Lifeboat Foundation

It seems inevitable that sooner or later, the performance of autonomous drones will surpass the performance of even the best human pilots. Usually things in robotics that seem inevitable happen later as opposed to sooner, but drone technology seems to be the exception to this. We’ve seen an astonishing amount of progress over the past few years, even to the extent of sophisticated autonomy making it into the hands of consumers at an affordable price.

The cutting edge of drone research right now is putting drones with relatively simple onboard sensing and computing in situations that require fast and highly aggressive maneuvers. In a paper published yesterday in Science Robotics, roboticists from Davide Scaramuzza’s Robotics and Perception Group at the University of Zurich along with partners at Intel demonstrate a small, self-contained, fully autonomous drone that can aggressively fly through complex environments at speeds of up to 40kph.

The world has gained a new weapon in the war on malaria, among the oldest known and deadliest of infectious diseases: the first vaccine shown to help prevent the disease. By one estimate, it will save tens of thousands of children each year.

Malaria kills about half a million people each year, nearly all of them in sub-Saharan Africa — including 260,000 children under 5. The new vaccine, made by GlaxoSmithKline, rouses a child’s immune system to thwart Plasmodium falciparum, the deadliest of five malaria pathogens and the most prevalent in Africa.

The World Health Organization on Wednesday endorsed the vaccine, the first step in a process that should lead to wide distribution in poor countries. To have a malaria vaccine that is safe, moderately effective and ready for distribution is “a historic event,” said Dr. Pedro Alonso, director of the W.H.O.’s global malaria program.

Researchers who built the device say it can lock itself onto the thruster nozzles used by most satellites and stay there for long periods undetected.

Sri Lanka has become the latest victim of China’s toxic counterfeit culture. After receiving the first consignment of organic fertilizers from China, the Sri Lankan agriculture ministry has found that 20,000 metric tons of fertilizers are toxic.

#Srilanka #China #Fertilizers.

Continue reading “Sri Lanka receives toxic chemicals from China, will sue Chinese company | WION News” »

Rearing animals for human consumption and clearing land to grow their feed causes untold environmental damage. Mass-producing plant-based proteins could be equally unsustainable. New technologies are being developed to grow pork, beef and chicken-like tissue in the lab, but can output be upscaled enough to make a real difference?

#agriculture #foodproduction

Continue reading “Lab-grown meat: The future of food? | FT Food Revolution” »

According to astronomers, several asteroids with diameters more than 10 meters collide with the surface of the solar system’s largest planet every year, causing explosions visible from Earth. Previously, such collisions were registered in 1,994 2009, 2,010 2012, 2,016 2017 and 2019.

If confirmed, this will be the ninth recorded impact on Jupiter since the first in July 1,994 when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 shattered into several smaller pieces, sinking one after another into the giant’s gas shell, leaving dark marks on the clouds of Jupiter, some of them the size of our planet.

Continue reading “A Second Object Crashed into Jupiter in Just One Month (video)” »

Surgeons have successfully attached a pig’s kidney to a human and confirmed that the body accepted the transplant in a major scientific breakthrough, The New York Times reported.

This successful operation is a promising sign as scientists work to be able to use animal organs in life-saving transplants in humans.

Scientists altered a pig gene and engineered the kidney to eliminate sugar to avoid an immune system attack. In the past, the human body would reject the transplant due to the presence of glycan, a sugar molecule in pig cells.

Scroll down to watch the video.

Imagine if we could control earthquakes and tsunamis to generate power. Or maybe even terraform every planet in the solar system. These are just a couple of the things that might happen if human civilization was to advance in the future.