Lifeboat Foundation

Dark matter is made up of axions, elementary particles that are full of suspense.

About 85 percent of our universe is believed to be composed of dark matter, a hypothetical material that does not interact with light. So it neither reflects nor emits nor absorbs any light rays, and therefore, we can not see this unusual form of the matter directly. However, to understand and explain the nature of dark matter, scientists have created various models.

Continue reading “Good news, universe! Scientists are one step closer to finally understanding dark matter” »

In an unexpected move, on Wednesday, European lawmakers voted to declare some gas and nuclear energy projects “green.” They also agreed that these projects should receive access to cheap loans and even state subsidies, according to a report by The New York Times.

The proposal was made by the European Commission and the lawmakers present at the European Parliament meeting in Strasbourg, France, voted in favor of accepting it, with 328 votes backing the proposal and 278 against it. This decision was much to the dismay of detractors who argue that these projects are not environmentally friendly.

The policy, known as the “taxonomy,” will give the bloc, a group of 27 industrialized and wealthy nations, support as it struggles to replace Russian energy sources in order to penalize the Kremlin for its invasion of Ukraine. It will also aim to thwart “greenwashing”, the practice of labeling projects green that are not truly so.

The EuroFusion consortium hopes its DEMOnstration Power Plant will take fusion power from the lab to commercial electricity supply by 2054.

Western intelligence services are raising alarms about Cyclops Blink, the latest tool at the notorious group’s disposal.

Chinese researchers have reportedly developed artificial intelligence (AI) that can read the minds of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials.

A video report detailed the software’s features and attributed it to the Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center, a relatively new institute focused on health and environment, energy research, information management and artificial intelligence.

The technology essentially tests one’s level of loyalty to the CCP. According to the center, it would “further solidify their [members’] confidence and determination to be grateful to the party, listen to the party and follow the party.”

In an illuminating study, Rentschler et al. leverage data to analyze populations at risk of flood exposure. They explore the overlap between poverty, geography, and flood risk while taking into account pluvial, fluvial, and coastal flooding. Their work reveals that hundreds of millions of people in low-income regions are directly exposed to flood risk. The authors emphasize that efforts towards global flood mitigation should take socioeconomic factors into account since many low-income regions have both high flood risk and poor existing flood mitigation measures in place.

#geography #global #asia #africa #datascience

Floods are most devastating for those who can least afford to be hit. Globally, 1.8 billion people face high flood risks; 89% of them live in developing countries; 170 million of them live in extreme poverty making them most vulnerable.

The motion of a tiny number of charged particles may solve a longstanding mystery about thin gas disks rotating around young stars, according to a new study from Caltech.

These features, called accretion disks, last tens of millions of years and are an early phase of solar system evolution. They contain a small fraction of the mass of the star around which they swirl; imagine a Saturn-like ring as big as the solar system. They are called accretion disks because the gas in these disks spirals slowly inward toward the star.

Continue reading “Why does inside of solar system not spin faster? Old mystery has possible new solution” »

Graphcore and Korea’s Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) have entered a multi-year partnership to develop new software approaches for high-efficiency AI compute.

Running from 2022 through 2025 and funded by the Korean government, the partnership will combine the world-leading capabilities of ETRI—Korea’s largest public research institute by R&D expenditure and license income—with Graphcore’s proven leadership in developing and commercialising efficient, high-performance compute systems for machine intelligence.

At least 750,000 entries containing Chinese citizens’ personal information were stolen and sold online by an unknown hacker.