Lifeboat Foundation

Among the ongoing mysteries surrounding last week’s arrest of Harvard University nanoscientist Charles Lieber is the precise nature of the research program Lieber was conducting in his cooperation with Chinese researchers.

Lieber was arrested on 28 January on charges of making false statements to U.S. law enforcement officials and federal funding agencies about a collaboration he forged with researchers in China. He was released two days later on a $1 million bond. An affidavit outlining the charges against Lieber notes that in January 2013, he signed an agreement between Harvard and Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) in China. According to the affidavit, “The stated purpose of the agreement, which had a five-year effective term, was to ‘carry out advanced research and development of nanowire-based lithium ion batteries with high performance for electric vehicles.’”

Officials at WUT have not responded to requests for comment on their agreement with Lieber. But it outlines just the kind of high-tech work that U.S. prosecutors involved in efforts to investigate Chinese attempts to acquire advanced technology from U.S.-based researchers say they are concerned about. They allege that the Chinese government has used such collaborations to improperly take advantage of the federally funded research enterprise, and gain an edge in economic and military advances.

ASAT tests are also widely condemned by many in the space community, as these demonstrations typically create hundreds to thousands of pieces of debris that can last for months, and even years, in orbit. Because these tests are high speed and high impact, the resulting debris can spread far and wide. Those pieces then pose a threat to other functioning spacecraft. A fast-moving piece of junk can render an operational satellite inoperable if they hit head on.

Today, Russia conducted another test of its missile system designed to destroy a satellite in orbit around Earth, according to US Space Command. It is believed to be the 10th test of this anti-satellite, or ASAT, technology, but it’s unclear if the missile actually destroyed anything in space.

Regardless of its target, US Space Command is openly condemning the demonstration. “Russia’s [anti-satellite] test provides yet another example that the threats to US and allied space systems are real, serious, and growing,” Gen. John Raymond, commander of USSPACECOM and the US Space Force chief of space operations, said in a statement. “The United States is ready and committed to deterring aggression and defending the Nation, our allies and U.S. interests from hostile acts in space.”

Continue reading “Russia conducts another test of its missile system to take out satellites” »

In a new study, Google researchers describe a system that makes decisions continuously in response to changes in the environment.

The first official evidence of a key imbalance between neutrinos and antineutrinos provides one of the best clues for why the universe contains something rather than nothing.

Thinking of the brain as a machine may be hampering our progress in understanding how it works, says The Idea of the Brain: A history by Matthew Cobb.

Rocket Lab is pursuing rocket reusability using a different method than SpaceX’s self-landing rockets.

Autism disproportionately affects boys. A new study offers a potential mechanism. Brain cells called microglia prune synaptic connections during early development. A specific genetic mutation affecting males led to enlarged microglia that had trouble performing that job.

A team from Facebook AI Research (FAIR) has developed a novel low-dimensional design space called ‘RegNet’ that outperforms traditional available models like from Google and runs five times faster on GPUs.

RegNet produces simple, fast and versatile networks and in experiments, it outperformed Google’s SOTA EfficientNet models, said the researchers in a paper titled ‘Designing Network Design Spaces; published on pre-print repository ArXiv.

The researchers aimed for “interpretability and to discover general design principles that describe networks that are simple, work well, and generalize across settings”.

John Horton Conway, a legendary mathematician who stood out for his love of games and for bringing mathematics to the masses, died on Saturday, April 11, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, from complications related to COVID-19. He was 82.

Known for his unbounded curiosity and enthusiasm for subjects far beyond mathematics, Conway was a beloved figure in the hallways of Princeton’s mathematics building and at the Small World coffee shop on Nassau Street, where he engaged with students, faculty and mathematical hobbyists with equal interest.

Conway, who joined the faculty in 1987, was the John von Neumann Professor in Applied and Computational Mathematics and a professor of mathematics until 2013 when he transferred to emeritus status.