Lifeboat Foundation

The supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy M87 is coming into sharper and sharper focus.

The bill awaits Gov. Jay Inslee’s signature.

Washington state lawmakers have passed a measure that would phase out the sale of gas-powered vehicles starting in 2030. The Clean Cars 2030 initiative passed Thursday as an amendment to a bill that requires state utilities prepare for an electric-vehicle future. The bill now awaits Gov. Jay Inslee’s signature.

That’s five years earlier than planned gas vehicle bans in California and Massachusetts, and the first ban on gas cars passed by legislators, rather than by an executive order. The bill passed Washington’s Senate by a vote of 25–23 and a vote of 54–43 in the House. The bill bans the sale, purchase, or registration of non-EVs from model year 2030 and later, and would include vehicles bought in another state and brought into Washington state.

Continue reading “Washington state lawmakers vote to phase out gasoline cars by 2030” »

The Space Development Agency is considering buying its next 150 satellites from three different vendors.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s Space Development Agency is considering buying its next 150 satellites from three different vendors, but that could change after the agency evaluates companies’ bids, SDA director Derek Tournear said April 14.

Speaking at the Washington Space Business Roundtable, Tournear said a request for proposals will be issued in August for the agency’s Transport Layer Tranche 1 — a network of hundreds of communications satellites in low Earth orbit projected to start launching in late 2024.

Continue reading “Space Development Agency could select three manufacturers to produce its next batch of satellites” »

Thermoelectrics directly convert heat into electricity and power a wide array of items—from NASA’s Perseverance rover currently exploring Mars to travel coolers that chill beverages.

A Clemson University physicist has joined forces with collaborators from China and Denmark to create a new and potentially paradigm-shifting high-performance thermoelectric compound.

A material’s atomic structure, which is how atoms arrange themselves in space and time, determines its properties. Typically, solids are crystalline or amorphous. In crystals, atoms are in an orderly and symmetrical pattern. Amorphous materials have randomly distributed atoms.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=KLmmPnMvwNY

‘Weapon of Mass Destruction’ is a term used in arms-control circles signifying something capable of damage on a large scale and subject to international treaties. Analyst Zak Kallenborn argues in a recent study for the U.S. Air Force Center for Strategic Deterrence Studies that some types of drone swarm would count as WMD. The argument might seem like the theoretical arms control equivalent of angels dancing on the head of a pin — except that the U.S. Army is working on a lethal swarm which fits Kallenborn’s description. Watch the video for more: https://youtu.be/KLmmPnMvwNY

The massive THANKS YOU to everyone for watching and all of your support!

Continue reading “U.S. Army Announced New Drone Swarm Would Be A Weapon Of Mass Destruction” »

As well as Kronshtadt, many other Russian enterprises in the military-industrial complex are developing drones for deployment on the front lines. For example, aircraft manufacturer Sukhoi has teamed up with defense company Mikoyan to build the Okhotnik-B, which will have a top speed of 1000 km/h. Another aerospace company, called OKB Sokol, has developed a UAV named Altius, due to be delivered to the Russian Army this year.

A Russian company is building the country’s first-ever specialized factory solely for manufacturing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). It plans to mass-produce military drones, like those deployed by the Russian Army in Syria.

The 45000-square-meter plant, under construction in the town of Dubna near Moscow, will cost at least four billion rubles ($52 million) and will create jobs for more than 1500 people. If all goes to plan, it will be built in record time, with the launch of production scheduled for November 2021.

Continue reading “Russian company reveals plan for $52-mn factory to mass-produce UAVs, as drones play bigger, more vital role in military ops” »

Four of the newfound quadruply imaged quasars are shown here: From top left and moving clockwise, the objects are: GraL J1537-3010 or “Wolf’s Paw;” GraL J0659+1629 or “Gemini’s Crossbow;” GraL J1651-0417 or “Dragon’s Kite;” GraL J2038-4008 or “Microscope Lens.” The fuzzy dot in the middle of the images is the lensing galaxy, the gravity of which is splitting the light from the quasar behind it in such a way to produce four quasar images. By modeling these systems and monitoring how the different images vary in brightness over time, astronomers can determine the expansion rate of the universe and help solve cosmological problems. Credit: The GraL Collaboration.

With the help of machine-learning techniques, a team of astronomers has discovered a dozen quasars that have been warped by a naturally occurring cosmic “lens” and split into four similar images. Quasars are extremely luminous cores of distant galaxies that are powered by supermassive black holes.

Over the past four decades, astronomers had found about 50 of these “quadruply imaged quasars,” or quads for short, which occur when the gravity of a massive galaxy that happens to sit in front of a quasar splits its single image into four. The latest study, which spanned only a year and a half, increases the number of known quads by about 25 percent and demonstrates the power of machine learning to assist astronomers in their search for these cosmic oddities.

New research reveals how cancer cells endure stress and survive. Publishing in Molecular Cell, an international research team identified mechanisms that human and mouse cells use to survive heat shock and resume their original function – and even pass the memory of the experience of stress down to their daughter cells.

Lead author Anniina Vihervaara, Assistant Professor in Gene Technology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, says the results provide insight into the mechanisms that coordinate transcription in cells, which potentially could make a vital contribution in disease research.

The researchers examined how embryonic fibroblast cells and cancer cells responded when subjected to heat shock at a temperature of 42C, using advanced technology to monitor the process of transcription across genes and their regulatory regions. Heat shock causes acute proteotoxic stress due to misfolding and aggregation of proteins. To adjust and maintain stability, stressed cells reduce protein synthesis and increase expression of chaperones that help other proteins to maintain their correct configuration. The heat shock response and protein misfolding are involved in many diseases, including cancer, Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s.

Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine, joins Ali Velshi to discuss the “pause” on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the United States after the discovery of 6 rare cases of blood clotting in women who were immunized with the shot. The goal, says Hotez, is to identify a specific group who might be at higher risk, and that requires a little time. “Even though the U.S. Has other options, many countries don’t. For many countries, all they have are the J & J, AstraZeneca vaccine and the Russian Sputnik V vaccine,” all of which are non-mNRA and have the potential to behave similarly. Says Hotez, “It is critical to sort this out not only to protect American citizens, but to protect the world.”