Lifeboat Foundation

Many colorful stars are packed close together in this image of the globular cluster NGC 1805, taken by the NASA /ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This tight grouping of thousands of stars is located near the edge of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way. The stars orbit closely to one another, like bees swarming around a hive. In the dense center of one of these clusters, stars are 100 to 1000 times closer together than the nearest stars are to our Sun, making planetary systems around them unlikely.

The striking difference in star colors is illustrated beautifully in this image, which combines two different types of light: blue stars, shining brightest in near-ultraviolet light, and red stars, illuminated in red and near-infrared. Space telescopes like Hubble can observe in the ultraviolet because they are positioned above Earth’s atmosphere, which absorbs most of this wavelength, making it inaccessible to ground-based facilities.

This young globular cluster can be seen from the southern hemisphere, in the Dorado constellation, which is Portugese for dolphinfish. Usually, globular clusters contain stars which are born at the same time; however, NGC 1805 is unusual as it appears to host two different populations of stars with ages millions of years apart. Observing such clusters of stars can help astronomers understand how stars evolve, and what factors determine whether they end their lives as white dwarfs, or explode as supernovae.

A Tesla Model 3 from China has recently gone where no other Model 3 has gone before. In an epic 5,500 km (3,400-mile) road trip, a white Tesla Model 3 Dual Motor AWD started a long journey from Shenzhen all the way to the base camp of Mt. Everest. What’s more remarkable was that over the long trip, the Tesla owner remarked that he experienced no range anxiety at all, despite his extremely remote destination.

Driving to the base camp of Mt. Everest is no joke, and it is hardly something that is considered relaxing and convenient. Needless to say, any trip that involves one of the highest and most dangerous mountains in the world is not something that is taken lightly. Some who drive to Everest’s base camp even utilize support vehicles just to be on the safe side. The Model 3 owner, for his part, took on the journey alone.

Extremely energy-efficient artificial intelligence is now closer to reality after a study by UCL researchers found a way to improve the accuracy of a brain-inspired computing system.

The system, which uses memristors to create artificial neural networks, is at least 1,000 times more energy efficient than conventional transistor-based AI hardware, but has until now been more prone to error.

Existing AI is extremely energy-intensive — training one AI model can generate 284 tonnes of carbon dioxide, equivalent to the lifetime emissions of five cars. Replacing the transistors that make up all digital devices with memristors, a novel electronic device first built in 2008, could reduce this to a fraction of a tonne of carbon dioxide — equivalent to emissions generated in an afternoon’s drive.

Scientists on an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider see massive W particles emerging from collisions with electromagnetic fields. How can this happen?

The Large Hadron Collider plays with Albert Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc², to transform matter into energy and then back into different forms of matter. But on rare occasions, it can skip the first step and collide pure energy—in the form of electromagnetic waves.

Last year, the ATLAS experiment at the LHC observed two photons, particles of light, ricocheting off one another and producing two new photons. This year, they’ve taken that research a step further and discovered photons merging and transforming into something even more interesting: W bosons, particles that carry the weak force, which governs nuclear decay.

Virgin Galactic plans to conducts its next crewed spaceflight test on Oct. 22, according to documents the company filed with the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday.

The flight will be the first of two that the space tourism company has planned to complete testing of its SpaceShipTwo spacecraft system and should have just two test pilots on board. Virgin Galactic said last month that the second test spaceflight will then have four “mission specialists” inside the cabin. If both test flights succeed, Virgin Galactic expects to fly founder Sir Richard Branson in the first quarter of 2021 – a milestone that will mark the beginning of the company’s commercial tourism service.

Shares of Virgin Galactic closed down 3.7% on Friday at $15.92 a share.

A Camcopter S-100 drone made the first commercial drone delivery to an offshore oil platform in late August and it might be the beginning of a major industry. The helicopter drone flew a 3D printed part from Norway to a rig located about 60 miles off the coast. The flight was conducted without any special airspace adjustments and the drone was just part of the traffic servicing the oil fields. The drone also did an exterior inspection of the drilling platform and performed a simulated search and rescue drill with the rig’s standby vessel.

Of course, the oil companies are keeping a close eye on the drone developments because hauling freight and supplies to the rigs by drone could not only be a lot cheaper, but also safer. There are also several major helicopter companies that have oilfield supply as their core business watching the new initiatives. Servicing oil platforms is a multibillion-dollar business and also one of the most dangerous forms of commercial flying. Nordic Unmanned, which flew the first drone flight, says drones are a viable alternative to many missions now flown by big, expensive helicopters. “This marks the beginning of a new chapter within unmanned logistics,” spokesman Pål Kristensen said.” The technology is proven and robust enough to implement in large scale and reduces the risk cost and environmental footprint drastically.”

Methods: In this review, due to their promise, we focus on inorganic nanomaterials [such as hollow mesoporous silica nanoparticles (HMSNs), tungsten sulfide quantum dots (WS2QDs), and gold nanorods (AuNRs)] combining PTT with CHT, RT or IT in one treatment, aiming to provide a comprehensive understanding of PTT-based combinational cancer therapy. Results: This review found much evidence for the use of inorganic nanoparticles for PTT-based combinational cancer therapy. Conclusion: Under synergistic effects, inorganic nanomaterial-based combinational treatments exhibit enhanced therapeutic effects compared to PTT, CHT, RT, IT or PDT alone and should be further investigated in the cancer field.

Applications of inorganic nanomaterials in photothermal therapy based on combinational cancer treatment — pubmed.

Public-private partnerships have been central to the development of cybersecurity over the past decade, through the sharing of threat information between commercial organizations and historically secretive government agencies. The opportunity now exists for a new era of public-private partnership, for a new realm of information sharing.

Cyberattacks continue to be reported as a key business risk. In the recent World Economic Forum’s Regional Risks for Doing Business 2019 report, survey respondents in six of the world’s 10-largest economies identified cyberattacks as their number one risk.

Continue reading “How to build a modern public-private cybersecurity partnership” »