Lifeboat Foundation

Here’s the latest on SpaceX’s dreams of building cities on Mars.

BANGKOK (AP) — Narcotics police in Myanmar have seized a large amount of liquid fentanyl, providing the first evidence that the synthetic opioid is being produced in quantity in Southeast Asia’s infamous Golden Triangle region.

The 5G revolution has begun, and the first lines of phones that can access the next generation of wireless speeds have already hit the shelves. Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Lille in France have built a new component that will more efficiently allow access to the highest 5G frequencies in a way that increases devices’ battery life and speeds up how quickly we can do things like stream high-definition media.

Smartphones are loaded with switches that perform a number of duties. One major task is jumping between networks and spectrum frequencies: 4G, Wi-Fi, LTE, Bluetooth, etc. The current radio-frequency (RF) switches that perform this task are always running, consuming precious processing power and battery life.

“The switch we have developed is more than 50 times more energy efficient compared to what is used today,” said Deji Akinwande, a professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering who led the research. “It can transmit an HDTV stream at a 100 gigahertz frequency, and that is unheard of in broadband switch technology.”

The ability to estimate the physical properties of objects is of key importance for robots, as it allows them to interact more effectively with their surrounding environment. In recent years, many robotics researchers have been specifically trying to develop techniques that allow robots to estimate tactile properties of objects or surfaces, which could ultimately provide them with skills that resemble the human sense of touch.

Building on previous research, Matthew Purri, a Ph.D. student specializing in Computer Vision and AI at Rutgers University, recently developed a convolutional neural network (CNN)-based model that can estimate tactile properties of surfaces by analyzing images of them. Purri’s new paper, pre-published on arXiv, was supervised by Kristin Dana, a professor of Electrical Engineering at Rutgers.

“My previous research dealt with fine-grain material segmentation from satellite images,” Purri told TechXplore. “Satellite image sequences provide a wealth of material information about a scene in the form of varied viewing and illumination angles and multispectral information. We learned how valuable multi-view information is for identifying material from our previous work and believed that this information could act as a cue for the problem of physical surface property estimation.”

Exploring the Gold colour planet of our Solar system — Saturn.

#SaturnExploration #SpaceExploration

Eric Klien

A liquid metal lattice that can be crushed but returns to its original shape on heating has been developed by Pu Zhang and colleagues at Binghamton University in the US. The material is held together by a silicone shell and could find myriad uses including soft robotics, foldable antennas and aerospace engineering. Indeed, the research could even lead to the creation of a liquid metal robot evoking the T-1000 character in the film Terminator 2.

The team created the liquid metal lattice using a special mixture of bismuth, indium and tin known as Field’s alloy. This alloy has the relatively unusual property of melting at just 62 °C, which means it can be liquefied with just hot water. Field’s alloy already has several applications – including as a liquid-metal coolant for advanced nuclear reactors.

Continue reading “New material could be used to make a liquid metal robot” »

Eric Klien

Simulation theory points out that we might be living in a giant computer simulation. Exponential technological growth and how far we’ve already come in so little time are big indicators that we can’t possibly imagine what the future of humanity would look like in 100 years, or better yet, 1,000 years!
Will we be able to create simulations so indistinguishable from reality that the characters will not be aware that they are being simulated? Today on Cognitive Culture, you’ll learn about why you’re not real!

Continue reading “Are We In A Simulation? | Why You Are Not Real” »

The incident follows the American military’s release of evidence that Russia has sent combat aircraft to join Libya’s civil war.

Circa 2019 o.o

There are enormous methods such as physical, chemical, and biological, for the synthesis of metallic nanoparticles (MNPs), which has become a matter of focus among material scientists. Green chemistry-based MNP synthesis is an area, which has gained much importance presently due to their non-toxicity and monodispersed nanoparticle preparation methodologies. Among green synthesis methods, plants are considered as efficient candidates for nanoparticle synthesis. The meticulous formation of different sizes and shapes of the nanoparticles using plants has spurred encouraging interest. The rate kinetics and stability of nanoparticle synthesis are well studied as well as appreciated in the arena of materials. Their capability to sequester metal ions and fastidiously define the dimensions using a plethora of capping proteins such as glutathione and phytochelatins is intriguing giving it a monodispersed size. This review is a comprehensive understanding of the metal nanoparticles synthesized by plants and apprehends the mechanism of nanoparticle synthesis exhaustively.