Lifeboat Foundation

This could mean breathable oxygen and rocket fuel. Not only that, they are suggesting the metal alloy byproducts could be useful again. Interesting.

I think a colony on the moon is sounding a bit more feasible.

The European Space Agency has created an experimental “oxygen plant” in the Netherlands that can extract oxygen trapped within simulated Moon dust.

Continue reading “Making air from Moon dust: Scientists create a prototype oxygen plant” »

A team of European researchers discovered a new high-pressure mineral in a lunar meteorite which is helping to explain what happens to materials within the extreme pressures of the Earth’s mantle.

The new mineral donwilhelmsite is the first high-pressure mineral found in meteorites with application for terrestrial sediments dragged deep into the Earth mantle by plate tectonics. Mainly composed of calcium, aluminum, silicon, and oxygen atoms, donwilhelmsite was discovered within the lunar meteorite Oued Awlitis 001 found in 2014 in the Western Sahara.

The meteorite is compositionally similar to rocks comprising the Earth’s continents. Eroded sediments from these continents are transported by wind and rivers to the oceans, and subducted into the Earth’s mantle as part of the dense oceanic crust. Once dragged to depths of about 460–700 km, their constituent minerals transform at high pressures and high temperatures existing at those depths into denser mineral phases, including the newly discovered mineral donwilhelmsite. In the terrestrial rock cycle, donwilhelmsite is therefore an important agent for transporting continental crustal sediments through the transition zone of the Earth’s mantle (460−700 km depth).

Real-time health monitoring and sensing abilities of robots require soft electronics, but a challenge of using such materials lie in their reliability. Unlike rigid devices, being elastic and pliable makes their performance less repeatable. The variation in reliability is known as hysteresis.

Guided by the theory of contact mechanics, a team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) came up with a new sensor material that has significantly less hysteresis. This ability enables more accurate wearable health technology and robotic sensing.

The research team, led by Assistant Professor Benjamin Tee from the Institute for Health Innovation & Technology at NUS, published their results in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on 28 September 2020.

A study of the industrial catalyst titanium silicalite-1 suggests that the conventional view of the structure of its active sites is wrong. The findings might enable further optimization of related industrial catalysts. Active sites in a widely used zeolite catalyst are dinuclear.

OverviewDefeXtiles are thin, flexible textiles of many materials that can quickly be printed into a variety of 3D forms using an inexpensive, unmodified, 3D printer with no additional software.

Has anyone here done a DNA test for longevity? I’m curious if you have any experiences with specific companies you can share. I researched 7 different big ones and am trying to decide which to go with.

Note: This is the second in our series of posts about the best DNA tests for health and longevity. To better understand the basics of DNA and the different types of DNA tests on the market please go back and read the first piece on The Benefits of Genetic Testing for Longevity.

Continue reading “Best DNA Tests for Health and Longevity” »

DiCarlo and Yamins, who now runs his own lab at Stanford University, are part of a coterie of neuroscientists using deep neural networks to make sense of the brain’s architecture. In particular, scientists have struggled to understand the reasons behind the specializations within the brain for various tasks. They have wondered not just why different parts of the brain do different things, but also why the differences can be so specific: Why, for example, does the brain have an area for recognizing objects in general but also for faces in particular? Deep neural networks are showing that such specializations may be the most efficient way to solve problems.

Neuroscientists are finding that deep-learning networks, often criticized as “black boxes,” can be good models for the organization of living brains.

In a landmark series of calculations, physicists have proved that black holes can shed information, which seems impossible by definition. The work appears to resolve a paradox that Stephen Hawking first described five decades ago.

SpaceX rolled-out Starlink beta internet service in northern United States and southern Canada in October. To date, SpaceX has deployed around 888 internet-beaming satellites out of the 4,409 that will operate in low Earth orbit. SpaceX is looking forward to connecting locations around the world where internet connection is unreliable and non-existent. Earlier this year, SpaceX engineers said Starlink is capable of beaming internet connection to remote areas on Earth; 60 Starlink satellites have the capability to beam low-latency, high-speed broadband internet to 40,000 users streaming high-definition videos simultaneously. Starlink customers receive service via a phased-array antenna dish and Wi-Fi router device. Additionally, SpaceX will build hundreds of ground stations that will receive the satellite’s communication. The stations are the linking factor between user terminals and data center for the Starlink network.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) which regulates telecommunications service, granted SpaceX a telecommunications license to offer internet on August 7th this year. SpaceX recieved approval to operate ground stations on October 26. ACMA granted SpaceX licenses to operate a total of 24 Starlink ground stations in Australia, according to a document published by the regulatory agency.

Approximately 2.5 million individuals in Australia still lack access to internet at home due to the service being either too expensive or unavailable in the rural location they reside in. Connecting rural areas around the globe to the network provides benefits to civilization as a whole. The Internet provides an equal chance for everyone to have access to education and job opportunites at their fingertips. Amid the Coronavirus outbreak, the digital divide among communites became more apparent, many students had to study from home but their households did not have internet service. SpaceX hopes to close the digital divide in rural areas worldwide. As more satellites are deployed to orbit, SpaceX will expand broadband coverage to Australia and the rest of the planet in 2021.