We-Know-It is not only a possibility, but a high probability. As the Chinese proverb says, “If you don’t change direction, you will end up where you are headed.” I think we are headed for disaster. But that thought does not thrill me. And it does not panic me into trying to fashion a world so controlled that it is actually predictable. Rather it energizes me to work toward a vision of a World-That-Works-For-Everyone, including all the nonhuman Everyones, a world in which eight billion people (or preferably fewer) maintain a European standard of living in a way that does not undermine the resource base, a world that evolves and learns and dances and operates from generosity and joy.”

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Interstellar space travel is still a matter of science fiction. With our current propulsion systems, it would take millennia to really travel on an interstellar level. However, science is now looking towards new propulsion systems to make interstellar reach possible in significantly less time.

One such system is called Photonic Propulsion, and it’s an insanely interesting idea. The video you see above is a quick summary of a talk given by Philip Lubin of University of California Santa Barbara. It’s a two minute selected sampling of a much larger talk, which you can watch in the source link below.

Continue reading “Could we get to Mars in 3 days? Nasa’s considering Photonic Propulsion tech” »

Living on a houseboat may seem very romantic, but the day-to-day misery of hauling water from shore and listening to the thump of the generator can soon take the icing off the cupcake. As a glimpse into what could be the future of aquatic living, two Fraunhofer Institutes and their partners are working on a self-sufficient floating home that creates its own water, electricity, and heat without looking like a works barge.

Housing shortages are a recurring problem in many parts of Europe and the canals of Amsterdam and London show that floating homes are hardly a new idea. But such residences must either be situated in the few places where power and water hook-ups are practical or find tenants who don’t mind living off the grid.

To make it feasible to live comfortably without being tied up to a pier, Fraunhofer and its associates have initiated the Lusation autartec project, which is aimed at a Germany that is looking more toward floating homes for both recreation and residency.

Continue reading “Self-sufficient floating home to create its own water and energy” »