Lifeboat Foundation

Bitcoin miners are setting up shop to take advantage of existing, unused energy infrastructure.

Thermoelectric cooling helmets for motorcycles can finally lead to spacesuits becoming electrically cooled.

530361 views • Aug 4, 2018 • The Feher ACH-1 is the world’s first and only self-contained air-conditioned motorcycle helmet. By utilizing thermoelectric technology, the patented full-face ACH-1 evenly distributes filtered, cooled air freely throughout the entire interior of the helmet. Integrating Feher’s patented Tubular Space Fabric with the helmets comfort liner allows the helmet to provide consistent, optimal temperature.

A new leak reveals how governments used Pegasus spy software to silence journalists, attack activists, and suppress dissent.

The oil industry, pharmaceutical companies and bioreactor manufacturers all face one common enemy: bubbles. Bubbles can form during the manufacturing or transport of various liquids, and their formation and rupture can cause significant issues in product quality.

Inspired by these issues and the puzzling physics behind bubbles, an international scientific collaboration was born. Stanford University chemical engineer Gerald Fuller along with his Ph.D. students Aadithya Kannan and Vinny Chandran Suja, as well as visiting Ph.D. student Daniele Tammaro from the University of Naples, teamed up to study how different kinds of bubbles pop.

The researchers were particularly interested in bubbles with proteins embedded on their surfaces, which is a common occurrence in the pharmaceutical industry and in bioreactors used for cell culture. In an unanticipated result, the researchers discovered that the protein bubbles they were studying opened up like flowers when popped with a needle. Their findings are detailed in a study published in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on July 19.

A team led by a researcher from the University of Sydney has developed a low-cost, sustainable, and readily available technology that can dim the screens of electronic devices, anti-reflection automobile mirrors, and smart architectural windows at a fraction of the cost of current technology.

It would replace one of the world’s scarcest—yet highly ubiquitous in use—modern materials: indium. A rare chemical element, that it is widely used in devices such as smartphones and computers, windscreen glass and self-dimming windows.

Although small amounts are used to manufacture smart device screens, indium is expensive as it is hard to source; it naturally occurs only in small deposits. Industrial indium is often made as a byproduct of zinc mining, which means a shortage could occur if demand for optoelectronic devices—such as LCDs and touch panels—ramps up.

A team of researchers from the University of Maryland has 3D printed a soft robotic hand that is agile enough to play Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. — and win!

The feat, highlighted on the front cover of the latest issue of Science Advances, demonstrates a promising innovation in the field of soft robotics, which centers on creating new types of flexible, inflatable robots that are powered using water or air rather than electricity. The inherent safety and adaptability of soft robots has sparked interest in their use for applications like prosthetics and biomedical devices. Unfortunately, controlling the fluids that make these soft robots bend and move has been especially difficult—until now.

The key breakthrough by the team, led by University of Maryland assistant professor of mechanical engineering Ryan D. Sochol, was the ability to 3D print fully assembled soft robots with integrated fluidic circuits in a single step.

Researchers have discovered that cybercriminals operating from Romania are performing Linux cryptojacking attacks.

Mysterious strands of DNA that seemingly assimilate genes from many different organisms in their surrounding environment have been discovered in a Californian backyard.

Scientists have named these elements “Borgs”, and their discovery could help us not just understand the evolution of microorganisms, but their interactions within their ecosystems, and their role in the broader environment.

According to geomicrobiologist Jill Banfield from the University of California, Berkeley, Borgs could make for a tremendously significant discovery.

The basic assumption, and it’s proven to be a good one, is that more people will want to send more stuff over the internet tomorrow, Tuesday, or in ten years. We may not know how many people or what stuff exactly, but growth has generally been a good guess.

To meet tomorrow’s demands, we have to start building a more capable internet today. And by we, I mean researchers in labs around the world. So it is that each year we’re duly notified of a new eye-watering, why-would-we-need-that speed record.

In August of last year, a University College London (UCL) team, set the top mark at 178 terabits per second. Now, a year later, researchers at Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) say they’ve nearly doubled the record with speeds of 319 terabits per second.