Lifeboat Foundation

PERHAPS THE MOST PROMISING ROUTE TO FUSION uses Boron instead, reqiring higher temperatures atainable by chirped lasers—using a widely available fuel, and an output which can be turned directly into energy without the need for steam turbines, etc.

“when it’s finally deployed on electric grids, humanity can leave uranium, coal, oil, and gas in the ground. We won’t need to drill for geothermal energy, or line our hills with unrecyclable wind turbines. It won’t matter if the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing…”

Using super powerful lasers to create clean, emission-less energy, HB11 Energy is expanding options for commercial nuclear fusion.

Continue reading “Australian Company Works to Make Energy From Nuclear Fusion — But Without the Fiery Ball of Plasma” »

In groundbreaking new research, scientists have made a structural battery 10 times better than in any previous experiment.

What’s a structural battery, and why is it such a big deal? The term refers to an energy storage device that can also bear weight as part of a structure—like if the studs in your home were all batteries, or if an electric fence also held up a wall.

Tokyo space startup Gitai Japan successfully conducted a technology demonstration of its autonomous robotic arm inside the International Space Station last week, a key milestone as the company prepares to provide robotics as a service in space.

The S1 robotic arm performed two tasks: operating cables and switches, and assembling structures and panels. These tasks — common crew activities — can be used in a general-purpose way for a range of in-space activities. The successful demo raised what NASA calls the “technology readiness level” of the Gitai robot to TRL 7. There are nine TRLs in total and hitting all of them will be critical for Gitai commercializing its robots.

Continue reading “Gitai successfully demos autonomous robot inside the International Space Station” »

“…The authors modified a well-used climate model for exoplanet research and applied it to the planet in Dune. The work was carried out in their spare time and is intended as an appropriate outreach piece to demonstrate how climate scientists use mathematical models to better understand our world and exoplanets…”

Looks like the Kingdom of Jordan to me. 😉

Is Dune scientifically plausible? We ran a climate model to find out.

Continue reading “Dune: we simulated the desert planet of Arrakis to see if humans could survive there” »

Facebook’s response, however, isn’t about how it should change its business model. Instead of any degree of self-awareness, the company has decided it’s going to push back on its critics and try to change the subject. Facebook isn’t actually trying to change any of the things that are wrong with Facebook.

Zuckerberg did talk a lot about the metaverse and said he plans to give more details later this week at Connect, the company’s developer conference.

To be fair, Zuckerberg did say that the company is “on track to spend more than $5 billion on safety and security in 2021.” That might sound impressive, but considering the company made $115 billion in the last 12 months, it’s barely anything. It’s only half of what Facebook says it plans to spend on building the metaverse.

Can intelligence be taught to robots? Advances in physical reservoir computing, a technology that makes sense of brain signals, could contribute to creating artificial intelligence machines that think like us.

In Applied Physics Letters, researchers from the University of Tokyo outline how a robot could be taught to navigate through a maze by electrically stimulating a culture of brain nerve cells connected to the machine.

These nerve cells, or neurons, were grown from living cells and acted as the physical reservoir for the computer to construct coherent signals.

Researchers have confirmed cases of the disease among two unconnected West African populations of chimpanzees, in Guinea-Bissau and the Ivory Coast.

Analysis published in the journal Nature shows the strains of leprosy are different, and both are uncommon among humans.

The origins of the infections are unclear, but the research team – led by the University of Exeter and the Robert Koch Institute – say the findings show leprosy is probably circulating in more wild animals than was previously suspected, either as a result of exposure to humans or other unknown environmental sources.

Cell culture is an essential in vitro experimental tool. An attempt to recapitulate the body in a dish, in two and three dimensions, it has provided the basis for decades of research and probably thousands of PhDs. When it goes wrong, however, whether through accident, infection, misidentification, cross-contamination or uncontrolled differentiation (for stem cells), it can be very stressful, especially in the case of longer-term experiments or when using hard-to-replace cell lines. Another important consideration is reproducibility, which is an acknowledged life sciences industry issue. A 2015 PLOS Biol ogy study, for example, reported in an analysis of previous studies that the prevalence of irreproducible research was over 50% – equivalent to USD $28 billion per year on irreproducible preclinical research.¹ Inconsistencies in cell culture approaches are a potential issue in this regard, as if cells are not maintained or used in a consistent way, or are contaminated with an infection (like mycoplasma), this can negatively impact results and make it more difficult to reproduce and/or accurately interpret data.

“Quality control (QC) is a key part of assuring the quality of outputs from any cell culture process, and is an essential part of assuring reproducibility of scientific quality in research as well as assurance of the quality and safety of cell culture-derived products,” comments Glyn N Stacey, International Stem Cell Banking Initiative, Cambridge, UK, and the Institute for Stem Cells and Regeneration and National Stem Cell Resource Centre, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. “These topics are currently very much in the minds of journal editors, research funders and regulators and are thus of crucial significance to researchers.”

This article will look at these different aspects of cell culture quality control and the types of protocols that can be implemented to help ensure reliable and reproducible results.

The comprehensive maps of the entire observable Universe is now in development.

A Co-founder of Apple has reported that his new organization is moving towards the objective of building the ‘Google maps of space’.

Continue reading “Google Maps of the Cosmos is now in the development stage” »