Lifeboat Foundation

Lithium (Li) batteries, or lithium metal batteries, use metallic lithium as an anode. Over the past few decades, rechargeable Li batteries have been used to power a wide variety of electronic devices, including toys, portable consumer devices and electric vehicles.

While these batteries typically achieve reliable performances at room temperature, their energy efficiency, power and cycle life tend to decrease significantly at temperatures below −10 °C. The inability to function well at low temperatures is a crucial drawback, as it greatly limits their use in regions with particularly cold climates. The main reason for this limitation is that at temperatures below −10 °C the solid-electrolyte interphase (SEI) becomes unstable and leads to what is known as the dendritic Li plating of the anode in the batteries.

A team of researchers at Pennsylvania State University and Argonne National Laboratory recently introduced a new design for Li metal batteries that could overcome this well-documented drawback. The resulting batteries, presented in a paper published in Nature Energy, were found to perform remarkably well at low temperatures compared to previously developed Li batteries.

When we say someone has a quick mind, it may be in part thanks to our expanded cerebellum that distinguishes human brains from those of macaque monkeys, for example.

Sometimes referred to by its Latin translation as the ‘“little brain”’, the cerebellum is located close to the brainstem and sits under the cortex in the hindbrain. New research at San Diego State University, however, calls the “little” terminology into question.

Continue reading “‘Little brain’ or cerebellum not so little after all” »

PENSACOLA, Fla. (WKRG) — NASA confirmed on their blog that SpaceX Crew Dragon will splashdown in Pensacola Florida on Sunday, August 2, 2020.

Weather conditions according to NASA are a “Go” but Hurricane Isaias will still be monitored and evaluate any impact the storm may have on the splashdown sight.

SpaceX will monitor weather conditions until 2.5 hours before scheduled undocking when the they will proceed with departure. Splashdown is scheduled for about 1:40PM local time.

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an emerging global pandemic that is threatening the viability of healthcare systems worldwide. The virus responsible for the disease is also known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 and abbreviated as SARS-CoV-2. The eruption started in China on December 29, 2019 and by March 2020 it was reported that it had spread to several countries across the world.

In the final days of 2019, Chinese doctors identified a number of similar cases of pneumonia in the city of Wuhan in China. Wuhan is the capital city of Hubei Province in China accommodating 11 million inhabitants. Soon, it was discovered that the disease was caused by a new strain of virus which was named SARS-CoV-2.

If you’re on the look out for a desktop PC that’s small enough to sit under a TV, Chinese brand XCY has a very small computer they’d like to sell you.

As Liliputing reports, the XCY X51 is about as small as you could possibly make a fully-featured desktop PC. It measures 2.4-by-2.4-by-1.7-inches and weighs a mere 121 grams. However, inside you’ll find a quad-core Intel Celeron N4100 clocked at 1.1GHz (2.4Ghz burst frequency) complete with UHD Graphics 600 GPU. The processor is complemented by 8GB of 2,133MHz DDR4 RAM, a 128GB M.2 SSD, and a micro SD card slot for further storage expansion.

Continue reading “XCY Squeezes a 4K-Capable Desktop PC Into a 2.4-Inch Case” »

Nvidia Corp. is in advanced talks to acquire Arm Ltd., the chip designer that SoftBank Group Corp. bought for $32 billion four years ago, according to people familiar with the matter.

The two parties aim to reach a deal in the next few weeks, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Nvidia is the only suitor in concrete discussions with SoftBank, according to the people.

A deal for Arm could be the largest ever in the semiconductor industry, which has been consolidating in recent years as companies seek to diversify and add scale. But any deal with Nvidia, which is a customer of Arm, would likely trigger regulatory scrutiny as well as a wave of opposition from other users.

“No Sun, no soil”. 95% less water. One acre this way compared to 390 the old way. And for detractors of life extension who complain about overpopulation this… See More.

Aerofarms the world’s largest indoor vertical farm is addressing food inequity in New Jersey.

In a study published earlier this month, a team of theoretical physicists is claiming to have discovered the remnants of previous universes hidden within the leftover radiation from the Big Bang. Our universe is a vast collection of observable matter, like gas, dust, stars, etc., in addition to the ever-elusive dark matter and dark energy. In some sense, this universe is all we know, and even then, we can only directly study about 5% of it, leaving 95% a mystery that scientists are actively working to solve. However, this group of physicists is arguing that our universe isn’t alone; it’s just one in a long line of universes that are born, grow, and die. Among these scientists is mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, who worked closely with Stephen Hawking and currently is the Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University. Penrose and his collaborators follow a cosmological theory called conformal cyclic cosmology (CCC) in which universes, much like human beings, come into existence, expand, and then perish.

Researchers devise an on-off system that allows high-fidelity operations and interconnection between processors.

MIT researchers have introduced a quantum computing architecture that can perform low-error quantum computations while also rapidly sharing quantum information between processors. The work represents a key advance toward a complete quantum computing platform.

Previous to this discovery, small-scale quantum processors have successfully performed tasks at a rate exponentially faster than that of classical computers. However, it has been difficult to controllably communicate quantum information between distant parts of a processor. In classical computers, wired interconnects are used to route information back and forth throughout a processor during the course of a computation. In a quantum computer, however, the information itself is quantum mechanical and fragile, requiring fundamentally new strategies to simultaneously process and communicate quantum information on a chip.