Lifeboat Foundation

Round Rock-based motor company Infinitum Electric is expanding as it steps up production and breaks into the electric vehicle business.

The company is growing its footprint and workforce on the back of an $80 million funding round, which it announced this week. The financial infusion brings the company’s funding to date to $135 million.

Infinitum Electric was founded in 2016 in Austin by CEO Ben Schuler and moved to Round Rock in 2019. The motors include circuit boards that cut down on some of the costly equipment required in traditional motors, making Infinitum’s motors more efficient, smaller and quieter than traditional motors, according to the company.

The unexpected discovery of “ghost” fossils belonging to tiny, ancient organisms could provide insights about how life reacts to climate change in Earth’s oceans.

Looking through a powerful microscope, researchers were stunned to see the impressions left by single-celled plankton, or fossilized nannoplankton, that lived millions of years ago – especially since they were analyzing something else.

A study detailing the findings published Thursday in the journal Science.

Virginia Tech researchers are exploring quantum applications to improve communications systems, bring new methods for securing data, make devices more energy efficient, and make computers smaller.

Scientists created an AI that can detect someone’s race from their x-rays with over 90% accuracy. Problem is, they don’t know how it works.

Circa 2014

For most of us, even one bite of chocolate is enough to send our taste buds into ecstasy. Now, scientists have concocted a process to make these dark, dulcet morsels look as decadent as they taste.

Switzerland-based company Morphotonix has given traditional Swiss chocolate-making a colorful twist: It’s devised a method to imprint shiny holograms onto the sweet surfaces — sans harmful additives. Which means when you tilt the goodies from side to side, rainbow stars and swirly patterns on the chocolate’s surface dance and shimmer in the light.

Continue reading “Holographic Chocolates Look As Beautiful As They Taste” »

Circa 2020 Electricity free grow lights using quantum dot leds.

While costs are coming down for controlled environment agriculture, electricity remains one of the highest because it has to power the LEDs that provide the lighting formula for plant growth. But a materials science company called UbiQD wants to change that by replacing electricity with a more efficient means of lighting: quantum dots.

Quantum dots are semiconductor nanoparticles that can transport electrons. When exposed to UV lighting, these particles emit lights of various colors, and can be adjusted in size to emit a specific color. For example, larger particles emit redder wavelengths, while smaller ones shift to blue.

Continue reading “UbiQD’s Quantum Dot Tech Is an Electricity Free Lighting Option for Greenhouses” »

From TVs, to solar cells, to cutting-edge cancer treatments, quantum dots are beginning to exhibit their unique potential in many fields, but manufacturing them at scale would raise some issues concerning the environment. Scientists at Japan’s Hiroshima University have demonstrated a greener path forward in this area, by using discarded rice husks to produce the world’s first silicon quantum dot LED light.

“Since typical quantum dots often involve toxic material, such as cadmium, lead, or other heavy metals, environmental concerns have been frequently deliberated when using nanomaterials,” said Ken-ichi Saitow, lead study author and a professor of chemistry at Hiroshima University. “Our proposed process and fabrication method for quantum dots minimizes these concerns.”

The type of quantum dots pursued by Saitow and his team are silicon quantum dots, which eschew heavy metals and offer some other benefits, too. Their stability and higher operating temperatures makes them one of the leading candidates for use in quantum computing, while their non-toxic nature also makes them suitable for use in medical applications.

For the first time ever, scientists have grown plants in soil samples collected from the Moon fifty years ago, a feat that could have implications not only for prolonged space exploration, but for plants trying to thrive in harsh conditions on our planet.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

Canada’s government said it would ban the use of the two Chinese telecommunications giants’ 5G gear due to national security concerns. The move follows similar bans in other Western countries.