Lifeboat Foundation

AP Exclusive: The Chinese government is tightly controlling all COVID-19 research under orders from President Xi Jinping, internal documents obtained by The AP show. As a result, China’s search for the origins of the virus has been cloaked in secrecy. In a sign of how sensitive research has become, police stopped scientists and confiscated their samples at a mineshaft where the closest known relative of the COVID-19 virus was found.

MOJIANG, China (AP) — Deep in the lush mountain valleys of southern China lies the entrance to a mine shaft that once harbored bats with the closest known relative of the COVID-19 virus.

The area is of intense scientific interest because it may hold clues to the origins of the coronavirus that has killed more than 1.7 million people worldwide. Yet for scientists and journalists, it has become a black hole of no information because of political sensitivity and secrecy.

Continue reading “China clamps down in hidden hunt for coronavirus origins” »

This is some real sci-fi stuff.

Beaming solar power from outer space sounds like a Marvel movie plot, but space could remove barriers to solar acceptance that dominate the Earthbound discourse.

The Gaia space telescope has measured the acceleration of the Solar System when it orbits the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The Solar System motion relative to the stars agrees with the results by Finnish astronomers in the 19th century. Moreover, the observational data by Gaia improves satellite navigation.

Earlier this month, the European Space Agency (ESA) released observational data from the Gaia telescope (Gaia Early Data Release 3 or EDR3), in continuation to the DR1 and DR2 releases of the years 2016 and 2018. Gaia accrues accurate knowledge about, for example, the Milky Way stars, distant extragalactic quasars, and the asteroids of our Solar System.

Continue reading “Acceleration of the Solar System Measured by the Gaia Space Telescope” »

Simulations rule out plasmas caused by meteoroid impacts as the source of lunar magnetism, supporting the proposal that the ancient moon generated a core dynamo.

Today, the moon lacks a global magnetic field, but this wasn’t always the case. Spacecraft measurements of the moon’s crust and lunar rocks retrieved by the Apollo missions contain remnant magnetization that formed 4 to 3.5 billion years ago in a magnetic field comparable in strength to that of the Earth. Scientists have argued that the source of this was a dynamo — a magnetic field generated by the moon’s churning, molten, metal core. However, research indicates that the moon’s suspected small core may not have been able to generate enough energy to sustain the ancient magnetic field that planetary scientists have inferred from in its rocks.

Continue reading “The Ancient Moon’s Missing Magnetism” »

Boston Dynamics’ robots dance to “Do you love me”

Boston Dynamics, already well known for its cutting-edge robotics technology, has released a new video in which its latest machines can be seen dancing to the classic song “Do You Love Me” by the Contours.

This line-up includes the bipedal humanoid Atlas, the four-legged canine-inspired Spot, and the two-wheeled Handle. The robots’ moves appear eerily human-like as they strut their stuff – an effect known as the uncanny valley.

This is another example of how autism is now being used as an advantage in business. What people previously saw as a weakness turned out to be a strength. 😃

Gordon Douglas struggled to find work because of his “differences”. Now his neurodiversity is making him a sought-after employee.

Genies like Adam are busy.

HIAS is an open-source Hospital Intelligent Automation System designed to control and manage an intelligent network of IoT connected devices. The network server provides locally hosted and encrypted databases, and a secure proxy to route traffic to the connected devices.

This will help ensure that SSDs don’t suddenly just stop working one day. 😃 At least you get to back up your data.

It’s only available for data centers for now though. In the future, we may get our own when they perfect the technology.

If a NAND chip fails, these new SSDs detect it, move the data somewhere else on the drive, and keep on functioning.

Sub-Saharan Africa can have high-speed internet access without needing to lay any cables.