Lifeboat Foundation

Solar energy has barely scratched the surface of its potential to decarbonize the global economy in time to avert catastrophic warming.

For all the activity in the solar energy marketplace, PV technology has barely even begun to hit the global economy in full force. Huge solar arrays filled with rows of super-efficient silicon solar panels are just one piece of an expanding universe. With that in mind, here are 4 new developments that could kick the slow pace of change into high gear.

1. Distributed Solar Energy

Continue reading “The Solar Energy Multiverse Keeps Expanding: Perovskites, Shape-Shifting Molecules, & More” »

The Vari Active Seat is an interesting product. It’s a standing desk chair, which is an optional “in-between” kind of seat for sit/stand desk users. It’s a third choice between sitting and standing, giving users more flexibility for those times when you don’t want to stand or sit.

Official info, current trends, and predictions.

Summary: Information about new experiences is retained by being tied to pre-existing activity patterns in the brain. Memory is acquired when the patterns are connected to each other across brain regions via transient bursts of activity.

Source: Osaka Metropolitan University.

In the brain, neuronal ensembles that bear the memory of an experience existed beforehand, suggesting a paradox that we already know what we are about to know.

Elon Musk talks to Chris Anderson, head and curator of the TED media organisation, about the challenges facing humanity in the coming decades – and why we should be more optimistic.

They discuss climate change, clean energy, electric vehicles, the rise of AI and robotics, brain-computer interfaces, self-driving cars, the revolutionary potential of reusable rockets and the forthcoming missions to Mars, as well as the other projects he is working on.

Continue reading “Elon Musk: A future worth getting excited about” »

Imagine a future in which you could 3D-print an entire robot or stretchy, electronic medical device with the press of a button—no tedious hours spent assembling parts by hand.

That possibility may be closer than ever thanks to a recent advancement in 3D-printing technology led by engineers at CU Boulder. In a new study, the team lays out a strategy for using currently-available printers to create materials that meld solid and liquid components—a tricky feat if you don’t want your robot to collapse.

“I think there’s a future where we could, for example, fabricate a complete system like a robot using this process,” said Robert MacCurdy, senior author of the study and assistant professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Scientists from Beijing set a new quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) world record of 102.2 km (64 miles), a massive leap over the previous record of 18 km (11 miles), according to The Eurasian Times.

The research could eventually lead to a massive quantum communications network that would be virtually hacker-proof due to the nature of the technology.

The researchers, who published their findings in a paper in Nature, demonstrated transmission speeds of 0.54 bits per second, much slower than communications using classical computing devices. Still, this was fast enough for phone call and text message encryption over a distance of 30 km (19 miles).