Lifeboat Foundation

This spring, the biotechnology company Oxitec plans to release genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes in the Florida Keys. Oxitec says its technology will combat dengue fever, a potentially life-threatening disease, and other mosquito-borne viruses — such as Zika — mainly transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

While there have been more than 7300 dengue cases reported in the United States between 2010 and 2020, a majority are contracted in Asia and the Caribbean, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Florida, however, there were 41 travel-related cases in 2020, compared with 71 cases that were transmitted locally.

In high-end 21st century communications, information travels in the form of a stream of light pulses typically traveling through fiber optic cables. Each pulse can be as faint as a single photon, the smallest possible unit (quantum) of light. The speed at which such systems can operate depends critically on how fast and how accurately detectors on the receiving end can discriminate and process those photons.

Now scientists at the National institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have devised a method that can detect individual photons at a rate 10 times faster than the best existing technology, with lower error rates, higher detection efficiency, and less noise.

“While classical communication and detection can operate at blazing speeds, quantum systems, which need that ultimate sensitivity for those faintest of pulses, are limited to much lower speeds,” said group leader Alan Migdall. “Combining that ultimate sensitivity with the ability to achieve the counting of photons at high rates has been a long-standing challenge. Here we are pushing both performance limits all in the same device.”

What do you think Chris Smedley.

After a decade of counter-insurgency, plans are changing | Europe.

Inverse spoke to Andrew Schwartz, a University of Pittsburgh neurobiologist who helped pioneer BCI technology — and he says that Neuralink seems to be bragging about things that scientists, himself included, could do decades ago.

Neuralink made a huge production out of something researchers have been able to do for decades.

Researchers at Utrecht University and at TU Wien (Vienna) create special light waves that can penetrate even opaque materials as if the material was not even there.

Why is sugar not transparent? Because light that penetrates a piece of sugar is scattered, altered and deflected in a highly complicated way. However, as a research team from TU Wien (Vienna) and Utrecht University (Netherlands) has now been able to show, there is a class of very special light waves for which this does not apply: for any specific disordered medium – such as the sugar cube you may just have put in your coffee – tailor-made light beams can be constructed that are practically not changed by this medium, but only attenuated. The light beam penetrates the medium, and a light pattern arrives on the other side that has the same shape as if the medium were not there at all.

This idea of “scattering-invariant modes of light” can also be used to specifically examine the interior of objects. The results have now been published in the journal Nature Photonics.

Yamaha reveals a 496-horsepower prototype electric motor. It’s willing and able to develop it for a car company, and do development work on the car itself.

FLIR Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: FLIR) announced it has won a contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to rapidly develop novel fabrics with embedded catalysts and chemistries that can fight and reduce chemical and biological threats upon contact.

The revolutionary fabrics will be incorporated into protective suits and other equipment such as boots, gloves, and eye protection that can be worn by troops on the battlefield, medical experts, healthcare workers, and more. FLIR received $11.2 million in initial funding for the potential five-year effort worth up to $20.5 million, including options.

Continue reading “FLIR Wins DARPA Contract Worth Up to $20.5M to Develop Revolutionary New Protective Fabrics for Chem-Bio Defense” »

The HiDRON stratospheric glider, a joint project between UAVOS and STRATODYNAMICS, has successfully carried out its regular test flight. UAVOS’ operators launched the stratospheric aircraft from a high-altitude balloon carrying a technology supported by NASA’s Flight Opportunities program successfully deploying an experimental payload to 24 km altitude and back.

Extensive testing was performed to test operation in high altitude flight regimes utilizing UAVOS’ autopilot system and payload test services. A launch routine was tested allowing a safe transition from free-fall to stable horizontal flight in thin air after being dropped from the balloon. UAVOS’ autopilot system has once again proven its superior long-range performance Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) capabilities.

Continue reading “UAVOS and STRATODYNAMICS Test HiDRON Stratospheric Glider To Validate Flight Control And Payload Data” »

As the Tufts scientists were creating the physical xenobot organisms, researchers working in parallel at the University of Vermont used a supercomputer to run simulations to try and find ways of assembling these living robots in order to perform useful tasks.

Scientists at Tufts University have created a strange new hybrid biological/mechanical organism that’s made of living cells, but operates like a robot.