Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Featured Image Source: Merrillan, Wisconsin resident r/ darkpenguin22 via Reddit.

SpaceX is building its Starlink internet network in low Earth orbit. The aerospace company plans to fund its space program by offering affordable, low-latency, broadband internet globally. SpaceX initially plans to deploy 4,409 internet-beaming Starlink satellites, according to a recent letter the company sent to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). These satellites will operate at altitudes between 550 to 570 kilometers above Earth. To date, there are approximately 708 Starlink satellites already in low Earth orbit.

Company employees are actively private beta testing the Starlink network via user terminals that look like a ‘UFO on a stick’ and Wi-Fi router. – “They show super-low latency and download speeds greater than 100 [megabits] per second [Mbps],” SpaceX Senior Engineer Kate Tice shared during the latest deployment broadcast, “That means our latency is low enough to play the fastest online video games and our download speeds are fast enough to stream multiple HD movies at once.”

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Although the SARS-CoV-2 virus has sickened more than 14 million people, bats contract similar viruses all the time without experiencing any known symptoms. Now, the newly sequenced genomes of six species spanning the bat family tree reveal how they’ve been outsmarting viruses for 65 million years. The findings are an “excellent starting point for understanding the superstar immune systems of bats,” says Laurel Yohe, a postdoc at Yale University who studies bat evolution and was not involved with the work. With more than 1400 species, bats are the second most diverse group of mammals on Earth. They live on every continent except Antarctica, and range in size from two to more than 1000 grams. They fly, they echolocate, and some live up to 41 years—a long time for animals of their size. They are also known to carry many different kinds of viruses, including coronaviruses, with no ill effects.

Newly sequenced genomes reveal the secrets of their “superstar” immune systems.

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The world’s first waterproof drone capable of submerging under water, floating like a boat and flying through the air at over 40mph (60kmh) has been unveiled by US engineers.

The $765 (£585) gadget, known as Spry, features a built-in 4K camera that can both record video and snap photos on the fly.

Footage is beamed back to a monitor embedded into a waterproof remote control, which the drone’s developers claim is another world first for the drone industry.

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O,.o.

Vat19 puts the life-saving LifeStraw water filter to the test by trying it out in sewage, urinal water, water from the Mississippi River, and even some liquid vomit. The video, naturally, comes with a warning for the weak of stomach.

This is our grossest video ever. If you have a weak stomach, you’ve been warned!?

Continue reading “LifeStraw Water Filter Is Put to the Test on Sewage, Urinal Water, and Vomit” | >

Visit http://TED.com to get our entire library of TED Talks, transcripts, translations, personalized talk recommendations and more.

Hugh Herr is building the next generation of bionic limbs, robotic prosthetics inspired by nature’s own designs. Herr lost both legs in a climbing accident 30 years ago; now, as the head of the MIT Media Lab’s Biomechatronics group, he shows his incredible technology in a talk that’s both technical and deeply personal — with the help of ballroom dancer Adrianne Haslet-Davis, who lost her left leg in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and performs again for the first time on the TED stage.

The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more. You’re welcome to link to or embed these videos, forward them to others and share these ideas with people you know. For more information on using TED for commercial purposes (e.g. employee learning, in a film or online course), submit a Media Request here: http://media-requests.TED.com

Follow TED on Twitter: http://twitter.com/TEDTalks

Continue reading “New bionics let us run, climb and dance | Hugh Herr” | >

In a statement, Roscosmos noted that the first missions to explore Venus were carried out by the Soviet Union.

“The enormous gap between the Soviet Union and its competitors in the investigation of Venus contributed to the fact that the United States called Venus a Soviet planet,” Roscosmos said.

The Russians claim to have extensive material that suggests that some objects on the Venusian surface have changed places or could be alive, although these are hypotheses that have yet to be confirmed.

Russia has announced an intention to independently explore Venus a day after scientists said there was a gas that could be present in the planet’s clouds due to single-cell microbes.

Continue reading “‘Venus is a Russian planet,’ Russian space agency director says” | >

Over the past five decades, space travel advocates have been pushing to expand our footprint in space. They dream about lunar bases, missions to Mars and colonies in free space. The visions are ever changing, with government efforts joined by those of private companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX — in the midst of an effort to send tourists on a trip around the Moon — gravitating toward the space tourism sector. While the goals and how to accomplish them are in constant flux, there remain certain obstacles that must be overcome before we take that next big step. And one of the biggest is the need to protect the health of our future space explorers.

That’s what’s prompted NASA to turn to the fast-moving world of gene therapy to solve several potential medical issues facing astronauts on lengthy space missions.

The US space agency and the associated Translational Institute for Space Health Research (TRISH) at the Baylor College of Medicine are now calling for proposals from private companies and other groups to develop a kind of gene therapy for astronauts. But this would be different than recent gene therapies that target specific diseases such as hemophilia or various types of cancer. Instead, the idea here is to minimize the damage from space radiation through a kind of preventive treatment. Exposure to radiation in space can cause cancer, cardiovascular disease, cataracts and the loss of cognitive function due to accelerated death of brain cells. These different disease categories involve very different mechanisms — cancer and heart disease result from radiation damaging DNA, while loss of brain tissue results simply from radiation killing off mature cells, and still other diseases result from radiation destroying stem cells.

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