Lifeboat Foundation

Circa 2010

Until the LHC finally gets up to full speed, Brookhaven National Lab’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) remains the world’s most powerful heavy ion smasher. And on Monday, they showed off some of that power by announcing that a recent collision resulted in the hottest matter ever recorded. Coming in at a scorching 7.2 trillion degrees Fahrenheit, the plasma not only recreated the environment of the Big Bang, but might have also resulted in the temporary formation of a bubble within which some normal laws of physics did not apply.

Restaurant owners say they have grown accustomed this year to constantly reinventing themselves to survive. Getting around Mother Nature as the U.S. heads toward winter may be their biggest challenge yet.

Sales from outdoor dining, reduced indoor dining, delivery, and takeout haven’t equaled what most restaurants expected to earn this year before the pandemic upended public life, some owners say. Adding heaters and other fixtures to draw diners to outdoor tables as the weather cools adds to the costs of sustaining a modest revenue stream.

But determined restaurant operators say they have no other choice. They say running at a loss while they have funds to do so—in the hope that the threat of the virus abates—is better than the challenges they would face after closing temporarily, such as finding reliable staff.

The Soyuz crew ship undocked from the station at 7:32 p.m. EDT today and will return to Earth at 10:55 p.m. with NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner of Roscosmos. Read more… go.nasa.gov/31su0Lm.

Millions more jobs will be lost to robots with Covid accelerating the trend, says the World Economic Forum.

It originated in middle school.

Anika Chebrolu, 14, of Frisco, Texas, has won this year’s 3M Young Scientist Challenge for her work finding a molecule that can selectively bind to the virus’s spike protein, according to the contest organizers. The eight grader used in-silico methodology for drug discovery to do it.

Starlink, SpaceX’s internet connectivity constellation, is making its way across the skies. Here’s how to see it from London, Seattle, and Houston.

Despite COVID’s impact on the economy, many companies in the data ecosystem have not just survived but thrived. Here are some key areas to watch.

As the electric vehicle sector grows, the demand for batteries is poised to see a significant increase. This is a big opportunity for companies like LG Chem, which supplies batteries for several EV makers like Tesla. Amidst this surging demand, LG Chem revealed on Wednesday that it is planning on tripling its production capacity for cylindrical batteries, the type used by the Silicon Valley-based electric car maker.

LG Chem currently forecasts a further rise in its battery sales and profits this fourth quarter. This is rather optimistic of the South Korean company considering that the company has already posted record quarterly earnings thanks to its growing EV battery business. “Sales are continuously expected to grow thanks to greater shipments of automotive batteries and cylindrical batteries for EVs,” LG Chem noted.

Global Manufacturing Companies Trust LandingLens to Enhance Their Existing Visual Inspection Systems with AI

PALO ALTO, Calif. – October 21, 2020 – Landing AI, a company that empowers customers to harness the business value of AI by providing enablement tools and transformation programs, today unveiled LandingLens, an end-to-end visual inspection platform specifically designed to help manufacturers build, deploy, and scale AI-powered visual inspection solutions.

Visual inspection is a widely used method in manufacturing for processes like defect identification and assembly verification. While this has generally been performed by human workers and traditional rule-based machine vision, more and more companies are turning to AI to automate and enhance their visual inspection operations given the accuracy, flexibility and low cost that the technology brings.