This mouth-full of a boat uses simple physics to create a cushion of air that allows it to effortlessly fly along the tops of ocean waves with near inexhaustible solar energy. The researchers say that this sleek, solar vessel could act as a mobile charging station for drones in the deep ocean or could conduct oceanic search and rescue missions.
Researchers in Russia have designed a solar-powered, and AI piloted, boat that can walk on water and serve as a mid-ocean fuel-up station for drones.
Posted in biotech/medical, business
There’s nothing small about the impact small businesses have on local communities. They turn towns into hometowns and strangers into neighbors.
And right now, they need our support.
That’s why we’re bringing you —a one-day musical experience to raise money for Accion Opportunity Fund to provide grants to the most at-risk small businesses hit hardest by COVID-19, with a focus on those run by women and people of color.
Join us as we cross the country to hear top musicians deliver unforgettable performances from unique locations, and share stories of the businesses they know and love.
UK experts say the low-dose steroid treatment is a major breakthrough in the fight against the deadly virus.
It cut the risk of death by a third for patients on ventilators. For those on oxygen, it cut deaths by a fifth.
The drug is part of the world’s biggest trial testing existing treatments to see if they also work for coronavirus.
Researchers estimate that if the drug had been used to treat patients in the UK from the start of the coronavirus pandemic up to 5,000 lives could have been saved. Because it is cheap, it could also be of huge benefit in poorer countries struggling with high numbers of Covid-19 patients.
Posted in space travel
Now, the same researchers have achieved their goal of entanglement-based quantum cryptography using the Micius satellite. The scientists, who detailed their findings online in the 15 June edition of the journal Nature, say they again connected two observatories separated by 1,120 kilometers. But this time, the collection efficiency of the links was improved by up to four-fold, which resulted in data rates of about 0.12 bits per second.
A space-based, virtually unhackable quantum Internet may be one step closer to reality due to satellite experiments that linked ground stations more than 1,000 kilometers apart, a new study finds.
Quantum physics makes a strange effect known as entanglement possible. Essentially, two or more particles such as photons that get linked or “entangled” can influence each other simultaneously no matter how far apart they are.
Entanglement is an essential factor in the operations of quantum computers, the networks that would connect them, and the most sophisticated kinds of quantum cryptography, a theoretically unhackable means of securing information exchange.
Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have demonstrated a potentially new way to make switches inside a computer’s processing chips, enabling them to use less energy and radiate less heat.
The team has developed a practical technique for controlling magnons, which are essentially waves that travel through magnetic materials and can carry information. To use magnons for information processing requires a switching mechanism that can control the transmission of a magnon signal through the device.
While other labs have created systems that carry and control magnons, the team’s approach brings two important firsts: Its elements can be built on silicon rather than exotic and expensive substrates, as other approaches have demanded. It also operates efficiently at room temperature, rather than requiring refrigeration. For these and other reasons, this new approach might be more readily employed by computer manufacturers.
Its performance is equally microscopic, only generating anywhere between 10 to 400 micronewtons — a tiny fraction of the power of a toy rocket.
But in space, even that low amount of power can allow satellites to hold their positions, and even gradually deorbit to make sure they’re out of harm’s way and don’t become space debris.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, a European-Japanese ion thruster used for the Mercury-bound spacecraft BepiColombo broke the record for the most powerful ion thruster in 2018. Its performance tops out at a maximum combined 290 millinewtons (290,000 micronewtons).
NASA is planning to bring Martian samples back to Earth — and they’re looking for someone to lead the mission.
The Mars Sample Return (MSR) program, set to take place over the next decade, aims to collect samples of Martian rock, soil, and atmosphere for analysis and testing on Earth.
NASA has previously sent several rovers to Mars, but no program or robot has ever been able to bring back samples, which could give researchers new insights into the Red Planet.
