Lifeboat Foundation

Imagine a manufacturing plant in which all the production equipment is continually changing in response to market needs. Robots churning out widgets, for instance, would reconfigure themselves based on data coming in from all points of the widget supply chain, as well as sensors monitoring the factory itself. The result is a smart factory that’s more agile and autonomous than previous generations of automation.

Also known as Industry 4.0, the smart factory runs on data and artificial intelligence, but connectivity forms the backbone of operations. The new fifth generation of mobile networks (5G) is a catalyst for this new industrial revolution because it offers much greater speed and bandwidth than previous networks, as well as low latency, or time required for data to travel between two points. 5G will work with and in some cases replace existing fixed, wired connections, making manufacturing more flexible and ready to implement innovations.

Continue reading “5G is accelerating factory automation that could add trillions to the global economy” »

Reviving a Pleistocene Plant

Thanks Kim K.

A real little time traveler.

Continue reading “Scientists Revive 32,000-Year-Old Plant Right Out of the Pleistocene” »

The Space Renaissance Academy kicked-off a very ambitious initiative: to build the greatest planetary mentorship programme.

The programme is made by two main parts:

In mammals, such as humans, DNA contains genetic instructions that are transcribed—or copied—into RNA. While DNA remains in the cell’s nucleus, RNA carries the copies of genetic information to the rest of the cell by way of various combinations of amino acids, which it delivers to ribosomes. The ribosomes link the amino acids together to form proteins that then carry out functions within the human body.

The viral RNA is sneaky: its features cause the protein synthesis machinery of our cells to mistake it for RNA produced by our own DNA.

COVID-19 enters the body through the nose, mouth, or eyes and attaches to our cells. Once the virus is inside our cells, it releases its RNA. Our hijacked cells serve as virus factories, reading the virus’s RNA and making long viral proteins to compromise the immune system. The virus assembles new copies of itself and spreads to more parts of the body and—by way of saliva, sweat, and other bodily fluids—to other humans.

Continue reading “COVID-19: What’s RNA research got to do with it?” »

This week:

🚀 Our NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover gets closer to launch ☄️ Comet NEOWISE spotted from the International Space Station 🛰️ Building a spacecraft to explore a metal-rich asteroid.

face_with_colon_three circa 2019.

Invisible to the eye, the dots glow under infrared light from modified smartphones.

What Was the Biggest Insect That Ever Lived? The largest known insect of all time was a predator resembling a dragonfly but was only distantly related to them. Its name is Meganeura.

You can find our beautiful education posters in our shop: https://shop.kurzgesagt.org

This video was made possible by a grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation.

Continue reading “What Is Intelligence? Where Does it Begin?” »

Last month, the U.S. Department of Defense and GM Defense LLC announced an agreement worth about $214,3 million to build, field and sustain the Army’s new Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV).

The ISV program will provide Infantry Brigade Combat Teams an additive lightweight vehicle to move Soldiers and their equipment quickly over complex and difficult cross-country terrain. Designed to provide rapid ground mobility, the expeditionary ISV is a light and agile all-terrain troop carrier intended to transport a nine-Soldier infantry squad moving throughout the battlefield.

The total production ISV contract award value is $214.3 million to procure the initial Army Procurement Objective of 649. The approved Army Acquisition Objective is 2,065 vehicles.