Lifeboat Foundation

Why do so many people get frustrated with their “high-tech” prostheses? Though sophisticated robotics allow for prosthetic joints that can do everything a human can and more, the way we control robotic machines right now doesn’t allow us to operate them as naturally as you would a biological hand. Most robotic prostheses are controlled via metal pads on the skin that indirectly measure muscle action and then make some assumptions to determine what the person wants to do. Whil… See More.

We plan to use MM to provide natural control over prosthetic limbs by leveraging the human body’s proprioception. When you wiggle one of your fingers, your brain senses muscle lengths, speeds, and forces, and it uses these to figure out the position of that finger. This is called body awareness, or proprioception. When someone receives an amputation, if their muscle connections are maintained with what is called the “AMI technique,” their brain still perceives muscle flexion as it relates to joint movement, as if their limb was still present. In other words, they are sensing movement of a phantom limb. To give an amputee intuitive control over a robotic prosthesis, we plan to directly measure the muscle lengths and speeds involved in this phantom limb experience and have the robot copy what the brain expects, so that the brain experiences awareness of the robot’s current state. We see this technique as an important next step in the embodiment of the prosthetic limb (the feeling that it is truly part of one’s body).

Notably, the tracking of magnetic beads is minimally invasive, not requiring wires to run through the skin boundary or electronics to be implanted inside the body, and these magnetic beads can be made safe to implant by coating them in a biocompatible material. In addition, for muscles that are close to the skin, MM can be performed with very high accuracy. We found that by increasing the number of compass sensors we used, we could track live muscle lengths close to the surface of the skin with better than millimeter accuracy, and we found that our measurements were consistent to within the width of a human hair (about 37 thousandths of a millimeter).

Continue reading “Improving prosthetic control using magnetomicrometry” »

On August 8 2021, an experiment at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL’s) National Ignition Facility (NIF) made a significant step toward ignition, achieving a yield of more than 1.3 megajoules (MJ). This advancement puts researchers at the threshold of fusion ignition, an important goal of the NIF, and opens access to a new experimental regime.

The experiment was enabled by focusing laser light from NIF — the size of three football fields — onto a target the size of a BB that produces a hot-spot the diameter of a human hair, generating more than 10 quadrillion watts of fusion power for 100 trillionths of a second.

“These extraordinary results from NIF advance the science that NNSA depends on to modernize our nuclear weapons and production as well as open new avenues of research,” said Jill Hruby, DOE under secretary for Nuclear Security and NNSA administrator.

A new ransomware gang known as LockFile encrypts Windows domains after hacking into Microsoft Exchange servers using the recently disclosed ProxyShell vulnerabilities.

ProxyShell is the name of an attack consisting of three chained Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities that result in unauthenticated, remote code execution.

The three vulnerabilities were discovered by Devcore Principal Security Researcher Orange Tsai, who chained them together to take over a Microsoft Exchange server in April’s Pwn2Own2021hacking contest.

The Nevera packs four electric motors that send 1,914 horsepower (1,408 kilowatts) to all four wheels. The car is also wearing Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires while tipping the scales at 4,733 pounds (2,146 kilograms). It has an MSRP of $2.4 million. The Tesla Model S is far less powerful and cheaper, but it still impresses with its 1,020 hp (760 kW) output, thanks to its three-motor setup. It’s heavier than the Rimac at 4,833 lbs (2,192 kg), though it’s much cheaper at $124,000. Power routes to all four Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires.

Watch as the Tesla Model S Plaid faces off against the Rimac Nevera hypercar in a series of high-powered EV drag races.

Blockchains work like DNA, says a new study. Its instructions are replicated across thousands of “nodes,” much as DNA is replicated in cells.

The mission is described as the ‘next epic leap forward for civilians’.

Netflix’s first trailer for a documentary series on SpaceX’s Inspiration4 private astronaut mission is here. Check it out.

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Web infrastructure and website security company Cloudflare on Thursday disclosed that it mitigated the largest ever volumetric distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack recorded to date.

The attack, launched via a Mirai botnet, is said to have targeted an unnamed customer in the financial industry last month. “Within seconds, the botnet bombarded the Cloudflare edge with over 330 million attack requests,” the company noted, at one point reaching a record high of 17.2 million requests-per-second (rps), making it three times bigger than previously reported HTTP DDoS attacks.

The probe has made detailed measurements of Venus’s cloudy atmosphere. Could it find life?

The Mercury-bound BepiColombo spacecraft recorded the sound of the solar wind at Venus as it flew just 340 miles (550 kilometers) above the planet’s surface during a maneuver designed to adjust its path.

“Stay safe friends,” astronaut Megan McArthur says.

As parts of the U.S. northeast brace for Hurricane Henri to make landfall in New York today (Aug. 22), astronauts and satellites are tracking the historic storm from space.

Continue reading “Astronauts and satellites watch Hurricane Henri from space as US Northeast braces for storm” »