Lifeboat Foundation

The chance of someone being killed by space junk falling from the sky may seem ridiculously tiny. After all, nobody has yet died from such an accident, though there have been instances of injury and damage to property. But given that we are launching an increasing number of satellites, rockets, and probes into space, do we need to start taking the risk more seriously?

A new study, published in Nature Astronomy, has estimated the chance of causalities from falling rocket parts over the next ten years.

Every minute of every day, debris rains down on us from space – a hazard we are almost completely unaware of. The microscopic particles from asteroids and comets patter down through the atmosphere to settle unnoticed on the Earth’s surface – adding up to around 40,000 tonnes of dust each year.

Artificial Intelligence has ushered the advancement of several disciplines throughout the years. But could it ever discover a new form of physics?

A group of roboticists from Columbia University wanted to exploit the vast potential of AI and find out if it can ever find an “alternative physics.”

Continue reading “Roboticists Developed an AI Program That May Have Discovered an ‘Alternative Physics’” »

Ever wanted to play first-person shooters on a monochrome graphing calculator screen? Well now you can! Or rather, you could for over a decade but I’m just now making a video on how to, ha.

● Links to the sites and resources used:
TI-Connect Graph Link Software.
https://education.ti.com/en/products/computer-software/ti-connect-sw.

Continue reading “LGR — ‘Doom’ on a Calculator! [Ti-83 Plus Games Tutorial]” »

A new division of Science X Network, covers the latest engineering, electronics and technology advances.

Human-like temporal variability in movements is a powerful hint that humans use to ascribe humanness to robots.

A team of researchers at the University of Geneva has found that ketamine is unlikely to be addictive to people who use it for extended periods of time. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes their study of the impact of the synthetic compound on the brains of mice and what they learned about its impact on different brain regions. Rianne Campbell and Mary Kay Lobo, with the University of Maryland School of Medicine have published a News and Views piece in the same journal issue outlining the work done by the team in Switzerland.

A team of researchers at the University of Geneva has found that ketamine is unlikely to be addictive to people who use it for extended periods of time. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes their study of the impact of the synthetic compound on the brains of mice and what they learned about its impact on different brain regions. Rianne Campbell and Mary Kay Lobo, with the University of Maryland School of Medicine have published a News and Views piece in the same journal issue outlining the work done by the team in Switzerland.

In recent years, more vehicles include partially autonomous driving features, such as blind spot detectors, automatic braking and lane sensing, which are said to increase safety. However, a recent study by researchers from The University of Texas at Austin finds that some of that safety benefit may be offset by people driving more, thereby clogging up roads and exposing themselves to more potential crashes.

The study, published recently in Transportation Research Part A—Policy and Practice, found that drivers with one or more of these autonomous features reported higher miles traveled than those of similar profiles who didn’t have them. This is important, because miles traveled is one of the most—if not the most—significant predictor of crashes. The more you drive, the more likely you are to crash.

“What we showed, without any ambiguity in our results, is that after embracing autonomous features, people tend to drive more,” said Chandra Bhat, one of the authors on the project and professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering. “There are certainly engineering benefits to these safety features, but they are offset to a good extent because people are driving more and exposed more.”

This single study has cracked open an entirely new field of scientific research, which Hadany calls phytoacoustics.

Veits wants to know more about the underlying mechanisms behind the phenomenon the research team observed. For instance, what molecular or mechanical processes are driving the vibration and nectar response? She also hopes the work will affirm the idea that it doesn’t always take a traditional sense organ to perceive the world.

“Some people may think, How can [plants] hear or smell?” Veits says. “I’d like people to understand that hearing is not only for ears.”

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are promising solar technologies. Although low-cost wet processing has shown advantages in small-area PSC fabrication, the preparation of uniform charge transport layers with thickness of several nanometers from solution for meter-sized large area products is still challenging.

Recently, a research group led by Prof. LIU Shengzhong from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has developed a facile surface redox engineering (SRE) strategy for vacuum-deposited NiO x to match the slot-die-coated perovskite, and fabricated high-performance large-area perovskite submodules.

This work was published in Joule (“Surface redox engineering of vacuum-deposited NiO x for top-performance perovskite solar cells and modules”).