Lifeboat Foundation

By Bill D’Zio March 25, 2020

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Part 2 of the Life in Space with COVID19 we will delve into Crew demo-2 where NASA and SpaceX are planning a launch within two months. There are a lot of pre-launch milestones and activities to cover to ensure a safe flight for the Astronauts. If anything goes wrong, there are lives at stake. Now NASA and SpaceX have to contend with another potential setback, COVID19 pandemic. (Click here for part I)

The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft for Demo-2 arrived at the launch site on Feb. 13, 2020. Photo credit: SpaceX

In Part I of why COVID19 pandemic is bad timing for the Space industry, we covered that issues happen because the relationship between complexity, risk, schedule and cost for space missions was not balanced.

Continue reading “COVID19 Impact Part II – SpaceX , SLS and NASA” »

;-; They say now it could be a bioweapon possibly like the chimera virus that is why it spread so fast. Many weird reports from god having a battle with the borg to even an alien entity in London but rationally this was a bioweapon as it spread so fast and evolved so fast. Still undecided the origin bit it seems patient zero was in china originally from a bat.

The COVID-19 coronavirus may be a chimera created from the presence of two pre-existing distinct viruses.

A man under Coronavirus lockdown used a drone to walk his dog 🐶.

For the first time, scientists have reprogrammed the stem cells of a 114-year-old woman, the oldest donor to date.

After first transforming cells from her blood sample into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), the researchers then generated mesenchymal stem cells, which help to maintain and repair tissues like bone, cartilage and fat.

“We set out to answer a big question: Can you reprogram cells this old?” says stem cell biologist Evan Snyder at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in California.

A Nobel Prize winning biology professor has provided a bit of good news amidst the coronavirus gloom; the US may see a downturn in new cases sooner than some models have predicted.

Michael Levitt, a Stanford University biology professor and a 2013 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, said his models predict the virus is not likely to dwindle on for months or years and – most importantly – is not likely to cause millions of deaths.

Mr Levitt previously predicted – correctly – when China would experience and endure the worst of its coronavirus crisis.

Tsunami waves may head to coasts around Japan, Russia, and beyond.

When you’re a software and hardware engineer sometimes you need a little challenge. Engineer Robert Lucian Chiriac’s latest Raspberry Pi creation can detect license plates and read the characters with fairly decent accuracy. This is an involved project that relies on machine learning to properly interpret images from the camera into discernible text.

The primary license plate reading function is constructed using three separate applications (there are more used throughout the project, but these three are critical). Chiriac used the YOLOv3 object detection algorithm to create a bounding box around each license plate it detects from the camera input. The image within the bounding box is sent to CRAFT, a text detecting application. Once the location for each character in the plate has been identified, the information is passed along to CRNN to predict the actual text.

Chiriac mounted the Raspberry Pi, GPS module, 4G module and Pi camera to his car’s rear-view mirror with a 3D-printed unit he designed. The Pi camera is even adjustable with a ball-joint swivel mount.

[Isolation is] actually very doable, but it’s very important to be able to interact well with the people you’re staying with, living with.

UPS is working with German startup Wingcopter to develop a new type of delivery drone, to be used for the logistics company’s growing commercial drone delivery efforts both in the U.S. and globally. Wingcopter has already designed an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that has a range of up to 75 miles and can achieve speeds as high as 150 miles per hour in conditions that include wind speeds of up to 45 miles per hour.

Wingcopter will be working closely with UPS’ Flight Forward subsidiary, the dedicated drone delivery unit that UPS developed last year in July to house its commercial drone delivery program. In October, Flight Forward received Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval to effectively operate a full-scale “drone airline” at scale for the purpose of package delivery.

Wingcopter has already demonstrated how its drones could operate in commercial settings, including during a demonstration with Merck earlier this year that saw its autonomous eVTOLs carry small packages between the drug company’s various office locations in Darmstadt in Germany. It also used its aircraft to deliver critical medical supplies and life-saving equipment to hard to reach areas, including through partnerships with UNICEF and other relief organizations.