Lifeboat Foundation

Hemispherical array of ultrasound transducers lifts objects off reflective surfaces.

Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have developed a new technology which allows non-contact manipulation of small objects using sound waves. They used a hemispherical array of ultrasound transducers to generate a 3D acoustic fields which stably trapped and lifted a small polystyrene ball from a reflective surface. Although their technique employs a method similar to laser trapping in biology, adaptable to a wider range of particle sizes and materials.

Continue reading “Acoustic Tweezers Can Pick Objects Up With Sound Waves – Without Any Physical Contact” »

Project offers new step toward study of emergence, ‘materials by design,’ and future nanomagnets.

Using a D-Wave quantum-annealing computer as a testbed, scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have shown that it is possible to isolate so-called emergent magnetic monopoles, a class of quasiparticles, creating a new approach to developing “materials by design.”

“We wanted to study emergent magnetic monopoles by exploiting the collective dynamics of qubits,” said Cristiano Nisoli, a lead Los Alamos author of the study. “Magnetic monopoles, as elementary particles with only one magnetic pole, have been hypothesized by many, and famously by Dirac, but have proved elusive so far.”

Likely due to high demand expectations, Apple has rumored to have ordered more than 100 million A15 Bionic chips from TSMC.

The Facebook CEO talks to Casey Newton about why he is putting his company’s resources toward the “metaverse,” a future that imagines an internet that combines physical, augmented, and virtual realities.

An “unusually large” meteor illuminated the night sky over southern Scandinavia early Sunday morning before at least some of it came rumbling down near Oslo, the capital of Norway.

The meteor “lit up the sky for a brief time as if broad daylight,” just after 1 a.m., Steinar Midtskogen, a spokesperson for the Norwegian Meteor Network, told CNN.

“A minute later or more a loud rumbling sound could be heard over a large area, perhaps up to 100 km (about 62 miles) away from where the meteor was seen straight overhead,” Midtskogen said in an email.

In 1970, scientists detected amino acids in a meteorite. Fifty years later, a variety of chemical ingredients for life have been found in other space rocks.

Circa 2005 o,.o.

Stable and reproducible spontaneous self-ignition and self-supporting combustion have been achieved at room temperature by exposing nanometer-sized catalytic particles to methanol/air or ethanol/air gas mixtures. Without any external ignition, structurally supported platinum nanoparticles instantaneously react with the gas mixtures. The reaction releases heat and produces CO₂ and water. Such reactions starting at ambient temperature have reached both high (]600 °C) and low (a few tenths of a degree above room temperature) reaction temperatures. The reaction is controlled by varying the fuel/air mixture. Catalytic activity could be dramatically changed by reducing particle size and changing particle morphology.

I believe since the weird localization of the virus in Japan that this sorta self evolving virus needs to have a counter like a self evolving vaccine but at the very least new variants can be made super fast with new technology in vaccine making.

Washington — Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, said Sunday he thinks the U.S. is further into the COVID-19 epidemic driven by the Delta variant than Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) models are picking up. He said that could mean “hopefully we’re going to turn a corner” in the next two to three weeks.

“We’re not doing a lot of testing. More of the testing that we are doing is antigen tests that are being done at home and not getting reported,” Gottlieb said. “So, I think we’re much further into this epidemic than we’re picking up and hopefully further through this epidemic.”

The Pacific basin is thought to contain more than 30 billion tons of so-called polymetallic nodules, rocks that are rich with cobalt, copper, manganese, nickel, rare-earth elements and titanium. Scientists and entrepreneurs have been researching methods of extracting them since the 1960s. In 1994, the International Seabed Authority was established to regulate mining efforts and protect the seabed environment. Any of the group’s 167 member-states can stake claims to mining concessions on the ocean floor and sponsor private companies to explore them. But the ISA has not yet completed, much less approved, any regulations. So far, it’s only handed out permits for exploration.

Despite the potential riches, more time is needed to study the potential impact on the least resilient ecosystem on the planet.