Lifeboat Foundation

Award Helps Move Cost-Effective, Productive, Robust Wave Energy Design a Step Closer to Commercialization and Widespread Use

In 1974, Stephen Salter, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, sent his “ducks” into the Scottish seas, launching the world’s first major wave energy project. But the ocean’s rough heaves and surges proved too much for his house-sized, floating generators. Like the more recent Pelamis’ P-750 model and Aquamarine’s Oysters, they succumbed to the power they were meant to harness.

Continue reading “A Window Into the Future of Wave Energy” »

Chip crisis? What chip crisis?

AMD has finally lifted the lid on its Ryzen 6,000 series mobile chips and the core 6nm design is far more than just an optical shrink. The resulting “massive increase in yield” means far more CPUs spilling out of TSMCs foundry, which can only help an industry in a chip supply crisis.

These Zen 3+ CPUs are going to be making their way to gaming laptops soon, and promise great things for notebooks this year. Intel’s Alder Lake mobile CPUs are also going to be dropping at the same time, plus we’ve got Nvidia’s mobile 3,070 Ti and 3,080 Ti to look forward to as well. If you’ve been putting off getting a new mobile gaming machine, then your patience should pay off nicely.

Continue reading “AMD’s ‘fundamental’ 6nm Ryzen upgrade promises ‘massive increase in yield’” »

For the first time, Intel confirmed Arrow Lake will succeed Meteor Lake as a client product (Intel Core series). This is a 2024 product that will most likely utilize the same platform as Meteor Lake. The company plans to market Arrow Lake as the 15th Gen Core series, which confirms a year-to-year product release for consumers.

Intel Arrow Lake will utilize three process nodes: Intel 4, Intel 20A, and External N3 technology. For Lunar Lake, which supposedly launches in 2024+ (so 2025?), the company confirmed it will utilize Intel 18A and unnamed external technology.

Top marketplaces facilitate epic amounts of theft and wash trading, scams are rampant, and the cringe is unbearable. Can it last?

Soft sensing technologies have the potential to revolutionize wearable devices, haptic interfaces, and robotic systems. However, most soft sensing technologies aren’t durable and consume high amounts of energy.

Now, researchers at the University of Cambridge have developed self-healing, biodegradable, 3D-printed materials that could be used in the development of realistic artificial hands and other soft robotics applications. The low-cost jelly-like materials can sense strain, temperature, and humidity. And unlike earlier self-healing robots, they can also partially repair themselves at room temperature.

“Incorporating soft sensors into robotics allows us to get a lot more information from them, like how strain on our muscles allows our brains to get information about the state of our bodies,” said David Hardman from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering the paper’s first author.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=4TCg4vsz6Ac

How many Dyson Spheres, a hypothetical energy source, could be built around stars in the Milky Way?

Researchers calculated the maximum amount of Dyson Spheres in the Milky Way in order to know what it is they did not find.

Researchers have created a device that enables them to electronically steer and focus a beam of terahertz electromagnetic energy with extreme precision. This opens the door to high-resolution, real-time imaging devices that are hundredths the size of other radar systems and more robust than other optical systems.

Terahertz waves, located on the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and infrared light, exist in a “no man’s land” where neither classic electronics nor optical devices can effectively manipulate their energy. But these high-frequency radio waves have many unique properties, like the ability to pass through certain solid materials without the health effects of X-rays. They may also enable higher-speed communications, or vision systems that can see through foggy or dusty environments.

The Terahertz Integrated Electronics Group at MIT, led by Associate Professor Ruonan Han, seeks to bridge this so-called terahertz gap. These researchers have now demonstrated the most precise, electronically steerable, terahertz antenna array, which contains the largest number of antennas. The antenna array, called a “reflectarray,” operates like a controllable mirror with its direction of reflection guided by a computer.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=GM3GM299orc

The photos look like a scene out of science fiction: Robot dogs patrolling the US-Mexico border, climbing over harsh terrain to search for threats and contraband.

But these images are real.

Continue reading “Robot dogs could patrol the US-Mexico border” »

For centuries, people have dreamed of being driven at speed across the vast oceans of space by winds of light.

As whimsical as the idea sounds, nudging reflective sails slowly towards the speed of light using nothing more than the punch of photons might be our only plausible shot at reaching another star inside of a single human lifetime.

It’s also far easier said than done. Particles of light might be fast, but they don’t push very hard. If you make a sail light enough to feel the inertia of radiation, then the constant barrage of photons could inadvertently damage its material.