Lifeboat Foundation

There’s an art to being a performer whose face will never be seen.

Unmanned combat air vehicles have notched up kills against armored fighting vehicles all over the world. Does it mean the end of the tank?

But people need to be kept at the centre of it.

There is more than one reason that we need to reforest Planet Earth. Less than a fifth of Earth’s original forests have survived the rise of humans since the last glaciation, and over half of them are in just five countries (see figure below).

The biggest effect from loss of forests is loss of habitat and the resultant loss of biodiversity, even if you don’t care about climate change. We’re burning billions of acres of pristine Indonesian rain forests to plant palm oil trees (Scientific American) just to get a cooking oil with a better shelf life.

Continue reading “Drones Can Reforest The Planet Faster Than Humans Can” »

IKEA Poland has gathered a multidisciplinary team to imagine how we can integrate a more eco-friendly lifestyle into our future homes. In the centre of Szczecin, Poland, the results are showcased in the Home of Tomorrow — a spacious, plant-filled living environment where visitors can get inspired on how to turn their own homes into healthier and more sustainable spaces.

I’m excited to welcome Catherine Johnson, a planetary geophysicist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona and an expert on the planet Mercury; the innermost planet in our solar system. Spacecraft have only visited Mercury twice, via flyby and orbit. But in 2025, a European mission is scheduled to orbit this puzzling planet with two separate spacecraft and should help further lift the scientific veil on this tiny world. Catherine and I will be talking all things Mercury! Stay tuned.

Airborne taxis are coming?

“Flying taxis” will start taking off from an aerodrome north of Paris as soon as next June, operators said, in a trial ahead of a vast tourist influx for the 2024 Olympics.

The experiment will take place at the Pontoise-Cormeilles-en-Vexin aerodrome some 90 minutes northwest of the capital by car, according to a joint announcement by the Ile-de-France region, airports operator Groupe ADP and the RATP public transport agency.

Continue reading “France to test ‘flying taxis’ from next year: operators” »

Elon Musk’s company SpaceX has given emergency responders in Washington access to its Starlink satellites to help fight fires.

Through the satellite-based internet constellation Starlink, SpaceX plans to provide broadband internet across the globe and enable connectivity to billions of people who may not have reliable internet access.

SpaceX has already launched hundreds of satellites into orbit, though the firefighters’ use of the network is the first early application of the internet service to be disclosed.

VR Boots for gaming.

Last year I did a VR experience meant to simulate what it’s like to be at the US-Mexico border wall. The tall, foreboding wall towered above me, and as I turned from side to side there were fields of grass with some wildlife and a deceivingly harmless-looking border patrol station. I wanted to explore more, so I took a few steps toward the wall, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Mexico side through its tall metal slats.

Continue reading “These Robotic Virtual Reality Boots Make It Feel Like You’re Walking While You Stay in Place” »

This could be important!

A new algorithm that fast forwards simulations could bring greater use ability to current and near-term quantum computers, opening the way for applications to run past strict time limits that hamper many quantum calculations.

“Quantum computers have a limited time to perform calculations before their useful quantum nature, which we call coherence, breaks down,” said Andrew Sornborger of the Computer, Computational, and Statistical Sciences division at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and senior author on a paper announcing the research. “With a new algorithm we have developed and tested, we will be able to fast forward quantum simulations to solve problems that were previously out of reach.”

Continue reading “New quantum computing algorithm skips past time limits imposed by decoherence” »