Lifeboat Foundation

Like something out of a spy movie, thermal cameras make it possible to “see” heat by converting infrared radiation into an image. They can detect infrared light given off by animals, vehicles, electrical equipment and even people—leading to specialized applications in a number of industries.

Despite these applications, thermal imaging technology remains too expensive to be used in many consumer products such as self-driving cars or smartphones.

Our team at Flinders University has been working hard to turn this technology into something we can all use, and not just something we see in spy movies. We’ve developed a low-cost thermal imaging lens that could be scaled up and brought into the lives of everyday people. Our findings are published in the journal Advanced Optical Materials.

Have you ever made a great catch—like saving a phone from dropping into a toilet or catching an indoor cat from running outside? Those skills—the ability to grab a moving object—takes precise interactions within and between our visual and motor systems. Researchers at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester have found that the ability to visually predict movement may be an important part of the ability to make a great catch—or grab a moving object.

“We were able to develop a method that allowed us to analyze behaviors in a natural environment with high precision, which is important because, as we showed, behavioral patterns differ in a controlled setting,” said Kuan Hong Wang, Ph.D., a Dean’s Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Wang led the study out today in Current Biology in collaboration with Jude Mitchell, Ph.D., assistant professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester, and Luke Shaw, a graduate student in the Neuroscience Graduate Program at the School of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Rochester. “Understanding how natural behaviors work will give us better insight into what is going awry in an array of neurological disorders.”

The frenzy over artificial intelligence may be ushering in the long-awaited moment when technology goes wild. Or maybe it’s the hype that is out of control.

The interplay of quantum measurements and unitary evolution is expected to produce dynamical phases with different entanglement properties. An entanglement phase transition has now been detected with hybrid quantum circuits in a superconducting processor.

Mercedes-Benz is the first automaker to get permission from California regulators to sell or lease vehicles with Level 3 (hands-off and eyes-off) self driving tech on designated roads, Reuters has reported. The California Department of Motor Vehicles issued a permit for the company’s Drive Pilot system, provided it’s used under certain conditions and on specific roads. Mercedes-Benz previous received a similar certification in Nevada.

Drive Pilot will allow Mercedes-Benz drivers to takes their eyes off the road and hands off the wheel, then do other non-driving activities like watching videos and texting. If the rules for use are followed, Mercedes (and not the driver) will be legally responsible for any accident that happens.

Continue reading “Mercedes becomes the first automaker to sell Level 3 self-driving vehicles in California” »

Scientists have discovered not only that animals age more quickly when they don’t have enough of the amino acid taurine in the body, but that oral taurine supplements can delay aging and increase a healthy lifespan.

An international team of researchers found that taurine supplements delayed aging in worms, mice, and monkeys, and increased the healthy lifespan of middle-aged mice by up to 12 percent.

Continue reading “Boosting One Amino Acid Might Be The Secret to Longer Lifespans” »

BOCA RATON, Fla. (AP) — Before Fred Kalfon began exercising at the Grey Team veterans center a couple months ago, the 81-year-old rarely left his Florida home.

Parkinson’s disease, an inner ear disorder and other neurological problems, all likely caused by the Vietnam vet’s exposure to the infamous defoliant Agent Orange, made it difficult for him to move. His post-traumatic stress disorder, centering on the execution of a woman who helped his platoon, was at its worst.

NASA is worried that SpaceX’s giant new Starship vehicle won’t be ready to carry astronauts to the surface of the moon in late 2025, as currently planned.

In 2021, the agency selected Starship — the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built — to be the first crewed lunar lander for its Artemis program of moon exploration.

To us, stars may resemble cut jewels, glittering coldly against the velvet darkness of the night sky. And for some of them, that may actually be sort of true.

As a certain type of dead star cools, it gradually hardens and crystallizes. Astronomers have found one doing just that in our cosmic backyard, a white dwarf composed primarily of carbon and metallic oxygen just 104 light-years away, whose temperature-mass profile suggests that the center of the star is transforming into a dense, hard, ‘cosmic diamond’ made up of crystallized carbon and oxygen.

The discovery is detailed in a paper accepted into the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and available on preprint website arXiv.