Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 3

A fresh study suggests that the way a person’s pupils change while they concentrate hints at how well that mental scratchpad is working.

Working memory does more than hold stray reminders; it stitches together phone digits until they are dialed, keeps track of a spoken sentence until the meaning lands, and buffers half-finished ideas during problem-solving.

Unlike long-term memory, it works on a tight clock measured in seconds. Because the capacity is finite – typically three to seven items at once – small differences in efficiency can ripple through reading, mathematics, and decision-making.

Read more | >

A research team from the University of South China has developed a set of algorithms to help optimize radiation-shielding design for new types of nuclear reactors.

Their achievement, which was published in the journal of Nuclear Science and Techniques and shared by TechXplore, will help engineers meet the difficult demands for next-gen reactors, including transportable models, as well as those intended for marine and space environments.

Safety is of paramount concern when it comes to nuclear energy, especially considering the public’s perception of this clean energy source following some notable accidents over the past 68 years.

Read more | >

Notably in April, Sierra Space announced the completion of successful hypervelocity impact trials conducted at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico, to optimize the structural integrity of Sierra Space’s LIFE habitat space station technology. This included the use of NASA’s .50 caliber two-stage light gas gun to replicate micrometeoroid and orbital debris (MMOD) impacts to LIFE’s outer shield, to prepare the space station of use in orbit.

About Sierra Space.

Sierra Space is a leading commercial space company and emerging defense tech prime that is building an end-to-end business and technology platform in space to benefit and protect life on Earth. With more than 30 years and 500 missions of space flight heritage, the company is reinventing both space transportation with Dream Chaser®, the world’s only commercial spaceplane, and the future of space destinations with the company’s expandable space station technology. Using commercial business models, the company is also delivering orbital services to commercial, DoD and national security organizations, expanding production capacity to meet the needs of constellation programs. In addition, Sierra Space builds a host of systems and subsystems across solar power, mechanics and motion control, environmental control, life support, propulsion and thermal control, offering myriad space-as-a-service solutions for the new space economy.

Read more | >

Machine-learning algorithms can now estimate the “brain age” of infants with unprecedented precision by analyzing electrical brain signals recorded using electroencephalography (EEG).

A team led by Sarah Lippé at Université de Montréal’s Department of Psychology has developed a method that can determine in minutes whether a baby’s brain development is advanced, delayed or in line with their chronological age.

This breakthrough promises to enable early screening and personalized monitoring of developmental disorders in babies.

Read more | >

SpaceX’s prototype Starship exploded over the Indian Ocean on Tuesday, capping another bumpy test flight for the rocket central to billionaire Elon Musk’s dream of colonizing Mars.

The biggest and most powerful launch vehicle ever built lifted off around 6:36 pm (2336 GMT) from the company’s Starbase facility, near a southern Texas village that earlier this month voted to become a city — also named Starbase.

Excitement ran high among SpaceX engineers and spectators alike, after the last two outings ended with the upper stage disintegrating in fiery cascades over the Caribbean.

Read more | >

A research team led by the Borzage Laboratory at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles tested a new functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analysis method to measure cerebrovascular health in aging adults. What they found was unexpected and validated the usefulness of this method for measuring neurovascular aging in childhood diseases.

The researchers measured the cerebrovascular reactivity of the brains of 53 men and women between the ages of 51 to 83. Cerebrovascular reactivity is the ability of the blood vessels in the brain to dilate in response to a stimulus. The fMRI method they used—known as blood oxygen level dependent-cerebrovascular reactivity (BOLD-CVR)—measures the ability of the brain’s vessels to flexibly regulate blood flow in response to changes in carbon dioxide levels.

“How well the vessels react reveals a lot about your brain health,” says lead author Bethany Sussman, Ph.D., Research Scientist, Neonatology, at CHLA. “If a certain part of the brain can’t perform that function very well, that area is likely more susceptible to stroke.

Read more | >