Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers at Duke University and Michigan State University have engineered a novel type of supercapacitor that remains fully functional even when stretched to eight times its original size. It does not exhibit any wear and tear from being stretched repeatedly and loses only a few percentage points of energy performance after 10,000 cycles of charging and discharging.

The researchers envision the supercapacitor being part of a power-independent, stretchable, flexible electronic system for applications such as wearable electronics or biomedical devices.

The results appear online March 19 in Matter, a journal from Cell Press. The research team includes senior author Changyong Cao, assistant professor of packaging, mechanical engineering and electrical and computer engineering at Michigan State University (MSU), and senior author Jeff Glass, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke. Their co-authors are doctoral students Yihao Zhou and Qiwei Han and research scientist Charles Parker from Duke, as well as Ph.D. student Yunteng Cao from the Massachusetts Institutes of Technology.

Countermeasures like social distancing may help stop the spread of Covid-19. But how can policymakers tell if they are doing more good than harm? Data!

New logo and new FB page for videos/ streaming events.

Hi, have set up this page for streamed or posted videos to support FB groups.

Circa 2005

The “non-lethal” laser rifle aims to dazzle suspects without causing permanent harm, but it will need to comply with a UN protocol on laser weaponry.

With a porosity of 99.99 %, it consists practically only of air, making it one of the lightest materials in the world: Aerobornitride is the name of the material developed by an international research team led by Kiel University. The scientists assume that they have thereby created a central basis for bringing laser light into a broad application range. Based on a boron-nitrogen compound, they developed a special three-dimensional nanostructure that scatters light very strongly and hardly absorbs it. Irradiated with a laser, the material emits uniform lighting, which, depending on the type of laser, is much more efficient and powerful than LED light. Thus, lamps for car headlights, projectors or room lighting with laser light could become smaller and brighter in the future. The research team presents their results in the current issue of the renowned journal Nature Communications, which was published today.

More light in the smallest space

In research and industry, laser light has long been considered the “next generation” of light sources that could even exceed the efficiency of LEDs (light-emitting diode). “For very bright or a lot of light, you need a large number of LEDs and thus space. But the same amount of light could also be obtained with a single laser diode that is one-thousandth smaller,” Dr. Fabian Schütt emphasizes the potential. The materials scientist from the working group “Functional Nanomaterials” at Kiel University is the first author of the study, which involves other researchers from Germany, England, Italy, Denmark and South Korea.

LONDON, Ky. — A gas station in London, Kentucky on Thursday, March 19 became the first in the nation to sell a gallon of gas for 99 cents.

GasBuddy officials confirmed via a cashier and GasBuddy users the BP gas station lowered its price to 99 cents per gallon as of about 6:30 a.m. Thursday.

GasBuddy had been anticipating this price could pop up in the Great Lakes states a week or so prior.

Partners in industry and academia are funded for the next three years for a total of 10 million Euros.

John Wallace

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Circa 2019

Memory loss is usually seen as an inevitable part of ageing. But new research suggests that magnetic pulse stimulation can help older brains recover a little of their youthful vitality.

Could some humans be able to sense the Earth’s magnetic field? Evidence suggests that in addition to quite a few animal species, humans could be—yes, this is the real term—magnetoreceptors. In a recent study, scientists conducted an experiment that measured how alpha waves interacted with a trace mineral that they believe registers magnetism.

Once upon a time, scientists thought animal magnetoreception was impossible, too. As they started to understand that birds and other animals used magnetoreception to navigate in the world, they still thought there was no way humans could do it.