Lifeboat Foundation

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Energy today announced the winners of $32 million in funding for 15 projects as part of the Breakthroughs Enabling THermonuclear-fusion Energy (BETHE) program. These projects will work to develop timely, commercially viable fusion energy, with the goal to increase the number and performance levels of lower-cost fusion concepts.

“Fusion energy technology holds great potential to be a safe, clean, reliable energy source, but research and development of fusion technology is often constrained by prohibitive costs,” said Under Secretary of Energy Mark W. Menezes. “BETHE teams will build on recent progress in fusion research and the growing fusion community to lower costs and further foster viable commercial opportunities for the next generation of fusion technology.”

“These BETHE projects further advance ARPA-E’s commitment to the development of fusion energy as a cost-competitive, viable, energy generation source,” said ARPA-E Director Lane Genatowski. “Commercially viable fusion energy can improve our chances of meeting global energy demand and will further establish U.S. technological lead in this crucial area.”

Contact tracing is working in South Korea and Singapore. But it raises privacy issues.

O.,o circa 2007.

The scales of the Arapaima, an Amazonian freshwater fish that can weigh up to 440 pounds, possess all the best attributes of a bulletproof vest, but the elements are better integrated into one solid piece combining imperviousness and flexibility, researchers say. The Air Force is funding a study of the fish for potential body armor development.

This armored BMW X5 is a bombproof fortress on wheels.

The Pentagon’s new program, Ground X-Vehicle Technologies (GXV-T), calls for a rugged but nimble war machine that can detect and dodge incoming fire.

Cygnus-X1.Net: A Tribute to Star Trek.

A dipolar force field propulsion system having a alternating electric field source for producing electromotive lines of force which in a first direction and which vary at a selected and having an electric field of a predetermined magnitude, a source of an alternating magnetic field having magnetic lines of force which in a second direction which is at a predetermined angle to the first direction of the electromotive lines of force and which cross and intercept the electromotive line of force at a predetermined location defining a force field region and wherein the of the alternating magnetic field substantially equal to the of the alternating electric field and at a selected in phase angle therewith and wherein the magnetic field has a flux which when multiplied times the selected is less than a known characteristic field ionization limit; a source of neutral particles of matter having a selected dipole characteristic and having a known characteristic field ionization limit which is greater than the magnitude of the electric field and wherein the dipoles of the particles of matter are capable of being driven into cyclic rotation at the selected by the electric field to produce a reactive thrust, a vaporizing stage which vaporizes said particles of matter into a gaseous state at a selected temperature, and a transporting system for transporting the vaporized particles of matter into the force field defined by the crossing electromotive lines of force and the magnetic lines of force.

Ions trapped nanoscale optical cavities could be used to distribute entangled quantum particles over large distances. That is the conclusion of Jonathan Kindem and colleagues at Caltech in the US, who showed that a trapped ion of ytterbium can remain entangled with a photon for long periods of time. Furthermore, the team showed that the ion’s quantum state can be read out when manipulated by laser and microwave pulses. Their achievement could lay the foundations for a future quantum internet.

Quantum computers are becoming a reality as research labs and companies roll out nascent devices. An important next step in this quantum revolution is creating a “quantum internet” across which quantum information can be shared. The delicate nature of quantum information, however, means that it is very difficult to connect quantum computers over long distances.

Most quantum computers encode quantum bits (qubits) of information into the quantum states of matter – trapped atoms or superconducting circuits, for example. However, the best way to transmit quantum information over long distances is to encode it into a photon of light. An important challenge is how to transfer quantum information from stationary matter-based qubits to photon-based “flying” qubits and then back again.