Lifeboat Foundation

For the last few decades, battery research has largely focused on rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, which are used in everything from electric cars to portable electronics and have improved dramatically in terms of affordability and capacity. But nonrechargeable batteries have seen little improvement during that time, despite their crucial role in many important uses such as implantable medical devices like pacemakers.

Now, researchers at MIT have come up with a way to improve the energy density of these nonrechargeable, or “primary,” batteries. They say it could enable up to a 50% increase in useful lifetime, or a corresponding decrease in size and weight for a given amount of power or energy capacity, while also improving safety, with little or no increase in cost.

The new findings, which involve substituting the conventionally inactive battery electrolyte with a material that is active for energy delivery, are reported today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in a paper by MIT Kavanaugh Postdoctoral Fellow Haining Gao, graduate student Alejandro Sevilla, associate professor of mechanical engineering Betar Gallant, and four others at MIT and Caltech.

A joint NASA/Italian space mission has put its sunglasses on to observe polarized X-ray light from a corona of hot gas around the Cygnus X-1 black hole.

New foundation aims for scientific and rhetorical value – and to run the debug cycle for longevity research.

The Longevity Investors Conference is quickly turning into one of the highlights in the longevity calendar, and we were delighted to be able to interview some of the speakers in a few ‘backstage’ moments.

Continue reading “Aubrey de Grey on longevity at scale” »

𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐈𝐬 𝐎𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐚 𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐔𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐀𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬, 𝐒𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐈𝐧 𝐑𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐨𝐫𝐲

“𝙒𝙚 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙘𝙚𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙡𝙙 𝙖𝙨 𝙖 𝙢𝙚𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙮,” 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙖𝙪𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙧𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙖 𝙧𝙚𝙘𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙥𝙖𝙥𝙚𝙧 𝙬𝙧𝙤𝙩𝙚. “𝙄𝙣 𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙙𝙨, 𝙩𝙚𝙘𝙝𝙣𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮, 𝙬𝙚 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙘𝙞𝙤𝙪𝙨𝙡𝙮 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙘𝙚𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙣𝙮𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙙𝙞𝙧𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙡𝙮.”

“We perceive the world as a memory,” the authors of a recent paper wrote. “In other words, technically, we are not consciously perceiving anything directly.”

Continue reading “Conscious Reality Is Only a Memory of Unconscious Actions, Scientists Propose In Radical New Theory” »

A 2022 pilot proved to officials at Dominion Energy that Spot can help improve efficiency and boost worker safety.

HBP researchers have trained a large-scale model of the primary visual cortex of the mouse to solve visual tasks in a highly robust way. The model provides the basis for a new generation of neural network models. Due to their versatility and energy-efficient processing, these models can contribute to advances in neuromorphic computing.

Modeling the brain can have a massive impact on artificial intelligence (AI): since the brain processes images in a much more energy-efficient way than artificial networks, scientists take inspiration from neuroscience to create neural networks that function similarly to the biological ones to significantly save energy.

In that sense, brain-inspired neural networks are likely to have an impact on future technology, by serving as blueprints for visual processing in more energy-efficient neuromorphic hardware. Now, a study by Human Brain Project (HBP) researchers from the Graz University of Technology (Austria) showed how a large data-based model can reproduce a number of the brain’s visual processing capabilities in a versatile and accurate way. The results were published in the journal Science Advances.

For Lisa Kaltenegger and her generation of exoplanet astronomers, decades of planning have set the stage for an epochal detection.

More than a decade ago, scientists started finding peculiar droplets inside cells. Now researchers are trying to work out how these ubiquitous beads form and what they do.

The obscured “zone of avoidance” in space is a place of mystery, and scientists are peering at what’s inside it.