Lifeboat Foundation

An explosive material fabricated with a highly porous structure is inactive but is easily “switched on” when filled with water.

Despite great effort, researchers have failed to find ways to make explosives entirely safe during storage yet still easily usable when needed. Now a research team has demonstrated an explosive with these properties by creating a highly porous structure for their explosive material [1]. The voids prevent the structure from supporting a sustained propagating wave of detonation, but filling the voids with water can quickly restore the explosive capacity. The researchers hope this technique can provide safer explosives for use in areas such as mining and oil exploration.

Storing highly explosive materials is inherently risky—in the military world, for example, over 500 accidental explosions occurred at munitions sites between 1979 and 2013, according to a survey [2]. These materials could be safer if they could be easily switched between an explosive-ready state and a “safe” state. “A switchable explosive is the holy grail of explosives research,” says chemist Alexander Mueller of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. He and his colleagues believe that they are the first to achieve it.

Researchers have developed a method for measuring the strength of certain ion–electron interactions in water, with initial tests throwing up unexpected results.

Researchers have demonstrated quantum gate operations in a system where voltage pulses cause neighboring electron spins to swap with one another.

If a helical bacteria’s tail propulsion is strong enough to deform the yield-stress fluid ahead of the swimmer, locomotion proceeds.

A trio of evolutionary biologists, two with Carleton University, the other with Seoul National University, has apparently solved the paradox of aposematism—how animals managed to evolve with bright colors to warn predators of their toxic nature. In their paper study, published in the journal Science, Karl Loeffler-Henry, Changku Kang and Thomas Sherratt, conducted an analysis of the family tree of over 1,000 frog, salamander and newt species.

For many years, evolutionary biologists have puzzled over the seeming paradox of aposematism, in which animals such as frogs develop bright colors to warn potential predators that eating them will make them sick or even kill them. How could such colors have evolved? Animals that stand out tend to be the first caught and eaten, preventing the evolution of even brighter colors from occurring. In this new effort, the research team set out to solve this riddle.

The work involved analyzing the family tree of 1,100 species of frogs, salamanders and newts, looking for evidence of evolution of aposematism in a new way—by breaking them down into more categories than previous efforts—five instead of two: conspicuous, cryptic, partially conspicuous, fully conspicuous and polymorphic.

Two newly discovered genes have been linked to schizophrenia while a previously known gene associated with schizophrenia risk has also been linked to autism in a massive new study.

Scientists say the findings increase our understanding of brain diseases and could lead to new treatment targets.

Continue reading “Scientists Identify New Schizophrenia Risk Genes in First-of-Its-Kind Study” »

These folks engineering a much better way to deliver your basically anything. If you want to engineer your own creations with me every month, just head to https://www.crunchlabs.com where you can get 2 boxes FREE!

Again, this was not sponsored in anyway nor did they pay for any of my travel or accommodations but if you want to learn more about Zipline here is their website-https://www.flyzipline.com/

Continue reading “Amazing Invention- This Drone Will Change Everything” »

Dr. Aled Roberts.

Scientists have been testing various materials for the construction of such habitats on Mars. An innovation in this field comes from scientists at the University of Manchester. They have developed a new ‘cosmic concrete’ composed of extraterrestrial dust, a press release stated.

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Martian soil is generally poor for growing plants, but researchers have used CRISPR to create gene-edited rice that might be able to germinate and grow despite the hostile habitat.

By Leah Crane

Continue reading “Gene-edited rice may be able to grow on Mars” »