Lifeboat Foundation

Tesla has unveiled its latest giant Megapack project consisting of 360 MWh of energy storage capacity used in concert with a solar farm to help power 60,000 homes.

Arevon is becoming one of Tesla’s biggest partners in the deployment of energy storage capacity.

Last year, Tesla and Arevon signed a deal for the former to supply a record amount of 2 GW/6 GWh of Megapack batteries to the latter for several new energy storage projects.

Mathematics is the language of the universe: It is probable that every major scientific discovery has used mathematics in some form.

Crossrail, or the Elizabeth Line, is set to revolutionize London transport, with high-speed trains running from east to west underneath the UK capital.

Crossrail, or the Elizabeth Line, is set to revolutionize London transport, with high-speed trains running from east to west underneath the UK capital.

A shadow war is a war that, officially, does not exist. As mercenaries, hackers and drones take over the role armies once played, shadow wars are on the rise.

States are evading their responsibilities and driving the privatization of violence. War in the grey-zone is a booming business: Mercenaries and digital weaponry regularly carry out attacks, while those giving orders remain in the shadows.

Continue reading “Drones, hackers and mercenaries — The future of war | DW Documentary” »

The notion of a large metallic robot that speaks in monotone and moves in lumbering, deliberate steps is somewhat hard to shake. But practitioners in the field of soft robotics have an entirely different image in mind—autonomous devices composed of compliant parts that are gentle to the touch, more closely resembling human fingers than R2-D2 or Robby the Robot.

That model is now being pursued by Professor Edward Adelson and his Perceptual Science Group at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). In a recent project, Adelson and Sandra Liu—a mechanical engineering Ph.D. student at CSAIL—have developed a robotic gripper using novel “GelSight Fin Ray” fingers that, like the human hand, is supple enough to manipulate objects. What sets this work apart from other efforts in the field is that Liu and Adelson have endowed their gripper with touch sensors that can meet or exceed the sensitivity of human skin.

Continue reading “A flexible way to grab items with feeling: Engineers develop a robotic gripper with rich sensory capabilities” »

Illinois Tech designs new engine brains that could reduce emissions.

I tried to find the single biggest laser in the world, but it turns out I’m spoiled for choice.

Nature may abhor a vacuum, but it sure loves structure. Complex, self-organized assemblies are found throughout the natural world, from double-helix DNA molecules to the photonic crystals that make butterfly wings so colorful and iridescent.

A Cornell-led project has created synthetic nanoclusters that can mimic this hierarchical self-assembly all the way from the nanometer to the centimeter scale, spanning seven orders of magnitude. The resulting synthetic thin films have the potential to serve as a model system for exploring biomimetic hierarchical systems and future advanced functions.

This image shows synthetic nanoparticles as they self-organize into filaments, then twist into cables, then bundle together into highly ordered bands, ultimately resulting in a thin film that is patterned at centimeter scales. (Image courtesy of the researchers)