Lifeboat Foundation

Military observers said the disruptive technologies – those that fundamentally change the status quo – might include such things as sixth-generation fighters, high-energy weapons like laser and rail guns, quantum radar and communications systems, new stealth materials, autonomous combat robots, orbital spacecraft, and biological technologies such as prosthetics and powered exoskeletons.

Speeding up the development of ‘strategic forward-looking disruptive technologies’ is a focus of the country’s latest five-year plan.

EPFL engineers have developed a computer chip that combines two functions—logic operations and data storage—into a single architecture, paving the way to more efficient devices. Their technology is particularly promising for applications relying on artificial intelligence.

It’s a major breakthrough in the field of electronics. Engineers at EPFL’s Laboratory of Nanoscale Electronics and Structures (LANES) have developed a next-generation circuit that allows for smaller, faster and more energy-efficient devices—which would have major benefits for artificial-intelligence systems. Their revolutionary technology is the first to use a 2-D material for what’s called a logic-in–memory architecture, or a single architecture that combines logic operations with a memory function. The research team’s findings appear today in Nature.

Until now, the energy efficiency of computer chips has been limited by the von Neumann architecture they currently use, where data processing and data storage take place in two separate units. That means data must constantly be transferred between the two units, using up a considerable amount of time and energy.

How well do you know the crew of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission? …How well do they know each other?

Astronauts Soichi Noguchi, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker, and Mike Hopkins talk about their upcoming mission – and their crewmates! Who is the funniest? Who is the cleanest? Get to know your crew… one!

SpaceX Starship SN8 will perform a historical flight test this upcoming week.

SN8 has already performed both the static fire and cryogenic tests. The next test is the flight test. SpaceX has announced the window of November 9th to the 11th for SN8, Starship number eight, 15 kilometer flight aka 9 miles.

(cc: Space Photographer Austin Barnard)

Florida will use BlueGreen Water Technologies’ treatment to stop harmful algae blooms in Lake Okeechobee from reaching the state’s waterways.

Lake Okeechobee, also known as Florida’s Inland Sea, is the state’s largest freshwater lake. It has become overrun by cyanobacterial blooms (“blue green algae”) that render the water toxic for drinking and agriculture. It’s also not safe to eat fish from the lake or to swim in its waters.

Left untreated, cyanobacterial blooms can hijack all the resources in a lake or reservoir and turn it a dead aquatic zone.

Click to expand.

In the field of molecular epidemiology, the worldwide scientific community has been sleuthing to solve the riddle of the early history of SARS-CoV-2.

Since the first SARS-CoV-2 virus infection was detected in December 2019, tens of thousands of its genomes have been sequenced worldwide, revealing that the coronavirus is mutating, albeit slowly, at a rate of 25 mutations per genome per year.

But despite major efforts, no one to date has identified the first case of human transmission, or “patient zero” in the COVID-19 pandemic. Finding such a case is necessary to better understand how the virus may have jumped from its animal host first to infect humans as well as the history of how the SARS-CoV-2 viral genome has mutated over time and spread globally.

The first quantum revolution brought about semiconductor electronics, the laser and finally the internet. The coming, second quantum revolution promises spy-proof communication, extremely precise quantum sensors and quantum computers for previously unsolvable computing tasks. But this revolution is still in its infancy. A central research object is the interface between local quantum devices and light quanta that enable the remote transmission of highly sensitive quantum information. The Otto-Hahn group “Quantum Networks” at the Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching is researching such a “quantum modem”. The team has now achieved a first breakthrough in a relatively simple but highly efficient technology that can be integrated into existing fiber optic networks. The work is published this week in Physical Review X.

The Corona pandemic is a daily reminder of how important the internet has become. The World Wide Web, once a by-product of basic physical research, has radically changed our culture. Could a quantum internet become the next major innovation out of physics?

It is still too early to answer that question, but basic research is already working on the quantum internet. Many applications will be more specialized and less sensual than video conferencing, but the importance of absolutely spy-proof long-distance communication is understandable to everyone. “In the future, a quantum internet could be used to connect quantum computers located in different places,” Andreas Reiserer says, “which would considerably increase their computing power!” The physicist heads the independent Otto-Hahn research group “Quantum Networks” at the Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching.

A new UO study confirms what earth scientists have long suspected: Plants first appeared on land about 460 million years ago, in the middle of a 45-million-year-long geologic period known as the Ordovician.

Authored by geologist Greg Retallack and published in the international journal The Palaeobotanist, the study describes a series of plant impressions in an Ordovician rock deposit from Douglas Dam in Tennessee. While previous studies have revealed fossil evidence of invertebrate animals in the deposit, Retallack’s is the first to identify whole fossil plants, including mosses, liverworts and lichens.

Retallack, director of the Condon Fossil Collection at the Museum of Natural and Cultural History, said those whole-plant impressions offer a key support to Ordovician land plant theories.