Lifeboat Foundation

Turns out, they’re great navigators with some clever strategies for flight.

* The world-first study unlocked a century-old mystery of what insects are up to during migration * The current study followed radio-tagged insects in a light aircraft * It revealed that the hawkmoths are excellent navigators.

Insects are some of the most common migrating animals on Earth-a fact that is often forgotten. Insect migrants such as monarch butterflies, locusts, mosquitoes, and bees, far outnumber ‘popular’ migrants such as birds and mammals. Yet their migration is the least understood form of long-range animal movement.

Continue reading “A first-of-its-kind study reveals that migrant insects can travel in perfectly straight flight paths” »

China produced an average of 407,181 scientific publications annually, overtaking the US’s 293,434 journal articles, says research.

China has overcome the US to take the top spot globally for “high impact” studies and volume of scientific research, according to a report published by Japan’s National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTP).

China currently publishes the most scholarly papers each year, followed by the US and Germany, reported The Guardian.

Continue reading “China surpasses the US in scientific research volume and quality, study claims” »

The new concrete made of tyres will be eco-friendly and cheaper. Engineers from RMIT succeeded in producing concrete from materials such as gravel, tyre, rubber, and crushed rock. It is believed that this innovation will be cheaper and eco-friendly. The team is now looking into reinforcing the concrete to see how it can work in structural elements. A group of researchers from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), has succeeded in replacing the classic method of making concrete, which is made of gravel and crushed rock, with rubber from discarded tyres that are suitable for building codes.

According to the press release that has been published by the university, new greener and lighter concrete also promises to reduce manufacturing and transportation costs significantly. Small amounts of rubber particles from tyres are already used to replace these concrete aggregates. However, the previous process of replacing all concrete with aggregates had not been successful.

The study published in the Resources, Conservation & Recycling journal showed the tyres’ manufacturing process.

Continue reading “Australian engineers produce concrete from tyre, rubber, and rocks” »

The machine functions in curved spaces defying the laws of Earth.

The robot recreates the same environment found around black holes. It does so by moving in a curved space. It could one day allow us to further study black holes.

There is one constant on Earth and that is that when humans, animals, and machines move, they always push against something, whether it’s the ground, air, or water. This fact consists of the law of conservation momentum and was up to now undisputed.

Continue reading “Researchers developed a new robot that could help us travel around black holes” »

Asteroid Bennu was in the news recently for an astonishing discovery. NASA scientists revealed that the asteroid has a surface that appears similar to plastic balls. The discovery dates back to October 2020, when NASA successfully collected a sample from the asteroid.

During the sampling event, the sampling head of the OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) spacecraft had sunk by 1.6 feet (0.5 meters) into the surface of the asteroid. The space agency found that Bennu’s exterior is made of loosely packed particles that are haphazardly packed together. The spacecraft would have sunk right into the asteroid if it hadn’t fired its thruster to back away after collecting dust and rocks.