Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 7294

O,.o circa 2018.

Bats’ extraordinary super-immunity long has fascinated virologists.

The U.S. military has a long history of enlisting the help of animals in warfare. The bottlenose dolphin’s sophisticated bio sonar enabled the Navy to detect and clear underwater bombs during the Iraq War, and homing pigeons played a vital role as secret messengers during both world wars, with some awarded medals for bravery.

But there is one animal the military has had significantly less success in conscripting, and that is the bat.

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Lately, there has been a flood of interest in gravitational waves. After the first official detection at LIGO / Virgo in 2015, data has been coming in showing how common these once theoretical phenomena actually are. Usually they are caused by unimaginably violent events, such as a merging pair of black holes. Such events also have a tendency to emit another type of phenomena—light. So far, it has been difficult to observe any optical associated with these gravitational-wave emitting events. But a team of researchers hope to change that with the full implementation of the Gravitation-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) telescope.

The GOTO project is designed specifically to find and monitor the parts of the sky that other instruments, such as LIGO, detect from. Its original incarnation, known as the GOTO-4 Prototype, was brought online in 2017. Located in La Palma, in the Canary Islands, this prototype consisted of four “unit telescopes” (UTs) housed in an 18ft clamshell dome. In 2020, this prototype was upgraded to 8 UTs, allowing for a much wider view of the sky.

The wide field of view is necessary for its work detecting gravitational-wave based optical , as directionality of gravitational waves are notoriously difficult to pin down. The wider the field of view of a , the more likely it will be able to detect an event that happens.

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Eighty-one years ago, our world-class research center in California’s Silicon Valley was born. Ground broke on Ames Research Center on Dec. 20, 1939. It was the second aeronautical laboratory established by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics to perform fundamental research on all things flight. From its very beginnings, Ames was a place for innovation. Tests performed in its wind tunnels transformed military aircraft during World War II and paved the way for air travel at supersonic speeds. In the 1950s and ‘60s, its researchers looked to the stars and came up with new designs and materials for spacecraft that would make human spaceflight a reality. Fast-forward to the present, and the center contributes to virtually every major agency mission through its expertise in spacecraft entry systems, robotics, aeronautics, supercomputing, and so much more! Here are things to know about Ames.

The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover is the latest lunar exploration mission led by Ames. Launching in 2023, the mobile robot will search for water ice inside craters and other places at the Moon’s South Pole. Its survey will help pave the way for astronaut missions to the lunar surface beginning in 2024 as part of the Artemis program.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com/.

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Hong Kong scientists claim they have made a potential breakthrough discovery in the fight against infectious diseases—a chemical that could slow the spread of deadly viral illnesses.

A team from the University of Hong Kong described the newly discovered chemical as “highly potent in interrupting the life cycle of diverse viruses” in a study published this month in the journal Nature Communications.

The scientists told AFP Monday that it could one day be used as a broad-spectrum antiviral for a host of —and even for viruses that have yet to emerge—if it passes clinical trials.

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Go big or go home. This Alabama-based start-up just unveiled the biggest drone in the world — and it looks sublime. The massive drone, called the Ravn X, is designed to launch small satellites into orbit while airborne.

Aevum — the space startup — has worked mainly in the background, until yesterday when they unveiled their gigantic autonomous drone.

They built the high-altitude aircraft and launch vehicle to ferry satellites to orbit and improve space access — similar goals to space-tech leaders like Virgin Orbit, Rocket Lab, and SpaceX. But if you want to get ahead of the competition and can’t be the first, why not be the biggest?

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While analyzing artifacts from the SolarWinds Orion supply-chain attack, security researchers discovered another backdoor that is likely from a second threat actor.

Named SUPERNOVA, the malware is a webshell planted in the code of the Orion network and applications monitoring platform and enabled adversaries to run arbitrary code on machines running the trojanized version of the software.

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