Lifeboat Foundation

FORT SILL, Okla., Aug. 17 2021 — The U.S. Army has completed a directed-energy maneuver short-range air defense (DE M-SHORAD) “combat shoot-off” — its first development and demonstration of a high-power laser weapon. As part of the DE M-SHORAD combat shoot-off, the Army Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO), alongside Air and Missile Defense Cross Functional Team, Fires Center of Excellence, and the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command, took a laser-equipped Stryker vehicle to Fort Sill, Okla. At the combat shoot-off, the Stryker faced a number of realistic scenarios designed to establish, for the first time in the Army, the desired characteristics for future DE M-SHORAD systems.

At the center of galaxies, like our own Milky Way, lie massive black holes surrounded by spinning gas. Some shine brightly, with a continuous supply of fuel, while others go dormant for millions of years, only to reawaken with a serendipitous influx of gas. It remains largely a mystery how gas flows across the universe to feed these massive black holes.

UConn Assistant Professor of Physics Daniel Anglés-Alcázar, lead author on a paper published today in The Astrophysical Journal, addresses some of the questions surrounding these massive and enigmatic features of the universe by using new, high-powered simulations.

“Supermassive black holes play a key role in galaxy evolution and we are trying to understand how they grow at the centers of galaxies,” says Anglés-Alcázar. “This is very important not just because black holes are very interesting objects on their own, as sources of gravitational waves and all sorts of interesting stuff, but also because we need to understand what the central black holes are doing if we want to understand how galaxies evolve.”

Bottom line: Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robots may be under new ownership, but they haven’t lost any of their old tricks. The robotics design company has shared a new video featuring its agile uprights tackling an obstacle course. If you haven’t seen what these humanoid bots are capable of lately, it’s certainly worth a look.

They’ve ditched their tethers, aren’t annoying loud like they once were and exhibit very fluid movement. Aside from a couple of minor hiccups, the run was mostly flawless.

Continue reading “Boston Dynamics’ robots master the art of parkour” »

Everyone’s talking about quantum computing these days. The experts claim the future will be full of amazing tech advances, but what does that really mean? property= description.

While a promising route to boosting crop yields, experts say more work needs to be done to understand why the tweak works.

A new kind of brain-computer interface (BCI) that uses neural implants the size of a grain of sand to record brain activity has been proven effective in rats — and one day, thousands of the “neurograins” could help you control machines with your mind.

Mind readers: BCIs are devices (usually electrodes implanted in the skull) that translate electrical signals from brain cells into commands for machines. They can allow paralyzed people to “speak” again, control robots, type with their minds, and even regain control of their own limbs.

Most of today’s interfaces can listen to just a few hundred neurons — but there are approximately 86 billion neurons in the brain. If we could monitor more neurons, in more places in the brain, it could radically upgrade what’s possible with mind-controlled tech.

Battery-and carmakers are already spending billions of dollars on reducing the costs of manufacturing and recycling electric-vehicle (EV) batteries — spurred in part by government incentives and the expectation of forthcoming regulations. National research funders have also founded centres to study better ways to make and recycle batteries. Because it is still less expensive, in most instances, to mine metals than to recycle them, a key goal is to develop processes to recover valuable metals cheaply enough to compete with freshly mined ones. “The biggest talker is money,” says Jeffrey Spangenberger, a chemical engineer at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois, who manages a US federally funded lithium-ion battery-recycling initiative, called ReCell.

Reducing the use of scarce metals — and recycling them — will be key to the world’s transition to electric vehicles.

The results make “a significant step toward ignition,” the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced on Tuesday.

At the National Ignition Facility, which is the size of three football fields, super powerful laser beams recreate the temperatures and pressures similar to what exists in the cores of stars, giant planets and inside exploding nuclear weapons, a spokesperson tells CNBC.

On Aug. 8 a laser light was focused onto a target the size of a BB which resulted in “a hot-spot the diameter of a human hair, generating more than 10 quadrillion watts of fusion power for 100 trillionths of a second,” the written statement says.

Continue reading “A national lab just achieved a ‘Wright Brothers moment’ in nuclear fusion” »

Showing how Atlas falls and gets back up again.

Boston Dynamics has shared two new videos of its bipedal Atlas robot. The first shows a dual-hander gymnastic routine, and the second offers insight into how such videos are programmed and practiced.

Continue reading “Boston Dynamics shows how bipedal Atlas robot flips, vaults, and falls over in latest videos” »